Damn. Internship is tiring.

PECKPOST

So my first time meeting the boss wasn't too bad. He was very nice about everything but his main concern was that I didn't have any accounting experience which is of course justified. That got me really motivated so I bought an introductory accounting book today to get acquainted with all the basics. I'm pretty fired up. Speaking of reality though, hopefully I won't get pwned too badly on monday.

Oh yeah I also went to eat a ramli burger for lunch today with my family. Like everytime I eat very little dinner, around 12 am onwards I start to get these unbelievable hunger pangs that cannnot be satiated by drinking water. And I think about ramli burgers. And I feel even hungrier. Cyclic masochism - it comes and goes. It's like I could kill for one. The one at the Tanjong Pagar railway station was pretty good but my main gripe was that it didn't have BBQ sauce. Everything else was awesome though.

On an unrelated note, I was watching my dad do some x-ray annotations for a jaw operation and I was just asking him some stuff about it. Oral surgeons are usually better known for extracting wisdom teeth or doing implants and stuff (which is all boring) but I think the aspect of my parents' profession that impresses me the most is when they do class 2 or class 3 jaw adjustment surgery. Essentially that means that they align the jaw properly for people that have an over or under-bite. It's a delicate, precise operation which is interspersed with brutality (like when they BREAK the jaw) but the results are damn near life-changing. Like some of their patients look so much better after the op that I'm left in awe sometimes at my parents' skillz. It's like my dad is Pablo Peck Picasso. The gratitude of the patients and their parents is always overwhelming as well. So yeah I do feel respect for my parents sometimes haha.

PECKPOST

So yesterday night my parents took their accountant friend and his accountant friend (who was arranging the internship) out for dinner. I was there as well, naturally. Both of them used to own their own firms but now they have retired and have boatloads of money. It was nice talking to them because they give out this masterly, "seen it all" vibe but yet at the same time they're totally unpretentious about it. They just laugh about things, talk cock, gossip and tell funny stories about high rollers. Like one of them will say that he found this really cheap TCM masseur in katong who gave excellent back massages for only $22, then next thing you know he's talking about his lonely friend who gave him herbal cordyceps worth 10k ahhahah. Then they'll start talking about high rollers at casinos that bet 50k in laundered money at once, and golf games with "small stakes" of 2k. It's a crazy world out there man.

Yeah so the guy who's arranging my internship is a kindly old gentleman. Very genteel in his ways. But you can smell class on him. He drives a porsche and his food order was damn classy. "I'll have the escargots for starters and the beef on the wagon". Haha compare that to my dad, "I'll have the caesars salad and the mee goreng" lolol. I had never eaten escargots in my life so I shared some with my mum. Well most things with copious amounts of garlic butter taste good so yeah the escargots tasted good. Generally though my family doesn't eat much french food. I've always asked my mum to take me to some sick french place like Les Amis or something and she'd always say "AH YA I've been there before. The food isn't that good la. Duntwan lah". Bah stingy poker.

So yeah my internship is more or less settled. I'll be meeting the boss of the firm tomorrow morning together with the old gentleman (the former boss) and I'll probably start work on Monday. I heard that there are poly accountancy students doing attachments there too so I guess I'll have some people to talk to. Apart from all the learning and stuff I sure hope I get paid too haha. My parents told me to expect NOTHING :/

Oh well the day before yesterday was wally's 21st birthday. We had his birthday at his friend's condo's function room and I met up with some of the class members. It was good to catch up though I don't hold the best conversations when there's a lot of noise around me - makes me as attentive as Beethoven. It was a nice bash with good food and all. Makes me wonder if I'll do anything on my 21st. I got a year to think about it but I've a feeling I'll be too lazy to get anything done.

PECKPOST

Well good luck to you Lip and good luck to me too. I'll be meeting my prospective boss on tuesday for dinner along with the so-called brokers of the internship and I hope I come off well from that. There's nothing worse than convincing your boss that you're a retard on Day 1.

