Tired.

It’s a long day today.

The morning was spent sorting out some administrative issues. If there was one “free period” for me today, that would be it – at least I could check my emails and answer phone calls!

Then in the afternoon I was helping with one event for awhile, and then I received a call to attend to some matters within campus. Off I went and when I was done with that, it was already 6.45pm! Whatever happened to that few hours in between?

After work, I headed straight for lessons, after being about half an hour late, if not more. Thank God the class was rather enjoyable.

So off went by whole day and I didn’t even know what exactly happened, and I’m already tired beyond words. I think I’ll go sleep after I’m done with my cup of Milo. Thank God tomorrow’s Friday.

Ronaldo.

Cristiano Ronaldo bagged 2 goals as United downed Tottenham in the FA Cup Fourth Round. As of today, Ronaldo has scored 25 times, the same number he’s scored for the whole of last season. A scary thought for opposition defenders – there’re still 4 months left in the season, and who would bet against him getting 40, let alone 30 goals by the end of the season?

Oh did I tell everyone that I’m a Manchester United fan? I think I must have been too subtle in my posts, so much so that nobody realised (or remembered).

Apart from Cristiano Ronaldo, there’s something that I’m getting very impressed with – Apple, as in Apple the computer maker. I’m sure everyone has been quite marvelled by the new Apple MacBook Air (including me). And to be honest, I won’t mind getting one, but I would need to find a way to convince myself that having 3 laptops at home is not too many. And being as big as I am, having such a thin notebook does seem a bit weird. But then again, if you remember the following Apple advertisement Yao Ming shot a few years ago with him holding a small notebook, size suddenly doesn’t seem to matter.

Weather is still cold, which is OK for me because I do prefer the cold weather. However, it would be so much better if I don’t have to wake up at 7.30 every morning just to get to work!

Off to sleep, have a great week ahead.

Sick.

I think it’s either there’s something wrong with the food and hygiene standards in Hong Kong, or I’m getting weaker. In just 3 weeks, I’ve been having problems with my digestive system – I had a bad bout of diarrhea and vomiting at the start of the month, and one more time these 2 days. It’s like, I hardly have this kind of problems when I was back in Singapore, but I’ve been getting these digestive system problems for about 5 or 6 times since I’ve returned to Hong Kong. I don’t understand why.

I think I need rest. Make it a lot of rest.

Home.

Suddenly I am finding myself to be writing my journal from home!

The sore eyes didn’t go away. The strange thing now is that only my left eye would get sore, but not my right. I’ve heard people say twitching of the left eye would mean something (bad or good, I can’t remember), but how about having a sore left eye?

I met Grace, one of my best primary school mates before I left for Singapore, for lunch today. The best thing about her is that after all these years she didn’t seem to have changed at all! It’s like when I saw her I knew straight away that’s her – not any bit of “I wonder if I got the right person”. It was actually great to be able to see her again after all these while, as the last time I saw her was more than 10 years ago already. It was great to hear that she’s getting married next year, and I really wish everything will be wonderful for her and her husband to be.

As I was walking back from Lok Fu to office (Lok Fu and HKBU are kinda like on the same street but it takes about 10 to 15 minutes on foot), I was thinking to myself – my primary school mates are getting married (both in Hong Kong and Singapore), while some even have kids already. Then I look at myself – man do I not look pitiful! But I guess that’s fine, it’s something that plays in the back of my mind sometimes, but I don’t think it affects me that much. I’m sure there must be someone there whom I can spend the rest of my life with. Of course the truth is, once you get older, you tend to not mind that much who the other person would be. But whatever it is, I don’t want to end up with someone I don’t love, just for the sake of being with someone.

Damn, I’m getting philosophical.

Sore eyes.

One of my colleagues commented to me that my left eye was very sore today. And boy, was she not right. When I looked into the mirror after she made the comment, I was actually quite worried. My left eye was visibly swollen, and it was looking real red. I felt that it was a bit painful, but I didn’t expect it to look so bad. That said, it wasn’t so bad that I have to take the day off (even though deep inside I wouldn’t have minded!), but it certainly didn’t feel very right.

Had the opportunity to meet the Vice-President this afternoon, and I think he’s a nice guy. Very soft-spoken but yet at the same time knows what he’s talking about. The thing about me working in HKBU so far is that I really have got a lot of chances to meet the really senior personnel in the University. For example, in my 4 months so far, I think I must have met the President about 8 times. Considering that I only got to see the NUS President for just 5 times in my 4 and a half years in NUS (with 2 of those in Shanghai when Prof Shih dropped by for the opening of the NUS Shanghai office), I think I’ve been seeing those senior people in BU quite often. Of course my role is such that I’ll definitely get to see them often, but I’m not too sure if people in the OSA back in NUS gets to see Prof Shih that often.

Of course I know now Prof Tan Chorh Chuan is the new NUS President. Hope that he’s going to be closer to the people that matter to the University.

Weekend.

