Siong Weekend

It's gonna be a siong weekend for me.

I'll be best man for Sox's wedding this Saturday. Morning going to grab
the bride, then best man at the church wedding, then best man AND emcee
at the wedding dinner. The bridesmaids want to give a speech so im also
giving a speech. It'd Wednesday today and I haven't penned down the
speech. Then I heard that the bridesmaids want to steal my script so
that they can do better than me. I decided to up the ante by singing a
song with my guitar. Wahahaha. This could potentially be embarrassing.

The siongness doesn't stop here. Due to some changes in schedule, I need
to be in Pune on Sunday noon for a presentation. So I'd have to leave
the dinner at 1130pm, go home, grab my luggage and catch a 2am flight to
Delhi, then take a 3-hour flight to Pune, wash up and do meet my client
for the presentation.

Im gonna be so knackered out by the end of Sunday.

Laundry Box

Ive been a critic of hotel gimmickry and recently i was a recipient.

Check out this huge laundry box that my laundry came back in. Haha. So big. I was so shocked. I thought it was a present. Turned out to be laundry. Bleah.

If it werent so big, id have brought it home.

SICC!

My cousin jio-ed me to join her for a golf game at Singapore Island Country Club. I was quite excited since i have never played many courses in Singapore and I wanted to try.

She asked me to invite a friend but i couldnt find a friend with a handicap.

On the days leading up to the game, i got kinda nervous because i heard her friend is quite good and i didnt want to embarrass myself. I also didnt want to wear too hiong in case the friend thinks im a professional but playing like shit.

Other than the better facilities at SICC as compared to my club in JB, even the buggies are different.

Usually buggies have two pedals - an accelerator and a brake. And on the brake pedal, there will be a button to park.

There wasnt a button to park in this SICC buggy. I kept stepping and stepping but there wasnt any "click" to indicate the buggy is parked. I asked my cousin why.

She said it's auto park. Once it's stopped, it's parked.

AUTO PARK!!! AUTO PARK!!! That's soooo cool!

Anyway, the game went quite well and i didnt embarrass myself so that was good.

My cousin paid for my game ($250) some more. Kio dio!!

Birthdays

I thought i had posted this but it was saved in the drafts folder.
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July is the month of both our birthdays. Sometimes we would arrange to do a mega celebration together but this year we were too busy to do anything so it was quite separate celebrations.

I actually bought her some towels from Roland Garros but i didnt take pics of them. I subsequently also bought her some towels from Wimbledon. So here they are:





When they got delivered, I noticed that there were the words "Christy" at the bottom of the towels. Because there was an option to stitch some initials on the towels, which i didnt utilise, i thought they has mistakenly stitched "Christy" instead. Only upon contacting them did i realise that Christy was the company that produced the towels. kwa kwa.

We went to Kumo for dinner. At the advice of the server, we decided to let the chef decide the menu for a budget that we want. We gave him a budget of $350 and it was some pretty good food.




For my birthday, it was a gastronomical journey starting with Ricciotti.



Then the next day was lunch at Ritz-Carlton. They had a promotion where if your surname starts with a particular letter on that day, you get a 35% discount. It was a buffet and the food was so-so only. I think im losing interest in buffets fast!



We were supposed to go look at some home theatre systems after lunch but then Someone planned a surprise!!

Wahahaha.

Turned out to be a one-night stay at Meritus Mandarin hotel. No wonder she insisted on driving that day. Hee hee.

Then to cap it off, we had dinner with some old friends on Saturday night at Paradise Inn. The food there is quite good really.

Maths?

I might have mentioned this before but surely i can mention this again.

I topped my level in mathematics in Sec 2. So i consider myself pretty decent in maths. And i remember that sec 2 maths was all about quadratic equations and indices. Although i was good at that, i always wondered how i'd ever use it in real life.

Almost 18 years later, i got my answer.

I mentioned in my previous post that i submitted my resume to a headhunter and they wanted me to do an online test. I was told to allocate at least 30 mins. That's fine because i did a 2-hour test before i got my current job.

At the start page, i was further informed to have rough paper and a calculator (???) ready.

It was 120 questions and time limit of 30 mins.

As i was cruising through the first 60 questions on reactions/feelings to situations, i started getting the maths questions which was quite tough! I begun to sweat. I managed to quickly cut and paste:

"We change a (sufficiently large) square into a rectangle by making it 7 cm less wide, and making it 7 cm taller. How much does the area change?"

Woah. That was quadratic equations 101. The answer i got eventually baffled me and i double and triple checked. Same answer. Oh well.

Then there was another question:

There were 10 apples and you took 3 of them. How many apples do you have?

Tricky eh?

Mooncake Box

While in Shanghai, i also took the opportunity to visit my friend who's working there.

Decided to buy them a box of mooncakes.

Nowadays mooncake boxes come in all shapes and sizes. I decided to buy this one which is quite unique.


Inside with the 8 mooncakes.


Once you're done with the mooncakes, take out the partitions and wahla! You have a wine carrier.

Shanghai Shopping!

Spent the weekend in Shanghai. A bit sian since i had to miss my golf game.

Decided to get up from my fat butt and went to search for some Grohe sanitary fixtures.

After numerous haggling and currency conversions, i decided to buy them!



Here's me doing a stock take:


All packed up and ready to leave the shop:


As per my previous post, i also took so much toiletries as i could from the hotel and put it in the box. Hee hee.

I was actually afraid that id be taxed for my purchases in Singapore. Heng never.

Tada! Opened it at home.



After clearing out the Grohe stuff:

Plunge?

i recently took the plunge and submitted my resume to a headhunter who had an opportunity for me.

It wasnt so much of a plunge because my resume is always ready but it seemed quite daunting psychologically.

I really hate the feeling at this stage. The one where i cant concentrate on my current job and feeling restless to hear back on the new opportunity.

Bleah.

Weird Gifts

In a continuing series of weird gifts following four dozen mangoes from s mumbai client,



someone gave me two pairs of shoe trees. And they're used ones. But i figured it's fine as long as i didnt go licking the trees.



After looking at the pic of the trees again, i realised that they look like mangoes too.

Contracting

Finding a right contractor is very difficult.
It's almost like finding a fling or an escort. You're trying to find the
right person whom you're comfortable in having a short-term relationship
with, and having a creative mind to come up with fanciful ideas and yet
attend to your every whim and fancy. All these at a price that you hope
to be as low as possible.
Tough sia.