Home

I'm back home in Singapore. My grandma (the wife of the grandfather who passed away last November) passed away last week. I'm going to be home till this Sun and will just work out of the SG office on Friday. Am glad to be out of Cantoshithole for a while (albeit for the wrong reason) and get to see G and all my friends & family (plus Logan who seems to have gotten cuter dammit!). :) After that, I go back to cantoshithole for 1 1/2 weeks before coming back here (again!) for Teddy Geiger! Then I get to spend one more weekend here before I go back for a week before going to Seoul for a meeting/workshop. And after Seoul, back to HK for a day before heading to Singapore for Eunice's wedding.

I like it when I get to fly around like that. It makes life in cantoshithole, not so shitty.

And life is better in cantoshithole when I have company. Though company such as TWK, will make me very broke, very quickly.

It's so freaking warm! Am going to position myself in front of a blasting fan now and not move. Toodles.

My stupid lymph node...

is not getting any smaller! It's still big and swollen and I can feel the phlegm at the back of my throat, chokin me. I have finished two courses of anti-phlegm meds and it's not going away! Argh! So annoyed. My neck feels swollen! Eeks! I'm going to see another doc and hope for stronger meds. And trust me, I am drinking A LOT of water.

Wei Keng is here in Hong Kong and we have shopped up a storm over the weekend! I think the two of us should be forbidden to shop for the next 3 months. We laid out our purchases on the sofa bed and they took up the whole bed! I took a picture of our purchases on Saturday and will post that next time for you to drop your jaws at. We shopped somemore today too. But every purchase was worth it! We are truly happy bunnies.

I want to go and bathe and go to bed soon. I want to stab my lymph node so it would go away!

Lymph node

I went to the doctor's again this morning. I've actually gone on Tuesday as I had a sore throat then. Yesterday I found that the right side of my neck is swollen! I suspected it was just a swollen lymph node as that is not uncommon when one is down with the flu like I had been. But went to the doc's again just to be doubly sure and true enough, he confirmed it was just a swollen lymph node which should subside in 3-4 weeks time once my 'infection' is cured. And in the case that it doesn't subside, I'd have to make a return trip where they will stick a needle in it to drain out the lympathic fluid. THAT would be really nasty. Eeeks.

On another note, I am going back to Singapore next week. My maternal grandma passed away (mum's mum). I worked out with my boss for me to work out of Singapore for the rest of the week so I can spend next weekend in Singapore.

Wei Keng is on her way to Hong Kong for her break now. I will be taking the same flight back to SG on Monday with her. I hope this nasty yellow green phlegm in my throat clears by then. It's very annoying plus it makes my mouth feel furry in the morning. The meds make me twitch and cough syrup gives me heart palpitations. I don't like being sick.

Poseidon

My stupid caps lock key, 'Q' key and 'Tab' key is stuck! KNN! Super dulan... I spilled coffee on it last week and ever since it's been 'niam niam'. I've poured water on it and soaked it up, hoping to remove traces of it but to no avail. I can change keyboard with my IT dept but the one they have doesn't match the rest of my computer. I'm superficial - bite me.

I watched The Poseidon Adventure on VCD yesterday. The 1972 classic as some puts it. It's quite good and considering back in the 70s, there were no fancy schmancy special effects, it was still pretty gripping! But I can't help but feel familiarity while watching it - I think Sylvester Stallone's 'Daylight' ripped off tons of ideas from this movie.

Now I can't wait to watch the new swanky version of Poseidon. I think it opens in June in HK. BUT! Not before I watch X-Men III!

Detox

Oops, forgot to post yesterday. I was gonna to but got caught up watching Grey's Anatomy after Jolly came by my place with her husband to help me install The Sims 2 on my laptop. Yay - now I can entertain myself with the game. I used to absolutely love it - to the extent I'd be dying to go home from work so I can turn on the computer and manipulate The Sims' lives. This one is the new & improved version with more stuff. I just need the cheat code so my Sims will have loads of money to buy the best furniture and items for their house! If only this is the case for real life! Oh yeah, it can be done - it's probably called fraud.

