Closing of a chapter

Wen and Celia are officially Houstonians no more. They left at dawn today for Singapore to celebrate CNY before heading to Shanghai to start a new chapter of their lives after the festive season.

We started off with 13 Singaporeans with the 3 couples forming a gang and the other 7 singles forming another. Even though we made several attempts to “jio” the singles to join us for dinner, we were never really successful. So the 3 couples pretty much stick together. With one couple less, our lives here will definitely not be the same as before. No more crap from Wen, no more STi and purple Camry to bring us around, no more table for 6, no more trips together in the US, no more just pure hanging out together and enjoying one another’s company. We are so used to sticking together that I’m already starting to miss them.

We’ve always talked about how things in Houston somehow will go wrong no matter what. We coined it WCGWWGW (‘what can go wrong will go wrong”). Never did we expect that the WCGWWGW luck were to stay with Wen and Celia right until the very last moment they were to leave Houston for good. Here’s what happened to them yesterday:

- Celia mysteriously caught a stomach virus early in the morning. Good thing she miraculously recovered last night; if not, she would be so uncomfortable during her 30-hour flight.

- Wen and Celia informed the staff at the leasing office that they would be moving out of the apartment back in early January. The staff told them that they did not have to hand in an early termination request letter until they are about to move out. This differed from what was written in the contract which stated that a formal letter has to be sent in a month before they leave. Assuming that the staff knows best, they left it as that.

However, when Wen and Celia sent in the termination form yesterday, they were told to pay two months rental penalty instead of just one month for failing to inform the office a month in advance. Wen had a big argument with the staff. The assistant manager got involved. As at the time they left for Singapore, the issue has not been resolved.

- We had a final farewell with Wen and Celia at their home last night. (hmm...actually, we were there to help ourselves to whatever furniture and food they don’t want.) We left at about 130am. Then at 330am, Tim and YR woke up to help them move their luggage to the SUV (and also to get the futon mattress which they have kindly given to us). Wen had deliberately rented a SUV so that they don’t have to bother us to send them to the airport in the middle of the night.

At 5am, we received a call. It’s from Celia. They had a Punctured Tire!

This is the most powerful of all WCGWWGWs - right before they were about to catch the flight out of here. One last WCGWWGW to make sure they remember Houston for life!

Luckily YR came to their rescue. Somehow, they managed to squeeze the seven pieces of luggage into his car and got to the airport just in time for their flight. Of course, they had to leave the rental car behind.

Wen and Celia, I’m sure you are done with WCGWWGW Houston. Best of luck with your Shanghai stint! U all will definitely be missed!! Must remember to spare us a futon when we go visiting! And come back with a Shanghai Tan!

ps: The singles gang is now left with just one guy. The rest has either gone back to Singapore, to China or NY to work. We are now left with just 5 Singaporeans in Houston. I bet the number will drop to zero before the year is out.

pps: Celia and Wen, just so u know, I made lotus root peanut soup today with the ingredients u gave me. I also stir fried the green beans with ur leftover bacon. And I've already used the wok and wok cover for steaming my egg as well as the extra pot to boil water. The futon matress is really comfy. I'm sure the kitchen towels and detergent will come in useful soon. But I will need to wash the laundry basket and shower curtain before using them. Gosh, that's really a long list of stuff that u all gave us....

Two years on...

and I am still BLOGGING!!! What a feat esp with so many bloggers closing theirs.

I started the first entry when I was all alone in Chicago 2 years ago. Since then, I must have written more than a hundred entries! I bet I have written more entries than Tim even though he was the one who started the blog back in July 2004. Then again, maybe not esp since he was pretty diligent in posting when he first started out...But one thing for sure, I have been the only one who has been updating it frequently ever since I came on board especially in the past few months.

So what kept me going? This blog has enabled people whom I haven't been in regular contact to keep in touch with what's going on in my life. It has also given me an avenue to document the incidents (both exciting and mundane) that had happened to me in the past couple of years in the US. I bet it will bring back good memories when I start reading all my past entries.

