working is tiring. SO BERRY TIRING. argh today is new year's eve and so many ppl are checking into the hotel to view the fireworks from the rooms. i think my brain cannot take so much info and multi-tasking. i am really lousy. baaahhh.

oh had chorale xmas gathering 2 days ago on sat at hog's breath, chijmes. had hell lot of fun. great food too! i had the beef steak. EEEEEE so NICE! oh modelling with marie was very fun. and it is a good scandal material. HEEHEE

oh met up with jingzhi, yehlin and rifdi yest for dinner at amk hub. ate nasi briyani and had family chocolate fondue at andersen's. hahah had hell alot of shit talk about army and police and stuffs like that. haahahh so much to talk about. i wouldn't want to leave at all if not for the fact that i had to work the next morning. BAAAAHHHHH

incredible. i had my first japanese conversation with 2 japanese guests today. i was helping them with their luggages cuz they seem to have some difficulty moving it on their on. haha it all started out as an english convo but i wanted to test my jap. so they were leaving the hotel and i wanted to ask them until what time they will be leaving their luggages at our hotel. ok i was slurring and pausing here and there... hahaha then this indian guy from concierge suddenly started asking them questions in fluent japanese. hahaha i was totally stunned. yah totally amazed. oh well. but i think i was nice enough to help them with their luggages that they decided to take pictures with me. YAY my first pictures with my guest in the hotel. too bad i won't get to have the photos. AHAHAHA. i know i have 2 japanese colleagues and alot of fillipino colleagues working with me. this is so exciting. must ask my japanese colleagues to help me with jap lang. :D

such a sleepy day. i almost fell asleep on the train and bus. ARGH neeed to sleep more!!! ok yesterday was really fun i think.

ran from work at marina mandarin to raffles hotel in the afternoon yesterday, barely making it in time for the reunion carolling. i think reunion carolling is one of the most impt event of the year as it is one of the rare occassion that we get to meet so many friends, something which is not possible during other times of the year. yah so i really cherished singing together on christmas day at raffles hotel lobby. :D

oh wanted to give out my CHOCOLATES but there were certain competition in lady sophia suite also giving away chocs. hahah ok i shall find something more unique to give next year. heehee after carolling the bunch of us went to thai express for desserts. my red bean paste with coconut ice cream was not bad, and it was quite interesting doing the 'wei ling confused smile' thingie at thai express...hurhurhur. then we took mrt to ben tan's house for dinner :D yah talk about lots of things and asked lots of questions. and yeah the vj year book was really useful for easy identification when we are gossiping behind other people's back. hAHAHA.

merry christmas!

haha got so many things to talk about. work, work, carolling, bentan's house xmas party. WAHHAHAHAHAH it's been a really fun day. no time to talk already gotta go sleep. maybe another day. HEHE

my height post. oh well. nvm.

just came back from carolling at singapore island country club with vc. we really had a great time there singing with the very very friendly and hospitable uncles and aunties over there who treated us to dinner at the cafe! hahhaha yah the otah and char kway teow were great! oh and i had 3 glasses of red wine which yin chuin said were of good great and also essential for the maturing of my taste buds. heehee. yah heehee

so tired. work is getting a lil boring, yet tiring. argh. shall do something to spice up work life. :D

i sure am good at gift-wrapping. baaah. watching heroes now :D

waiting for work to start at 3 later on in the afternoon. man it's going to end at 11. HAHAHA maybe i should go grab lunch at the hotel cafeteria. heehee. well front desk job has been really fulfilling to a great extent. love learning the procedures and communicating with guests, but i don't see myself doing the same job in the long run... i think i will cry if i have to do this for 5 years or so heehee

went for propnex graduation ceremony yesterday. it was quite a waste of time actually...hahaha all 3 hours spent there just to get a damn cert. hahahah oh well at least after that i got to meet up with chan, dennis, shane harold and yy a.k.a leonard for my THIRD dinner. haha

work was fantasbularatingly good. front desk work is very challenging, i think i got like 3.28% after 2 days of learning. hahahah it's really alot of familiarising with the system which hanged on my first day of work, and how to accomodate to guest needs. at the moment i just said ok to everything that the guest wants first if it sounds reasonable or if need be i will ask them to wait for a while first before i consult my shifus. josephine looks small but she is actually the assistant manager. irene looks sleepy but she is very efficient, like she can multi-task very well. oh deanne is good too she has been here for like only 3 weeks but she works like a pro liao.

hhahha good ar my working environment. haha my boss mr pek is a very funny guy he was making fun of himself in the office yesterday. HAHAHA oh went to most of the room types already, except presidential suite. heehee most probably will be going for orientation next week.

