Box

In yet another continuing series of things that come my way in the office, I got this big box this morning from Fedex.


It’s from my client! In it, it contained the signed documents of the deal I’ve been talking about for ages. Finally, my first deal! It’s the first deal for my company in Asia! W00t! I’m very happy and I had wanted to take the day off but I had 16 items on my To-Do list today before my trip.

I bought a white chip macadamia cookie from Subway to celebrate instead.

Hong Kong

I'm flying to Hong Kong on Tues and back on Friday. It's been more than a year since I went to Hong Kong. Stayed in crappy Kowloon hotel the last time. Smallest room i ever stayed. This time, i'll be staying at the W Hong Kong. Heard it's quite nice.

Will post pics!

Life

This week was quite a roller coaster week really.

I was quite ill, as evidenced by my visit to the doc.

It was hell trying to get up and i was really sleepy by 9pm but with my deal due to be signed soon, i was calling US twice almost every night. Bleah.

Everytime when i get quite ill, i start to get a little philosophical and sometimes thonk about the meaning of life and meaning of working (although i work less hard in my current job, i still like to think i work quite hard now)

I dont know about other people but when im ill, I feel the most lonely. So going to work this week was a downer.

Plus it just seems like of late, there isnt much good news. Almost everyone in the office is sick. A few of my friends are sick as well. I went to NTUC with my mum on Saturday evening and she saw her friend and her friend's wife is in final stages of breast cancer. That's really sad, really. Sigh. I could tell my mum was a tad bit affected and i was as well.

I am someone who likes choices (which is why i like nasi padang and chinese mixed veg rice). So when one is faced with a terminal decision, i think that just sucks. To not be able to do anything about it. So helpless. Grrr.. i hate that.

For some odd reason, it just made me want to be a little more charitable. My company has some quarterly community service thing and I just signed up for it.

Everything just seems so bleak of late. Electricity bills are up by 21%. I've taken to charging my handphone in the office so that i save electricity at home. YJJ commented that she did that long time ago! My colleague then said maybe no bonus this year and then maybe have to invoke the 10% variable component in my salary. Bleah. That sucks big time.

It was the Taka sale this weekend for members and i didnt go. Im quite proud of myself really. Stayed home to watch tv even though i had S$300 Taka vouchers i could use. I guess I'll save them for Christmas for something special for myself.

As mentioned i went to NTUC with my mum and bought these stuff to tide me over the weekend. I bought two of everything in this pic.

Long Time

Long time since i blogged.

This week has been quite horrendous really. Wasnt feeling too well. Got dumped some shit to do.

I'm actually still in office at 715pm on a Friday... cos I'm waiting for my dinner appointment. Going to have sushi tei. Long time since i had sushi tei. I think i deserve a treat from the long week.

This weekend's going to be a slow week. Yokie's getting married in May 09. Im heart broken.

In the continuing series of things i find on my desk after lunch, i found this magazine on my desk.



My colleague had left it there with a note that said "Love the 'preppy look'. Check it out". Apparently the 'preppy look' means this.

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.