So the new year just arrived a few days ago and I'm sure everyone had awesomesauce plans on christmas eve. I actually went lanning with my army friends and we played L4D2 till just past midnight. After that we went to eat curry rice. I thought it was really enjoyable actually but then again I can be pretty easy to please sometimes. More like sometimes I prefer simple over complicated simply because complicated has too many strings attached to it. But I'm no angel. Sometimes I get very anal about certain things. Like for example when I was in army and I came home for dinner on Wednesday, I'd expect something nice. If it was boiled fish I'd be like OMFG. I mean home is a refuge man not some place where I eat shitty boiled fish. Pass the fried chicken or pork ribs or something haha. I can drive my mum up the wall just complaining about food sometimes. Hell we have western standoffs over food.

Ah but I digress. So what events in 2009 meant something to me:

1) My grandmas death. It was probably earth-shaking for the whole family, especially on my dad's side since my grandma held everyone together. Towards the end communication was breaking down a lot but I guess kisses and touch always conveyed meaning that didn't need to be put into words.

2) ORD - claimed back my freedom from the dark lords of middle earth

3) Holidays to HK and USA - I was fortunate enough to holiday with my friends and holiday with my family. Both were different but both were good.

4) Friendships in general - I made some good friends, caught up with others.

5) My relationship with my parents - My mum and I have gotten closer (I hope she thinks so too. It would be terrible if she did not reciprocate the feeling :|). I think she's still maturing in her older years and learning to give her children a lot more space. I give her credit for that. My dad's as idiosyncratic as ever and sometimes I feel like doing the people's elbow on him but other than that we get along fine. I can definitely see our relationship improving as I learn more about the financial world and property markets.

That's about it really. So what are my resolutions for 2010? I realise I make too many unrealistic goals so I'm just going to have 4 relatively achievable ones.

1) Work hard in uni and do well. I have not worked at max since PSLE so I'm gonna try to rediscover that spark. Throughout secondary and A levels my studying has been plagued by poor planning and distractions so I always got the feeling that I was stumbling towards the end-goal.

2) Get closer with my family. - Well especially when my sister and her boyfriend move over later this year (he is taking a PhD in geog at NUS).

3) Get a little bit spiritual - church is like the most boring activity of the week for me at the moment so I'll just try reading the bible a bit more and praying more regularly too. And maybe dropping fewer f bombs.

4) Lose weight.

Yep that settles it.

Well the new year has been pretty exciting so far. Yesterday I went to eat 4 seasons buffet with my parents ( new year resolution 4 fail) which was excellent. After that I walked around orchard before going home and then proceeding to sleep for 14 hours straight. My mum totally didn't bother to wake me up for anything. She was like "You needed to compensate for your sleep debt. Yur on holiday you can afford it -beams-". Oh yeah I've been having lots of dreams lately too. Like in America I constantly had dreams about getting pwned for A levels and JC exams and I always woke up relieved. During the 14 hour sleep I dreamt about some road trip.

Anyway I also got a new phone. I got an E72 from Nokia. I decided against the I-phone because I already had an I-touch and I also decided against the HTC Hero because a lot of people say Android has tremendous potential but at the moment is not ideal yet. Another overwhelming factor was that I have no confidence in touchscreen keyboards at the moment. The E72 qwerty keyboard was very attractive to me because I possess stubby banana fingers. All this points to one thing: I am camping for the google phone.

LIPOST

Well I'm starting work tomorrow, just praying that everyone will be nice and it wont be TOOO boring. Mwahahaha.

Hope everyone had a good new year :D

My holiday season in 10 words:

lobster, dino, ORD, grandma, poker, carrot, AC130, (and because i have to keep this meaningful which i dont normally do) faith, hope, love.

Good times.

