Cuffed

I wasn’t feeling too well today so I went to see the doctor.

She wanted to take my blood pressure and told me to fold up my sleeves.

This usually isnt a problem but I was wearing this pair of cufflinks today.



I like this pair of cufflinks. It’s one of my more elegant and understated ones. But it’s quite difficult to put it on as the horseshoe-shaped head is larger than the cufflink hole. So I usually asked my mum to help me.

So I told the doctor, “ I can remove this but you have to promise to help me cuff it back”

She said,” oh your wife helps you with this usually?”

Me: Can you keep a secret?

Doc: Sure

Me: My mum helps me.

Doc laughs.

Me: Doctor-Patient confidentiality right?

F1 Fever

F1 fever has gripped the entire nation and today’s news headlines are filled with news on F1.

F1 fever has also gripped normal drivers who aspire to be F1 driver. In the whole of last week, I’ve witnessed so many accidents. One of the more appalling ones was a Toyota Rush rammed up the road divider (those grey metal kind, standing about 1m above the ground) and stayed there facing the opposite direction! Meaning the bugger ran so fast he flew up to the divider and did a 180 degree spin and stayed on it. Phew.

I attended a breakfast meeting with my boss on Friday morning. I purposely didn’t eat breakfast at home so that I don’t feel left out at the meeting. But when I went there, all everyone had was juices and didn’t eat the food. I was soooo hungry.

My boss and I drove separately so it was an early meeting and I was actually ahead of him when he cut my lane and overtook me. Sigh.. another racer. I guess his BMW is better than my high performance Lancer.

More F1

It was 3pm in the afternoon in the office when i heard buzzing.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

I realised that it was the frantic drone of racecars. I hurried to the nearest window and peered down to the track.

The F1 cars were doing their practice rounds. It's really amazing that at more than 35 levels up, i can hear them.

The entire office hurried to the reception area of my office which offered a panoramic view of the pitstops.

It was quite fun really. Of course, many people arent really fans but try to act like they know. Like "wah.. the red acr is ferrari hor.. sure win..My boss, a consummate F1 fan, corrected them that these were just the junior racers and the cars are only travelling HALF the speed the real F1 cars go.

I swear, i took more than 10 pics before i got one with the car inside. Haha... Here it is. Hope you can spot the car. It's a white car.



Amidst all the excitement, a colleague asked me if I knew the rules of F1. Of course, Cornball knows everything. The rule of F1 is to come in first!

My boss decides to leave at 3:30pm to go prepare for his long night and i could go off as well. But then i had nothing to do as well as i stayed in the office till 5pm to chat with my colleagues. Haha..

In the end, i bought some comfort food to last me through Friday night. Chinese mixed food rice and yam milk tea with pearls!

F1

The F1 has created quite a stir in the office simply cos I’m located right smack here.

Just this morning, there’re some talks over buying an antenna so that people can come back to the office to watch on the tv in the meeting room. Unfortunately, the tv is only 32”. Not very smart to have so many people looking at a small screen.

Travelling to work is actually easier cos not all cars can come into the restricted areas. I actually managed to drive home from work in 19 minutes at 6pm! W00t!

A lot of people have asked me if I am interested in F1 since I drive such a fierce and high performance car. I actually don’t see the point of looking at cars going round and round in circles. Not a fan.

I’ve attached some pictures of the view from my office of the track.

Advice

It was my cousin’s daughter’s man yue last Sunday. I think I might have mentioned this in the earlier posts.

I realised that my sister and I are one of the last remaining single people amongst our cousins. Two of my younger cousins are now married and one of them has a kid already.

I’m feeling a little pressure. Haha..

On the topic of marriage and family, my mum was telling me about HDB flats and told me to buy a HDB first instead of a condo to make full use of the government hdb subsidies. Then after that, I should sell the hdb to my parents and then they’ll sell our present house so that I can get the profits. Then I will buy the condo after this.

Seems like she got it all planned for me.

On another note, I told my mum that day to drink more soya bean milk after her surgery as it is soothing for the throat and full of protein. I told her I got a new craze to drink soya bean milk with pearls. Then she told me not to drink so much cos it’d reduce my sperm count.

