Sick.

I really wonder what’s going on with me – I’m having another heavy bout of diarrhrea for the past couple of days and I had to visit the doctor at my university’s medical centre. It’s like, for three months in a row I had to be seeing a doctor for treatment, and I don’t think it’s such a nice thing.

The diarrhrea was at its worst on Tuesday, when I felt really sick and had problems trying to do any work. got some medication from the doctor and I felt slightly better after that. However, the whole sickness came back in again around midnight, and I had to endure a very torrid time while trying to sleep at the same time.

Things didn’t exactly turn out to be much better yesterday, and I had to resort to cutting down my food intake to make sure that I don’t have that much output again. The diarrhrea is still continuing even up till now, and I think that’s really not such a fun thing to be enduring.

The last time I had such a bad diarrhrea was on my birthday, and this time round it was mid-autumn festival. Surely it’s a coincidence?

One week.

It’s been exactly one week since I last updated my little journal, and I’m sorry that I’ve been procrastinating so much that I’ve neglected this space. But hey, I’ve been rather busy for the whole week so it was difficult to actually find time to even sit down and think about what I’ve done.

The last week was not too bad – work was OK and so was school. The highlight of the week has to be the department retreat to Shenzhen – it was a really tiring trip! We visited the OCT East(東部華僑城), which is supposed to be a new theme park on the east side of Shenzhen. The greatest thing about this theme park is that when we were there last Friday, it wasn’t officially opened yet! They were still testing out things here and there, so the things are either very new or not in function yet. That said, it was a nice little experience, but I don’t think I would want to go there again any time soon.

My MacBook has been giving me some problems lately as the screen seems to keep flickering very often. And to be honest, it isn’t exactly a very good idea to run Windows on a Mac because it seems to drain the battery out much quicker, and shorten the battery life quicker too. I really think that if I’ve just used it as it is things probably won’t be so bad, but since I found out the hard way, my recommendation for those of you who own a MacBook is that – don’t run Windows on a Mac unless you are having a MacBook Pro.

Met some NUS alumni for lunch yesterday and it was a very interesting gathering. It seems to me that I’m the only one who is working in an environment that’s relatively less stressful. Sounds like I’m getting envious of myself already.

And with United beat Chelsea that is probably the best way to start a new week!

Night.

Looking through my previous entries, I realised that this is the first post that I’ve posted after 11pm for almost 2 months. Not as if it mattered, but I think that proved 2 things:

1. I’ve been slacking at work because I’ve always been writing during the time in office.
2. I’m normally too tired when I get home from work and school.

Anyway I didn’t really play around too much for the weekend, except attending the CityU Postgraduate Association’s orientation gathering on Satuday evening. The event was OK, but I’m just a bit disappointed that there weren’t more locals attending the event. Make no mistake, I was happy to be there anyhow, but it’s just that the low turnout from the locals made it slightly disappointing. Not winning the lucky draw grand prize of that 2GB iPod nano made it worse. But at least two of my classmates from my class were there at the gathering, so perhaps that’s some consolation.

I’m into the third week of my work in HKBU, and I think I’m getting busier, as more responsibilities are coming my way. There are more things that I have to be looking at, more people to be accountable for, but in general that’s a good thing. At least that makes my life more interesting, and I don’t think I can ask for anything more. At the same time, a couple of my former students have been asking for me to return next semester to teach them. While that makes me feel fairly warm, I don’t think I’d want to go back there in a hurry. I believe I’m done with teaching in my life, and I want to do something else that’s more suitable for me.

Work again tomorrow, and I think I need to really train up on surviving on less sleep.

Education Version & Credit Transfer.

As I was exploring the software available in my computer, I was reminded that I am using an education version:

This is about the biggest “reminder” of an educational version software in terms of size that I’ve ever come across. My gut feeling, however, seems to suggest that there must be bigger reminders floating around in some of the software that we use. Those who have come across anything bigger than this, please send them to my usual address.

And then my financial burden for my Masters course is lightened by about HKD 15,000 because of this:

Click the thumbnail (?) for a bigger image.

City University approved the credit transfer for 2 of my required courses, meaning that I have 2 less modules to take! At about HKD 7,500 per module, that is quite a bit of savings, as now I only have to pay HKD 75,000 for my degree. Still expensive, but still good. At least it’s slightly more financiable.

The CityU Postgraduates Association is having an orientation gathering this Saturday – sounds like a nice idea to go and take a look, but I’ll have to get a few of my classmates to go otherwise I’d look silly alone there. Did I mention that I’ve already gotten to know a few of my classmates already?

Weather.

