Hi again

I’ve been back for a week now and been working (yeah, you heard right) 12-hour days to sort out some company problems as my dad takes a break. You could say my mind has not been exactly ‘here’ in blogospace.

Singapore was refreshing and much to my dad’s chagrin I ended up in London for a week at my brother’s. It would’ve stretched to a month if not for my parents and Shirley and Jojo my puppy who I heard has been trashing my room. Anyway I stayed at Paddington, helped my bro with a few ideas for his business there and tied up a few loose ends with my funds manager friends in town.

For some reason London seemed different this time. The atmosphere wasn’t too jubilant. I’m guessing its because my friends Laura, Martin and Matt have graduated from college and are too caught up in their jobs to hang out much. The last time we did something was in ‘05 when we camped out in the country and made a horrendously lopsided crop circle in somebody’s wheat farm. Anyway I ran low on dough and had to cut short my plan to head north to Helsinki so… well here I am being a responsible son

Got no photos to show this time around. The UK trip was unplanned and I didn’t bring my photographic gear with me.

A lot of things are going thru my head right now about my future and stuff. I’ve grounded myself till end of the year so I can help dad out with some things so I’ll be here. Thanks for all the expressions of concern you guys. Gimme a week or two and I should be able to start posting as regularly as I used to.

(Hey Angel your avatar finally showed up. Nice!)

In Singapore

I won’t be updating these couple of days as I’m in Singapore. I do have a life outside the net that needs catching up u know plus an apartment here that hasn’t been cleaned for months, yucks. So have a good weekend and I’ll respond to your comments probably Monday or something.

Am I becoming an evil Emperor

I think I’m going nuts. When I was a teenager I used to impress my friends with this gag. I’d hang a piece of dry toilet paper on a string, point my finger at it from about 3cm away and watch the paper gravitate slightly towards me.

No the paper’s not posessed. Its called static electricity. Its common in dry weather and there’s lots of it where I lived in the US.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have given it a second thought but I think that’s starting to change. Its not the static but the AMOUNT of it that’s been coming out of my body. I zapped two friends today by accident, just as we were walking in the mall. There was brief contact and they recoiled like they’re bitten by snakes. It felt like pin pricks they said.

I hate it when that happens. So anyway just now, just to show my two friends the freakazoid that I am, I pointed my finger close to a metal banister and out came a blue streak towards the metal surface. Its just a couple of millimeters long but its visible very very briefly. My friends freaked out. So did I.

This blue lightning thing started a couple of years ago and is getting stronger in intensity. I’ve had electrical equipment die on me. Some of my friends have wised up about walking too near me to avoid getting mini electric shocks, particularly Shirley. I just can’t control it.

Crap there goes my social life.

Looks versus weight

Should I get a Game Boy or a PSP? Been agonizing over this question for a week.

I must have games when I have to queue up for anything or when I’m on the plane or subway. My phone used to do the job but the buttons are starting to wobble from all the frantic pressing. Phones aren’t made for playing games are they.

So I shopped around yesterday but went home empty handed. The Sony PSP’s display is superb but with the size and weight I might as well be carrying a rock. Forget it. The Nintendo Gameboy has a nice practical size but the display is like crap. Even an ordinary phone’s display puts it to shame. Forget it too.

Surely there be something as small as a Gameboy with the display of a PSP? And with a dedicated joystick? Hate the idea of going back to the Nokia N-Gage but I may not have a choice. Hmm… should I risk it? It’s so last decade though…

Jakarta the sequel

Not sure what to say about this 2nd trip to Jakarta other than the fact that I spent 2 full days at an office trying to understand some people’s operational problems. I was there representing my dad, which was an effort considering the people I had to deal with were as old as he is. You don’t know what its like to sit in meetings where people spoke a mix of broken English and Mandarin laced with a thick Javanese accent.

All was not lost though. For some strange reason Indonesia always makes me hungry and I had a feast for the 3 days. The people there seem to have a love affair with chillies and they put it in everything they eat. If you think its the same in Malaysia, wait till you see people carrying around a packet of raw chillies for a snack, like popcorn.

One thing I must say, their Chinese food tastes a little weird. Here’s a version of their wantan mee.

I’m sure a person from Xiamen will have the same sentiments about Malaysian wantan mee.

Here’s more food in a Veitnamese cafe in Block M, the equivalent of KL’s Lot 10 which was near the hotel I was at.

The only night I was free to roam, I spent at Citos or Cilandak Town Square, a heavily guarded R&R place catering mainly to expatriates. Come to think of it, it reminds me of the Curve.

Jakarta’s a city of contrasts. Some parts of it would blend right into New York City and some looks like the poorest sections of Sierra Leone. Its very crowded but not as bad as Hong Kong. Maybe in my next trip I’ll have more leisure time to get a more balanced view of the place.

Anyway while at Pondok Indah Mall, their equivalent of 1-Utama, I came across this interesting sign. I’ll leave you to your imagination as to what the sign is about.

Back to a mess

Arrived home very late last night and went straight into panic mode when I heard about the Minnesota bridge collapse. Spent half the night trying to locate 3 friends living in the Minneapolis St. Paul area. Thank god they’re all safe. Hard to believe the bridge I had taken numerous photos of is now at the bottom of the Mississippi.

This morning I’ve to wade through the mess left by the stock price sneeze in Wall Street. Doesn’t look like a very good homecoming this time.

