CNY … You’re forced, given an excuse, by chance, by routine, ended up meeting relatives. Some close, some used to be close, some you can hardly even remember their names, how old they are, what they’re like. You see the small ones, growing taller, fatter, from bad to worse, cuter. And the old ones, getting older, making less sense, mellowed.

Strange feeling when people I used to be so unfamiliar with started becoming part of my family, and I’m actually starting to feel fond about them and enjoyed spending that bit of time together. And there are those that you used to hate that became not that bad after all. Of course some stayed on in the hate list and moved up the ranks. And there are those that used to be so close to your heart, but instantly got themselves propelled all the way to the top, and winning the honour of being someone so painful to hate, yet you can’t find enough excuses to forgive them, even just for the New Year.

So this came up in my annual review recently. I was told that I need to work on my “poker face”. Apparently, a few people have been going to my boss after meetings, expressing “concerns” that I din seem to agree with what they said or their plans, but yet did not raise my objection. So my boss has asked that in the future, I either voice my objections if I dun agree with anything, or try not to show my disapproval.

So this is really funny. First of all, why the hell are my colleagues so concerned if I agree with what they said. They dun report to me, why should they care so much what I think. Secondly, I have only heard of open style management whereby the boss will tell his men to speak freely. This is the first time I’ve heard of a boss telling his men to “act” and “play poker”. Yap! You can never understand Americans!

ediot’s flickr.

Got it from Thomson. Kinda looked good only for one day 昙花一现

ediot’s flickr.

Experimental shot taken in Shanghai. It’s actually a very small flower on the table, taken with the camera pointing upwards. The spot light turned out looking like the sun.

ediot’s flickr.

This is the popular “Dog don’t care” buns that 北方人 like to eat. How did the name came about? There was this poor farmer boy, his parents named him 狗子 which means puppy, hoping that he will be brought up easily like how easy it’s for puppies to grow up. So 狗子 grew up and was making these buns for a living. It was delicious and his business was really good. He was so busy making buns that he din have time to talk to his customers, so his customer starting to joke about 狗子忙做包子不理客人 or something like that. Overtime, people started calling his buns 狗不理包子

ediot’s flickr.

Took this pcture at the Forbidden City. Like the way it shows the details.

ediot’s flickr.

I like this series of pictures I took of Phyllis when we were at Shanghai. She looked really happy and of course pretty . They were taken at The Bund No 12.

ediot’s flickr.

In China, there’s a saying “不到长城非好汉”. So we did, and I almost died climbing it. It was really steep, some point at almost 45 degrees. Some of the steeps were rather high too. My bad knee din hold up too well, and I’m definitely way too unfit. We din made it to the top. There is no end to it actually. I think in all, we spent like only 1.5 hours there. We will be back!

ediot’s flickr.

This is what she bought. 12 from China … another 2 from the previous batch from BKK. I think we had like almost 10 from BKK btw.