Thoughts.

After the last week when it was relatively low-key in terms of work, I’m moving into another week of similar mood, though I think there would be more work to do though. I don’t know, let’s see what’s going to happen tomorrow when I head into office tomorrow.

Time sure flies and it’s already the second last day of 2007. And it’s been more than a year since I’ve returned to Hong Kong for work. Though to be honest the job that I’m doing now is not exactly the one that I’ve been really looking for when I first started my job hunting process, I’m still enjoying what I’m doing now. People may think that being in the education line does little to boost my CV, but I’m sure the experience I have in this line is still going to be useful in whatever industry that I might eventually find myself in. Student affairs is not an easy field, and it is something that I feel would require more on-the-spot reactions. Students may have different needs and wants at different times, and it is our job to react to these needs and wants.

Spent the past two days really havoc-ing on my PS3, and I think it’s fair to say that I am really enjoying myself on it. Considering that I don’t have that many weekend dates, it’s good that I have a PS3 to accompany me. Sad, eh.

I slept at 3 this morning and for one reason or another I woke up at 7, so I’m totally knackered and I believe I can fall asleep even before my head hits the pillow.

Work.

After 2 days of holidays, the uncomfortable thought of going back to work has set in. I’m sitting in my office, trying to pick up some determination to really start working. One consolation is perhaps that because these couple of days are still considered a “festive period”, so there really isn’t much to do, and it is a nice time to slowly finish up things that I’ve been meant to do (OK, it’s not that much and I’ve been constantly doing them, it’s just that I can take these couple of days to try to finish them up).

The past few days have really been quite interesting. Went to Lantau with a couple of the NUS alumni in Hong Kong on Christmas Day itself, and I think it’s a good day out compared to what I otherwise would do – sit at home and play on my PS3. Then yesterday was a more of a rest day as I spent most of my time at home, recuperating from 4 days of play.

Looking forward to 2008, and yes, I’ve about 4 days to complete whatever that’s on my wishlist listed at the end of last year. Time certainly flies, and soon it will be time to write my roundup of the year and wishlist for the next year, just like I’ve done for the past 4 years. Wow.

Christmas Eve.

Time certainly passed very quickly, and without knowing, it’s Christmas Eve!

I went to the Asia Games Show on Saturday and for some strange reasons, I decided that I really want to play Winning Eleven 2008, Shin Sangaku Musou 5 and Gran Turismo 5, I went to get a set of the Playstation 3. The end result after the weekend was that I spent a lot of time playing, and it was really amazing. Now I probably would want to get that Component Cable so that the graphics would be nicer, and perhaps I can start planning on a new HDTV set.

Would be having a dinner with some of my friends later, and then off to a church to see how a Christmas mass is being done. Looks like I’m going to have an interesting Christmas ahead.

Merry Christmas!

Santa.

Dear Santa,

It’s that time of the year again and I’m sure you must be busy like mad, reading letters, emails, cards and what not. I’m not sure if you would have time to be reading this, but heck, I think I should still write you something, after conveniently forgetting about it for the past 20 years or so.

For a start, I think I’ve been a good kid this year. As a teacher before my current job, I think I didn’t screw up the lives of the kids as much as they screwed up mine, so I can say that I did not retaliate to all the wrong that was done onto me. So that’s good deed number one. Also, I have been telling the truth more nowadays. Now I would really let the person know that he’s a real idiot by jumping queue, or would let the group of people walking in one horizontal line in front of me know that they are blocking the way for other people. Since it’s a virtue to be telling the truth, so I think that’s good deed number two. Of course, there are also a lot of good deeds that I’ve done this year, but undertanding that you are short of time, I think I’ll skip the part about describing them.

So now what do I want for Christmas? Honestly speaking, I could have a long list, which would include things like a PS3, a Motorola V9, a new HDTV, a new home renovation job, etc etc. But apart from these things that I could probably buy using my own money, there are also a lot of things that money can’t be bought, so that’s where I need your help. I would appreciate if you can bring more love to my life. Love from family, love from friends, love as in romance, etc etc. Nobody would have too much of love, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult for you to spare some resources into catering to this request. Of course, if I have to choose only a few types of love, love as in romance would be something nice. But then again, love from friends and family are important too. This I’m not too sure, maybe you can use your expert judgement and decide for me what I should be getting. Anything would be nice, really.

