Somehow, the days are seemingly flying by. I can hardly remember what happened last week at work, or what I did last weekend.

I only remember that me and FredBear met up with SoBear for dinner and some drinks later. Had a lot of inane fun, which is great and was good to meet him as well. He has finished his exams and is just now waiting for his results, and will probably start work as a lawyer in September. Amazing. Finally into the workforce. Very proud. Has put on a little weight too. Hehe. But then, so have I.

Ah...it was a weekend of extremely little sleep.

After work got hauled along to a bar at LKF, where I had no drinks, and then dinner at Cafe Siam. Then FredBear joined GATra and GAG and myself to MJ at GATra's place. Till about 4 am. So tiring. After a long day's work.

I know I started Saturday off very sleep after only a couple of hours sleep and stumbled to Chinese class. Had a very short nap at home before revising some French then taking the Subway all the way to Hang Hau, to meet GATra and FredBear for dinner. Dinner was pretty good though VERY unhealthy, and we ended up renting Burn After Reading to watch at FredBear's place. As you can imagine, we also bought some dessert to eat. By the time we started the movie it was almost midnight. Slept at 4 I believe.

I think on Sunday, I just slept. Perhaps cooked. Really blank day because I remember turning up on Monday really dazed and wishing for the day to go by really fast and yet, it crawled. Coffee did not help. I am having some trouble sleeping nowadays and usually wake up around 4 am. Is this my body telling me to go out for a run, and then go into office early !?!?!? All the tiredness concluded in me falling asleep at 8.30 pm on Monday. Luckily it was UK and US holiday, and that made us able to finish up really early and go home at 7. Real early by my terms as usual days finish up by 8 pm.

An event happened at work which got me slightly sore. We discovered that some people were doing deals with customers that were not really good for the bank and yet when we started investigating them, they got all cranky and stopped giving us information. I am not giving up though, as I have started collecting information, and as you very well know, being in OCC before, I am able to get my information easily and understand as well. I thank the IG rotations that I am really able to understand more of the bank else I doubt I would be able to understand the BCA enough to discover what they were doing wrong and how they were hiding it. More saga to continue as I do not know how the bosses are going to solve this yet but I know that somebody is going to get hurt real bad. To think that they tried to lie that this was the only case but in fact I have hard proof on at least two other cases. Fun.

This will make us some enemies though. But justice has to be served.

Today is Dragonboat Festival and so it is a public holiday here in Hong Kong. Nevertheless made the trip back to office as I wanted to clear up some project work on FERMAT and test the new application. Got quite a lot done in the almost deserted office so it was great. Also met up with some new colleagues so that was ok. Went for lunch later near Happy Valley and finally topped up my prepaid for my mobile. Also managed to get a small Korean phrasebook for only HKD40. Really cheap, but was really tempted to get the French one with the CD as well, but I guess I wanted to save that as I do not really want to be all confused with learning two new languages at the same time. I think I shall be able to catch up with my French again later, quite easily. But since my Korean starts next week, I am really excited !! Have even got to buy a textbook but my chief grouse is that CUHK does all its student communication in Chinese !!! so it took me a while to get through all the rules of the course and stuff.

Going on a yacht tomorrow ! It is quite fun to pack.

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Well it seems that I have gotten myself into a set of automation in life at the moment. It is absolutely totally work during the weekdays, followed by minor entertainment on Friday nights. This is usually followed by Chinese classes on Saturday, some form of sports like tennis or golf, probably ending up with mahjong, and dinner. Sunday is laundry day, cleaning up, and sometimes grocery day. So it is quite rare when there comes those special days when you do something different.

Last weekend, as part of Volunteering Week at office, I went on this tour of an organic farm with Single Parent Families. GAPet came along as well. It was quite fun, though hot. The volunteers first met up at a train station and then took the bus. Drowsing off, the bus arrived an hour later, on a slope of a mountain. As we walked along a trail to the organic farm, it was like taking a walk to a hidden lost valley. From the jungle shrubbery, we emerged upon fields and fields of crops on slopes. There were huts here and there, and hardworking farmers around as well. Was really surprised to have this kind of view in Hong Kong of all places.

About 40 volunteers and 120 of the SPF members showed up. First we had a lot of talk on the ground rules of the place such as no soap allowed, pick up the trash, do not kill the bugs and so on. All made a lot of sense and I remembered thinking that the presenter was very good and funny. He must do this a lot.

We started off, with groups of people having plots of land. Where we had to till then plow the place, leaving freshly turned earth looking up to the sun. We were then given other tools to form furrows for the seeds, which everyone had a great time sowing. After watering, we were all surprised that it had taken about 2 hours of much work and laughing to get the job done. We rested then in the shade for a while before the second activity. Split into groups again, this time we were baking bread from organic wheat flour. Again interesting, as the presented seemed quite skilled at baking bread as well. The kids had a lot of fun making bread into different shapes and then decorating them with raisins and sesame seeds. The aroma of freshly baked bread is intoxicating after a long afternoon's work in the fields.

All too soon that was the end, although it had taken up about 6 hours ! But that was just one of the rare times that I deviated from my usual weekend activities so it was quite fun.

