My first four days back in Jakarta was simply busy, going around visiting relatives from morning until night, collecting red packets (ang pao) hihihi.... Went to two open houses, belonging to owners of a mobile phone brand in Indonesia and a national bank respectively, and now I see how big houses looks like, they are really really huge !!!! I went to visit countless houses, good to see how families get together again during the Chinese New Year period. Let me consolidate all my photos first during my trip back, there are hundreds of them, and post it here

Then, the last few days was spent helping out with my family's business, met a couple of friends, hunting for Indonesian-type food, those that I can't or hardly find in Singapore It's great being able to meet my old friends again, and normally they all have grown up, horizontally speaking :p

Then, on 7th Feb was my birthday. This year birthday was rather different and special in a way. My colleagues celebreated my birthday three weeks ago already, before I even went back to Jakarta for holiday, my flatmates celebrated early at midnight, and at night, I went out for dinner with Upik at Fish and Co. Unknowingly, when we went out from Marina Square, we saw fireworks being thrown up in the night's sky. I know it's not meant for me, but I guess I can claim it at least, to have fireworks for my birthday. It was my first, and could probably be the one and only time in my life? Who knows.
All photos coming soon, no time yet, hihihi.....

Next week, I'll be preparing for another trip overseas again, and I'll more photos by then, haha.... Now got hundreds of photos to organize first.

I still have FIVE Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger v8) invitation. Drop me an email at public [at] hendrikch [dot] com with your email address if you want it. First come first serve

Update: THREE taken, TWO more to go

I will be away again (third time already this year) from Wednesday to Saturday, this time round to Thailand, Bangkok and Phuket. So, I will not be active in my blog (again) for the next couple of days. See you all when I'm back on Saturday. Take care all Now need to catch 4.5 hours sleep, flight is at 8 AM

I went to Thailand (Bangkok and Phuket to be exact) for 3D2N company meeting. However, as I was in the organizing committee, I had to arrive there one day earlier. This was the first trip in which I miss my flight. I arrived in Bangkok with half-an-hour remaining for transit to Phuket. I alighted somewhere in gate 5. As my next flight is in gate 63, as stated in the boarding pass, I walked towards the direction shown towards gate 1-77 (shown in Photo 2 below). As I walked towards the gate, I saw the direction as something like: Gate 21-29, turn left, Gate 30-77 go straight. After a few minutes walk, I saw Gate 30-39 turn left, Gate 40-77 go straight. So, I thought, gate 63 will be at the end. Little that I know, when I reached the end, what I saw was: Gate 50-59 turn left, Gate 70-77 go straight. Where is gate 63 then?

I asked around, some said, go straight, some said go back, then turn left somewhere. Nobody seemed to know exactly where is gate 63. In the end, I asked the Information counter, they said, gate 63 is the domestic flight gate number, and I was at the international flight building. To get to the domestic flight, I need to go to gate 7, then transfer via airport bus into domestic flight. Oh no, I only had less than 10 minutes left before the flight took off. I've walked the whole end to end of the international flight building, and now I need to walk back, with so little time left. By the time I reached back at gate 7, the plane already flew, and my baggage already off-loaded. I checked for the next flight which was three hours later. They told me the next flight was full, and I have to wait for another 6-7 hours. I started complaining, told them that it was Thai Singapore fault, so on and so on, asking for their supervisor. In the end, I got into the next flight on my way to Phuket. phewwww.... Thank God.

With more than 2 hours to spare, I went to retrieve my already-off-loaded baggage, then I went out of the airport and looked for local food for lunch.

First night there (Wednesday night), I did nothing much, except went out to look for dinner. As per normal, the first thing to try there was Tom Yam Kung. It was really spicy, you know. The next day, I went to Patong Beach, had dinner in hotel, and played cards with friends until over midnight.

On Friday, I had the meeting, but still went out to Phuket FantaSea for entertainment and dinner. Phuket FantaSea is the Fantasy World of Phuket (Dufan in Indonesian language). One show I went to was at the Palace of the Elephants, a very entertaining two hours of cultural show, acrobatic show, magic show, with lots of balloons, fireworks, loud bangs, lots of performers, from human, to chickens, to doves, to dogs, to elephants, to cows, to horses, etc. It's like a zoo, hahaha....

Saturday was the time to go back, I went to from Phuket to Bangkok to transfer, and from Bangkok get back to Singapore, reached home close to 9 PM. All in all, it was a really entertaining, refreshing, and wonderful trip, in which I still managed to find time out outside of my meeting. Oh yes, one thing for sure is that Thai local food are really really good. Almost everything that they came out with, be it hotel food, or food-court food, almost everything are really good food. Can't wait to get back to Thailand again in the future.

