the 100th post - awake at 3+ am in China

Travelled to China after 1 month of enjoyable stay in Singapore. Almost looked forward to overseas work trips...

I'm awake at such a late hour, as dinner included too much alcohol. Upon returning to the room, I had only enough consciousness to bolt the door, remove my phone and wallet, before collapsing into the bed. That was about 4 hours of sleep? Anyhow, got up some time ago to do some work, and now preparing to go back to bed.

Thoughts on business dinners in China
Looking at it positively - chance to taste different delicacies, at company's or other's expense, free opportunity to drink alcohol, understanding another culture and history

On the flip side - too much of a waste of food, too much alcohol, and too much smoke
Why is there still a need to have too much food on the table? I hope that sufficient food that we can all finish will become the norm in the near future, but how do we promote this?

It doesn't help that I don't really fancy "delicacies" or alcohol all that much, so good luck to me for the next 5 days or so.

Bangkok 2009

Went on a last-minute holiday over last thursday to sunday, planned and confirmed only last monday-tuesday.

It was a good decision, to put down everything and take a break. Besides a few work calls and email checking, I was free to use my mind for my own purpose. Did some shopping, clubbing, and most importantly, roaming around with the same gang of friends.

Finally saw the Jatujak market, and despite the complaints of how hot, messy and unpleasant the market could be, I actually quite liked it. Well... I cannot understand why they are selling used shoes in the market, but the sale of some flowers, plants and pets did add something different to the typical flea-market style.

We went to a club two nights in a row (a third too, for those who stayed), and the crowd was amazing... amazing as in that it was almost impossible to move through the people, and we were pushed around more often, then moved by our own accord. The music was nice for these two nights though, and it was really enjoyable.

IPPT and Holiday

Just took my IPPT on tuesday, and there were two takeaways:
1. There was a need for us to sign a declaration form on H1N1, and the nominal roll for the IPPT test takers was about 5 pages long, in NRIC number order... and i was in the first page... guess i was one of the older participants.
2. I was not really prepared to run too fast in the 2.4km run, since i had hardly had sufficient training prior to the test date, and i was having some muscle sore from recent trainings. But when the run started, there were two guys who were consistently fast, and pacing behind them, i managed to complete the run in 10mins 07sec. I amazed myself!

After some toggling back and forth on going and not going for holiday with the gang of pals, I had finally decided to go for it. Booked the flights, hotels and arrangements on Monday, and in less than 6 hours, i will be taking off to a nice and lazy holiday. Woohoo... photos will come later!