no holds barred (not in batam)

wow now only i got some time to write.

it has been quite some hectic weeks for me. it's not my fault. when the atp tour arranged french open grand slam and wimbledon lawn tennis championship head to head with only few weeks aparts, they failed to see that for a tennis freak like me, that means many weeks glued in front of tv after work and abandoned my blog.

plus, i was away last weekend. a friend of mine who works in a travel agency in raffles place got us a SGD98 deal for 2D1N batam purajaya resort escapade. that was cheap! i mean, the boat alone normally costs around SGD50 including taxes, now plus the seaport transfers, hotel room and lunch/breakfast for that amount is a total rip.

the whole trip, well, was pretty fun. it's batam so it's not like there was anything to see, we just had fun enjoying cheap nice foods and bargain hunting. there were 8 of us so our movements were quite slow, i didn't even manage to go for night live band and body massage which was kind of a bummer...


the resort itself was pretty far from town. it's a nongsa part of the island, which is about 40 minutes drive to nagoya, or about rph80,000 per taxi. that works about sgd12, which is not much cheaper compared to singapore.



in fact, in you asked me, things in batam was not much cheaper either. i guess it all depends on how we bargain. it's one of those places where every single tourist has the word 'rip me off please' firmly planted on their forehead.

i mean, tell me why a kilogram of rambutan at the roadside stall costs rph15,000 (sgd2.25) when in singapore i could buy for sgd1.50? we had to fight to lower the price for some fake goods too which the quality is of course, very questionable. it got so tiring after awhile having to argue every single time so i ended up shopping in local supermarkets.


when we got back to singapore, where there was internet again, a free internet unlike blood-sucking sgd8/hour internet at the resort, i found out about the new sodomy claim against malaysian ex-deputy PM anwar ibrahim.

that was quite a news huh! apart from a particular attention-catching keyword, this evolves a high profile figure. i have no idea politics in malaysia could get that dirty. who in a sound mind would believe such a claim? what's sad is that despite knowing that, there is nothing us, the civillians, could do, especially with election 4 (light-)years away.

well at least there's an infinite 4-years wait, but in my situation at work right now, i don't even know when things could improve. i had a talk with my boss this morning. it was a performance review actually. apparently he took notice that i had been losing steam lately. which was surprising considering i did my work as normal despite no longer feeling interested. man, was it that obvious?

ok maybe i wasn't producing much results to begin with, but that was actually because i figured i had been loaded with unmeaningful tasks. while i was busy doing a supporting role from the backseat, my colleagues have been consistently leaping over me scoring issues by issues and be like the darling of the company. so when the evaluation time comes, tell me what's stopping me from getting a pariah pay?

oh well, we did the talks and let's see how things go. at this moment, i just want to gloat over rafael nadal's victory to wimbledon's quarter-final...



...ed