argh the only not-so-good thing about my job is have to wake up very early for first shift. like 530 latest. arghhh i was really running late today when i left the house at 615. luckily the bus came quite promptly. :D

yay looking forward to work tml. i like greeting people i think. HEEHEE. have a good night and a pleasant stay at home! :D

oh today was impresario auditions. met jiejun and hianyin there! hahahaha. oh well the only thing i remembered about the audition was the tapping of toes. ARgh....anyway i dropped my NT190 watch on the locker room floor and now it has stopped working and there is something moving around inside it when u shake it. ARGH. why can't cheap things last. i have to wear my scratched watch to work tml. BAH

the mrt station at 7 was so crowded it almost felt like orchard road on christmas eve. haha yah and the trains were pretty fast. they also had this glass barricade on the platform to ensure people do not cross the safety line...

shilin was such a nice place to shop that i actually hated the idea of slinging my camera over my shoulders! hahah shilin market is actually quite complicated with it's grid-like structure. have to return to the same street to get to the next street.

shilin night market was really crowded when we went there. we really had to squeeze through hoardes of ppl going in the opposite direction. did not really have much snacks there cuz there wasn't even enough time to shop, much less to say time for eating. HAHA

HAHA yah anyway went to this marvelous shoe shop called great taipei shoes. they had lotsa shoes going at very low rates, however the biggest steal were the NT990 onitsuka tigers shoes! hahaha wanted to get a few pairs but they did not have my size! iwent back there like 4 times and also went to look around the night market for other similar stores, but they either do not have the designs or that they did not have my size. ARGH... not very good...melvin was really indecisive at first whether to get the shoes or not so we walked down the street, only to walk back the same street after 15 minutes after he decided that he would need to get two pairs, one for himself and one for his friend. bah i would have bought 10 pairs if they had my sizes. :( shilin is a must go. too bad i only went once. ARGH... anyway bought 2 hoodies plus 2 long-sleeve old navy t-shirts here plus skinny tie.

day four

i would say DAY 4 wasn't as interesting as day 3. yah we went to guanghua 3c plaza at zhongxiao east toad, however it was really small and there is no comparison to our very own sim lim square.so we were out of there after 15 minutes and wanted to walk to taipei 101. :) haha look at daniel trying to do a hunch-back pose.

it wasn't easy getting to zhongxiao east road, had to ask around for directions and kept refering to maps. hehe but at least i think we are all decent map readers.

hahahah bran, mel and yy managed to get business pants at a street hawker down the road. haha so andy, daniel and i were sorta experimenting shots with my cam. hehe

when we reached taipei 101 it was very cloudy and there was actually a very light drizzle. yah so we actually had to rush to taipei 101 from about 500m away.

it was really magnificent and we could almost see it from anywhere in the eastern district. when we reached the bottom of the building we had to really tilt our head like 90 degrees to see the top. oh but we didn't explore much of the building except the basement foodcourt and market, which was actually quite a waste i would say. however the foodcourt had really delicious-looking food in big portions. yah i had yummy pork cutlet with curry for lunch. then we went to new york new york to get mister donut, shinkong mitsukoshi which was really big cuz it had 4 buildings in all, and then we went to eslite, this really massive building selling all sorts of books. too bad i am not a bookworm if not i would have loved this place.

planned for a trip up to the observatory of taipei 101 but the guys did not want to go up there....yah so no choice we went to tonghua night market. oh the night market is sorta sucky, very little selection of food and clothes. yah so we went to wufenpu, which had pretty much the same price as anywhere else. i think the clothes would only be cheaper if we bought in bulk. OH WELL. so in the end yy and i decided to go back to our hotel first since we were really tired while brandon went to raohe night market himself.

back in ximending i had a haircut and i think the hairstylist was really good. ok his cutting style is very different, sorta like a bottom up kinda cut, like cut from the root. he told me he learnt it from toni & guy in singapre. HAHAA. he told me my hair was really thick, yah cuz i haven't cut it in 2 months... hahaha yah had a really good conversation, but he was told by another of his colleague to rush my haircut abit cuz the shop was closing already and they all wanna go home. :P haha oh after the haircut i went to walk around the vicinity of the hotel and discovered this little shop. bought jeans and cargo pants and a belt there...but argh i think i am not very good at slashing prices.

