into the inlet gates

i just returned home from my journey to the east, and i am just so exhausted.

it's ironic how relaxing work is nowadays, and days on travel is far more hectic. i rushed flight departure time more frequent than boss' assignments dealines. i felt like working is actually my new weekend.

on the recent long deepavali weekend, we did the amazing race across macau, hong kong and shenzhen, rushing from spot to spot checking out local scenes and products. at the end of the day, we didn't win any money of course, heck we even got fake money in the process, but at least, we have gigas of photos and sunburn lines to tell our tales.

oh and impaired smell sense too due to over-exposed to that stinking tofu.

hereby, i'm gonna call this trip, the oriental express.



oriental express travellogue : part 1

of all the budget airlines i've taken, and this year has been A LOT, this recent trip must be the longest one. the journey i mean.

still, i was really convinced the airlines put in enough fuel inside and they were NOT comprimising anything in the safety department. hey budget airlines have flown all the way to london, right? compared to that, this trip must be just like visiting the neighbours.


we touched down at macau international airport on time at 3.30pm. the weather was clowdy. that weather bitch lady the day before must be lying on our faces when she said it would be thunderstorm.

we were greeted by the sight of a ferries-wheel on top of the building.

what a funny place to build that at huh?


we only stayed one night in macau, and it was at this grandview hotel. taxi fare from the airport was 20MOP, which we paid by HKD. HKD is only slightly bigger than MOP, so I guess it was an excepted transcation islandwide. after all, they gain, you lose.

i booked this hotel via latestays.com for only 80 SGD per night, which is cheap for a 4-star hotel in macau.

pretty nice place, although not exceptionally what you called 'grand'. only that it is in taipa island, but macau islands are small anyway, so moving around should be a breeze.


plus, our plan was just to visit casinos for that night, and what's better place to start other than the venetian macau at the nearby cotai strip?


venetian macau is very prominent on that cotai-strip. it looks exactly the same as the one in las vegas, so i wasn't really head over heel over the sight.

i don't even have a proper photo shot of the building, so i substituted with the one with me inside it. someone said BOF, that korean show, had a scene here. hah, no wonder people stare at me, they must have thought i was one of the actor....

the venetian macau

the grand canal was on the higher floor, and unlike the one in vegas, this one has very less people. it was easy to snap photos without people walking passed by in front of your camera making you wanted to strangle them alive. made me wonder, how could these shops here survived? the nasi lemak auntie in front of my block back home have more customers...

from the venetian, we hopped on the shuttle bus to get to the sands in macau island. you see, all these casino hotels each have their own shuttle buses, mainly to the ferry terminal. the venetian for example, have extra shuttles to the sands and the airport.

they are free, and the deal is, they won't ask you any question when to take them. so it all screamed 'let's abuse the system', like we did when we took the the shuttle bus to the sands when we actually wanted to go to the Wynn and MGM grand just beside it.

left:casinos at cotai strip, right:nearby wynn at macau island

after the grand canal at venetian, the insides of other casinos looked less impressive. we just briskly passed through the gambling dens then moved to others. MGM Grand was not bad with fake pandas scattered all over the hall. MGM = Panda? I don't see the connection. lion, yes, but never panda. whatever..

we returned to our hotel using our hotel's shuttle bus from the ferry terminal close to midnight, and then turned in for the night. god knows how our beds going to be in subsequent nights, so we better cherished the comfortable grandview beds. we got to wake up early to catch the early ferry to hong kong the next day. there were places left to venture in macau but we were going to do that when we returned to macau on our last day before flying back.

sounds like a plan?

...ed

quo vadis

i have cough. i have flu, and till few days ago, i got a bit of fever.

urghh...

i don't mind getting sick you know, as it's just flu, not life-threatening (unless it's H1Ni but somehow i don't think that's what this is) and i can use a bit of rest at home too (whilst playing my new virtua tennis xbox 360 game that i just bought last week).

but i already took 2 days mc last week because of gastric pain, the week after my one week hari raya break, and getting one this week doesn't look too good from the eyes of the boss and HR no matter how you look at it. plus, i'm going on leave tomorrow till next week.

the timing is just all wrong lahh.. my body chose such an inconvenient time to fall apart. last friday night, we went to zirca pub in clarke quay. my friend asked me to go along since he could get us into the guest list.

you see, it was a mr singapore final event that night, and his friend is actually mr bukit timah. how he got a friend like that, i don't know, but i just wanted to go out and chill.

but then, my nose started running the moment i stepped inside. it was like a curse or retribution or something. i tell you, it doesn't make you feel good to be all wet and drippy while looking at those perfectly healthy bodies on the stage. i felt like such a reject.

and now, it's less than 24 hours till my flight to macau, and i'm not even sure i don't have fever yet. at least, i think i don't. this should be just the normal warm blooded heat. still, i must find a way to cool down the body today, be it by gulping liters of barley drink or wearing ice patch all over. it's just common sense to be prepared, or like the singaporeans say, be kiasu a bit.

i guess eating ice cream is good too, right? i already started coughing anyway, so it's not like it's a big deal. the company thinks it is though, because they think it's appropriate to reward us for getting through the pay freeze and retrenchment and zero OT through this difficult economic downturn by giving us ice creams.

yes ice cream. 2 cones of it. they even elected representatives from each department to decide whether their respective departments will get cones or scoops of ice creams. when other companies get bonuses or even outside outings, we get 2 cones of ice creams, and it's not even haagen daas, or one of those premium brand. i mean, what kind of brand is dairy farm??

well i guess at the very least, all those middle age men and women could flashback their childhood memory, to the excitement when their kindergarten class teacher treated the whole class ice creams to get them to cheer up. after all, this is what it's all about, the company tryring to cheer you up for 2 seconds despite all the shortcomings.

so, good job company x, keep it up! i almost forgot my pay is stagnant already.

the newspaper can say what they want, like today's headline proclaims that singapore is already out of recession, but for me, until we are feeling the benefits, it's all just empty words.

people say, until you walk the talk, you're just talking cock. if the company is doing better, then how come i still cannot claim medical expenses? if i go to work and spread H1N1 to the whole department then it's really not my problem.

when our friends will get married is also not my problem. well most of the times, but when your good friend suddenly announced he's getting married in few months time, it does send shock waves to the richter scale. i felt just like susan meyer suddenly being told that her daughter is pregnant by her neighbour lynette scavo in season 6.

the only difference is, nobody is in life support machine here. well, except PAS that just got whacked left and right after the malaysian state bagan pinang by-election last sunday. they deserved it though. my point is, what's up with endless islamic or secular state, canning or not canning, drinking or not drinking, covered up or not covered up debates? can we just concentrate on how to improve the quality of life of common folks?

but what do i know? i'm just a stagnant-paid employee of a company that rewards ice creams, with drippy nose and unstoppable coughing, and kept in the dark when his best friend was getting married.

quo vadis, ed??


