Monday.

The weekend was spent mostly on my Wii – I’ve been playing G1 Jockey Wii for quite a while already and I think the game is quite fun. What to say, Wii is a true revelation.

Went to the Ani-Com Exhibition on Saturday and was actually quite disappointed by it. Probably because I’m not a great manga fan to start with, so I didn’t find the whole exhibition to be that interesting or exciting. Oh well, at least I can claim to have been there.

Ever since I got words about the likelihood that I would not be given a contract extension, I have been actively looking for jobs out there. The funny thing so far is that I’ve sent out quite a number of resumes for Hong Kong companies and none of them seems to be interested in employing me, which I find a bit amusing. But no worries, I’ll continue to flood my resume onto the market, surely someone out there would be willing to (take pity in me and) take me in?

丁噹.

The reason why I’m doing the second post in a day is because I’m bored – I did sneak out to attend a research seminar at City University just now. The research seminar was conducted by Dr. Chung, under whom I spent one semester doing a course in. I received my lowest grade in my 4 years of studies at NUS, but Dr. Chung remained one of my favourite lecturers. Since he’s in town to give a seminar there’s no way I’m going to miss that – just for old times’ sake. I think he must be quite surprised to see me just now. Had a quick chat with him after the seminar, and I think it’s really great to see him again.

Oh, something more important – I want to recommend this album:

Her name is 丁噹 (Ding Dang). The first time I heard her songs was during the Mayday concert in Taipei last Saturday. To be honest, before the concert I’ve heard her name, but I didn’t really give too much of a thought to this newcomer. Then during the concert my impression about her totally changed. She opened the concert for Mayday with 2 of her songs “離家出走” (no, it’s different from Janice’s version) and “可以不可以” and I must say that her voice had immediately captivated me. She had a wonderful voice and had absolutely no problem going across 2 octaves (the promotional materials said that she can easily move around 17 notes). I also admired how she conducted herself in front of the crowd at Taipei Arena – imagine opening a Mayday concert in front of 15,000 people who haven’t really heard of her name before – she appeared very calm even though at times she did come close to tears (probably because she’s too touched or something), her voice did not break at all. After the Mayday concert, I went to get her CD from one of the music shops in Taipei and to be honest while the album was brilliant, it did not do any justice to her abilities because I think she sounded so much better while singing live. Nonetheless, it was still probably the best spent NT$380 (or HK$95) during my Taipei trip. Just to make sure that I get to hear it everyday, I’ve promptly moved the entire album into my iPod.

To be honest, as far as I’m concerned, I have no problems with singers who don’t compose their own songs, as long as they have a great voice and sing well. It’s people who can’t sing and yet pretending they can that irk me. Worse still, some of these people have never seemed to improve after being in the market so long. The industry keeps on blaming people for killing the music industry because of illegal downloads, but have they really thought about the fact that they are churning out rubbish that insults the word “music”? I’m sure if a singer is good and have good songs, people will not hesitate to buy their albums.

Thursday.

The past few days in office have been boring. Apart from doing some revisions for my Security+ exam, a bit of playing around with MySQL and sneaking out to the Hong Kong Book Fair, I did practically nothing constructive in these couple of days. I’m not someone who can endure long periods of boredom, so I hope there will be a new job for me soon in which I can really do something. That said, I’m still not hearing anything from the companies that I’ve dumped my resume to.

My left elbow is swollen and it’s giving me a bit of pain, especially when I straighten my arm or rest my elbow on the table. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t think it’s particular comfortable. Hopefully it will go away soon.

Contemplating sneaking out in the afternoon again. This shows how boring my job is now. Damn, I need to get out of this place otherwise I’m going to go mad soon. It’s like, when I look at my friends back in Singapore and see that they are all having decent jobs and I’m stuck in Hong Kong with this crap job, I wonder if I’ve made the correct decision in returning to Hong Kong. I know I’ll probably have to slug it out in Hong Kong for another 2 years because of my Masters, but whether I’ll still stay here after that is really something that I’ll have to give a serious thought.