:(

Nice

In the end it was a nice breakfast at Dempsey Olio.

Yummy.

Run for Hope

I'm doing this run. Some of my colleagues are doing it and they asked me.

And then for some reason they'd like me to take some pictures and also write a short article for our newsletter. So weird.

Change

After 2 weeks in China, it seemed like the world has changed. Merrill Lynch is bought over by BoA and Lehman Bros is bankrupt. And AIG is going downhill. Not to mention some of the others who have died along the way. Some of them are my clients really, so it's quite disconcerting.

I emailed one of them the other day and here was the reply

"Could be better. Thanks for asking.

Just in case, here's my personal email and mobile"

That's what happens when uncertainty creeps in. It's really quite scary cos when Bear Stearns went down, I went to the Lehman Brother website to check out their annual report and i thought their website was quite cool and results looked quite sterling!

Oh well.. here's an interesting picture.

Decals

With the F1 coming next week, the area where i work has been cordoned and cars without proper decals cannot enter the ZONE.

I got my decals yesterday. My colleague was very nice to remember me while i was away and called me to ask when i was coming back and if i needed the decals as well. I thought that was quite sweet.

In any case, there are three kinds of decals, weekdays, Saturday and Sunday. I actually thought they might be quite cool with car motifs and all. But they turned out pretty ugly really.

BOLD-ENED

I've been em-BOLDened.

Finally got one set yesterday after a very arduous affair.

Cloudy

One of the last things I did in Shanghai was to meet a client along the Bund of Shanghai and I managed to take a picture of that tall, bottle-cap opener building. It was bright 9:30am but check out the smog!

Deal or No Deal

I mentioned here that I didnt manage to get the bugger to sign my deal when we met. Had we signed it, it'd be my first Letter of Intent signed. But he didnt. So i was disappointed. Have to wait till end of month for the said board meeting.

In my business, after LOI comes months of negotiations, then we sign the actual docs.

Since I joined the company, I've been working on the negotiations part of another deal in Thailand (one might remember my Bangkok trip in January) and it has been an arduous nine odd months of work before we managed to take great strides in getting the actual docs signed. And as I landed in Singapore today, I was glad to read my mail that we are getting them signed finally.

It'd be my company's first deal in Asia. Although i didnt start the LOI process, I was glad to play a part in it to bring it to fruition. I wonder what kinda celebrations it'd be.

Back Home

I'm back home and I'm happy to be back.

While taking a shower, I already kinda miss the hot powered shower head at the hotel. But that's irrelevant cos home cooked food was good.

Tomorrow I have several items on my itinerary. I have a dentist appointment. It has been one year since I went to the dentist. The last time I went was one day before my interview. My new job has S$120 dental benefits so I think i should finish it up before the year ends. Maybe buy some toothbrushes or toothpastes.

Then I'm going for a facial. My therapist will probably have a fit again after what all the bad air in China has done to my face. I also have to swing by the office to pick up the F1 decals for my car to enter the CBD during F1.

I have a dinner and KTV at night. I dont know if I can make it or not as my mouth will/might be sore after the dentist.

Saturday, I have an early brunch with T|ny before going for badminton (woohoo!) and then I have a satay and stingray date at night.

I was informed by my mum that Sunday got my cousin's son's man yue. Wait a minute... i didnt even know he HAD a son!!!!! What the.. I need to check with my mum tomorrow. My cousin's like three years younger than me and he has a kid already (purportedly)! Then I have my Sunday badminton with my friends. This weekend, we are doing something a little special as it's the birthday of one of my badm kakis so we are going for a paintball match with some of her primary school friends. That's kinda complicated really.

Seems like a busy weekend. I was just informed that my sis is travelling next week means she'd need to take her charger along with her, which means I hope to get my new phone soon.

Miffed

I was actually kinda peeved that I left my charger in the hotel. In my four years of travelling, I've never forgotten anything. And usually i'm very attached to my belongings. Even it's just a phone charger, I was very irritated.

