Disillusions.

I believe every once in a while I’ll slip into some sort of disillusions, whether it’s about work, about school or life in general. These few days I’ve been thinking about my postgraduate studies – there are some things that I’m not exactly sure about, and I wonder if there is this disillusion coming in.

When I was in NUS, and in whichever module I’m doing, I always have the opinion that there are some really smart people in my class and I am always going to be able to benefit from working with such people. I know I have that ego about me thinking that I’m actually not that bad a student, but I know very well that there are someone in the class that are much better than me. Of course whether or not these smart people are nice people to work with is another matter altogether, but having these people around in my class always make me want to make a bit more effort to try to do better.

Sure it may be true that undergraduate studies are very different from postgraduate studies, given that all you need is probably just money to get into a postgrad course. But it does seem to me that the postgraduate course I’m doing now is not exactly value-adding to me. The course contents are mostly stuffs that I’ve learned before in my undergraduate course, and I really have not been learning anything new except one or two things. Then attending those lessons 3 times a week is very tiring. We’re just getting into November but I feel that I am more drained than ever. I guess it would have been better if the classes were interesting and there’s something to take back at the end of the day. But as things stand it feels as if studying for this postgraduate degree is not really that challenging to me, and to be really honest, I’m not enjoying it. Things that disappoint me extend beyond the lessons, but I’m not going into them here.

Maybe it’s just me who don’t like to do non-value-adding work – maybe I should try to apply for a research postgraduate course instead. At least I can do some research on my own.

Sunday.

One week has just zoomed past like that, and we are already looking at the end of the month already.

Anyway the weekend was good for me – meeting up with Ron was a highlight as he came down to Hong Kong from Guangzhou. Also saw Jiahe as well as he’s having his exchange at Hong Kong University. Ate quite a bit of fairly good stuffs, and having something to look forward to when I call in for work tomorrow is always nice!

I’m actually planning for a short trip back to Singapore one of these days, but I haven’t decided on exactly when because I probably would need to get clearance from the people at work first, before I go on to book my tickets. The good thing is that it doesn’t look exactly expensive for me to be heading back to Singapore for the short trip, but because of the duration it means that I probably might have to give Zouk a miss. Or alternatively, I can come back later and go for ZoukOut on 8th December!

Haven’t been blogging regularly lately, partly because working life actually can get quite boring. But then again, I’m helping to organize something at the university level right now so I think it’s all good. Hopefully I’ll get more chances to do more interesting things in my time coming up at BU, so that the decision to turn down the $21,000 per month job won’t come back to haunt me in the future.

Have a great remainder of the weekend – and another 4 goals for United is always a good thing for the weekend.

Macau.

It was Chung Yeung Festival public holiday last Friday and I decided that I will venture into the mysterious land that is known as Macau.

(OK so perhaps Macau isn’t exactly that mysterious compared to places like, say, North Korea, but since I’ve never been there before in my life, it does appear mysterious to me)

Macau isn’t a big place, and I think if you have 2 days you probably could finish touring the entire 27 square kilometers of it.

Ruinas de São Paulo – the most definitive landmark of Macau. It’s really quite amazing to think that about everything of this former cathedral had collapsed, and the part that remains intact after all these years is its front.

One of my favourite pictures of this little getaway – the Macau Tower and one of the many bridges in Macau.

The Casino Lisboa – apparently one of the oldest casinos in Macau. The crazy thing is that there are casinos almost everywhere in Macau, and yet both me and my sister did not make it to any one of them. Strange but true. Though sometimes I wonder – where do they find that many people to gamble, or should I say, entertain themselves (in Macau all the casinos are known as 娛樂場, or “entertainment centres” in Chinese), in the casinos?

Of course besides the casinos, food is also another trademark of Macau. Many people claim that you have not been to Macau if you haven’t tried some of the food in the city.

One of them is of course the Portugese eggtart:

Of course I would have no idea if these egg tarts really originated from Portugal, but I don’t think that many people would be arguing about this anyway.

And then the next one is the pork chop bun:

I didn’t try this pork chop bun at the shop that’s famous for it, but this little pretender tasted not too bad as well, so I guess most of the pork chop buns in Macau are probably good.

It was a really short getaway, so I think I might go there again soon. It’s not exactly expensive to go there from Hong Kong, and perhaps next time I really should try to go into the casinos to take a look – though I’m pretty sure phototaking would not be allowed inside there!

Midweek.

In German, Wednesday is called “Mittwoch”, translating literally to “mid-week”. How apt.

In any case, the past 2 days or so have been really tiring for me. I don’t understand where the source of the tiredness is, but I guess it’s really the effect of both work and study. Perhaps because I’m making such a concerted effort in both, which drains me out rather quickly by the time the day ends. That said, I’m still fairly satisfied with my life so far.

I think through my work I can realise one thing – making decisions sometimes is not as easy as we all think it is, especially when you have to look at other people’s response before making a decision, that’s especially hard. Sometimes you may think that approving something probably does not incur that much of consequences, but it may turn out to be that a small decision made today would have a huge after-effect. Then you might think that you would reject that something just to make life easy for you in the future because those after-effects would be avoided. But then there will be other after-effects coming your way, and those effects might be just as hard to deal with.

So I hereby declare decision making is an art, and I think I might need some time in learning.

Monday.

Yoohoo. It’s Monday again.

I woke up feeling terribly tired, probably because I didn’t sleep well at all last night. The weather is getting a little chilly, and I almost wanted to wear a windbreaker to work this morning.

