Beijing Day 3 (Tuesday) – The Forbidden City, Tian’anmen Square

Once again, an early day, more early morning web-surfing, a cup of joe at my disposal.
Eventually we set off to The Forbidden City once more. We looked at the crowds of people milling about beneath the large, forbidding red walls, taking in the groups of Chinese tourists with thei matching caps and tiny [...]

Beijing Day 2 (Monday) – The Temple of Heaven

I wake up at 6.30am every day, a combination of my natural melatonin-light sleep-wake system and the habitual training from early days. While waiting for the night-owl members of the family to wake, I take to enjoying my daily cup of coffee (dang it, I was supposed to detox on this journey), a cheesecake, and [...]

Beijing Day 1 (Sunday) – The Great Wall, Ming Tombs

Touchdown! Beijing airport is huge. We got off the plane, walked, walked, then walked until the customs, crossed, then took an escalator to take a 6 minute rain ride, then walked, walked and walked some more, collected our luggage, reported the handle of one of our luggage pieces missing, walked yet more and were finally [...]

Beijing Day 0 (Saturday) – Traveling

This day was the strange combination of relaxing and busy. In the midst of packing (really little required, due to it being only a one week trip and the ability to do laundry), there was the residual ill-will from the altercation the day before.
Half the luggage bag consisted of things to be brought for the [...]

Books: The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

A weird book. You don’t quite know what’s going on, though you get a nebulous feel. The story is narrated by a pianist Mr Ryder who’s like a floating leaf buffeted by waves. His life in this town seems to move constantly from one encounter to the other without any control on his part. The [...]

Books: The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

Aye, he’s back from China, one country in which WordPress is banned. Ah well. J. read this book about 1 week before he left for Beijing.
Yes, as J.’s said before, he likes books by Ian McEwan, from the moment he started reading Saturday. Part of it is because of his ability to craft an engaging [...]

Wireless@Terminal 3

As it is, I’m typing this at Terminal 3 of Changi Airport, taking advantage of Wireless@SG present. When you already have a SingNet account, it’s easy, with the same user name and password.
Terminal 3 is breathtaking. It’s incredible. It’s traveling in luxury. You don’t even have to compare it to a 3rd world country like [...]

Angry Rant: Slacker Colleague

-Rant ahead- Well, y’know, J.’s been trying to keep everything on this blog politically correct, even-handed and all that, don’t ya know. But it’s nice to let off steam once in a while
You see, every now and then, you meet a stupid colleague (no offense intended to the truly intellectually disabled).
And you’ll notice, it’s the [...]

Black Sheep HOs

Out-of-phase HOs is a term used to describe house officers who have not graduated from our fine local YLL SoM. They come from all over, Malaysia, Mauritius, Malaysia, Singapore (but studied overseas), Malaysia and some even from Malaysia.
Regardless, it has come to J.’s attention that out-of-phase HOs are gaining a reputation for being less than [...]

Book: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Two or so weeks back, J. read this book as part of a Read-A-Good-Book-A-Week-Since-You-Don’t-Have-To-Study-For-MBBS series. It was an engaging enough book that he read it through in less than 2 days… a testament more to his wilful neglect of personal hygie… um… unessential time-wasting habits than his speed-reading capabilities.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
It tells the story from [...]