Hectic

***I obviously was supposed to post this on 29 May but only ended up doing so on 9 June***

**This entry was supposed to be posted on 3 May but i have been too busy. Between the typing of this post and the date of posting (29 May), i travelled to China again for 10 days, which i might blog about. **

It has been some time since i blogged cos i have been in China for the whole of last week and China blocked Blogspot.

We were in Chengdu for 14 hours meeting clients before flying to Lijiang.

Lijiang looks like a place stuck in time cos they still have an old town (古城）that looks like a scene out of a period drama.





The hotel we stayed in was pretty modern actually.



After 22 hours in Lijiang, we flew to Nanjing. Man, that was a 6 hour journey due to a stopover. Damn. I shudder when i think of it now.

We arrived at the Nanjing hotel at 2am only to be told that the hotel was overbooked and they gave us the Presidential Suite which had two rooms. What the... it was so weird cos the Presidential Suite had a big living room so we just basically entered the room together and each went to a room. We stayed there for two nights and it was weird cos we didnt really "hang out" in the living room area and just stay holed up in our rooms. We BBM-ed each other instead. Like literally have a conversation like "Today was a good day ya.."

We managed to sign two LOIs after meeting the client for the first time at 10am that morning and ironing out all the details by 6pm. So that was a happy outcome for us.

WHOPPEE!

We went to Shanghai after Nanjing. My boss decided to use his own money and stay in one of the newer nicer hotels. After checking into my hotel, i went to pick him up from his hotel for a meeting. The traffic was quite bad due to the Expo but it was taking much longer than i knew it would and the surroundings were getting quite unfamiliar. So i asked the driver if she (yes, it's a lady driver :( ) knew where the hotel was. She replied emphatically "YES! My relatives have held many wedding dinners there. In fact i was there two weekends ago!"

Alarm bells just rang in my head. How can a taxi driver and her family afford weddings in one of the nicest new hotels in Shanghai? To cut the long story short, after driving for 15 more minutes, she brought me to a lousy ass hotel which has the same chinese name as the one my boss was staying. Needless to say, i was late and not a happy camper. :(

Mask

My boss gave the few of us each this today.



I was quite ill on Monday and he has been down these few days and another member was flu-ish since Wednesday.

He said we are so busy these days we cannot afford to be sick.

Siong.

Indeed we are busy. Two weeks from now, we will travel to China. Singapore-Chengdu-Lijiang-Kunming-Changsha-Nanjing-Hong Kong-Singapore.

Now, that's siong.

Books

Bought these two books the other day.

Hopefully the red one helps me seal some deals in China.

New Laptop

YAY! I got a new laptop. Largely cos my wifi was spoilt in my previous laptop and we have a new finance person coming so and she wont need wifi.

So i get a spanking new Thinkpad. Fast and light and sleek. Well, a little too sleek. The cover is so glossy it's a fingerprint magnet.



I took the pic with my blackberry on it to contrast the equipment i got when i first joined.



Although my laptop is new, the Windows Experience Index is only 3.4. Lose to ShitFong's 5.0. :(

Shenzhen

I was in Shenzhen the last few days. Quite many new hotels there. I chose to stay in one of the newer ones cos there's just something about new hotels.

Quite a nice room.



Except that being the pretenders the Chinese typically are, they tend to screw up once in a while. This time, the open concept bathroom has a bathtub that blocks the entry to the bathroom. It's so dumb!



i got back to Singapore on Friday night. I was so gian to play golf on Saturday that i followed Sox's parents to JB to play golf at 5am even though he wasnt going. Haha..

Check out the usual breakfast fare before the 7am tee off.

Lying there..

Oddly, I found the missing piece of my cufflink in the paper tray of my office printer. Wonder how it got there.

It’s a little depressing to see it lying there. Lifeless and alone.

Trepidation

Next week is one of the three weeks in a year that i know i'd fall sick. It's Board/Exco meetings week.

My CEO and President have just arrived and i just got off the phone with them as i have scheduled some meetings for them.

It's Board meeting on Wednesday and my client told me last week that he was going to sign an LOI with us on Tuesday when he's back in the office. Therefore there's a possibility i could announce our first LOI for the year in the Board meeting if he comes through for me. Another project i have been chasing is likely to make a decision at the end of March. So there's a chance of either heartbreak or elation.

My HCMC meeting went relatively well. Seems like there's an LOI lurking to be signed somewhere.

I hope the week turns out well. *shudder*

Babel

Im so happy to be going back home tomorrow that i bothered to draw this out.

My CEO is in Asia so i dragged him to Vietnam with me. He's German so he speaks German and English. The client is Vietnamese and their consultant is a Vietnamese German so the bugger speaks Vietnamese, German and English.

