Labour Day.

Labour Day tomorrow – finally I get to enjoy this one-day holiday as a full-fledge working class personnel. Sure it isn’t fun when the holiday is only one day log, but hey, it’s better than nothing. At least I get to rest my throat after going through that 4-hour class today.

I don’t think I’ll be doing anything tomorrow besides perhaps going to play a bit of football. I think I need rest. Boy am I not getting weak.

Just 4 more weeks of lessons to go and it will be exam time for my kids in school. I hope some of them will suddenly become more hardworking in the hope of passing their exams. After looking at some of their attitudes and behaviors, I would have no problem in giving them a fail grade because they just can’t be bothered. I mean, if they want to come to school to play on their PSP or play LAN games, they might as well don’t turn up for my class. I don’t have the energy to teach people who aren’t interested. I mean, I am more than willing to spend a few hours teaching the kids who want to learn, but to those who seem to think that playing on their PSP or NDS is more important than their school work, I simply don’t have the energy for them. They are wasting their time, they are wasting my time. I will not hesitate to fail them if I have to. After all, if they don’t deserve to pass, it would be wrong for me to give them a pass grade as well.

Cool down, it’s Labour Day tomorrow – a day of rest for people in the labour force, which includes me!

Oh and I’m so sorry that I can’t turn up for the Diablo outing last Saturday – I would definitely have been there if I were in Singapore! Well, maybe you guys can come to Hong Kong to visit me sometime soon? But on a more serious note, I probably would be back in Singapore in the first week of July for a few days to attend Commencement (that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgiven those people in SOC), so please organize an outing during that period!

Cravings…

Spent the entire day sitting in front of my MacBook and work on my project in school. It wasn’t too bad, I got about 80% of one single ASP.NET page up after struggling through the day.

I even have to settle my lunch in school, which was a pretty decent burger meal that I bought from one of the student restaurants today.

The burger was OK, not the best that I’ve eaten in my life, but considering that it’s the students’ effort (at least the selling part, not too sure if the cooking part was by them too), I just can’t find any excuse not to give them my support. I think that’s my problem – sometimes I think too much for the students (which some of them are not even my students to start with). But well, shouldn’t a teacher always put their students on top of their priority lists?

Suddenly have a craving to go play football. Hope that somebody will overlook my bad physique and terrible physical condition and choose to focus on the whatever skills that I have. Haha.

Weekend’s coming, and I’ve received my second credit card in a week. I tell you, applying for a credit card in Hong Kong is one of the easiest things to do. For most of the cards, you only need an annual salary of around HKD 65,000 (that’s SGD 13,000) – most people will get that in about half a year. So for the slightly luckier ones like me, applying for a card is not even a problem. Just fill in the form, submit the proof of address and payslip and there you go. There are so many credit cards in Hong Kong that basically banks come up with all kinds of credit cards to attract people to sign them up. Some of the cards I’ve seen includes:

The Muji Card (as in that Japanese Goods company)

The Keroro Gunso Card (yup, that frog-lookalike Japanese cartoon character)

The Manchester United Card (not surprising, since they have it in UK too)

And they even give you free gifts before your application is even approved! For example, the AIG gave me a beach chair and a HKD50 supermarket voucher before I even got my card (and you thought AIG only does insurance), and Mevas Bank, from which I applied for my Manchester United card, gave me a Manchester United mug (lovely).

How can people not be on bad credit ratings when the cards are being given out like nobody’s business?

And ya, I finally managed to hit a million points in Zoo Keeper on my Nintendo DS!

Have a great weekend.

Sleepy.

The past couple of days were pretty normal, except on Tuesday when the red rainstorm signal was hoisted and classes in the afternoon were cancelled.

I find that recently I haven’t been able to sleep very well. It’s like, sometimes I can lie on the bed for almost 2 hours staring at the ceiling before I can actually fall asleep (if at all), while sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason at all. Then every morning I would be waking up at about 6.45 even though I have my alarm clock set to 7.10. All these eventually lead to me feeling very tired and sleepy during work in school. If I have class, it’s still not so bad because the 2 hours in class would kinda wake me up, but if I don’t, it can be very tiring and I would need some form of energy booster to perk me up a bit. Not fun.

Oh, I’ve gotten my first credit card! I promise I will not overspend. I’ll try. Haha.

Disneyland.

I went to Disneyland last night.

Nope – that wasn’t meant as a joke or something. I was really at Disneyland last night. I was there to participate in the 903 Disney Attack party with my sister. Basically it was an event organized by Commercial Radio FM903, and the party was themed around the 80’s, so the DJs were all dressing up in the 80s fashion.

DJ Sammy – the host of the event. When I was at the closest to him, I was about an arm’s length away! It was fun!

To be honest, the event itself wasn’t spectacular as there were a bit too much empty spaces between the DJs appearances. Probably there wasn’t much communication between the organizers and the crowd, so there were a lot of waiting. But I guess having the opportunity to play some of the newer attractions without those mainland visitors (the party was kinda like a closed event), as well as having the chance to see the 903 DJs up close was something special. My sister even took a picture with one of the DJs (I think she has put that picture up in her flickr account or something)!

Spent the whole of today lazing around at home and didn’t really do much except, erm, lazing around. It’s good to be able to enjoy a Sunday without doing anything. Oh, I did spend the afternoon watching my Ayumi Hamasaki DVDs. Haha.