Hope to hear from you soon. And yes, if you have some good job lobangs apart from climbing into chimneys please let me know too. I don’t mind some reindeer sleighing actually.

Cheers,
Kin Ching =)

Rain.

This weekend has been very low-key. I was supposed to have make a trip up north to China to visit Ron, but given that he’s a busy man, I shelved my plans and decided that I’ll go see him 2 weekends later when he has more free time.

I spent Friday at CityU for a student affairs workshop with another colleague. The workshop was actually useful in terms of content, but not exactly 100% related to my work at this point of time (keywords here is “at this point of time”), but I’m sure at some stage in the future I would be able to make use of what I learned at the workshop into use.

After the workshop, I stayed around CityU preparing for my exam in the evening. Didn’t exactly do too well I guess, but I think I would be able to scrape through with a pass. But one thing that had me fuming at the exam was the complete incompetence of the invigilator (whom I reckon is a PhD candidate or something along that line). There was this question in which I wasn’t exactly sure of some stuffs, so I put my hands up to ask the invigilator if there’s something missing in the question. That joker just shook his head and tried to explain that he’s not the one who set the paper and he would have no idea on whether something is actually missing in the question. The keyword here is “tried”, because he was speaking in some alien language that I couldn’t understand. Whatever it is, basically he was just shrugging his shoulders, waving his hands and insisted that there was nothing he can do. I got real fed up and asked him “Then can’t you at least contact the examiner to get him to answer this question for me?” – again he was speaking in Alienese, which I presumed he was saying that he couldn’t do that, or maybe he didn’t know how to do that. After hearing those crap that wasted 3 minutes of my time, I did the simplest thing – I asked him to buzz off with the use of a word that would have required censoring. Later, when the examiner came in to explain the missing part of the question (there was indeed a missing part), this invigilator tried to be clever again and made an announcement – which nobody understood as all were giving the “huh?” face to him – resulting in the examiner getting fed up too and repeated the announcement again. My thoughts are with the poor panel of examiners when this bloke is due to present his dissertation – it’s either they have to start learning Alienese, or this joker would have to buck up on his English.

After the paper, I headed to a restaurant in Festival Walk for the NUS Alumni Dinner hosted by the OAR. It was actually nice to see all the fellow alumnus, as well as some people from the OAR. The meal was good too, which was an added bonus. Subsequently, a few of us adjourned to a pub owned by an alumni, and the drinks were wonderful as well. I especially liked the vodka ginger – good gingery taste without being too hot or bitter. Nice.

My Saturday and Sunday were boring, so there’s really nothing to talk about. Though one happy thing to come through was United beating Liverpool at Anfield (again). Liverpool as genuine title contender? You’re having a laugh.

Alrighty, it’s time to start working.

Sore throat.

The weather for the past couple of days has been weird to say the least. It was kinda warm, but at the same time kinda dry also. I’ve been having quite a bit of sore throat these 2 days and I somehow feel that the Strepsils and the Nin Jioms are not exactly helping in soothing the situation. Maybe I should go see a doctor and get some medicated lozenges instead.

As Christmas is coming, for one reason or another I feel that the Christmas spirit in Hong Kong seems to be much stronger than that in Singapore. I mean, yes, there are decorations in Orchard Road and all that, but the general feeling towards Christmas seems to be stronger in Hong Kong than in Singapore. The HKBU campus is already in progress of putting up decorations, but I don’t seem to remember seeing that much Christmas decorations when I was studying at NUS. Some might contribute to the fact that Christmas is in the holidays, so few people are in school anyway, but then it’s the same case here in Hong Kong – maybe Hong Kong people do prefer to spend some time and money in celebrating all these festivals.

Got a few big things coming my way and I hope I can do them well. But before that happens, I’ve got another paper tomorrow for my exams. I think I need to do a bit of revisions tonight.

Exam.

Had my first paper yesterday evening. The paper wasn’t exactly difficult, though at times I was cursing quite a bit because I couldn’t recall things that I read through in my 2 rounds of revisions earlier. It’s like I know the rough idea, but not the details. Not exactly the best thing to happen, but since I managed to finish the paper, and I usually wouldn’t fail those modules that I manage to complete the exam paper, I’m not really worried. I’ve got 2 more papers coming up, though one is an open book exam with Internet access allowed so I don’t intend to worry too much about it, so technically I’m left with one paper and it’s going to be on Friday.

