千八百八十： And the Best Girl Wins

Just watched Mao Asada & Kim Yu Na's figure skating performance on the news, Kim Yu Na's skating was spectacular, she definitely deserves the win. Mao was great as well, performing under the pressure of being the next skater after Kim Yu Na received the world's best score ever, I guess she lost her focus halfway through and missed her jumps.. :( What a pity, she would have definitely got the gold if she hadn't buckled, and her tears after the performance when she saw her score only ranked second was enough to bring tears to her supporters watching her on tv. I think the worst part of it came from knowing that it was her own mistakes that caused herself to lose the medal & that her rival did perform outstandingly well. But she did really well to continue to finish beautifully & to hold back her tears until everything was over & throughout the interviews. Well done!! I hope she can win the gold at the next Olympic games to prove herself.

It will be a year soon since I started playing Bejeweled. Which was basically to numb my mind from thinking about what happened a year ago. How time flies.

千八百七十九： Figure Skating

Quite angry at the work laptop - it keeps going into sleep mode and not waking up. This has been happening at least once a day, but usually end of day, but today it happened like 3 times in the afternoon & i had to wait / do system check for like an hour to wake it up w/o problems again.

Figure skating ladies short program this afternoon. I must say, I had been quite skeptical about Mao Asada's ability to perform today, but after her performance, I actually had tears in my eyes. She had always been unable to perform under pressure for the past year, but today she finally overcame the barrier / the curse of the triple axel and executed a flawless performance & wowed the fans & the crowds. Although her score is still 2nd to the korean skater Kim Yu Na, I would say that she has a good chance of a gold medal (providing Kim fouls up tomorrow a little?) if she keeps up her wonderful performance tomorrow as well. Well done!!

trying to clear some space on my desk today, it has suddenly become so full of everything that I only have space to perch the laptop on it slightly. I want the space to do my crafts & to write! managed to clear a small little space, hopefully i keep the space clean.

I became a library member yesterday! apparently we can borrow 10 books for a period of 2 weeks and go to any library in Kobe City. The number of English books & the selection is quite limited though, trying to figure out which library has the most English books in Kobe :)

千八百七十八： 城崎温泉

We went to Kinosaki Onsen over the weekend; this town is famous for their crabs. As you can see, they have crab claws at the train station area for photos.

Everything that day for dinner was crab:
Crab Sashimi, crab hotpot, BBQ crab, かに味噌　(crab miso), Crab appetizers. think we had about 5 crabs each..
& I'm allergic to crab sashimi :( my mouth was itching very badly & lips turned red & throat also felt very funny after that.

Crab Sashimi

The onsen was in a separate building so we had to go outdoors in the yukatas provided. here's a pict of me getting ready to remove all the yukata :

Unfortunately, there's no pic of me after I remove the Yukata. hahahaha!

I've finally read "The End of Mr Y" over the long train ride to the onsen as well. It was a strange coincidence that I've never been able to read past the first page even though I've had the book since september, until now, after I've watched Big Bang Theory & then suddenly decided to read this book with all the stuff that was mentioned in Big Bang Theory. The book was mind-boggling to say the least, although a tad difficult with all the scientific theories mentioned, but totally engrossing & I couldn't stop reading it until I finished it.

Have to try to find a library with English books near my place. I can't possibly be buying english books all the time. & if I buy them, i won't sell them (I'll keep them.. ) so i need to get a library membership soon!

千八百七十七： Bronze for Japan!

Japan got a bronze in the Men's figure skating event this morning! how exciting that i was able to watch it live.

finally the week is over, must have a good break this weekend. Going to watch SAF FC vs Gamba Osaka in March. Thanks to Hiroki who informed me about this, wonder if i'll be the only sg supporter for them there.

cooked gyoza for dinner today, it tastes quite good! even though it doesn't look that great as gyoza. :P

weird.. i drank tea this afternoon yet i feel so sleepy now.. good night world

千八百七十六： Snowboard HalfPipe

Finally my project is pretty much over, i'm quite happy that finally i can return to normal sleeping hours! the late 2 am meetings were quite frankly killing me even though I only started doing them after coming back from London because in London it was about 5pm when I had the meetings. I guess the thing i learnt was that no matter what project, it always end up that i'm doing everything myself to save the situation. but hopefully things will change the next time round!

