Sai Kung.

Last Saturday the lot of us in the department decided to have a day of sun, sand and sea to unwind from our usually hectic life in the office. So we set ourselves to an excursion of some sort to Sai Kung!

About 8 of us started the day in Hap Mun Bay, which is a 30-minute boat ride from the Sai Kung Pier, for some fun at the beach. The ride wasn’t the smoothest as the boats were not really comfortable – it felt almost like the thing would collapse anytime – and I was just glad to have been able to make it to the beach safely. It was actually very hot, as the digital signboard at the beach displayed:

Not clear? Maybe the next one would be clearer.

37 degrees. You’re having a laugh.

It certainly wasn’t fun to be getting myself roasted on the beach, and by the time I got out of the beach, I think I was about 20% away from being completely roasted.

After the roasting session at the beach, we took a boat back to the Sai Kung Pier to meet up with the rest who, perhaps smartly, did not come for the beach session. We spent the evening on another boat, but this time round we were going to be on the boat for a few hours, trying to fish for squids.

Usually squid fishing doesn’t start until it gets darker, so before that starts, we indulged ourselves with the beautiful scenery that Sai Kung has to offer:

Even though at the end of the day I didn’t manage to hook any squid up, but I thought the whole session was still fun. I certainly won’t mind going for it again – though I would probably think twice about the sun, the sand and the sea!

Zhua Kuang.

Zhua Kuang is a Chinese phrase (or more accurately a Taiwanese phrase as it’s more frequently used there), and it’s written “抓狂”. For those of you who know Chinese, you could probably guess from the way the words are written to see what it means (that’s the beauty of Chinese). But for those who don’t, Zhua Kuang (or ZK as I’ll shortform it from now on) means getting really upset and agitated about things. I guess everyone would go into a ZK mood every once in a while.

There are actually a lot of things I can ZK about in my daily life. Work, studies, living, etc can all be sources of my ZK-ness. Both it does appear to me that more recently my work is making me ZK more often. Like I mention many many times, I like my working environment, I like my colleagues (whether it’s mutual remains to be seen but who’s arguing), but I find that I’m getting more and more unsettled as far as my job is concerned. I somehow am beginning to not be inspired to go to work these days. It’s like, even during my busiest times earlier in the year, I would not dread the thought of going to work in the morning. But somehow lately I find that I’m just not that inspired to head to office. And when I’m at work, somewhere somehow something would contrive to piss me off. The worst thing is that I can’t let off these kind of frustration openly. Of course, handling frustrations are part and parcel of working life, but I don’t know if it’s the job or if it’s just me.

Maybe I need to find a counsellor – that’s perhaps one good thing about working in an university, that there are qualified counsellors who are available.

Week.

I think my procrastination skills is getting higher by the day – I left my journal untouched for almost a week, and I don’t even half feel guilty about it. It’s no good.

Anyway last Friday I went to watch “The Happening”. Not the best movie that I’ve seen this year, but it’s not exactly scary – I would call it being more sick rather than scary – it’s not the kind of movies that you want to bring a girl along in the hope of impressing her, unless she’s the kind that would jump onto you the moment she sees a scary scene.

Last weekend I met up with a group of my primary school friends and boy, how has everyone changed!

It’s about the oldest group of friends that I have in my life – I’ve known them for close to 20 years already! It’s quite amazing to think that times have changed so fast that some of us are already married with kids, while some are tying their knots soon, and some others are still (trying to insist that we are) enjoying singlehood. It was great to have seen everybody, and I already am looking forward to the next gathering!

Back to work tomorrow, and I really am not looking forward to it.

Taichung (finally).

After so long, I finally got down to some determination to write my Taichung travelogue. Sorry for the delay – I think procrastination is becoming my forte. Anyway here goes…

17 May 2008 (Day 1)

My sis and I flew out to Taipei (or Taoyuan as the airport is there) in the morning on a China Airlines flight. The thing I like about travelling on China Airlines to Taiwan is that there are a lot of flights each day, so it’s really easy to plan for the trip. After a short flight of about 75 minutes, I’m at the Taoyuan airport, and what followed was a 2-hour bus ride to Taichung.

