Singapore.

After a week of non-update, I am bringing you this edition of my little journal from the comfort of my home in Singapore. Yes, I’ve touched down about an hour and a half ago and the first thing that greeted me was Terminal 3. The terminal was quite nice, but because this is the first time that I’ve seen it, it took some getting used to. Anyway the flight on SIA was brilliant. I’ve probably never been on a more enjoyable flight than this one, and I think I shall ditch Cathay Pacific for SIA for my future trips between Hong Kong and Singapore.

The past week has been pretty hectic for me – I had quite a lot of things to do, went to a lot of different places and also did a lot of crazy things. I headed out to Shenzhen with my sister for steamboat at Little Sheep (小肥羊) and for a very sumptuous meal, we paid only RMB 172. You probably can’t even get the soup base in Hong Kong at that price.

I spent Christmas alone though. Went out to watch Madagascar 2 at APM, and went to make a new pair of glasses after the movie. I think it was the first time in many years that I spent Christmas alone, and to be honest it was refreshing for a change.

Then Boxing Day. I was actually supposed to have gone watch Galileo: Suspect X (ガリレオ：容疑者Ｘの現身), but for one reason or another me and my sister managed to get the ticket to a wrong date. Not very good.

Saturday. I woke up early to go to Mong Kok to apply for my China Entry Permit and by the time I got there, I was number 112 in the queue. Mind you, they only started distributing the queue numbers at 8.45 in the morning and I was there at 9.25. The process was a breeze though, I was done in 25 minutes, of which 23 was spent on waiting for my number to be called. After that I bought a ticket for the 3.50pm showing of Galileo: Suspect X at Mong Kok, and then headed home to continue my sleep. Went over Dundas Street to meet my classmates for a project discussion which lasted for 4 hours, with 3 and a half spent on talking crap and another 25 minutes on the project itself. Topics ranged from graduation to trip to whether we should help matchmake some of our classmates. It was mindless, but it was fun.

On Sunday, I headed out to Jiangmen, China for my cousin’s wedding dinner. While I’ve been to many different wedding dinners in Hong Kong, this was the first time that I went for one in China. The dinner was very interesting – the dishes began to serve at 7pm and the whole dinner is done by 8.30! If I had knew that would be the case, I wouldn’t have bothered with booking a hotel room to stay overnight!

Headed back down to Hong Kong on Monday and to be honest, the 2 and a half hours bus ride form Jiangmen to Shenzhen was a torture. When would they be having railway? Anyway, after arriving in Hong Kong, I went to do some arrears before heading back into Mainland again with SQ, who’s in town in Hong Kong and I promised to bring him to Shenzhen to check out the massage parlours and the grand restaurants. I think he must have been pretty amused by how the place is like. Because I had a flight to catch, so I left Shenzhen at about 2.30, and it turned out, I wasn’t able to sleep at all even though I reached home at 4.15. I had to finish quite a bit of personal admin before I fly off, and by the time I was done with all those things, it was already 6.30. As my flight was at 10.30 and I had to be at the airport at about 8.30 and the journey from home to airport is 2 hours, I had no choice but to forego sleep.

I’ll be in Singapore until 4th Jan, so anyone who’s keen for a meal or whatever, please give me a call at my usual Singapore number!

AGS.

I went to the Asian Games Show on Saturday, hoping to check out some new games for my PS3. I think this was the 3rd AGS that I’ve ever been to, and apart from the first one which I came off empty-handed, I’ve always gotten something from this massive games show (or more like, massive Sony games show as half of the exhibition hall was taken by Sony). I managed to buy two games this time round, namely Gundom Musou 2 and LittleBIGPlanet, and coupled with the games that I’ve bought for the past month or so, I should have a good time playing over this Christmas period.

Anyway a couple of pics from AGS:

LittleBIGPlanet – it’s cute and it’s highly addictive, even for non-seasoned PS3 players.

Winning Eleven 2009 – I got the game about a month back, and to be honest, no matter what people say about WE, it’s still a football fan must-have.

I’ll be having short working day on Christmas Eve as I can get out from work at 3.30pm (it was 12.30pm last year, may I add). For me, that would signal a 11-day away from office – can hardly wait, really.

Love (as I look at it now).

When I was younger, I always have this “dream” that I’ll be married when I turn 25. For your information, I’m turning 29 next year so I was supposed to have been married for 4 years already.

Those who know me well would know that I have not had a girlfriend for a long time already, but the surprising thing is that, for the past two or three years, this thing has not been too much of a bother for me. It’s like I’m happy with how things are like for the moment, and I think life has been pretty good to me already. I’ve got a decent job with nice colleagues, I’m doing well in my studies and have got a bunch of good classmates, I’m also having opportunities to visit different places around the region (was so tempted to write “world” instead though), I guess I should be satisfied. Of course every once in a while I do think about the “what if” factor, but I guess it’s not like a few years ago when all that’s on my mind would be trying to find a girlfriend. Probably when you grow a bit older, there are other things that you might feel more important than having a female companion. Is that a sign of growing old?

Of course, if anyone good comes my way and she feels the same way as I do towards her (in a positive way, since it can also be the case that I hate her and she hates me), and if something were to happen from there, why not?