Here's how the meeting this meeting went.

Im not kidding. Half the time, the conversation went from German to Vietnamese and vice versa.



Most of the time i was starting into space wondering what i was going to wear for golf this weekend.

The title of this entry "Babel", refers to the Tower of Babel a bunch of sinners was trying to build to reach god and god made everyone speak different languages so that they cant communicate.

Until the devil made everyone take two languages in school.

=(

As a continuing slew of bad things to happen to me, one of my favourite cufflinks was damaged. Only realised it when i removed my shirt.



Im in Ho Chi Minh City and staying in the same hotel that offers me four free pieces of free laundry. I even brought two dirty shirts i wore on Monday and Tuesday in Singapore to be laundried here. Wahaha..

Dumbass

I only just realised that all this while, I have been meaning to type “是否“to my clients but I had typed “是佛”instead.

Now my clients must think im either a dumbass or a Buddhist fanatic.

Dilemma

A client gave me this thumbdrive today. It says there's some mother of pearl thingy in it but it's soooo girly. Dont think i'll dare to use it.

But it's 2GB. Argh. Such a dilemma.

Nerds

I saw this Asus repair centre in Adelphi. Somehow i feel that when service centres are designed to be spacious and many seats, Im never confident of the quality of their products cos they're expecting tons of people to send in their products for repairs.

Apparently this particular repair centre took things a little further even after allocating a lot of space. Check out their signboard.



"Royal Club"??? "Rock solid"??? "Heart warming"???

They make the place sound like a premier airline lounge. And hey, it'd warm my heart more if your products are more solid that your signboard. Asus? More like Asses.

The picture was taken at an oblique angle cos there was a geek standing outside and i had to stand further away to take my clandestine pic.

Austerity

For some reason, I've been on a saving mode of late. Sure, those golf games cost a bit, plus the accessories and attire but other than that, i havent bought a non-golf shirt for ages, havent gone to the tailor for 8 months, just changed my wallet after using for 1.5 years, just changed my phone after almost 2 years.

This is compared to my peak of making 2-3 shirts per week, changing wallets/phones after less than a year.

I was glad i managed to save more than half my pay in Feb.

I think the personification of this austerity was exemplified by the state of my golf glove. Play until got holes.



I have another pair of gloves which i wear, depending on the color coordination with my shirt/shorts and it has some holes as well.

Sigh, got to buy 2 gloves now.

In some ways, im glad im travelling a little more now so that i dont have to pay ERP ($6 daily) and my daily meals, etc.

Im going to Vietnam next week again. Yawn.

Checking in

Im on leave today to do my first annual body check up. Decided to do this since now that im over 30, thought it'd be prudent.

Hope nothing bad turns up. Im kinda scared and hungry (from the fasting).

Then it's facial.

Then it's golf tmr in JB.

Then badm.

Then i might have to go Vietnam next week. Bleah

Kio Dio!

We went to Inagiku last weekend. We have been going there quite often cos the lunch there is quite good and I get a 50% discount.

We decided we didnt want the usual tempura we usually eat, nor the usual set, nor the lousy clear soup that came with the other set. So we ordered this set (set 1) that had unagi, pork cutlet, sashimi and miso soup. We ordered another wagyu beef set, which we ordered before (set 2).

The food came. First was simmered vegetables. Alarm bells started ringing for me cos there's no way in hell (heaven has no vegetables) im going to pay for vegetables, when i dont eat vegs! I thought perhaps it was just a very large portion of appetiser. Then came tempura! Now, something was very wrong.

We asked for the manager, cos he was the one who took our order. We asked how come the food that came wasnt what we ordered from the menu. He calmly said that they had a new chef and the new chef changed some items from Set 1 cos he didnt like some of the ingredients in there. So he removed pork cutlet and unagi and added the veg (what???) and tempura. He offered to give us the unagi and pork but we'd have to wait for a while for them to prepare it. Then he said we could have the tempura since it's already made and given to us.

He came back after a while to say that there's no more pork cutlet and he'd give us a large portion of unagi and he wasnt going to charge us for set 1.

So in the end we only paid for set 2 and cos we had 50% discount, we only paid $60! w00t!

Here's the spread we had.

Bagged

Thought i'd give you guys a treat and show you my golf bag.

Vietnam

I was in Ho Chi Minh City for a couple of days. I never really enjoyed my trips there cos it’s such a cowboy town with bad traffic, not very nice food, no shopping, etc. I could go on.

