Le Driver

We have been having some problems with the driver of late.

 

We pay for the fuel, parking charges and toll charges on top of overtime pay. All these including the number of hours of overtime is tabulated on a timesheet.

 

Recently we have found that the charges seem quite high even when we don’t go out much. Then we decided to keep our own time sheet to tally with his at the end of the month.

 

We found that on some days, his ending hours differed from us, usually by an hour. On one day, it even differed by five hours! We even delved deeper to see the distance travelled in the last few months versus the petrol charges and calculated mileage costs.

 

We did this for two months before confronting him.

 

Apparently, he lists the end time as the time he reaches home. We were flabbergasted. If you think about it, for normal working people, the working hours are when you reach the office and knock off time is when you leave the office.

 

He said this was the industry practice but grudgingly agreed to my formula.

 

Then I asked him how come one day was five hours off from our records. He couldn’t give an answer. Eww Eww Oww Oww..

 

Grand total of savings: RMB110. Not a very big amount but the principle aint right.

 

 

Journeys

I recently got to know a Malaysian girl who still lives in JB but works in Singapore.

 

She takes the bus from her house in Iskandar every morning to Jurong East then takes the MRT to her office on Maxwell Road. That’s a 1.5 hour journey.

 

She says she gets to come in a bit later so I asked her what time.

 

“9+”.

 

9 plus isn’t a bit later! Most people come in at 9+ anyway.

She then takes the reverse trip back every evening after work.

 

That’s three hours on the road every day. Pretty crazy. She must love her work a lot.

Gift Galore

It was Someone’s birthday the other day.

She typically doesn't ask for any particular presents but I decided to get some cheap toys from Taobao. Cost me a grand total of S$5. Lots of cheap and good stuff on TB but mostly fake.

During this time, I saw that my friend bought a new mouse that was apparently very fierce.

This was the Logitech G700s.

Cost a bomb on the local shopping websites here.

I was getting irritated because once I have my eyes set on something, I don't give up.

Amazon China surprisingly sells it at a similar price than in Singapore.

BHAM! Arrived in two days.

My own gift to myself costs 24 times more than Someone’s birthday gift. Haha.

The mouse’s battery drains quite quickly so I have to remind myself to switch it off every day before I leave the office. Thus, this sticker on my monitor.

Decadance

I have written often about how I come across decadence and how surprised I am. It’s not like I’m a model of austere living.

A couple of weeks ago, my President visited one of my clients and the client hosted a dinner.

As my President is new, this client wanted to impress him so he started talking about his hobbies and how he likes to collect things like cigars, fish, wine and good food.

He went on to say he had a fish farm in Hong Kong like a kelong. Said he had more than 1,000 fishes that are more than 2m long and 10,000 fishes that are shorter than 2m. I found that pretty incredulous really but I guess anything’s possible with these guys.

He then mentioned that he had specially brought the red wine which we were drinking that night so that we can try. I am not a big fan of red wine but it tasted pretty different. I am not sure if it was psychological. It probably it.

After that, he said my President should have come one day earlier. It had rained in Kunming two days ago. The rain caused a lot of mushrooms to grow. Client’s friend then sent these mushrooms to him yesterday. So he got to have fresh mushrooms. As fresh as can be. He asked my President to monitor the weather in Kunming. If it rains, he should make plans to come to China. *sweat*

Dessert came. I had heard him as the server to bring out THE peaches. I would actually prefer mangoes than peaches but who was I to demand fruits? Sliced up with their white and reddish skin still on it and looking rather soft, it didn’t look that appetizing at all. But golly, the moment I sank my teeth into them, the juice-filled pulp just burst into a million wet dreams. I gobbled my portion down in double quick time partly also because no one was paying me any attention.

After I got back to Shanghai, I couldn’t take my mind off them.

When we saw some at the supermarket, I stopped and checked the fruits section. They were selling peaches too! Three for S$17. Woah. That’s expensive. They gave us some to try and yes, they were the same I tried a few days before. I made an executive decision to buy them despite their price.

Alas, we got cheated! Those we bought weren’t half as soft nor succulent nor juicy as those we tried! They were as crunchy as apples in fact. What a downer.

