Monday.

I would be flying off to Hong Kong in about 14 hours’ time and I’m feeling really excited. I mean, yes, I haven’t really gotten a job yet, but I’m looking forward to be in Hong Kong – to a certain extent this is the first time that I’ve put so much determination to leave Singapore, so I should be happy with myself.

Anyway I spent the whole of yesterday recuperating from ZoukOut – I slept at 10.15 at night and woke up at 11.30 this morning! It was really a good rest and I feel really hyper, even when it’s going to be 3 in the morning!

Hopefully tomorrow’s flight would be great. And everyone in Singapore, don’t miss me cos if all fails (i.e. I remain unemployed) I should be back in Singapore in about 2 or 3 months’ time!

ZoukOut.

I just got home from the whole night out at ZoukOut. It was a massive event and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The $38 I paid for the ticket was worth every cent of it, as acts like Steve Lawler and Ferry Corsten were just brilliant. I could have stayed longer, but my old bones were not going to hold up any longer, so I decided to leave Sentosa at about 5. Managed to catch the first bus for service number 30 to get back to Boon Lay – about the first time I’ve ever caught a first bus!

If you didn’t go ZoukOut today, you really would have no idea what you have missed!

Off to sleep – I think it would well be the late afternoon before I actually get up. But since I had a great night out, it was OK!

VivoCity.

After talking about wanting to go VivoCity for so long, I finally made my way there today with a couple of friends from the UC06 committee. It was a nice little gathering – with just 5 of us!

To be absolutely honest, VivoCity is just another big shopping centre with lots of shops (what do you expect?), and for someone who’s not really very keen on shopping, it doesn’t really have much appeal to me. Everyone was saying that VivoCity’s main attraction is the cinema, but since we didn’t watch any movie today, I shan’t comment on that. Despite the fact that I wasn’t exactly impressed with the place, there were still something interesting about VivoCity:

I saw this on the entrance of the male toilet. For those of you who are beginning to harvest evil thoughts, nope – there was really nothing exciting about the female cleaners in the male toilet.

FC Barcelona has a club shop in VivoCity – let’s hope it doesn’t suffer the fate of the Manchester United club shop. But I think the people in Barcelona are very proud of their Catalan origins – their website address reads http://www.barcelone.cat (with .cat being the suffix for Catalonia apparently) instead of .es which is normally associated with Spanish websites, like http://www.realmadrid.es.

A couple of nude models were found to be outside the Tangs department store. No one was even remotely alarmed about these nude models with horribly good figures.

So my day at VivoCity was pretty fun to say the least because of the people that I was with. But I’m pretty sure my next visit would probably be a long time later.

Hui Min is still ignoring me, which is not good because I still don’t know what time I should appear (if at all) at the NOC Pre-departure bootcamp tomorrow.

Have a great weekend – I promise I’ll try to snap some pictures at ZoukOut tomorrow!

Music.

There are two new albums released recently that I think even for those of you who don’t understand Cantonese should try listening to.

Janice Vidal 衛蘭 – Do U Know

The wonderful thing about Janice’s albums is that you would listen to the entire album from the first to the last song, because her voice is wonderful. Compared to a lot of those “idols” singers in Hong Kong who can’t really sing for nuts, Janice is one who makes seemingly ordinary songs sound brilliant. Among all the songs in the album, the best ones have to be 離家出走, 愛你還愛你 and 愛才, which have been getting pretty good airtime on Hong Kong radio. That said, Janice didn’t do too badly in the other songs either!

Ivana Wong 王菀之 – 詩情．畫意

If you don’t know who Ivana Wong is, try recalling the song 我真的受傷了 by Jacky Cheung, especially the version in which he sang in a live concert. If you remember the female voice, then you have Ivana Wong. She may not be the prettiest of singers, but she can sing and compose, which is fairly rare in the Hong Kong music scene. People who don’t like her complains about her looks, her speaking voice (she does sound like a kid when she talks) and everything. But in this album, Ivana was brilliant in her performance, and it is another one that I would listen from the first song to the last. Among the songs, my favourites are 詩情, 畫意, (巴黎沒有)摩天輪 and 想愛不相愛, though the others are just as nice.

If you click on the title of the album you would be able to go to HMV’s website, where you can listen to the samples of the songs in the two albums. And if you like what you hear – get the albums!

Zouk.

I went to Zouk last night for perhaps the last Mambo for a long while. I arrived at about 11.20 at night and had to queue for about half an hour before I could get into the place. It was very crowded, and unlike previously when the dancefloor used to be empty until about 12, by the time I went in the dancefloor was completely packed. I managed to find a little corner to stand on, and managed to have a bit of fun on my own.

