Empty largest mall

I went down to South China Mall (华南 mall）today. It's supposedly the world's largest shopping mall although they're still arguing about how to measure that. Was expecting to spend half a day there, but when I got there, I realised that most of the shop-space was still vacant. In fact, the only happening activity there, which also takes up a LOT of floor area, is the theme park. It's a pity the Imax theatre opens only in May. I contemplated watching a movie there but i ended up playing arcade.

I'm quite impressed with the SE phone camera as it allows me to stitch pictures together! Tested it with a picture of a part of my room. Check it out!

I'm a small small girl, in a big big world

The rooms in china are just getting bigger. It started with nanjing being big, then in suzhou they gave me a place with a cooking area. Now in dongguan, the room's so huge that they have a sitting area within the walk-in wardrobe. Since i'm only here for like 4 days, i hardly brought anything to fill the room here. I feel so tiny...

Caught norbit with fae yesterday. Stupid but funny. I also managed to send my eten for repairs finally and they called me today to ask if it dropped into water. Guess the watermarks are visible and will cost me a hundred bucks. Now if i fixed the phone, what should I do with 3 phones? Get another sim card for it?

Oh, I went for facial 2 days ago. Shocking! I know, even my family didn't believe me. Not just that, i even bought a couple of bottles of funny cream! Haven't used them yet, but i'll probably try to do that soon. When I figure out how to. Shouldn't be too tough huh?

Mahjong galore

When we came home from dinner, I was the first to open the house door and got a shock of my life. There were more than 20 relatives and friends in my house entertaining themselves! 8 of them opened up 2 tables of mahjong to play. The rest of the people were scattered around my living and dining room, watching some mahjong show on channel 8.

With mahjong, it is not always necessary for the hosts to be around...

Outlook

And so I bought the k800i after much consideration. I'm so glad that it's able to sync with my MS outlook without the need for an intermediary software. Hopefully this hp can last longer, although it costs about 20% of the price of my pda phone that dropped into the water..

Past couple of days were busy days. Went to work on thursday when I worked non-stop since i was late, except for the CNY company lunch that took 2 hours. Then yesterday, the die-hard changkat tkd team gathered in peiqi's house (just the 5 of us) to validate her cooking skills during lunch. It was great to catch up once again, though I had to work a couple of hours from peiqi's home too.

When we finally left, I went with elinn to buy kokok gei's food then picked tammy up to watch dreamgirls at cathay. Elinn's gf joined us for dinner, while joyce only came for the movie. Still, all of us went bernies after the movie despite the fact that i was in t-shirt, berms n slippers. I really didn't wanna go, but elinn didn't wanna hear of it. Sighz.. i must say that i'm glad i wore nice nike slippers and not the market flip flops.

Visited auntie jo's house in JB today with leng, lian n fiance. The traffic back to singapore was challenging but i still made it back in time for my major 人日family dinner. This year, it's held at man fu yuan @ hotel intercontinental. What should I wear? I know i won't be wearing my nike slippers although they look quite good... Ok, i'm late.

Bitching

Today, a whole troop of my younger sis's students came to my house on the pretext of 拜年. I bet it's to collect ang pows lor! But they're good for clearing some food that I don't like. Heh. Then I hear them bitching about the other teachers to my sis. And they even asked for Chivas, which my sis said "NO" instantly. Kids these days are really....... ok, i won't bitch on them.

I've been gobbling so much food this festive season. My next week in guangzhou n an entire March in HK isn't going to help my diet. I swear i'm going to eat very little from April onwards. That's going to be my CNY resolve. I must lose 5kg. If peiqi can do it, so can I. :) And talking about peiqi.. just a couple of nights ago, i went with dehua, ivan, peiqi n my entire family to catch the protege. Guess what? Peiqi brought a whole bag of CNY goodies there! She is so always making me fat so that she can look skinnier.

Now my latest thought is on which hp to get. I'm considering between k800i and nokia N series (or even the 7000 series). I still haven't gotten over my destroyed pda phone. I'll see if i can send it for repairs tomorrow, but i should be getting a new hp regardless by tomorrow. I hope.

一路顺风

I know I haven't been diligently updating my blog for the past 10 days. Told ya i was busy! Even on valentine's day, i had meetings from morning to night. At the end of it all, i was totally drained. On the night before my flight back to singapore, my clients had an interesting dialogue.

Shanghai client: Esther, 我们祝你一路顺风，干杯！
Suzhou client: 你这个人怎么那么没学问？她是坐飞机回去，怎么可以说一路顺风? 这是很不吉利的! 你要说一路平安嘛!

I then realised the meaning of the words. Yeah, the wind was meant for the ancient times when people sat ships across seas. Now everyone, please remember not to tell me 一路顺风 anymore when i'm flying out! :)

Oh yeah, wishing one and all a very happy chinese new year! :)

I can run but I can't hide

They really wanna play badminton. And i'm out of excuses. So today, we went to play badminton. It was quite fun after all! After that, we had steamboat (mild spicy) and lots of beer. Eating it the szechuan way. I'm really so proud of myself for being able to take spice now lor. Solid! I wanted to pay for the meal but in the end they still didn't let me. Sighz, I've got another day's budget excess again. Oh, the steamboat for the 4 of us (including all those bottles of beer) is less than 1 bowl of sharksfin lor...

Packing my bag now to prepare for nanjing tomorrow evening. Really wish that someone could share the suite with me. With my small body size, a suite is huge for me. Should I go to the gym? But I didn't bring my gym-wear.

There's this intern working in my client's place whom I think idolises me or something. I have completely no idea who she is but she came into my room and started talking to me. Asked me about career advice when i'm in a crisis myself! She told me her background and age, then put her face into her hands and said her age is a secret n yet she told me?? Finally managed to chase her out, but she reappeared again at 4pm and started talking to me! Fortunately, she only spoke for 3 minutes before my client appeared for a meeting. PHEW! For once, i really love meetings. Now, not only must i run from the client, i must also run from people in office. Run esther run!!

一臂之力 no more!

I've been so busy juggling between entertaining the client and doing my own stuffs. On monday, I found lots of problems here and guess what? That night, I had another round of dinner and drinks n this time, even karaoke! Yesterday, they wanted to have a game of badminton with me. I decided against it, fixed a couple of conference calls at nite n rejected their offer. It's quite stressful to keep having to think of excuses.

As everyone knows, the food budget for china is so high that you can use the sharksfin soup to rinse your mouth literally. Yet, I constantly blew the budget by trying all kinds of funny stuffs. Initially it was just the gold leaf sharksfin. Then it was the super high class sharksfin cooked in the palace style. Today, i had the 25-head abalone. I'm going to stop blowing budget and eat fried rice next time.

Now for the big news. I've removed my cast. It's not completely healed yet but it's really too cumbersome. I'm now doing DIY physiotherapy by forcing my left hand to do things even though it hurts big time. As it is, it looks rotten. So far, I've used it to write, eat, shower, etc. And being the clumsy me, i had to bang it against things like tables and chairs once in a while. OUCH!!!! Another example of me being clumsy is when i dropped my PDA hp into the water 2 nights ago. Damn! Now it's not working anymore. Fortunately, I carry my other nokia hp as an on-site backup all the time. Now it's going to make itself useful. Problem is, i didn't bring my hp charger. :(

I got my train tickets to nanjing already. Will be heading there this weekend to check out the massacre museum. I'll probably lose all my appetite after the visit, which is what i need.