HHAHAHA i then met yy outside our room when i was returning back to the room cuz he was really bored watching tv in the room. we went to walk around ximending and i had corn in soy sauce. it was really salty and quite yucky. yy had mac's fillet-o-fish plus charcoal-burnt milk tea. is that what it's english name is called?....hahahah ok when the other guys came back they kept saying how good raohe night market was...oh well...we then watched xing guang da dao until 3 plus. heehee

day 5 was the free and easy day.

we all went to different places. daniel had to collect his hand-drawn shoes from taipei 101 while melvin, andy and yy went to wufenpu. bran went to guting. i went to my 2nd favourite place to shop - ximending. wanted to go to shilin initially but it opens only at 3....

ok so i went to THAT shoe shop again and wanted to buy some things cuz i still had some cash to spare. in the end asked the shop assistant whether there were any other outlets in the vicinity, and he told me there was one in eslite. so i went there and discovered treasure. heehee the sports store was at the 5th floor and it was like 3 adidas, nike and puma boutique shops fused into one big boutique shop, and the prices there were also quite heavily-discounted. hehehe but oh well did not have much money left after i bought a very nice bukta sling bag at level 3. heehee

heehee. then i went to buy matchsticks with the boxes drawn by local designers. really funky. haha the shop assistant kept telling me stories about the cover characters which were quite funny la. so i decided to buy 2 boxes from her. yah total cost was like what....25 sing bucks? quite crazy i know for some matchsticks.

had duck noodles for lunch. it was really good although there was just one piece of duck meat inside the entire bowl. yah the soup was really delicious! haiya but the thing was i told the boss i wanted ya rou bian, which was actually the shop name!! then he told me in quite a sarcastic manner that ya rou bian cannot be eaten...hahah the other customer who was beside me was giggling away...hahaha so it was quite embarassing that when i was sitting inside the shop i did not dare to look at them cuz i knew that they were laughing at me. HAHA but still, the soup was good. must try again :D

after lunch i had apple dipped in caramel with chopped almond nuts. HEHE also bought dunkin' donuts! heehee there is nothing that is not sweet or salty in taipei. HHAHA

heehee so we went back to the hotel at 1530hrs to catch the bus to the airport. and we had this mountain of luggage. HAHA yes just the six of us! hahaha really bought lotsa stuffs.

the driver was really interesting. asked daniel to buy betel nuts for him and brought us to this pastry shop which he recommended. he also made us watch this silly cartoon on the car. hahahah oh well and so this five-day trip had come to a close and i think we all had lotsa fun in taipei! woohoo where shall we go next?

heehee i am back in singapore! had a really great 5-day taipei food tasting and shopping trip! bought lotsa stuffs back :D oh and the good thing about the trip was that the weather forecast was wrong! there was no rain throughout the entire trip except the little drizzle when we were at taipei 101. heh

ok firstly jetstar service is actually quite good, even though the seats were actually very crampy. however i had the luxury of sitting by the aisle so can stretch my legs. yah so next time must try to get aisle seats again. oh and during the flights there and back we did not experience much turbulence, which was supposed quite good, but it gets abit boring by the 3rd hour without much entertainment in my bag. HAHAHA luckily the flight was only 4h40min if not we would have been bored to death.

alright i think when we arrived at taoyuan airport it was around 6 but the sun had already set, so it was actually quite dark. after we took the tour bus and reached royal castle hotel at about 8, we set off for ximending :D (hee hee i actually went to ximending for like one third of the trip.) ximending had this huge plaza near the station and it was really windy over there! hahaha very comfortable breeze i would say.

managed to find a sports apparels shop which sells shoes and clothes at highly discounted prices. ok la the stuffs there are quite off-season ones but they still look very attractive yah. bought a pair of grey adidas shoes there :D oh and there were these BIG chicken cutlets with very spicy chilli powder and BIG bubble teas which is used to soothe the mouth after eating the chicken.

oh also had fried and steams dumplings, and donuts and MASSIVE fried hot dogs which can be found at up to 10 inches long at some places. yeah so many things to eat already on the first night HAHA then we went to huaxi street night market at around 11 but most of the shops were closed. however the place was still wafting with the scent of smelly toufu. EEE. i did not eat any smelly toufu there. no betel nuts too. haha

ok i think we went back to our hotel at about 12 plus. it was 5 minutes away from ximen station but we discovered that there were hotels cheaper and nearer to the station in the vicinity. screw paulene our travel agent. ok maybe no need to screw her cuz royal castle hotel staffs were REALLY VERY FRIENDLY. yah especially the manager, and the reception people and the housekeeper. which means everyone working there were friendly la. however the room was a little too small for 3 guys yah. daniel, yy and i were in 802 while mel, bran and andy were in 803.

