My mum's going for her surgery tomorrow.
No mood to work today.
Bleah.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Speech by J.K Rowling
This is a speech by J.K Rowling given at the graduation of the class of 2008 at Harvard.
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
by J.K. Rowling
Speech Details
2008 Harvard University Commencement, June 5, 2008. Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008
NPR.org, June 5, 2008 · President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,
The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008
The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
by J.K. Rowling
Speech Details
2008 Harvard University Commencement, June 5, 2008. Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008
NPR.org, June 5, 2008 · President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,
The first thing I would like to say is 'thank you.' Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I've experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world's best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called 'real life', I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents' car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International's headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country's regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people's minds, imagine themselves into other people's places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people's lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children's godparents, the people to whom I've been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I've used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.
Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
My Dream Girl
I think i've finally found my dream gal.
Her name's Anne Hathaway.
I saw her in Get Smart and WOW! I saw her in Devil Wears Prada but gosh!
Big eyes, long legs, jet black hair.
Ironically, i cant find a decent picture of her on the internet. Her hair isnt black in those pics, so it actually makes my post stupid.
I played badminton yesterday and my friends (or so i thought) said i looked like a character from Kung Fu Panda.
Unfortunately, his picture was easier to find.
Her name's Anne Hathaway.
I saw her in Get Smart and WOW! I saw her in Devil Wears Prada but gosh!
Big eyes, long legs, jet black hair.
Ironically, i cant find a decent picture of her on the internet. Her hair isnt black in those pics, so it actually makes my post stupid.
I played badminton yesterday and my friends (or so i thought) said i looked like a character from Kung Fu Panda.
Unfortunately, his picture was easier to find.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Foods of the Middle Kingdom
Here're just some of the times i had the mood to take some pics of the food i ate.
Here's a pizza. Lousy ass pizza man... i ate 3 pizzas in total in China and they all suck.
Heng i ordered chicken wings.
My friend brought me to this peking duck place in Shanghai. It was great. So i went back a few days later to da bao half a duck for dinner.
The place is called 鸭王.
Check out how crowded the place is...well, not really.
The place where they roast the duck.
Here's what i ordered.
Half a peking duck and a packet of rice and i made sure that they gave me the dough skin and sauce and onions and cucumber for my duck.
When i got to the hotel, I found out that the skin and sauce and vegetables were totally frozen. Apparently they thought i bringing it home for dinner and imagined i have a steamer for the dough skin.
Heng i ordered the rice as well, so it was more of a roasted duck meal.
I drank this iced tea in a macau themed restaurant. Quite cool way to present the tea.
Here's a pizza. Lousy ass pizza man... i ate 3 pizzas in total in China and they all suck.
Heng i ordered chicken wings.
My friend brought me to this peking duck place in Shanghai. It was great. So i went back a few days later to da bao half a duck for dinner.
The place is called 鸭王.
Check out how crowded the place is...well, not really.
The place where they roast the duck.
Here's what i ordered.
Half a peking duck and a packet of rice and i made sure that they gave me the dough skin and sauce and onions and cucumber for my duck.
When i got to the hotel, I found out that the skin and sauce and vegetables were totally frozen. Apparently they thought i bringing it home for dinner and imagined i have a steamer for the dough skin.
Heng i ordered the rice as well, so it was more of a roasted duck meal.
I drank this iced tea in a macau themed restaurant. Quite cool way to present the tea.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Lounging
Im typing this in the airport lounge. It’s a wonderful lounge man. There are so many different kinds of seats. Sofa seats, table seats, bar seats with power points for lappies and also this, which I chose. Leather loungers for sleeping with an option for a wake up call.
I think I need one of these for my apartment.
Only thing is the wifi isn’t working. The Chinese will always be able to find some way to cock things up.
I think I need one of these for my apartment.
Only thing is the wifi isn’t working. The Chinese will always be able to find some way to cock things up.
Hunted
My headhunter smsed me today and asked me if I got anybody to recommend for this job that she had an opening for. I asked her which company and if I can join.
She immediately called me to ask if I was unhappy. She said technically ive stayed for 6 months so if I wanna go, I just have to write her a note to make it official.
Haha..
But then the job was for a Singapore MNC. Doesn’t seem very fun. So I declined.
She ended by asking if I needed her to pray for me. How sweet really.
She immediately called me to ask if I was unhappy. She said technically ive stayed for 6 months so if I wanna go, I just have to write her a note to make it official.
