Happy birthday to me!

I'm not an epicurean, but I do love eating at good restaurants. So it was with great delight, while recommending the wonderful restaurant that is Buko Nero to an overseas friend, that I stumbled upon the results of Chubby Hubby's Best Restaurants in Asia-Pacific survey, inspired by Restaurant Magazine's top 50 restaurants in the world survey published earlier this year.

I don't really like to spend all that much money on food, preferring to indulge in less transient things like clothes and shoes, but I'm happy to say that I have been to one restaurant in each of CH's three tiers of ranking. Tetsuya's definitely deserves to be one of the best restaurants in the Asia-Pacific region, and the A$250 dinner I had there just under two weeks ago is definitely one of the best dining experiences I have ever had in my entire life. Pictures to come soon, I promise!

I had a great weekend. I was positively smothered with affection.

First off with my pre-birthday party on Friday night, followed by a rather hazy night spent dancing dressed in a mini-skirt (usually not my skirt length of choice) and feathered mask on my head. Hazy because I found out the hard way that fenny is rather more powerful than absinthe especially if you have more than one shot of it.

Saturday was spent lazing around, recovering, until my brother returned home from London, whereupon we spent the evening catching up.

And Sunday was family time, followed by shopping for a ZoukOut outfit (new bikini and new footwear, as my sandals disintegrated after the last ZoukOut) with a dear friend who, I gather, really missed me while I was gone.

And of course, there was dinner tonight with an old friend who I really needed to catch up with, having only had intermittent contact with her over the past few weeks during a very tough period for her, as I was so tied up with work, and of course, being away from Singapore. She's better now, I'm happy to say, and it was great to see her again in happier circumstances.

It's nice to be missed... and not just by the office!

I got into the office today to find my regional boss had left the U2 - Best of 1990 - 2000 DVD on my desk as a gift because, as he put it, I was "crazy enough to fly all the way there to see them."

How sweet.

Snow Patrol will be touring Australia in February 2007. Please let them come to Singapore!

In spite of my recent Sydney trip, I still have quite a few days of leave to clear for the year. It's typical Little Miss Random style, as I didn't feel it was good to take leave within the first six months of joining my company, and then the overseas work stints came up.

In any case, I asked my boss whether I could take clear some leave next month and was told that he didn't want me to, as I had spent enough time away from the Singapore office already. I had to bite back my instinctive reply, which was, "the five weeks I spent working in the overseas office wasn't exactly a paid vacation." He did admit he wasn't being fair to me, but that doesn't really do anything for me.

Sydney was my first vacation of 2006. My first vacation! In the middle of November. I really should take a leaf from the Australians' book and not work as hard as I've been doing, and really concentrate on getting more of a life.

I didn't quite expect to get through work today with my holiday spirit intact. But I did. And it was a most incredible thing too. I'd started to flag some time near 5 pm, but a 40-minute innuendo-laden call from a colleague at 6.50 pm which covered everything from chess-cum-boxing, basketbrawl, vacations, James Bond (yes, we were both in our respective offices, and we were doing our best to keep our voices low) restored it all. Considering we'd been having an on and off IM conversation throughout the day which had already been veering on the slightly nutty side, it was no wonder that all sense of modesty, innocence and propriety had started to vanish just as the sun went down.

U2 were fantastic on Monday. We were sitting in the A Reserve section (aka the best seats in the place but not as good as the standing area near the stage) and the atmosphere was fantastic. The sound quality was not great, given that the Telstra Stadium is an open-air sporting arena, but nevertheless, the concert as a whole was great. But of course I would say that. U2 is my favourite band after all, so much so that I flew eight hours just to see them play.

I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Miss Sarajevo and Where the Streets Have No Name, which hadn't been played in the last leg of the tour and was an absolute show-stopper. I screamed my lungs out at the usual points: Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, I Still Haven't Found (What I'm Looking For) and Pride (in the Name of Love) before realising my voice just might have been captured on my digital camera as I was filming the performance. Fortunately, that turned out not to have been the case, but it did make me a little less carelessly exuburent for the remainder of the concert.

Throughout the concert, I wasn't able to fully immerse myself in the whole experience, having to concentrate on taking photos and filming songs I enjoyed. But once I stopped doing all of that (after With or Without You, the song which I'd been waiting for the whole night), I found a big grin creeping onto my face. Kite, the song U2 ended off the night with, was given a native touch with didgeridoo accompaniment and sounded absolutely fantastic; the song moved me greatly, even though it's not in my top ten favourite songs, and almost brought tears to my eyes.

All in all, it was an awesome, awesome night. And if U2 came by whichever region I happened to be in, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. After all, I still want to hear Stay (Faraway, So Close!) and Bad live.


Setlist (thanks to this site):
1. City Of Blinding Lights
2. Vertigo / Pump It Up (snippet)
3. Elevation / Spinning Around (snippet) / I Should Be So Lucky (snippet)
4. I Will Follow
5. New Year's Day
6. Beautiful Day / Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (snippet) / Blackbird (snippet) / Michelle (snippet)
7. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
8. Angel Of Harlem
9. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own / No Regrets (snippet)
10. Love And Peace Or Else
11. Sunday Bloody Sunday
12. Bullet The Blue Sky / When Johnny Comes Marching Home (snippet) / The Hands That Built America (snippet)
13. Miss Sarajevo
14. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
15. Where The Streets Have No Name
16. Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (snippet) / One

First Encore:
17. Until The End Of The World
18. Mysterious Ways
19. With Or Without You

Second Encore:
20. The Saints Are Coming
21. Party Girl / I Should Be So Lucky (snippet)
22. Kite

Link to another review.