It has been quite a while since I last updated my little journal at home. I guess it has been such that sitting in front of the TV, resting after a long day of work has become the priority for my life whenever I reach home, so much so that updating my little journal is no longer just as important. But mind you, that’s only when I hit home. I still would write here, just that I would probably do that more often in office (not sure if my boss is going to read this but hey, I only write them at the relatively freer time of my days, and I won’t put aside my work for the purpose of updating my journal).

Anyway I spent today (or rather, yesterday) in Shenzhen (again), this time with the primary objective of checking out one of the many Carrefour stores there. You may ask why I would want to spend all those time and transport cost to travel to Shenzhen just to check out a big supermarket. Sure, there are many supermarkets in Hong Kong, some big ones in fact. But I would want to go see the ones in Shenzhen and compare the prices. True enough, for quite a number of things that I came across, the prices were much lower in Shenzhen. Of course when you add up the transport cost it’s going to be roughly the same, but I guess if I were to be making a huge purchase it would be so much more worthwhile to do it there. I think it’s just the same concept as Singaporeans going to JB to do grocery shopping. The difference, in my opinion, is that it’s much cheaper to travel to JB from Singapore, than to Shenzhen from Hong Kong.

Had steamboat for dinner just now. A lot of food, and I think me and my sister were really eating to our hearts’ content, which was just nice, considering that the period of low temperature is about over again.

Friday.

Time passes quicker when you are busy – it’s Friday!

The past couple of days have really been very busy for me. I had a lot of things to do, a lot of things to take care of, a lot of things to watch over. Being busy is not a problem – in fact I enjoyed being busy. That said, that few crazy days were obviously not very pleasant because there were just so many things going on, so much so that there were some tasks that I totally have no time to do, which I obviously am not very impressed with myself.

Classes for the past two days have been good. I managed to know a few new people on the Wednesday class, and it was great seeing all my coursemates in the class yesterday. While it’s nice to know new friends, it’s always much more comfortable to be with people I know.

Weekend’s half a day away, and I hope that this remaining half of the day would pass by without too much problems. After a more than hectic four days, I would appreciate any kind of break at work, really. These few days have also been getting colder, so my friends in Hong Kong, do wear a bit more!

Tuesday.

Yesterday was also a hugely busy day for me as I worked non-stop from 9 in the morning all the way till 6 in the evening. There were just a lot of things to do, and I didn’t really have time to catch a breather of any sort. As for today, I’m happy to say that things that I need to be completing are more or less there and I can finally take a short break right now and write something in my little journal.

Attended my first lesson in Semester B yesterday evening and to be honest it wasn’t a very interesting class. I mean, the lecture itself was OK, but the makeup of the class wasn’t. Apparently the class that I was in was made up mostly of students from another course, and they all seemed to know one another already which made the grouping up for project hugely difficult. It’s almost like they were all grouped before I could even ask them if I could join. I guess that’s the price to pay when I decide that I’ll do one of my elective modules this semester as I have two modules already on credit transfer.

It seems that these next few days would also be kinda busy for me, which can’t be a bad thing.

Happy Hour.

I was at the NUS-HK Alumni Happy Hour yesterday night and I think I had a pretty enjoyable evening of fun, laughter and drinks! Drank quite a fair bit, and at certain times my head did seem to be heavier than my feet, but being the competent drinker that I am, I managed to compose myself very well!

Looking back at the evening, I think it was a really successful one for a start. At its peak there must have been about 30 people inside the bar, which was about double of what Michelle and I had expected! Of course the whole evening wasn’t just about NUS alumni in Hong Kong, but also different people from various universities. The great thing about such an event is that you would get to meet people from everywhere, thus expanding your social network. And the best thing about this Happy Hour is that most of us were really just chatting and relaxing, rather than those business networking sessions where people are purely talking business (which is something that I won’t mind going but definitely not too comfortable with). In our event last night, I think I hardly talked about what I do at work, and most of the topics were evolving around living in Hong Kong, silly gags and poking fun at politicians. It was quite an ideal night out really.

Definitely looking forward to the next one – hopefully it would be just as successful!

Tuesday.

Because of the fact that my supervisor is on leave, I am in a no-inspiration-to-work mood. That said, there are still things to be done and I’m looking to get them done soon.

School is going to reopen next week and I’ll be in my second semester of studies. This semester my workload is slightly lighter than that of the last, as I am doing only 2 modules, after I’ve transferred the credits for 2 of my modules earlier (Refer to this post). I could well have just taken one, because the modules are kinda assigned to us, but I thought it would be better to spread out the workload. By doing this 2 modules these semester, I’ll only have to do one module in the next 3 semesters in addition to my project, which can’t be a bad thing.

The 2 modules that I’m doing are both Information Systems modules, so I think it should be more fun. One of them is IS5314 E-Business System Integration and the other is IS6643 Information Technology Based Organization Transformation. I know chances are both modules might not be entirely related to my job (to be honest, the entire Masters degree that I’m doing is not entirely related to my job), but I still hope to learn a few things or two so that it could better prepare me.

The strange thing is, the results of my previous semester won’t be released until tomorrow, so it does seem a bit weird to be choosing modules to take at this point in time. But then again, stranger things have happened, so I don’t think I’d be that alarmed.

Alrighty, time to really start working.