PECKPOST

Well I guess one of the ironic perks of being a dentist is that you get tons of food on festive occasions from your colleagues. It's ridiculous really, the amount of stuff we've gotten. In fact it's killing me just to stay away from all the goodies. We have received several tins of calorie-bursting biscuits of different flavours and 3 whole cakes. One chocolate one from random place (which my mum used as my bday cake), one cheesecake from cedele and one chocolate one from NYDC. My dad was going bonkers because we got so much cake and you can't give dogs chocolate. I'm still holding my mum to her word that she'd get me a chocolate royale cake from goodwood park hotel. Later I guess.

Oh ya we got a dvd player from someone too. Random.

Check out this sick mash-up of 2009's top pop songs. It's excellent. It's like one big rave party

PECKPOST

So what can I say about my US trip. I had a pretty damn good time actually. It's been quite a while since I've had a long holiday overseas (no thanks to NS. _|_ NS) and I've always wanted to visit the US so I was looking forward to it. Also, I was looking forward to not having to on my handphone for 2 weeks. I get pretty sms-phobic sometimes. Dono why but sometimes when I hear my phone ring im like FUCKARGHHH. Ah but thats not important. So where did I go in the US. I'll just break it down in order of of visitation:

1) Stanford - So my family and my aunts family landed at SF Airport. My sister and her boyfriend picked us up. We stayed at a motel which wasn't too bad. We also went to Costcos which is my idea of a great supermarket. The range and quantity of fresh and dried/packeted/bottled food is unbelievable. Like I can buy random pies off the rack and they taste a million times better than the stuff from NTUC.


















OHHO we just stealin some apples


2) HOLLYWOOOOOOD - We pretty much acted like shameless tourists. We were taking pictures with all the stars (on the street pavements, that is :| ) and we also tried to photograph the big HOLLYWOOD sign. I think my dad's decision to bring his cumbersome long range lenses was validated for that 5 minutes. After that we went to Universal Studios which I absolutely loved. The way they create movie sets and special effects is just plain cool and ingenious. Like zomg I saw Mysteria Lane. We sat on all the major rides which didnt cause too much organ displacement but I still screamed through all of them. Simpsons was quite exciting for a simulator. The Mummy was pretty scary but there were no drops and it was quite short. The Jurassic Park ride had a steep slide into the water at the end and we had just eaten chinese fastfood from Panda Express so I can't say I felt excellent after. One thing that really killed me though was all the 3D stuff around. Really burnt my eyes. I cannot even imagine people watching Avatar in IMAX while wearing glasses like that.






















Clint Eastwood's hands are massive. I think that's how he killed so many in Unforgiven.


3) Disneyland - Well a lot of people say that your childhood is not complete until you have gone to Disneyland. I concur 100%. This place is the shit man. It's just a world in itself where everyone smiles and you see churro stalls every 20 feet. We covered it in day because we wanted to do Adventure Park the next day. We did all the rides that we wanted to do and it was fun as hell. The good thing about Disneyland rides is that it's very family oriented while still maintaining a certain edginess and craziness so everyone went for nearly everything. Some of the highlights were Indiana Jones, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain (my clothes got DESTROYED here) and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And if I may add, I trouced the entire family at Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. I think I got like 40500. MUAHAHAHAHAA. MUAAHAHAHHAHA. We did some other random rides too like Alice in Wonderland and Nemo Submarine where half my family fell asleep in the submarine. My aunt wanted to watch the terribad 3D Show Honey! I Shrunk the Audience which didn't quite live up to its name because there was no audience to shrink in the first place. Oh yeah my sister later jio-ed me to go to Adventureland and have this kickass pineapple drink. It's pineapple juice with pineapple ice-cream and it was just so tasty and refreshing. Mmm -smacks lips-. We ended off with the parade on Main Street which was quite exciting - for a 2 year old child.















If you wore a poncho, you are wise.