Taipei (and back).

The weekend has just zoomed past, and for those of you who aren’t already aware, I was in Taipei with my sister. The trip was a nice getaway, and I think both of us enjoyed it very much.

We arrived in Taipei at about 11pm on Friday night, and the Taoyuan Airport that greeted us was a bit surreal for me, as it really looked like an airport that serves no other function except for tourists to arrive in:

The next morning both of us decided to really be a tourist, and walked around various parts of Taipei. Firstly, the President’s Office:

Then we went over to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, which is a stone’s throw from the President’s Office. Once we were there we were actually quite in awe of the grandeur of the entire place. I mean, just imagine how much resources went into building this memorial hall?

The interesting thing is that the current Taiwan government, which is headed by the Democratic Progress Party, has a special dislike for Chiang Kai-Shek, who was apparently labelled as a dictator and thus disliked the idea of having a memorial hall to commemorate him. So what they did was to change the name of the memorial hall to “National Taiwan Demoracy Memorial Hall”:

But the Taipei City Government, which is headed by the Kuomintang, wasn’t impressed with this name change, and given that Chiang Kai-Shek was their eternal chairman (or something along that line), they simply refused to give in to this name change and stuck with the name Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, as shown in their metro station name:

Now I think if you hop on a Taipei cab and tell the driver that you are heading to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall he might just give you a blank stare.

So after the CKS Memorial Hall (or whatever name they are happy with), we went to the Taipei Railway Station area for some walkabout. There was this Taiwan Story Museum which showcased a lot of the old Taiwan. For example, old police stations (or a simple remake) which have a portrait of CKS labelled as “The Great Leader”…

… to old-fashioned tea houses…

… to how one should never forget about his motherland while having fun…

… to the next move in reuniting motherland!

To say both me and my sister had a great laugh inside the museum would be about just correct.

After the museum we continued our walkabout and shopabout, and found some time to try the well-acclaimed Tian Bu La from Simending. For me, it’s just wonderful.

Then at about evening time we went to the Taipei Arena for our main purpose of this trip – the Mayday Concert!

The concert was really wonderful – the opening featured a lot of fireworks and some water splash which was definitely cooling – the entire standing area was splashed. The experience of watching a Mayday concert inside the standing zone was quite fascinating, though it meant that by the end of the concert both my feet were hurting because of the prolonged standing and constant jumping!

After the concert we decided to head to the Shilin Night Market despite our tiredness, and it turned out to be an interesting experience, with all the stuffs on sale, and all those wonderful food!

The next morning we headed towards Taipei 101 – the tallest building in the world for the time being (the Dubai Tower is scheduled to overtake Taipei 101). But whatever it is, the view from the observatory at the 89th floor was really quite breathtaking:

After Taipei 101, we went over to the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, which isn’t that far away. As we walked past the Taipei City Hall, this image shocked me to the extent that I was totally lost for words:

I mean, it was hot in Taipei – but 41 degrees? You are having a laugh.

Looking at Taipei 101 from the SYS Memorial Hall is quite amazing too:

After the SYS Memorial Hall, we spent quite a bit of time walking between Zhongxiao Dunhua and Zhongxiao Fuxing metro stations, looking around, eating around. Following that, we headed back towards the Taipei Railway Station and boarded the High Speed Rail and headed towards Taoyuan for the airport:

The HSR is quite an interesting experience. It was actually fairly fast, as it took us just 20 minutes to reach Taoyuan from Taipei. However, the Taoyuan HSR station is actually still quite a distance from the airport, as we had to take a cab that cost NT$310. Oh well, all for the experience.

And then it’s time to fly back to Hong Kong, and back to reality on board the China Airlines flight. China Airlines is surprisingly good, I think.