Last night, I began a very irrational search of my belongings in Shanghai. Maybe it's stuck in some nook in my luggage. Maybe it's between some clothes. Maybe it's in this drawer in the room (in Shanghai), which i've never opened before.

Damn. It's in Tianjin.

I called up the hotel and they said they can send it to me. To an address in Tianjin, not Singapore and they'll only hold it for 3 months.

Damn.

I was quite sad and as a desperate measure, I wrote to my ex-colleagues to ask if they're going to Tianjin soon. One of them is, in 2 weeks. So there you go. I hope i get my charger back.

Tianjin

I never really liked Tianjin. The last time i was in Tianjin was exactly one year ago almost before i resigned and the horrible trip on the one in 2006.

I was actually in Tianjin on monday and tuesday for a short trip.

Since it was a short trip, I thought i'd stay in a cheaper hotel.

But it turned out to be quite nice really.

Idiots

In my post here, I had indicated that I had pizza and wings. It was from a delivery from the nearby pizza shop and usually i asked them to bring the portable credit card machine so that i can use my credit card to earn points and also not use so much cash, which means i dun have to change so much money and expose myself to currency risk.

I ordered pizza and wings again from the same place last night as I was tired from my trip from Tianjin. When it arrived, the security guard refused to let the delivery person up. I insisted we had done this before and it was fine. Took them a good 10 mins. When the delivery gal came, she found out that her portable credit card machine ran out of battery! Gosh, so stupid. I had to pay cash, but not before making a snide remark that she shouldnt bring a flat machine out.

Tonight I ordered the same thing again. Again, the security downstairs said i had to come down to collect my pizza. I told me i did this two times before and actually during my last stay in June. After 20 mins, they let the poor boy up. When he finally came up, i found out that he didnt know how to use the portable credit card machine and I ended up helping him with it, even though it was in Chinese.

Gosh, good help is so hard to come by nowadays.

Damn

My dream phone is here but it seems like it's out of stock in the whole of Singapore.

So i'm actually kinda irritated that i cant get my hands on it to play over the weekend.

Faithful readers might have read here that i forgot to bring some items on my trip. Well, I was actually in Tianjin on monday and i found out that I left my phone charger there when i checked out. Sigh..

It's a sign i need to change phones.

Things I Miss

Things I miss on long trips:

1. My bed

2. My family, a little

3. My car.

4. Satay

5. Japanese food

6. My bolster (no hotels provide a bolster)

7. Badminton

8. Fresh Air


Things I'd miss ABOUT being on a trip

1. Toilet in the room

2. Room Service

3. Evening turn down service

4. All expenses paid

21

When i got this forwarded mail, I thought it had something to do with that poker game movie, but it turned out to be some "wise" words.

I'm kinda bored so I am just posting them here.

ONE. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

THREE. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR. When you say, 'I love you,' mean it.

FIVE. When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye.

SIX. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN. Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

NINE. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.

TEN.. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.

ELEVEN. Don't judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE. Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN! When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, 'Why do you want to know?'

FOURTEEN. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

FIFTEEN. Say 'bless you' when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

SEVENTEEN. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.

EIGHTEEN. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.

TWENTY- ONE.. Spend some time alone.

Peking Duck

I managed to have my beloved Duck King last night. It's just as bustling as you'd expect for a Saturday night for yummy food.


The chef was doing the duck so fast you could barely see his hands.


Here's my PF once again. Her joy was apparent.




Actually before the meal my friend brought me some fresh meat mooncake (鲜肉月饼）. You read it right. FRESH MEAT. The skin is like those puff pastry kind cos it's mooncake from Suzhou (or was it Jiangsu) and older people prefer this kind of skin.


The meat was actually quite salty and the mooncake was still warm cos it's freshly made. Not a huge fan but still an experience.

Insurance

I actually still cannot get over the whole cancer thing happening to my friend and i was chatting with the Cyster about it. You may read about the Cyster here and here and here and here.

And after my mum's surgery at the end of June, I decided to go get myself some insurance.

After intense interviews with 4 agents, I have decided on one agent and will be signing up with her when i return.