I am also trying to embark on a 15 day detoxing plan. It comes in the form of 5 day plan and at the point when I bought it, it was a 'Buy 2 Get 1 Free' promo so I have 3 sets. THese are 30ml vials of strawberry flavoured stuff and I'm supposed to mix it with 1 litre of water and drink throughout the day. It's Day 4 now and I can't quite say I'm beginning to feel a wee bit detox-ed. Addy is also 'detoxing' and she got GNC 'Total Cleanse' programme and she said it made her erm move her bowels a lot! That's good! I want! I'm always paranoid about all that undigested or digested but not passed out stuff lurking in the depths of my colon.

*Burp* Just finished lunch which wasn't nice at all. Don't know why my colleagues like to order lunch from there. I'm sleepy now. Zzzzzz.....

Long Distance Dating

Alright - there's something quite weird going on these days. Myself & G inclusive, I now know a total of SIX long distance dating couples. That's almost like MORE than the 'normal' couples I know.

So I was walking to lunch with Michele and discussing this 'phenomenon' and how hard it is these days for couples to be in the same place. Ha, well of course that's an exaggeration. Michele broke up with her ex bf of 6 years when she moved back to HK and he to Manila to start up a business. She is now dating a American raised Singaporean who spends his weekdays working in Korea but gets to come back to HK every weekend. That, my dear, I told her, is HARDLY long distance dating. If I had the luxury of goin back to SG every weekend on company's expense, maybe I won't be quite as half arsed bored here.

Most recently, a friend 'fessed she is finally dating this guy who has fancied her for the longest time. She asked me for 'tips' - haha like I'm the pro! My two good sec sch friends, Addy & Yang, also have their beaus in KL & Shanghai respectively. They have been dating their respective fellas for 6 and 7 (?) years. Addy's V only moved to KL earlier this year and Yang's Dean has been in Shanghai for the past 2 - 3 years? In addition, there's also Carol whose boyfriend has been in Perth for the past dunnohowmany years pursuing his Masters and now PhD degree.

Gosh my brains are going mush coz I cannot remember what's the point i'm trying to make with this post - I'm just rambling as usual. Bloody long distance dating is a bitch I can tell you. It messes with your mind and as Addy likes to tell me to not 'hu si luan xiang'! Ha! Too bored lah. I'm going to watch Da Vinci Code tonight! Yay!

Durians

I ate durians! I bought them in the supermarket and they are shiok shiok shiok! Left a bit of a funky smell on my finger and at the back of my throat but shiok nonetheless.

Today after work, I was on the MTR with Erica as she wanted to go to CWB to buy a present for her brother. She was goin to buy a suitcase for him and I originally thought she was going alone and asked if I could come along! (I think buying luggage is fun!) But she was meeting her best friend and her boyfriend but she asked me to come along nonetheless and joined them for dinner. Even though her best friend & boyfriend didn't speak very much (they aren't comfortable speaking in English she says) it was refreshing to NOT go home straight after work. But that also meant I missed American Idol, Grey's Anatomy and The Apprentice.

Darn was gonna input a proper entry but G called and my train of thoughts disembarked somewhere. Erm, tmrw lah! It's almost 1am liao now. :P

Learning Cantoshitese

My dear readers,

I know most of you are concerned that I am showing signs of depression being stuck in cantoshithole and some of you even encourage me to just move back home (thanks for missing me hee hee)

Some of you asked me 'Why are you so resistant? Just learn Cantonese lah!"

To set the record straight - let me put it to you this way. Who says I am NOT 'learning' Cantonese? Take this into consideration, I spent TWENTY FUCKING FIVE years NOT speaking or knowing the dialect and then suddenly in a space of 9 months, I am expected to be a PRO? Cut me some fucking slack guys, I am partly resistant coz I hate the pressure of being EXPECTED to know it now coz I live here. "How's your Cantonese now?" "FUCKED UP that's how!"

I hate the sound, the intonations, how they mutilate Chinese words to make them Cantonese and the dialect on the whole. BUT I realise I need to learn to speak it coz now that I live in this shithole when sometimes Mandarin nor English would get me by.

My lovely sister just said "I think you will come back as a lunatic. You sound very pathetic in your blog. Honestly, I WILL JUST DIE FROM BOREDOM AND SELF PITY THERE. No bf, no Logan, nobody speaking the same language as you". You know what, this is just a mild toned down version of how I truly feel about my situation. As I said, I don't hate the place, I hate the circumstances I am in.

How much more of this can I take? I don't know. There are days when I just deal with it and it doesn't bother me and there are days when I just want to pack it all in and go home. The latter is becoming more common these days. But I shall not give up so soon! I also want to see how much longer I can take. My endurance has been taken to a whole new level.

