Day 0 of Project EuroWedding

it was a crazy day at work, with not enough time to complete the tasks at hand... made worse as I would be "out of touch" for the next 18 days. It has been quite a long while since I had more than a day beyond close proximity to my work laptop. Now, I would be thousands of miles from it... guess I should be happier than, you know, paranoid.

well, most of the plans are in place, and we will make the best use of our time there. for legs of the trip that we had not made ample plans on the itinerary, we will just make them up as we go along.

here we go...

back at last, for a while

after 27 nights, 17 flights, many road travels and hotel stays, i have finally reached home, and had the much needed rest... where 10 hours of sleep was truly 10 hours long. besides the aches in the body (punishing badminton session on sat), i must say that i feel rested at long last.

just came home from fetching my parents. it was just from a bus-stop distance away, but since they asked, and i was really free, why not... then only at the carpark at our place, i noticed that my parents were walking really slowly, and i only found out later that my mom had strained her back in the afternoon (and it was only cos my father offered that information). I felt a little ashamed that I did not ask earlier, but then, I was smiling within. Smiling becos there they were, chatting happily, arm-in-arm and walking very slowly. :-)

the essense of the upcoming vacation planning is complete, with only some to-do lists to be thought through! yeah! 2.5 weeks of break from work. hope i will not be too stressed before or after that at work.

Beijing weekend

i was planning grand things for this trip: get the wedding suits tailored, meet up with the soon-to-be-weds, go to the Great Wall...

Tailoring was done last night, and I was supposed to check it out this morning, in case there are corrections to be done. My friend and her husband-to-be had a home BBQ and I joined them and their two friends at their appartment. After getting lost on the way there, and 6 flights of stairs in darkness, I found them, and had a great time with food, red wine, and whisky... and cigars for two of them. By the time I was back to the hotel, I was tipsy and a bit too happy for my usual self.

anyhow, i tried to do some work and drank my routine cuppa coffee before turning in at about 2 am. and I had set an ambitious 6.30 am to wake up. well, i woke up at 2pm, destroying all my plans... Rushed to get out of the room to check out the clothes, which fit okay. Perhaps it is cos I was easy. Now, the only thing left to do is to get a luggage (cos mine just died) and maybe do some sightseeing before 6pm. It is now 3.25 on at Saripon's Pizzeria at Xiu Shui Jie...

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the above was written while having breakfast/lunch/tea... I did get a luggage (not a great price, but hey, not as if I have much of a choice at this moment), and only got to go to the Beihai Garden. Dinner was pleasant, but the usual tourist stuff was not accomplished at all. Oh well, there will be other times in future. Meeting up with friends was entertaining, so I do not regret oversleeping this morning. Less than 20 days to their big day.

more than usual

It was disturbing, with the heightened security for entering China thru' Harbin. It had always been a breeze to come to Harbin or Dalian, that I had come to take it for granted.

On walking towards the immigrations, I was looking intently at my blackberry with one hand, and passport with arrival card on the other. It came as a surprise when one of the immigrations officer asked me where I was from. On ascertaining that I am a Singaporean, and my boss joined me, he asked us to go to a waiting area, without any explanation. Soon, a number of people, including some elderly passengers from Australia joined us. Two Chinese nationals and one Korean also joined in the group, while the other Chinese nationals and Koreans went smoothly across.

Guess it was pretty awkward for us travellers, and probably for the security officers too... they tried to ask everyone to take seats, when there was obviously not enough for all the people they had brought in. And some people weren't too interested to sit down, and would rather know what was going on. Anyhow, me and my boss were called in to have our hand carry luggages checked. They checked through EVERYTHING... took all the papers and flipped through them. Checked every compartment, and asked about almost everything. Cameras were turned on, and photos were browsed. Laptops and thumb drives were taken to be inspected away from our sight, which was pretty disturbing for me.

I maintained to be cheerful and cooperative throughout the situation, since there was nothing that I could do to ease the situation. Whatever they wanted to check, I let them, and was very obliging to provide all the details that they wanted. The security officers that handled me were quite friendly, though they did not divulge what they were looking for or why they were going such a thorough inspection.

Well, not everyone was this lucky or patient with them, and the ladies were probably the most upset... and some photos in some cameras were probably lost in the process. And they did not allow the folks to go to the washrooms unaccompanied, making everyone feel like prisoners. Of course this was to be expected for a heightened security situation, but seriously, nobody there looked even the least bit dangerous.

We made some small talk with the Australians. A very nice lady (Trish) was sorta a head of the group, and was trying to look out for the rest. However, they had difficulties communicating with the officers and I went forward to help. Just some translation. Of course she had her points, that the elderly travellers were all tired and needed to rest, and the security officers had their red tape and could not be very flexible, so being a translator for that part of the conversation was not the most fun. But we managed to get the security officers to go out to help them inform their travel agent about the situation, and ensure that the agent remained waiting for them.

The whole ordeal took a little over 90 minutes and it was just lucky for us that we were not in a hurry. But this was enough to convince us to really avoid coming to China until the Olympics is over. Well, hope the rest of the China trip will be much better!

Korean "storm"

As I sat on the flight to get to Incheon from San Fransico, I looked at the time on the entertainment system… Time at SFO… Time at ICN… and my laptop had Singapore’s time. And then I looked at my analog watch and decided to set to Korea’s time. Try to imagine adjusting the time on an analog watch, where the minute arm turns round and round … with the limited lighting conditions, I was temporarily brought into a movie-like sequence, and it was almost like magic, a little magic in life... where the hands of time went spinning round and round. After 2 weeks of U.S. clock, it is time to get back to the regular time zone. I returned with some Coach bags, lots of incomplete work, important assignments and some heavy feelings.

and the "storm" refers to a flurry of activities here in Korea. it was nice to revisit some places, as well as going to a new one. the weather had also been excellent here, though I hadn't the time or mood to roam around, and quickly, 4 days had passed...