The bulk of my meetings was going to be near the airport so I was deliberating if I should stay in the nicer city centre hotels or nearer the airport in the lousier hotel. I decided to help the company save money and also save the amount of time I spent in the horrible traffic with this hotel near the airport. Managed to get a good rate, upgrade to suite, two-way airport transfer, free internet, use of executive lounge, 1-hour use of meeting room (didn’t think I’d use it but I did eventually), discounts on food eaten at their restaurants. What a steal!

My impression of this cowboy town started even at their immigration when the visa of the angmo in front of me only started the next day (what a dumb angmo), and the immigration officer demanded money from him. It was that blatant. The angmo kept saying he had no money and the immigration officer just stared into blank space for a very long time. Held up the queue for a long time before the officer relented and threw the passport back at him.

My hotel room was pretty decent but like ive mentioned before, I don’t really like suites cos the distance between the bed and the table and the tv is too far that it’s tiring.







I saw this wedding couple standing at the lobby of the hotel underneath some arches that night. Apparently they are waiting for their guests and when the guests come, they can all pose under the arches and take a picture. This is repeated until it’s time to go in. That sounds tiring.



My client brought us to a place to eat in the middle of the city. It was a quaint black and white bungalow and very crowded and no air-con. I felt stupid to be wearing a suit in this place but the client was insistent that the food was very good. The food was indeed very good!





Check out the chendol making process.



Doesn’t my client’s assistant look like Chuck Bartowski from the tv series “Chuck”? Curly hair, side burns, white shirt, dorky face. All he needs is a nerd herd badge.



I also flew to Nha Trang to visit some places. My cowboy clients said they didn’t manage to book our return flight from Nha Trang to HCMC so they said we had to take a car ride back from Nha Trang to HCMC… a 10-hour car ride. I very nearly fainted when I heard that cos I had serious motion sickness. Man, 10 hours.. my longest in a car was 6 hours and I nearly died then. It made me pissy the entire night on this news. I therefore only packed my facial wash and stole a hotel face towel into my laptop bag in preparation for my flight the next day.

The next morning while waiting for the flight to Nha Trang, the client told me that they managed to secure tickets for us. I was elated, before I realised that I didn’t bring a change of clothes, nor my laptop. Means it’d be a night of naked cable tv. Beats a grimy 10-hour car ride.

It was my first time in Nha Trang so I was quite excited that I now can add one more location on my facebook “Where I’ve been” app. The client decided we should have breakfast first before starting work. In deference to us being guests, they opted for a cleaner establishment.



Otherwise, it would have been this roadside stall. *shudder*



This is the bed that I would spend a naked cable tv night.


This is the view from my Nha Trang hotel. Quite nice actually.



This is the city area.



We had lunch at this nice alfresco beach side restaurant, which served damn good fish. We ate three different kinds of fish.



All in all, I spent four nights in Vietnam. I couldn’t wait to get back after the first night.

Sacked

There’s a show out in theatres now featuring George Clooney playing a person whose job is to travel around and telling people that they’re fired. Whilst that’s a pretty weird job in itself, I actually have a better way to do his job.

Saw this in my office today. This is a much easier and less emotionally draining way to sack a person. Of course in this way, you don’t get an excuse to see George Clooney.

Clamped

This is what you get when you park at my Chairman's lot.

Clamped!

One Night in Beijing

I was in Beijing for a night last week. Just one day cos my Chairman was in Asia and i told him i needed him for a meeting in Hong Kong and Beijing. My boss went to Hong Kong with him and I met them in Beijing for that one meeting.

Because the hotel we stayed in heard who was coming (not me of course), they upgraded us to a suite. I had arrived first and the front desk manager and rooms manager was there to greet me. I wasnt in my best of moods so i told them i just wanted to get to my room.

The suite was a disappointment as i heard it was a new wing but the build quality was horrible.



The stupid toilet didnt even have a dustbin.



One slightly good thing was that there was some food waiting for me.



And there was a bottle of Evian, the big bottle kind. This typically costs S$13 in hotel rooms and i was glad this was free.



And even better, it's meant for golfers, according to the label at the back.



I was glad to be in and out of Beijing quickly. It's so boring and smoggy.

Sucker

Sometimes I think im quite a sucker. We were browsing around for shoes and I came across this pair and tried it. Was a little undecided so I decided to ask the sales lady for her opinion.

Her reply was that this pair has the Hugo Boss look. This kinda turned me on cos it’s a look I’d (and most people I’d venture) like to have.

This was, of course, until Someone told me that the lady said it cos I was wearing a Hugo Boss shirt.

Tsk. What a party pooper.

But I refused to believe, so I went back today to buy it.

See for yourself and tell me this doesn’t exude Hugo.

CNY

I cant remember if i have ever blogged about it but i hate CNY.