Happy Mother's Day!

Went to watch Mission Impossible III alone yesterday. The show was better than I expected but as of all Hollywood flick, can everyone say CLICHED after me? Nonetheless, an entertaining romp though I thought half the time, Tom Cruise looked a bit constipated. (Speaking of which, I am gonna get that similar expression on my face very soon if I don't........ never mind)

I've stocked up on a pretty decent collection of VCDs/DVDs recently as I like to hole up at home to watch them since I can't find anyone to go out with. I finally watched CRASH last night and though I think it's pretty good, I'm with Kai on this - it's a wee bit overrated. I bought 'Boys Don't Cry' on VCD yesterday and today, I was at HMV again today and bought
- The Virgin Suicides
- What's Eating Gilbert Grape
- Munich
- Zoolander (I have this in SG but it's such a riot and G hasn't seen it anyway, thought I can pass to him when I see him next)
- The Poisedon Adventure (the 'classic' apparently since the remake is coming out soon!)

I still have half of CSI season One unwatched and 'Garden State' and 'Natural Born Killers' untouched yet.

Very hardcore I admit. I'm just putting VCDs/DVDs into my arms everytime I step into HMV!

My hair is getting too long and I don't know what to do with it....I saw this salon that charges HK$480 and u can do a mixture of whatever services you may want! Cut, blowdry, shampoo, colour/highlight, curls. I just need to figure out how I want it to look...BTW the beer & egg leave-in conditioner that I bought from Boots in BKK is helping my hair! It's very smooth now! Yay! Plus I realise putting in some shine serum in ur hair before styling it can make it really glossy! Haha! Yeah sick of my frizzled looking hair.....

Aieee I got short attention span....I'll blog about my Sunday later, I'm gonna watch an ep of CSI now... Laterzzzzz..

Numb, number, almost fully numb

The whole office well, ALMOST the whole office has gone out for lunch with their ex-President of the region. Obviously leaving me, the OUTSIDER behind alone in the office. Just as well, coz I don't think I can sit through another meal surrounded by cantobabble by people who know I dun understand very m uch. I feel like asking these people "How would you like it if you were in France and don't know French and sit at a table of natives and they just talk to one another in French without taking in the fact you are sitting there, unaware of the conversation?" Then again, I realise that asking them such a long question might be lost on them (imagine a 'Kong Meh ah?") since they don't really speak ENGLISH so I shut up and eat my food in silence.

WHATEVER.

Anyway, I have a really bad sore right eye. It's red and it keeps tearing. Dammit. Don't know if my eyes are conditioned to tear now after my 'little' incident at BKK airport but it is nasty and it's painful as though someone left a fingernail in it or something. Ack.

Had a meeting with new boss and the team is short of one member yet again. We only just replaced MM who left us in Oct and this new person is only coming in in June. Great, just bloody great. In the meantime, everyone just asks me questions. LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE! I just wanna sit here quietly and do only what I need to do and put this on my CV and fuck off out of this cantoshithole.

Apparently there's a global marketing thingy happening in Istanbul in June, as well as a Digital Marketing forum in Korea. I should be going for Korea but fingers crossed I get to go to Istanbul as well. If that happens, it should be directly after the Singapore trip on 15 - 16 June.

I love travelling. I wish I get to travel more so I spend less time in Cantoshithole. Cantoshithole isn't so bad once in a while. I love my apartment. I hate Cantonese. I love my TV. I hate free Chinese newspapers being shoved in my direction every morning at the MTR station. I love my DVD/CD player. I hate people reading newspapers in the trains. I love beds. I hate people trying to correct my funny accented Cantonese. I love 'che zai mee' and will order that for lunch now.

hot hot HOT!

Damn what happened to HK while I was away? It was a whopping 30 degrees when I returned on Monday night and has remained so for these two days! It's like being in freaking Singapore but less humid but the sun is scorching!

So I have lived through the key seasons in HK. I moved here in late summer, went through with fall and winter and spring and now moving back into summer. It's early May now so in another 3 months plus, I would have been here for one full year.

Counting? Who's counting?! :P

To make up for the lack of updates while I was in Bangkok, I shall attempt to briefly update the past week.

