Tokyo : Stop over

Finally at Japan Tokyo after a few hours of flight...I suppose the trash collector have already finished swearing at us and the trash had already been taken care of.



Arrived with 2 hrs left to shop around the duty free shop. And bought some key chains of Japan and took a shot at their famous butt washing machine.





Okie, this blog will stop functioning from now till my next trip overseas. Which should be around 2-3 weeks time. Then it's time to continue more stories of my sightings!

Texas : Balek Kampong

Just got news that we would be flying back on 22 dec morning. Which would mean that we'll be reaching on Sat night. The flight would go San Fransico for transit before making a stop at Tokyo and finally back to Singapore. And upon reaching, there's 2 days to rest before work starts again!

So maybe this blog would be temporary closed until next trip. Which I suppose would be soon. To where? It's a secret....shhh

For now, there's 2 more days left to work. But I am planning to ask for a day off before flying to clean up the house and do some packing. Tmlo shall be clearance day and hopefully we can go back early. There's a mystery package that came yesterday from FedEx. Could it be the missing iPod? Coz Sam's package couldn't have reached in 1 day according to him.

But for now...I've got tons of food left to eat coz I tot we'd be going back after Xmas. So now I have just stuffed in a pizza at 1am and feeling full. Hoping I can finish my 8 fish fillets, 8 eggs, 50 meatballs, 6 nuggets, 1 pizza, 1 campbell soup, 1.5litre of orange juice, 200g of Famous Amos cookies, 1 pound of beef, a quarter of roast chicken, 5 hotdogs and 6 slices of ham in 4 meals!!!!!! On top of that, I am bringing my unpopped popcorns, mineral water and maggi mee to the office to give away.

Phew...tons of things to do in 2 days.

Texas : The Case of The Missing iPod

Today, we had an unusual visitor. A guy with his kid came to our apartment looking for a package they claimed to have been delivered here. He told us that he's been living here for the past 6 years and there was a package that had been delivered to this adddress which contained an iPod for his kid.

Well, I didn't recieve any package thou, just a mail addressed to this guy. Perhaps the mail holds the key to the package. I dunno, but obviously he didn't believe us. The 1st time he came, I told him that all we got was a mail and I handed him the letter. Asked him to check with the resident' office to see if there's any addressed to our address ( which I guess probably not, since I collected my package 2 days ago and all I got was my own book)

After 10 mins he came back again and said that there wasnt any package in the resident's office. But he checked with the postman who he claimed to be his friend, and he was told that the package had been delivered. So I asked him where was it delivered to? My mailbox, my doorstep or wat? He said he's not sure but the postman's his frend and told him it's delivered. He even said that he don't mind if the package been opened or used, as long as we return it to his son. So I supposed he suspected we took the package ( which was supposedly an iPod).

The thing is, if the postman's his friend why doesn't he send it to his new address? And how the hell would a postman with tons of stuff to deliever remember who it was addressed to! Stupid yang gui zi, next time try coming out with something more convincing. And 6 years of living in our apartment? That would mean you are either holding a damn high postition to be living in an apartment that charges USD$3600 per month, or you are just another big liar. Serves you right for losing your package. (If it ever existed)

Texas : Lunch Thoughts

Yeap, its friday noon and I am at home for lunch! Coz Liling and Minh didn't bring their lunchboxes so we drove back for lunch. Speaking of lunch, it has become the 1 thing I don't look forward to anymore. Becoz everyday I am eating food that I cook, which is basically the same every day. It's a standard to have rice, hotdog,nuggets, brocolli and corn. The mere thought of these food ( even the writing about it now) makes me sick and full.

I just got my last package delievered to me, which is a book I bought so I could have something to do on the 20 hr flight back to SG. The flight is supposedly confirmed on 29 Dec but plans might change anytime if they managed to get us an earlier flight since the Xmas week is all holidays here. At most 2 more weeks away from my claypot frog legs and hokkien mee!

Well, work's been pretty monotonous and so far I am just spending time looking thru the whole system and figuring out what each function does. It's kinda boring becoz I am not given any stuff to do, such as troubleshooting. There's no sense of achievement when I simply snoop around the system without the chance to prove anything. That's why I am getting bored of going to work. Well, luckily it's only 1 more week left.

Finally, I think I am not going to cook any more lunch to work next week. Since it's the last week, I was thinking of going out to eat. Like try their other fast food or something. Else it's like ...we've been here for 11 weeks and the only places we have tried are

1. Best Buffet
2. Fogo De Chaos
3. TGIF
4. Wendy
5. Sonny Bryan
6. Bone Daddy's
7. Charo Chicken
8. JC Burger
   

8 places and a few were like company treats. Hmm...ppl have been recommending a few restuarant but I don't quite recall them off hand now. Okie, time's up. Back to the company!

Texas : Welcome to SSS

Guess what is SSS?

Hint: Look the photos below.





Okie, it's Syrix's Shoes Shop! Ya..lame..

Texas : The End Is Near

Soon to be reaching the end of the internship here. The kinda mood is setting in....waiting to leave here, got enough of the life in US. Come to think of it, Sg is a much more lively place than Texas at least. Here the streets are empty and buildings are far apart. There's nothing much to be done here without a car/license. No way can you ask your neighbourhood frends out for a cup of tea. Or just take a feeder bus to some nearby shopping centre and hang out. There is practically no public transport here. The bus comes like every hour.