So if you ask me what can I take back at the end of this trip, I would probably think along the following lines:

1. The stewardess on China Airlines are generally prettier than the ones on Cathay Pacific.

2. Taiwan girls are generally prettier than Hong Kong girls.

3. Taiwan salesgirls are generally sweeter than Hong Kong ones. The way they speak makes me actually feel a bit scary cos they sound just so sweet. Or maybe that’s just how they speak normally anyway.

4. Taipei is actually a fairly boring place at night – the whole place seems to shut down after 10pm except those night markets. However, during the day, Taipei can really be buzzing.

5. Most Taiwanese are actually nice people. At least I think the proportion of nice people in Taiwan is higher than that in Hong Kong.

So there you have it, a 2-day getaway in Taipei. I would think this has to be my most worthwhile trip ever, and I definitely would go there again soon. It’s not that expensive to go Taiwan from Hong Kong anyway!

CityU.

I’m officially a postgraduate student at City University of Hong Kong!

My student pass – as usual the pictures on my documents are never nice.

For the next 2 years (or one and a half, or two and a half, depending on how quickly/slowly I would want to do my course) I will be able to immerse myself in a study environment again, and hopefully I will get to learn more interesting stuffs, meet more interesting people (as in more of the interesting people, not implying that the people I have met so far are boring), and enjoy the whole studying process. Like I said before, I think I really enjoy studying and learning. Too bad my undergraduate results were crap, otherwise I probably would be studying towards a research degree now. But I’m sure if I do my this coursework degree well enough, there will still be opportunities for me to move into the research field – if I feel that I still am keen for that – in the future.

Yesterday was the first day of the priority intake for the new academic year and it was generally catered for our own students. Not many turned up for my department’s courses – I only saw 2 of my own students. Apparently they want to study something else, which is fine because we should all study whatever we are interested in. Though it would be kinda sad that I might not get to see some of them again in my college (that is if i get to stay after my current contract runs out, and that is not looking optimistic to be absolutely honest). I wish them all their best.

Today might be kind of a boring day because there really isn’t much for me to do. Maybe I’ll do some readings and see what kind of progress there is for the college’s research centre, which apparently partially funds my pay.

Would be heading to Taipei tonight with my sis. I’m definitely looking forward to it, but it’s nothing like my sis, who is absolutely excited about the trip. Probably because it’s her first time ever to Taiwan that’s why she’s finding it so exciting. Let’s hope everything will turn out to be great.

Wednesday.

Did the invigilation for the kids doing the supplementary exams today and thank God everything went through fairly straight forward, and I think that’s a good thing.

Actually there really isn’t much to do since it’s the school holidays now, so I spend most of my time just doing a lot of reading and revising for my certifications. Not very enriching, so I think it’s either I start thinking about some projects to be implemented next academic year, or start finding another job. It’s actually not very fun to be hanging in a limbo like I am in now, not exactly knowing what the future holds for me, but heck, I’ll just take one thing at a time.

Would be heading to City University tomorrow for registration, hopefully it will be fun.

Chair.

Today I went back to work and the first thing that greeted me was that my chair was changed without my knowledge (I won’t even say approval). One of my colleagues took the liberty and exchanged his chair with mine while I was away on holiday – talk about being courteous. It doesn’t help when this colleague was never one of my favourite colleague anyway. I could have given him a piece of my mind, but in order to preserve the harmonious relations among members of my office I decided to just ask him to buzz off while he was about to offer his explanation. Not the best way to celebrate my return to office, and to say I’m not impressed with this colleague would be a blatant understatement. I mean, the least he could do was just drop me an email and let me know that he’s exchanged the chairs, and I don’t need to endure such a traumatic return.

And today has been horribly hot! I was perspiring all over whenever I’m not indoors, and I really hate that feeling. Somehow it seems that it’s warmer here in Hong Kong than in Singapore. Thank God it’s the school holidays now and I can still pretty much wear casually to school. I can’t imagine if I’m one of those who have to put on a suit everyday to work.

Most of my colleagues will be going off to their holidays soon, so I’ll be having the office to myself – with the exception of that chair-exchanging colleague. Thank God I have no common topic with him so I won’t even think about starting a conversation with him.