4) California Adventure Park - Well Adventureland is something like an add-on to Disneyland. It's smaller but it has some pretty damn big rides. Like seriously rides that will rape jor ass. Like this beast called CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN. It is this mother big, superhyperfast rollercoaster with a ton of steep drops and a 360 circle of doom. I got pwned so hard on this. I was screaming like a banshee on roids. My uncle who sat it out said he could hear me screaming from below. I literally screamed "WAAAT THHHHHEEE FFFFFUUUUUUKKK" non-stop for the first 80% of the ride and by the last 20% I had descended into a slobbering mess of random swear words. I pretty much got served. The other one where I died was The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. When you go to the top, the doors open and you see the park, then the doors close and they drop you in the dark. It's just one of those OH SHIT rides because you don't know what's gonna happen. My cousin held my arm because he was afraid of the dark. I'm kinda glad he did.

















I don't know if you can see, but I'm screaming like a little girl.

5) Las Vegas - Well some of the family had really high expectations that they could do a lot of stuff in Vegas but there's probably very little stuff you can do for free there. I quite liked it actually. It's a Sin City with tons of excess and I can see why people like to come here to let loose. The city's an animal. Probably the highlight was the Bellagio Fountains display. There was one choregraphed display in particular that was ridiculously awe-inspiring and hilarious. It was set to the music of GOD BLESS THE USA. You can feel the over-the-top patriotism conveyed THROUGH the fountain. It's like during the closing lines the height of the fountain was literally

GOD..... BLESS...... THE..... USAAAAAA
















pwning my mum at the pyramid. She'll be well pleased.

6) Grand Canyon - Well there had been a bit of tension during the trip - it's natural when you have so many people but I think everything dissipated when we got to the Grand Canyon. It's majestic beyond words and I was quite content to just stand there quietly and look at it for 10 minutes. Haha it's sort of like "Omg? how can we quarrel with all this beauty in front of us". My mum said visiting the Grand Canyon was one of her lifelong dreams so I'm glad she fulfilled it




















Oh yeah showin some love. Sis' boyfriend btw, not some random guy.



My mum's viking hat sure is distracting


7) Sedona - We stayed in Sedona for a night and the next morning and honestly I wasn't too amazed by the place. There's a lot of rock formations but I didn't really like it because it's very deserty and dry. We also visited a catholic church built into rock which was quite cool but they had some stuff made with twigs in the church and immediately I thought of the Blair Witch Project :X. Hoho but I do remember during the night we went to this Chinese restaurant owned and run by Malaysians. It was super funny because there was a sort of mini-celebration simply over the fact that the staff had finally met some of their Malaysian bretheren (my mum and my aunts family). The convo went something like this in Hokkien:

- cook walks out-

My dad: Hey you're Malaysian too is it.
Cook: Hey hi yeah I am.
My uncle: Hey we're Malaysian too.
Cook: YOU'RE MALAYSIAN? From where from where (anticipation building)
Mum: Perak
Aunt: Ya Perak.
Cook: PERAK? IM ALSO FROM PERAK. OOOOOHH! Which district which district??????
Aunt: Telok Intan
Cook: TELOK INTAN? IM FROM IPOH. HAHHAAHHAAHA OMGWTH WE'RE LIKE FAMILLLLY.
All: OMGWTH YA WE ARE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAH!
Cook: HAHAHAHAHAHA. TOO AWESOME! HOWS THE FOOD HOWS THE FOOD
Uncle: TASTES LIKE REAL MALAYSIAN FOOD. ITS EXCELLENT.
Cook: HAHAHAHAHAH GOOD GOOD!

LOLOL It was crazy man. They were bonding for like 3 minutes just over geographical affinity. They were laughing as racuously as I make them out to be in the convo.