I was so traumatized by being cheated so I decided to call my colleague in Wuxi (recently found out that Wuxi has good peaches) to buy some for me and courier it to Shanghai.

He did and that’s why I have two boxes of these last weekend.

 

MOST of these were the real and a couple were too hard or rotten. But the good ones were da domb! They weren’t exactly cheap either. 8 for S$30. Heng my colleague said one box was his gift to me.

Yoga Adventures

Because the both of us have been troubled by tight muscles, necks, backs for the longest time, we have decided to embark on yoga.

 

I actually got the idea of yoga quite some time back as a solution to our ailments. In fact, I thought it’d be better for Someone than me given the problems she has but there was a lot of inertia for her to go until quite recently when we got to know a Singaporean who has a yoga package here.

 

Someone had already tried one studio before I joined her for the first time. When I got there, the class before us was lying down. My friend told me that this was the dead man’s pose usually done at the end of each session.

 

I thought, “What a pussy move. Such a low impact ‘sport’. I’ll probably be dozing off.”

 

The class started off with a cross legged meditation. I was seated for less than a minute before I was already feeling like my upper thighs were burning and I was feeling very mang zang! I almost felt like I couldn’t breathe and I was trying so hard to calm down. No way I was going to survive this if I could take the first two minutes of meditation.

 

Thankfully, the meditation was over in a while.

 

Soon, the poses were getting difficult and I was working up quite a sweat. I began to understand that this could indeed be a workout and could actually be beneficial. I was quite glad for that actually. I am not the most flexible person and I know that so it wasn’t a big surprise to me that I couldn’t do a lot of the stuff but up and down, up and down, I was feeling a little dizzy. It must be my motion sickness again.

 

Time passed pretty quickly. Soon it was the end and time for dead man’s pose. I was so bushed that I was so thankful to be able to lie down and do the dead man’s pose.

 

BUT

 

I couldn’t rest. My legs were aching and my head was swirling. I was panting even, somewhat. I was trying to calm myself down by thinking of nice sceneries. I tried thinking of France but I realized that I have never gone to France before. Then I thought of the Maldives, but the waves weren’t helping with the motion sickness.

 

We were in Dead Man for about 15 minutes before the class dismissed.

 

I struggled a little to get up and limped to the showers and limped downstairs.

 

I limped for the next two days but I actually felt rather good for quite some time. Perhaps this is the way to go for a stretched life. A life free of tightness. We’ll see.

 

 

 

 

Lapis Dreams

I had earlier posted some six months ago about how I got my Singapore colleague to buy us some kueh lapis from Singapore when they came to Shanghai.

 

Very soon after that, someone else came and we ordered another one.

 

By then, it was already quite sickening cos we aren’t big lapis eaters to begin with. It’s just something we cant buy here and therefore had a craving.

 

That was five to six months ago. In the deluge of friends who visited two months ago, we asked one of them to buy us one again since it’s been some time.

 

We haven’t finished before another one of the visitors brought another one as a gift.

 

There’s so much lapis now that I bring slices now on trips to eat on the longer flights since I don’t eat on planes anymore.

 

Kinda silly really. To get to a point of being sickened on something just because we don’t get this in Shanghai.

 

Stalled Market

I had earlier mentioned that I had started to open a shares trading account in Singapore.

 

There was a hiccup and the Central Depositary said I had to sign some documents in front of some official people.

 

So I arranged to sign them in front of the OCBC Shanghai employees since I was opening an account with them.

 

I was all prepared to courier these to Singapore when they said that they cant let me take them away. Anyone who takes these documents away must give them a receipt like a courier’s receipt. So in front of them, I called OCBC Singapore to ask them to arrange. They agreed.

 

Two weeks later, I didn’t hear anything and called OCBC Singapore. The VP said the documents are still in Shanghai. The Shanghai branch manager said no one arranged to come collect from them. I yelled at her and said if no one asked, you just let the documents sit there and you do nothing about it. She said it wasn’t her responsibility. Then she said the Singapore person has been liaising with was on leave. Then the Singapore VP said that it was the Shanghai person who was on leave.

