Third time in a row...

... a post every Saturday, so far so good. =)

Good news! I have now a Chinese Driver's License, which allows me to drive (legally) in China! License came on 31-Jan 2007 and is valid for 6 years. No worries, definitely not going to stay here for 6 years... haha.. Not sure when i will start to drive in Beijing, hope to have a car by Mar.

Went to Ikea on Friday night - for the Swedish Meatballs. Shared a table with some local Chinese & a common observation: most of them who ordered spaghetti ate with chopsticks. This is what i would call "Western, the Chinese way"... =P At the Ikea cafeteria, they have quite an innovative invention - the tray trolley. It takes upto 3 trays per trolley - isn't it ideal to send 1 person to order food for the rest? Not sure if they have tray trolley in Ikea Singapore...

Annual Dinner... or NOT...

It is a traditional custom in China to have 庆功宴 (alias Staff Annual Dinner) in celebration of a successful business year before the Lunar New Year. Ours is held today, 27 January 2007. Colleagues from offices located in the North region of China (Tianjin, Shenyang, Shijiazhuang, Qingdao & Changchun) took night trains to Beijing to attend this corporate function. Whilst the intention of an Annual Dinner is to promote staff unity, two names were forgotten...

My boss provided a list of suggested themes to the organizing committee & the 1st on the list was named the theme of this year's annual dinner. "Go for gold" - symbolizes the aim to win (gold medal), quite appropriately in the context that Beijing is the host city of the Olympic Games in 2008 and my company is an Official Supplier in the product category of Freight Forwarding & Customs Clearance for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. Yet, two names were forgotten...

An email was sent to the Admin. Manager (who is responsible for organizing this function) by my boss to request if the two names could be invited to the annual dinner. The answer was "yes", followed by a list of details (date: 27-Jan 2007, time: 5pm, venue: Chateau Laffitte Hotel).

As days went by, my boss & i learned that there will be a group photo taking session at 4pm (1hr before the function starts), which obviously both of us were not informed of. Then we saw the original email of invitation which was sent to the 300+ staff - quite different to what my boss & i have received where the lower portion of the invite details were deleted.

We felt disregarded as a part of the Beijing office... Decided we will not attend the dinner.

2007

As a year of new beginning, i thought perhaps i should get back on track with blogging again. Although i do realized that i've lost quite a number of faithful audiences due to the lack of activity in the past months (well, since May 2006 was my last post)...

Life went on even though it was not reflected on my blog. *Duh!* Well, a quick recap of what happened since May 2006:

Jul-Sep: worked in Qingdao for a Sailing Regatta event, went to Xingjiang (north west province of China, near Mongolia) for a week;
Oct: back in Beijing for major planning & meetings, mum & friends came to visit;
Nov-Dec: work has gotten to a point where i just felt like throwing in the towel... of course, i didn't because i couldn't do that to my boss.

Was back in Singapore for almost a month - spending Christmas 2006 & New Year 2007 with family & friends. On Christmas eve, my friend's mum passed away. Christmas week was spent at the wake (daily) and funeral. But overall, my trip back was quite eventful - with 2 Saturdays at Sentosa, 3 badminton sessions, several karaoke nights & stay over parties, lots of lunches & dinners, etc. Not to mention it was good to be attending Sunday Services!

You can imagine how i loath going back to Beijing on 13-Jan... Sometimes, there is no two way about certain things in life...

10 days later...

... and i'm back in Singapore! Yup! It's hard to believe how things changed so quickly in Beijing & now i'm back home again for 3.5 weeks. It's a long story but thank God for the free (company paid) trip back to see family & friends! Yippy!

Still, it's not a holiday but will be working from the Singapore office instead.