.. Boo Boo Culture ..

千九百七十七：Winter

2012-02-09T11:57:00.002+08:00

Huat for 2012!

Finally got down to blogging today, after such a long break. FQR12 projects just ended last night, which is why today is quite a free day. (ok there's work but I'm just giving myself a break until deadlines loom near) Going to catch up on some reading hopefully.

I'm also back in Japan & not very happy about the weather. It's freezing here! There's some sort of cold drift across the whole country, and usually Kobe is sorta warmish, less than 10 degrees but never less than 0 degrees, but this time it went to negative at night and I did not see any snow yet. humph! Last night was the coldest night so far, I just couldn't sleep because my face was freezing and in the end I buried myself (including my head) under the blankets before finally getting warm enough to fall asleep. I hope this doesn't get worse..

The last 2 weeks in SG went by in a blur. It seems to always be that I'm quite free & relaxed until the last 2 weeks when suddenly there just isn't enough time to meet up with everyone and do everything I want to do. I managed to go to Marina Barrage (very inconvenient place to get to without a car although it is a very relaxing environment, good for a picnic or just to lie down on the grass & enjoy the sky), take a ride on the Singapore Flyer (hmm.. a little overrated I guess, but the view was beautiful at night on the MBS side, and I'm glad I did it once), and went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens (fed swans with a friend's daughter, it was fun!) I didn't have time to catch Wicked, which was a pity, given that I've heard so many good reviews. But then, I'm really more of a play person, musicals just don't captivate me as much. I think my favourite is still The Inspector Calls with my sister & Calvin in London, that was hilarious and kept us in stitches the whole time. Maybe next time.

Chinese New Year was quite subdued this year, perhaps because there's only 2 weekdays and people are still tired after the Christmas & New Year holidays. With so many festivals back to back, who would have the mood to keep celebrating. (& also no mood to work at all for December/January) It was work for me for both days, which was good because it meant no need to give angbaos hehe.. and I don't really enjoy making small talk. Although at the end of it, I realised I did miss eating the CNY goodies, but it was too late, because we didn't have any at home.

Ryo is away for a week or so, which makes this short month with each other even shorter. After he comes back, we have around a week together before I go to Tokyo to meet up with the marathon people for a week plus. & we would have been married for 3 years after end of this month. How fast! Perhaps it's all the flying and being apart but it feels alot shorter than that. Which also means that our dear friend has left us for almost 3 years. The worst part is that it happened so soon after the wedding that every time I think about the anniversary, it will also be time for hers. I think of her less often now, but the sadness that comes up every time she comes to mind is overwhelming. The annual visits will be continued for as long as I can, but if I ever forget in future, I hope it will only mean that we are finally at peace with her being in heaven.

千九百七十六：2 more weeks

2012-01-17T16:13:00.001+08:00

These moments are the reason why you have kids (not my kid..)

Almost Chinese New Year, time really flies. 2 more weeks in Singapore & I'll be going back to Japan. I think I'm going to watch Wicked alone, the ticket is quite expensive to ask anyone else to go with me (no one else around me seems interested anyway).. & go to marina barrage to just see the real thing for myself and relive the peacefulness of lying on the grass (hope it's clean) or maybe fly a kite. Have tickets for the flyer, & will head to the botanic gardens to try to figure out my way around. Now it's so warm, it might not be that great an idea though, but I do want to walk around the place before I run out of energy to do so.

on a totally irrelevant note, I'm kind of trying to get kinder bueno to eat (white version) but everytime I see it I forget to buy it.

I've read 4 books so far, including Steve Jobs (the biography). It's pretty inspiring, in the sense that although he was such a control freak & perfectionist with very bad temper and eccentricities, he succeeded in making everyone around him see things his way & came up with the products we are using daily. And the Kindle choose to break down right when I was reaching the end of the book. (T.T) Luckily for the iPhone. I was able to upload a pdf version into my phone and finish reading it on iBooks. This is when I agreed with Steve saying all other products are crap. To give Amazon some credit, they immediately agreed to send a replacement Kindle (but to Japan?! how am I going to survive the next few weeks on the bus!?) because it seems like it was a common issue. and of course my Kindle was still within warranty. I guess I have to read real books on the bus for the next few weeks..

My appetite is improving, less nausea and less diarrhoea. turns out that i'm now lactose intolerant - which had led to the few weeks of very bloated feeling, tummyaches and nausea. & of course these led to no energy, no appetite as well as fatigue (as anyone would feel after going to the loo for the fifth time in a day)

As much as I'm enjoying being around friends and family, I miss being home in Japan. (not the cold though) I miss watching CSI on my big TV, or just tinkering around my plants, my kitchen and just lazing on my sofa. I miss going jogging, (totally no mood to run here due to the weather) and I just miss the supermarket outings once a week with Ryo. After shopping, he would load everything into the bicycle so that I don't have to carry anything, and then he would cycle like mad trying to catch up with me while i run as fast as I can home. & then we would both reach the lobby of the apartment panting like mad & laughing at each other for being silly. sighz.. after 2 weeks you'll read about me missing Singapore instead..

千九百七十五：2012 Resolutions

2012-01-03T16:40:00.003+08:00

Teddy Bears at the ArtScience Museum

As usual, checking if I've fulfilled my resolutions for 2011 in my first post of 2012.
2011 resolutions : http://booboogal.blogspot.com/2011/01/2011-resolutions.html

1. Running - 80km monthly, Run a half marathon by June, a Full marathon by end of the year. - Done the last 2, the first one only managed it for April / May 2011 .. oops..
2. Photography - Improve on skills with all lenses. - hmmmmmm.. some commented my photos have improved (could be editing skills improved though) need to take more photos with the Macro lens though
3. French - Take classes and get to finish book 1 of the text book. - damn..... I think I didn't finish the book, had around 3-4 chapters left to go.. maybe I should try to clear this goal this year.
4. Spend more time at home in JPN. seriously need to improve variety of food i can cook. & to try to wake up earlier... - I did manage to wake up earlier towards the end of the year. Also manage to only visit SG with a gap period of 6 months, but travelled alot everywhere else from June to December. Maybe I should be more concrete about this as well (>.<) food variety probably not increased at all, have to try harder next year.
5. Read /write more. & love myself alot more.. - Fulfilled my reading goal of 50 books from July-December2011! -> check out the widget at the side. Made a conscious effort to blog more as well , tried to do a biweekly thing, if not weekly, instead of once a month update on my blog. Should have separated out the 2nd half of this resolution , because it is totally not linked to the first half. I have made some hard decisions in December, & will be adding them on to my resolutions for 2012 as well. & am seriously tired of all the mental strain from all the toxic relationships.

2012 Resolutions on the way:
1. Read more (80 books at least this year) - must try to read 2 books a week!? oops .. this didn't sound like that much when I finished 50 books in 5 months.
2. Only be nice to people who deserve it. - hence my resolution yesterday of don't bother asking about pple's day if they are not interested in yours. (seriously, isn't it just courtesy to ask how about you? even after you reply a really boring answer because if the person didn't want to know, he or she wouldn't have asked in the first place. Since they have no interest in your day whatsoever, by just putting a stop to the conversation, i guess they don't need my concern in the first place. )

3. Detox my life. Cut off toxic/ poisonous people who call themselves my friends/family yet show no concern for me or my well-being or my life whatsoever (these people are usually self-centred, gets angry easily with me yet never reflects on their own behaviour to check if they themselves are guilty of such behaviour & speak without care if they hurt others.) Holding on to such relationships only serve to put myself under tremendous mental strain & I'm currently under enough as it is.

4. Appreciate my parents more. Not much time in their lives as they get older.. which means less time for me as well. Despite all the rebellious situations when I was younger,

5. Again, be in Japan more.

6. Finish my French elementary lessons (at least!!).

Spent New Year's Day & the day after at home almost sleeping throughout. Perhaps because I stayed out on New Year's eve and it's been awhile since I had actually slept so late. The horrible situation of not being able to get any cab is really a turnoff for any future festive seasons though. Why can't they leave the SMRT to run for 24 hours on Xmas & New Year's Eve when they can do that for the marathon? But was a first time I actually ushered in the new year at a club/drinking venue, had quite a good time. Xinhuan visited with her family & her kids are already so grown up.

Xmas was a quiet affair, but enjoyed myself nevertheless. I think.

Am really hoping this year to be a good year (for everyone around me, not just me). All the best to everyone!

千九百七十四：Festivities

2011-12-26T00:04:00.000+08:00

View of the Esplanade from the SkyPark

The festivities are upon us! 2011 is coming to an end and it's been a lazy cheerful mode in the country. With so much excitement in the air, of many things that happened, the major incident being the SMRT breaking down leading to people being unable to buy their presents - seems abit stupid to me because can't they take buses or cabs? or just that the news programs all happen to interview dumbos?

I haven't had a Christmas in Singapore for 2 years, and it was nice being around for gifts exchanges & Xmas dinners which really added to the atmosphere compared to me being alone at home during the non-public holiday in Japan usually. Visited the Art Science museum, managed to see the Titanic & Cartier exhibition as well, ($24 for Singaporeans - ask for the Singaporean prices at the counter!) and despite the wet weather over the past week, it has been pretty good in terms of events so far. I am feeling better in terms of health, perhaps I can resume light running in a week or so. Met up with secondary school friends as well, & despite the fiasco at the end of the dinner, we had a pretty good time catching up.

A wedding lunch on New Year's eve, parents' wedding anniversary dinner next week or today probably.. Seems like the year will end pretty well :)

千九百七十三：Kinect

2011-12-15T23:54:00.002+08:00

everyone wanted a shot of the rainbow

I think I am very forgetful nowadays. I can barely remember what I did last week, or the week before. Last week was the xmas lunch on friday (received chocolates for the gift exchange) and the food was only so-so despite being at the Raffles Hotel Bar & Billiards room. Convinced my parents to buy the Kinect on Sunday after lunch, and it has been quite fun so far. I must warn everyone not to buy the 4GB system because it is a scam! 4GB is barely enough (became 1.2GB after I updated the XBOX OS) it's like buying a 16GB iphone only to realised the OS takes up 10GB! ... quite angry at this, no choice but to buy an external xbox hard disk.

Another exciting moment was when we went to see the A&F models on Wednesday before we went to shoot the xmas lights at Orchard. Thanks to James & his super camera, the shots of the models & me turned out great :D hehehehe, so happy to have managed to catch them just before they left at 7pm. Borrowed the Pen from Julius' brother, it was quite good! lightweight (lighter than I had thought) and good quality pictures generally, but the price is still the obstacle to purchasing it.

Desaru day trip tomorrow, hope I don't feel sick or anything in the car. Work has been slow so far (maybe everyone is in the Christmas mood already) ..

It's almost 2012, the year went by in a flash!

千九百七十二：Singapore Marathon 2011

2011-12-05T13:52:00.001+08:00

Runners heading to the finishing line

I am sad (embarrassed) to say that I didn't run my last planned race of the year due to some unforeseen circumstances. However I did go to support my colleagues & friends.

After seeing a few races in Japan go smoothly, I must say the Singapore one seems very disorganised! Long queues at bag deposits; no cut off times, so many barriers to deter supporters, too many people for all events (too many people crowding the finishing area), too many walkers (blocking photos of the marathoners). The only thing better was the pacers which were very visible in SG (& GC) with their balloons and costumes. I couldn't see the pacers in Japan at all, all they had were the timings stuck on their backs (who can see those from afar?!)

After a morning at the marathon we headed to Tiong Bahru market for lunch & I got to eat my favourite chicken rice. Not something big to be happy about, but I guess nothing beats the real chicken rice in Singapore.

a Jack Russell outside Tiong Bahru Market

It's been non-stop eating (or at least feels so to me) of my favourite foods so far, even though I haven't had much appetite since last week. The volume of food I can take in is reduced though, hopefully this gets better over the next 2 months.

Not much thoughts so far, been feeling tired easily & discovered some hurtful stuff that I shall try to not think about (which the more I try, the more I end up thinking about it & feeling angry and sad). argh!!!

The least I can do is not let myself be hurt by people I care about anymore. But how? Build a wall around me?

千九百七十一：Korea

2011-11-28T16:28:00.001+08:00

time waits for no man (or woman..)

I'm back from the Seoul super short trip! The temperatures were freezing (need 2 thick jackets above my heattech top & normal sweater & gloves) which really tired me out; I spent all my energy fighting the call and was dead tired by early evening.

The flight there was quite short, around 2 hours, but the trip to the hotel took around 2 hours as well. I should have taken the airport express bus to Myeongdong, but did not know of it until when going back, which was a pity, because it was cheaper and faster. I'm glad I got a room at Skypark hotel, because it was like 3 minutes from the subway station was was just plonk in the middle of the shopping area. I finally met up with Marini & Qling at around 4pm and we headed for my first proper meal of the day - bibim cold noodles. It was delicious! but very spicy. & I think I ate it wrongly w/o using the cold soup. hmmm.. We walked a little around, saw a demonstration in progress, escaped the confusion and crowds and met the bride for dinner at a crab place. I didn't know that crabs were famous in Korea. & they were pretty good! Unexpected food of this trip. After dinner, they brought us to Dongdaemun for me to look around a little - it's like MBK in Bangkok with all the small wholesale type clothing shops where there are lots of shops u have to bargain with and they all carry similar clothes after walking around for a bit. Maybe we were there too late, but the area isn't as happening as portrayed by the Japanese travel programs. (>.<)

The next day, we had brunch or actually an early lunch - some sort of hot pot. The luncheon meat was surprisingly good :) Then we went on to Red Mango for some dessert. I think I ordered a different item .. I wanted frozen yoghurt but the person didn't seem to understand me & I ended up with Yoghurt icecream. This is the problem with going to countries where they don't understand me! By the time I realised someone else did order frozen yoghurt, it was too late (because I was too full to eat anymore). We headed for the spa after lunch & it was a very very interesting experience. The old aunties who were the "scrubbers" were also in their undies (which was super weird) but practical & I dunno why we paid to torture ourselves in the oven sauna! At least at the end of it, I was scrubbed super clean & probably that "detox" session burnt some fats as well, because I was very hungry after 2-3 hours of spa activities. We had Ginseng Chicken for dinner, which was only so-so because I didn't like the sticky glutinous rice in the chicken. After dinner, we shopped a bit more & went back to the hotel early (too cold & we had to wake up the next day early for the wedding)

On the wedding day - it actually got colder. Cloudy overcast sky. I swear, I'll never go Korea in winter again. We made it to the wedding venue via shuttle bus, the wedding was quite an interesting affair. The usual ceremony was quite similar to a church wedding except we didn't understand what the officiating guy was chattering about - he made a speech for >15 minutes. The table arrangements were weird too, there was no eating no drinks, so why were there tables in there? They should have put in more chairs as >half of the people had to stand at the back of the hall. The traditional ceremony was funny, and I'm glad I was able to witness it. It was almost exactly as the dramas portrayed it, (with whichever few dramas I watched) the husband had to piggyback the wife around the room! I'm very glad I got the chance to see this, but most of all, happy that a friend who has been like a big sister to me has found her own happiness as well.

After the wedding, we went back to change, (dresses & heels are not for the super cold weather) and we headed for some tea at a store called Tea Therapy. It was a very cozy place, with half herbal teas and half herb teas, at a very reasonable price & we tried the very delicious ice kachang too! After that, we headed to dinner, finally we had bbq pork & chige & that was the last of my trip.

Headed back to JP yesterday morning at 6am for a 9am flight, I'm so glad JP is so warm (at 15 degrees it feels so warm!).

Now I'm just looking forward to Singapore to avoid the cold winter here for 2 months! :)

千九百七十：Kobe Marathon

2011-11-23T22:35:00.001+08:00

Kobe Marathon Participation T-shirt

My 2nd last run for the year is over & I'm feeling that alot of weight is off my shoulders! I know that I'm not in to win but there is just pressure on myself (from myself) that I need to do better that I did previously. Now I have only the Standard Chartered half marathon in Singapore left to worry about!

The run expo was a rainy affair, and there was only a small hall with with not many exhibitors. It was quite a sad event compared to the Osaka Marathon Expo and I don't know if it was due to poor planning or just plain stinginess on the organisers' part, there was no wet weather plan.

It was lucky that the marathon day itself was sunny but with very strong winds. It was a horrible run mainly because I had the urge to pee which got very very bad towards the 7-8km mark & I was really running for the loo rather than for any other reason in the end. The race course was too crowded - again poor planning, I don't know why they start everyone off at the same time cos in the end the 10km runners are stuck behind the slow full marathon runners who are definitely not going to be running at the same pace as us (or the people who actually need to use the loo) with many sharp curves in the route where runners were slowed to a crawl when running (now i understand the pain of the F1 racers in Singapore).

I managed to finish the run in an hour+, seek immediate relief in the loo of the end point before going on to support the full marathon runners.

Hiroki did really well! I'm actually surprised that I managed to catch all the people that I know was running, & that cheering them on helped to boost their morale (at least that's what they said). It was fun chasing them with the trains to 2 different points in the race - something that is probably not doable in Singapore. (How to go to Orchard then ECP then suntec within a few hours with all the walking & road closures in between?!) But the sunny weather was such a boost to runners' morales & you can really see the difference in the videos. Most people tried to finish with a run here but in the heavy rains during the Osaka Marathon, everyone looked depressed even at the finishing line. At least I experienced the worse one with hopes that if I ever join any marathon again, it should have better weather?!

I'm glad I've done all I wanted to achieve this year (train up, improve my 10km, do a good half marathon & try a full marathon). Heading to Seoul tomorrow for a colleague's wedding, it seems to be super cold in Korea! I hate the cold, it makes me feel all sleepy and want to just hibernate like a bear. I'm so looking forward to escaping 2 months of the cold in SG in a week!!

千九百六十九：Kyoto

2011-11-14T14:10:00.001+08:00

The escape artist at the Philosopher's Walk in Kyoto

Last week was quite relaxing in the sense that the projects got signed off finally! & the team went on some event on Friday so it was a very coincidentally good timing that Shuping & Susan came to Kyoto over the same days.

Thursday night was 焼肉、 finally settled my beef cravings. I can't even remember the last time I had bbq beef, was it with Ryo's team?

Friday was sightseeing at Kyoto with the girls, it was a very very gloomy & chilly day with rain & lots of bus rides. We got to chat a lot on the bus rides at least, & I realised that Kyoto is too big a city to cover even in a week! (maybe because of the jams.. & the fact that we were taking buses.. the subway network is not comprehensive enough, we had to walk alot of places) I feel sorry for the people who live in Kyoto; there are so many tourists on the public transportation system, & the buses are so tiny with so little seats, are they paying taxes to maintain these systems? Around evening time, the horrible buses are packed to the door, and locals are not able to get on the buses (because the buses are so small) & I actually feel thankful for the SG buses being so spacious and user friendly in their designs (even for standing people!) We managed to head to the Philosopher's walk (stumbled upon the cat above), then 平安神宮 & 金閣寺. When the sun set, we headed towards Gion, & then the shopping district. Luckily, we were all laidback travellers (not the kind who must cheong 10 places a day) & this suited us very well + our legs were all super tired from the walking around & the standing in the bus for >40 minutes per ride.