By the way this was the stage of Ayumi’s concert the other night – I’m not supposed to have taken this considering that cameras were not allowed in the coliseum that night…

And this was how close I was to the pitch last Sunday when I went to the Mong Kok Stadium to watch South China vs Kitchee. It was fun too.

Back to work tomorrow. Wow.

Recovered?

After taking the medication and sleeping for so much yesterday, I woke up feeling better than yesterday. That said, I still kinda have a bit of headache hanging around me – probably because apart from three bowls of porridge I did not eat anything else yesterday. The undersupply of food into my body yesterday made me feel tired and weak for the whole morning today despite the fact that I had breakfast before I arrived in school. By the time I was done with class at 12.30, I was already feeling very weak and hungry. But I couldn’t go for lunch just yet because my students were asking me questions – something that I really appreciated – so lunch was delayed until 1.45. I felt that I would collapse any moment after stepping out of school and to the nearby shopping centre for lunch.

Spent the afternoon preparing my notes for the HD kids, and a cup of coffee was my energy boost at about 3 in the afternoon. Maybe my digestive system has recovered from the ordeal of yesterday, but not my entire body. Maybe I’ll try to get as much rest as possible in the next couple of days (when I’m not working, of course).

I’m 3 months into my job at HW. Time sure flies.

Sick.

Didn’t go to work today because I fell ill. Woke up at about 5.30 with a very bad diarrhea and had some vomiting as well. I told myself that I’d try to endure until about 8.30 when the clinics open, but I couldn’t as I was feeling horrible, so I took a cab and rushed down to the United Christian Hospital (UCH) at about 6.30. When I reached the A&E department, I saw about 20 people there, and I was already thinking that this could be quite a wait. I paid $100 for registration, and basically was just sitting there and wait. The stomachache came on and off and that made it unbearable. After a while, there was a small commotion in the waiting area – apparently some of the people there have been waiting since 2 in the morning and has yet to be seen by the doctor. When I heard that, I thought that at the rate of going, it might be 10 in the morning before I can see anyone, so I ripped the registration sheet apart (after getting pissed off by the staffs at the hospital) and went back to my estate to see the doctor at the clinic. After about 20 minutes at the clinic I was done with everything and went back home to rest.

Basically did nothing except eat, sleep and take medicine today. I went back home at about 9, took my medicine, took my breakfast, went back to sleep, then woke up at 1.30, took my medicine, took my lunch, went back to sleep, then woke up at 6.30, took my medicine, took my dinner, and I think I’m going off to sleep soon. The medication apparently makes me feel really drowsy. That doesn’t feel good.

Warm Day.

A tinge of summer today as the temperature rose to about 27 degrees. It’s going to stay the same for tomorrow, so it looks like my air-conditioner at home might have to start working again. To be honest, I am actually looking to get myself another air-conditioner to replace the one at home now, as the one I have now looks old and is too noisy for my liking. Besides, at about $2000 for a set, it is reasonable. But then again, I’m looking to get a fridge at home because I don’t have one now (you can’t blame me – I don’t cook at all so there’s no need for a fridge for quite a while). Since summer is coming, I might want to get a fridge to put my cold drinks (read beer) and ice-cream in. That’s going to be another $2000.

Getting a bit tired after going 4 hours non stop today conducting classes. Besides, I didn’t really sleep well last night. I crashed onto bed at about 12 and woke up at about 7 – normally that would be OK for me, but not today. I was yawning away the entire morning and basically was in a pretty bad physical condition. I guess it must have been the numerous dreams that I had last night that actually exhausted me. The few different dreams I had were all weird – in each of them I dreamt that I was doing a lot of running, which was definitely weird!

I need some recuperation.

Football.

I went to Mong Kok Stadium to watch the Hong Kong football league match between South China and Kitchee. Because the match was billed as a title decider, it attracted a lot of people. I was one of those who went to the stadium because of the hype – and to be honest, I think it was a good experience. The match itself wasn’t a great one because both sides were afraid to lose, but the real fun was observing Hong Kong football fans. The way they hurl their abuse at the football players were amazing. It’s like, if you think Singapore fans are crude in their abuse, the Hong Kong fans’ powers were at least twice of that, if not more.

Back to work tomorrow.

Weekend.

After going back to school on Wednesday, I find that I was feeling very lethargic throughout these 3 days. I was getting tired easily, and somehow the zest that I normally have was somewhat missing. That said, I still managed to churn out a few things along the way, which included my first ever VB.NET application, as well as my first self-written AJAX application. Now that was the fun part.

Weekend beckons, and I hope these 2 days would be some kind of a good break for me, considering that I didn’t really recover from watching United down Roma 7-1 in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Have a good weekend.

Work.

Suddenly the Easter holidays are over and I have to go back to work tomorrow. It seemed almost like yesterday that my holidays started. Looking back, the highlight of the holidays was obviously the Ayumi Hamasaki concert on Saturday. Besides the concert, the only things that I ever remembered about the holidays was the amount of work that I was doing both at home and in school. It’s not fun to have to be still doing so much work while on holidays, but it can’t be helped. Some work just doesn’t seem to end. It’s like I didn’t seem to have taken much of a rest or break because I’m always on the go for these few days. And the bad thing is that the next long holidays would be around Christmas… but I think with short one-day breaks here and there I guess things would be OK. I hope.