It's not about the relatives asking when im getting married or the need to buy new clothes. No one ever asks and i probably havent bought new clothes for CNY for the last 10 years. (I do think in advance what to wear that would be palatable for the superstitious relatives)

I hate CNY cos there's always a need to coordinate schedules on when to visit my mum's or dad's side. But actually they're pretty cool about me not going but i feel bad.

Then there's a need to decide where to eat for CNY eve. In recent years, i have suggested we gone out to eat to lessen the burden of cooking at home. But man, it's tough to find a nice place which doesnt serve set meals. You dont want to be paying $600 for food that they cook in bulk!

CNY is also a time where many shops close. That sucks. It's almost as if life comes to a standstill.

This year, day 1 is on Sunday. Which means no badminton for me. Bleah.

And it seems like my usual getaway activity - mahjong with the Dream Team - might not happen. So that sucks too.

CNY eve is on Saturday so no golf on Saturday too. Double sucky.

Hopefully there will be some golf sometime in the 3 days.

Zonked

Sometimes i dont know why i blog. Cos most of my happenings is updated on Facebook. I cant think of anyone who isnt on my FB reading my blog.

Anyway, I took half day on Friday to go JB golfing with my recently unemployed (voluntarily) friend. Quite a horrible game when i lost a box worth (12) of balls. A little heartpain but hey, a bad day at golf is better than a good day in the office. Haha..

It was a busy friday which meant there were tons of mails in my BB while i was playing and i ended up going back to the office to get my laptop and have dinner near my office.

At night i complained to Sox that it was sucha bad game that i felt like going to the range on Sat morning. He jokingly suggested i joined him and his family for golf on Saturday morning. 5am leave, 7am tee off!!!! I asked Someone for permission then MOVED! Actually when i woke up on Saturday morning at 4am, i laid in bed for 10 minutes wondering if i should go and go back to sleep. Haha.. but considering that the course was designed by a world class designed, i decided to go for it. Also, considering it was quite a difficult course, i thought i did pretty well. A good day at golf is of course better than a good day at work.

I played badminton today. My whole body was aching when i woke up this morning. But i think i did pretty well.

I bet my body would ache big time tomorrow.

Sucks that i have a breakfast meeting tomorrow.

Tea

Every heterosexual man should have a stash of this.

FIrst Meal in Tokyo

Finally managed to organise my pictures from Tokyo. Phew.. so many pics to edit and decide which are post-worthy and which aren't.

We reached Tokyo at 4pm and hotel at 6pm. So hungry but yet too tired to venture too far so we took the free hotel bus to Shinjuku. There was just so many shops and we decided on this conveyor belt thingy.

There was a little bit of a crowd.



The sushi chefs hard at work.



Because there was no english prices anyway, nor a menu in sight, we had to constantly refer to the plate colors and the corresponding prices on the wall. As it was our first meal in Japan, we didnt want to blow the bank.



Everything is handmade and eaten immediately. Itd be A LITTLE weird if one can feel the warmth of his hand on the sushi. Itd be like you taking off your clothes and putting them in a laundry bag and handing it to the housekeeper and she feels your warm clothes... eewwwwl.

Because it's all handmade, the sushi is not as "uniform". It all adds to the authenticity. But if Sakae Sushi did this, we would all cry foul. I know i would. Haha

Christmas

Ive been so busy with work and range that my blogging has been delayed.

My Christmas bounty this year was quite dismal.

Someone gave me a tie..



and a TV.. Haha.. the TV was a huge surprise. Gave her my 21". 21" in exchange for 32". Song!

Common Sense

Saw this that day on a forum. Hee hee.. so right sometimes. They should do something for female drivers.

Rattled

The chinese sign is attached on the back windscreen of my car.

It’s metallic so it rattles every time the road gets bumpy.

So now,every time there’s a speed bump in life, I think of Sox’s love for me.

Niu

Sox came by the range yesterday to pass me something he got from Shanghai.

I thought it was kinda weird for him to be passing me Chinese signs.

Here you go.



I was confused for a while and he had to explain it.

Haha..

What’s between niu a and niu c?

Niu b

= Newbie.

He promised me another sign when I get below 100 at golf.

First Day

I was questioned the other day how come no more Japan pics after Krispy Kreme. That’s cos we arrived at 7am on Sunday morning from Beijing and had a wedding lunch that lasted 3 hours! Knocked out after that.

First day of work yesterday. As usual, I was filled with promise and fervour, which lasted until 10am. Haha.

But well, new year, clean slate of things. 12 more months to sign a deal. Didn’t manage to sign a deal in 2009. Clock’s ticking to sign a couple in the next 12 months.

Saw this yesterday on my colleague’s desk.



Windows Blue Screen of Death on the first day of the year. Hee hee. How ominous.