...ed

three-some nines

this morning my friend wrote on his facebook status that today's date is 09/09/09. at that particular moment i glanced at the clock and it was about 2 minutes more before 09:09:09am on this wednesday morning.

wow, isn't that cool? 09/09/09 09:09:09.

i heard that lots of couples in singapore registered for marriage on this very day. for the chinese, number 9 signifies longevity, so it's such an auspicious date to hold the holy matrimony.

plus, it will look good in the invitation card and easy to remember the anniversary too.

but that's as far as it gets. if you and your spouse are like cats and dogs, or like UMNO and PAS, barring machine-guns and C4 after every arguments, bunch of nines isn't gonna help anything at all. for all you know, you'll be dialing 999 instead in no time.

still, people like eventful numbers like this.

it's too bad my father isn't chinese. because if he was, i could just ask him to wait till the next auspicious date 09/09/99 for me to get married since I have already missed this one. that's another 90 years! plenty of time to stall him.

but apparently he's not. i bet he doesn't even realized today's date, unless there is a planned opposition party rally in the city or something. that's why the last time i met him, he said if i join my brother who's going to get married in june next year and make it a double wedding, he could upgrade the celebration hall package.

huh? i mean, excuse me. like i could just go to the shopping mall and buy a wife at will.

well, i could. there are plenty of organizations that provide brides from outerspace, but will i? this is so like that movie i watched about a rich dad left his son a fortune before he died, but only if the son finds himself a wife in a month time, or else he could be left with nothing.

me? i don't even get any incentive like that. plus, what should i say to her? 'let's get married so we could upgrade the caterers and perhaps add in 2 more dishes?'.

yeah that's romantic.

so for me, with zero plan to get married on this day, or even in june next year, today isn't gonna be anything different. sky stays blue, roses stay red and teoh beng hock death still remains a mystery. in fact, today so far is as uneventful as it can be, nobody paraded with any severed animal head or anything, and my attempt to work today has been F9. failed.

99 everyone.




...ed

Moo-points extravaganza

i woke up last night before dawn to have a quick bite.

(you see, it's the fasting month now, time when we refrain ourselves from food and all things evil (read : sex) from dawn till dusk. so this pre-dawn meal is when you have your last meal to prevent you from feeling regret when your stomach grumbles the next day)

i took out the toaster, butter and jam (somehow i was craving for hot kaya toasts) and then the bread and.. realized the bread has already spotted green fungus.

eeekk...

so there went my dream meal. gone with the fungus down the rubbish chute.

so now i'm already hungry at 10am in the morning. what a bummer.

the good thing is, today seems like a free day for me too. i've been free since.. quite awhile actually. i'm handling this customer return parts analysis, and by the look of it, our customers are all satisfied. .

well, either that or our parts screw their system so bad that they don't know what's the source of the screwing-up.

not that i'm complaining. hey, I'm typing this, and the money keeps rolling in at the end of the month. only that this stalling around makes the time goes slow. i've already spammed my facebook account with status (err.. is there a plural for status?? statusses??) and comments, digged up all the malaysian insider news and spread the hate... and it's only just noon.

but i'm sure there are ways to amuse myself. for example, like reading the reasons why malaysian home minister hishamudin defended the cow-head stomping and spitting incidents last friday.

i'm telling you, does he think malaysians are stupid? ok maybe we are not, but reading these kind of news makes our IQ drop a few notches. youtube already showed that the recent temple relocation protesters in shah alam kicked and spat the cow-head, and yet he said they did not know where the cow-head came from.

please lah. the cow head dropped from the sky, is it? and they just happened to accidentally stepped on it?

he also said the police did not interfere the illegal gathering because apparently the bloody death threat they shouted was peaceful, and 50 people is a small number to cause security concern anyway.

yeah right. that's why they arrested the opposition candle light vigil gathering held in selangor months back. i mean, candles could cause fire, right? even if it's being done by less than 20 people. also it apparently must be a national security concern too if you wear black and flock together go drink coffee (err.. because then those people can hide behind the shades of the black coffee and avoid paying?? i dunno.. ask the police who arrested them).

i'm concerned actually. the other day i listened to the news when they interviewed local people there on why they objected to the temple in their vicinity. they said their's is a muslim majority area, so the temple should not be built there. plus, then the temple will be next to the playground, and the parents will prevent their children from using the playground if the temple is next to it.

you see, we cringed when minority muslims were harrassed elsewhere, but when they are the majority, they have to come out with ridiculuous reasons like this to deny the minority religion their rights. ok if we follow that logic, there won't be any mosque built in sabah and sarawak. and what's the problem with playground next to the temple? afraid the kids will embrace hinduism if they see the tnmple everyday??

i have no more say. last night, another ruling party parliament member Mukhriz said the police should not arrest those illegal cow-head-stomping protesters so that to avoid unrest. ok so charging someone of their wrongdoings can create unrest.

i rest my case. all these should just go down the rubbish chute, just like my fungus-spotted bread.


...ed

all that has (not) gone bonkers

i'm having headache from laying on the bed too much. it's saturday noon, and i really don't feel like doing anything else. you know, i had plan to wash my car since i saw the rims were all dirty and yellow when we exhanged the punctured tyre. ok not we, but this guy from nissan emergency line that came for my rescue when i found out my front wheel went punctured in orchard's far east plaza carpark around friday midnight, in what was a fitting ending to my harry potter half blood prince night out.

but now i just don't feel like washing anything. hey it's weekend, why do i need to do something that i don't feel like it? i already have the whole weekdays for that.

by the way, is it me or the weeks have gone by so fast nowadays? one minute it's saturday and before i know it, it's already another saturday and i'm delaying the car wash plan to yet another week. it's horrifying. it's like some magical being somewhere is fast forwarding the time.

people said time flies when you're having fun, which i think should be true because if so, we don't put convict in prison if 10 years prisonment feels like 10 minutes. especially not when you get beaten and forced to eat faeces in the cell as were revealed during the recent singapore courtroom trial.

well you see, at least people here got fair hearings and their grieves answered, unlike in malaysia where you could get killed in the most suspicious ways but yet nobody cares when the killers are part of the government body.

