Knock knock - chet, are you there?

OK OK...I've been reminded to do a blog update again. Thanks Y. :-)

Well, now that I'm pounding away on my keyboard, I can't think of anything to write about! Let's see...what have I been up to recently?

I got to spend two whole weeks in Singapore, that's a rarity. Took the opportunity to really slack off at work and relax a little bit otherwise I would have gone postal. I've been spending 4 hours of my precious weekend time training hard in Bukit Timah for my upcoming summit trek of Haba Snow Mountain in China. For those of you who are curious, "bukit" means "hill" and "timah" means "tin" so my guess is there used to be tin there. Now it's a very popular weekend exercise routine for many Singaporeans. For me it's pure torture when we train and have to go up and down those damn steps repeatedly rather than just once. Bukit Timah is also the highest point in Singapore - all 163.63 metres of it. So here's a question - is climbing up and down a 163m hill going to help me climb a 5396m mountain?? What's even more scary is the fact that the first day of the trip will cover a climb of 1700m which is pushing the limit if you ask me. I'm hiring a horse as a backup (just in case!) Singaporeans seem to always be in a rush. I noticed all their trips are usually 7-14 days long. Never the usual 21 days or so for a typical summit trek. Judging by how hard it is to get any time off, I guess I shouldn't be too suprised.

So this weekend has been a good one even though I had to spend half my Sunday travelling (I'm in Manila right now). I managed to catch up with some very good and old friends on Saturday. It's always funny - we all used to live in different countries, I was in Australia, K was in Malaysia and S was in Singapore. We actually see more of each other when we were in the different countries! I think in the 12 months that we all lived in Singapore (K moved to Singapore, I moved to Singapore and S only recently moved back to Malaysia), we only met up twice! Get what I'm trying to explain??

So I get a call on Thursday night, at the exact moment that I got home, at the exact time when I dropped my keys on the table and at the exact time that I unbuttoned the first button on my shirt, the phone rings, "Eug, come on over to SS's house for drinks." I look at my watch, it's 11pm. Ah what the heck, I'll go over for 45 minutes (SS's house is only 15 mins walk away) and then come back, take a shower and get my beauty sleep. Of course I stumbled in at 2.30am and my Friday was spent walking into walls in the office.

It didn't help one of the team members from the Haba trip called me up on Thursday morning too. I didn't even realise I had ordered two trekking poles for the trip! I thought it was a dream all along and then I got the confirmation email. Yep, I am, as my close friends will know, NOT a morning person! So if you want to sell me something that I don't want, call me at 7am in the morning. Argh! To be fair, I do need a pair of trekking poles.

Back to my friends being in town for the weekend, we did what most people our age do, food, drinks and Facebooking! Heh heh...I now acknowledge that everyone's on Facebook! It's amazing - I've found long lost friends I have not met for 15 years! This includes a girl I once met on a flight from Melbourne to KL back in my uni days - that would have been 12 years ago. I don't like the whole privacy thing though. If you put anything on Facebook, expect it to be seen by tons of people. I just found out yesteday that if you Poke someone, your profile is actually open for them to view for a month??

We went out to Denise's, a wine bar in East Coast Park last night. It's outdoors and it was a cool night so I really enjoyed that. Let me see if I can rummage one of the photos that the guys took. Nope. I deleted them by mistake. Argh! After drinks, the whole gang went to my place to continue drinking (the wine bar closes at midnight). First time guests!! Yes yes, I need to pull my act up and organise a proper "house warming". So we were all up on the rooftop drinking away a bottle of South African wine (can't remember the name). My guess is this is what the hip people call "Chill". :-)

Like I mentioned before, I'm back in Manila for work this week. I didn't realise I'm now an Elite member with the hotel's frequent stayer programme. I can't get used to it but the duty manager and one of the receptionists greeted me at my car door and then personally escorted me to my room. All the paperwork was done and all they needed was my signature. Not bad huh? On top of that I will always get an upgrade to a suite (if the room is available), free internet, chocolates, a big giant fruit basket (not the usual two bananas and a mango - see photo below), etc.


Speaking about internet, is it just me or are internet prices in hotels insanely expensive? The price for internet usage in this hotel is 919 Philippine Pesos plus taxes a day. That's about 23 Aussie dollars plus taxes a day in a country where the average household income is 405 pesos a day or AUD10 a day (stats came from this website). Is this the case in other countries??

I somehow managed to drown my relatively new phone with the 3MP camera. That's why the pictures like the one above don't look great - I'm only on 1MP right now. Anyone know how I can resurrect a phone where the Sony Ericsson engineers say there's no hope without paying a small fortune? I'm still kicking myself over it. I'm actually more keen to get grab all the data that's still on that phone (300+ phone numbers plus some really valuable photos) and before you ask, no I didn't synch it with my laptop because I didn't like the software.

It's getting late so adios for now. If you don't hear from me again in October, the next posting will probably be sometime past mid-November. I'm flying straight off to Vietnam after my Haba snow mountain trip (that is if I make it back alive). It's a public holiday in Singapore (Happy Deepavali in advance) when I'm in Hanoi so I might take a couple of days and go visit Halong Bay. Any other recommendations anyone?

And oh yeah, "Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri" to my Muslim friends. Mana duit raya saya?? ;-) Seriously though, I hope you all had a good celebration with your loved ones.

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