So would I continue writing after I leave US? Hmm...that I am not sure. I certainly hope to continue updating. But I suspect that with the hectic workload in Spore, and the number of social events to attend to (right, we dun have much to do here or many people to meet), I highly doubt I will write on a regular basis.

So what do I hate most about blogging? Writer's block. Sometimes I just have no clue of what to write. Prob that's why Tim hasn't been updating... and of course the not so friendly features of blogspot when it comes to uploading photographs.

Anyhow, cheers to myself for a great 2 years and many more to come!

New Year’s Resolution

While having our mini New Year celebration with the nine of us (YH had to spend his New Year alone in Austin) in our room at Algonquin Motel, we were asked what our resolutions for the year were. I think I said something to the effect that I wanna chao geng no more and wanna step up and take on more responsibilities (at least at work).

Indeed, I have been really busy ever since we got back....

I have to manage two projects with tight deadlines that are close to each other. And I am going to have more projects coming up in the pipeline. I have had more client interaction in the past two weeks than I ever had over the past two years. I had to handle a difficult client whuch I think I didn’t manage very well. I had to manage a hard-to-get-hold-of senior manager who threw me into the ocean to fight on my own. Good thing I didn’t drown. I have to manage an Ang Mo staff who had a sudden outburst one day which I thought I handled the situation fine but not very well.

Even at the personal level, I am finally taking steps to improve. I finally took care of my own travel admin which I usually rely on Tim to do. I flew to Dallas with only a day's notice and had to make my own travel arrangement. I had to reserve the hotel, car and air tickets and search online for maps and print them. I know it doesn’t sound difficult but it can be really cumbersome.

I finally drove a car that was not my own after almost two years. It was a hollowing experience when I first started driving that car as it was old with neither auto doors nor windows. It did not even have a central locking system. I had to go to each door to manually lock them. Also, my lady bug has a very good brake but poor acceleration. The rental car is the exact opposite. So it takes some getting used to trying to remember to step on the gas pedal less and harder on the brake.

For people in the US, they will know that I usually let Tim do the driving while I sleep in the car when we go on road trips. For the Dallas trip, I had to drive and look at the map at the same time to figure out how to go from the airport to the client’s place and to our office in Dallas and back. I am not the best driver in town. So, of course, I missed a few turns here and there.

I found the things that happened over just two weeks into 2008 rather enriching. I kind of enjoy being busy and being tasked with more responsibilities. I felt I have been challenged in many aspects (from managing client and staff relationships to handling technical issues) and am happy that I rose up to the challenge most of the time although there is definitely room for improvement. Maybe this is because of the thought that I should be going home soon so I have to try to live each day to the fullest and gain as much out of my stint here as possible.

Anyway, I am leaving for Boston/New Hampshire this Friday for a weekend snowboarding trip with Tim! Yes, we are hooked to snowboarding after Canada! Will meet up with Tim’s ex-colleague, Wen Hung, for the first time in the US. Or should I say the second time since we bumped into her at the LA airport when she first moved from Spore to the US. What a coincidence!

In any case, never forget to take some time off to have some fun even if you are really busy. Carpe Diem!

Highlights of our Trip

Top 10 things that happened during the trip:

1. Endless bantering among the 8 of us. Why only 8? Cos the only 2 non-couple within the group were pretty quiet. Then again, I think Wen and Celia were not that chatty too. Maybe the 6 of us were just too noisy.

2. Endless "tennis" playing (trading of insults) between Neo and Chris. They could go on and on until even the Grandmaster of fan-ness aka PW was "fan2" by them.

3. Endless barking, howling, wimpering by the 320 Alaskan huskies at Algonquin Park. An unforgetable experience.

4. Countless karaoke sessions in our "bus". Chris held his Jay Chou concert while PW and I cheered on by screaming out loud and waving our hands pretending we were holding on the cyalume sticks. We were his only two fans. Poor Chris...