nah i'm not gonna venture much on that here now. apparently if you have decided which side of the story you want to believe, there's little other people could do to change your mind. it's like the religion. each people believe wholeheartedly in their religion, thinking others are plain wrong, when the fact is there should be a greater truth out there and yours might or might not be it.

what i'm saying is, we should open our minds and see sense. when you think we should leave that MACC murder case solely to the police investigation when we all know police and the MACC are under one umbrella, you're obviously deluded in your own perfect little world.

the best thing is, i'm not in that country, and if that young ex-model kelantanese princess could escape her allegedly abusive prince husband only when they were in singapore with all those bodyguards, god knows we are in safe hands here. it's such a black period there back home, sometimes you just wish you wake up one day and it's already the 13th general election when we have the chance once more to make things right. which mind you, at the rate the weeks seem to blast past by me nowadays, shan't be too long.

being away from home, my year has been particularly not too bad if i'm being honest. just yesterday, we booked our way to boracay island in the phillipines for a holiday in november. i heard it's a lovely paradise beach there that is one of the top beaches in the world. how promising is that? i'm so excited. and not that i have nothing to look forward too until november. i have yogyakarta borobudur trip in 2 weeks time, and then macau and hong kong trip after my hari raya break. all i got to say is, so far i've been truly blessed.

i mean, who cares if my rims are all dirty and yellow?



...ed

the thorny affair

i'm under informal quarantine now. ok, the actual words from the doctor were for me to rest at home and recuperate, which i then translated as, to do intensive facebooking and catching up with my blog.

so let me backtrack a little bit.

i want to write about the durian farm visit a couple of weeks back.

you'd think what's so special about going to some far far away places just to eat some durians, right? well let me tell you something about durian.

durian eaters are like cult members. they could go all extreme. they could splurge their money on the expensive clones, they find ways to smuggle the pungent fruit where its forbidden and for our case, travel hundred of miles just to hunt for it.

one more thing.. it's usually worth it.

i found this particular forum in the internet discussing about good durian farm places. it's not hard, you just google 'malaysia good durian farm' and everything pops out in a list, waiting to get laid.

the most prominent one from the conversations is the one in segamat. now, that sleepy town of segamat in malaysia's southern state of johore is well known for its durians. which makes me wonder actually, because it's not like segamat has different climate than the rest of the country. still, if you sell durian and you claim they're from segamat, you could bring the price up the sky.

ok so i set up my GPS that early morning and left north. the trick is, to cross the singapore-malaysian border before 7am because that's when the traffic normally starts to get congested. picked up some friends in johore baharu and then we convoyed towards the malaysian north-south highway.

tangkak town, heard that its well known for its textile

we took the tangkak exit, about 200km north from the singapore border. after the toll, we turned right, and travel about 30km more passing through tangkak town, then some palm oil plantation and sugar cane farm until we see a signboard to kg teratai. we took the right junction right and travelled about 3km deep and voila, we were there!

the target destination, kg teratai durian farm

the place is actually a just small shelter that have lots of durians just brought over from the trees. we paid RM22 and we could eat all that we want the whole day! well, theoretically, because normally you'd stop after an hour or two because they are very filling, and you'd be burnt hot by then haha... durian will make your body hot after consuming.

there are lots of durian types. normal village durian is the common, cheaper ones with thin meat and big seeds inside. the cloned durians like the D-series, XO and the most famous Mountain Cat King, have fleshier meat and smaller seeds. That's why they are more expensive, sometimes can reach about RM20 per kg.

those that we feasted on. there are yellow, bright orange and whitish...

for our eyes they might just look the same, green and thorny but there are ways to identify them. for instance, the mountain cat durian has distinct orange star at the bottom.

mountain cat durian, the most expensive clone

we had fun there. although the mountain cat durian was not included in the eat-all-you-can durian buffet, they gave us one to sample, and that was good enough. i mean, the rest of them tasted divine too. as the durians just fall off the trees the night before, the fleshy meat inside has not turn mushy.

opening the durian, and me fooling around haha


i plan to go there again next year.



...ed

the way he makes me feel

i'm overly efficient today. it's just 3pm and i'm proud to say i've finished my work. not only my work, but my colleague's work too. she's down with fever today.

you know, getting fever today is a big deal. hearing people getting fever is just like hearing an interesting gossip that is worth to be passed around.

because having fever could mean getting the recent H1N1 virus outbreak, and being the first in our company will really make you popular. i bet people would even get jealous, because when else could you rest at home with nobody questioning your mc?

ok even if we do get H1N1, what's the big deal anyway? nobody dies yet, and none even seriously ill. thus, that 7 days quarantine really sounds like a good deal.

so anyway, my fellow colleague is away. actually my boss is away too. he is down with flu. you see, that just showed that i don't mingle with my boss much. either he only concentrates on someone doing more important stuff (read : that colleague of mine that got fever) or he trust me running my own show.

i prefer to think it's the latter. because gosh, i must be on fire since yesterday night when i stayed back late after work despite no overtime pay and no aircond. it really has been awhile since i lend myself top charity like this.

partly i guess because of michael jackson. he might have passed away unexpectedly last week but as far as i'm concern, or most of everybody else's concern for that matter, he's more alive now than ever.

i mean, when else could you have michael jackson's songs and performances played over and over again in pc, mp3 and youtube? i caught few of my collagues watching the history world tour on youtube during lunch break, and i already have michael's songs in rotating list in my mp3 while doing my lab analysis.

something in his songs could lift your spirit up. seriously, give it a listen. instead of feeling down and sleepy after lunch, i got all energetic in the lab humming man in the mirror while checking the leakage current characteristic. even when i'm walking with the way you make me feel plucked in my ears, it's hard not make a little skip or a prompt cool slide down the floor when nobody's looking.

before i know it, my job is done, and my colleague's job is done too. my hands must be unusually fast to keep with smooth criminal's beat. that's what music could do to you. have you seen those filipino prisoners that really got in sync dancing to the thriller? rapers and murderers got hand in hand trying to terrorize this poor lil' man-girl...

ok i still got some time left. maybe i'll go around checking if there's anybody else's jobs lying around to do. i'm already ready to play don't stop till you get enough...



