One world one nation

I am only 2 weeks here but am so fucking pissed off already over how ignorant this country is. They seem to be living in a world of their own, totally separated from the beautifully diversified world that we all know. Most don't bother to understand even simple english words. They even have a chinese name for every single english name, just so that non-chinese speaking foreigners will really suffer in this country to even do the simplest stuff imaginable e.g. telling the taxi driver the name of your hotel, let alone to find "halal food" - renaissance is known to the locals as "ren pe yek kau", fraser residence is "fau ka you". Ok i made those names up. But it's true. And worse, these chinese names are, of course, written only in chinese. So how are you supposed to know? Ask the hotel staff? Good luck, i say. It might take you at least 7 attempts to get your question right into their head.

To those true fighters of bahasa kebangsaan in our country, i suggest you come to china for maybe a month and you will know just exactly what i am talking about.

Tremor

I was interviewing some girl (well, for work, obviously) when suddenly there were some commotions and panic in the office. Then that girl asked me if i feel kinda dizzy, which i did. I asked what is about, and she said there's an earthquake. Oh man, that was my first encounter with earthquake (i somehow missed the one that hit KL last year sometime during the tsunami), and i was not totally amused. When i arrived in hotel at about 8pm, the death toll as reported on CNN was somewhere around 100 (including 900 students trapped under the collapsed school building). But by now, 12.01am, the total fatalities has hit a disastrous 7000+!! The center of the quake is a province called Chengdu, and only last week did the team have a small discussion on whether we should include Chengdu or not for field visit, which we eventually decided against it in view of its less consequential activity as compared to other provinces.

Dear friends, pray that I will be back to KL in one healthy piece.

Freezing

Beijing is so cold, with temperature between 5 to 10 degrees celcius. Aku plak dengan tshirt murah petaling street, memang menggigil2. Orang2 lain yang berjaket bagai, semuanya pandang semacam je. Jaket yg bawak pulak kotor, kena antar laundry dulu.

Sesampai je kat sini, dah memalukan diri sdiri - lepas dah jumpa driver kat airport, dia bawak aku ke kereta, dia tolong letakkan beg dalam bonet, aku plak dengan spontan terus ke pintu depan sblh kiri. Tiba2 dia cuit belakang, kemudian bagi isyarat tangan yg aku tak paham (oh, by the way, language is really a problem here, much like bangkok). Lama aku fikir, pastu tergelak besar. They are right-hand driving, so pintu yang aku bukak tu seat driver. Tah apa2 lah agaknye mamat tu fikir, hopefully bukan "berlagaknye dia ni, baru sampai dah nak pandai2 drive"

For dinner, had sthg that i wish i could immediately erase from memory, forever.

And before you ask, no it's not pork.

Nor was it frog.

Yucks.

Midnite mumbling

It’s 12.45am and I just reached home from office. It has been a really, really loooong and tiring day, and it’s Friday for crying out loud – left home at 6.00am today (or, technically it was yesterday) so that I could jog around the klcc park before I start working. Been working till so late everyday that I couldn’t find time for my own health that I have to resort to exercising (albeit irregularly) in the early morning instead.

When the works just got too hectic to the point of unbearable, I couldn’t help but always thought about the options that lay ahead of me within the next few months – stay and get promoted, get moved out to another function which will definitely require me to not stay in each place more than 2 months (at least for a total of a good 2 to 3 years), or the last option which I quite like the most but probably with the biggest hassles – resign and go work elsewhere, far from this work-crazy society.

As for now, I try to take one step at a time – finish the fiscal account for the audit next week, then get myself ready for the audit in china which starts end of next week (the audit boss has warned me over our teleconf the other day “you must come running and in high gear. Do not spend the first 2 days there just trying to understand the work program”), then come back and do the crazily tedious month-end on my own in preparation for the internal promo. It’s actually all these that in the past several months has robbed me from my own personal time– all the weekday nites and weekends that I should have spent more leisurely.

Right now I couldn’t help but think – are these all really worth it? I really need to start re-considering my priorities.