Went to Jay Chou’s concert on Sunday and my seat was actually not too bad as I managed to get a pretty good view of the whole stage. Of course I was never going to be able to see Jay’s face, but there was a big screen above the stage so it wasn’t a problem. But one thing did strike me was that there was this guy who was filming the entire concert using his DV camera, which obviously was illegal. Then at one stage, a security officer went to him and asked him to hand over the tape in which he recorded the concert in. Instead of knowing his guilt (and realising that he could have been sued for doing what he was doing) and hand over the tape, he kept on refusing to hand it over. The best thing was the security officer, after trying for a few minutes to get him to hand over the tape, apparently gave up and left him alone. And promptly that guy continued to film the concert. I was like going, “huh?” – what has this world come to? Has he no shame or something? And why didn’t the security officer get a few more of his colleagues and demand the guy to hand over his tape or make him leave the concert? Are we in a society where people in authority are afraid to make authoritative decisions even when it’s called for, and are the people so anti-authority that even when they are breaking the law they can still be so ardent against it? Strange.

Didn’t sleep too much last night after spending almost 2 hours chatting to a friend over MSN – it’s been a long time since I last did that, really.

Friday.

We’ve arrived at the end of the week again, and although the end of this week signals the start of the next, which coincides with the start of my exams at CityU, I’m still looking forward to it nonetheless.

Had a fairly busy day yesterday with quite a fair bit of work, and I think today would probably be more or less the same case. The good thing would be I don’t have to call in at work tomorrow (I’m required to come to work on a Saturday about once a month), but I probably would be hiding somewhere (either at CityU or in BU, depending on my mood) to do my revisions. Gut feeling tells me that BU would be a better place because it’s relatively more empty, but I think I’ll decide tomorrow.

There are a few events that I could probably be looking forward to in December. For example, there is going to be an innovation fair next weekend, followed by the Asian Games Show around Christmas. Also, there’s the Hong Kong Brands Fair which begins tomorrow and lasts till end of the month. Indeed there are quite a few nice events that I can go take a look in, but the problem is I’ve got no one to go with me!

Temperature.

I always am very puzzled about this. Let say that the temperature outside is 30 degrees, then if I were to switch my air-conditioner to 25.5 degrees (the recommended temperature for energy saving), I would probably feel cooler inside the room than outside, isn’t it? I don’t think this part would lead to any arguments, so we’ll have it as that.

But what if the temperature outside is 20 degrees and I continue to have my air-conditioner to be at 25.5 degrees? OK some might say that in this case you don’t really need to switch on the air conditioner so as to save the environment, but what if it is a centralized system and you can’t really switch it off? Would you actually feel warmer inside the room, or you’ll still feel cool nonetheless because the air coming out from the air conditioner is cool air in the first place?

Anyone familiar with these physics theory can answer my question?

Franklin Graham.

Yesterday I went to the Hong Kong Franklin Graham Festival with my supervisor and my colleagues. I’m not a Christian, but since the event was free and I had a free afternoon + evening to spare, I thought I might want to take a look at how such huge religious events are like.

For a non-believer, I think the event was pretty massive. The Hong Kong Stadium was totally packed with people – I reckon there must be almost 40,000 people inside the stadium. The preaching session itself was interesting, though the immediate Chinese translation did make it a bit not as good because it feels as if the whole thing wasn’t coherent. It’s like, Franklin Graham would say one line, and then the Chinese interpreter would translate what he just said. I, of course, would rather be listening to Franklin Graham talk on his own without a Chinese interpreter, but I guess such interpreter is needed because we are in Hong Kong after all.

The message that I think Franklin Graham is trying to bring across is actually pretty simple. He didn’t use anything too complicated or difficult. Instead, he kept on repeating the same point, and it did make a very lasting impression on whoever that attended. I mean, after more than 24 hours, the story that he was talking about is still ringing in my ears!

Towards the end of the session, he invited people to step to the front of the stage to declare their new belief, and I think there must have been 10,000 people stepping up – it was actually quite a magnificent sight. As for me, I chose to remain in my seat at that point of time because I didn’t think I am ready for such a thing yet. Of course I’m not saying that I’ll never take a belief into the Christian religion – or any religion for that matter, but I just feel that I’m not mentally ready for the commitment of a religion. I know believers of religions will say that you are always ready to take your belief, but I just want to find out a bit more first.

Back to work tomorrow. Not fun.