Saturday was a trip to 嵐山 Arashiyama (the most scenic place in Kyoto in my opinion). I should have set off earlier, but I was in serious sleep debt after 2 nights of sleeping late & waking up early the next day, and the seats were all taken up by energetic old ladies who were ready to go sightseeing at 9+am. (T.T) I had to stand for the whole of the 1.5 hours train ride there. Although there was only about 20% of the trees having turned yellow for autumn, having not been in Arashiyama for 2 years++ , the view still pretty much took my breath away. Seeing the bridge against the mountainous backdrop with patches of red & yellow, & a river with super clear waters, it was very scenic, if you try to ignore all the human traffic trying to squeeze pass you when you try to stop to take a pic (>.<) Anyway, loads of fun that day with the girls. We headed to the 竹林, managed to see workmen cutting down bamboo trees, old men doing watercolour paintings by the roadside, duck udon for lunch, an orgel museum (only headed into the shop hehe)

Kyoto is famous for it's 漬物　(pickled vegetables?) so we had alot of fun trying out pickles at the stores (of course we bought some!) I think the best part was that we were all sorta on the same frequency, especially with the "take alot of pics of everything" & "take alot of candid pics of the other girls'" mentality since we all had our own quite good cameras. I haven't travelled with friends in a while, it's usually Ryo & he doesn't take pics much (unless he wants to post something on fb) or he will be kinda involved in playing his games on the phone (which is pretty irritating) and be waiting for me while i browse or take pics instead of taking pics himself so this time was 10x more fun.

Dinner on Saturday night was with my cousin who also happened to come to Osaka at the same weekend, (the girls went back to Tokyo..) & his baby is already 1 year old! I haven't met his wife/baby directly before, and I must say the baby is a really really cute & sweet little girl! She was just smiling all the time (almost) & charmed the socks off 3 grown men at the next table which was quite funny cos they actually looked very macho & scary to me, until they started making faces at the baby. wahahaha!

Sunday morning was runclub activities and had to wake up at 7am sobzz (T.T) But was quite happy that I went; I hadn't realised that the last time I went was in July! Everyone seemed genuinely happy to meet up with me, & I feel very guilty that the next one I can only join is in February after I return from Singapore. sighz. I had a good time catching up with everyone during lunch (brought them to eat chicken rice for lunch!) and made some new friends as well.

I'm very glad to be not going any where this week (for now though) because my legs are so so so tired! There is the quarter marathon this Sunday, & Korea next weekend. Glad to have events to look forward to!

千九百六十八：Happy Birthday!

2011-11-09T17:13:00.001+08:00

Mont Blanc Chocolat Birthday Dessert

My hubby turned 40 last Friday. It sounds old! (><) But I tried to make it a good birthday, since almost every year I am not in Japan for his birthday, actually, trying to recall, I don't even think I've celebrated his birthday at all since 2005. Since we were in Tokyo, we went out for his favourite お好み焼 for dinner, & I surprised him by producing the above when he came back to the room. I went up first because I had to pee (really!) while he went to 7-eleven, & that gave me the chance to prepare the dessert/cake and the candles. I went to buy the cake on the way back to the hotel after working at starbucks in the afternoon, luckily we were staying within walking distance from the department stores. (Odakyu has a very poor choice of confectionery compared to Hankyu, I realised.) Anyway, he was surprised & quite touched (I didn't wish him happy birthday in the morning because I had forgotten haha), so yay! Still sore he didn't do anything for me for my birthday, but too bad for me ...

Back at home since Monday, Ryo has gone to New York for work this morning. I have resolved to clean up the mess at home while he is away so that I can surprise him again when he is back. (& I really should clean up the study room which is overflowing with books.) I've managed to throw away tons of receipts, even from 2009. & have finally called the garbage center to remove the broken suitcase which Ryo was supposed to have done. Cannot depend on him to help with anything!! I have also decided to read a book a day (or a book every 2 days) which is very hard when you are at home and there is so much other things you want to do. So far so good, I've read 7 (?) books since last week, on the train rides in Tokyo & back home. Ryo being away should give me the chance to read in bed before I sleep anyway.

It was a good trip, as 1day was a public holiday & we had the weekend + Friday dinner together. Usually when i'm in tokyo, I would be having dinner myself almost every day. Met up with some ex colleagues for lunch, leisurely worked in the afternoon (only 1 work day anyway) & met up with 2 NY girls for dinner on Sunday. It was so fun to girl talk while the JP husbands 诉苦 to each other. (^^)v Shopped a little, ate alot, on the whole it was quite a relaxing trip. It was the first time I took an afternoon flight home as well and I managed to catch a glimpse of Osaka Castle & Umeda Sky building from the air. It was amazing!

Feeling very fulfilled after the big cleanup today, shall go read & cook dinner (not at the same time) now. Ciao!

千九百六十七：　Air Acrobatics

2011-11-04T16:54:00.002+08:00

Blue Impulse - the Japanese air acrobatics pilots in their air display

I'm in Tokyo again, blogging from the Starbucks at 三井ビル in Shinjuku. Had lunch with Maya & Mikey-san, & am now doing work here at least until the housekeeping is done in the hotel room (& also to give myself some fresh air).

Just got most of my work done, & am looking forward to the SG holiday on Monday (because I can OTOTw/o having to worry about my travelling time from Tokyo - Osaka.

We had quite a good time at 入間 (Iruma) airbase yesterday; they had an open house & there was an air display by the Japanese air acrobatics team Blue Impulse. They were pretty good! Although they weren't flying fighter jets like the Italian team Frecce Tricolori or the Singapore Black Knights, the stunts were similar & as usual, very breathtaking. The last display I had watched live was during the Singapore airshow in 1998, & it was so exciting! The difference this time is I have a DSLR (with only 200mm zoom but good enough for most of my shots) & the pictures are so much better :)

I'm back in the hotel now; the problem with working outdoors is that you always worry that you have not enough battery power to last. If you have to bring all the power cables, it kinda defeats the purpose of mobile work right? & my bag will then be very heavy.

Enjoying tokyo air so far, but wished I had brought jeans now.. is abit cold.. Looking fw to checking out the latest sg restaurant I discovered online tomorrow, & hopefully thai food tomorrow for dinner also! (^^)v

千九百六十六： Osaka Marathon 2011

2011-11-01T21:05:00.002+08:00

At the starting line on 30 Oct 2011.

Finally the day that I was dreading is finally over!! Been waiting (dreading) for this day for the past 4 months ever since I got the spot for the race. With lots of grand plans for training myself to avoid the horrible pains of Sundown, I was actually quite looking forward to it at first until I injured my foot during the fireworks at Yodogawa, stopped training for almost the whole of August, travelled to Taipei, then Italy then basically suddenly it was October already & I haven't trained at all. (>.<) & it became a very dreaded event... argh...

At any rate I was hoping to finish within 5 hours, but it was not to be ... & I was filled respect for people who did managed to finish within 6 hours after the race haha.

my timing for Osaka Marathon 2011

Moving time displayed. Total time was actually 6:11:58 if you click in to see , I rested for almost 1 hour. What a waste!

It was a super gloomy day on Sunday, cloudy, drizzling, cold winds.. I was filling so cold at the start line cos of the winds, was wondering if my decision to just wear shorts & tshirt was right after all. (weather forecast had forecast that rain was to come around 3pm) so I had just ziplocked my phone & earphones & some money in a pouch & hoped the weather held up. It felt like everyone around me seemed very well prepared ... & I was just feeling kinda scared.

When it finally started at 9am, my group was around 500m away from the start line, so I walked slowly there (15 min? ) while everyone around me like kinda cheonged towards the start.. I mean, not like they are going to count the time we take to get to the start & 500 m is not a short distance.. i want to conserve my energy! The first 2 km was really almost shoulder to shoulder, had no space in front to even try to overtake people. Which in a way was good, cos I was forced to go quite slowly & 2+km went by w/o even feeling much effort/

Luckily I did.. as usual, the long waiting time for the start of the race made me want to pee. Not urgently but added with the intensity of the race but every toilet I passed had a long queue. I finally decided to take a quick break at 9.9km & just queued for the loo & take a breather.

Ryo was nice enuff to move around every 5/10km to catch me. Actually it was a big help he was around. I had something to look forward to, every 5km or 10km, knowing he was somewhere along the side & it kinda kept me going. When I neared the points he was supposed to be at, I would be kinda scanning the pavements for him which helped me ignore the pains in my feet or the urge to stop & just sit down. Everytime I saw him, it kinda gave me energy at least for the next 1-2 km to run abit before I had to walk again.

It was a super huge struggle after 25km. I could feel the pains in my leg very clearly now, but thank God it wasn't the horrible horrible pain behind the knee as per Sundown. This was still walkable, I really had to stop & stretch every 2km, but i was kinda not really running much after 30km (depressing in the rain & gave up on having a time limit, just wanted to get this over with)

Rain got heavy, & Ryo would only be at the end point. All I could think about was omg, no more full marathons for me again!! & just tried to walk faster because I was in danger of missing the next cut off time. (38 km at 1514) I had passed 34km at 1415, which meant I had an hour to clear 4km. A slow walk for a normal person is around 3km an hour. which means I had to walk faster than that. Feeling quite scared, I tried to stretch out abit, spray alot of Salonpas on my leg　& tried to run at least for the next km. Managed to do it in 8 min, realised if I walked w/o thinking about anything except just counting until 100 it might be easier, I did that for the next 4km... & finally managed to get to 38km.

Rain got heavier & heavier. There were drinks & food station every 2.5km, at that point it was kinda like a stroll at the pasar malam where yay free food & drinks & I was actually starting to feel quite full. no need to eat/drink also just take, something to take my mind off the pain & the last few km. There was an upslope at 39km? & I saw like soooo many people ahead of me, & actually I didn't know then, but there was actually still around 6000 people behind me. It was pouring cats & dogs, when I finally hit the last km marker. at 42km, I still couldn't see the finishing line. Which was damn weird. & very demoralising. Finally decided to just end the pain (200m is actually still quite a distance, when I could finally see the finishing point, made a final effort to dash towards it. (which led to the commentator commenting, oh, this person still has energy to run more!) *rolls eyes*

The struggle wasn't over. After the finishing point, had to walk at least another 1km (through the expo hall) to get our medals & everything that came with the finisher pack, then another 1km to the next expo hall to get our baggage, then wait in line another 30minutes to exit the place. omg..... & then guess what, the train station was too crowded so we had to walk to the next one in the super heavy rain, probably another 1km away. (T.T) & at the train station had to queue for at least 15 min just to get into the station due to the crowds. I almost died post race if not during the race.

Ryo had to leave for his work trip after reaching home, so I kinda just spent sunday night with lots of the Salonpas patches on my legs. Knees were aching like mad (never ached before), waist area too, back of thighs & butt as well. All I can say is luckily I work from home! Fell asleep from exhaustion at 10pm, but kept waking up at night when i moved my legs due to the pain. Monday was just shuffling in pain from 1 place to another in the house, but amazingly I can actually descend the stairs w/o pain today anymore. In fact most of my bodyaches are gone! Just the side of my right knee still hurting a little & I got tired super fast when I went out to run some errands.

Work kept me busy for the past 2 days; thank goodness it doesn't hurt to sit down.

Phew! I'm glad I don't have any full marathons upcoming, & am quite looking forward to the quarter marathon on 20th Nov. (Yay!! only Quarter!! 11km should be chicken feed!) & the half marathon in SG in december. I guess my short term goal is just to better the shorter distances' timings. & something else I learnt, that there is no such thing as having fun in the marathons. If you decide on timing, there is no time to stop & take pics. (unless you ran very fast) If you just want to hv fun & take alot of pics, just throw your timing out the window. Half of it was the indecision of what I wanted out of this marathon that got me feeling very tired mentally. At least for the shorter distances, there isn't such a dilemma!

If you actually managed to read until here - you can view the photos from the marathon here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157628032055232

Will be in Tokyo for the weekend (from tomorrow's evening actually)!!

千九百六十五：Hurtful Words

2011-10-28T06:31:00.001+08:00

at the tennis court

Woke up especially early today because I'm going to collect my race pack at the Osaka Marathon Expo later. The place looks huge, with almost all the major sports brands in Japan setting up booths. I'm so excited! By the way, if you want to just check out how I'm doing during the marathon on Sunday, you can just go to this page: http://www.osaka-marathon.com/2011/ and search for my tag number L 43374. I'm not exactly sure if there is an exact page that allows for the search or just this page directly, will try to update this page on Saturday night. Having alot of jitters for this, because I didn't train much, & am having abit of a sore throat now. But I am going to finish this by hook or crook (hopefully just able to finish this normally can le.. )

This has been an uneventful week, just work work work. Last minute deadlines almost killed me, had to work until 4am trying to complete some data creation on Monday. But partly my own fault, met up with Yusuke for dinner but it was good hearing about people from the office. At least he lives so near me I don't have to spend much time travelling to meet up with him. I did see something that I sorta feel like buying, a fish eyes lens for the iphone, it's just so cute! but so bulky in the bag, how am I going to stick that case into the bag with the lens sticking out? hmm..

The hubby was so horrible last night. We were going to visit his parents on Saturday morning, because it was his mum's birthday & he said something about visiting his parents means eating free meals so isn't it a good thing? and it just sounded wrong saying it like that even though it might be true. Shouldn't we visit them because we want to see them and not because we go there to eat free meals? & I said that, & he got pissed off saying I always seem so reluctant to visit them blah blah (apparently he missed the point I was trying to make again) and I said huh? since when? I might complain about having to wash the dishes, but who doesn't? I would rather bring the parents out for dinner because I feel bad that they have to take so much trouble to cook so much food (always end up having leftovers which they don't mind but I mind) & after that I have to help clean up (this is a given but I've always done it willingly because they are so old) but when he said that it really made me mad. Did I not volunteer to cook dinner & bring over? Did I not jog all the way to the hospital to visit his dad when he wasn't around? I mean, I always go over when he wants to, help out like a normal if not above average daughter in law & he can just say out such hurtful things w/o even thinking. How about changing his position to him being in Singapore & if I want to go my parents' place & if he always has to make small talk how will he feel? The point is not really cleaning up or what, it's more of the feeling that i have - similar to visiting relatives that I hardly visit in CNY (which is why I don't really like CNY)? You go there, greet people, sit down & eat and then after that just watch TV. You don't really have anything to say to them, except the direct concerns like how are you feeling etc. I don't know how to make small talk. Getting married to the son doesn't make me family any immediately than they adopting me as a child. They might make an effort to be friendly & treat me like family, but I will still be a stranger because they are not my parents and it takes time. I am not the type of person who can just become chummy or warm up to other people in a short time, especially not the elderly or authority figures, but I will at least be civil and do the duties or responsibilities expected of me. Is that so hard to understand?

千九百六十四：ごちそうさまでした！

2011-10-24T09:09:00.003+08:00

the 2nd Osaka GoChiSo Marathon on 23-Oct-2011

I joined the Osaka GoChiSo marathon yesterday with 2 friends from the run club! It was quite a fun run, basically along the run, we will pass through 商店街 (streets with shops) & they will offer us food & we can eat / drink & then continue running. The food is usually those representative type of foods from the shops around that area, like sushi, udon, snacks, fruits, bbq squid etc. & also we passed through some niche places of interests in Osaka that I didn't know about, like Diamond point (best view of sunset from Osaka harbour area) & the lowest mountain in Japan (天保山 see the word 山？！） hahaha!　& the best part is actually the ferry ride across from the harbour to Universal Studios Japan's perimeter, I don't think any one has actually ran in a race that involves a boat ride! Good chance for us to take a breather; the weather was so warm yesterday. We went to get registered at 8am, and waited until 11am for the run to start :x then unluckily, they started people off in groups, so there are like around 20+ groups and we are group 19! :( so we only finally flagged off at 11.40am. By then, we were all famished, & the first food stop around 1.6km away was very very welcome with warabi mochi (chilled & super delicious!) and some tea. Although after that it got harder & harder to continue running cos of the food being digested & I just kept feeling the urge to burp. I used the 4S to take photos, but the camera just sucked all the battery life out of the phone! I think I took only around 50 pictures, switched off wifi, all other apps, but the battery life was down to 50% at around 2pm from 100% in the morning, & around 80% when the race started. :(

Pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157627963020060/
& the best thing about using iPhone to take pictures is that all the pictures are Geotagged already! (see the little map beside each picture)

I had to abort the race at the halfway point, because I had a househunting meeting with the salesman at 3pm. (took us 2hours for 13km including all the eating) so when we reached a point where I could get to the train station, I made my escape. :X all the good food actually only came in after this point. Which kinda makes sense because near the end le, can eat more, can't possibly be eating udon at the start of the race. Sighz...

Anyway, we kinda made a decision on the apartment at Sannomiya!! yay! See the double standard of guys - he complains I want to get the first place I saw (which actually i think is really nice) but actually he just illogically wanted this place w/o checking much other places because he really likes it. (>.<) humph! I'm not super in love with this place, but I'm ok to live here (because it's new & we can still save up for the payment next year & we can still customize it) and I'm just very relieved we don't have to go around looking anymore. I don't like shopping around much for anything, seriously, if I see it & I like it, then I just get it, instead of giving myself reasons why I should shop around more.

So we are waiting for the housing loan initial review by the bank to go through then we can officially sign the contract for the house. woohoo!

千九百六十三：Too Much Alone Time

2011-10-22T00:52:00.001+08:00

ok I'm blogging so much recently because I've had alot of alone time.

I've watched finished all the episodes of CSI & CSI:NY recorded on my TV, 3 movies (recorded too) & all the episodes of Tin Tin & the last episode of the Amazing Race as well. All thanks to Ryo coming back home so late every day for the past week (around 1 am) & being away in Tokyo today until tomorrow.

I mean I feel irritated when he's around hogging the TV & I can't watch the shows I've recorded but there is such a thing as too much alone time. I haven't been out of the house in 4 days. (because i'm lazy to dress up & due to PMS, having headaches & tummy aches so didn't feel all that well to want to relieve boredom by going out).

I've been having quite a bit of disturbing dreams lately. They feel so real & I wake up feeling half sad and very tired.

I'm not looking forward to clearing the huge hurdle of the marathon next weekend. I have zero confidence, & zero motivation to train. but I hope that this time will be better than the previous attempt. What in the world was I thinking when I signed up for this?! (><)

& then after that will be Tokyo, and there will be the Seoul trip to look forward to & then to SG for 2 whole months. yay!!!

千九百六十二： Gold Coast

2011-10-19T11:11:00.000+08:00

my first time eating Churros! (spanish donuts) in Brisbane / with condensed milk

anyway, here's the very very late blog post about the Gold Coast trip - was in Gold Coast for the Gold Coast Airport Marathon from 2011-6-26 to 2011-7-5 - although I only joined the half marathon- and here it is :

amazed and happy with my results - only walked 2 water stops around 100 - 200 m each time. Had targetted around 2h30min, but i guess this is definitely much better! Actual results 2hr04min btw :)

Ok for some elaboration of the trip, here is the short & long of it. Long if you have the time to read, here's the short of it.

Sunday Day 1 - Brisbane day trip via Airtrain
Monday Day 2 - Car rental -> Mt Tamborine & Cedar Creek Wineries & Cedar Creek Falls, Mariner's Cove/Mariner's mirage
Tuesday Day 3 - Car rental -> Coolangotta, Point Danger lookout, Little Nerang Dam, Springbrook National Park - Best Ever Lookout, Cav's steakhouse
Wednesday Day 4 - Day of relaxation - Mini run/walk after waking up at Surfer's paradise along the beach, then just shopping at surfer's paradise, went for dinner at Fisherman's wharf
Thursday Day 5 - Movie world
Friday Day 6 - Paradise Country Farmland , then headed to the GC Expo hall to collect our bibs for the marathon, then checked out Broadbeach
Saturday Day 7 - GC Expo to shop for sports stuff, then Harbourtown for some outlet shopping & went back to some self cooked pasta dinner for carbo & slept at 10pm.
Sunday Day 8 - Marathon in the morning (woke up at 3.30am), lunched at Australia Fair, reached back with aching legs, showered & conked out until 8pm, dapao-ed dinner & slept at 10pm again.
Monday Day 9 - Sea World Whale watch it was fantastic to watch the whales dive in and out of the sea. Sea World in the afternoon, went to Marina's Mirage in the evening, Chinese food for dinner at Surfer's Paradise.
Tuesday Day 10 - Checked out at 5am and had to board the flight home at 10am.