...ed

if today was your last day

wow i almost forgot my password for this site. i entered my facebook password instead, or was it my twitter password?

it's hard nowadays to remember each and every password i have. of course it would be easier to use the same password for all, but some websites tried to be more intelligent than the others by giving so much password-making restrictions.

i mean, duh.. it's not like i have any earth-shattering secrets that hackers feel the need to hack my passwords.

but i guess, being paranoid is a way of life nowadays. we look at unattended bags and think it belongs to some terrorists. people sneeze and we thought he has H1N1. i got a page from an unknown number in the office and i thought it was from HR.

you'd think what's so scary about getting a page from HR, right? it normally not, but that time i received it in a brink of the company implementing the RIF, or reduction-in-force. by the way,this must be the work of some think-tanks that thought replacing the word 'retrenchment' with some abbreviated unknown word will make the impact less devastating to the common ears.

''company XXX will implement RIF' certainly sounds better than 'company XXX will implement retrenchment' in the news. but for us that potentially affected, who are they kidding?

ok so i got that unknown page, asking me if i'm inside the plant, and if i do, i need to call a certain certain numbers. you know, at that moment, with every heartbeat, i was wondering, oh gosh oh gosh this could be from the HR telling me that i'm RIF-ed.

it turned out a page from another department about some work stuff. what a momentary relief. even when my boss put my fellow colleagues in the mail cc list when he replied me making me think that he was laying some groundworks for people to take over me. paranoid? i do think so.

so you see, that was why i was away for a while from the blogsphere. do you think i will blog when my rice bowl is in jeopardy? it's so much easier to just put vague status updates in facebook that only relevant people that know what's going on can relate too. at least you'd get some replies and know it wasn't totally all inside your head.

in the end, i survived the RIF.

or did i? define survive anyway. because when i think about it, i would get quite a huge payout if i were to (ok i still need to touch wood here) be affected. think about what i could do with all the money that could easily last me for a year. i could travel the world and reflect the reasons of my existance among other things. because let's be honest, when god created mankind, it's not purposely so they could work their asses off in some multi-national company, right? plus, what's good staying in the company that needs to do RIF anyway? maybe survive means the ability to get out sooner with a huge payouts.

instead, now the people who made it through are spoilt. how could they ever tender resignation anymore after this? there will be no payouts whatsoever. you leave empty-handed to a new place. doesn't sound attractive, huh?

but that's life. we go through it in phases. one time you're an active blogger, then you converted to a full-time facebooker and even forgot your blogger password. one time you're living a life that felt so stable, but then things happened and now you're not even sure if you could take another storm unscathed.

i guess, that's what makes us survivors. the dinasours probably couldn't handle all this changes when they were alive, so that's why they got extinct. you know, except those in the museums at night and land of the lost.

tonight, we are going to the KTV in town as a farewell gesture to this friend of us who got affected by the RIF. now that we all live in the world phase which is the aftermath of michael jackson's sudden death this morning, we are probably ended up doing an MJ tribute because truly, as recent events higlighted, nothing ever remains the same.


...ed

whyyawannabringmedown

i learned a new word today. swine, as in the swine flu. when i first heard it, i thought it sounded country, you know, just like 'wayne'. but apparently it refers to 'pig', which then makes it, well.. not so nice a word anymore.

lucky i haven't resorted to naming my character in my xbox game 'swine adams' or something like that yet...

so swine flu is just pig flu. pig flu on human that swept across mexico all the way to europe and no, i'm not talking about any episode of heroes here. scary huh? that just shows how vulnerable we are. one pandemic comes out of nowhere and humankind would be swept clean, no matter how many nuclear warheads you have...

those virus might be all the way across the globe from us here in south-east asia, but that doesn't mean we are safe. especially since last week, there are fierce rumours that our company is planning to sweep part of her employees clean, a head count cut.

so we are totally far from safe here. if we were in american idol, we are those bottom-2 vote-getters standing waiting for ryan seacrest to say, 'american voted... you are...' then briskly go to commercial break. in fact, maybe we are even in a worse condition. i mean, for swine flu, at least you could wear mask, swallow all the tamiflu you've got and stay safe, but for us here, nothing could shield us from that probable pink letter verdict. nothing.

it's as if you've got a cancer, and the doctor refused to tell you if you would survive or how long more before you die. plain vain, right? i say, let it over with already but no, they are gonna squeeze every ounce of your efforts first, and then shoo you off with pathetic compensation package.

so at the moment, we live with this uncertainty. every now and then i would forget this dilemma when my hands are busy typing those numerous work reports while my headphones blasting lady gaga's poker face over and over again, but when i passed by every corners every cubicles there would be whispers speculating about this, making me all depressed again.

i wonder, so what's their evil attitude?




...ed

hoe down throwdown

there is a dog lazying on the grass just beside the road that i take every morning to enter the highway. it's black and shaggy, and i call him, ..well, shaggy. it's at that part of the ground in between major roads, so nobody comes and disturbs. so every morning i will see shaggy curling to sleep, or just on lying his tummy watching the cars pass by. it kind of starts my day...

nowadays, i just wish that i were that dog. because there is definitely no time for me to laze around and enjoy the surroundings anymore at work. the workload is just crazy. when you have to plan to walk by the canteen on the way to the lab so that you can grab some bread and eat it during that 5 minutes walking journey, you're not exactly having a walk in the park working time.

but i'm not complaining. at this recession time, i'm just blessed to have some work to do. god knows how many people out there willing to do anything to just make ends meet. anything, you know, other than being a cleaner, or a maid in singapore which i don't understand why. the point is, job is precious.

it just means that i'm always operating on low battery mode at the end of the day. i feel just like a soldier who has just survived a battle, and have to get ready for another battle the next day. it's physically draining, which is why i no longer do occasional gym at night anymore. should be fine, because with all the walking up and down the lab, i bet i clock in enough miles to stay fit.

it's mentally draining too. i can't stress this enough, but having some peace and quiet after the long working day, is totally a bless. you would understand after having a pager that beeps and a desk phone that rings all day long, knowing you'd be interrogated for data each and every time you answer them. that is why i find solace in my xbox top spin 3 and facebook mob war because they don't demand anything from me, and the fact that i could just shut them off whenever i want.

so what makes my day on this sunday night, on the brink of monday blue (which to be frank, doesn't feel much like a monday blue to me because every single working day is a monday for me nowadays. in fact, i worry more about nadal's performance in barcelone open tonight) is that i'm going for a vacation this thursday.

yeah baby, vacation! it's a good friday holiday this friday (duh!) and we're going to take a night train the night (double duh!) before to kelantan the northern state of malaysia. then we are going to proceed to perhentian island the next day to live and breath as islanders till the middle of the next week.

even better? there would be no pager and no phone for me there. even if the world stops spinning, then be it. i'm sure the president won't take calls either on his vacation because the vice president takes charge. you know, unless the aliens come and invade the earth or something...

i just feel that i deserve it. with continuous 12 hours a day work with no overtime pay, and no aircond past 7 at night, surely i'm due for a short break. ok, maybe i just came back from bali a few weeks back, and the labuan trip a few weeks before that but those were short trips, so they don't count.

this time round, i bet shaggy is gonna miss me. not that i think it notices me all these time, but again, i bet it's hard to notice things when you're that relaxed anyway. i will know in a few days time.





