Kitty Kat

Am blogging from Hong Kong (office)... after a week of travelling alone, it was nice to be able to meet and stay with JL instead of a sterile hotel room... JL, I guess this is 1 of those moments where we sometimes forget / find it hard to really express how grateful I am for this, as well as your fantastic best-friendship over the years... looking forward to watching tv / sitting around doing nothing together over the next few days!


Guess who I found lying nekkid on my bed when I came out of the shower?


Spot the cat!

I like...

Phew!

Was spared the whole long eating and drinking routine with colleagues this evening... left the office at 5:30pm for quick dinner with the same "small hose" colleague at COEX mall, and we parted ways at 6:45pm when he had some short-notice work matter to attend to....

So I'm happily sitting in front of the computer, watching tv, and kicking myself for forgetting to buy some of those lovely looking pastries from the basement food mall of Hyundai Department Store for my really early breakfast tomorrow... 9am flight, which means I have to leave the hotel at 6am...

*waves to Telmi*... it was nice talking on Skype!

Booze

1 of the parts of overseas work trips I sometimes dread is the socialising during the evenings... Whilst I am fully appreciative of the fact that quite a lot of the time the hosts are trying their darnedest to be hospitable (and in my previous job, to curry favor, since I was an emissary from HQ), sometimes I just want to be left alone, especially when it's for example a 3-night trip and I need only be kept company for 1 evening...

Thankfully I haven't been subject to the "drag the foreigner to try our exotic dishes and see how / if he gags" treatment yet...

Anyways, last night, my primary host had something on, so she got another colleague to bring me out for dinner.. we went to a place near the office for charcoal barbequed meats and stuff (lotsa spring onions involved, so you can imagine the gas created last night... hahahahahah), which was pretty good... we shared a small bottle of shochu between us, and I was quite glad that it was going to stop there...

But once dinner ended, my primary host called the colleague to ask us to meet her and some friends for drinks... we got to the appointed place first, and the colleague with me started ordering more drinks... some threshold must have been silently crossed at this stage, for the pretty straight-laced-seeming guy started talking about how many korean ladies have boob jobs and how he likes his girls with big chests and biggish butts... but it was not all risque talk - he started volunteering a few "do you know she's [x] years old??!?", "she has many boyfriends" and other miscellaneous secrets about this person and that...

By the time the others arrived, he was quite a goner... and because his english standard was the typical Korean standard, he regaled the rest of us with gaffes... like I'm sure he meant to say "excuse me, I need to go pee; I have a small bladder" but he said "small hose"... heh... and you know someone is totally gone when he starts calling you "brother" on the first day he meets you, and says things like "I really like you, man"... geez...

Anyways, moral of the story - never do "bad" things together / with the knowledge of colleagues, cos they might spill the beans accidentally or otherwise one day, and ure dead meat!

Seoul

Update time!

Am back in the Hotel, after having the first full-of-meat meal in 3.5 days... heh.. mostly self-inflicted tho... Had a buffet dinner at the hotel (hellooo grilled pork belly! :D) and walked 2% of it off going to the Hyundai Shopping Centre adjacent to COEX, and the COEX mall itself...

Some colleague falsely told me that Nike stuff was cheap here.. my ass! Well, pretty much everything's at least slightly more expensive than Singapore... and the economy must be doing roaring well, cos the LV, Gucci, and jewellery counters in the high-end department stores were all crowded with ladies!

Anyways, the activities of the past few days in reverse chrono sequence, since when I uploaded the photos, the most recent ones appear on top:

DMZ Tour

Thus far, I think it was the most enjoyable part of the trip... cost about SGD80 for a half-day tour, and we were brought to Imjingak park where you could see the Freedom Bridge (where they returned the POWs of the Korean War), the gate of the Freedom Bridge where people tie ribbons and posters with messages of the early return of the displaced persons, as well as for peace in the world in general...





In between, we went to some other places where photos were not allowed, e.g. 1 of the 4 known tunnels which were dug by the North Koreans in order to allow a invasion exit right in South Korea itself... didn't look like it, but apparently it could pump out 30,000 soldiers (1 division) in 1 hour... obviously not wide enough for vehicles tho, so some kinda invasion that would be.. We were also told that the North Koreans painted the (granite) ceiling of the tunnel black, so that they could say that they were mining for coal when they were caught with the tunnel... heh.. ingenious eh?

Below photo is of the Dora train station, which was built in 2002(?) as the last stop in South Korea, and to be linked to North Korea when they day of peace finally comes...



Insadong

Yesterday. I'd read about this teahouse called The Old Teahouse / Yetchatjip in the Lonely Planet - the highlight was the old knick knacks, and that songbirds fly freely within the premises... the place turned out to be smaller than I thought, but was really quaint and nice... SGD10 for a big cup of cool pear tea and a few pieces of dessert, birds flying so close past you that you could hear the buzz of their wings, and a couple of hours respite from the noise and heat of the alleys downstairs... definitely recommended!