Pictures have finally been uploaded to flickr too: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157627137341024

& now for the long of it..

General thoughts about the trip instead of a day by day rundown - it's too long - both for the person reading it & the person writing it.

Before the marathon, we went sightseeing & some of the highlights were Brisbane, glow worms, Nerang Dam, Springbrook National Park & the Paradise Country Farm. Not saying the other places weren't fun, but these were the places　I liked alot :)

I was having sorethroat/cough/flu throughout so generally kinda slept through alot of the transport and was heavy headed during the walks and was quite a grumpy / listless travelmate i think.

We went to Brisbane for a day trip on Sunday when I reached, that's where i had churros, and since it was a Sunday, it was a very peaceful day in the CBD area. We wandered around taking pictures of the historical buildings, there was the winter festival going on so there were crowds and fun stuff going on. We wandered to Southbank and it was great there, with the park and the ferris wheel and I just did what everyone else did, laid back on the grass and enjoyed the view of the sky. :D

my view from my place lying down on the grass

an artist spraypainted over old records

There are Nando's everywhere in Australia - i guess it's probably like fast food for them. Didn't have a chance to try it anywhere yet, so took the chance to have. was coming down with flu/and sore throat as well, and it was a torture eating western food which was mostly xxx with chips which is French fries.

Food was a problem, because of my sore throat, everything western seemed less than appetizing. We wandered around alot looking for Asian food although we did try eat the local food for the first few days. Their steaks were pretty good, oysters too :)

We saw glow worms at Cedar Creek wineries, it was a man-made cave, but no pictures there because it was too dark and glow worms are just too small anyway. Lunch was pretty good, I had steak with some of Cedar Creek's dessert wine. We also tried steak & oysters at Cav's steakhouse at Frank St (Labrador) which was pretty good, but quite a big slice of steak so it's better to share so that you can try other food as well. Cedar Creek Falls was nearby, but not super majestic, it's just a mini waterfall. There were some quaint little shops at Mt Tamborine, before we reached Cedar Creek, and apparently fudge is their specialty. We got large chunks of fudge to try, but after a few bites they were too sweet for us

We took a drive to Little Nerang Dam (cos we all haven't seen a real dam before) and it was in so deep into the woods that we thought we were lost. When we finally reached it, we saw a campsite and we were like thinking "people would drive all the way here just to have a picnic?!" Most of the parks have a picnic /campsite so it was quite common to see kids/families even in the most difficult places to get to. We did get lost a little here and there as we were driving based on the street directory, not GPS, but that kind of added the fun to the trip because we hit unexpected places, like a lookout spot for a beautiful sunset was also a sorta gravestone for a pet.. :(

Back in GC, the weather was cold and rainy after our 2 days of driving around, and I guess I had underestimated the cold. There was winter sales ongoing though, & managed to get 2 sweaters from the surf brands at very good prices. We spent quite abit of time wandering around surfer's paradise, made a trip to the outlet malls (Harbourtown). The remaining time we tried to make trips to Movie World, Sea World, whale watch & also to the Paradise country farm. The wet weather almost ruined our chance to whale watch. We had planned to whale watch the first few days we were there, but due to stormy seas, the trips in the first week was cancelled and the very next trip was our last day in GC which was quite lucky for us that we didn't get a flight back the day after the marathon. it was just so majestic! to see the whales for real first time in my life in the wild. The whales were moving up north and GC waters happen to be in their route every year. This was probably the best part of the wildlife I experienced in Australia.

a whale making a dive

All too soon, the trip was at an end and we reluctantly parted ways at the airport. It was a fruitful trip, gave me back confidence for 21km, and of course a relaxing vacation does wonders for the mental health (makes me want to have a longer vacation at least haha)

& I guess i can now finally start sorting through photos from Taipei & Italy!

千九百六十一：New Purchases

2011-10-17T11:30:00.001+08:00

new iPhone!

I got my new phone last Friday! Even though we pre-ordered it, and were told we could go to the shop from 8am onwards to collect, the Softbank server was down all the way till noon before we were able to get our phone. Japan has a very ineffective & un-environmentally friendly system of using SIM cards - new SIM cards are issued everytime you change a new phone (which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of for such an efficient country). Luckily they don't charge us for SIM cards! Which caused the whole lag time in the system. Most people actually reached the shop around 8am (I was first in the queue) but it turns out it was a country wide system failure & while I had quite a bit of time to wait in the store, the people behind me were working adults who had to reach the office probably around 9+am. They were quite shocked (& I think very sad) that they couldn't get the phones to bring to the office & that their phone lines will be cut off in the middle of the day once the new phone's SIM card got activated, and all of them left reluctantly. I decided to just sit in the shop until the service resumed, because I had no other ways to be contacted by the shop, and since there were a ton of people who were waiting at the Apple stores, I was quite sure the service had to be fixed shortly.

I'm actually glad that I waited. Around 11.30am, a guy came in to collect his phone & the system registration went through for him smoothly! I was like thinking " oi....... what about mine? I waited for so long already!!" & pointedly looked at the staff who handled that successful registration. The lady who had handled my order came over after that to say , sorry but she doesn't know when system will be resumed & I was like erh..?! The other guy just left with his new iphone! what are you talking about!? & I said, "I think the system seems to be up, can you try first? since i'm here anyway" & she reluctantly agreed. Luckily she did that, because after that a whole bunch of people came in (it was lunchtime) to try to collect their phones, and if I was the staff, I would definitely be handling those people in the store first instead of the morning cases who already went home. & the system finally activated my SIM card and she allowed me to take the phones home. (-.-!) what a waste of time... 4 hours.

I'm still trying to get used to the phone; it has the tendency to slip through my hand because it's a little too thin. But I guess gamewise it's alot faster than the old phone & of course the camera I have no complaints :)

Another major purchase we were trying to make over the weekend was the house. (apartment I guess?) We went to see a few, some work in progress, some already built, but i guess what we agreed on is that we prefer Kobe to Osaka. So Saturday, we went to see one in Sannomiya (三宮） which is a residence block that will be 54 storeys. Being in the city centre of Kobe, of course there was no amenities issues; it's like living in Orchard Road I suppose. Surprisingly, prices are cheaper for the apartments here than at Sumiyoshi (住吉） , near our current aparment which we are renting. But, cheaper in the relative sense - 85sqm costs around S$10k/sqm in Sannomiya while in Sumiyoshi, it was S$11k/sqm. ouch ouch ouch. 85sqm is only around a 3-4rm flat in Singapore. How sad :( But of course, the demerits being that there was always all sorts of people hanging around, it's never quiet, and there are like pachinko parlours all over the place.

Yesterday, we went to see an apartment near the Kobe colonial area, near the Meriken Park which was built in March this year. & being around 10minutes away from the station, of course this is cheaper (& depreciating everyday since it was already completed). The salesman was trying to talk us into buying this - http://www.b-kobe.com/plan/type_r/index.html which had only 1 unit left, on the 26th Floor. And the price was even less than both apartments above. S$880k for 101sqm corner apartment!? I was pretty keen on it (just the space and the price alone was amazing, let alone it's super high floor and can sort of see the sea). All cabinets & downlights were inbuilt already, & bathroom toilets & walk-in closets & it actually had a real kitchen!! so far all the places have only those kitchen that's open concept with the living room which is so impractical - all the oil & smells will reach the living room furniture right?! & already in built kitchen counters & cupboards! (other places have to add prices to have those built -.- )But obviously, no one talks prices on the first meeting & he set up a next meeting for us next week. & I excitedly went home and showed my parents and asked for their opinions and got them all excited. Guess what. The salesman called last night and said that the house had been sold (another couple who had been looking at the house had made their decision to buy last night) WTF!? I was super disappointed... sighz...

I guess this finally convinced Ryo that if you snooze you lose. After dinner, I was trying to swallow the disappointment by looking at the brochures for the same completed block for other available apartments, but seriously what was remaining was either high floor but small units or low floor but ok spacious units (the view is of the expressway and not the sea if below 15th floor) In the end we decided to stick to the Sannomiya work in progress block. It will be completed in March 2013, so we have another year to save up alot more for the final payment (to reduce the amount of bank loan because this will lead to a hugeass bank charge that is dependent on the amount you loan). At least this is on the 44th floor, and will be all new and we can still request for some customizations like colours & cupboards we need. We haven't confirmed the purchase, but we already asked the salesperson to just flag it as in progress so that no one else takes it (grrrrr...). But I hope by next week we will be 80% confirmed. Househunting is a horribly tiring process!!

the Sannomiya place is at its 20th floor

千九百六十：The End of Summer

2011-10-13T12:28:00.003+08:00

the end of my sunflower

Not long ago, I was complaining how crazy hot it is here, & suddenly after I come back from Italy, it's almost cold. I'm still happily wearing shorts out in the daytime but at least it's like long fleece pants for pajamas at night. Although it's not super chilly yet, because I still actually switch on my fan at night sometimes and freeze the husband to death - he is using 2 blankets (?!) while I'm still using a normal very thin one.

I've just upgraded the OS on my iphone to iOS5 (kinda pointless since i'm probably getting the new phone tomorrow) but just wanted to have the pleasure of saying I'm upgraded the OS in probably the faster time so far w/o any issues on my first try! all thanks to the fact that I had only 3.6GB of apps in my phone. (Refer to my article on how to get rid of apps a few days ago.) & unchecking all music & podcasts & removing all pics before upgrading helped I guess.

After 3 days of disagreements & bickering, we finally pinpointed the reasons why I was so disagreeable & pissed off.
1. There was no birthday celebration or present for me. (from the husband or anyone else actually, my mum did pass me an angbao through my sis)
2. He didn't seem to have plans at all for our future.
3. Accumulated frustrations that I was just here to be his maid & feeling very under-appreciated (since he didn't even bother to make me feel appreciated on my birthday)

He finally understood how important the house buying was to me because i said the D word if nothing is going to change, (I came up with this new slogan so that he can remember it - No House = No BB = D!) it might sound funny but it really is quite frustrating to see friends going forward in their lives while i'm still going nowhere. :(

Work is quite slow these few days, but maybe i'm still in the vacation mode, (which is why you see so many blog updates) although I should actually do more constructive stuff like ... tidy the house. which I'm not really feeling up to it cos of all the quarrelling (I keep thinking why should I be the one to do everything??). But I hope things are getting better, he made some plans for us to go see more places this Saturday, so good luck to us!

千九百五十九：　The Meaning of Social

2011-10-12T14:13:00.000+08:00

the anti-social bug on my clothesline

Social tools being twitter, facebook, instagram & other apps or programs where you share stuff with people.

I believe there are many many many people who don't understand the purpose of using such tools.

Take for example the below situation:
Instagram is a tool you use to share photographs with other people on the Instagram community. A public account shares your photographs with all users in the community, a private account shares your photos with only your followers. I think the keyword is "share". If you are looking for a photo repository, taking photos for yourself, then don't share. Instagram is not a photo repository system. it's like twitter, when you spam posts with crap, you push other people's (maybe) better posts down the line. If you purposely go to other apps to edit the photos before uploading them, that's sharing, that's totally out of line with taking the pictures for yourself. If you don't have the intention to share, edit the pictures & just keep them in your folder, & NOT SHARE them, instead of sharing them & having people comment about the photos and giving the lamest self defense in the world of, i took them for myself, who cares about the number of likes, etc etc. If you took them for your self, you wouldn't bother re-editing the picts in another app to make them look better before re-going to instagram to share them again. & then also sharing the pictures on Twitter & facebook which means the same friends get spammed with the photo feed in 3 places. You want approval, you want people to take a look at what you did, that's why we share stuff - you don't share stuff because they were for yourself. If I had a cake I bought for myself, I sure wouldn't be sharing the information with my neighbours: "hey i bought a cake!" & leave the neighbours thinking "you want me to eat is it, that's why you tell me?"

I guess what I'm frustrated or irritated by, is such people saying 1 thing and doing totally another. Their actions clearly contradict their words; do they think we are idiots to not notice? This greatly discounts my trust in such people: they don't like to hear advice, they keep defending their own actions as right instead of learning something new when they get feedback etc. Will they ever be successful in life? I doubt so, because in this world they keep living for themselves (in their very flimsy self-defense) instead of really understanding what social means.

All the social tools have a different purpose to start with, that's why they are not the same tool. To start using all in the same way makes no sense & frustrates other people who are in your social circle.

on a happier note, 2 more days to the new phone!! (=^-^=)

千九百五十八：　Shitloads of Stupid Conditions

2011-10-10T23:37:00.002+08:00

I'm not happy!! Not happy to be in this house that's not mine, that I can't stick anything on the walls, I can't put up shelves, where the kitchen is so dark & dingy & windowless and I have no space on the counter to cut up ingredients except with a tiny 100yen chopping board. I want a sunny kitchen, I want to have space on the counter & cupboards to keep more pots & pans, & even to put a recipe book! (Now I have to keep going back & forth from the dining table to the kitchen when reading the recipe book. which is damn stupid .... i want to sleep on a bed, I want a house with enough space in the room for a bed!

What does the stupid guy want? Near to a station, near to his parents, but cheap enough, but not on the side of the station nearer to the expressway (because it's noisy & air is polluted), but spacious, but have resale value because he might be reassigned to Tokyo. & how often is he actually at home? An average of 59 hours per week & out of which, 42 hours sleeping. Which means only 10% of a week he is actually awake & enjoying his time at home. Whereas I am at home 85% of the time (144/168 hours). Shouldn't it be me who decides what kind of house we should live in??

& he gets unhappy when I return to Singapore for a longer period. Why should I want to be here when I still feel that Singapore is still my home more? Family, food, friends. Everyone & everything is still in Singapore for me.

千九百五十七：About Cleaning up your Iphone

2011-10-09T00:50:00.004+08:00

One of the artists' works outside the Uffizi Museum, Firenze

I was reading this article about clearing apps & "cleaning up the apps" on the iPhones. The blogger said using folders made your Iphone is able to contain 12x more apps & after cleaning up (by moving them into folders & deleting: he only deleted around 120 apps), he still had 12 pages in the menu. How is that clearing the phone? From an IT standpoint, clearing means removing, & opening up more memory/storage in the phone. what's the use of having 16folders of 12 apps in maybe 11 pages? that is 11x16x12 = 2112 apps? Do any of us use that many apps? If you log your app use for maybe a month, you will find that really all the apps you need and use are probably already in the first 2-4 pages already. While for the pages behind are games that I actually play like at least once a week. If you have 11pages of 16 folders, do you really know what's in where? Do you remember the app name to be able to search for them in the search screen? Even after clearing, he has 12pages left, 5 of which contain folders (5x16x12=960) which comes up to 960 apps still. Really? He uses 960 apps still? I think more cleaning up should be done (on the basis that he was writing a how to clean up article)

I have only 8 half-full folders in 9 pages & 5 pages of the menu are less than half covered (I like having the space for new downloads) - most apps I delete after 1-2 uses if I find that they are uninteresting or un-userfriendly. If I need to use them again, I can always download again- what's downloaded before stays in your Itunes account and you are not charged twice for the same app anyway. Everything is also backed up in your PC too. The only reason you might keep the app is there might have been data in the app, but again, if you haven't used the app in ages, you probably don't need the data anyway. Or copy them out somewhere before deleting.

Having only 16GB in my iPhone, storage space is a luxury. I also listen to podcasts & music & take lots of photographs, so removing unused apps is really dictated by necessity. But I guess if you do have 32GB, you should have the right to have more stuff in your phone, even though it is super messy for yourself. So although I don't really agree with the article's end results, the "clear everything not used in a month" is a good rule.

Anyway, I put in a preorder for the 64GB Iphone 4S.. I hope it comes on 14 Oct! I don't think I'll be increasing the number of apps though, I would be putting in more podcasts & taking lots of photos & videos :) Countdown to the new phone, 5 more days!

On a separate note, this is totally irking me. I wish people would stop linking the Iphone 4S = Iphone for Steve. It's named 4S because it was not changed from 4 in terms of looks (only an improvement functionality wise) as 3G became 3GS. Not because they knew Steve was going to die. Rumours about 4S came up far earlier in the year, not like it happened a day before / after Steve die, eg. - this article in July. 5 would be something that's radically different, as when 3GS became 4. So please stop saying this is for Steve & that is for Steve; Steve probably decided on the name himself - & being the demi-god of cool things, he probably wouldn't people to keep saying this lame line "for Steve" when it's just 4S.

千九百五十六：Buon Giorno!

2011-10-06T19:26:00.000+08:00

One of the many funny signboard vandalism in Firenze

Back from Italy, took another 2 days off so I'll be back at work next Tuesday since Monday is a Japan holiday.

Reached home last night around 8pm, after around 18+ hours of flying from Venice - Munich - Tokyo - Osaka, it would have been worse if we hadn't travelled business class (thanks to all the mileage from Ryo's work trips). 12 hours on the plane was surprisingly easy to get through this time, with dinner for the 2nd hour of the flight, then 2 short movies (with lots of fast forwarding). Started to feel drowsy around the end of the 2nd movie, (thats about 4hours gone) reclined to sleep mode & actually fell asleep for around 4 hours. woke up to the 2nd meal, ate another hour, did crocheting for the last 3 hours & then we reached Tokyo around 3pm in the afternoon.

Our cash of 1.5k Euros was enough surprisingly, we had abit of a scare when we had only like 500Euros left for the last 6 days of the trip but my sister joined us and became the cash source while we paid for all places that accepted credit cards. Everything is so expensive! (after Taiwan) Prices are equivalent to Japan, or more, especially in Rome & Venice. Florence was slightly cheaper than Japan prices; it was actually my favourite city as well since it was the safest. no suspicious people lurking about, quiet streets with joggers/dinner goers, tourists wandering around, it's almost the perfect place to live if only it has more international restaurants. I was craving for some light Japanese / Asian food towards the last day in Florence, we were kinda eating only breakfast & 1 other meal per day since the 2nd meal is usually so heavy we didn't need to eat 1 more.

Claiming back our VAT refunds was a nightmare. There was a big group of Malaysians in front of us, around 7 pple who had probably done a round Europe trip & they were claiming VAT refunds for stuff bought all over Europe. We waited in queue for >1 hr to realise that we couldn't claim because we didn't have the customs stamp which was outside airport security (& almost screamed at the VAT refund person here) & we had to run out to get the refund papers stamped & come back through security & queue up AGAIN! The VAT refund was also the Travelex money exchange service and the people serving the counter were super slow. The lady in front of us wanted to change money, & the person took 15 min to conduct the transaction, including taking checking the passport detail by detail, photocopying the passport, counting the notes slowly to the customer 2 times (& losing count halfway through so had to start over again). Everyone in the queue was seething mad & many people actually had to give up their claims and leave when their flight made the last call announcement.

Generally the Italians we met were friendly & helpful; however, it was embarrassing the way some Asians behaved overseas. These people behaved like they were shopping at the market!! In the brand boutiques & outlet malls, the people from mainland China & Taiwan shoved and pushed people, spoke in super loud voices and were quite rude to the sales people. A youngish woman was like asking to see wallets in LV & she slammed the product she was holding on to the glass counter when told that the design she wanted wasn't available and the LV saleslady actually reprimanded her. "I don't like..." she whined. duh.. don't like can just leave the store right? not like this is the only LV in the world.