...ed

all i ever wanted

you know, i tried hard to treat today just like any other day.

..because for all we know, today is indeed just like any other day. nothing significant, just another page in the calender. come tomorrow, i'm sure nobody's gonna even remember what's going on today.

unless, you know, if japan really shoots down that north korea's satellite, or abdullah, uppss.. tun abdullah badawi suddenly decided not to pass down his job to najib tun razak.

man.. imagine the chaos.. ppl would be talking about 3 April for years.. just like 9-11 has become.

however, chances are, nothing of those are gonna happen tomorrow. why should they? nothing fascinating happened in the world anymore nowadays since everybody is busy facing the recession.

3 April is gonna come and go, and let's face it, even if they skip a day and let the date be 4 April tomorrow, nobody's gonna even notice.

but still, i couldn't help it. by right, i should just do my routine weekdays night - play mobwar, facebooking, check the latest tennis score, catch the latest episode of lost, then sleep while watching friends.

except, everything i do tonight i feel like there's significance to it to my one year from now. like just now, i even made my bed, and tidied up my room a little bit because i was afraid if i left them all messy by the time the clock striked 12, they would be messy all year long. i threw away the garbage and also opened my windows up wide to let all the good wind inside. even my underwear i chose a bright red coloured one.

i never think myself as superstitious. ok sometimes when i watched tennis live on tv i felt that my sitting position could affect the outcome, or everytime when i blow the birthday cake candles, i really thought my wish would come true but i'm sure those are the only ones. full stop.

the fact is, i'm really emotional facing this day. i know ultimately age are just numbers but people judge you by that number. i mean, let's say you look for a job, wouldn't it make a difference if you are 25 vs 35? or even 45? it really affects your chance on landing the job, isn't it? .. and people say age are just numbers.

the truth is, i'm pretty comfortable at where i am now. and when i'm comfortable, i wouldn't want to leap out from my comfort zone. especially when the zone is probably moving towards the natural path of life.

they said, 4 things we cannot avoid in this life - birth, sickness, old and death. and i'm probably already more than halfway through there. if i'm the petrol meter inside cars, i couldn't even get through singapore custom to get to malaysia without being fined.

there, i mentioned the word 'fined' in my first blog after 3 April. you'd think i won't freak out...

anyway, i just wanna state down that for another year, i wish to be more prosper, happier, healthier, and blessed.

amen.

.. and now blow the candles...




...ed

strip party, no. STRIPE party

i have a friend in the office. his hobby is to participate in contests, you know, those in magazines, brochures, radios, etc etc... and you know what? HE ALWAYS WIN. i'm not kidding! even in those lucky draws, he always win. it's like life's one big wonder, the one that mulder and scully tend to end up investigating...

he's sweet though, he always forwarded us the contests details and even wrote up the answers for us but when the result comes, he still wins. to which i'm not complaining. i won sometimes too, but that's really once in a blue moon kinda thing...

last week, he forwarded us this nokia stripe party invitation details for the launch of their new 5800 handphone. you wear anything with stripes and you are entitled for the lucky draws.. 58 lucky numbers can buy the SGD700+ phone with just 58 cents, and another 58 numbers to get SGD258-off voucher for the phone.

58 cents!

that's just ridiculous.. i mean, that's cheaper than one piece of roti prata, right?

so the party was held in zouk's car park last friday, starting at 10pm. we wore stripe shirts to work and then started queuing for the numbers from about 830pm.

by 9pm we were in.

and my number was 20313.

hmm.. 313? that doesn't look like a lucky number...

anyway, while waiting, we signed up for nokia online music account. not that we really wanted the account but actually to get the free t-shirt. hahaha!! we saw the crews walking around in that nokia music t-shirt and we thought they really look nice.

i got my t-shirt just on time when all american rejects started to play their music on the temporary stage just above where we signed up for the online music account.

yeah that's right. ALL AMERICAN REJECTS!!

can you believe that? when i first read the itenerary for this stripe party, i couldn't believe they would have all-american rejects the band. first, they are such an international artist. their song 'gives you hell' is currently at no-4 on the american billboard top 100 chart. then, this party is held not inside zouk, but zouk's CARPARK!

and i must say, it was not even a nice carpark too. the surface was stony, uneven and rough, no proper borders, and there were even some constructions going on just beside it.

in short, the place WAS UGLY.

but still, there they were, just few metres away from me singing their hit songs. it was surreal, but i was not like those teenage girls who went ga-ga. at most, i just shook my butt once in awhile whilst maintaining my cool hahahaha... to be frank, i had no idea how the members of this band looked like until last friday. i knew their main songs though..

all-american rejects playing on the stage

so in the end i didn't win the lucky draw.

not surprising. i didn't put much hope anyway. so i didn't manage to buy that latest cool touch-screen phone for 58 cents. big deal. i could do a lot more with that 58 cents that i saved.

...like, buying sticks and pike those who won that night.

the night was not totally lost though, i gotta see all-american rejects and their live music, i got cool free nokia music t-shirt, many many bottles of nokia water (which tasted funny but hey, they were free), and managed good gossips with my friends..

oh yeah, my other 3 friends didn't win anything either.

except this friend that i mentioned earlier that always win.

he DID WIN that night, the SGD258 voucher.