5. Endless questions for our tour guide Tim on what's our itinerary for the next day. "What are we doing tomorrow, huh?" And we usually do not ask when everyone was around. He had to repeat himself at least 4 times!

Even though our good-natured tour guide sent us a rough itinerary which he planned way before we embarked on our trip and told us to include places or activities we fancied, no one really did anything. We just depended on him to do and plan everything. And when something went wrong, who did we blame? Tim of course!

6. Endless suan-ing of our tour guide aka whipping boy Tim. He was called names. From pang chek (This nickname came abt after I called Zhanwen Ah boon chek. Then someone remembered Tim's dialect name as Chin Pang. So now he is called Pang Chek = punctured)to gay shit

PW even came up with a song sang to the tune of Noel.

Here's how it goes...

Gay Ho, Gay Ho
Gay Ho, Gay Ho

Ok, it's not exactly a song...

7. Endless driving. Each time we traveled from one city to another, if mapquest/GPS said we needed 3 hours, it usually meant we would reach our destination in 5. Just cos our "tour" group was so big that even going to the toilet would take us at least 20 mins esp if there's only one restroom at the gas station.

Good thing we had the owner of ZDS (Zhanwen Driving School) driving our "bus" which made our drive a little safer and smoother. He even managed to drive our heavy bus up a snow-covered steep slope after a 15 mins try when all of us had already given up hope.

8. Endless stretch of ski slope. I went up to the midpoint of one of the green ski slopes at Mont Tremblant Ski resort. Took me frigging 3 hours to snowboard down. Tim then went up to the highest point and came down in 45 mins flat. What an insult!

9. Endless eating. This is the first trip I spent more on meals than activities. Usually when we go on trips, we try to eat cheaply most of the time and treat ourselves to expensive food only occassionally. This time round we spent quite abit eating in restaurants.

10. Last but not least, the ever falling temperature. Tim told us we would experience the coldest at the ski resort. Never did we realise that it wasn't gonna be.

One morning at the Algonquin Park (5 days after we left the ski resort), the temperature actually dropped to a friggin -30 degree celsius! We could feel the water in our nose froze instantaneously when we stepped out of our motel. It was as if we had stepped into a giant poultry freezer. Our hands instead of feeling cold began to hurt instead. Good thing was we were actually leaving for Toronto that morning so we didnt have to suffer too much.

That's all for now. Time to sleep.

Flight Delays

We had 9 people meeting in Niagara Falls on the first day of our trip, taking 6 different routes on a total of 14 different planes. So what are the chances of flight delays?

The original plan:
- Tim and Moi (from Houston) to meet Yaohan (from Austin)in Toronto airport at about 130pm. Then we go Toronto Downtown to jalan jalan before going back to pick Marvin and Celia (from Houston) at Toronto airport at 630pm to go Niagara Falls to catch the 9pm fireworks.
- Zing (from Houston) to meet Yiren (from NYC) and Chris and Peiwen (from Spore) in Buffalo at about 10pm.
- All to meet at Niagara Falls Marriott Courtyard at around 1130pm.

What happened in the end:
- Tim and Moi's flight was delayed. We reached Toronto at 230pm. By the time we cleared custom, it was almost 4pm.
- Yaohao's flight was delayed. He reached 6pm (about the time Wen and Celia were supposed to reach)
- Wen and Celia's flight was delayed. They reached 1230am (Yes, past midnight!)
- Surprisingly, Zing who was supposed to change flight twice managed to get into Buffalo on time.
- Neo reached Buffalo on time.
- Chris and PW's flight was delayed. They reached around 1am.
- All finally met at Niagara falls at 230am.

A lot of time wasted on waiting for people to arrive on the first day. But it was all worth it. It marked the beginning of our ultra fun trip...

Back from Canada, off to Dallas

We are finally back from our two weeks trip to Eastern Canada! But barely just two days after our return, I had to travel to Dallas for client meetings. So now I'm writing this entry from my hotel room, eating room service dinner, and about to start watching Kinship 2. Heard from Neo that the 2nd season is really good. Hopefully it is worth my while to catch up with the show.