Overall I quite enjoyed the trip but wished there was more relaxation time in between. There isn't a single starbucks, (for non-coffee drinks) & all the bars are standing - sitting means u pay a 15% service charge, and i don't drink coffee! Gelatos are usually eaten standing outside the shop too and all the sitting was only done during meals & transportation rides. My legs & feet are still aching now actually. All the soft drinks are jacked up like 300% (water is 80cents in the supermarket for 1liter but 500ml is 3 euros in the shops)

Today I was supposed to clean up my study room which is becoming very much like a store room but fell asleep from 11am to 3pm (><) I guess i'll just relax and do everything tomorrow instead. Ciao!

千九百五十五：Another Year

2011-09-28T04:07:00.001+08:00

Stray dog at Pompeii Ruins - kinda looks like how I'm feeling now

It's another year, and for this year's birthday I'm in Italy!

I feel kinda torn between where I should be for my birthday every year. Last year, I was in Singapore, & I had a good time with friends & family in Singapore but w/o the husband although from my blog post I think there were not so good times also because I remember I worked OT on my birthday until quite late. The year before, I was in Singapore before my birthday so I had pre-birthday celebrations with friends & family before going to Hawaii with the husband for honeymoon & I remembered we quarrelled on my birthday because he kept saying going to SG was my present. which really pissed me off because it was not a holiday trip, I just had a normal working life in SG. But anyway, that's the problem with an almost photographic memory, most events are like videos in my mind that never gets erased. I shall stop thinking about those events NOW.

Anyway, it happens that I'm in Italy this year. This is the usual overseas holiday week for me every year, either because the husband is able to take leave usually around this period (end Sept to Oct?) or if I'm in SG, it's holiday mood. We've gone to Rome, finished up Naples (actually didn't see much of Naples, but only Capri & Pompei due to the whole Naples looking kind of grimy (loads of garbage on the road sides) & every one looking dangerous on the streets. I mean, when the hotel staff also reminds you to keep your camera when walking on the streets, you know you're in trouble if you aren't wary enough of your surroundings. So I have very few pictures of Naples, (with the camera in my bag) & we are heading to Florence tomorrow morning. Eurostar trip will take 3 hours, will aim to crochet abit more on the train tomorrow (because sleeping on European trains is too dangerous!) and hit the outlets tomorrow.

Thinking back.. seems like it's been a very fast 1 year when I just celebrated turning 28. Travelled to a 4 new countries this year, revisited 1 country, sounds like a lot of travelling! Again, lots of happiness & sadness (as per every year..), made more friends in Osaka/Kobe through the run club & twitter, took lots & lots of photos to improve, (I hoped I improved my photography skills at least by abit?) & cleared my first half marathon properly as well. Hopefully I will be able to clear my first full marathon next month but it's hard to say since I'm now holidaying away and haven't been training very much. Looking forward to conquering new challenges in the year ahead!!

千九百五十四：　Grouses

2011-09-09T11:28:00.002+08:00

an example of a no-brain but cute dog

I saw this dog tied to the lamppost at Sannomiya; I think the owner went into the shops. This dog was just barking and barking (the dog in the previous post was on the contrary waiting quietly for the mistress to come out of starbucks). He stopped barking for a while when I took his pictures, but when I got up to leave, started barking madly again. (-.-!) Very noisy dog! But I realise I like dogs quite a lot, (at least for photographing). The day before there was an Otousan brown Shiba-ken, who was strolling in front of me with his mistress. Suddenly he turned around, and kept looking back as he walked. I was like "omg, how cute, maybe he will start speaking like the dog in the advertisement anytime" and he actually opened his mouth & started to bark at me. He actually went out of his way to keep turning his head back to look & bark at me. wahahah! It was so funny I almost fell over laughing right on the pavement.

I think as I grow older, I get irritated by more and more types of people.

1. Indecisive guys.
I must admit my hubby is one of them. Small decisions like what to eat at a restaurant is usually made by me, but this isn't one of the things that irritate me, it's more of, when buying stuff for people, you can't decide, yet you have alot of input, when I suggest A and B, all cannot yet you can't come up with anything at all. I get very pissed off because I hate to shop with someone saying this cannot that cannot beside me. Eg, desserts for a housewarming lunch. Ok, it's better to buy something the houseowner likes. But whether the owner want to share the desserts with you after the meal is up to the owner right? Yet he was like, "ok that guy only eats this, but I want to eat that so how??" & i thought what kind of mentality is this? Buy something for the houseowner with a bit more sincerity can? Just buy something the houseowner likes! & I said that & he got all unhappy that I'm so curt with him. duh! & I got more and more irritated as we walked round and he shot down everything I pointed out (cos he dun feel like eating those which made me more angry) so I just kept quiet and stopped walking or suggesting anything anymore.

2. People who give alot of excuses/reasons why they did anything when you point out mistakes or give them suggestions
I mean, I of course don't expect you to take every suggestion I make, but to flat not even accept it / consider it is quite rude. or give excuses like "aiyah it's for myself only so troublesome to change". The least you can say to be polite is "oh, thanks, i'll think about it, or I'll go check". If it's for yourself, don't facebook post it, don't tweet it, don't tell every single person u did something when you actually didn't, buay paiseh meh? I guess this is kinda like claiming credit for something you didn't do which is one of the things I dislike ALOT - similar to hypocrites. At least check your data before sharing it with the world, if someone find out u are "cheating" then all your previous / future data shared will be kinda dubious whether it's really what you said it is right?

3. People who keep reposting the same picture especially in instagram
Some people post the same picture several times in a day, after making some minor adjustments they said. Then why don't you just post a final copy & insist on posting every single edit? it's frankly very irritating because it pushes other people off the timeline so I have to scroll past the same looking picture to me to get to other people who don't do such things & might have nicer pictures in fact. Which brings me to people who post pictures of EVERYTHING & ANYTHING without really a meaningful caption should also be shot. If you caption your pictures so that I know what the picture is about, at least I understand. or if its clear on first look (eg scenery shots) fine. if it's a pic of some animal in the distance that is probably a dot in the picture - why are u wasting our time? are you yourself going to relook at these nearly 10000 pictures again in future if you say it's for yourself? If for yourself, again - stop sharing in every single thing the same pic - facebook, twitter etc. if you share the pic in these areas, it's a social thing - it means you want people to look! why don't people understand the meaning of social networks?? which also = oversharing.

4. Girls who feel the need to talk & talk & talk & talk about mindless topics.
This doesn't really apply to people I meet, but more of those people who sit at the next table at cafes/restaurants or anywhere that has chairs.
Case 1. girl comes in with bf to restaurant. She is chattering endlessly from the moment she comes in & even when she is eating. about nothing in particular but just like commenting about every single thing. wtf! i'm trying to eat & your high & loud & nasal voice is giving me a headache. & I can't hear myself when I try to talk to Ryo - who can't hear me also. Which kinda ruins my meal.
Case 2: whiny school girls at the next table at starbucks. Whining about every single thing in the world. Their hair, their class, their home, their family, cash. wtf! if no money go home, don't loiter here & make noise! I'm trying to work! or another group of girls will be whining about work / bfs or something & i'm thinking why u guys so free to whine here. Get a grip & use your time to find solutions! If you are whining quietly it's fine, but u are whining loudly - which really makes me want to hit you over your head to knock you out.

Ok enough complaints - heading to 鶴橋 (Osaka's Korea town) for 焼肉 today! then tomorrow will be heading out to 伊勢 with Ryo's team for their annual retreat - as a special guest, so i'll just be a photographer for them I suppose. Looking forward!!

千九百五十三：　Busy Week

2011-09-04T20:21:00.000+08:00

Doggy outside Starbucks

Last weekend was the most relaxing in a long time, without plans, so we had gyoza for lunch, headed to Mikage to read & rot for the rest of the Saturday afternoon. Sunday was a morning at the museum for an exhibition by one of the artists in Ghibli Studio as part of the Kobe Biennale 2011.

The week went by in a flash as well - due to the public holiday in Singapore on Tues & India holidays on Wednesday & Thursday. I finally set my mind to it & went for a run after around a month of not running. It was a short run, only 4km, but was quite worried about injuring my foot more than anything else, & was quite surprised that I managed to do quite ok :) On Tuesday - went for a haircut (after I think 6 months without cutting my hair!), had lunch at starbucks & walked home - which was around 2km away. Don't eat the Churros at starbucks - they were dry & hard. How I miss my churros from Brisbane... (T.T) Wednesday was a mad rush of trying to use up around 9000 points in Daimaru because they were expiring on that day & department store was closing at 8pm. How do they expect working people to shop if they close at 8pm? Finally spent the points on a carpet for use in winter, & some skincare product, & I saw some Onitsuka tigers that I will have to go back & relook at next week. (^^) On Thursday, I met Donpy & Abi for lunch. Donpy was buying over my 35mm lens! After lunch, we just hung out at starbucks while I did my work & they played bejeweled on the Iphone & Ipad, trying to beat my score. Muahahaha - not possible yet! Friday was finally a day at home rushing work stuff, & Typhoon No. 12 (Talas) came along so it was kinda rainy & gloomy. The typhoon was travelling at 10km/h can you imagine, that's like a runner who can run 10km in an hour?! so slow! But apparently, it's slow but powerful and covers a wide area and caused major damage in Wakayama & Nara with floods, landslides and some deaths. So yesterday we were at home waiting for the storm to pass, but actually it was quite ok weather throughout the day, just grey & drizzling, and the rain only really started to fall at night. (><) Today was sort of a housewarming at Ryo's ex-manager's place and then went to replace the batteries on my watch, checked exactly what to do to upgrade my pocket wifi & came home. I'm feeling quite exhausted due to sleeping too late last night.

Achievement last week, I finished 1 cushion cover!

I'm quite proud of myself, because it's totally handstitched and I didn't think I could finish it because the seams was already like 80cm long. But I did! And I started on the cover for the 2nd chair, hopefully, that one gets completed in a shorter time!

I have to run alot more next week, tomorrow onwards I guess.. less than 60 days to the Osaka Marathon.

千九百五十二：　BBB

2011-08-25T14:01:00.005+08:00

New lens!

BBB = Buy Buy Buy!

Spent alot of money yesterday. You know when suddenly you just feel super reckless about spending money, especially when your bank balance is on the decline you feel the "oh heck it!" feeling & spend even more money. it was like that yesterday. Had to pay taxes (around S$1.2k as 1 of the quarterly instalments) which burned quite a big hole in my pocket, & already spent money in Taiwan, & also bought some stocks in JP, & payday is like next week but I was selling my Nikon 35mm next week so i HAD to get a replacement by then (excuses!). But I did want to get a F1.4 after trying out my friend's one at lunch so it was just a matter of time. the only affordable F1.4 was by Sigma (Nikon's one cost S$1.9k) & had pretty good reviews from the people using it (especially this photographer in JP : http://dacafe.petit.cc/. His photos are so tranquil! Hopefully I can get there in future (his skill level). So I couldn't wait, went to Yodobashi to check the price, which was same as the online price, then thought *heck!* & bought it on the spot. (^^)v

I wanted to open up the box at the restaurant, but was eating alone, didn't want more eyes on me (poor thing why is she eating alone..) so just slowly ate with my iphone & then 忍 all the way home before opening it at home. Tried a few shots : http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157627508107358/ The background is so blur! i like! Hopefully I have a chance to go out & take more pics with it soon!

Finished up CTT stuff early (today) so had some time to do random stuff that was hanging in the air. Found a way to backup / view all the instagram pics to flickr - Check this site out if you want to do the same. http://instaport.me/　You log in with your Instagram account & you can choose when you want to download until / from & the site will export all the fotos you uploaded into a ZIP file for you to download. After you get your photos you have a backup! :) Here are the photos in flickr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157627513766072/

& remaining tasks / want to dos for today - at least finish up the seams of the cushion cover i'm trying to sew up. My mind is everywhere - so many things i want to do! I want to finish the book i'm reading now too! argh..

千九百五十一：　I'm on Etsy!

2011-08-18T15:05:00.005+08:00

I have just set up an Etsy store after much deliberation. :)

Here's the link : booboogal in Etsy!

I will be putting up more items for sale, all items order made - please drop by to show your support! For now it's just the Kindle case, if you want a case for any other objects please let me know as well!

千九百五十：　Back from Taipei

2011-08-17T19:38:00.007+08:00

this t-shirt totally cracked me up; it says "Playing dead is prohibited"

Ok I'm totally behind on my posts now :x

I've just been to Taipei over the weekend with Ryo & I haven't even blogged about the Gold Coast Trip. Or the long weekend when I went to see the sunflowers. argh.

To remind myself, here's what's missing from this blog from then till now.
1. 15-18 July - Stay at Meriken Park, Visited Sayo sunflower fields, & went to see the 鉄人 at 長田。
2. 22 July - Appbank dinner at DD House
3. 29 July - 3 Aug - short trip to Tokyo, met Shuping & Maya & Fukushima-san & Manami-san. Went to the dino expo too.
4. 6 Aug - Yodogawa Fireworks
5. 7-Aug - High School baseball at Koshien
6. 10 - Aug - Morning High school baseball at Koshien
7. 13 - 17 Aug - Taipei with Ryo.

At least the photo in this post is updated, saw it in Taipei. As you can see, almost every weekend was packed since the last post, either travelling or doing something with Ryo, which is a good thing because we have been so apart the previous months with work / travel separately. Weekdays are crazy with work due to the quarterly release period again, and only got a chance to breathe end of last week & start preparing for Taipei & clear some of the errands/housework piling up.

I enjoyed Taipei alot, it was the closest I could get to Singapore so far from home. & also because i haven't actually had a chance to travel with Ryo since Feb when we went to Singapore. Singapore didn't really count cos I wanted to meet friends & we had to spend alot of time with family. In Taipei, everything was just cheap cheap cheap! when you can enjoy local food and transport for such low prices, travelling becomes 10x more fun, cos you don't have to keep counting how much the thing costs in your local currency & can just eat/drink w/o much consideration. Even so, we spent less than S$400 in total, around S$340 in fact for 5 days, and that's the total for 2 of us :D I guess we covered most of the costs by picking the hotel at Ximending, which covered most of the transport costs since it was central to everywhere. But generally the hotels costs as much as SG if not more, might as well settle for an OK one at OK rates. Which was lucky for me because if i had had to walk back to a really far hotel with my injured food at the end of each day I would have died. The pain almost killed me by the end of Day 3. Don't even know how it got so bad. Sighz.

Back to work tomorrow. Can foresee OT all the way to end of next week. The price I have to pay for a short vacation .. (T.T)

千九百四十九：　Long time no blog

2011-07-14T17:30:00.000+08:00

handmade kindle case of felt

I haven't been blogging for a while, and was actually still in the midst of writing about the GC trip but it was taking too long I thought I had better just do a intermittent write up of what I've been up to.

Got myself a Kindle after seeing my cousin's one, around USD139 b4 shipping it's so light & convenient! Have been reading alot more thanks to it, & handsewn myself a felt case for the Kindle (as above). pretty nice huh? :)

I went to Gold Coast for the GC Asics Half Marathon during the end of June and we went to sightsee. More of that in the next post (if i ever get to finish it). Anyway, here's my favourite picture of the trip:

The Sheep @ Paradise Country

they are so cute! but pretty stinky.

after i got back, it's back to work. Work is starting to get hectic this week & I was pretty nua / tired last week from the vacation so didn't do much except go for Run Club on Sunday. Finally unpacked my stuff & everything, finished watching most of my recordings from May til now, CSI, House, Bones, etc, and getting myself back to the working mood. (still not very in the mood but getting better) & also not much mood to run, which is a problem. Maybe I'll try cycling instead, just to do something tomorrow. Discovered a seaside park about 3km away from my place, it looks nicely big and quiet (a little too quiet in some parts, I was thinking what if i meet some robber/rapist and it caused me to speed up in my run) but then I wasn't feeling too well still until the day b4 so i need to get back being active soon.

Going to Taipei in Aug & Italy in September!! pretty excited about the upcoming trips :)

千九百四十八：　The Lack of Discretion

2011-06-24T01:01:00.003+08:00

I know I should be sleeping at this hour but I just came back from a dinner and I just have to get this off my chest!

I accidentally saw 2 people in the group who are married (to other people respectively and the lady has kids), holding hands under the table; the guy was also resting his hand on the girl's thigh etc. wtf!? I don't have a problem with you having an affair. I have a problem with you not bothering to hide it! It's one thing to be speaking about your wife and the next moment you are stroking the thigh of the girl next to you (am very glad i took the seat further away from this guy). At least have some discretion right! Tonight was the first time i met some of these people in real life, and having heard some things about you, i thought hey, nice story, even though he strayed once he finally met someone he was going to commit to (married 2x already) and now he's fondling the girl beside him?! Have some consideration for the people around you! I mean if we are openly knowing you 2 are having an affair ok, fine, act openly. But I was feeling kinda mad and disgusted after that I just felt my mood sour and couldn't look the 2 people in their eyes at all for the rest of the night for being so .. indiscreet. Does that mean that .. people who stray will always stray? That it's actually really part of their character that will never change?? that these people will always always be looking around for someone better for themselves?

Maybe this is really what the ugly world is like out there and I had thought i had experienced most of it already.

千九百四十七：　A Marathon & A Wedding in Singapore

2011-06-18T09:07:00.000+08:00

my mum's bazhang is the best!

Long time no blog! Because I was
1. Training & running the sundown marathon,
2. Working my ass off for some dumbo project where the manager likes to have pre call sync up calls and post call syncup calls.
3. Too much activities meeting up with friends in Singapore

I'm back in Kobe for this week and next and then jetting off again :)

Sundown was quite hellish. actually it was ok until around 17km when i pulled something again at the back of my left knee and it got worse and worse until I had to stop and walk til I dropped. or until 30km. I was doing ok until 13km, did my best to slow jog until 17km when even a jog was impossible and limped-dragged my feet all the way to 30km before deciding to give up. it took me around 3 hours to reach 21km, i guess 1 hour for the 5 km i walked and another 2 km for the 9km.. :x Luckily the volunteer was kind enough to lend me his phone so that I could call HW who managed to pick me up or I would have been stranded at ECP until the next morning. I guess it was a good experience in the sense that I kinda realise how far the distance is.. Will attempt to complete the whole marathon in October instead. sighz.

so the first weekend was taken up by the marathon (Saturday night run, Sunday - Jimmy's baby shower and then went home to rest/sleep) then the next weekend was Hawx & Owl's wedding. Got roped in to be the emcee, and helped out as a calafare photographer in the morning. I'm very happy for them, and although it was exhausting, it was a great night as I got to meet the 61 pple and catch up. So many people are having babies! Feel abit disconnected from all the baby conversations though.. Forgot how funny and easy it was to be around them and just be myself .. i guess old friends are your best friends after all.

Finally the last weekend was a trip to St John's Island & Kusu Island with James & his photography friends. They are quite an interesting group, and most carry Ipad2 already! It was a pity about the wet weather, else the photos might have turned out to be better. The islands are really tiny! first time for me on Kusu Island and we learnt that tortoises are NOT SLOW! they also seem to like eating mangoes and were really aggressive in fighting for food.

Mom left for London with my youngest sis and it was kinda lonely the last week w/o mum preparing dinner for us (my dad & me) we had to figure out what to eat every night after work and got tired of eating outside food the whole week. Made an effort to have dinner with dad more during the week since Mum wasn't around, hopefully it was enough. He was kinda sad when he sent me to the airport on sunday, I think, he even asked me when i was coming back to SG. we are not expressive or talk much to each other but i guess Dad tries hard to show his love but all the little things like driving us around, taking us for dinner and just small questions.