Got into Bangkok early Wednesday on May 3 and checked into the swanky new Millennium Hilton Hotel. Opened just a month plus ago, a lot of cabbies don't even know where it is! It's so new that some of the suites are not even ready yet. Apparently still doing wiring and laying down carpets etc. So hotel room was spanking new (I like!) and the pool was gorgeous too!

Obviously the highlight of the trip for me was G coming to BKK to see me on Sat night. He came by the venue with his Thai friend Chairat and Chairat's wife so I could pass them the tickets to see the MAA show. It was weird - there he was standing in front of me and I had to act very nonchalant coz I was at the event venue and my bosses/colleagues were lurking around. Heh.

The show wasn't too bad but honestly I personally thought it was one of the most boring lineups so far. The production itself was good and LeeHom & Kelly Rowland were pretty good hosts (mucchhhhh better than sleazeball Shaggy & slutbitchwhorishlooking CoCo Lee as well as whinyvoiced Michelle Branch & 'yoyowhassup' Vanness)

I didn't even stay that long at the aftershow party coz it was really quite boring. (Plus G was already here and I wanted to spend more time with him!)

On Sunday, had to sort out check out saga at the hotel and check in saga at the airport with Kelly's entourage. Bloody hell, SUPER DRAMA can. I was literally pulling my hair in frustration and I was super relieved when the last one finally disappeared out of sight at the airport. They took away my precious time away with G! We were supposed to go to the floating market with Chairat but since I had to babysit those drama queens, I had to give that up. But nonetheless, I met up with G for dinner and shopping, and subsequently Erica came to join us, and the three of us managed to do a a bit of Thai massage and latenight shopping at Silom/Patpong.

Monday - G & I hit the pool after breakkie coz I was officially all done with work! We then went for lunch at Central Chitlom and then back to hotel to collect luggage before going to the airport. I've always been calm and rational whenever I have to say bye to him, albeit feeling a great deal of sadness. But I have never 'lost' it the way I did at BKK on Monday when it was 'Final Call' for me to board my plane (my flight leaves 1 hr earlier than his)

Anyway back to work. Hopefully I get to go to SG in mid June coz we have an artiste going there for promo! Woohoo!

Back from Bangkok

I am back after yet another MTV Asia Awards.

Man am I getting jaded. I can't even be bothered to watch it anymore.

I'm getting bored of Bangkok - that was my 6th time there and I've been there for work all 6 times. I didn't even buy much but I definitely went crazy at Boots with buying toiletries. I'm such a toiletries junkie - I think I found a hobby afterall ha!

I'm not in a very positive mood so if I continue writing, I may bore you. When my spirits have lifted a bit, I will update.... hopefully tonight. Got shit loads of laundry to do! Argh!

Golden Week

Started in China and apparently in Japan too.

The whole of Hong Kong seems to be SWARMING with tourists, mainland Chinese & Japanese.

Went for a facial yest at Sense of Touch. Place is quite small but I think the facial wasn't too bad. Wasn't run by locals I think - the receptionist and the therapists were Filipinos or Indonesians or something. I did the Skin Exfoliation treatment and for about 1 hr 20 min, it costs a whopping HK$650. BUT I think i feel the difference - my skin does feel smoother but that could be coz they used good Dermalogica products.

Following my facial, I strolled down Hollywood Road to get myself a coffee at Pacific Coffee. Sitting by the window, facing the road, I took out my notebook (the one Yeacy gave me prior to me moving here) and wrote down things I should do so I will not feel bored & miserable here. I should start gymming more often, probably take up lessons in either guitar/bass guitar/drums or learn tennis. I know some ppl are encouraging me to take yoga but honestly, I don't think it's my cuppa tea.

Anywaaaaaay, after walking around aimlessly in Central for a while (I realise I should go Central more often - it's full of non-HKies! :) ) I took the ferry to TST, thinking I'd go check out Granville Road for some shopping. Upon reaching there, I found a Japanese restaurant next to this record store I went in to help Hoon check out this CD she wanted! I got myself a Sukiyaki set, complete with chuwanmushi, rice & a Coke for a mere HK$40! Was very pleased and aim to go back there again.

Am going out to go to a private sale with Cardin now, don't even know what the sale is selling haha. Then we are watching MATCH POINT at 2.30pm and she's meeting some friends after that and I think I'll come home to watch DVDs, cook dinner and probably pack my bag for BKK.