Dylan and I in Changi Airport	Gates 1-77 this way. Never say it excludes gate 60-something	The sign board that we should have seen
Where I recover my off-loaded baggage	Lunch in Bangkok	Near Bangkok International Airport
My hotel room. So cozy	View from my hotel room	Tom Yam Kung for dinner
They seem very prepared for another tsunami, which we hope never happen again	Lunch for second day. Only 140 Baht (< S$6) per person	In Patong Beach
Dinner table, grouped by birthmonth. This one is for those born in the month of February	Night view from hotel room	Photo session before midnight games
Luckily, I was not the one who had to draw twelve cards	Swimming pool seen from my room	Phuket Fantasea
At the entrance of Phuket Fantasea	Where I had dinner for third night	Palace of the Elephants
Palace of the Elephants 2	Before taking off back to Singapore	At the back entrance of my plane

Just for laugh:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/4630
http://www.blamethepixel.com/sigs/BSOD%20in%20las%20vegas%20telescreen.jpg

Do you have any to share?

Got this from Bear's blog. Apparently it's true, not Photoshop-ed. It's on today's StraitsTimes front page news as well.

Update: Last night I went there, the eye shade/sunglasses is not there anymore

For the EIGHTH time in eight days, I JUST missed my 184 bus again !!! And it's the kind of miss that you see the bus passed in front of your eyes with yourself near enough to see the bus, but far enough to realistically catch it. It was three times I saw 184 pass in front of my eyes last Sunday, then every morning on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Then again, today before I went to church, that 184 bus passed me again. Frankly speaking, I was very very very upset, but cannot blame anyone for it.

The fact that no matter what time I went out of my house in the morning during weekdays, be it 8 AM, 8.05 AM, or 8.10 AM, the same scenario will happen. If I went out at 8.10 AM, the bus will pass me at 8.09 AM. The next morning, I went out earlier at 8.05 AM, but that same bus passed me at 8.04 AM. Tried again the next day at 8 AM, but this time round, the bus decided to come at 7.59 AM. And again today, usually I went out at 4.15 PM to catch the bus for going to church. Today, since I didn't want to be late, I decided to leave my house at 4.05 PM, reaching my bus stop around 4.10 PM. Then, at 4.09 PM, that same bus passed me !!!! I will be OK if it happened one or twice, but eight times, read that, eight times !!!!! in eight days is simply beyond my patience. And it's not like I need one minute to reach the bus stop, I was always always around 20 seconds away from the bus stop. I was very super upset, irritated, displeased, dejected, and forgive me God for cursing and swearing (to be honest), so on and so on. Help yourself to add to those list. I was that angry !!!! It has been a while since I lost my temper. I pleaded guilty and prayed for forgiveness from God when I was in the taxi from home to church after that, and thankfully, I felt much better afterwards.

Never mind, hope things change for the better from tomorrow onwards. I will be OK, really, I will be OK, I only felt like complaining now, to write all my thoughts and my feelings into words, to feel better, so I can sleep well tonight. Thanks for reading.

Update: Make it NINE times in nine days as of today. I was just across the road when the bus came.

If Valentine's Day spans across fifteen days like Chinese New Year, today will be the last (15^th) day (Cap Go Meh in Chinese New Year term) for Valentine's Day. hahaha.....

After my previous T610 and current K700 phone from Sony Ericsson line-up, it will make the very sense that my next phone will be Sony Ericsson K800i. It is Sony Ericsson's first to be tagged with Cyber-shot branding letting you know there's some good digicam lovin' on the inside. True to the name, these handsets bring a big 3.2 megapixel camera with flash and lens cover, dedicated shutter button, auto red eye reduction, PictBridge support, image stabilization, and a brand new feature called BestPic -- press the shutter once and get 9 full quality snaps; 4 before and 4 after the actual image you captured all presented as icons on the display. You select the best image(s) from the bunch to keep. The rest of the specs are: 2.0-inch QVGA 262K TFT display, 64MB internal flash memory with Memory Stick Micro M2 expansion slot, Bluetooth 2.0, an RSS reader, video recording and playback, Music Player supporting MP3/AAC, and RDS FM radio all in a 106 x 47 x 18/20 mm. I'm drooling for it already.

As with all Sony Ericsson phones, it will come out in Q2. Expected price should be around S$698 with 2-year contract in Q2, S$498 in Q3, and down to S$298 in Q4, and when my current contract ends in November 2006, I hope the price will go down to S$298, and it would be a perfect time to upgrade.

It would have been considered unlucky that this kind of event should happen in one family lives, even once in whole lifetime, but this has happened three times to my family. First was back in 1981 before I was even born, second was in 2003, and the third time had just happened in 2006. No, it has nothing to do with missing the bus, it's much much much worse than that. I am not blaming anyone, in fact, I am grateful that no one was hurt in this most-recent third "episode". I am very sad to see that Indonesia has a lot and a lot of these kind of people.

I shouldn't be angry because revenge and justice are of God's. Forgive them LORD for they do not know what they are doing.