I almost missed the flight due to a series of unfortunate incidents at the airport (murphy's laws, all my lines I queued in were the slowest, the guy in front of me at DFS tried to pay with an expired credit card etc) and when I reached JP, my luggage fell apart (trolley handle broke, wheel dropped off) and i left my pocket wifi on the plane & had to ask the airport staff to search for it and bring it to me before exiting customs. Then the connecting flight to Osaka from Tokyo was delayed by a full hour & we waited in the plane w/o any information until the plane took off an hour late and the pilot apologised for the delay due to some problem with the left engine. which was kinda alarming whenever the plane starts to shudder due to turbulence or something. FINALLY reached Osaka at 9.45am which means I just missed the bus back and had to wait 40min for the next bus. sighz......... after all these bad luck, finally reached home around noon. not a great flight.

Off to get a new suitcase today, & found a really good looking bag to be my travel bag. Hopefully I don't have to bring around a backpack & the camera sling bag around anymore. :)

千九百四十六：　21km

2011-05-09T10:53:00.003+08:00

a fallen pine cone at Rokko

It was a pretty good golden week holiday for me, despite Ryo going to work most of the days and I had work as well some of the days. Took some time out to go trail running (walking for most of it) with some of the run club friends, and also a run club activity yesterday. Met my goal of running 21km last week - with a run club friend giving support by joining me at the last 10km. Basically I had no time to be bored or lonely throughout the past week :D

Trail run gave me super bad muscle ache in my thighs from the climbing uphill i guess, but felt super good when we managed to reach the top of the mini-hill we were climbing and see out into the distance. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day, so didn't manage to get good photographs.

21km run was completed on Saturday morning. Started out at around 7am.. made my way w/o a map towards the meeting point, got a little lost for about 2km but managed to complete the whole thing in 2.5hours despite all the red lights and checking roadside maps :D

Run club was on sunday, day after the run & I was surprised i had no muscle ache from the 21km. Krispy Kreme donut for breakfast, then managed to do another 8+ km on sunday morning, we then headed for udon lunch and yoghurt again after that :D after that we just hung around the shops for a bit.

Work work work today, & then French starts again tmr & will be headed to Tokyo tmr night. Have to do a 30km this week!

千九百四十五：　Run Club

2011-04-27T21:42:00.002+08:00

Dandelion in full bloom (Tampopo in Japanese)

Been focusing on some other stuff this month so haven't been blogging much.

Work for one. Had to take over teammate's projects because he got pulled to something else, which I am glad it's him and not me because it means having to work EOC hours. But it also means stretching myself quite thin when I had wanted to spend more time on less work and more me time this month after working until the wee hours so much last month.

I managed to go for hanami (or just a walk through the parks taking pics of sakura) over the weekends but haven't had the chance to sort out the pics much. Maybe it's just laziness, but just haven't found any pictures that I particularly liked out of all the shots I took.

I accidentally discovered an old schoolmate was a friend of a Japanese friend in Tokyo, how small the world is! Everyone looks just the same as they did, maybe we are just really lucky to be the batch of kids who never ever age at all? :D

The Nike Run club people had a celebration party last weekend and despite having only joined 3 sessions before their 1 year anniversary, I was invited and had quite a good time talking to people and making new friends. I think things are finally picking up, suddenly I have this bunch of friends I look forward to seeing every 2 weeks, even if the running is actually just chatting along the jogs, we get to have lunch and chat after lunch and everyone is sooo passionate about running that I feel secretly inadequate. They run almost daily, they wake up before work at 5am to run, they join so many runs.. Of cos I try my best, have finally clocked 100km of running distance this month! Finally been able to run past 10km for my training runs, I've to get to at least 15-20km by next week! At least I get motivation from seeing the others train so hard, & of cos with the Osaka Marathon that I actually managed to win a spot for. hohohoho!! out os 171000+ people who applied! it's almost like winning the lottery - since I don't usually get lucky for any sort of lucky draw at all.

Feeling pretty happy with life nowadays, work is busy but I don't feel as lonely as the last 2 years. I miss Singapore, I miss people at work, I miss my friends, I miss having the photo outings they take and the runs they are joining but I don't feel the urge to go back so strongly now maybe because I finally have sort of a friend group here with the run club.

Went to Tokyo for a day on Monday to say goodbye to Akane who is going to go to Canada for good. (or she might not find a job and come back to Japan) I hate good byes! & good times are always so short! i haven't seen the people in tokyo for so long, it was great to just say hi and it really sucked that I had to go back home because I have french lessons the next day and can't stay overnight. i'll just look forward to the next trip in May and take lots of photos then!

Golden week upcoming next week, as usual it's a work week for Ryo due to deadlines and me to meet the project signoff date on May 11. I better start thinking about what I'm going to do this weekend.

千九百四十四：　桜

2011-04-05T22:15:00.002+08:00

Sakura at Shukugawa Park

Signed up for French lessons today (kinda fast even though I was still deciding last night). And got myself a new pair of running shoes from Adidas to replace my current adizero Breeze, which has its soles coming apart - to a pair of adizero Mana 5. I tried running with it today - feels pretty good! It was a good price too; I had around 2500yen off from a discount card, so got the shoes at around S$100. It's quite scary buying running shoes because I always dunno what's the right size. I thought my adidas size is 24.5 and Nike is 24, because I bought a pair sized 24 from adidas and it turned out to be too tight for running.. (or my toes grew longer?! can't believe how come I could wear it at the store) and today's 24.5 turned out to be too big (almost slipping off my feet when I ran) and I tried on size 24 and it fit.. but was quite traumatized by my pair of mana at home that i couldn't wear... so bought it half reluctantly.. Luckily this one turned out to be ok (Lesson learned : always leave a half toe space in the running shoes you buy!).

Am running a little more daily to try to cure/rehabilitate the ITB problem, seems to be working, it hurts in the morning when I wake up but the distance I can run daily until the point where it hurts is increasing too. Hopefully by next week it will be 10km?? looking forward to the Nike Run Club session this weekend! & i signed up for the Gold Coast Marathon (half marathon) - no confidence for full yet, but since I can upgrade the run category at the race expo, will evaluate what I can do again after sundown.

Not much work mood these few days.. feeling quite sluggish. Maybe partly due to the pain and the running - i realise pain takes up alot of energy... hopefully this negative energy sapping pain will be gone soon!!

千九百四十三：　6 years

2011-04-04T22:11:00.002+08:00

last place in the Yodogawa half marathon

Yesterday marked the start of the 7th year with Ryo. doesn't feel quite like 7 years (maybe cos half the time we are actually in different countries).

it's been a crazy few weeks in March -
1. been super busy with work, working until 3-4am for the past 2 weeks helping out on a project that finally launched on April 1st (kept thinking maybe its a April Fools' joke)
2. completed my first half marathon (came in last place cos the back of my knees started to hurt after 10km and then i walked 10km but at least i didn't give up!!) & 10km is super super super damn far to walk when your legs are in pain and u are dragging both feet.
3. made new friends at the Nike Run Club, everyone is so into running it's really quite motivating.

April is here, a quarter of the year is gone so quickly. in April - thinking whether to continue french classes since there's so much activity these 2 months including travelling here and there. trying to train up for the sundown marathon as well.. thinking now if I was mad to join...

千九百四十二：　Still Sick

2011-03-10T20:54:00.002+08:00

The mascot of a shop named 'Squirrel'

I'm still sick. with cough and symptoms just get worse in the evening even though I feel better towards the afternoon. At night, I start coughing more, throat hurts more, head hurts more as well and I start feeling woozy. maybe it's the lack of use of my head that's why i'm getting headache (work's been a little slow recently)

Manami & Akane came to stay over the weekend & we visited Ayaka's mom & Ayaka's grave. We didn't stay long, but even the simple act of lighting the candles and burning some incense for her brought tears to our eyes. Her mum visits her everyday, everyday after work. She didn't know that we had visited the cemetery ourselves last year, and finally the mystery of the secret visitor to the grave was cleared (to the mum at least) I guess she didn't think anyone would make a visit so far by themselves.. Maybe everything is just fate, that I will live here and be just 30 min car ride away so that I can visit her or to bring friends to visit her every year. She gave us a reason for gathering every year, 1 less member this year, I think we might have one less next year depending on situation (i hope she comes back to Japan).

They stayed over on Saturday and Sunday we went to Kitano (北野) in Kobe. it's an area in Kobe with lots of colonial buildings and colonial culture so even now it has many many French and Italian restaurants and steak houses. We had a late lunch at Komatsu　and it was pretty good. But after that, it started raining when we left the restaurant and I had no umbrella, so just walked in the drizzle... and think that's how I got sick.. when I reached home I was getting headachy and throat started to hurt.. and that's how I am still sick today. sighz.

hope to get better next week or I wont be running my half-marathon le... :(

千九百四十一：　Flu

2011-02-28T16:48:00.005+08:00

white plum blossoms

Alone for this week - Ryo was back for a day on Saturday after Tokyo and left for NY on Sunday morning 6am? :s

Yesterday felt like the longest day I ever had to spend by myself. After Ryo left, I went to Shinsaibashi to join the Nike Run Club's run, which is held twice a month. It was around 7km but with the people around, some runners started chatting with me while running, it actually didn't feel that long. Plus we weren't running that fast to begin with as I was having some weird pains on the outside of my left thigh/knee. will definitely join the next run again :)

Last week is kinda blank in my head, I can't really remember what I did. Last weekend I ate french food & went to NakazakiCho. Sunday was some work thing at Shinsaibashi for Ryo Work work work for the first 4 days, went to buy my macro lens on Friday and ate Ippudo Ramen, Saturday was just french class and lunch and then just hanging out at Starbucks. Ryo went off around 6am on Sunday, I went to the Nike Run Club at around 7.30am, then came back for a shower and change before I went to take pictures of plum blossoms (梅　ume) at Sumaura park.

The view from the top of the mountain at Sumaura Park was breathtaking, but it would have been nice to have had someone to share it with. I saw some couples, both young and old, sitting on the benches taking in the view, taking a breather from the climb and was feeling a little sorry that no one will ever be seeing this view with me (because I am never going there again). There was a teen who had jogged up (from his jogging attire and towel) who was taking a rest there as well, our eyes met, and I thought he wanted to say something, but I wasn't really in the mood to chat with anyone, so I just looked away and moved on. He was quite cute though ...

Got flu or some sort of flu that results in a stuffy nose, hope it gets better by the end of this week. Looking forward to seeing the girls from Tokyo this weekend :)

千九百四十：　Lethargy

2011-02-18T19:44:00.002+08:00

Flowers at Sentosa

Relaxed week this week finally - got to do abit of my own stuff and finish up stuff that I wanted to do and meet up with some friends for dinner as well. Wanted to start running but the first run I finally went for after a 3(?) week break was a painful one. I think I didn't stretch enough and the old pain in the back of the knee came back and I had to walk 4km home :(

Of cos the pain carried on at least 2 days, so I stayed at home and strived to do at least 30 minutes of Yoga daily instead. I think it's working because my arms are aching like mad from the yoga and legs alittle too but I can finally touch my toes. First half marathon on 20th March. 1 more month! argh!!!! maybe i will die at the run.. :x Planning out next week's training now, hopefully I can keep to it.

Made chocolates for the first time this week, the problem is that it doesn't harden, i read and re read the recipe and i couldn't figure out where I did wrong.. does anyone know why??

千九百三十九：　Chinese New Year 2011

2011-02-12T18:35:00.002+08:00

a Tabby cat searching in a shoebox for food

Ryo's first time back to SG after the wedding, his first time here during CNY as well. this week was soooo short, half taken over by me trying to clear work early in the day and late at night, but thankfully for great colleagues who help to back me up for the past few days.

1 week in sg is too short, there isn't enough time to meet up with everyone i want to meet and meet more with other friends too. and not enough time to eat the food i wan to eat too.. since it's CNY.. have to spend priority time with family first then friends. at least managed to take lots of pictures.

back in japan now, the cold is killing me. 2degrees today! (T.T) wish I'm back in sg..

千九百三十八：　Numb3rs

2011-01-31T18:22:00.006+08:00

The address is 1-1-1

I love taking pictures of signboards, of road signs, of mailboxes, of numbers and words.

Why? Maybe cause when you look back they tell you where u have been, where you have left your foot steps etc. Especially when your memory starts to fail you, the pictures won't. my MIL is the best example. She travels alot, maybe 3-4 countries a year, Switzerland, Greece, Rome etc, but when I tried to help her sort out her travel pics in the PC, she had no idea where the places in the pics were. -.- I was thinking omg, wats the point of travelling when u dun remember all the sights and sounds that you went there to experience, even looking at the photos you took, you don't remember where you went. because not a single road sign or signboard to identify the place, just scenery shots. what a waste... (like bringing kids /babies to tour and its a waste of money cos they can't really remember the place after they grow up.. )

Been taking alot of pictures lately - because Ryo works on the weekends and I have to spend the weekend fending for myself and finding interesting stuff to do. Basically decided to explore the city & take pictures, after French class, usually i have lunch with Ryo & then we split up ..

so I went for a walk around Osaka (shopping streets) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625903122948/

the Historical CBD areas : http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625817509537/

The previous run on 23 Jan at Takatsuki City : http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625817234289/

& had a gathering with some Singaporean ladies here i got to know at the SG embassy lunch a few weeks ago, for some Dim Sum at Kyoto: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625943751466/

I haven't been to Kyoto since August when my family came over; it was pretty much the same except the weather was VERY COLD. apparently Kyoto is in a valley, so all the winds blow through it. The bad thing is when Ryo finally joins me sometimes to walk around, he really irritates me cos all he does is complain: *i'm sleepy, i need coffee, i'm cold* ... I want to go out and take photos since we rarely go to Kyoto! and then i just think damn it, i'm too used to travelling around by myself liao, it's nice to have company but it's so troublesome to accommodate someone else. I'm fine with having a coffee/drink but i'm not ok with the supposed companion continuously being so negative behind/ beside me. The only good thing was at Starbucks, this quite cute guy who was sitting outside, finished smoking and came in to escape from the cold and to finish his drink. He saw the few seats beside me was empty, our eyes kinda met and he kinda gave a hesitant smile and started coming in to sit down. I wasn't sure if he was asking are the seats empty, but the whole row was empty except for me & Ryo beside /behind me cos i wanted to look at the sidewalk so I was kinda turned away from Ryo & looking outside (hence able to see the cute guy) and i wasn't really sure I wanted him approaching me with Ryo behind me and i was just thinking sighz.. why am i married ... so when he came in, he gave a hesitant smile again, and i was like like half nodded to try to say ya, the seats are empty, but refused to make anymore eye contact after that even though he kinda half turned around like he wanted to get some courage to chat. I think he finally gave up when he saw me turn back to Ryo when Ryo said something to me. sighz....... what a waste .. even if just to make friends... but then i really don't even want guys to hv the chance to get the wrong idea or to have any temptations since i'm alone so much. :(

Will be back in SG next weekend onwards for a very short week though. Looking forward to having some chicken rice and KOI everyday :D

千九百三十七：　Impulse

2011-01-21T21:35:00.002+08:00

my favourite ラーメン from 一風堂！

It's been another long week. & it's the 3rd night this year that I'm home alone. 3 nights in 3 weeks - 49 more to come?! sighz. but I'm kind of resigned to the fact that Friday will never be date night in Japan because friday is Tokyo day for Ryo. I'm swamped with work 4 projects in total & I've barely anytime for myself.

On some sort of weird impulse while discussing the GC marathon, I signed up for Sundown full marathon. I wanted to sign up for half marathon to prepare for GC.. but it was already full registration.. then J said join full lor.. and i was like .. ok wth, GC will be full marathon anyway, I should be ready by then.. and i did it. Meaning that I have to be ready to run a half marathon by March! & i signed up for one in Osaka today as well. on the spur of the moment. sighz. well... what's done is done, at least I have all the time i want in Japan to train with not much of a social life. Good luck to me!!!

At least work is the only thing on my mind during my waking hours; tu me manques..

千九百三十六：　Long week

2011-01-14T19:25:00.003+08:00

can you believe that this dog is a handphone strap!?

what a long week.

what a long week.

i think next week will be longer..

i'm feeling so exhausted this whole week from the barrage of questions i face everyday & from coordinating so many things at the same time that i think my brain just shuts down around 9pm and i don't even want to go near the laptop cause I feel kinda repulsed by it.

The worst of the questions are things I've said b4, did training for so many times for the most basic work, the supposedly 'senior' people come to ask me again how to do. I don't mind people asking me stuff, i'm willing to help if I'm quite free but when i'm not, and i'm dodging arrows left and right and still have to teach you to do stuff and make decisions for you, should I get 20% of your salary?? Or people asking questions that are not even in their duties to check, I'm thinking just do what I ask u to instead of doing so many extra things when you haven't finished your own work !! can really strangle these people...

what a long week.

Photos of my first ever winter run here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625784164288/

It was a great experience, especially to see how events are held in different countries and how different cultures behave at the same kind of event. It rained/snowed a little during the run, super windy for most of it, sunny for the most of it too.. at first it was really hard to stand around in the cold, but actually with all the adrenaline and jumping around, it was really that bad despite the temperature being around 5 degrees celsius.

Got 2 big ulcers in my mouth now, worst thing is 1 is on the left and the other is on the right side of my mouth and is about 2cm long. Hurts like hell when I eat..

ok.. am exhausted now too... am going to grab some dinner (alone for the 4th time this week) and stone at the couch.

千九百三十五：　First week of 2011

2011-01-07T20:20:00.000+08:00

the shrine's 柴犬 sniffing around - why do dogs do that??

It's been a hectic first week. I'm feeling a little like the dog in the pic, sniffing around alot cos of the cold and feeling kind of lost.

I've been piled too many things on for work and I'm starting to get tired of idiots who refuse to learn / step up. But as I'm typing this, I remember Xinhuan's philosophy about not writing negative stuff cos why should we put down the bad things in our blogs and remember these bad events for eternity?? so I am now trying to think about good stuff that happened this week.

1. Snow snow snow! First time I seen so much snow in Kobe/Osaka. Snow that actually you can feel on your face! but of course it's too weak to pile up so no snowman pictures..
2. Signed up for french class - I don't know if it was a good move because it means I can't sleep in on all Saturdays from now on. But at least progressing on my resolutions for the year.
3. Managed to run almost every alternate day, at least 18km this week since 10km on sunday upcoming? This is really hard, because it's so cold that the natural thing to do is just nua in the house under the blankets in your fleecewear and to get changed into running clothes is already a feat by itself. I'm quite excited about sunday, but half regretting it because i didn't expect it to be so cold. Weather forecasts says highest degree is 10degrees I hope no super cold winds is good enough for me.
4. Only a few more weeks before I'll be back in tropical Singapore! We complain so much about the heat when we are in SG, but seriously, I would rather have a Singapore day over this killer coldness anyday.
5. Bought around 5 books at Kino's New Year 20% off Foreign books sales, at around S$7 per book!

I'm hooked on CSI / CSI:NY these days, CSI:Miami sucks, the police just looks like they aren't taking everything seriously. Signed up for cable TV and enjoying every minute of it :D at least there is something to occupy me when I'm home alone.

ok am superbly hungry... going to go home now..

千九百三十四：　2011 Resolutions

2011-01-01T00:42:00.002+08:00

2010's resolutions:http://booboogal.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-year-resolutions.html
Let's see how many i have achieved.