Haha..
But then the job was for a Singapore MNC. Doesn’t seem very fun. So I declined.
She ended by asking if I needed her to pray for me. How sweet really.
One of my crazy colleagues emailed me over the weekend for something mundane concerning work. And then she asked the customary “How’s everything in China?”
I guess she wasn’t expecting my answer when I said “ Im kinda sick and I miss home a lot especially when im sick”
Her reply was simply “I know how you feel on the second part”, cos she is based in Dubai.
Within 10 minutes, my direct boss emailed me (he’s a BB freak) to ask how I was.
That was the weekend.
2 days before I leave Shanghai, I received this package at my hotel from my colleagues in Singapore.
It contained the el cheapo biscuits that I like, 3 in 1 milo, a stuffed penguin toy, a pocket IQ test (????) and a note that contained pictures of chili crab, satay, mee goreng that said “ Goodies await your return. Have a good flight back”, signed by all my colleagues.
I was so touched.
I guess she wasn’t expecting my answer when I said “ Im kinda sick and I miss home a lot especially when im sick”
Her reply was simply “I know how you feel on the second part”, cos she is based in Dubai.
Within 10 minutes, my direct boss emailed me (he’s a BB freak) to ask how I was.
That was the weekend.
2 days before I leave Shanghai, I received this package at my hotel from my colleagues in Singapore.
It contained the el cheapo biscuits that I like, 3 in 1 milo, a stuffed penguin toy, a pocket IQ test (????) and a note that contained pictures of chili crab, satay, mee goreng that said “ Goodies await your return. Have a good flight back”, signed by all my colleagues.
I was so touched.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Cheap
Things arent exactly cheap in Shanghai.
Quite a lot of things are more expensive her, especially imported goods.
A bottle of Evian in my room.. S$13..
I didnt feel like paying for expensive water so i got the chambermaid to give me more bottles of free water. w00t
Whilst here, I cut my hair twice at Toni & Guys, went massage twice for just S$16 each (damn good) and also went to pedicure and manicure.
I feel clean now.
Quite a lot of things are more expensive her, especially imported goods.
A bottle of Evian in my room.. S$13..
I didnt feel like paying for expensive water so i got the chambermaid to give me more bottles of free water. w00t
Whilst here, I cut my hair twice at Toni & Guys, went massage twice for just S$16 each (damn good) and also went to pedicure and manicure.
I feel clean now.
Wedding
I just heard that one of my friends is getting married on 28 Dec.
Seems like 28 Dec is a good date to get married. Shitfong also get married on that day last year.
Seems like 28 Dec is a good date to get married. Shitfong also get married on that day last year.
Feelings
Perhaps it was the pain of a last dinner.
Or perhaps it was the peppermint tea.
Tonight was the last night i was spending with my pretty Shanghai friend. (I'll upload some pics later on a faster internet connection)
Among the nonsense we ALWAYS talk about like work and my extensive use of Chinese proverbs, we started talking about marriage.
Yes, marriage.
Not between us of course. But Pretty Friend ("PF") said that she was not getting young anymore (borned in 1980) and her parents are excited for her to get married. But she doesnt want to lose out of her single life like meeting friends, going for movies and going for ice cream, etc
Some sagely advice i gave was how about finding someone to be a partner, as opposed to a bf/husband. A partner whom you would feel comfortable with to do all the single life stuff and also a partner whom you can also bring to meet your existing friends. Sounds like very logical advice really but not easy to accomplish.
She sent me home and after a hug and then another, we parted. We enjoyed ourselves this time. She helped me book all my domestic flights, brought me shopping and brought me to a massage place.
Dont know when i'll be back. It's a mixed feeling.
Or perhaps it was the peppermint tea.
Tonight was the last night i was spending with my pretty Shanghai friend. (I'll upload some pics later on a faster internet connection)
Among the nonsense we ALWAYS talk about like work and my extensive use of Chinese proverbs, we started talking about marriage.
Yes, marriage.
Not between us of course. But Pretty Friend ("PF") said that she was not getting young anymore (borned in 1980) and her parents are excited for her to get married. But she doesnt want to lose out of her single life like meeting friends, going for movies and going for ice cream, etc
Some sagely advice i gave was how about finding someone to be a partner, as opposed to a bf/husband. A partner whom you would feel comfortable with to do all the single life stuff and also a partner whom you can also bring to meet your existing friends. Sounds like very logical advice really but not easy to accomplish.