The bus took us to the Taichung Railway Station, and I think it looks similar to the Yilan Railway Station, which I went last August:

After settling down in the hotel (which was a 5-star hotel, may I add), my sis and I headed out to the Yizhong Commercial Circle to do some walk walk see see, and most importantly, head to the Mayday Concert!

The concert was really wonderful – it was my first ever outdoor concert! It was hot, I was perspiring all over, but it didn’t matter! To be there to see Mayday perform for 4 hours was just brilliant. To cap it all off, my seat was actually pretty near the rear stage, so I actually had a very good view of the band when they were at the rear stage:

The concert ended at about 12 midnight, and I didn’t collapse to my bed in the hotel until about 2 in the morning. W00t!

18 May 2008 (Day 2)

My sister’s tactic of coming to Taichung on the day of the concert worked wonders – we had one full day in Taichung! We first went to the Science Museum where we saw a lot of near-real-life animal models, which included dinosaurs, orang utans, and:

Bear!

For those who have me listed on their Facebook accounts you would probably see a picture of me taken with this bear. I bet you can spot the difference between me and the bear. For those who don’t have me on your Facebook, you can see the picture here. If you can’t spot the difference, drop me an email to the usual address.

After the Science Museum, we took a walk to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. We thought walking there wouldn’t take long because the Taichung map I got from the Railway Station the previous day seemed to suggest so. The walk was actually OK – it took about 20 minutes – but it wasn’t really fun because it was very hot! The Museum was actually a huge place, but sadly there really wasn’t a lot of things to see. The DigiArk was quite an interesting concept too, so I think this Art Museum is still worth visiting.

We headed back towards the Yizhong Commercial Circle later because we wanted to see Wanwan, the famous Taiwanese blogger, at her autograph session. I was dumb enough to have forgotten to bring her book to Taiwan with me so that I could get it autographed (I realised after I returned to Hong Kong that I actually lent it to a colleague anyway), but seeing the queue at the bookstore, both me and my sis agreed that we wouldn’t want to waste a day just to get her autograph. So we satisfied ourselves by taking pictures of her, which was good enough IMO. And just to round off the visit to the bookstore, I bought a couple of books as well.

For those interested in Wanwan’s blog which have registered more than 10 million hits, it is at http://www.wretch.cc/blog/cwanny.

One of the landmarks of Taichung is Chungyu Department Store. Besides being a high-end shopping centre, one of its classics is its Coca-Cola decoration in some parts of the store:

Try guessing where were these decor found? If you know the answer, drop me a mail to the usual address again! A little prize awaits… hahaha…

Then we went to Stock 20, which was a godown-turned-museum by the Taichung Railway Station. They turned what previously was a godown into a museum and art centre. When we were there, an exhibition related to train travel was going on and you could see the exhibits all have something to do with travelling. It was quite interesting, and for those who want to find out more about this depot, you can visit their website at http://www.stock20.com.tw.

Some small-scale concerts are sometimes held here.

19 May 2008 (Day 3)

We didn’t really do anything special, except going around to buy the souvenirs and gifts (and whatever everyone back in office asked me to buy). After we were done, we took the High Speed Rail to Taoyuan, and then a bus to the airport. It turned out that it was actually a good choice, because it took less than the 2 hour plus that otherwise would be needed to travel on the bus, with no fear of traffic congestion!

So there you have it, my 3-day walkabout in Taichung. My overall impression of Taichung is that it’s not really a big place (most places seem to be within walkable distance from one another), and it’s definitely not as cosmopolitan as Taipei (which isn’t that cosmopolitan to start with actually, if you compare it to Hong Kong). And I also noticed that the Taichung people are really a nice lot – like what one of my blog visitors last year who lives in Taichung said – That said, I probably still prefer Taipei to Taichung, primarily because the transport system is much better in Taipei. But then again, given the size of Taichung, it probably won’t be economical to build a subway system of any sorts. And I guess if I have been given more time to live in Taichung, I probably would have got the public system figured out.

My next destination would most likely be either Taipei (with some fellow CityU Postgrads, probably in June but still highly tentative) or Nanjing (for work). I promise I’ll take more pictures and update my travelogue earlier the next time.