1. Run alot more. Working out at home do not help me get rid of fats on my thighs. - ran ran ran alot!
2. Find more time to myself & work less. Need to get a better work life balance, esp when working at home you lose track of time & just work work work until no night no day. I want to start doing more craft stuff, learn to bake / cook better food, and trying very hard to keep in touch with friends in SG.
*edit* resolution to knit/crochet a red & white checked muffler for myself this year at least. saw the girl in Nodame Catabile drama wear one and it looked so cute. - fail
3. In accordance to Keeping in Touch with friends in SG, i guess I overdid it for some people, so I'll try to keep less in touch with these people who feedbacked. - failed. will do this next year. how fast time flies, the same pple complained of too much contact again.
4. Keep in touch with Family more. - visited my sis / they are on watsapptoo
5. Save up money for D5000. Last i saw, it was 80000yen. Hopefully some waiting will drop it's price. - Bought D3000!
6. Clean up the house regularly instead of doing it during the yearly spring cleaning. - hmm FAIL!

now for 2011. I think i can make more concrete resolutions this year.
1. Running - 80km monthly, Run a half marathon by June, a Full marathon by end of the year.
2. Photography - Improve on skills with all lenses.
3. French - Take classes and get to finish book 1 of the text book.
4. Spend more time at home in JPN. seriously need to improve variety of food i can cook. & to try to wake up earlier...
5. Read /write more. & love myself alot more..

千九百三十三：2010 reflections

2010-12-31T17:16:00.005+08:00

The year of 2010 just flew by in the blink of an eye when I can still remember the previous year so clearly. Perhaps it's because it's so eventful that when I think back, I can still remember clearly what I did each month in 2010, almost each week.

A Recap of the year:
January: Visited my sister in London, and went to Paris and Sweden as well! Realised the travelling alone is a lonely lonely thing, but i survived -16degrees celsius.

February: Wedding anniversary at Kinosaki Onsen, ate crabs until I was pretty sick of them. Found out I was allergic to crab sashimi.

March: A loved one hurt me very badly. 1st death anniversary of Ayaka, the ladies came down from Tokyo and we had a good get together.

April: Bought my first DSLR & watched my first soccer game live in Jpn, went to SG - v-jimlim left MS with kelly... but good food and good friends all around :)

May: Went to USS with Xinhuan, went to Melaka, went to Tokyo, met up with friends :) Baked my first (& only) buns.

June: Quiet month, mainly prepared for JP wedding & took Vik around Osaka/Kobe. Ran outdoors for the first time.

July: World Cup finals, & went back to SG for 2 weeks for wedding stuff and alot of food again,

August: JP wedding finally over (8-Aug), family gathered at my place for 3 weeks & was busy with wedding & sightseeing and work. followed through the high school baseball tournaments, got very tanned as a result. but the passion they provided is unforgettable.

September: Went back to SG (again...) Lots of birthday celebrations in SG, with both family and friends & turning 28, probably finally grew up alot more as well.. F1 for the first time and I realised that car engines are my lullabies..

October: Supported runs (Real Run, North Face), joined my first run (Nike!), and GE run. ILight , eMcee-ed at Adrian's wedding, sixoneder gatherings, XQ came back to SG

November: BMW World, went to the museums, went to Kukup

December: Christine's wedding, Jimmy's unexpected wedding, went to support a (few) marathon participants.. got hurt again. Went to Guam, thought through alot of things, decided it was time to stop being an idiot.

There. my 2010.

Jampacked with activities, came to the realization that i need to be more aloof. I put in too much of myself for people I care about but then that's me, why would you want to do things halfheartedly? No one forced you into anything, rather than regret bad decisions, what's done is done and just put your heart to it and you might enjoy this alternative route that you had thought was wrong.. I guess i want to just say, stop sweating over the small stuff, life is not that long, u never know when's it's your last. I would rather die knowing i put in my best for the people I loved than have treated any of them shabbily and regretted it.

Spring cleaning yesterday, today was just abit of last minute clean up and then later to the temple for the 初詣 at midnight.　To give thanks for 2010 and to look forward to 2011. It will be a better year because I will make it better, and not just because I hope it will be.

Happy New year everyone!

千九百三十二：　Guam

2010-12-22T19:51:00.002+08:00

Okie, holiday's over (i think?). but tomorrow is a public holiday in JP again. yay!

Guam had great weather for the most part, I managed to finish a book and 5 magazines and read another book halfway.. and ate so much beef (cos it's an US island after all) that I'm kinda off beef for the time being. I'm quite happy that i brought my running shoes cos this is the first time i've gone jogging when I travel, and it helps to deflect some of feeling fat from eating US -sized food portions for the whole week. I did gain 1 kg (luckily only 1kg) and went for a run immediately today to try to get used to running in the cold (it was very cold, the runny nose / winds almost killed me). We went on a half day tour on day 2 (i think, kinda lost track of time last week) then went to the beach / pool almost the rest of the whole trip daily. The beach was beautiful, clean and clear waters. But, I think the hotel was lacking service wise, or maybe I was too pampered by Conrad Bali, with their drinks service and towels, fruit platter brought to you the moment you sit down poolside.

All the rooms were oceanview (first time i actually stayed in a room that was full ocean view but the whole hotel was ocean view apparently) and managed to catch the sunset almost everyday. Meals were quite a problem, USD10 avg but that's at a food court which we had to wait 30 min for to go to, and if we wanted to eat nearer to the hotel, it was restaurants avg USD25 per person and the menu was the US food, steaks/ribs/burgers etc. Luckily we found a Din Tai Fung near the hotel (imagine that! no starbucks on the whole island of Guam but they have a Din Tai Fung!!) and it was pretty good to eat some Asian food at almost the same quality as it is in SG after a week of meat and potatoes.

Happy to be back in JP again after a week of not so good meals (i do miss the tropical weather though), now i have to start training for the upcoming run on 9-Jan. I don't know how I'm going to survive the cold weather running seriously. Wearing more than 1 layer is heavy but w/o a jacket the wind will really kill me. must train alot more...

My favourite picture from Guam - i don't know how to explain it but this picture looks like i'm a really tiny person in a giant's room.

Holiday photos here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625515724521/with/5281906132/

千九百三十一：　Respite

2010-12-20T13:51:00.002+08:00

remains of my iced lemon tea

Been in Guam for 6 days, checking out tomorrow. Weather here is like Bali/ Singapore, hot and humid. Internet is super intermittent. no free wifi .. can only intermittently connect to mail and stuff from Ryo's phone since he switches on Data roaming for work.

will continue the story after i go back to JPN tmr evening..

千九百三十：　Karma Pt 2

2010-12-13T02:36:00.006+08:00

at the Mandai Orchid Gardens

I've finally packed around 90% of my stuff I think.

Feeling a little sad that the day to leave is finally here. So much has happened in the last few months, and I don't know if I have made the right decision but it's a decision that should have been made long ago and I intend to follow it through instead of hurting other people. I have decided to change my priorities and put it straight, friends should never come before family.

A little sad when I was at Jimmy's wedding because I don't know if this was really what he wants, but at least I hope it is and I wish him happiness for the future.

I have done so much these few months - a person whom I thought didn't know me said this to me earlier tonight. She said, whenever i'm back i am always so involved with everyone's activities, and she really admired me for it, that I actually make the effort to do everything with everyone even for however short a time. I try my best, but I hadn't thought about it that way. I realise that I do have a photo album for almost every weekend that I'm here, and I try not to let the days go wasted, and this is more so after I saw a quote in a magazine - that you can't choose the way you die, so why not choose the way you live? something to the gist of it.

I picked up a new sport this trip - golf - at least learnt how to swing the club and aim properly thanks to Yinnah, and once again I marvel at how so many things just happens "coincidentally" just when you least expect it.

1. I agreed to go to F1 even though I thought it would be hard to see anything through the barriers and last minute, my cousin offers me tickets for a Saturday night on pretty good seats!
2. I was thinking on what i should do about golf, as the lessons are really quite costly, when very much by coincidence, I took the time to meet Yinnah for tea and by accident, found out that she is quite the proficient player and can teach me.
3. I heard or learnt some information that made no sense to me at the time when I learn it but then suddenly after that someone comes along needing that information and I suddenly realised that was why I learnt it? a little far fetched but true..
4. The book I borrowed from the library turned out to be the book James was also reading at the same time. How odd, considering that it was a not so common photography book.
5. I had almost decided not to go to the marathon because it was just so early and I really didn't have a reason for going anymore, but I'm glad I went because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to catch up with Xinhuan who kept me company for almost 2 whole hours and we had a fun time chatting & playing with the camera.

There are more, that I can't remember right now.. but I am starting to think that there really is such thing as Karma & that what goes around comes around.

Hence - taking things easy - letting things go - always always always just smile and let go, in spite of anything mean others are doing to you, being kind to everyone, inc people u dislike, not bearing grudges etc.. all this will just be for your own wellbeing since nature will put everything in their rightful course for you. Plus not breaking promises made. I think that's the most important thing, because if other people are treated so lightly to you, that you can break your promises to them easily, you will just be treated as lightly a friend to them in return. makes sense?

千九百二十九：　88 months

2010-12-11T16:27:00.002+08:00

The blog has been alive for 88 months!

千九百二十八：　SCMS2010

2010-12-07T00:53:00.004+08:00

the Standard Chartered Marathon is finally over.

Last marathon of the year in SG, last run as a supporter for me this year, not sure if I will support any runs next year in SG..

Seeing so many people run back while I stood at the finishing area until my nose was sunburnt, I'm wondering why i'm not out there among the runners instead. Maybe next year that's my goal i suppose. But planning alot for next year, I can only have confidence in myself to achieve everything I'm trying to do :) Luckily Xinhuan came over to accompany me after she finished her race, I was wondering if I should leave after standing there for 2 hours plus and I wasn't sure if I had actually missed the runners I was watching out for since i hadn't seen anyone I knew yet...

1 more week to go, feels a little torn between missing friends and happy to be going back. I want to have my own time back！Commuting to work is such a waste of time, when I spend >2 hours each day in total travelling on the bus instead of working. I have no time to run as and when I want, instead i'm stuck in the office. also, I'm just spending so much money here! argh... Must go back to the cooking my own meals life soon to start growing the bank account again.

I will miss watching movies in the cinema for sure. Wonder if I have time to go see another 2 movies this week, maybe i'll just head out there and watch my first movie alone tomorrow. Rapunzel & something else that I can't remember right now. I'm glad I caught 告白.. it was disturbing but had a very interesting plot. intriguing all the way.. Anyway... time to start packing up my bags and say goodbye to people!

Trying out smugmug site for pictures of the marathon:

for people who just want to stick to good old flickr, here's the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157625414416685/with/5236976493/

千九百二十七：　Unstoppable

2010-11-29T23:02:00.005+08:00

38.3km to Singapore

I think this sign at Kukup is cool - like the floor area of the GMT clock in Greenwich where they show where / what time all the major cities in the world is. Kukup had really good seafood, their cereal prawns were much better than sg, not so harsh pieces of cereal and the crabs were cooked in a much tastier chilli concoction than sg too.

Unstoppable last week was very heartstoppingly exciting. Living next to the train tracks for pretty much half of my life so far, I can totally feel the danger of the runaway train in a densely populated residential area.

Finally rebonded my hair after 1 year of trying to grow out the broken hair from the last rebonding session. The chemicals were too strong, leading to a flaky scalp for almost half a year, hair breaking in chunks from my head (which scared me really badly and i thought I was balding when hair came off in bunches when I was washing my hair) and very very dry hair made worse by the long winter in Japan. Decided that I could not go through all that again and went back to Mei Mei my longtime stylist who still remembered me & did some great work on my hair as usual :) Business seems to be going well for her and i'm happy for her!

I'll be leaving Singapore in 2 more mondays! even though I was here for 3 months, the last 2 weeks are always packed with meeting people, strangely, but at least I realise that many people actually are quite happy to catch up and meet with me even after a gap of a year or 2.

千九百二十六：　Movies

2010-11-21T12:00:00.004+08:00

Kungfu Panda 2 is coming soon!

meaning next year I think - probably during School holidays?

I'm happy that i've managed to finally watch some movies this week! During UAT period there weren't many good movies too luckily, so watched RED, Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, It's a wonderful afterlife, The Housemaid. I have another 2 weeks plus to gorge myself on the theater experience because this is one of the things that I miss the most in Japan. Watching movies in theaters are just too expensive - per movie it's 2500 yen per ticket - nearly S$40! ... thats 4 tickets in Singapore. :(

I think 3 months back in SG is a bit long. I've settled into normalcy, don't really have any cravings for any SG food anymore.. although i'm happily still going for desserts that I know I will miss like almost every week or 2 weeks - eg Koi bubble tea or Red Mango yoghurt or the snow ice at Ion.

Red Mango yoghurt - Berries Galore

I haven't been running regularly and i have to buck up a bit. there's some weird pain behind my right knee from my thigh to calf area, hope that doesn't worsen.

千九百二十五：　Grey

2010-11-17T00:31:00.003+08:00

I am starting to dread coming back to the house because my mom will start to quarrel with my dad everyday at bedtime. Usually it's about how he doesn't chat with her.

wth is this about? when I don't take her side, she bursts into tears which irritates me more. When I am in Japan, I face 4 walls and i have no one to speak to most of the time. and she is the person who keeps saying to me: "oh u will get used to it". I wish she would just take her own advice. at least my dad is in the office with her almost 8 hours a day?? When I'm in Singapore no one really chats with me face to face as well, the only consolation is that if i make it into the office early enough, I can have lunch with humans. else I would eat lunch alone at my desk again.

it's raining every afternoon nowadays and my mood is pretty much the same - grey grey grey.

I walked into Kikki.k at Ion (which I would probably spend all my money in if I had more of it) and saw some really good ideas for organizers / calendars / notebooks. They were also giving out a Xmas gift catalogue which kinda reminded me that the year is coming to an end soon. I remembered making xmas cards last year and sending them out to friends which only reached them after new year, and I think I have to start early this year and thinking what kind of card I should send out. I don't know if people actually keep them, or ~~maybe i should ask pple if they even want to receive physical cards.~~ ok I asked on facebook. I hope there will be responses. Thinking if i should give any gifts at all, have thought out some gifts for some people.. but the rest probably will go by air mail i think...

New goal in mind for 10km. Must try to have more discipline to run in the mornings - but the mornings in SG are just so hot :( I need to be able to run the current race pace as my normal training times (flat ground minimal slope) - to be able to run 5km in 28 min or less normally is pretty much a condition for any improvement. (mental encouragement to myself: go Jocelyn!)

千九百二十四：　 Books

2010-11-15T00:12:00.005+08:00

I realise that I only have 1 month left in SG to exercise my library privileges so I've decided to read at least 4 new books a week.

Novels, non-fiction, historical accounts, anything. I've recently got myself interested in WWII historical accounts, especially from the Asian warfront, about encounters with the Japanese army from the Allies, (since I'm in SG) but it's hard to get a true account of the perspective from the Japanese side except from Japan. So far the war museums in Japan have been interesting and very educational, but of course I would like to have English materials to read to understand fully what went on.

btw, Singaporeans are really lucky to have NLB. We have so many libraries every where and the convenience of returning the books anywhere is amazing now that i've experienced library services in Japan. so few libraries, very little English books (not really a valid complaint since I'm in Japan), no availability to return books as and where.. no wonder when I said I had enrolled myself as a member, Ryo was surprised (he has never joined a library his whole life in JP) and i was like.. but I can't just keep buying books to be able to read so many books in the world! I was trying to find secondhand bookstores (for English books in Japan) but they seem to be mostly in Tokyo, and now I understand why their bookstores are booming since no one goes to the library! there are bookstores at almost all train stations, Japanese people read a lot I believe so if they spent some money increasing the number of libraries in these times of recession, I'm sure the library memberships would just explode and grow exponentially.

Serious lack of sleep this week, first it was because of work, after that it was because I was too excited work's done and then just had to do my own stuff before I sleep and before I know it it's past midnight, past 1 am, past 2 am before i force myself to lie down and not do a thing in bed to fall asleep.

Trying to achieve the feeling of no-negativity towards others in my mind, and this mantra really helps : If you don't care why should I?

It seems to be working, I do make an effort to say what I feel but I don't think I should make myself all unhappy if people choose to ignore my advice. I said whatever I said because I cared, but if you don't care why should I? -> see, it comes in very useful.

Favourite picture of the week:

the crowd milling around a Z1 at BMWworld

BMW World was so so, quite small venue, nothing really superb? Luckily it was free admission, gave us a chance to see the concept car as well.

千九百二十三：　Heritage

2010-11-07T01:03:00.006+08:00

My favourite photo of the week:

picture of j taking a picture of the giant capsicum

Artists should make more of such sculptures - we know what it is with 1 look instead of those abstract types u need to think and understand and its damn cute too :)

I realised that I haven't been to most of the museums in SG. Went to the SAM (Singapore Art Museum) one public holiday long long ago in 2003? and that's it. it was pretty interesting, but yet did not have the chance to visit the rest of the museums in SG while i went all over the world visiting the famous museums w/o knowing what our own National museum was like. Our museum may not have historical exhibits of the ancient civilisations, the roman empires, or the pyramids' replicas, but they do have Singaporean food history, fashion, living, and with our really short history i think it's pretty good. Looking around brings back a sense of nostalgia, and I might be too young to really understand or remember seeing everything, but I think I might come back here when I'm older and see all sorts of items i would be exclaiming *oh i remember this!* to my children/grandchildren about. The other 2 museums were a little small, and I wonder why they don't try to combine everything into the National Museum to reduce operating costs and to improve visitors' experience? there seems to be too few exhibits for the National museum, and I'm wondering where's the history museum that has all the war time history artifacts?

Reading the Runner's Rule Book now. it's super funny. I was laughing by myself when thumbing through the book at Running Lab today and I just had to get it. I found another book by the same author and I was standing in Kino reading it and just couldn't stop laughing. Until a lady came over to me, and said, I seem to be enjoying myself, it's such a rare sight to be able to see people laughing aloud when reading. hahaha. so embarrassing. but then it was really funny..

long weekend 2thirds over. Have to get work done tomorrow.. yuck yuck yuck!!! I feel so reluctant to open my mailbox nowadays, because it means I probably have to fight with people to get them over obvious issues and i'm really tired of it. the pictures/screenshots are so obvious, are they blind??

flight back to JP decided. have about a month in SG left.

千九百二十二：　Great Eastern Women 10K

2010-11-01T20:44:00.004+08:00

my first finisher's medal

Went for the GE women's 10K run yesterday and completed it in 59:29. I had to stop for a toilet break halfway again argh, but i think it was more psychological than physical. I just kept thinking i can't go to the loo when I started and i guess the more you think about it the more you want to do it instead so.. in the end i had to go.. :( 2 races in 2 weeks are abit too much for a novice runner like me, when after the run I was just dragging my right foot around wherever I walked. I think I need to train my thighs abit more with bodylicious type exercises. Felt very fatigued around middle of the run and was very much struggling to even continue running. perhaps it was just because of the mental exhaustion from the week at work. and the route was boring, no scenery, just kept going up and down the same road and u-turning. bleahz.

after the race..

going to just train for 10km and improve my timing first before even trying to go for distance. Don't want to try to achieve too much at a time, improving the time to 50 minutes will be my next goal :)

Last week of UAT this week .. looking forward to the holiday on Friday. but then.. it's only Monday...

千九百二十一：　Crazy week

2010-10-30T11:10:00.002+08:00

MBS all lighted up

Ok I'm feeling rather exhausted from the past week at work that I don't even have the energy to think of any good name for the week. Facing super tight deadlines with the pressure to deliver for a major project. I'm not saying I can't do it, but I do wish people would stop asking how I'm going to do it. If it comes to me having to work until 3am every night to complete it I will but I can't say that to you right? :( Of course I hope that won't happen, probably have to diligently put in a few hours today & tomorrow to clear it. After next week the nightmare will be over! Yesterday was probably the first friday in a long time that I actually was thinking TGIF when I woke up. Couldn't face more mails/ IMs coming from pple who are not supposed to be under my charge to keep asking for details details when it's things they can find out themselves. I actually was dithering / delaying opening my mailbox as much as I could.