See if you can spot the songbirds!

If you're ever going to Seoul, make sure you check out Lonely Planet / google about some of the other unique teahouses in Insadong - apparently there's one with pet rabbits and monkeys!



Gyeongbokgung

Most famous palace in South Korea...



Imagine living here and having your personal harem... heh...
apparently our friend had up to 8 concubines living under the same roof at some point...



Seoraksan

Was told about this place, and decided to make the 4-hour bus ride to this national park... if I'd been here in about 3 weeks' time, I'd been able to see the marvelous orange maple leaves falling into the streams, blah blah blah... oh well...


I climbed this! shack ah!



That marks the "fun" part of the trip... it's work for the next few days!

I brought some mooncakes for my Korean colleagues, but given the distances they travelled on the place, on the buses, etc., they are slightly flaky when I checked this afternoon... ooops... hee...

All together now...

Awww....

Paella

Colleague came back from her 2+ week Spain trip yesterday, and she looked like she had quite a lot of little wounds and scabs on her right hand..

Turns out she ate paella very often, and burnt her hand on the paella pan at the average of 2 times per paella meal... hahahaha....

The Banquet

Caught this chinese movie called The Banquet over the weekend with YF and this girl I'm sure she's trying to fix me up with..

Anyways, this is a contender the Cheesiest Line award:

[Empress was visiting an apothecary and wanted a really potent poison to poison the Emperor]
Empress: Is there anything more poisonous than this?
Apothecary: Yes; the human heart...

Geez...

Own Goal

Can you imagine how stupid theywe look?

22 out of 27 CSO representatives are now able to enter Singapore
By Rita Zahara, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 15 September 2006 2109 hrs

SINGAPORE: 22 Civil Society Organisation (CSO) representatives will now be allowed to enter Singapore for the IMF/World Bank meetings.

The move comes after Singapore reviewed its decision which initially denied entry to 27 activists.

However, the remaining five will still be subjected to interviews and may not be let in, if they attempt to enter the country.

...

Maudlin

Saw that a friend had changed her MSN nick today to "Maudlin"... I guess it's cos she's going back to London to complete her masters very soon, but that's not the point.. the point is that "maudlin's" one of my favourite words in the whole English language, and there's a story which accompanies how I found out about this word...

Back when I was in the Firm, there was this girl ("YE") who was my age but 2 years more senior (because of the "dead" time in NS) in experience on my floor... she was just about everything ideal in my dream girl... shoulder length hair, always smiling, healthy tan, very often dressed in white (heh), just the local equivalent of a WASP...

But she was doing corporate and I was in litigation, and there wasn't much time nor opportunity for us to speak and stuff... but anyways, when she was leaving the firm, she wrote a farewell email which began with (I still remember the words so clearly) "I'm not one for mauldin farewells, but..."

Needless to say, I did not know the meaning of "maudlin" then, and had to find it out from www.m-w.com...

Hmm.. come to think of it, it's a story about nothing, but what the heck... :D

A million bucks

Another one of those "what I wouldn't give to be this happy" photos:

Ripley's Believe It Or Not

A friend sent this to me....

Why not lease land from Australia?

The truce in Lebanon is holding. After the destruction and suffering, millions of aid dollars will be spent to rebuild broken homes and infrastructure. Many countries will benefit from the spoils of that monthlong senseless war, which is a criminal waste of precious lives and materials.

Many countries have sent their troops into the Middle East in support of the United States' larger effort to uphold democracy and peace there. Many claim that the unsettling problem stems from the state of Israel, which some Muslim countries in the region have vowed to destroy and obliterate at all costs.

Is there no solution to this unending conflict and hatred in the Middle East?

Israel wants a nation and a homeland of their own in Jerusalem and more land for its people.

I would like to humbly suggest that a huge country with land to spare should consider the lease of a piece of land twice the size of Israel to the Israelis for 200 years.

If a host country cannot foresee any change to the land for the next 500 years, I hope they have the political will to support this proposition, which is not meant to ask the Israelis to quit Israel completely.

I have in mind Australia. What loss or gain can come out of it if Australia were to lease land in its desolate and thinly-populated North West to Israel?

I am sure Israel has the ability to convert the land to good use in a short time and benefit all. I am confident many countries and the United Nations will be in support of this idea to help reduce tension in the Middle East. It will be cheaper than the cost of wars.

TAN KOK TIM
Singapore


Jakarta Post 4 Sep

Angry

Have just been emailed by HR that everyone in the Singapore office is forced to take 3 days of annual leave between Tuesday 26 December and Thursday 28 December... "as a gesture of goodwill", the company will give declare Friday, 29 December, as a day off...