That can hardly be compared to this weekend, where I watched Angels and Demons on Friday night at Cyberport, then went to FredBear's place for a empty house party with about 9 other people. It was great as we got to meet RoxBear's new man, as well had a lot of fun making pizza and I even learnt how to make lasagna from GAHil. Our pizza tasted great and I had second helpings of lasagna. The night descended into mahjong as predicted before we got into the Wii. Went to sleep sometime at 5.30 on the couch, and then woke up to Wii. Had lunch at Outback before going shopping for kitchenware. Saw some great ceramicware that would have loved to buy if were at home. Went back to his place before watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and Superhero movie. We also had delivery of Indian food, before watching Beautiful Cooking (which is a cooking show by girls who get judged by guys). Finallyarrived home after 30 hours of leaving it.

I guess you could say that this weekend was not normal as well.

By the way, I received news that my application for Korean classes has been approved and should start in June.

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Well the week just seemed to fly past, punctuated by the fact that we had about 10 very big bosses visit us. There seemed to be a flurry of cleaning up the office and being on best behaviour. This culminated in a great dinner at a great restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong, the Indochine. Great atmosphere and it was amazing how much and how fast wine went down here. This was also the week that I switched some duties and it has suddenly become a little more free for me. Nevertheless, the learning process continues and it is only a matter of picking up new duties before I start getting busy again.

Also managed to visit La Brezza for a dinner one night. Started off with some warm bread, salad, followed by pumpkin soup, grilled Japanese Kurobuta, and finished off with fantastic souffle. Total Bill for two : HKD 780. But the best meal of the week so far has to be my visit to Zuma, once voted Hong Kong's top restaurant. Japanese themed, it has fantastic rock carved walls and table top. I managed to get a seat by the sushi bar and it was fantastic. Food was great tasting, service was wonderful and even talked to the head chef who was friendly and gave us water on the house. Yea, usually the water is charged ! Total Bill for two : HKD 1,230 for two. So it does seem as if the next week has to be somewhat low key, as need to get back on track for my monthly spending, as I have also been to massage this week. Oops. I have spent in 10 days in May, what I have spent in a whole month in February.

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Ohmigoodness I am so unbelievably exhausted !

The week went by quite smoothly and though some things happened at work, which are not exactly great, but not really crap as well, the week was good. And I am moving on to other things at the same department so all is well on the work front. New challenges, new job, more work, and hopefully more recognition and superstardom is just the next step.

The weekend started off with a great massage on Thursday night. I slept like a baby that night. Friday I woke up and it was a great public holiday ! Woohoo. Have not had one since Easter. Which was about a whole month ago. Nevertheless, I still made a journey to the office, cleared up some stuff, before walking up the stairs home. It is henceforth to be known as the HK Midlevels Stairway to Hell. Then it was time for the afternoon. The plan was to meet with the usual weekend group for some cycling at Dai Wai area, somewhere north of Sha Tin. Unfortunately by the time we got there, there were so many people there that most shops were literally out of bicycles. There were still some left going at about HKD150 rental which was three times the normal price I heard.

Luckily FredBear drove over (as he was late) and we piled in instead for a change of plans. We went all the way to Gold Coast, where it was sunny and bright and there was even a beachside bazaar much like StKilda. We wanted to go for a massage but it was fully booked. After some ice creams and some photos we went on to the next destination which was this Dragon Drum Beach far far away. We arrived safely and proceeded to walk on the beach followed by a Barbeque buffet dinner. The fun thing was that you had to cook all the food yourself. Of course, the danger being that impatient people could end up with raw meat.

After much meat, we moved on to Yuen Long to try the famed B-Boy Grass Jelly. We were warned that it would be big so we ordered two for 5 people. Turned out that we could have done with just one, and it was really funny for us to eat such huge bowls of fruit and grass jelly. It was amazingly huge. And we were filled to the brim. We were so full after that, our brains did not even work that well on the way home. And that is where went. Since it was about midnight by the time I even arrived home.

Saturday was another trip up and down the Stairway to Hell, since I wrongly thought I would have to go for Mandarin class but it was not to be. Apparently it was another public holiday related to Buddhist rites. Put off, I went grocery shopping before taking a nap. Then went for some tennis at Victoria Gardens and I can tell you that it was burning with midday sun. We had a lot of fun though, and I did enjoy being out in the sun. I do feel a slight sunburn on my neck though.

And then I made a spontaneous decision to go to Lamma Island with GATra ! Crazy. But I did so. And this time we walked the mountain trail the other way round. Since I have walked it before I knew that it was not very difficult and we even spent some time at the beach, writing words in the sand, my extra Mandarin class. Lol. Had a great view of the sunset and also a lot of discussions on life, money, job satisfaction and so on. The ferry was also faster than I remembered and we made a beeline for home where we ordered takeout sushi. Then she did her CFA revision (glad that that part of my life was over) while I read my Xmen book.

And thus ends another day of the long weekend.

Luckily there is still Sunday to go, and I already have mahjong lined up. Woohoo.

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