Finally met up with the sixoneders 2 weeks ago. I must thank XQ for always organising a gathering when he comes back. I always think of them but if I organise something I have to have a place for them to go which I usually have no idea where. I'm still amazed at how time flies by and people are starting to bring wives / husbands to the gatherings. I think the next time there will really be kids too and it's really amazing how we are all still so close and the same old jokes just never fail to make all of us laugh despite the years and not having seen one another for years also. 1 thing we all agree on, no one has changed much. Not in looks (seriously all of us look the same as we were in JC except 1-2 pple have ballooned), not in behaviour, it's like we are all still stuck in JC days. How strange.

GE Run tomorrow.. hopefully I can do better, and not rush for the loo in the middle of it :p

I'm now hooked on Godfinger thanks to TY, but it's definitely much better on the Ipad then the phone, cos it's so small. hmm. But too many wants on the list, and have many weddings coming up so am getting a little broke. Have to get a tripod maybe, drybox back in JP since i have 4 lens now, some presents for upcoming birthday pple, wedding angbaos, and maybe some running wear for winter as I'm thinking of joining some runs in Kobe in January, will be a good experience to test out the running better in less humidity theory.

千九百二十：　Nike City 10K Singapore

2010-10-24T18:11:00.005+08:00

I completed my first race ever! :)

http://runkeeper.com/user/booboogal/activity/18875283

Joined the Nike City 10k with Julius / HW, and am happy that I managed to complete it with a personal best timing of about 59:28 (according to Runkeeper).

I think I probably could have done better if

- I didn't stop for a toilet break in between.
I was feeling super urgent around after 6km and was already contemplating going behind a banyan tree when I saw a indian temple coming up and I just decided that I had to be thick skinned because I just couldn't hold my bladder anymore and went up to ask if I could borrow the loo. Luckily, they were pretty kind and I managed to carry on w/o much mishaps after that.

- I can drink and run at the same time.
I finally decided that I should get a drink at the last water point, got a cup and managed to spill half of it on myself while trying to drink up something, and in the end I had to walk and drink.

But had a lot of fun anyway, kinda understand the adrenaline / the pushing your body to it's limits thing alot more now. And all i think about during the race was "overtake overtake", then towards the end it was just "finish finish" and the most focus comes about at the last km where you can't really think about anything because you are just trying to make your legs move.

Well, some lessons learnt for next run, hopefully next sunday i can improve my timing again at the GE Women's 10k run!

after the run .. all red and chubby....

千九百十九：　Luck

2010-10-12T18:52:00.003+08:00

can you find a 4 leaf clover?

Took this picture in a drain (camera reached into the drain but i didn't) and I realised that there are clovers like everywhere. Is it a weed?! But.. I couldn't find a 4-leaf clover, am now wondering how those pple find enough to make bookmarks and sell them.

so many babies born this week week. Today a colleague had her baby, the day before a junior from my sec sch, last thurs a friend's sister in law. Maybe the hot weather is driving the babies out from the tummies early :p

Very accident prone lately. walked into a glass wall when all my life i've been wondering how people do it. It's apparently quite easy to do that when you are in a hurry, feeling flustered or just not paying attention to where you are going. Luckily the glass didn't break despite the loud bang on the glass when I walked into it, everyone stared in shock, tears started streaming down my face uncontrollably (try hitting your nose and u'll get that effect) and I was super embarrassed. :(

Watched Eat Pray Love, a little draggy towards the end, but I liked the part when she was in Italy the most. Would I be able to just drop everything, go to a foreign land to experience life there for a few months and learn a new language and make friends so easily? I kinda agree with the finding yourself part. and I think it's very hard to do that w/o getting out of the comfort zone. Maybe that's something I should think about doing..

千九百十八：　Happiness?

2010-10-07T00:04:00.004+08:00

Are you happy?

Shoebag & jeans got stolen from Queenstown stadium yesterday. Thankful it wasn't more, no valuables missing, but very heartpain for my jeans as it was Ruehl 925 and the brand has been closed down by A&F. sighz. Only good thing was I went to buy a new pair of jeans today from Levis and realised with all the jogging i'm down to a size 24 (demi curve, skinny boot). Trying to get over the loss (very hard as i am very very careful with my stuff and very attached to most stuff i own, i can't sell them, can't give them away, can't throw away, typical hoarder..) Cursing the horrible thief made me feel better although i actually secretly hope that he /she will realise that it's only jeans and bring it back to the stadium and just put it back where they took it from. sighz.....

A question was stuck in my head from Belgariad. *Is a sound a sound if no one hears it?* Does this apply to human lives too? where no one ever *hears* the sound of you being alive, where u left no impression with anyone, were you really alive? It takes effort to maintain relationships and interest in other people's lives; maintaining any sort of relationship (friendship, watever ship) takes effort from both parties. If people realise that you have no intention of putting in effort and always only depend on others to keep contact, I think the relationship will probably just trail off and break down sooner or later. hmm. depressing.

千九百十七：　Turned 28

2010-09-29T02:06:00.003+08:00

Just turned 28.

Feeling a teensy bit blue.

I don't know if it's work blues or birthday blues or just the general blues about getting older or just the feeling of the blueness that a birthday has passed.

I just keep having the feeling that something is lacking. Not sure what is it, but i hope i find it soon. The feeling is almost driving me nuts.

I don't know why I just keep having this weird feeling in the pit of my tummy, like the world is going to collapse around me any moment soon.

I think I must learn to not get sentimental or attached to anything or anyone because it all becomes old when people find such attachment too close for comfort after alot of "I miss u"s when you are not around. Only when you are gone will people start to appreciate how much you mean to them but it's too late. How many chances do you give for people to find out how much they need you? It may be too late for anything to change. Or we are just trying to change things to be the way we wanted them to be but it's just not the same with all the extra hurt and spaces we forced in between over the years. Events that have happened don't just get erased from memory, how do we really forget anything or avoid living in the shadows of other people's past? Maybe we are all just too jaded and tired to face the truth for now.

千九百十六：　Tiny Achievements

2010-09-25T10:46:00.002+08:00

never wake a sleeping dog..

Almost 28 years old. I don't feel any birthday excitement this year though. Maybe because I'm so entrenched in work for the past month. and will be as well for the next 2 months. Woke up this morning and my mom was in the room and I thought that she was in to wake me for work. I had no idea what day it was, that it was a Saturday, and had to confirm with her before conking out in bed again.

Watched Legend of the Fist last night, remake of a Bruce Lee movie with Donnie Yen (Ip Man) as lead. I thought it would have been better if there was less gore, more kungfu fights, and less Bruce Lee imitation. If it's a remake, is it necessary to imitate Bruce Lee's signature screeches?? the last fight scene was a disappointment, just the lead punching the hell out of the face of the JP general and that's it. -.-

Been trying to improve on animal photos I guess. maybe scenery shots too? humans are so hard to shoot. Thinking if I should get myself a wide-angle lens as a reward for working so hard. :D speaking of achievements, I managed to finally run my personal best longest distance in my life w/o stopping. yay! not a big deal to many i suppose, but 7.5km is definitely very far for me. Going to aim for 10km in a week or 2 hopefully! :)

千九百十五：　Karma

2010-09-21T22:01:00.002+08:00

Been thinking alot about Karma lately.

the usual stuff about more tolerance towards others, be less critical, be more selfless, be more self-reflecting, put others before yourself etc.

I'm wondering if that's a mistake, because no one cares, no matter how often you put people before yourself, they will only remember the few times when u might have put yourself first (because it gets tiring and sometimes you have needs too??). Despite the times when I might have felt slight irritation at others but suppressed saying anything because it was really minor and just put it out of mind after a moment's thought instead of saying it because it really doesn't matter in the big picture and you just think about nice things the person has done for u and no one is perfect anyway? or just went along and hope that the next time I might get to do what I want, but usually I don't but there's always next time right? But if I get unhappy about people, it's bad karma for myself and all I do is ask for feedback so that I can better myself.

OK. enough rambling perhaps.
Been feeling very tired mentally and quite down in the dumps and just want time to be with myself and really think things through very very clearly and just hope I can do the right thing as I go along.

In SG now, but kinda wished I wasn't back. Miss the peace I had in my own place in JP. Miss doing things at my own pace, and kinda miss the little shops that I always jog pass because they let me know how far i've jogged.

I guess i have to adapt back to here and start training for my runs in SG too..

saw a deer who is blind in one eye when we went to Nara.. it's kind of sad :(

千九百十四：　Prickles

2010-08-27T12:36:00.003+08:00

Been feeling very poorly for the past week.
stomach flu plus normal flu, fever and sore throat.
tummy still hurting on and off.
I think I have to return to the doc's soon because i suspect it might be more than stomach flu given the symptoms. Just checked my life line on my palm and it seems to be still ok long so I shouldn't need to worry?

saw a cat that looked like a rabbit:

Not looking forward to work next week. not feeling very well :(

千九百十三：　Tenacity

2010-08-23T13:10:00.003+08:00

a Daddy Long Legs was hanging on to the car mirror for dear life when we drove to the hair salon.

It was amazing, managed to hang on for about 1 km before dropping off somewhere.

Got a hair cut on Saturday, ate thai food for dinner, and realised I had stomach flu when for the 3rd time that week my stomach was hit with sharp pains during dinner and had to run to the loo. Luckily in all instances, the loos were pretty clean and I made it to the loo in time despite the urgency of the situations. (T.T) Woke up super early with bad stomachaches the whole week as well.

I haven't been sleeping well partly due to the weather - 36 degrees celsius on the avg daily. Plus our stupid fan stops every 6 hours automatically. DUH!! it might be to save power, but who wakes up every 6 hours to on the fan in the night! sighz. i guess it's our own fault for buying a fan with this stupid feature, but i realised most fans have this auto off feature. RAWR!!!

千九百十二：　Visitors

2010-08-12T09:51:00.005+08:00

Whole family gathered in Japan the past weekend (mom and sis came 2 weeks earlier), and 2nd sister remains here with Calvin this week.

It was half good half bad.

Good - Mom was around to take of us, she cleaned up the whole house and there was meals mom prepared and I didn't have time to cook my own meals as I was trying to finish up AQR and the wedding stuff as well. Had a lot of fun with my sister(s) around, was able to draw great maps for her to move around in. They finally saw for themselves what my life was like - (alone for almost 80% of the time) and luckily they were around, even if just for meals, or playing DDR or guitar hero, cos the previous 2 weeks i would have been alone in the house like the whole time.

Bad - i was too busy with work to really bring the family around the 1st 2 weeks, Mom was unhappy about almost everything - she really isn't a very good traveller since she doesn't eat majority of the meats and JP isnt a vegetarian friendly country, and kept showing mood swings and the horrifically hot and humid weather (37 degrees celsius max) didn't help things much.

But, managed to take take my sisters to watch baseball (luckily there is high sch baseball tournaments ongoing) which we enjoyed immensely since we totally understand the concept of school pride, took lots of paparazzi type pictures of each other and cute guys we saw on the streets, went to some temples before my mom said *another temple again!?* -.-, did stupid stuff like poke at deer, avoid deer shit, watched fireworks, tried ESP with each other (and succeeded) and did some daily stuff together like jogging / supermarket groceries buying and just strolling around the neighbourhood.

Some stuff we saw

ponyo sticking out of the Ghibli store signboard

at the baseball game - before a hit

Some shots my sis took of me:

me looking like a lost tourist when waiting for the toilet go-ers

resting my tired feet in 丸山公園　after a day in kyoto

and the wedding finished up w/o much problems except alot of complaints about the wedding coordinator and the photographer.

the cocktail dress from La Belle

warning - > 600 pics in full set of pics taken by my sisters & Calvin here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157624700716412/

千九百十一：　Singapore again!

2010-07-26T00:36:00.002+08:00

the sky so blue

Went to Singapore for the past 2 weeks, had a great time eating mainly, not so good time with work. As you can see, Kelly has gone mad from the work.

work drove (some of) us crazy

Very short trip this time, only 11 days, and most of the days at work. I feel kinda more stressed after the trip, but at least I will be looking forward to the next one soon!

千九百十：　World Cup

2010-07-07T02:26:00.005+08:00

Watching the world cup the past few weeks hence the lack of posts. Supreme lack of sleep, plus been busy with work.. its UAT again. and running.

Am very proud of myself that I have managed to go running almost every sunny day in June, and managed to get my target below 30 minutes for 5km, (around 29min at 5km, 31:37 at 5.45km. Can see my activities here - http://runkeeper.com/user/booboogal/ but I've set the maps to be private to avoid getting any stalkers behind me since I usually run around my house area. I'm not really sure what I'm running for, partly was to lose fats, partly was to improve my stamina, partly was to have some sort of goal and to have the discipline to achieve what I had set for myself. It's kinda working out well for other parts of my daily routine as well, because i'm forced to have breakfast so that i can run in the afternoon, or just have more regular / earlier meals. I've gotten more familiar with the buildings/ shops along the run routes, and discovered a few other shops that I want to go to if I have time.

Photo of the day - a preview of the dessert course - I can't really remember the name of each piece, so will have to make do with calling them thingeys. I liked the citrus thingey better.

chocolate thingey, and a citrus thingey.

Everything is in quite a mess now. EVERYTHING. I wish someone can come and rescue me.

千九百零九： Slideshows

2010-06-23T18:16:00.005+08:00

Discovered an amazing slideshow creating site - animoto.com

Actually more of Yong How, the photographer from my wedding last year recommended it to me. The free service lets you create 30 second videos, and I'm considering paying for the $30/year service to make the wedding slideshow..

This is one of the test videos I created.. can't even tell that its a amateur video right? hehe

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The most difficult part of creating any slideshow is choosing the music.. and this is kinda driving me nuts..

千九百零八：　Greed

2010-06-22T12:05:00.003+08:00

It's time to do the 2nd wedding.

picking out which tiara I should borrow (in my mind thinking i probably won't borrow anything)

I'm wondering why I am putting myself through the torture of doing this again. and I am so mad at the stupid hotel.
1. They charge money for everything and this is like the worst - to change the table cloth of the main table to a coloured one, they want to charge 3000yen per piece for 4 pieces. - almost S$200 to RENT table clothes? how about i bring my own?! renting the accessories cost S$1.5k for the tiara / necklace / earrings - I am so going to just bring/borrow my own from SG. Per tiny bag of sweets as doorgifts is $15?! Do they think wedding couples are carrot heads?? and if that bag is $15 worth of candy, I won't complain, but the picture showed 2 tiny 10 cent coin type candies in a tiny bag. WTF?! Hand bouquet - $500 . They must think we are very stupid or all wedding couples are extremely rich???

2. For such a big hotel - they are telling they have no easel stand for the wedding portrait/ welcome sign. ???? they asked me to put the portrait on a chair. ???? - I am so going to buy my own easel stand as well.

I guess this comes down to the point that the hotels are too greedy. If they charge less they can earn some but this only leads to couples who don't want to spend so much money looking for alternatives instead.

千九百零七：　Run

2010-06-14T14:30:00.002+08:00

I'm quite proud of myself for having been able to run daily for the past week (besides wkend). Not very long runs, but at least kept the discipline to go down and run a little more than the day before. I hope I can run 5km continuously w/o stopping by the end of the week!

The activities are here - maps are locked for security purposes (don't want stalkers to see the maps and start following me)
http://runkeeper.com/user/booboogal

Love this runkeeper app by the way, cos it only uses GPS and not data, so basically I can still use this even though I switched off all GPRS data settings.

Trying to revise my french but not really getting anywhere. Am quite tempted to spend alot of money shopping online :(

千九百零六：　Salut!

2010-06-11T11:03:00.003+08:00

I was feeling quite silly one evening and decided to use my camera to take my own pic when I was working with the self timer:

and so this is what i look like when I'm semi-busy and staring at the PC screen. A little fierce, like I might shout at the next person who talks to me. hahaha!

This week was all business at the last minute, ie, end of day work. Which was not that great, because I wanted to go quite a few places this week.

Monday - ~~Monday evening was a blank though, i totally can't recall what I did in the night.~~
Ok after much thinking I finally realised I went to the dentist. and extracted my baby tooth stump.

Tuesday - went to take a look at the interpreter sch, they said even though my english was ok, Jpnese maybe need to study more. all because of they made a take a test by reading a newspaper article out loud. Who does that in real life?! even if you don't know the pronunciation doesn't mean you don't know the meaning anyway. The lady said something like ... maybe your polite form isn't good enough in Japanese , then I was thinking, how many of your students started out with strong polite form in English?? But ok.. just abit pissed off at their snobby attitude, am glad I don't have to spend money there anymore.

Wednesday - watched Shaolin soccer on tv, was hilarious as before and nolstagic of the days in uni when we watched it in the LT and couldn't stop laughing when the fat guy ate the raw eggs.

Thursday - went to register for French lessons at Alliance Francaise Osaka, they asked me to go for the 1st lesson on 3rd July, to see if I was comfortable with the level before I needed to commit. Which was really nice of them! Am so glad I didn't spend money on the interpreter sch, the course of 1 month there would have covered 2 semesters' fees at AF. Was looking at the French Text last night and I think I need some intensive revision before lessons start. Hope I can make some new friends there! :)

Friday - couldn't really wake up today due to the late meetings last night then having to wake up to make breakfast then go back to sleep again. Still feeling super groggy, at least there is the world cup to look forward to tonight. Go Mexico!!

千九百零五：　Aftermath

2010-06-03T21:36:00.002+08:00

aftermath of the Hanshin earthquake left at the Meriken park in Kobe. everything was tilted strangely.

Today was a rare busy day at work.

Vik reminded me of my 大凶 lot I picked at the beginning of the year from the shrine. He asked me if the year has been bad so far. When I was thinking yesterday i could only think of my 3 year visa, so I couldn't think of the unhappy moments until now. There were unhappy moments, very unhappy moments I guess. but there were some happy moments. I guess with unhappiness you learn to appreciate the happy times and just take it that nothing lasts forever.

Today I thought about why I was still so nice to the people i love, who hurt me despite everything. I guess after Ayaka passed away, I just took it that life is really short and I don't want to have any final memories of me or people of me as being anger and unhappiness or alot of regret which was what i felt and still feel whenever I think about Ayaka. About words I should have said to her but i didn't, about appreciation I should have shown but didn't and About all the things we had decided to do together but she left before we could do them. I don't dare to think about our happy memories together to much because they still bring tears to my eyes. So what if the person did me wrong? what goes around come around.. and i shouldn't ruin my own karma by being mean to anyone. and i do sincerely wish for all the people i love to be happy no matter what. i guess our first instinct upon any hurt to us is to hurt the person back but after some cooling down, i'm just thinking "what am I thinking of... As if the person being unhappy will make me any happier" bearing grudges don't do much for my own health either so what's the point. just move on and everyone is happy. and u learn who are the people who really care for you in your life. Ryo always asked why I said thank u to the taxi drivers even though they are so rude and cranky. Why not? Saying thank u doesn't cost me anything and it might make their dreary day more cheerful if they at least meet 1 nice person in his day.

I watched Othello on Monday at a theater in Kyoto.. a 2 hour train ride there then a 2 hour train ride back. I didn't really know the story before watching it, it was a story of a stupid man who trusted the wrong man too easily and believed all the poison his "trusted" friend poured into his ears about his wife being unfaithful and he believed everything with a few fake evidence planted around, went mad with paranoia and suspicion and killed all the innocent people before realising it was all lies and killed himself.

千九百零四：　赤壁

2010-05-30T08:16:00.003+08:00

I watched the Chinese opera version of 赤壁　yesterday performed by a Hunan opera troupe. I had only watched Red Cliff 1 at the movies so I didn't really know the story for this. The acrobatic fighting scenes with a huge amount of somersaults and flips were very cool, but the ending with Guan Yu letting Cao Cao go was quite sucky.

