Monday, July 09, 2007
Miss.
Larh.
I miss my work attachment in Hong Kong.
Over there, we really lived it up.
Yes, we worked hard, and came home tired everyday.
But our holidays were genuine holidays, as no work could be taken out of the office.
We looked forward to every weekend, planning in advance all the fun we would have.
We explored old Hong Kong streets and saw all the weird stuff on sale there.
We shopped and shopped, creating (AND fulfilling) enormous shopping lists, spending almost $200 every weekend, all from our salary! And whenever we were tired, we would kick back in the nearest coffee house, sipping coffee and watching all the crazy Hong Kong youth go by.
We explored the area around our office during our flexible and long lunch breaks, sampling quite a lot of Hong Kong food, even finding a laksa stall selling Singapore laksa! (it wasnt that good though)
When Chinese New Year came around, we all went up to Shenzhen to meet our classmates and stay for 3 nights. While there, we trudged throuh pitch-dark streets, watching as locals fired off fireworks bought from street vendors, mesmerised as the shimmering streaks of light coursed into still night, exploding with a vengeful thunder. Never had we been so close to real fireworks. In Singapore, those lame people actually queue 4 hours at Marina Bay just to see some lame fireworks show. Here, you can BUY them for like two dollars a pop -_-.
We also laughed when some fools trying to launch fireworks from their balcony accidently set off a small explosion, right there on the balcony! We heard ambulance sirens a few minutes later.
When our classmates in Shenzhen came down, we spent a day in Hong Kong's Ocean Park. It was not peak period, so the rides had very short queues. It was my first time riding a somersaulting roller coaster! And we took this ride that lifted us up almost 30m into the air before dropping us at freefall! AND we got to see live jellyfish! oh man that was so much fun.
When we went up to Shenzhen another time, we all crashed in their posh company-rented condominiums, watching movies till 3am, playing pranks on each other and having midnight feasts of insanely cheap Chinese street BBQ snacks.
And then it was goodbye. I don't miss the work (haha), but I sure miss the fun we had in a foreign city.
On the flight back to Singapore, my lugugage EXCEEDED the 20kg weight limit by 12kg (!!), while i had to check in ANOTHER bag full of stuff because they said my hand carry lugguage was way too big to bring on board the plane -_-.
There is a time for everything, and work should be purely work, while play should be purely play.
In Singapore, and even in most modern societies today, there is no more leisure time. Everyone works. Bah.
jOhn thought at 4:43 AM