ok DAY 2

couldn't really sleep well the past night cuz daniel was snoring. woke up at 5 plus and decided to put on my noise-reducing ear phones and managed to sleep at about 6 plus. hahah so when i woke up i gave daniel a piece of my mind. but he then told me that he couldn't sleep till 3 becuz of MY snoring. HAHAH i don't even know that i snore...oh well. :P

ok hotel breakfast was kinda sucky. we had "a wide array of continental and western cuisines" as melvin and brandon put it. had bread with ham and egg and porridge with veggies and pork floss. ok that was pretty much the kind of food we had for the rest of the days.

we set off for taipei main station at around 10 and the underground mall was pretty good. bought lotsa pastries and nougats there. and the pastries from liyi biscuit shop were actually delivered to our hotel on our last day without any delivery charges. saw the female lift operators of shinkong mitsukoshi with the signature taiwanese 'huan ying guan ling!' too...


ok then went to 228 peace park and ntu hospital station to go to yuanling street for shoes. 228 peace park was windy. yah that's all. yah then we had yonghe soya milk which actually is OK only lor.

mel and bran bought leather shoes at yuanling st after like 2 hours of sourcing around for the best deals, but i did not really fancy that place la. heehee had a big, nice bowl of pork cutlet rice at a japanese restaurant there though. :D





after which we went to back to our hotel to put our stuffs, and then set off for gongguan and shida night market - i was just too tired and felt abit sickly, so decided to walk around ximending by myself. got back to the hotel by 11 and watched tv. they then came back at around 1 plus in the morning and i had to open the door for them. poor me can't sleep properly... :(



day 3 was the most enjoyable i think. we went to danshui and shilin night market.





danshui is a very pretty coastal town with lotsa nice food and great scenery. went to this traditional goods shop and the lady boss said that daniel looks like he is one of the indigenous people. we actually wanted to walk all the way from the mrt station to fisherman's wharf and lovers' bridge but gave up half way. hahaha but when we took the bus we realised how long the walk would have taken. maybe an hour to walk 5 km? haha melvin was complaining about the amount of cam-whoring that we had, like 1 every 3 footsteps.

HAHA anyway had ah-gei noodles which consists of fish paste, tofu and vermicelli for lunch. it wasn't very filling, so we went back to danshui old street and had dumpling soup and more bubble tea. the pearls actually filled up half of the entire cup! how amazing... HHAHA then danshui had this market whereby i bought a cap and a pair of specs. :D


hahah we bought SOOO many things we had to go back to the hotel to put our stuffs first. then we were off to shiling night market!

haha using the internet at royal castle hotel now. :D:D:D the past few days have been very fun! and cold. taipei has very strong winds. alright when i was in singapore the weather forecast said that it will be raining everyday in taipei. but it wasn't raining for the past few days! woohoo! went to danshui, ximending, shilin and many other places...alright don't wanna say much now already must go shopping later at the east district!

yay will be flying for taiwan tml! finally! yay after so many months of preparation and meetings. HAHAHA see you guys on the 9th!

heehee just changed the curtains. took an hour to take the old curtains out, wipe the grills and window glasses, then put on the new curtains. erm do i lack exercise cuz i found this hour of housework to be particularly draining. now my eyes are like half-shut. or half-open. :(

had karaoke session in the afternoon with calvin, weilin and shihui at peace centre. HAHA it has been some time since i last went to sing karaoke. hey it's rather cheap 10 bucks for 4 hours of singing plus one drink!:D:D:D anyway jj's baby baby is a really nice song to sing!


alright then went to wei ming's house for 4-4 class gathering. met shawn loh at amk mrt then we went to thomson green together. oh well we were semi-lost when we came to a dead end but managed to get to the house at 715 still. yah had sarpino's pizza which didn't taste very nice (one of the pizzas had only tomatoes and onions on it), but got to catch up with lotsa peeps. played bridge and daidi, some games which i have not played in the longest time... that's why i was the asshole for most of the games! ARGH!

teck kuan, bert, desmama, shieh, pf, andy, joel, mel, weiming, minsheng, samuel, benedict ccc, weixuan, shawn loh, alex koh, me, yy

oh serene-photoshopped some time back...

watched ENCHANTED with 44 guys yesterday. yah and as far as i know, it's a chick flick. HAHAH but i like love comedies what, especially those set in new york. ok i know i have been harping on how disgusting the cockroaches were, and the show actually resembled science fiction at the point when swarms of cockroaches were CLEANING the bath tub and dancing on the main character giselle's hands. EEEEEEEEE....
hahaha yah but the movie was actually quite entertaining with lotsa bollywood dancing as melvin called it. i think what it lacks is a christmas dinner date scene. but oh well it's not christmas yet.

oh i got my marina mandarin job! :D