I'm no romantic but Lord knows I try


8) CAR CRASH OF DOOM. Well on the way back from Sedona to Vegas (we were going to watch a show), we got into an accident which could have been damn near catastrophic. Essentially right after my sister made a turn into a road and had started speeding up her rear tyre exploded. I don't mean punctured. I mean EXPLODED like BOOM. The car swivelled hard and then proceeded to do a 1440 DEGREE SPIN (OMG TONEY HAWK ONLY DOES 900) into the sand by the roadside and up a sloped path on elevated ground. Amazingly no one was hurt and only the tyres were damaged. In the aftermath. if the car had gone ANYWHERE else someone would probably have died or something. So that means I could have died haha. When we spun apparently someone saw it and already called the cops. Then some friendly trucker dude who looked like Jesus came to our aid to make sure we're fine. He was like "oh I've seen a lottta crashes like this in my life. You guys are preeetty lucky". The policeman was like "You guys really need to thank you're angels tonight because if you had crashed into that signboard or the rocks it would have been over". So yeah. Hot Damn. We're alive.

i) Pre Accident

















ii) Tyre explosion- I was in the front with my sister btw

















iii) Car does a spinarooney














iv) Post-accident situation analysis






























Tyre of fail


9) Yosemite. Lol so after getting ALL 4 of my sister's tyres replaced we still went on to Yosemite where we saw lots of mountains and had an epic snowball fight where my sister put a snowball down my pants. I was getting quad-teamed so don't blame me.














Even when the odds are stacked against me, I still find time to pwn my mum


10) San Francisco was OK for me. I really enjoyed Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square but other than that it was OK. People were getting tired by this time I think.















Chilling at the Golden Gate Bridge

And after that the next day we flew home. So yeah that was the US trip. While we still ate a lot of chinese food during the trip to cater to the older people there was a lot of other foods that I tried and loved like:

- Roscoes Waffles and Chicken. Eat some chiken then eat some waffles and syrup. Surest route to cardiac arrest
-Teriyaki Meatballs from Costcos
- Churros in Disneyland. It's like sweet You Tiao
-Giant Turkey leg in Adventureland
- Mexican Food. We ate this once and I loved the burritos. There was one with French Fries and beef and cheese inside and it was heavenly
- Hawaiian L and L. Hawaiian fast food is awesome. It's sort of like Japanese, Western and Island food mixed all together.
- Diner food in general. Diner food is comfort food. Omelettes, waffles, apple pies, ice cream, fried stuff and chips. Mmm.
- Calamari from Fisherman's Wharf

So overall my experience in the US was really great and unforgettable. Amongst other things, I got to see my sister again which is always nice. Also I got to know her boyfriend a little better. He's a really nice smart guy, a real steady guy whose personality complements my sister's and I think during this trip he left a very favourable impression on my family. We 3 drank quite a bit of beer together too.

Finally yesterday was my birthday. Well turning 20 is no biggie and birthdays in my household are turning out to be a bit of a non-event so it was a quiet day around the house. My cheapskate mum asked me to use a cake that someone else gave to us as my birthday cake. I was like wtf? Birthdays are so not the time to be practical. But they said they'd buy me another one soon so we just used some banana cake haha. They also gave me some cash as a gift. Cash is always good.

I am back from USA. Firstly, it was enjoyable and awesome for a variety of reasons. Secondly I NEARLY DIED. K more tomorrow.

WOOOOT. I like disneyland. And universal studios. And costco. And roscoes. I like a lot of things in America.

Today was exciting! Both in a bad and good way :d

Was woken at roughly 6am by my dad saying that my 'grandma had a heart attack' (mums side), and that we had to rush to the hospital. Given that i slept at 2, i was in the state where you know you really shouldnt be doing anything except sleeping as things might get dangerous. Liek you might trip and fall down the stairs. Or blind yourself with a toothbrush etc.