I've been recording the Winter Olympics live events (since they start at 4/5am and end around 1+++ pm) to watch & the snowboard halfpipe event was really amazing this morning. I think I've watched Shaun White once (in Japan also; their TV has such good sports coverage!) in the X games, and he was really cool today! his first run in the finals already had the best score in the whole finals & his second run was just a perfunctory run since he had already won, and he managed to top himself with a new snowboarding trick he came up with! He got almost perfect score, and his performance was really amazing. A pity the Japan members didn't win any medals, their first run in the first round was great but they just sort of faltered after that. what a pity ..

went to the gym and had a good slow run for an hour, & I realised I had stupidly missed the class i wanted to join because I had mistook the time of the class to be 1 hour later (on Friday's timetable it's at 9pm while on Thurs' its at 8pm). grrr. so i ran & used the machines & took a very long shower at the gym before limping home. Don't know why, but the big toe on both my feet hurt. Hopefully I can sleep well tonight :)

千八百七十五： Mad Rush

Didn't expect to be able to clear my work early so rushed out at 7pm to clear some errands - repair boots, get refund, buy colour pencils.

Managed to reach Umeda in 30 min & cleared 2 of the 3 tasks; the whole shopping complex was closed! a little shocked; should have checked the website beforehand... apparently it's written in the website:


sighz. wasted trip, have to go down again soon.

I didn't feel like cooking dinner after coming home so dropped in at the bakery & the lemon cream bread was delicious! the weirdest thing happened though, this guy also rushed into the shop before the doors closed, then at the cashier, at his turn, he realised he didn't bring his wallet or something, maybe left it at the office, and then he just apologised to the cashier & left w/o buying. Hmm, if he had just asked for help or something I would have just paid for him since I was standing behind him, and it was only 2 pieces of bread.. good deed for the day? when he rushed off i was thinking if I should have stopped him. oh well.. hope that wasn't his dinner or else quite poor thing.

managed to start drawing something tiny in the notebook, went to buy a few more colour pencils when I realised a set of 12 basic colours was totally not enough. But, to buy a whole new box was a bit stupid, and very expensive; think a box of 24 was like $50? don't waste money until i really finish a whole sketchbook first to see if i can continue this. :)

千八百七十四： So many things..

Winter olympics is ongoing now & Japan isn't doing too well. no medal yet!! how disappointing. They seem to have a medal chance for 500m men's speed skating + figure skating though. Let's see how it goes tonight.

Just finished a conf call, another one in 1 hour 20 min, then I think i can sleep? :( have to stay up until 2am just for a 10min call, i can't wait for this torture to be over by the end of this week.

I went to Umeda alone on Saturday, because Ryo last minute said he hasn't made plans for this weekend yet & asked me to go check with the tour agents if there are any packages still available for some short of 1 day tour. went to check on 温泉　tours but apparently these 旅館s have like at most 10 rooms each so trying to make a booking a week before is like almost fruitless. Anyway, the agent didn't have anything left, guess we have to look online somemore.. :(

Was thinking of beautifying the house a bit and tried to search for table cloths but it seems like the table cloth is an uncommon thing in Japan. not a single houseware store sells tableclothes! weird!! gave up, in the end went to my favourite art store tools to just look around & saw a book about bringing colour pencils everywhere you go. (with a sketch book of cos) they made it seem so easy to draw / sketch stuff on the spot, that i'm just so tempted to buy a big box of colour pencils right there. managed to curb the urge to buy, instead went home & bought the book from Rakuten. hehe. saw so many cooking books which reminded of my sis making her own bread & thought i should start improving my cooking skills soon, since I'm running out of ideas of what to cook for dinner / lunch soon. I'm more interested in making my own pasta though, eg http://item.rakuten.co.jp/al-fine/al1310/ since I eat that alot, & maybe making gyozas/dumplings. Got a book of that, can't wait for it to arrive.. & went to the beads store, reminded me of my beads getting stale in my cupboard.. argh. it's really not 三分熱度！just that i have no time to slowly do these things now that work is like 80% of my time. I MUST START DOING SOMETHING PROPERLY NEXT WEEK!!!

think i should just start doodling with colour pencils anywhere anytime now. I'm kinda torn between the desire to keep the sketchbook very very very white & clean & pretty or to start drawing something. :( I'm a weirdo.

ok let me start doing something so that i can show for it here. :)

千八百七十三： Back~

Sweden pictures are up :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157623418066468/

Back in Japan finally. Kinda sian that I'm not in sg for CNY, because I just want to be around to eat all the food, not that i want to go 拜年。 I wonder if anyone I know is heading for the new universal studios?

A little lonely that i'm by myself again, at least everyone is around for dinner at my sis' place. How did i think Japan is not as cold as London?! I'm like wearing so many more layers at home compared to in London, but then it could be that the place is bigger so more drafty? The sun is out again which is great for the laundry though :)

I'll be married for a year next weekend. how fast time flies! kinda tired though to do any celebration of any kind.