She sent me home and after a hug and then another, we parted. We enjoyed ourselves this time. She helped me book all my domestic flights, brought me shopping and brought me to a massage place.
Dont know when i'll be back. It's a mixed feeling.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Sick
I was sick over the weekend.
It was the same ailment as what I got before i left for Shanghai. Feverish, losing my balance and having a splitting headache. I also got a tummyache but that was largely cos of the obscene amount of food i ate.
The fever kicked in first and i only realised that it's the same as what i got in Singapore when i began losing my balance.
It totally sucks being sick over the weekend and being so far from home and my pretty Shanghai friend was busy with her friends.
Bad weekend. I wanna go home.
It was the same ailment as what I got before i left for Shanghai. Feverish, losing my balance and having a splitting headache. I also got a tummyache but that was largely cos of the obscene amount of food i ate.
The fever kicked in first and i only realised that it's the same as what i got in Singapore when i began losing my balance.
It totally sucks being sick over the weekend and being so far from home and my pretty Shanghai friend was busy with her friends.
Bad weekend. I wanna go home.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Trips
Phew, I'm in Guangzhou.
I only blog when i'm out of Shanghai cos the internet connection is just sucky there.
Staying in this nice hotel. Been a long time since i stayed in a nice hotel.
I was quite enthralled by it all untill i tried using it. Absolutely horrible. The shower room's glass door has a rubber end which made opening it so hard i nearly broke the door. There are so many switches all over the room but no indicators. The new age switches dont sit in very well.
Nice room but not practical.
Do i complain a lot? I just like things to be perfect.
I've been thinking about this for some time. Decided not to chase after the BMW already.
I've decided to save up and buy a condo unit. Preferably somewhere in the east, with a pool. Hopefully residential prices continue to drop as i save up.
I only blog when i'm out of Shanghai cos the internet connection is just sucky there.
Staying in this nice hotel. Been a long time since i stayed in a nice hotel.
I was quite enthralled by it all untill i tried using it. Absolutely horrible. The shower room's glass door has a rubber end which made opening it so hard i nearly broke the door. There are so many switches all over the room but no indicators. The new age switches dont sit in very well.
Nice room but not practical.
Do i complain a lot? I just like things to be perfect.
I've been thinking about this for some time. Decided not to chase after the BMW already.
I've decided to save up and buy a condo unit. Preferably somewhere in the east, with a pool. Hopefully residential prices continue to drop as i save up.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Missing
It's day #13 here in the Middle Kingdom.
I miss proper english.
I miss my car.
I miss my mum's steamed chicken.
I miss my bed.
I miss my imac.
I miss badminton.
I miss proper english.
I miss my car.
I miss my mum's steamed chicken.
I miss my bed.
I miss my imac.
I miss badminton.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Eating at Sea
My client brought me out to eat on a restaurant on boats.. it's a fishing community that live on boats.
It was damn dirty that i nearly puked. It's a whole bunch of fishing boats together and the water's in between the boats are very dirty. Plus the workers throw whatever they want into the nets where the fishes are kept..
There was sea urchin too.
Eating while the boat was bobbing up and down was not fun. I couldnt wait till the lunch was over. :(
It was damn dirty that i nearly puked. It's a whole bunch of fishing boats together and the water's in between the boats are very dirty. Plus the workers throw whatever they want into the nets where the fishes are kept..
There was sea urchin too.
Eating while the boat was bobbing up and down was not fun. I couldnt wait till the lunch was over. :(
Its Day four in China and I'm already missing home.
I went to Sanya yesterday to see some clients.
My flight to Sanya was delayed. There were some angry people at the waiting gallery. Loud voices and then banging of the counter. Angry women were yelling at the counter staff about them being rude about the delay and then wanted to see the manager. I could tell the guy who was being scolded was close to tears. Tons of ple were taking pics and vids.
After a while, the people trooped off, presumably to see the manager.
Then i saw this.
The people were lined up along the steps from the immigration and security place, to block the new people coming in after clearing immigration. They were chanting and holding placards saying "我要回家！"
Then i realised that it's ba zhang festival on monday and that's why they wanna go home.
So exciting yet sad at the same time.
There're some things you cant prevent no matter how much you yell, chant, block, bang counter. Cannot means cannot
I went to Sanya yesterday to see some clients.