But anyway we went, now she's in the ICU apparently the idiots (since none of you work in the orthopaedic department in SGH, i hope your parents dont too) had no idea what to do in event of a heart attack, cuz all theyre used to is like bandaging legs and bringing elderly for therapy. I know they probably do an excellent job at that, but whats the use of becoming a DOCTOR or a NURSE and the most basic need crops up ie SAVING A LIFE and you just jack around fumbling with tubes and wires you've learned about in NUS but havent actually foreseen yourself using. I'm no doctor and i'm not sure how it goes, but i find it ironic that a ward that deals specifically with weak elderly suffering injuries or ailments can fail so terribly. I was actually there when 4 nurses utterly FAILED at working the respirator.

So anyway my grandma i think spent 3-4 hours since her heart attack and actually getting on the respirator, (3am heart attack, 7am respirator). Doesn't need a doctor to figure out how messed up that is.

Anyway now she's stable in the ICU so thank God, and i hope she pulls through this okay. Just got to pray alot i guess!

Unhappy things aside, after that was baking marathon (ok not really) at tanneh's place! We ambitiously set out to make 4 things - special choco chip cookies, xmas cookies with weird sugar, carrot cake and strawberry cheesecake. The chocochip cookies surprisingly turned out really good if i may say so myself, with a melt in yuor mouth texture that was ooooooooooo. I think it had to do with the fact that we put 300000 grams of butter in the dough. :D

The strawberry cheesecake also turned out pretty good, i maintain my stand that a close to 1cm thick crust of digestive biscuits + butter + other unhealthy stuff was TOO MUCH but she likes the crust most so oh well. DIdnt have a blender so had to hand pound the strawberries to a pulp, which i enjoyed. Mixed it in with the cheese and made pretty swirly patterns! Not bad considering our first cheesecake attempt was... rofl

Anyway i was like I LOVE CARROT CAKE so we decided to make it. Hardest part was probably grating the carrots T_T rest was just like, mix everything together in a big bowl and pour it out in a pan and bake it. Wish i took a picture of the mixture though it really looked like puke cake mix HAHA. We forgot to seive the flour and all the other powders so had to go on a crusade to crush all the little irritating lumps of death. Again it turned out pretty good, too much icing though and too little nuts.

XMAS COOKIES FAILED I HATE CRAPPY DOUGH THAT DOESNT DO WHAT IT IS SUPPOSED TO DO. oh well the dough sits in the fridge, and she has kindly offered to continue with them when theyre the correct texture.

SO yup that was today my fingers smell of dough yuck.

So from the 4th to 8th the geog boys (excluding AL) went to HK for a holiday. I thought it was awesome! It's been a long time since I've had so much fun. Some of the places we visited were a little hit and miss but the company made it all good.

Day 1 - JETSTAR BLOWS. I slept through the whole flight. After that we went to The Peak which is one of the highest points in HK. The view was good but it was a little obscured by all the smog. After that we went to the Peak shopping malls and decided we were cheapskate enough not to pay money to enter Mdm Tussauds. Instead we posed for free with the Bruce Lee wax figure outside the museum. We then went to some atas mall. We were eager to try this restaurant which sold congee and dim sum but I guess the congee must be some 7 star abalone scallop black truffle congee coz the prices were redonkulous. We ended up at some sandwich shop and I had a croissont for dinner -__-.

We then took a ferry to the other side of the island to catch the building light show which is held every night. It was kinda cool...for like 10 seconds? Lol the buildings were just lighting up and putting out some lasers to bad music. I just dont see the allure (my mum told me it was MUST SEE. gah). But after that suddenly this fleet of lit junks started floating across the river and we thought it was part of the light show and xy and me were saying oh my man the daily budget for this show must be dam godlike. Turns out we damn dumb it was the rehearsal for the opening for the East Asian Games. We saw Andy Lau lip-synching live too. He had a violinist next to him and I swear she was violin-synching with the music. The Avenue of Stars was actually nothing to shout about but we were finding all sorts of interesting trash to talk about it. Like how Jet Li's handprints like small child. That was Day 1. We walked pretty damn far. I now know how the (Israelites felt in the desert) / (40 X 365)

