Bye bye 2007!

Due to certain physical conditions, i decided to abandon my hot spring plans in beijing. Instead, on christmas eve, i went to church for service. At around 8+pm, i received a call. I was asked to go back to my client's place as there was an SOS situation. Damn. So I took the cab for another hour just to rush to client's place and stayed there till 1am. And that was how I celebrated my christmas. :(

After my leave got rejected, I went into another round of discussion with my group partner. Managed to negotiate for a week holidays instead so I'm off to osaka today! In fact, I only booked my air ticket like 2 days ago. So I had to finish up loads of work before I fly, so was working till past midnight for the past few days. Still, i have too much outstanding work that i'm doing the rare thing of bringing my laptop with me while on holiday.

Last night, I was dragged to the department's bowling session where i worked out my right palm so much that it's feeling really sore just by typing the blog. Ok, I'll be meeting my kyoto friend again since osaka and kyoto are like half an hour away by train. It's a pity that Mrs Wada will be busy this time, so I won't be able to meet up with her and her family. Anyway, i'm so overworked that i'm just so lethargic right now. Hopefully I can be recharged from this short break and kick off my 2008 with a big bang!

Christmas!!

Last friday, i had a christmas party at heng peng's house. Wanted to kick-off my resolution to abstain from alcohol but didn't succeed. Last saturday was shopping day. And i'm talking about clothes, not computers. The most unbelievable thing was that I initiated it. Simply because i was freezing my ass off in beijing and needed more clothes to fight the cold! So i went with cu after our dim sum brunch and spent so much money on cashmere stuffs. Even had to reject dinner appointments just for shopping.

Then on sunday, went to shandong AGAIN. As usual, i couldn't wait to get home, which i did on wednesday. Brought forward my plans, partially because i know my game was ready by then. Yeah, downloaded 7Gb of call of duty 4 and when i got back on wed, it was done! So i was fighting it out and finished it in record speed by yesterday evening! Of course i did work too.. but after finishing my game, i had to rush to vanessa's place for the christmas party n gift exchange. This time, it's with another group of friends. The cab driver who sent me to her place pissed me off by lying and said he didn't know the place as it was only his second day at work. I called his bluff very quickly and told him straight that i was going to find out from his cab company soon if it was really his second day at work.

Ok, back to the party. We really intended for it to be a christmas party, but the highlight of the night was... lust, caution... uncensored!! Hahaha.... it was so funny when the girls were requesting for rewinds of certain scenes, then pause at certain parts to confirm that everyone saw what everyone saw. Of course, we were all more interested in tony leung than the girl, especially since she didn't shave her arm-pit hair.

I really have to spend today working already. Cos of my game, i didn't do as much work as i should, plus tomorrow i'm going skiing. Then on monday morning, carol's booking the villa for us to have our personal open hot spring where we'll soak till tuesday. And tuesday night (i.e. christmas!!), i'm supposed to watch a musical with leona at the beijing grand theatre (aka the egg). Unfortunately, it's in russian with CHINESE subtitles, so we've called it off. Maybe we'll see some ballet performance where we don't have to struggle with CHINESE words.

Now to plan where to have my dinner on christmas night... :) Oh, and work.

No more alcohol

On friday, we had our annual dinner at the people's hall. Few people have the opportunity to even enter this hall that only government officials gather at. It's supposed to be a grand event but alas, the program coordinators did a terrible job. The food was badly chosen and the stage programs were disconnected with the floor. So what if they had paid a million bucks for the acrobatics? No one was really interested in that!

As usual, in such occassions, I can't turn down the alcohol invites. Fortunately, it was mostly red wine and not the 72% white wines like those drunk with Haier people. That night, I started throwing up in the middle of my sleep. Then i felt nauseous the whole time. Whatever I ate on Saturday, I threw up. I suspect my gastrics lining is gone and my gastrics attack me whenever I drink. After an entire day of resting, I slowly recovered today with minimal food. As such, I will make an early new year's resolution for myself. No more alcohol!! So I shall replace it with.. wang lao ji! That reminds me. Each time some singaporean guest leaves my house, they somehow steal TWO packets of wang lao ji from me. So now i'll need to stock up whenever someone comes "visit" me...

Small world?

After making a last-ditch effort to not go Qingdao which ended up fruitless, i made my way there on Sunday morning with yoyo since she happened to be staying with me in beijing. The project that I'm put in charge of is Haier. Guess what? My UTC IAD colleagues are also here to audit Haier! Apparently, UTC has got some JV with haier via carrier. And then, another surprise.. my ex-IAD colleague who went on to become a regional controller for Carrier is also in Qingdao becos of Haier! Oh man, guess how excited everyone was when we found this out on Monday evening? All of us met up (including yoyo of cos) for dinner with the Haier management before continuing with our IAD session of tea at shangri-la. It was just so bizarre!

Just when you think that the day of coincidence was over, we hopped onto the cab back to our hotel and realised that it was the THIRD time we sat in his cab within 2 days of being in qingdao already. And qingdao really has got a lot of cabs. What kind of chance is that??

Fools Rush In

Last week, I was tasked to give a training to the client (of course in Chinese) that had a group of more than 20 people. One of my sections was delegated to my staff, a very experienced senior. She had self-declared to have tremendous amount of knowledge in SAP. And almost every statement she made, I shook my head.. cos I realised that her concepts are all confused. But it's ok, cos I realised that the group of people were accepting everything she said like it's gospel. Sort of reminded me of the times in NTU when i had lectures. I'm sure that not everything the lecturers said (especially since they are NTU lecturers...) are correct. But you'll just believe that they are right anyway. And who's going to climb a mountain and prove the gradient formula wrong?


This week, i'm stuck in qingdao. This place is freaking chilly during winter cos the wind blows non-stop. Once again, i'm targetting to leave here earlier than planned. I mean, the place sucks, the weather sucks, the client sucks. I miss beijing so much!!