...ed

racha-yai giant leap underwater

Phuket vacation : Prequel

WE ended up taking a stroll along patong beach during sunset. this may sound romantic but our actual purpose, well, at least my friend's actual purpose was to ask the owners of the various boats along the beach if we could hire a boat to nearby islands. me? i was just tagging along.

it turned out, the boats were not very cheap. man, these people are bunch of blood-suckers, aren't they? blame us for competing with those euro-paying tourists.

there were still people jet-skiing and para-gliding at the beach. i guess it gives them a different experience doing those in that dim lit redish sky. more sentimental perhaps?

patong beach goes all golden at sunset

one thing about the westerners is they are very easy to strike conversation with. plus, they are on holiday here, so everybody is in a good mood.

this may sound silly but i found this similar like when i was in las vegas, in united states. both places are full of tourists so you get this party vibe all over. everybody is vacationing, you don't see locals hurrying up to work or doing daily routine chores. it feels just like disneyland, minus the rides and of course, mickey mouse.

one of them ended up talking to us while we strolled on the beach. he's an iranian enjoying the freedom in thailand. ok maybe he's not a westerner but still very chatty. then my friend somehow joined some australian guys playing takraw. i didn't play as i suck at takraw and didn't want to make a fool of myself in front of strangers. they said they would be in phuket for another 3 weeks. now that's what i call life. and we have to be back home in.. (what?) few more days...

ok let's not think about that just yet.


Phuket vacation : Part 2
o1 Feb '09


it was 6 months ago when i got my diving license, and this was my first dive apart from my diving teacher. so naturally, when i got my tank strapped behind my back and a big blue sea with god-knows-what's-undernearth just one big giant leap away, i got a bit of adrenaline flowing in a negative way.

me doing the giant leap while going 'oh god oh god oh god...'

that was why when the mask on my face started leaking in water again and again, i got panicked and surfaced up barely 5m down. i know this is a big violation in my diving class but to my defense, this was a case of a defective gear. you don't fail a driving test student just because the tyre got punctured half way, do you?

a change of mask later, i started descending again and slowly my heartbeat frequency returned to normal. all the excitement of exploring underwater world came rushing back in. my dive master, holger, led me and my friend while taking our photos and videos along the way. i think that was one of a few time when i didn't really care how i would look inside the photos because with a diving gear, you could do lunges and still look cool...

do we look cool? haha.. ok the fishes definitely are..

other than those butterfly fishes, we got to see a giant morray eel lurking from between the rocks (my friend got a photo with it. damn!) and there was also this bearded scorpionfish that the dive master quickly signalled dangerous (he meant don't go near or you'd cry all the trip back bearing the pain).

the other good thing about this diving trip was, the boat ride itself. it was a speed boat and they even had this cook that prepared us omellette for breakfast. the crepe she made tasted like heaven especially when i ate it at the opened boat deck after the dive. i remember thinking, god, this is what holidays should be like, and then, have i said this more than once already during this trip?

me and my dive master, holger from germany on the right. he's such a nice guy

australian open tennis final between rafael nadal and roger federer just started when i reached my hotel room that late afternoon. i was all tired from the whole day at sea so i watched the match from my bed but all the suspense was killing me. i have used all my adrenalin for today so i figured i should watch an hour later if nadal is leading the score. i decided to go out for a massage instead.

ok it turned out i took 2 massages in a row. can you blame me?



...ed

it ain't over till the fat lady sings

a week ago, elizabeth wong won't ring any bell inside my head, or any bell inside most of street malaysians' head.

but today, she is like a celebrity. you can go around and say, hey what's up with elizabeth wong?, and people know what you mean.

well at least, people in my office where i had actually given it a try :)

she even has this group supporting her in facebook and that says a lot. this morning, she was the face that greeted me from the front page of singapore's newspaper that i picked up from underneath my main door.

ok maybe i'm not totally impressed by that. news are lame here in singapore. barely anything happened in this country, making reading the newspaper here is like reading the textbook. boring.

plus, if they have 100 news, 99 of them is about the economy and how bad is it now. i mean, what's up with that? that's why people gets so phobia of spending here, pushing the economy further down south.

no wonder the newspaper guys have to go an extra mile to get juicy news from across the causeway.

ok back to elizabeth wong. i just want to say that i support her.

so her nude sleeping photo were exposed through e-mails and mms by her ex-boyfriend. big deal. yes, she would be embarrased but is that her fault? i think she has no reason to quit her post as selangor's state assemblywoman which she did yesterday.

the only problem is, she is a member of the opposition party in malaysia. so naturally she was under attack by the opposite party leaders.

they even made this case similar to that of their own branch party leader who was caught having sex in a hotel room some time ago. so they had pressured her to step down as well.

i say, how could it be the same? that guy is married. he was having sex with his mistress. hello, no matter how you look at it from the social norm point of view, that is just plain wrong.

elizabeth wong is a single lady. she was nude in her own bedroom and it's not like she was doing raunchy sex stuff for the camera. the photo was taken without her permission, and was distributed without her permission.

if you asked me, this smells thick of conspriracy to discredit her and her party.

i mean, how come nobody points finger to her ex-boyfriend whom i heard is a malay? if he is indeed a muslim, surely he broke the islamic syariah court law by being with a non-married woman and thus, could get himself in all sorts of complication. what's the merit of him exposing those photos then? either he is that stupid or he has other unknown benefits...

anyway, we can only speculate for now. the reality is, this is another news, yet another colourful news in another week in malaysian political scene.

the other day, i was talking with my friends and we agreed that with all that has been happening in malaysia's leadership front, hollywood could come out with one hell of a movie.

i mean, malaysia's political world has all the ingredients of an entertaining show. it has lies, deceptions, conspiracy, street protests, people missing, kidnapped, ambushed.. there are explosions, murder, sodomy, sex scandal and now nude photo exposure.

my other friend said, those are too many plots for a movie. maybe more suitable for a tv series, you know, ala 'lost' or 'heroes'. each week there will be a new episode, a new twist in the storyline, and people will just have to keep guessing.

and i'm like all the malaysians, are currently guessing who would be the next casualty after elizabeth wong because make no mistake, things seem to be very very far from over...



...ed

long lost encounter

god. i'm coughing coughing coughing...

it's been a week, hasn't it? my flu is better now but god, my throat itches like crazy. it feels very dry too inside there, which is weird because i swallow my slivers everytime.

wait, do we normally swallow our slivers?

anyway, cough or no cough, i'm still going for my tennis later. i might give reason not to swim before because my body is still weak, but i'm never gonna give any reason for not playing tennis.

even if nadal has lost his final against muray last night. god that was so irritating. i'm never gonna open any tennis site now for a few weeks.

ok what else should i write? hmm.. i guess this is part of the year when suddenly things become uneventful. except the suicide of our colleague last week of course but even that, nobody was talking anything about it in the office. like it's one big taboo now in our company.

gosh, why does everybody wanna keep things hush-hush? just now when i was busy doing my weekly report, few of my colleagues behind me got together and started whispering to each other. as if i cared what they were talking about. for all i know maybe they were discussing about work.

ok maybe i did care a bit.

at least one of my long lost friend suddenly dropped me a message today at work, just when i thought facebook has became so boring with no new notification for a long time ~gosh my contacts/friends are all so passive and boring~.

wow we haven't been in touch for.. close to 9 years! can you imagine? actually come to think about it, we tend to move through different stages of our lives and unintentionally dropped our friends along the way. such a waste huh?

ok me going to grab dinner (as usual, milo and oat biscuts again...)