 

I got pissed and yelled at her then called the Shanghai person again and yelled at her.

 

Singapore one called me back to say they’ve made arrangements to allow me to arrange a local courier to collect from the bank and then I courier it to Singapore myself. I yelled at her again to say that this was what I had suggested to them when they said they needed a receipt but they didn’t allow. Now, two weeks on, I missed the IPO of a company I wanted to buy.

 

Then I said to her in my calmest voice,” Please do me one more favour. Please call the bank again and ask them to destroy the documents because I don’t wish to open the account anymore.”

 

With that, I am now account-less again.

Politics of Group Chats

A lot, in fact, all of the new friends we got to know here are introductions from friends we go to know here. These friends, of course, were introduced from other friends.

 

It’s a continuous cycle. Vicious or virtuous cycle? I guess there are hits and misses sometimes.

 

A very easy way to introduce someone to your current group of friends is through the Wechat or whatsapp group chats.

 

The groups typically start off small. Typically two or three couples trying to decide where to eat. Then after the dinner, pictures are shared in the group. Then the next times we want to arrange something, we would use the same group and probably add more people.

 

More and more people will be added. Some new people and some people the entire group already knows.

 

At same point, the group will get so big that it becomes unwieldy to arrange dinners. It’s not every dinner that the same 15 will be able to attend or want to attend. Or worse, that you would want them to attend.

 

Imagine coming up with a dinner location that 15 people agrees to.

 

The way to go around this would be to form a new group.

 

Then the new group slowly grows and grows from there.

 

It has come to a point where I have multiple groups of varying sizes but largely the same few people and the differences between the groups are the fringe people.

 

Once, one of these fringe people suggested dinner one night. The problem is the very same group already arranged for dinner that very night in another group but said fringe person and his wife wasn’t in THAT group. So no one replied to his suggestion. Everyone just kept quiet. I felt both uneasy and amused. Haha. It’s kinda hard to keep a dinner gathering under wraps because at every dinner, there will be pictures taken of the food, people and then posted on wechat where everyone can see. So, at that dinner, we made a pact to only post pictures within the group and not post anywhere else. So conspiratorial.

 

Frankly, if it werent for Someone’s active socialising, I’ll be counted as a fringe person.  I don’t mind being invited to less dinners so that I can stay home to watch more TV but I guess it’s rather sucky to jio people but they are arranging another thing without you. Kwa kwa.

Group Traveling

I rarely like to travel in a group. Largely because I think it's a hassle to move from place to place in a foreign land and also a major pain to get a consensus on where to go, how to go, etc.

A group of people we hang out with in Shanghai suggested a day trip to Nanjing. Ordinarily, I would have refused. But because we made a conscious effort to explore more of China now that our first full year is behind us, and also since I bought a new camera, we decided to go along.

Because of my motion sickness and probably being too used to having my travel expenses paid by the company, I typically would choose the more comfortable option to travel. Nanjing is a 75-minute train ride away and I usually take first class seats but since everyone wanted second class seats and even though we didnt have to sit in the same class, I decided to go along with second class so that I dont appear like a prima donna. The difference between first and second class is S$18 per way per person.

I usually like a planned itinerary wherever I go so I did some research on the distances of the two attractions we wanted to go so that we can travel more efficiently. I guess because it's a holiday, everyone is a little more chill so my itinerary wasnt used. Instead, the first thing most of them wanted when we emerged from the train station was to look for Starbucks. There wasnt a mall beside the station so as we wandered along the streets, I thought we would take a taxi to one of the attractions. But nooooo, for some reason, they wanted to take the MRT. It was 3RMB per person for MRT and 25RMB for four people in a taxi. Double the cost but just a S$2.40 difference.

It was at this point when I realised that this was a roughing out trip.

We alighted at the station for the Sun Yet Sen Mausoleum. Go check out the number of steps to the top. I did. So when I saw touts wanting to drive us up at RMB10 per car for four pax, I thought it was a steal! But they were afraid the touts will kidnap us to sell us away. Valid point.