My trip was tiring but got the job done. I’ll say a bit more about it a bit later in the day if I’m up to it.

Jakarta, again.

I’m flying off tomorrow on an unplanned but necessary trip to Jakarta. Sigh, that’s the 2nd time this year, excluding Bali. I’ll be back Thursday I think. My notebook’s fixed so I shouldn’t have any problem getting online.

Guangzhou rendezvous

I’ve given up looking for my camera’s SD card so I’ll just post a few video stills from my camcorder. I’ll be going to Cn again in October, this time to Beijing and if I can convince my parents, Harbin.

One thing about going places with your mom is how they can be so overprotective of you. She didn’t think it was a good idea for me to walk around the city alone with a camera. Its not like I’ve never done it before, geez. It’s like we’re either in the hotel, in the car, in some office, at a restaurant, then back to the hotel. For my dad it was a working trip. He had to remind me it was a working trip for me too.

So here’s a few crappy stills randomly salvaged from the 1st few minutes of my camcorder recording.

Told you it was crappy. I haven’t even seen the rest of the footage.

Anyway about the ‘interesting’ encounter that I mentioned in my last post. We went to this big new shopping mall and some guy tried to pick me up in the washroom. I was doing my thing at the urinal when I felt this guy next to me getting a little curious. And I think it was more than just normal curiosity cause he seemed fixated to a certain part of my body. Anyway he waited outside and flashed me a smile as I came out. Mom came to the rescue thank god. The end.

So that went down in my list of WTFs. It would be the 2nd time this year after one guy tried to get me interested in his pecker at a gym changing room in Singapore. Yeah I asked the same question, why me.

Anyway the trip home wasn’t great. The in flight service sucked as usual. With my notebook kay o’d and with the cheesy video games on board, I decided to put better use of my time sleeping which I did.

And that’s my trip.

Scary plane rides

What do you do when you’re in the transit lounge of some airport and you see breaking news about a horrific plane crash somewhere? This happened to me 3 times.

As we disembarked at Changi (Sg) last Tuesday, we received breaking news about a plane crash in Brazil. Apparently 200 people died. It was an Airbus 320, similar to the one we had taken to Sg.

En route to Guangzhou

Earlier this year, I had just stepped off a plane at Jakarta airport when I saw the news on tv that an Adam Air plane had disappeared and presumed crashed. And right there on the tarmac were a couple of Adam Airs. In 2005 en route to Boston for Christmas, as I was waiting for a connecting flight at Denver airport when news broke out that a plane had gone down in Miami.

Statistically air accidents happen in clusters so you’ll understand why I had rather mixed feelings about being on an airplane on a day planes are crashing.

Baiyunport, Guangzhou

Because of how people and places are scattered in my life I can’t escape flying, never mind that Boeing tells me it’s 22 times safer flying in a commercial jet than traveling by car. I’ve had scary moments and these have been the hardest to forget :-

Chicago to Phoenix. Took off in a storm to fly through tornado alley. Pilot struggled with turbulence, changing the cruising altitude a few times. I was familiar enough with the route to know that these moves were abnormal.

New Jersey to Los Angeles. I swear we almost hit the wing of another plane when we took off.

Sg to KL. Record-breaking number of mid-air turns in a 50 minute flight. We thought the pilot was burning up fuel to prepare for a crashlanding.

KL to Bali. Cross winds. I think we landed sideways instead of a straight line. Big jolt and screech as we hit the ground.

Sg to Amsterdam. Very hard landing. A few overhead bins jolted opened and stuff fell.

Taipei to Hong Kong (Old Kai Tak). Navigating the plane between tall apartments during typhoon season to land.

San Francisco to Denver. A commuter turboprop. Hit air pocket over the mountains and I spilt my orange juice all over my pants.

San Francisco to Denver (another flight). Dead of winter. The plane skidded slightly on the icy tarmac on landing. Small screams and gasps in the cabin.

But my biggest scare by far has got to be this.

Des Moines to Rockford Illinois. A single-engine private plane piloted by a friend. At cruising altitude a big gust of wind dragged us down a few hundred feet in seconds. I think my heart got lodged in my throat that day.

What about you, what was your worst plane ride?

I’m back

Finally. Hugging pillow in my own bed, CD on loud, aircon at full blast.

My mom, dad and I decided not to go to Shanghai as the stuff my dad wanted to see wasn’t ready yet (thank you God) and besides they had already gone last November. My notebook got banged around in transit and is making squeaky noises. I think its the fan. That put me completely off from surfing during the trip. Thank goodness for the desktop in my room.

My camera’s 1GB SD card has decided to play hide and seek with me. Damn, why do they have to be so small. I’m just too lazy to rummage for it through my unpacked bags.

I can sum up this trip as nothing more than a series of lunches and dinners with my dad’s friends (boring), a couple of factory visits and accompanying my mom shopping. There was nothing new since my last visit although the change of scenery was invigorating nevertheless. If you can put up with the terrible air pollution that is.

As usual, the highlight of my trip was the drive from Guangzhou to Shenzen where we stayed for a day. For some reason I love driving on that stretch of highway and stopping by one of our favorite places to eat in Dongguan, just off the Pearl River delta. One thing for sure – they pick the prettiest girls to man their toll gates.

Something interesting did happen to me in Guangzhou. I might blog about it later if I’m in the mood. Anyway its great to be back in my own bed. I should be back to my normal routine in a day or two.