...ed

flour pills and red sugar syrup

i woke up this morning with a painful dry throat and a running nose i had difficulty to keep still. i even have cough now.

now what did the company doctor gave me few days ago? flour pills and red sugar syrup? for all i know, i AM NOT getting better.

so i didn't bother to drive 12 km to my company and wait half a day to see the same doctor and get the same medicine and be expected to work after that. my cubicle mate already closed his nose whenever he came near me, which i don't blame him because he has a daughter who gets all the illnesses available all the time.

i went to this neighbourhood family clinic instead. the doctor is always this young chinese guy who always look as if he just won the lottery. well, considering the money he could get after every patients visit, he probably is.

i got some medicines, and to my surprise, they even include in vitamin C capsules. errr.. i do take vitamin C at home so do i really need this? but i couldn't make myself to stop them to include that in. oh well, at least my company will reimburse half of the cost.

so i am on MC today. YESSS!!! a whole day to rest and recuperate to get well just in time for the weekend. whole day of bedtime rest and i must remind myself, NOT to write blogs.



...ed

how many days in a week?

i had conference call early morning. after japan hang up their phone, and i was all alone with my boss, my boss asked me..

if, touch wood, the company were to implement 4-days a week scheme, which day would i prefer to be off?

dang! there we have it. i knew it would come to this finally. i mean, our japanese branch and our italian branch already implemented a shorter week work-time as a pay cut measure to get through this economic downturn. what are the chances that singapore won't get hit too?

i asked my boss, if this is for real? but of course he said that nothing has been confirmed yet, that he was asking just in case.

yeah right. if he was asking just in case, he would be asking about all sorts of other stuff, wouldn't he? like what if the government refused to reduce the transportation fare, or what if i won that 1 billion toto. see? but he didn't.

recession sucks. i tell you, never have i been in this period so gloomy, that everyone that i met, sighed during work. a big, loud sigh that sounded like, god i wish i were somewhere else.

but you know what? there's no place left to go during this downturn. i heard 2 of my ex bosses are now still unemployed since the expansion plant was shut down. and there are many people in the interview fighting for that few empty spots.

so if i think about it, still having a job is still a bless. the point is, there's always people that fare worse than you. at least i can still go to work and bitch about the conference call or the bosses at night.




...ed

romance of the full moon

ok i figured i must write this now. it was getting harder to write nowadays. i don't know, maybe because it was due to the holiday season from christmas last year all the way to the recent chinese new year, making me abandoned all my routines. then even after that i had to go through holiday withdrawal phase, or HWP as i called it, so awhile more after that until i could come back to my senses.

..like now. so.. what's up with me nowadays? well nothing's up, all down. nothing much really. work has been neither here nor there. but still, i have to wake up early tomorrow to attend this conference call with japanese branch at 8am. deep in my heart, i wonder, what's the use? we always communicate through e-mail anyway, and it's not like we have big issues to discuss. plus, it's a dinasour-period device i'm handling as far as i'm concern. what the conference call means to me, is that i will miss my daily breakfast in office canteen.

but i guess, the boss has his own means. so i will have to be there before 8am. which means i have to try to sleep early tonight. which is kinda impossible since i have to write this, and then watch star wars the clone wars new episode after that. before i knew it, it will already be 6.30am and i have to curse and swear to wake up for work.

at least, my body seem to be holding fine after tennis just now. like every monday, it was a tennis day today. the only thing different was, one of our usual partner was hit by flu, so my another friend asked her husband to join our session. the thing is, he was so good at playing tennis. he striked the ball with ease and he could do spins and stuff. i was in total awe. if you must know, 2 things that could get me drop dead envious, are people who can play guitar, and people who can play tennis. i mean, good tennis. because i'm so hopeless in those things. for all i know, i have 2 left hands when it comes to playing guitar or tennis. so in the court just now, i was a bit stressed-out.

by the way, have you seen the moon tonight? while i was in the office today, my colleague told me that the moon tonight is going to be the biggest viewed in about 50 years. i searched for that news in yahoo news but couldn't find it. he must have got it from some chinese news websites. he surfs the chinese news a lot. it's amazing things that he knows from reading those chinese sites. anyway, i already happened to know that tonight is a full-moon night. so when we were at the tennis court just now, we got the chance to have full view of the moon. it looks like this.

of course i didn't take this while i was on the court. after my friends went back after the game, i went up my house, took my camera and my tripod, came down and shot this using my telephoto lense. some people walking by must have thought that i'm a moron who never seen the full moon before. because for one thing, it didn't look that big to me. it looked pretty normal, i'm sure i've seen the moon bigger before. it was very bright than usual though. still i couldn't see chang-er from the photo. maybe she was at the other side of the moon.

ok it's already almost 1am. did i tell you the clock always tick faster after midnight? one glance it's 12am, and another glance it will be close to 1am. and i haven't even start watching my clone wars.

so later guys...




...ed

sleepless in phuket

Phuket vacation : Part 1
30/31 Jan '09


WOW my body felt so wonderful. i just had this wonderful thai traditional body massage at C&N hotel and it costed only 200 baht. that's like, what? ..less than 10 singapore dollars for an hour of pure relaxation and joy.

i'm in phuket, thailand right now. we just landed a bit more than 24 hrs ago, and already life in singapore felt like in a galaxy far far away.

my first view of phuket from air asia plane window

we are staying at this 2 storey hotel called the beach safari hotel, just 50m from patong beach. the hotel is pretty ok, the service is quite good, the building is not shoddy and the amenities are what you could expect from a 3-star hotel, if not slightly better. plus, they have free internet access, provided you have your own laptop, even though the connection could be slow sometimes.

so i'm writing this while my buddies are outside enjoying the beach. i already went swimming in the beach this morning, and even fall asleep for awhile on that reclined plastic rest chair facing the sea, awakened by the slight havoc when the water line reached our chairs and i had to quickly grabbed our slippers before they got washed out into the sea.

it was very relaxing. with my rayban sunglass on, i could see people of all shapes, wearing swimming suits that mostly had to work extra hard to counter the gravity pulling effect. if not because of the tropic weather, i would think i was in some european cities judging from where most of the crowd was from.