The weekend was a busy one for me. On Saturday I took some of the students to the army camp (yes they have that in Hong Kong too) for a visit. The students got to see the PLA soldiers, their equipment, helicopters, gunships, etc and it was actually quite an eye-opener. Also, we got to talk to those PLA soldiers and I must say as far as PR is concerned they are all pretty good at it. At least the impression they gave me was a pretty positive one. I think that’s something that the Singapore army can perhaps learn from the PLA.

Then yesterday I met some of my relatives for a dinner at Mong Kok. It was quite interesting, but when I footed the bill I almost had a shock – it was almost $1200! Oh well, I guess that’s always going to be an one-off and I hope that would be the last time that I’d ever need to do that in the near future!

Diablo’s apparently are having a reunion soon and I’m contemplating if I should fly back to see them for the weekend of something. But then again I have classes on Fridays and I am not entirely keen to skip, even though they are pretty, well, boring. Well, I’ll see.

Really feel like sleeping. Yawn.

Canteen.

Now that I’ve worked in 2 academic institutions and studying in another one here in Hong Kong, I think I should be qualified enough to comment on the canteens in each of these places.

The IVE(HW) canteen is a fairly small place, but the food is generally not too bad. Plus the fact that you can settle a meal for less than $20, it is really a decent option for lunch if ever I don’t feel like leaving the campus in the mid-day. That said, I’m not missing the place.

The BU canteen is decent in size, though I’m not exactly sure how the place would hold up during the students’ lunch time because I usually have my lunch at about 1. Space aside, the food is at best acceptable, because they really aren’t good. The breakfast is cheap (comparatively), but since you get what you pay for, the quality isn’t exactly good either. The lunch I had yesterday was about the “best” that I’ve ever had in the canteen – the whole thing was filled with mushrooms! The staff canteen, which I visit about once a week, is slightly better in terms of the quality of the food – perhaps that’s because it’s a staff canteen?

The CityU canteen is about the worst of the lot. The food always look strange, sometimes the food they serve are not even warm as well. My worst encounter with the food in the CityU canteen was when the sauce on my Baked Portugese Sauce Chicken Rice turned out to be just a paste of stuff that I have problem even trying to come to terms with. The steamed rice is usually bad too because they don’t seem to be warm at all. The only thing that perhaps can be eaten would be the roast meat rice, but then again the queue for that is forever long because I think a lot of people think the same way as myself.

Sometimes I really miss home-cooked food, especially when the food outside varies so much in quality and price.

New Week.

It’s the start of a new week again!

The past weekend was fairly low-key, as I had to go back to work on Saturday. After work I headed straight back home and decided that I would want to spend the remainder of the weekend just lazing around so that I can recuperate from the tired body that I’m carrying with the work and the studies.

The weather recently hasn’t been good – it’s hot and stuffy again, and it really isn’t that comfortable. I hope that’s going to be the last bout of hot weather before autumn really comes, cos honestly speaking I’m beginning to forget how it feels like to be cold.

I think that I’m someone who’s easily bored. The work so far hasn’t been really spectacularly interesting, and I’m still looking forward to something that’s more fun and enjoyable. Hope that’s going to come.

Printer.

I bought a printer last month at the computer fair here in campus, and because of one reason or another, I could collect it only yesterday. The keyword here is “could”, because I ended up still not having my printer yet. When I went to the collection point yesterday (which was in campus), the joker told me that they went out of stock for that particular model of printer. I really gave him the WTF face and started questioning him. I was like, you asked me to collect the printer today and you tell me it’s out of stock? What kind of joke is this? The idiot at the counter could just keep saying sorry and did not know what to do. Later his manager, who apparently is also quite an idiot, came to me and said that they would give me a free gift as an apology. That idiot manager said that this thing costs $250 originally, but he’s willing to give it to me free to compensate for me having to wait for another week for the printer.

And this is what I got:

I think that manager must have thought that I’m an idiot too. I could get this for less than $100 at Sham Shui Po, for god’s sake.

Lessons.

Went to class just now and to be honest I somehow just couldn’t manage to find the necessary determination to pay attention. I think it’s due to a few reasons:

1. Waking up to watch United beat Roma earlier in the morning means that I had less sleep (1-0 to the Champions, may I add).

2. Work today wasn’t exciting, so there was nothing to keep me on a high for the remainder of the day.

3. The lecture was covering things that I have already learned. I even taught some of the stuffs to the IVE kids half a year ago.

Hopefully tomorrow would be a better and less tiring day for me.

National Day.

Unlike the folks in mainland China, we have a grand total of 3 days of holiday over this Chinese National Day holidays, of which one of them was a Sunday, which is a public holiday anyway, and a Saturday, which is a half-day for some people. So in total, there was still only one day of holiday. But since it’s a long weekend, I don’t think that many people would be complaining. I, for one, am not.

The long weekend was a fairly good one for me, with the only down point being going back to CityU for a make-up class on Saturday afternoon. It’s not the most exciting way to spend a Saturday afternoon, but I think what’s amazing is that not many people from CityU seem to think that way – the campus was full of people on a Saturday afternoon! I’m sure NUS would be almost emptied out on a Saturday afternoon…

Was supposed to have gone to Ocean Park yesterday, but when my sis and I arrived at Admiralty to take the bus to Ocean Park, we were so put off by the long queue that we decided that we’ll give the theme park a miss, even though that would mean paying $20 more the next time to go there as they are having a price hike. But then I’m just not prepared to crowd myself out in a theme park when I’m supposed to be having fun there.

Would be back to work tomorrow – somehow there seem to be something about the job that I don’t know how to describe. After a month there, I don’t think I can say I love the job yet, but there’s still something that I feel about it, and I just don’t know how to put it into words. Maybe I’m still in the process of getting used to the job. Oh well. Things should turn out to be better, I guess.