Quite miffed, really... I've got no bloody where to go during that week! Then stay at home and rot, or get caught in the rain in Orchard Road ah? *Growl*

Signatures Cafe

I clean forgot that I was brought to another pretty nice place when I was in Sydney... after the fabbo dinner at Hurricane's, my friends drove us to this place called Signatures Cafe at Brighton for desert... too bad it was already dark, otherwise the floor to ceiling windows would have been simply superb! Tho we could see the seagulls sleeping on the beach, all facing into the wind, and that was cute! So does that mean that when the wind shifts, they shift their bodies in their sleep too? Speaking of which, I saw a 1-legged seagull in Manly... quite sad, really, cos it obviously had some difficulty when taking off and landing...

Slip Slop Slap

Sydney was great! It's really one of those places I really really like, and can see myself living and working in for the long term, though it is still second to San Francisco...

Colleagues were great, and it was nice being able to put a face to the name / voice... am glad that it's going to be even easier working with these people going forward! There's going to be a big company pow-wow in KL this week and my Sales VP for South Pacific promised to positively coo about me to my boss... hahaha.. hopefully that translates into big increment!

The R&R part was great as well, and marred only slightly by the inclement weather... Had marvelous (hmmm... is it "marvelous" or "marvellous"?) ribs and steak at Hurricane's... positively yummy! Had checked out a couple of other really nice places on the internet before going, but didn't quite have the time... see for example this blog to totally whet ure appetite! And I definitely must eat at Kelly's the next time I'm there!

Wanted to do the whole walk from Coogee to Bondi, but it rained really hard by the time we got past Waverly Cemetary, and had to turn back... Slip Slop Slap my ass :D

Didn't get to meet NyumNyum either... sorry dude! With some luck, there's a chance to go back again before the year is out!





Some other pics from the trip... when I stepped on the weighing scale at the serviced apartment I was staying, it read 66kg, which is a good 4 or 5 kg less than I usually weigh... haha... obviously not functioning properly... :D


My Travel10 card from 2 years ago still works! :D

Big Bird

Guess who? Big Bird, his granny and Cookie Monster dressed up pretending to be Big Bird's granny... something along the lines of the story of Little Red Riding Hood...

Had dinner with a couple of my colleagues last night in Crow's Nest, 1 of whom used to teach at a fancy-schmanzy college in the US... He confessed that if he had to grade 80 exam papers, after the 4th paper, despite the best of intentions when he started off, he's sick of seeing the same responses, and simply scans through the script to look for keywords to give the relevant grade... way way too late, but so the trick is short sentences, underline keywords / cases, and have neat handwriting!

Teleport

In Sydney for work.. it's awful lonely to be the only person in a 2-bedroom serviced apartment...

But the flip side is, now I know how nice it is to be able to walk from "home" to the office in 4 minutes!

I spy....

whilst all his buddies are busy figuring something out,


our friend is so bored upstairs he read some magazine for a while, and then fell asleep... heh...

So thick you could cut it with a knife...

Posts are coming in with a lag as I've been too lazy to write much...

On Thursday, YG, the 2nd of our bunch of secondary school friends, a.k.a. The Brotherhood of Honor, had his ROM thing...

His intention was to hold the tasting dinner for this traditional wedding last night, and invite some other close friends to a buffet dinner at one of the restaurants of the same hotel.. but I think in the end, a couple of people who were supposed to be at the downstairs dinner with us could not make it, and LT called to say that we got "upgraded" to the upstairs dinner...

What I didn't realise was that we were upgraded to the tasting dinner, i.e. they had added 3 more chairs to the table, and we'd be sitting at the only table, with parents from both sides! I was about 30 minutes late joining the dinner, and when I entered the room and sat down, I saw what looked like a really dour and "I'd rather not be here" look from the bride's dad ("BD")... whoa.... and for the first 10 minutes, there was near total silence from BD despite attempts from the groom's dad, etc. to start bits of conversation...

But suddenly, someone mentioned the price of cigarettes, and it totally got BD talking! From then on, suddenly he had lots to say about everything, from drinking to gambling to how the soon hocks they serve in wedding dinners in Singapore are not "real soon hocks"... hee hee... it was almost like something else possessed him!

Anyways, YG, congrats!

Rain

Met my ex-colleagues for lunch on Wendesday... it was bright and sunny when I left the office at 1145, but pouring huge-ass cats and dogs by the time I got off the train back at Tanjong Pagar..

Thank goodness I got my ex-secretary to bring for me the x-rays that I accidentally left behind in the old company during my haste to leave on the last day of work there, for they served as a half-decent "umbrella".. heh...

For the first time in my life, I saw an adult female drenched to the skin from the rain... it was like a wet t-shirt dream come true! hahahahaha...