patong beach: my view of a perfect vacation

there were people doing para-gliding, and man, i would love to try that. they would tie you up to the parachute and then pull you up using the speed boat. we checked the price and it costs 1000 baht, which should be about SGD40. not too bad, considering even cable skiing in east coast back home already costs SGD30 and that's crap. you just go round and round at the same place hoping some chicks walking pass by would gawp in awe admiring your skills. duh...

only that i just spend 3400 baht just now to book for a diving day trip tomorrow to racha yai island in south phuket, so i wouldn't want to spend more now just yet. so i chose to stay in my room when my friends asked me to join them.

plus, dinara safina was battling serena williams in australian open final on tv (they have sports cable here! o bless this hotel), so i was glued in front of the tv for awhile. until i realized serena was in annihilating mode, making the whole match unbearable to watch. there goes my hope of someone defeating serena. oh well, at least i could still hope for a nadal win tomorrow against federer in men's final.

before that, i have to wake up early morning tomorrow because they will pick us up from our hotel in patong tomorrow early morning, and then charter us to the harbour and then to the island for our 2 dives trip. i'm really excited, and a bit worried too because it was more than 6 months ago when i last did the diving. man, i better look out for some notes off the internet to refresh some of the skills. the good thing is, that island is supposedly suitable for beginners.

so i wouldn't want to venture the night that much tonight. last night, we roamed the bangla street until after midnight, which includes some UNO sessions somewhere on the street. i said somewhere because the streets transformed from relatively quite, innocent roads during daytime, to become lively, loud and bustling with activities streets at night. it was really like 2 different worlds out there.

innocent daytime bangla street's hell breaks lose and gets sleazy when the sun sets

you know what, now that i think about it, maybe it's a different beach now compared to this morning. maybe i'll go hit the beach for awhile, maybe check out the the sunset by the beach too. after all the day is still young, safina already lost and it's not like it costs any money.




...ed

OXpicious & PrOXperity

you know, in many years that i'm in singapore, every year i would still go to chinatown to submerge myself into the festive mood, and every time too i would act like a newly landed tourist who just discovered chinese.

so for this year, here are the photos...

this is the main CNY arch entrance. i felt like it was a bit toned down compared to last year. cost cutting? not very glittering and glamour but still, not too bad i guess. it's chinese new year, i'm sure they could do even with just a piece of red cloth.

unusual friend?

but to be fair, most of my friends are unusual anyway, in a unique way of course haha....

the final moment of that uncle...

..before he went home with his CNY goodies hahaha.. gotcha?

but seriously, pedestrians in singapore are notorious. they would ignore your car all the time. i guess they expect the government would grant them a new life if they got killed or something..

it's not the first time i see this kind of signboard but i'm still amused. like they say, low crime doesn't mean no crime and i applaud this effort.

malaysia should learn a thing or two on this. except, if they start to put this notice at every snatch theft spots, they would run out of boards in no time. in fact, i'm even convinced this board would get snatched off too.

tan in chinatown. i just love this photos, we have the main object, a curious auntie, some street shoppers, red lantern background to symbolized lunar new year celebration, old flat and an indian temple, all in one shot.

this one i took with the flash accidentally turned on. i think it captured the classic vibe of an old bustling chinatown.



they have performances in an outdoor stage in the heart of the shopping street, nearby the big temple. last time i watched a bit of opera here, and bunch of old hokkien songs performers. this year, there was some acrobatic show, which was truly impressive. i just sit by the stairs and blended in with the crowd, imagining myself in shanghai in 1950's.



this temple is called the buddha tooth relic temple. almost everytime i let someone know of the name, they would ask me, is buddha tooth really there? you know what? i don't know. what i know is, there are whole lots of activities inside there. i imagine if i look hard enough, maybe i could spot shaolin students too.. haha...



a repeat shot, this time to show the light up. hmm..

"HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR everybody!!!"



...ed

chronicles of the daily news

wow singapore headlines nowadays are full of recession news. they are the same news actually, only arranged in different words. the message are the same :- 'the economy screwed up, so save your ass suckerzzz...'

somehow singapore is the worst hit. i never heard any recession news from places like laos and cambodia. singapore news said that the GDP is expected to shrink by 2 to 5 percent this year. to tell you the truth, i don't even know what it actually means when people say negative growth. i mean, let's say we have negative growth over many years, do we eventually go back to stone age?

it's still not too bad for the singaporeans because the government will give them money through GST credits as announced in yesterday's 2009 budget, but what about us permanent residents? it's not like we pay less taxes and not contributing to the country at all. ok we don't don the army suits and walk around proudly as if we just came back from iraq but surely we play a large part in the country's growth too?

i heard some of the companies already opted a 4-days a week approach by making monday an off day so that they can cut the salary. drastic huh? but then, it's better they make an off day rather than cut your salary 20% and still expect you to work like normal. at least you can do something on that off day to make up for the money that you lost, you know, like working part-time, beg for money or something.

things are somehow grim in our company too. we can't help it. because when the first thing you read during the long morning breakfast in company cafeteria are grim news, it can hardly liven up your day, can't it? so most of us are just busy asking each other what to do during our 11-days long chinese new year break starting next week.

you see, we are forced to take days off in the next 2 weeks. they called it 'company slowdown'. in fact, many companies in our industry do the same thing. sounds bad? well, at least our shares don't dropped 69% in one day.

so i'll be flying off to kl on monday to spend a few days with my family. what better way to face this downturn than being in the company of our loved ones? when i called my father to tell him that i'm flying back home, he promptly asked, is everything ok? you're not affected by lay-offs or something in your company? you see, family is very understanding, although secretly i suspect that was because me coming back without any reason is just out of my norm.

and i'll be flying off to phuket after that for the remainder of the break. yaay!! ok i know it's recession and we are supposed to tightened our belt and eat boiled ubi kayu but what am i supposed to do during this unusual off days? stay rot at home? plus, everybody knows things are much cheaper in thailand due to the currency difference. i read in yahoo news that singapore is considering to lower its currency value to stay competitive in the market, so all the more i better spend my singapore dollar now when it's still worth a lot.

not only phuket, i actually have plans for april's good friday long weekend, and also may's labour day week. if it's inside my new year resolution to always plan ahead, i am so there and ready for 2010 resolutions. except it's not. i don't even remember what my resolutions for this year were. the only thing i know, things are not actually superb for my first few weeks in 2009.

but hey, everybody's not doing so great too. have you read the news?



...ed