I left the place at about 3.15 to get back home to watch United vs Benfica on the telly, and after everything was done, I went to sleep at 6 in the morning. It was tiring, but all in all it was a great night for me.

Went to school this morning for some final bits of admin, and I think it would be a long while before I would be in school again. Came back home and slept from 2.30 to 6, just to catch up on the sleep that I missed this morning.

And yup, I’ve gotten my ticket for ZoukOut!

Anybody keen on going?

Year-end Trip.

Now I’m having a bit of a dilemma. I am planning to go for a short trip of about a week to 10 days towards the end of the month, but I’m not sure where I want to go.

Because I have a very small budget, I could probably afford to go to somewhere near and not too expensive. And since I’m going to be in Hong Kong from next week onwards, so in reality there are only two choices: China or Taiwan.

Option 1 would probably be Shanghai over Christmas and New Year period, where I can probably go and meet all the friends that I haven’t been seeing in a while, which will be a good thing. I can probably spend 2 days in Nanjing, considering I’ve not been there before despite me spending a year there last year. And I’m sure all the nice friends in Shanghai that I have would mean that I probably don’t have to fork out too much on accommodation (it’s a test of friendship now…). And given that it’s China, it’s not going to be too expensive. I expect spending about only 2500 RMB for the entire trip including the train ticket (yup I probably would take the train to Shanghai since it’s pretty cheap). But if I have to pay for accommodation then it would be more.

Option 2 would be the other side of the straits. They are having some pretty good offers for air tickets to Taiwan from Hong Kong, and a return trip ticket on China Airlines costs HK$1500, which is pretty cheap. I can probably stay in Taipei City for 4 days, staying in youth hostels which are going at about NT$500 per night. Then after that I could go visit my relatives in Junghe, Taipei County – which would be a good idea considering that I’ve not seen them for almost 10 years for a few and 20 for others. If Taiwan is the destination, then it would probably cost me around HK$3500, slightly more than that to Shanghai. The only drawback is that I don’t have anyone to go with me, so that might make the trip slightly boring.

Of course I would love to have both options being available to me, but given that my budget is kinda tight, I don’t think I can afford that. So now it’s a case of having to choose. Friends in Shanghai vs sightseeing and relatives in Taiwan. Not an easy choice. But in reality, I actually am more keen to go Taiwan because of the fact that I’ve not been there for more than 20 years already. So if there is anyone who is keen to go Taiwan with me, then I won’t even consider any further and Taiwan it will be.

Anyone? Anyone?

Sunday.

Spent the entire day looking at recruitment advertisements and managed to find a few openings that might probably be suitable for me. Prepared a couple of the applications, now the job is to find more of such advertisements and send more applications.

It’s been quite a while since I last put some pictures on my little journal, so here’s for your enjoyment:

You know Christmas is coming when huge Christmas trees are all around shopping centres in Singapore.

And you also know that it’s school holidays when the Pokemons are having stage performances for kids!

This was the board assigned to me for my HYP poster presentation.

And this was how my poster looked like – I wasn’t going to put the entire poster out otherwise you would have known who my supervisor that I’ve been bashing about is!

This was the poster that Sarah, Stella and me had on Friday. Nice looking one, the taste was decent too.

Would be in school tomorrow afternoon for some admin stuffs. Oh well, I’m not officially a graduate yet, so it can’t be helped.

Need to secure a job quick. Dear employers, please look at my resume!!

Exam.

My one and only exam of the semester – as well as my last exam in NUS – was fairly straight forward. Not too difficult and I managed to finish everything in about an hour. Decided to thoroughly check through and see if there were anything to add in, and when I was sure I have written whatever I could, I handed up my paper with half an hour to spare. My lecturer was surprised to see me to be in such a high mood, so he asked me why I was so excited. Well, it was simple – I’ve graduated! I know I would only be an official graduate when I get my results towards the end of this month, but I really don’t think I’ll do so badly to fail either my project or my module…

Went for dinner with Sarah and Stella in the evening and perhaps it’s been a long time since I last saw Stella or something, she had a field day in trying to wind me up verbally. But the nice guy that I always have been, I decided to let her have her day today because I’ve been winding her up for 2 and a half years in university!

Caught another animated movie today in the form of Open Season. It was pretty funny, and I had a good laugh. What a perfect way to end a fairly happy day for me. Now all I need is securing a job, and getting a result for my HYP and exam. God bless me.