today after the recording session -- not too painful, had a few
laughs -- at lavender, we went down to The Geranium, aka tubby
lawyer's newly built shag pad. We surveyed his new 700 plus sq ft
apartment sans lights since there hasn't been electric cabling fixed
up yet. It looks quite cool and cosy and the youngbies are already
looking forward to invading it once it's all done up. i guess if
there's one motivating factor to constantly climb the corporate
ladder, it would be the ability to afford investments and assets like
these....

today's front page story in the ST was about this gambling den on the
premises of the consulate of Senegal.... it's located above Lau's
Arcadia along East Coast Road, or just behind my house. my sister had
remarked before on the flag of "some African country" which hung
rather limply outside one of the windows. we conjectured that it was
probably a dingy room inhabited by some foreign construction workers
who were really patriotic, maybe remnants of some World Cup fervor, or
something. and indeed it did turn out to be a den of ill-repute, and
of course ST put it on the front page to milk it for all the publicity
it served -- that its investigative scribes were the ones who tipped
off the police about the illicit activities happening at the consulate
at night.

speaking of which, this Lau's Arcadia is quite a prominent building
along east coast road, but it's what many around here believe is home
to bad feng shui. Compared to the many other establishments that line
oth sides of the road, the tenants of Lau's Arcadia on the ground
floor have all been quite temporary.. there've been restaurants (one
taiwanese one called Coway), a few lighting shops, and even one which
sold vases of all sizes, with the huge 6 ft ones lining the passageway
outside.

the shops along that busy stretch of road are changing. even though i
live within five minutes' walk from it, i don't pass it by often.
today i was surprised to see a Tatami shop, newly set up, next to
Carlton Restaurant. a few months back, i realized boon tong kee, the
chain of $5 chicken rice fame, had moved in two doors away from Polar.
I should hang out in my 'hood more often.

So it would seem this blog is dead. But i'm valiantly trying to rescue
it from the depths of chlorofoam-induced stupor.
My consolation is that while this space has languished, my life has
been anything but dismal. It's actually been quite hectic. Just came
back from Beijing, where I had to attend a two day conference. We took
advantage of the long holiday and flew up for the weekend, had quite a
bit of fun. Even in China, one can find interesting things to do
besides shopping. The weather is starting to get quite chilly, which
is nice. A vast difference from the summer heat in July when we were
in Shanghai.

But beijing is so polluted the government actually forecasts how many
sunny days there will be in a year. When we first arrived it looked no
different from the haze in Southeast Asia. Everything was gloomy, the
sky was overcast and the traffic was bad and our taxi driver let us
off at the wrong place -- the building looked like anything but a
hotel. Plus our friend chose to keep identity of hotel secret and he
didn't think to print out the name and directions in Chinese. Coupled
with my reluctance to converse with said RUDE taxi driver in
putonghua, we found ourselves in a bit of a tight spot. Fortunately,
the little hiccup ironed itself out and we managed to walk the few
hundred meters to hotel unscathed.

And so the rest of the weekend passed quite eventfully, but in a sort
of unhurried, relaxed manner. we didn't try to cram in too many
tourist sights as it would have just been too hectic and i haven't
really been very impressed with cultural sights in beijing.

The weekend was only marred by a persistent pain in the ball of my
right foot, which worsened such that i couldn't put my weight on it
and i was hobbling around supporting my weight on the side and heel of
my foot instead... which made those areas ache at the end of the day.
a quick check on google told me i probably had metatarsalgia, caused
mainly by the uneven distribution of weight in the foot, with a major
culprit being.... high heels of course. major bahhhh.... i had to go
look for a pair of 'dress' flats at the fake goods market because i
couldn't very well attend the conference in my Camper sneakers.

In the last few days it's gotten better but i started wearing heels
yesterday, which i guess, is quite unwise... And so now I have a more
valid excuse besides not picking up race pack, for not running
tomorrow's GE race... bah. i'm so out of shape....