In some ways, buying insurance just seems like an another step to being an adult.

*gulp*

The Call

I was having dinner with Pretty Friend last night (Friday) in Shanghai when i got a call from Singapore.

It was my former boss, calling from the office.

He said he thought of me suddenly and then wanted to see how i was doing, although he actually knew i was in China.

And just there and then, we just caught up on each others' lives. It was kinda odd really cos i was quite hungry.

Friday was also the last day of one of the staff and I asked him if he called cos he was traumatised by her departure. He said not really, though she will leave many wonderful memories, just like i did.

My PF said he's kinda weird former boss.

Tough

I just heard from a friend that she has cancer. And she's just 25. Gosh. Told me there's a tumour and it's Grade 3. I had to Google to find out if grade 3 is better than grade 1 or vice versa.

Michael Scott once rightly said that the medical profession is a lopsided one. A "negative" is a good thing and a "positive" is bad.

I was quite taken aback cos she told me last week she was taking leave and going for operation etc and then added me on Skype and was smiling here and there and then told me she had cancer.

It was like a kick in the gut.

She seems quite chirpy and all and i really didnt know what to say.

She's only 24.

Survived

I survived Chengdu. It was a huge relief.

And it's Saturday today. It's the umpteenth time i've spent the weekend here in Shanghai. But it's always fun cos there're usually many things to do and many things to see and eat. Plus i have a friend here who brings me around.

I had actually wanted to go visit the newest hotel in Shanghai. It's supposed to be the tallest building in Shanghai now - Shanghai World Financial Center.



In the picture, it's the one with the hole at the top portion of the building.

The building is owned by a Japanese company and the hole was actually supposed to be circular. But the chinese didnt like that to be the symbol of the rising sun. So the owners changed the shape of the hole to this.

Now, it looks like a bottle cap opener.

Chengdu

I arrived in Chengdu this early evening. I've never been here cos the last time i was in China they were just recovering from the earthquake. Weather's pretty good. I saw some nice buildings, including the one below. Quite a unique facade amidst the adjacent ugly buildings in a Tier II city in China.


Here's a closeup shot.



Reached my hotel. Quite a decent room really, though i was told by my ex-colleague that this hotel no good. I think they're getting to pompous for their own good really.



I ordered room service for dinner as I didnt want to go out and went the food came, it shocked me cos it looked damn familiar.



Look here and here.

Quite scary really. Almost three years down the road, here i am ordering the same food again. Hahah..

I was just told by the hotel staff that there might be a HUGE earthquake between 10-15 Sept. It's 10th Sept today and I leave on the 12th. ARGH. So scary...

Bleah

I eventually went to sleep at 5:30 and woke at 830am for a meeting at 10am.

Totally zonked out from the short sleep.

Bloody cab ride took me one hour and i was late by 15 minutes. I rushed to the office only to find that the person i was supposed to meet was called away by government officials and i had to wait till 11am before i could meet him.

I was supposed to sign a deal with him and had already brought my docs.

But then he said he had to get Board approval before he can sign, although he's deputy Chairman. The board sits in Singapore. SO WHY AM I MEETING HIM IN CHINA???!?@

He felt bad and asked his driver to send me back to my hotel. It took 30 mins, although the jam was quite bad. By then my head was pounding badly from the lack of food and sleep and the hot humid weather.

I bought a pizza (six pieces) and four chicken wings back to my SUITE and finished them in half an hour. That's very fast even by my standards.

I find that I'm always complaining when im in China. Even T|ny and ZZ are making fun of me on how much i hate being in China.

So far, I forgot to bring my English brochures, spare contact lens, cotton pads and sunglasses this time. I hope that's all i forgot.

Shanghai Knight 3: Sleepless in Puxi

It's 3:30am now in Shanghai and I just cannot get to sleep. I have no idea why. It's like there's tons of thoughts going through my mind. Some work, some not work.