So, what I can do when I get home is just to surf the net, cook my meals and wait for 12 midnight before turning in. In view of the vast amount of time I have at home, here's another dish i whipped up! It looks nice I suppose.

My Hermit Broccolli!

Texas : Mike's Grad Party

Went to Mike's grad party for his achievement in Masters in computer science. At first I thought it was like convocation kinda stuff. Then realised that it's held at his house, so i guess its more of a party where everyone mingles around.

It was supposed to start at 630pm but we reached at 7pm. There was no NSIT lab ppl around and we were the first. The rest of the people who turned up ( around 7-8) were Mike's frend and family I suppose. So we were really alienated there and got nothing to do. We went to take a serving of Mexican food and the 3 of us sat down and talked among ourselves.

Time passed and still no NSIT guys came over...we got to talk to Mike for a while and were back to our little comfort zone. Ate a few tachos and thats it! Its 845pm already and I guess the party's staying the way it is. We figured we've stayed long enough and its about time to leave.

Texas : Fogo De Chao

Here's the post on Fogo De Chao! It's quite outdated actually, happened on Tues but there were so many other things to post that postponed it till now.

Tuesday was a Motorola Treat Alcatel (MTA) session. We went to this place called Fogo De Chao which was way classy and served nice roasted beef and lamb and pork and chicken! It's a buffet but the meat comes to you! There would be waitors going around with their own kinda meat ( beef,lamb,chicken and pork) and asking if you would like a serving. And there are many waitors around == many meat!! And there was red wine, white wine, beer and whatever you can order! Rem...it's a treat..haha.

As it looked too classy, I didn't dare to take photo of my food until the end when everyone was flashing out their cameras for shots. So I only managed to take a shot of the dessert.

Great looking dessert with a sunshine around it. Guess it's to represent a happy dessert.


A shot of us and Ali.

Texas : Shoes Peddler , Popcorn killer

Yeap, thats quite apt to describe who I am recently. Firstly, it was a Sunday night and I was watching movie eating my 1st popcorn freshly popped from the microwave. I put it at 4 mins and it came out that 20% of the corn didn't pop. So I didn't have enough of it and decided to get another pack. This time I wanted it all to pop so I set to 5 mins. Without watching over the microwave, I returned 5 minutes later to find the whole kitchen filled with smoke!!!

Lately, I have been mass buying shoes to bring home, ordered 3 pairs for myself, 2 for my dear, 1 for my ah gong, 1 for dad and 1 more pair that didn't quite fit, thinking of giving to my uncle. But shall see if I even have the space to pack in. Else I'd just return for a refund.

More updates on the Motorola dinner at Fogo De Chaos soon! And latest changes in my training plan!

Texas : FireWheel Market

(More pictures here -> )Firewheel market was supposedly an outdoor shopping area according to some of the colleagues here, but when we reached the place it wasnt as expected ( think pasar malam). Anyway we had a hard time going there coz it's quite far out and we didn't have a detailed map to follow. But trust me, coming back was a nightmare!!!

Reached there at 130pm and walked around the place, nothing much I would wanna buy because my luggage is going to be so full from adding shoes I need to buy for my Dad and ah gong. I just walked around and found a Clarks shoe store. Damn when I asked the sales assistant about their shoes sizes, she told me it's inconsistent. A 8US feet would have fitted nicely in a 7.5US Clarks. That explains my Ronald Macdonald's 9.5US Clarks shoe I bought from Amazon. Now I have to find someone to sell/give away.

At around 4 pm I think I have covered everything I am going to see, so I went back to the bookstore and sat down to read a book on 'Forex: 6 ways to trade the money". I guess it was much better than walking around with no aim to buy anything. The book was interesting but I think it's written by some guy who is trying to promote his company at the same time. So there was lots of sales pitch inside the book.

We met at 6pm, ( we split up to do our own shopping) and went to TGIFriday for dinner. Wanted to experience more dining in US before going back. ( Been eating rice and TV dinners most of the time). I ordered a ribeye steak medium-well, but it was kinda well-done in my opinion. Anyway that meal set me back by USD$21.

On our way back, we met the tollbooth from hell. In order to leave a tollway, you have to stop beside an automated tollbooth and pay 40 cents. We didn't have 40 cents so we gave the greedy machine 45 cents. It didn't allowed passage. So we thought the booth was spoilt and reversed into another booth. There wasn't much car coming through that exit so we could reverse. Then we still didn't have exact 40 cents so I think we gave it 50 cents. But it still didn't open, and we kept feeding it $$, think we spent around $2 dollars feeding this booth but still it didn't open. Other cars were coming into our previous booth and they all got passed. Hey does the booth recognise Americians?! Damn, we finally decided not to exit and made a 50m reverse back onto the main highway , kinda dangerous the way u see our car go reversing in a zig zag route.

Texas : Snowing

Yeap, it's snowing here. For 1 day only, was thinking of getting thicker snow pic before posting them, but they have all melted. So here's some shots of the little snow I had.

See the pathetic snow on the roof