Bought the DDR version of wii, now everything wii is = xxxfit , everything has become some sort of workout which I'm quite a sucker for especially since i'm only paying to go to the gym per use. the main aim of gym is yoga and the treadmill but I think I have to start running outdoors soon because of the stupid 1 hour limit on the machines. how far can I run in an hour? unless it forces me to run a longer distance in a shorter time though. so far have managed to run about 7.5km in an hour, I need to slowly increase that to 10km if possible. anyway, i have the whole of next week to myself to play with the DDR game and to workout i guess. I can try to run before work every morning but it's hard to begin alone. and I'm not familiar with the roads as well. I guess the safest way is to run along the train tracks..

千九百零三：　夕日

2010-05-28T12:07:00.004+08:00

Some may have seen this in facebook, this is the better quality photo taken with my digicam. Gives me a very serene feeling looking at this picture.

Going to watch a 京劇 tomorrow, it's 「赤壁の戦い」 Red Cliff actually. which reminds me, i should watch Red Cliff 2 today to finish the story before I go tomorrow. Am debating internally if it's worth it to get the macro lens now, with the 5% off within this month. After calculationg it's actually cheaper to get it this month.. but should I? have already kinda overspent this month :(hmm but that's because of my sg ticket. hmmmm i have another 3 days to think about it. Finally settled all the tickets for the family for their JP trip as well.

Work is slow this week, because of the environment problems. I want to ask for more work but I'm afraid that when the wedding looms nearer it might be very difficult to handle.

In the midst of Season 3 of Criminal Minds, and next friday there is going to be CSI NY marathon on AXN. woohoo!

千九百零二：　Le Pain

2010-05-24T14:41:00.003+08:00

I baked bread!

It's nothing spectacular, plain bread in the shape of buns, but quite an achievement considering I haven't touched an oven in years. Ryo saw the effort needed to knead the dough and he was saying if I really want to bake more bread we should get a bread machine instead of tiring myself out. and he probably thinks that after a few times of intense manual kneading I might lose interest in baking bread hahaha. I thought it was pretty calming when kneading the dough though, although the table did become quite a mess but seeing the bread rise & form into buns in the oven was pretty rewarding in itself. I don't really want to eat the bread, but i guess it saves me the money of 8 buns this week. hahahaha!

千九百零一：　今日の1ショット

2010-05-20T21:23:00.002+08:00

I don't really recognise Lin Zhiling, but only realised that she was on the cover of the magazine with Kimura on retrospect. haha. oops. She's acting with Kimura in his latest drama, I've recorded all the episodes so far but haven't started watching it.

Ryo is in Tokyo till Saturday, meaning i'm home alone until then. hmm.

千九百：　Alien card

2010-05-18T09:58:00.002+08:00

Japan legal procedures are so frustrating! I've to renew my alien card annually which means having to provide 2 new passport-sized photos annually even though the old card was fine and i didn't change so much in my looks over the past year!? and they have to waste materials making a perfectly new holographic card (like the NRIC card material). duh!!!!

I have to go down to the ward office during lunch and I have to go down to renew my spouse visa tomorrow morning as well.. I swear that this is just a prank for them to get more money from me because a yearly visa is more expensive than them giving me a 3 year visa. argh!

Went to the gym yesterday, surprisingly still able to do the Yoga poses. I guess balance is one thing that remains, but flexibility isn't. Couldn't reach my toes when I bent over, however balancing was still a breeze on the tree pose. But. due to lack of exercise, leg muscles have weakened and of course i needed more effort to stand on 1 foot for the same amount of time as before. But it works, 1 kg has gone away from yesterday, I have less than 3 months to train now!

千八百九十九：　Tokyo in May

2010-05-16T14:39:00.000+08:00

Strawberry parfait at Takano Fruit Parlour

Had a great time at Tokyo meeting up with ex colleagues and current colleagues. At first was quite tired from SG, and a little regretting to have planned the trips so close to each other, but all was forgetten when we met up :)

We had mexican food and drinks on Monday, Tues Okinawa food with M, wednesday was just myself shopping a little / yakiniku Bento, Thurs M-san had 鰻 unagi & strawberry parfait for dessert. Friday was dinner with the MS pple, finally the end of a long work week. We had dinner at a organic vegetable based restaurant Flax, it was good but not filling enough. It made us drink alot to fill our stomachs though. Saturday was SG food day at Sin Tong Kee with Manami & Akane & Ryo. Realised that Ryo hasn't tried most hawker food before (because we always went to town area or ate at home).

back to work at home tomorrow. kinda relieved to be able to do nothing at all the whole day today :)

千八百九十八：　Work from Tokyo

2010-05-11T08:41:00.003+08:00

It's work from Tokyo week this week.

Last week was a hectic week, a rush to meet up with everyone b4 i leave SG again.

Wednesday was Universal Studios with XH, Thurs there was the JP Morgan Run, where I joined as a volunteer photographer with my new camera :p Learnt quite a bit from James my photography guru, here he is :)

James & me

Reached JP last friday evening. On Saturday, we had buffet at the hotel after meeting the wedding coordinator.
On Sunday, we flew to Tokyo, and watched Kimura on TV the whole day as there were alot of promotional interviews for his new drama. Had Mexican food with the Capcom people last night, it was very good to see them again.

千八百九十七：　Universal Studios Singapore

2010-05-06T01:52:00.003+08:00

Still sorting through photos, but I like this one the best :)

Glad we went together! had a fantastic time screaming together on the rides especially those roller coaster ones under the scorching sun amidst the girl talk. No queues on the rides, the performances were great, finally got to see the Shrek 4D show in English.

千八百九十六：　さよなら

2010-04-24T03:15:00.002+08:00

Waiting for my hair to dry a little before sleeping.

We had a farewell dinner for Kelly & Jimmy tonight. I will definitely miss them..

me & Jimmy

UAT team with Jimmy who almost joined us.. sighz.

if only he had joined us we wouldn't need to have this party.

Someone said I seemed to be getting prettier everytime he saw me. What nice words, but i laughed at him and said "hahaha, of course I can't be getting uglier right?" jokingly, and he was like "erh.. nono i really mean it ".. and i was quite in disbelief but thanked him anyway for the compliment. I had motivation to keep in shape / maintain looks, but now it's kinda sorta at a "so what if I do all these, or look better, I'm always the one who is alone in the end..." i need alot of affirmation in my life, or perhaps it's just my character.but is there anything so wrong about that?

Already started feeling somewhat keen on being initiative despite everything. Perhaps things will never change as long as I am still me.

千八百九十五：　Time

2010-04-21T21:43:00.004+08:00

I just wish that time would stop here. and now.

even though things are not exactly what I want, but it's the best I can get now. and I intend to treasure every moment of the next 2weeks. be it bad or good, but just the time spent together will be a precious memory in my heart.

I can only wish.

千八百九十四：　Criminal Minds

2010-04-16T17:51:00.002+08:00

Started on a new drama (old on tv, new to me) Criminal Minds. FBI criminal profiling is the main theme, which is really interesting. There are so many crime dramas but I think the only one that I actually got bored watching was CSI Miami (the lead detective just doesn't have the charisma in other shows like CSI new york/numbers/bones etc).

Sudden work beckons. will continue this later.

千八百九十三：　Achievements

2010-04-14T08:30:00.005+08:00

Maybe due to the strange 激しい　temperature changes, have been feeling a little under the weather. it was >20degrees celsius over the weekend, but it dropped back to 11degrees today. Feverish/coldish headachy since Sunday night and stomach upsets the past few days.

I realise I can't really tell foe from friend these few weeks.

trying to remember what X said about not writing bad stuff here so that i won't remember the unhappiness.

I don't know if I want gaps in my memories.

but towards a happy note - Ryo's work on the IR site for his company has earned them a No. 1 IR site ranking on the Gomez IR Rankings for 2010 :) They were ranked ahead of MNCs like Toshiba & NTT Docomo, so that's quite an achievement!

I haven't had any achievements lately to speak of, but have been doing alot of cards for friends. Hopefully they will like it.

千八百九十二：　Movie

2010-04-11T16:21:00.003+08:00

went to watch 「ダーリンは外国人」　yesterday at Umeda. it's based on a comic based on the illustrator's own life (something like Baby Blues), mainly about the difficulties she faced from her family & society when she got together with a foreigner. Quite funny, and got some very sad parts in the middle, everyone was crying..

This picture is quite irrelevant here, but just thought i looked quite nice. hahaha!

Didn't do much but the weekend just seems to fly past.

千八百九十一：　Weird..

2010-04-09T17:13:00.004+08:00

How weird.

Felt that I should order my books today and didn't realise that it was on the same date last month that I purchased the first set of the Belgariad series.

what a weird coincidence.

Feeling a little weird today generally. I couldn't wake up despite no nightmares. It's always home alone on a Friday night because he always schedules his work trip on fridays. hmm.

thinking of all the food i want to eat when I'm in sg. Curry Fish Head, Thai Food, Chicken rice, salted vege with duck soup. Yummy!!! thinking of all these is making me drool...

千八百九十：　桜

2010-04-08T12:23:00.006+08:00

Finally uploaded photos to flickr after renewing my account. every year i just delay the renewal of the pro acct by a month so that it will last a month more. hehe... abit ngeow, but no harm to anyone.

Sakura visit at 夙川公園,

the street stalls' food were delicious btw. although it was still freezingly cold with the wind.

plus a soccer game (first time ever in my life watching a live game at the pitch), Gamba Osaka vs SAFFC.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157623801655778/

of course Osaka won the game against SAFFC.

bought a DSLR: Nikon D3000 dual lens kit because it was going on sale, then it ended up to be cheaper than Canon powershot G11 which was my first choice. Havent really taken it out yet, cos i havent been anywhere after getting the camera, but just by taking shots randomly of the scenery outside the house and in the house, the sharpness and focus just blows me away. :D

click on the pic to see it in its original size:

this was a cloudy day but the camera managed to take such a sharp pic and made everything look kinda toy like.

i love my new toy!

千八百八十九：　TGIF

2010-04-02T19:35:00.005+08:00

Doing UAT at home on a friday night. feeling really really bored. :(

Ryo is in Tokyo until tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder why he is always there on a friday. The trips seem to be increasing. Maybe i will surprise him one of the trips. If only I can afford those taitai life & jet to tokyo for no reason at all but just to shop. :)

Hanami this weekend I think. He has said he would bring me to eat yakiniku but who knows, probably he will back out.. & shopping for spring clothes i think. & maybe golf.

must stay strong.

千八百八十八：　Exhaustion

2010-04-01T19:11:00.004+08:00

Visited Nara with Anna on sunday. Did not get harrassed by the deer (because there were soooo many tourists feeding them)

deer trying to get all the rice crackers in the kid's hands

at world heritage site, Todaiji (東大寺)

outside the temple

Went to watch soccer Gamba Osaka vs SAFFC for AFC. this is actually my first live soccer match in my whole life. I think because it was cold & the audience wasn't that many in number, the atmosphere was only half there. but luckily our seat was like near the goal & can see alot of action closer up. I don't think i will be watching soccer matches much because the stadium is just so out of the way. (1.5 hr from my place.)

{another picture is supposed to be here..}

work exhaustion, & my right eye has has been feeling really painful for the past few days. Finding it very hard to wake up in the morning as well, partly cold & partly really exhausted. working late lately because daytime is so packed with stuff to do. can't use the new work laptop yet cos there isn't a ras card reader with it & I had to order 1 myself in JP.

feeling shitty when i hear pple tell me sightings. "i saw .... yesterday" half torn wishing i was there to see for myself or another part of me just wants to pretend I don't know anything. keep thinking about the good times last year, re-reading email msgs, when everything was so different not even a month ago. & i just feel so helpless.

千八百八十七：　Sunny Day

2010-03-28T00:25:00.002+08:00

Today was a sunny day.

But sorta spent half the day in the house trying to carry out some work & then mad rush to clean the house because A was coming to stay the weekend until she met her bf on Tue morning. Had to vacuum, fold clothes, tidy up.. while someone just complained of hunger & sat around watching TV & then napping after having the food. grrrrr... got a bit mad but as it was my fren who was coming, i couldn't say anything & just tried to do everything myself until he finally decided to wake up. :(

Ate KFC for dinner, first time I ate KFC in JP. It's nicer in sg somehow, although the skin tastes smoother in JP, but the drink is so small & the coleslaw has onions. (Yuck!) & am trying to find something to color my eyebrows because now i look so funny with brown hair & black brows...

Nara tomorrow.. hopefully the deers don't try to eat me.

千八百八十六：　Appreciation

2010-03-26T19:57:00.006+08:00

Things are getting better, thanks to many friends for their concern & kind words.

Bali was arranged at a right time, for me to try to relax & get my mind off everything bad that had happened but somehow i think it was the talk of Bali which caused everything to happen.

Bali had great weather, no rain for the whole week & sitting in front of the sea everyday made me feel like a tiny person. I tried to read, tried to be more big hearted, tried to just forget all the unhappy stuff & just remember the good.. so many thoughts just kept racing through my mind everyday, and everyday they were the same thoughts, nothing changed. I was quite irritable, when Ryo tried to be playful sometimes, when he poked me or said something, my mind was far away & I felt sorry that i couldn't give him my full attention. But i did try very hard to just not think or to pay attention when talking to Ryo, my mind was quite exhausted though..

I realise that the things I want might not always be the best for me but I always try to give my best to others. I want to feel needed, who doesn't? found suddenly white hair on my head. I finally understand why it causes stress. especially those strands that are half white half black. somehow somewhere in between they just lost their colour..

went to read some history of what i wrote or some chat logs of a year ago , 2 years ago, 3 years ago. It seems that March has never been a good month in my life. it's too long, too many days for bad things to happen. & i discovered the pattern of March every year. Its' the month where i will always have to say goodbye to someone in my life somehow or another.

千八百八十五：　Apprehension

2010-03-21T20:31:00.003+08:00

I've so many things that I want to say to u. to share & get your opinion.

But I think you're not interested in being in the know anymore..

& i'm really afraid of what I will get in April.

千八百八十四：Alone

2010-03-12T02:48:00.002+08:00

Cant' sleep.
Can't breathe.

no one i can talk to.
Gd bye for now

千八百八十三：　Foooood

2010-03-09T21:27:00.005+08:00

late post --
2 wkends ago, had some sushi & watched Avatar 3D. Avatar 3D was like really dark, as in after wearing the 3D glasses I couldn't really see the colours & stuff, so didn't like it that much. OK story, as usual, humans (americans?) just foist themselves on any community with violence instead of diplomacy to get what they want w/o care for this community's needs & culture & tradition. Pretty much the same as that "documentary" - The Cove. But this definitely won't win an award against an Iraq war based movie i supposed, this is make-believe!!

Some pics to make u drool:

Spam sushi (Whale meat!)

Roast Duck Sushi

Had a good weekend with the ladies from Tokyo. They had come to visit Ayaka's grave on her death anniversary on 7-March. Manami & Akane came early saturday morning & we went to see the ikebana display Ryo's colleague had done -

Eco themed flower arrangement

there has been a huge renovation at Takashimaya Namba Osaka - which brought in Din Tai Fung! but long long queue, maybe I'll head there one of the weekdays instead.

We went to 心斎橋 after that, had お好み焼き for lunch, then lots of たこ焼き (Octopus balls)。Dinner was Korean food at Koreatown 鶴橋　where they are famous for their bbq beef。On Sunday, we had lunch at a Chinese restaurant at Nishinomiya Gardens, named Dragon Red River (abit weird this name) and it was really good. Then after we visited the cemetery, we had desserts at 御影高杉 (Mikage Takasugi) a famous desserts cafe in Kobe. Basically we just ate & ate the whole weekend.. Won't see the girls for a while i guess, but I'm happy they made the trip down. We probably will make this an annual affair.

千八百八十二：　March

2010-03-02T17:20:00.002+08:00

hmm how irritating. I went to get my boots during lunch & bought a jacket from Zara, and i didn't check properly & I just realised the back of it has a ballpen mark of about 5cm. The jacket is like light grey so it's really obvious & I've no choice but to go down & exchange it again later.

Finally figured out where the treasure map piece in DQ was referring to. I think the train is a very good place to figure things out; i was stuck on that map for a long time & finally today i just scanned through the A3 map & found what I was looking for.

Reading Catch-22 right now, it's quite funny, but not super engrossing like The End of Mr Y. But it hasn't made me want to just jump straight to the ending yet, so it's still alright. I think i read too much chick lit, & I always can't stand books without ~~happy or~~ definite endings. Books that leave things hanging in the air always make me feel very dissatisfied. I'm trying to resist buying books, because they'll just pile up & they're not cheap, wondering if there are any English book exchange groups in my area or book club. Must remember to look this up.

千八百八十一：　Tsunami Warnings

2010-03-01T17:02:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was quite exciting. First time in 17 years that JP issued an almost nationwide tsunami warning. Which I think was a good move despite all those idiots who kept saying stuff like "nothing happened! blah blah". Given the unpredictability of tsunamis & what happened in 2004, i would think it's better to be safe than sorry. if something had happened because the danger was underestimated, it would be terrible. the tsunami did come, but really slowly so it wasn't like the 2004 videos you see, where this humongous wave covered everything in its path. Rather, the water level rose by 1.2m in 10min and receded etc. 1m & many areas in northern japan was flooded to knee level. imagine if "something" had happened, some big ass wave had really come, it would really be disastrous.

Ryo left for London on work yesterday morning, and I had the whole day to myself. Actually have all the days to myself until thursday.. Went to the supermarket, went to the dry-cleaner's & then to my in-laws' place for dinner. it's abit awkward to be there by myself, but got sort stuck because Ryo didn't tell them he was going to be away & they had expected us to come for dinner on sunday.. so i was like ok i'll come then.. then ended up teaching my mom-in-law how to use MS Word.

Hooked on cafe world in Fb lately, it's such a tedious game ..

Will be going to the cemetery this sunday. It feels like she's on a long vacation and hasn't returned still.

千八百八十：　And the Best Girl Wins

2010-02-26T23:03:00.002+08:00

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

2010-02-24T19:17:00.002+08:00

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

2010-02-22T12:52:00.003+08:00

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!

.. Boo Boo Culture ..

千九百七十七：Winter

千九百七十六：2 more weeks

千九百七十五：2012 Resolutions

千九百七十四：Festivities

千九百七十三：Kinect

千九百七十二：Singapore Marathon 2011

千九百七十一：Korea

千九百七十：Kobe Marathon

千九百六十九：Kyoto

千九百六十八：Happy Birthday!

千九百六十七： Air Acrobatics

千九百六十六： Osaka Marathon 2011

千九百六十五：Hurtful Words

千九百六十四：ごちそうさまでした！

千九百六十三：Too Much Alone Time

千九百六十二： Gold Coast

千九百六十一：New Purchases

千九百六十：The End of Summer

千九百五十九： The Meaning of Social

千九百五十八： Shitloads of Stupid Conditions

千九百五十七：About Cleaning up your Iphone

千九百五十六：Buon Giorno!

千九百五十五：Another Year

千九百五十四： Grouses

千九百五十三： Busy Week

千九百五十二： BBB

千九百五十一： I'm on Etsy!

千九百五十： Back from Taipei

千九百四十九： Long time no blog

千九百四十八： The Lack of Discretion

千九百四十七： A Marathon & A Wedding in Singapore

千九百四十六： 21km

千九百四十五： Run Club

千九百四十四： 桜

千九百四十三： 6 years

千九百四十二： Still Sick

千九百四十一： Flu

千九百四十： Lethargy

千九百三十九： Chinese New Year 2011

千九百三十八： Numb3rs

千九百三十七： Impulse

千九百三十六： Long week

千九百三十五： First week of 2011

千九百三十四： 2011 Resolutions