Day 2 - Ocean Park was a BLAST. There were tons of things to do and I sat on my first roller coaster ever! We started off slow and easy. We visited some cute pandas and some damn ugly goldfish, and then wasted tons of money playing stupid games. Like throwing the ball in the monkeys mouth and basketball hoops. Even though we sucked it was damn fun though. Later on we came back for seconds. XY and wally used their sick M16 skills to win some puny prize at the nerf gun store. Then we proceeded to waste HK$50 on 45 rings to throw on a square patch of bottles. It was fricking hilarious. After a few cautious throws we realised how rapage hard it was so we just spammed like the remaining 40 in 1 minute. And we DIDNT GET A SINGLE ONE around the bottles. All the spectators were like omg -epiphany- this game is impossible.

Later on we took a cable car to the adult side of the park. Lawl we got our clothes wasted at some water ride, then got totally raped at some roller coaster. It was my first roller coaster ever and I was absolutely petrified. I was cursing throughout the whole ride. I was like FUK FUK FUK FUK FUK FUK AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH and wally was like AH AH AH OH NO AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. After that we tried the viking ship of doom and basically everyone on the ship screamed till they literally ran out of scream. Of course my stamina was unsurpassed and I screamed from start to finish even though I was in the middle of the viking ship. Rayner said no kik. The abyss was probably the worse ride in the park. It was like changi airport control tower with a 50m drop to the bottom. However XY postulated that it simulates jumping from a building and might trigger a heart attack in any of us. It was a perfectly rational reason not to go on it. We were juz RARING to go but we had to think of our health jahaha.

Towards the end of the day we went to Stanley Market. I loved this place so much. It's like a mixture of Clarke Quay and Holland Village near the sea and the ambience just makes you feel so comfortable. It has those quaint little shops combined with hip eateries and bars. Needless to say there were tons of expats hanging out. After that I think we went to search for this mango dessert that smoot recommended highly. It was absolutely godly divine. It's made up of mango ice-cream, mango pudding, mango juice and mango slices. That stuff rejuvenated my jellylegs and restored my mojo.

Day 3 - This was probably the most boring day of the trip. We went shopping at City Gate Mall and found out that despite being an outlet mall, most prices were on par with that of Orchard Road. Then again a 30% discount on clothing at Armani Exchange or Burberry would still blow a Hiroshima-like crater in my pocket. Probably blow my leg off. Esprit was one one of the few shops with good deals and wally obliged by going on a fitting room rampage. After that we went to somemore shopping centres before ending the day at the same mango place. Gosh damn I do love mangoes.

Day 4 - MACAU was great though our mood and photographs were slightly tampered by the rainy weather. Macau has a really rustic, historical feel to it although some parts are gentrified and don't look quite as authentic. We visited a few historical buildings and places - many of them are churches. We also went to The Ruins of St Paul's which is super famous. It's just the facade of a church about a metre or two in thickness. The rest of the church was burnt in a fire. Clearly the developers were damn cunning and are probably now burning in hell. The highlight of the day however was at the Venetian, which is one of the most crazy, unbelievably opulent hotels ever. We spent a long time at the casino just watching high rollers throw away thousands of HK dollars. It's a bit surreal and ridiculous really. They just replace their bets like they don't mean anything. Some make a lot of noise but others are silent, observant and nonchalant. Then we saw the fake sky and gondolas. Reality got suspended for a bit.

Overall I thought it was a great trip. The HK people aren't exactly the warmest but you know they go about their ways quickly and efficiently and you can't really criticise them for it. The pace of the city is pretty damn fast. It's like we would be the only people actually standing still on the travelator. The city looks and feels laissez faire. I enjoyed the trash-talking, the talk cock sessions, the serious discussions and all the jokes that were cracked. I hope this isn't the last of the geog boys though. We'll be going our separate ways next year to different unis and different countries with different aims and expectations. Hopefully our friendships will stand the test of time. Hmm hope we'll all be rich :D

GOING USA FROM 11-28th. PEACE