Then one of our merry troop wanted to walk up! I was aghast!

Thankfully, it started to drizzle so we quickly made a decision to take a buggy up, rather than walk up. Cost of buggy: RMB10 per person.

But a troop member noted how far the buggy took us, she said it was the best RMB10 she spent. I could only smile.

The rest of the journey wasnt as rough because everyone was sapped after the mausoleum that we took a taxi back to the train station. Second class seats back to Shanghai.

Of course, the silly thing at the end of the day was the Nanjing on that day, topped the most polluted cities in China.

15 June

15 June marks the tenth anniversary of my working life.

Ten years ago that day, I started work at my first job.

I dropped an SMS to the boss who hired me, saying:

“Hey XXX, today, 15 June, marks the anniversary of tenth year in which I started work. Which means that 10 years ago today, you gave me a chance at XXX and I will always be grateful for what you've done for me. Take care and I hope to catch up soon.”

His reply was typical and short:

“Let me know when you’re next back in Singapore and we can catch up.”

Ten years. Time seemed to have flew by.

It was actually quite a surreal the way I got the job. My job applications to the traditional big firms and statutory boards weren’t getting any hits and it was at this time when XXX sent an email to my university asking for interested applicants. Although it was a somewhat different industry, I applied because I was somewhat desparate.

I remember thinking the office of this company must be really lousy and small because the boss conducted all his interviews in the restaurant of the nearby hotel. I know it was all his interviews because I saw someone leaving before me and then when it was my turn to leave, I saw my uni sch mate after me, also waiting to be interviewed.

I was right on both counts – the office was small and lousy.

The “office” of the boss was a mere partition. It had a door but it’s like a toilet cubicle door. You can throw something over to hit him. I remember being disappointed that my office isn’t in the CBD like what I imagined it’d be like. I remember going to the CBD to meet my friends for lunch and being amazed at the tall skyscrapers and the hordes of people there are during lunch hour.

I also remember being concerned how much lunch cost each day and wondering when I’d be able to pay off my university tuition loan.

Thankfully, we didn't stay in that office for very long. But we moved to the other side of outside CBD. I still wasn't getting a break on office location. I was thankful that at least my desk in the office was in front of a wall so that I could surf and MSN at my leisure.

We moved again for the second time after some time and this time, I was able to get a bigger table and a corner seat even.

Throughout my first job, I remember over-working a lot. I remember flying even more. As I look back every once in a while, I am thankful for the opportunities accorded to me, a heartland boy, to see the world.

Green Fingers

Sometimes, I just love the way the Chinese use similar sounding words to convey their meaning in a somewhat poetic way.

Macs

Saw this a Macs the other day.

Burritos and you tiao! Wow!

Nondescript

It's one of those lull periods when there's nothing much happening in my life worth blogging about.

Sometimes I feel bad when you readers check out and leave disappointed that there's no new update but sometimes there's really nothing to talk about and it's a bit of a chore to log into VPN, then think of something to write then log onto Blogger. It's much easier to watch TV.

It's a bit of a lull in China. Economy is slowing down and therefore business is slowing down. Im not sure whether I'll be able to make my targets this year. We'll see.

On the company front, I mentioned earlier that we have a new President. Along with a new President came a huge restructuring of the corporate office in Singapore. With the "restructuring", the position of EVP of Sales and Marketing and CFO were deemed redundant. Both of them left in a jiffy.

That shocked me somewhat and for many moons, I actually wondered if I'd have a job the next day. It's a rather daunting thought really. With me being a sole breadwinner and a housing debt to repay, it's not a good time to lose my job. I guess there's never a good time to lose your job. Haha.

It doesnt help that things have been slowing down.

So there you go. My first entry for some time and it's rather heavy.

Summer Breeze

It’s the summer.

Summer means more tourists and more sleeveless.

Saw this Chinese tourist at the Bund posing like she’s holding one building in her hand. 

Although it’s late at night, my eagle eyes caught sight of something. 

Yes, unshaven underarms. The picture isnt very clear as I had to stand quite far away and zoom in with my cell. Another reason to get a kick-ass camera.