Will be registering at City University this Thursday evening. Hopefully the picture they are going to take for me will turn out to be a nice one for the student pass.

Hong Kong.

Reached home at about 10.30 and the first piece of news I heard from my neighbour was that the neighbour downstairs complained about water dropping from my aircon last week. Blimey – who broke into the house and switched the aircon on for me? But just for the sake of finding out who the real culprit is for the aircon water, I’ll suffer a bit and not switch on my aircon this week. If the neighbour downstairs is still complaining about the water, then obviously it can’t be me. It’s not exactly fun to endure the heat, but to clear my conscience, that’s what I have to do (or maybe I can just get a new aircon and have it installed inside my house rather than having it hanging out of the window).

Anyway the flight from Singapore back to Hong Kong was decent. I didn’t have enough leg space as usual, but at least I didn’t have someone suddenly tilting his seat in front of me, and there wasn’t anyone who left his or her mobile phone on throughout the entire journey. All these means that this was the most enjoyable Jetstar flight I’ve ever taken!

I think throughout these couple of days I didn’t really update about the things I did, and I think it’s going to be a heck of a long entry if I were to describe day by day. So instead I’ll just do it in a number format – if you don’t get the whole story then there’s really nothing I can help you with.

11 – Number of days I spent in Singapore.

16 – The total number of people if all of us at Diablo bring his or her partner to a gathering.

6 – The number of jugs of alcohol I drank with Philip, John and Weiqiang at Zouk on Wednesday.

0 – The number of first class honours student from my graduation batch of E-Commerce stream.

4 – The number of pieces of tops I bought at the Canterbury store in Heeren.

3 – The amount of money I paid to get into Sentosa on the monorail.

2 – The number of times I bought food from the food court in Pioneer Mall.

1 – The number of times my whole family had a meal at home together.

12 – The weight of my check-in luggage from Singapore to Hong Kong.

45 – The amount I paid for seeing the doctor yesterday.

13 – The number of mails in my physical mailbox after I returned this evening.

Back to work tomorrow – do I not like that?

Changi Airport.

I’m standing in the free Internet access counter here in Changi Airport Terminal 1, bending my already hurting back to bring you this entry of the journal. Apparently I have to be subscribing to something in order to use my laptop to access the Internet, and I don’t think that’s such a great idea to be spending money just to enter this entry, so I’ll just have to endure a little bit with the bending. And it doesn’t help when the keyboard is so hard to play around with. Perhaps the folks at Changi Airport should pick up a thing or two from those at the Hong Kong Airport.

Indeed the past week has zoomed past pretty quickly and now it’s time for me to return to Hong Kong. If you ask me if I want to go back, my answer would be yes and no at the same time. No for obvious reasons (friends and family), but yes because I have quite a lot of ideas going in my head which I hope to make it into reality in my next term in school. As I told NG a few days back, I want to leave a legacy in my college before finally getting out of there.

While I don’t know when the next time I return to Singapore is, all of you folks in Singapore are always in my mind and I really am looking forward to see you guys again soon. And yup, you can pay me a visit in Hong Kong as well!

I’m going over to the departure lounge now – see you guys online when I get back to my Hong Kong home!

And the flu hasn’t really gone away yet. I’ll do with a good rest on the flight later – at least I hope.

Sick.

The past couple of days have been real great. Going out, meeting old friends, chat about the old times, moan about our own individual lives – can’t get any better than this.

Of course there’s always going to be a catch – I’ve fallen ill! I think it must have been the flu as I’m feeling lethargic. I hope I’ll recover in time to return to Hong Kong!

Work is going to start soon – I think I have a really good break and I hope when I return to Hong Kong the positive energy I gathered from my time here will carry through for my next period of work. I’ve quite a few things on my mind right now to think about, especially in terms of my future, but I think after being here for a week I really can give things a better consideration, and perhaps make the best decision for myself.