My flight to Sanya was delayed. There were some angry people at the waiting gallery. Loud voices and then banging of the counter. Angry women were yelling at the counter staff about them being rude about the delay and then wanted to see the manager. I could tell the guy who was being scolded was close to tears. Tons of ple were taking pics and vids.
After a while, the people trooped off, presumably to see the manager.
Then i saw this.
The people were lined up along the steps from the immigration and security place, to block the new people coming in after clearing immigration. They were chanting and holding placards saying "我要回家！"
Then i realised that it's ba zhang festival on monday and that's why they wanna go home.
So exciting yet sad at the same time.
There're some things you cant prevent no matter how much you yell, chant, block, bang counter. Cannot means cannot
Monday, June 02, 2008
Maths
Sometimes I think I'm quite ordinary.
Sometimes I think I'm pretty great.
Usually the former occurs more often. It's called central theory, i think, where one usually perceives others as similar to oneself.
So when my in-house legal counsel asked me what was 30% of 100 million, I was quite concerned that there was a hidden legal nuance i was unaware of. After all, i topped my school in mathematics in sec 2. This was disturbing.
I told her 30 million.
And i emailed my only other lawyer friend - Goddess - to tell her how dumb my colleague was.
Goddess said, "Well, technically it's 33.3333333333 million"
I was felled.
I struggled back to pri 5 when i learnt about percentages. I thought it through and i thought AGAIN. It's 30 million!!@!
Never believe what lawyers tell you.
For those less challenged: here's a maths qn.
Peter spent $48 on some storybooks. he spent 1/3 of the remainder on a dictionary. he had 2/5 of the total money left. how much did he have at first?
Sometimes I think I'm pretty great.
Usually the former occurs more often. It's called central theory, i think, where one usually perceives others as similar to oneself.
So when my in-house legal counsel asked me what was 30% of 100 million, I was quite concerned that there was a hidden legal nuance i was unaware of. After all, i topped my school in mathematics in sec 2. This was disturbing.
I told her 30 million.
And i emailed my only other lawyer friend - Goddess - to tell her how dumb my colleague was.
Goddess said, "Well, technically it's 33.3333333333 million"
I was felled.
I struggled back to pri 5 when i learnt about percentages. I thought it through and i thought AGAIN. It's 30 million!!@!
Never believe what lawyers tell you.
For those less challenged: here's a maths qn.
Peter spent $48 on some storybooks. he spent 1/3 of the remainder on a dictionary. he had 2/5 of the total money left. how much did he have at first?
Not Good
I dont know if it was the lack of sleep from previous night.
Or that my contact lens were due for a change.
Or was it because by 9:30am, my to-do list exploded to 14 items.
Or was it because of the extensive bleeding from my fingers two days before.
Or it was from the pit in my stomach from the realisation that my mum needed surgery.
By 10am, my head was spinning and my eyes couldnt focus and i literally lost my balance a couple of times. I was breaking out in a cold sweat.
I was due to make a presentation of my findings from my Vietnam trip at 1130am and i still couldnt focus on my points.
When i eventually did present, I even trembled a couple of times due to the cold air con, the cold sweat and just fear of screwing things up.
I went to the doctor cos i was just afraid i was going to faint while driving. He said that i was heaty and coming down with a flu and with some parts of my throat and ear getting inflamed, my balance was affected. This was the first time i heard something like that.
I just ate my meds and feeling quite groggy now.
Tomorrow i make my way to China for 3 weeks. Never been away from home for so long, except for the 42 days i spent in Taiwan during my army days.
Or that my contact lens were due for a change.
Or was it because by 9:30am, my to-do list exploded to 14 items.
Or was it because of the extensive bleeding from my fingers two days before.
Or it was from the pit in my stomach from the realisation that my mum needed surgery.
By 10am, my head was spinning and my eyes couldnt focus and i literally lost my balance a couple of times. I was breaking out in a cold sweat.
I was due to make a presentation of my findings from my Vietnam trip at 1130am and i still couldnt focus on my points.
When i eventually did present, I even trembled a couple of times due to the cold air con, the cold sweat and just fear of screwing things up.
I went to the doctor cos i was just afraid i was going to faint while driving. He said that i was heaty and coming down with a flu and with some parts of my throat and ear getting inflamed, my balance was affected. This was the first time i heard something like that.
I just ate my meds and feeling quite groggy now.
Tomorrow i make my way to China for 3 weeks. Never been away from home for so long, except for the 42 days i spent in Taiwan during my army days.
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