Back to work tomorrow. Not fun – it seems to be always the case after a weekend, or a long weekend, or a holiday. Guess it’s time to find new inspiration somewhere.

Mayday.

Because of my laziness to resize the pictures I’ve taken in Taichung, the travelogue will be delayed for another issue at least. But don’t worry, I’ve got interesting things to talk about today.

I went to the Mayday “Down to Earth” concert last Saturday at the AsiaWorld-Arena. The concert was not the best one that I’ve ever been to, but it really wasn’t the fault of the performing artists. Instead, it’s the whole place (AsiaWorld-Arena) that contributed to the disappointment. Overall the concert was actually brilliant, but if those elements at the Arena were not there, it would be about perfect!

The concert itself was great. As usual, Mayday delivered their style of rock which got everyone standing up from the word go, and with all the classic songs on show, it was just wonderful. The best thing was perhaps the second encore, which I thought wasn’t suppose to be in the first place. I remembered it was after all the credits were shown, the whole Arena was lit up and completely bright and people were already leaving. Then the five of them ran back up onto the stage and started singing – those who were on their way out suddenly all ran back into the Arena! It was quite cool, actually.

But then there were a few things that gave an otherwise brilliant concert some blemishes, and – may I emphasize here – it’s not Mayday’s fault at all.

The first rant was about the security officers. They were a constant menace – always running around asking people to stop taking pictures. The whole deal was that photography was supposedly not allowed (that’s what’s written on the ticket), so these officers would run to whoever that’s holding a camera (even when he might be just viewing the pictures he’s taken a few years ago with his Mum and his ex-girlfriend) and ask them to shut it off. I understand that they were doing their job, but what I couldn’t accept was that they went to the extent of disturbing other people to do their jobs. They would squeeze into a row full of people standing, just to shine a torch light at the whoever that’s taking a picture. In trying to stop one person from apparently disturbing the concert, these officers were incurring the wrath of many more, whom I presume are less than impressed with these people. I was just thinking, if they were really that keen in stopping people from taking pictures, they should either have do a bag check at the start and get those with cameras to deposit it somewhere, or have the guts to confiscate the cameras. They did neither, so when they were trying to stop people from taking pictures they simply had no way to do it except running around and disturbing others. Furthermore, they were so inconsistent in their work. When they see some people who look kind of fierce, they dare not do anything. Instead they picked on those who were smaller and seem less likely to argue back. What’s their freaking problem?!

Furthermore, they were constantly patrolling the Arena, looking for people who were breaking rules (like standing half a centimeter too far in front of their seats). Have they ever been to a rock concert? I mean, doing their jobs is one thing, but going to the extent of being over-sensitive and over-particular about how the audience behaved was out of this world. For no less than one occasions I thought I was actually in prison as an inmate and all these security officers were actually the wardens. I just don’t like the idea of being watched that closely at a concert.

Then the sound system was actually quite horrible too. The moment the concert started we were treated to a rapture of noise rather than music. It wasn’t because Mayday couldn’t sing, but it was because the sound system was acting up strange! Ashin’s voice was constantly being cracked, as did the guitar and the bass. The music got so warped that I think if Mayday had a choice they probably won’t want to have their concerts in this Arena again. The sound system at the Hong Kong Coliseum wasn’t perfect, but it was still miles better than this one here!

The only thing that is worth a mention was the transport arrangement at the end of the concert. Basically it wasn’t difficult to get out of the place after the concert – after all nobody would like to be stranded in Lantau Island at midnight!

Mayday’s last concert in 2008!

I-took-this-right-under-the-noses-of-the-security-officers-so-if-they-aren’t-happy-then-go-sue-me #1: Sea of blue lightsticks at the start of the concert. Heartwarming.

I-took-this-right-under-the-noses-of-the-security-officers-so-if-they-aren’t-happy-then-go-sue-me #2: During the second encore – for those who left thinking that Mayday were going to do only one round of encore, you really missed something!

Back in office today, and just like the name of Mayday’s concert, it’s “down to earth” and back to reality for me. Not fun.