I’m getting philosophical. That’s so not me.

Exam.

My Law exam was yesterday and to be honest, it’s best not to talk about it. Now I just hope I’ll be able to pass.

The next couple of days are going to be great because my exams are done, Christmas is coming, and my long break is coming too! Before I fly back to Singapore on the 30th, I’d have many things to look forward to:

– A reunion Christmas party in the primary school that I attended for 2 years before I moved to Singapore. I bet I’m probably the second oldest alumni to attend the party (Grace would have been the oldest because she’s older than me by a few months!).
– Watch a whole lot of movies: Madagascar 2, Ip Man, Detective Galileo…
– Head to Jiangmen for my cousin’s wedding.
– Asian Games Show 2008

All these should be enough to keep me busy until I head back to Singapore!

Revision.

As I’m writing this, I’m stting inside the computer labs in CityU. I’ve been spending most of the evening here doing some revision for my Law examination next week. Since I’m not a law student, preparing for this exam means a lot of work and difficulties for me. It’s not as if the law concepts are difficult to understand, but it’s just a lot of things to read up, a lot of ideas to grab hold of. And while I’m preparing all those law cases, I discover that the provided materials had more than a fair share of discrepancies with those that I found elsewhere, and I’m not even talking about the typo errors… Talk about mentally and physically draining.

My exam is actually on next Tuesday, which is still good news as I still have some time to prepare. After that I’d be kind of liberated, but it won’t be long because I’ll need to start preparing for the intermediary report for my Final Year Project! It seems like tis is going to be a mad semester ahead for me. I just hope everything would be fine.

I’m looking more and more forward to my trip back to Singapore at the end of the month! There are just so many people that I want to meet, and I hope I’d be able to meet all of them. I hope 6 days would be enough!

Tired from all the studying – I guess I’ll grab my things and head home. A good rest tonight is in order.

Gadgetry.

Somehow I’m very excited about heading back to Singapore at the end of the month. I guess the excitement comes from the fact that the trip is a short one which is a good break away from work.

I was in Sham Shui Po last Saturday for the IT Fair. If you’ve read the news in Hong Kong you would have realised how crowded the place was. The Fair was an outdoor one, occupying a few roads around the IT shopping malls in the area. It was so crowded that when I got there, the police could only let people in at timed intervals, so you could imagine how big a crowd had actually built up. I wanted to actually check out the the Kohjinsha SX3KB06MH UMPC. I thought this little gadget was very cool, and any UMPC that comes with a rotatable touchscreen and DVD writer has to be a great one. I didn’t buy it though, because I thought the price of $7,988 was a bit steep. That said, this is definitely on my wishlist!

Another thing that’s on my wishlist is the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The phone looks pretty cool with the touchscreen and all that, and while I’m a junkie for 5 megapixels cameraphones (both my current and my previous phones come with 5MP cameras), I think this 3.2MP cameraphone probably doesn’t come too far off. And I especially like the different input methods – that means I no longer have to remember those irritating strokes for inputing Chinese characters, yet I can still speed my way through for an English SMS!

I’m feeling gadgetry!

Singapore.

I’m still keeping to my diet regime – it’s not easy but I’m trying hard. All for the sake of my health.

Anyway I’ve booked the tickets to go back to Singapore for a short trip at the end of the month. I’ll be arriving on the 30th, stay in Singapore for 2 years and returning on 4 Jan. 2 years, I hear you ask – well I’m going to be in Singapore for both 2008 (30-31 Dec) and 2009 (1-4 Jan), so does that not make it 2 years? Hopefully I’d have time to catch up with as many people as possible, and since it’s that period when everyone is having a lull period, I guess that should be the best time! I’ll be flying on Singapore Airlines this time, and this would be the first time since 2002 that I would get to come face to face with the Singapore Girl, so you can imagine how excited I am. Oops!

Anyone need anything from Hong Kong? Drop me a message at the usual email address.

Hello December.

Welcome to the beginning of the end of 2008. The year seemed to have zoomed past and we are in December already.

Last Saturday I had a real reality check – I had a mini body check and it turned out that it was a miracle that I’m still alive. I shan’t post the details of the findings, but it’s enough to scare a few people. So from now on I need to be doing a lot of things to control all these things that have somehow spiralled out of control. It’s going to be tough, but I guess it’s God’s will to let me know about such things now rather than I collapse without warning. So from now on, whenever you see a new post, you would know that I’m still alive!

I’ve more or less recovered from the flu, except that I’m still with a little bit of cough and running nose. But I guess the worst is over already, and I should be able to regain full condition in a few days’ time.

The health reality check was quite a big stunner to me, and I think for the past day or so I have not been in the best of moods, which is quite unlike me. Of course, being an ever optimist, I think I should recover from this soon. And one thing though, I’m seriously considering moving out of Hong Kong and perhaps back to Singapore just for the sake of my health. The environment here in Hong Kong is really not that great with all the pollutions and all that, and it’s not fun to be unable to see that many trees here. Singapore would be hot, but at least the air is fresher, and there really aren’t that many ridiculous politicians trying to wind up the society everyday. If you are in Singapore and have some job lobangs, please keep me posted!