The weather seemed to have turned for the better for me in the past couple of days. The temperature has been hoovering around 25 to 29 degrees, and it definitely didn’t seem as hot nowdays. Furthermore, there has been quite a bit of wind for the last few days as well, so all that made for a pretty comfortable environment. Hopefully we really are stepping into authmn.

The crazy thing about the weather in Hong Kong is that sometimes when it’s hot, it does feel as if it’s hotter than Singapore. Both places are humid, so hot weathers are naturally difficult to bear. But it just seems to me that the pollution in Hong Kong just make things worse. To be honest, while I think I like it here in Hong Kong, I may eventually have to move to somewhere else because the air quality here is so bad.

It’s only the misinformed or misguided that really think Hong Kong is a heaven. Just the air alone already makes the place bad enough. It may be a great place to be in for a few days, but once you are here on a long-term basis, you’ll discover that actually the environment isn’t that condusive for human living.

By the way, with so many things to remember nowadys, I think it’s good for me to at least remember in which month my friends are having their birthdays! Think about how many of your friends can’t even remember your birthday at all, and suddenly you’ll appreciate those who at least remember the month! *LOL*

One week.

After being at HKBU for a week, I think things are going fairly OK. But I think it’s still early days and there must be a lot of protocols that I have to get myself acquainted with, and hopefully everything will be fine. Now as an admin personnel, I think I can see how difficult certain things can be for people at my level. Students may always want to do something spectacular or extraordinary, but rules and guidelines set by the school sometimes do make these extraordinary things difficult to do. Students being students always would want to do things their way (I was a student too, after all), so being stuck between students and the regulations sometimes can be a very daunting thing – you won’t want the students to hate you for rejecting what they want to do, and yet you will never contemplate bending the rules and regulations for them. So I think communication is always going to be very important. So far I haven’t really been stuck in a difficult situation yet, but who’s to say that’s not going to happen?

Also, I still am trying to come to terms with the fact that I’m an admin personnel instead of a student now, and there are always occasions when I’m very keen to help students in the conduct of their activities and all that – like all seniors would to their own organizations. However, one of the advices I’ve heard so far is that while it is true that we can help the students a lot in our capacities, it is also equally important for them to learn to do things right, and perhaps learn from their mistakes. So the role we play is not so much of a do-er, but more of an advisor and consultant. And sometimes it may even be better to let the students do the things as they plan, and only provide assistance when the need really arises. After all, generally students may not like the idea of having an admin person hanging around them while they do their stuffs (just as I never like that as well), so perhaps that’s something I have to learn as well.

Spent the weekend doing a lot of resting – as much as I am enjoying myself both at work and at school, I couldn’t wait for the weekend to come because I was so tired at the end of it all. Perhaps going to Taiwan over the weekend also contributed to my poor condition, so in general I was just enduring a very tiring week over the past couple of days. Slept quite a lot over the 2 days, and I think I’m more refreshed today.

Could it be because I’m in a Christian university that makes me begin to adopt Christian thinking? Suddenly I feel as if I’m looking forward to everything in life!

Decoration.

I haven’t found time to decorate my office yet. To be really honest, I really don’t know how I should dress it up. My office is a nice little room, but it could have been much better if there isn’t a pillar sitting near the wall. The pillar is such that it severly limits the amount of utilizable space in my room – up to almost 25% of space is wasted because of this little pillar. While I like my office room so far, I really have to question what the heck is this pillar doing here!

Have been really tired these couple of days. Maybe I’m still trying to get used to working and studying in new envrionments at the same time. I’m sure things will get better.

Thursday.

Work so far has been good. Not that entirely busy yet, but I believe as the semester goes on I should have more work coming my way. My new colleagues are all nice people, and I think I would most likely be able to enjoy my time here – may that be long enough.

Attended my second lecture at City University yesterday and basically the class is yet another introductory one so there wasn’t much to cover. But according to the lecturer there will be topics on mobile and wireless e-commerce, so I think the class should become more interesting.

So much for the updates – back to work now.

New.

Yup, it’s been two days since I returned to Hong Kong from Taipei, and yes, I’ve taken quite a few pictures (except when the camera on my N95 decided to take an extended leave and not want to function at Yilan). Don’t fret, I’ll put them up as soon as possible.

3 September was a very interesting day – it’s the day that I started my new job at HKBU, as well as attending my first lesson at City University. My first day at HKBU was rather interesting – I’ve got my own room in the office! Basically I spent most of the day getting used to the place, meeting new colleagues, etc. It was fairly enjoyable.

Then my first lesson at CityU. It wasn’t the best because the things that the lecturer was covering was fairly introductory, so there wasn’t anything that was highly spectacular. That suited me fine, but I hope to have more interesting lessons in the future.

Second day at work and I’m beginning to get busy already – there is a truckload of reporters at my university today for some obvious reasons…