I think the room they gave me is too big. I'd stayed in this hotel the last trip to Shanghai and because there were some screw ups, i complained and now that I'm here again, they upgraded me to a suite. If you have been a follower of my blog, I typically dont really like suites cos they're a little too big for just one person. In typical Chinese fashion, I found something wrong with this suite.

The room's pretty big and spacious.



But for some reason, they chose to have the working desk behind a wall that is behind the bed! This means that i cannot watch TV when im at the desk working. This is dumb.



I of course called the operator to find me a room in the same category but with a desk that has a view of the TV.

Of course there isnt such a room. :(

Wedding

I attended a wedding dinner of one of my uni friends last night. This dude was in the same project group for ALL of my projects in my four years in UNI! FOUR YEARS! Which means he endured my nonsense for four years. I did a rough calculation. That's at least 30 projects!

It was a good night of catching up with my uni mates, of which some were my badminton kakis so there was some badminton talk as well.

This was the door gift.



We played a game where u guess where is the crumpled piece of paper after moving the cups around quickly.



I realise i dont attend many weddings in a year. Last night was my first wedding this year. I have another next sat but i cant go cos im travelling. And then another one in December.

Hotels

I was clearing my drawer when i came across these hotel key cards which i've collected in the last 4 years.

As I looked through each of them, each hotel brought back so many memories.

Carz

My ultra big boss's daughter is in town. So he let her drive his S600 Merc. So he bo bian have to drive his other car.

The Rolls Royce Phantom!

HUGE!



To put it in perspective, here's how big it is beside this BMW.

Testing My Camera

Decided to test my new camera by taking a close up picture. Not bad really.

Pic

Godiva

A Godiva to end the day

Yummy.

Mooncakes

During my time in China, it’d be the Yue Bing Jie (Mooncake Festival). It’s actually the first time in modern history that they have a holiday for Yue Bing Jie.

That’s cos in China they used to only have three 1-week holidays called Golden Weeks. One for Chinese New Year in Feb, one in May for Labour Day (Communists are big on labour day) and one in October for Independence Day. But this created huge chaos for the travel industry as millions would travel back to their villages by planes, cars, rail and ships. So just this year, they abolished the May and October ones and spread the holidays across the festivals. Yue Bing Jie is one such festival. Ba Zhang Jie is another one.

So it’s a holiday on 15 Sept. My pretty friend said she can only meet me on 13 Sept and lunch on 14 Sept cos she got to stay home on the night of 14 September. So it’d be a lonely Sunday night on 14 Sept for me. Maybe I’ll buy one mooncake and put a candle on it.

Mongolia

My colleague recently went to Mongolia for her holiday/community service work. She sent me her pics and they look gorgeous.

Mating and Dating

In the last 2 weeks, there has been an increase in the number of people who are trying to matchmake me or introduce gals to me.

1. My sister and some friends
2. Uni friend
3. Some colleagues in the office
4. My CEO

Really kinda weird with this deluge of interests in my singlehood. Haha..

But today really took the cake. When I came back from lunch today, I saw this in my keyboard.



A pocket book on dating, which my colleague got for me. 

And in it, there are 10 pick up lines, which my colleague gamely blew it up to A3 and is now hanging on my cubicle.

New Shirt!

I have a wedding to attend this Saturday and made a new shirt for it.

So nice hor? Check out the orange button holes. I'll probably wear a pair of khaki pants to go along with it.

So Loose

Everyone always gets "loose" and "lose" wrongly.

My colleagues were passing around a bag of pens and a farewell card for a colleague who's leaving.

On the bag it wrote:



I couldnt resist correcting the error. Wahahahahah

China Again

It’s that period of time when I’m starting to plan for my trip. I went to borrow this book to read on those long lonely nights/flights. Looks quite interesting.



I’ll be going to Shanghai, Tianjin and Chengdu. Once again, the drudgery of travelling within China is going to overwhelm me and I hope I don’t get depressed. I hope I am a little more well prepared this time. I’ll be bringing the book I mentioned above, some dvds to watch, my PSP. I’ve also learnt that I don’t need so many clothes, since I can laundry them.

I really don’t know the purpose of this post. I’m quite bored at work and someone just gave me a cake.