What a week. I've been working late every single day this week because a deal which had lain dormant for months suddenly rose up and threaten to swamp us under. I did my best given the little we got and made arrangements to work out of Sydney but thanks to a last minute change on the part of our client, we're now back to almost square one and I can look forward to an uninterrupted vacation.

On the other hand, this will be the deal of the year in Asia if it goes through and I would hate for it to close during my absence after all the work I've done on it. You really only get the glory when you're there for the closing.

In any case, I can't do anything about it, and given that I did threaten - mock or otherwise - to quit if they didn't let me go on my first vacation of the year (the bachelorette party in August didn't count because I didn't get much rest at all), I'm trying not to think about it and just think about how excited I am to see U2 after all these years of yearning.

I'll write more about my travels during the last few months and the people I've met some other time.

Oh, and one last thing. Just to clarify, it is possible to like more than one person at one time, in case you think I'm some kind of guy-starved, desperate, crazy girl. Far from it. I just meet people who I get this sense that we could have something together, short-term or long-term, and it's just my misfortune that most of the people who I meet who I feel that way about, happen to be based overseas.

Back to packing. I'm leaving for the airport in just over a half hour and I still haven't finished packing yet.

I'm so glad StarWorld is currently showing the second season of Grey's Anatomy, even as I'm getting my fix by reading the recaps of the third season on Television Without Pity. The most recent episode, 2.04 Deny, Deny, Deny, was a pretty interesting episode, and I think one of the episodes submitted for Sandra Oh's Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.

It's easy to see which this one was chosen to be submitted; here, we see Cristina at her best and worst. She's snippy with her mother, she refuses to get any rest after having had surgery for her ectopic pregnancy which resulted in her losing a fallopian tube, she's argumentative with her ex-lover (Burke), and right towards the end of the episode, after she's proven right about one of the other patients in the hospital, she just loses it, breaking down, unable to stop crying. This last part is of course where her famous "Make it... make it stop... somebody sedate me!" scene occurs.

Right at the end, Burke comes in and sees the tears streaming down her face. He moves to stroke her head but stops when her mother says, "she doesn't want to be touched." At this moment, Cristina's face shows a perfect combination of not wanting anyone to come near her and simultaneously pain, distress and a desperate desire to be consoled. Burke sees this for what it is, takes off his jacket, gets into the bed, and wraps himself around her as Cristina leans against him for solace. This one scene, short though it is, was done exceedingly well, and just about broke my heart when it occurred.

Ah, Grey's Anatomy. I'm so glad you're back in my life. And I'm really into the theme song, Psapp - Cosy in the Rocket, as well. It's just so delightfully simple and full of bleeps and bloops.

A recently discovered web site along the lines of PostSecret and GroupHug (both of which I liked when I first saw them, although I really only read PostSecret nowadays) is JoeApology.Com, which is

"a site where people can freely and anonymously post their apologies. Think of it as a confessional of sorts (without the religious ties, that is). Are you feeling sorry about something you did? Do you want to get something off your chest? Go on, tell me about it...and remember, it's completely anonymous. Just post your apology, no matter how big or small, and you'll feel so much better. I promise."

Some, as you'd expect, are trite and melodramatic (as are some posts in my blog, seeing as we're all consumed by our self-importance) but there are some nice ones as well, such as this one:

Dear Pringles (my cat),

Sorry I don't have enough time sometimes to let you into the hallway. I know you love to walk around and sniff the stairs and the neighbor's door.

I'm back! I was sad to leave Hong Kong (there's a lot more going on there business-wise compared to Singapore) but happy to be home nonetheless.

First three things I did upon touching down:

1. SMS friends to find out plans for tonight - I think we're heading to MoS for Jimmy Van M.
2. Unpack all my laundry to be done because I'm leaving for Australia in just a few days time.
3. Turn on the PC to listen to Scissor Sisters - Don't Feel Like Dancing which is seriously rocking my world and making me do all sorts of goofy dancing every time I hear it.
   

Today is the first day of November, my favouritest month of the year.

It is also ten days before I go on vacation, 12 days before I see U2 in concert and 29 days before I officially turn a year older.

I could write so much more... well, really, I can't, so instead, I'll leave you with an entry I wrote a few days ago and meant to post, but decided to wait until I could upload photos.

Originally written on 29 October, somewhere around 10 pm:
My feet are dead tired. I've done so much today and I still have to go out for a Halloween party tonight.

All in all, I started out heading to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception up in Mid-levels in the morning, forgetting that the Central - Mid-Levels Escalators head downwards until 10.30 am every day, resulting in my having to walk up all the way from Connaught Road Central to the Cathedral. Then, it was off to Maxim's Palace for brunch (old-style dim sum complete with trolley ladies) where we got the magical queue number 88 and waited 45 minutes for a table. C'mon, after receiving that number, we couldn't possibly walk away in spite of our incredible hunger.



We spent just over an hour there, partaking of some pretty damn good dim sum, and walked out the door at just after 1 pm, whereupon we found that they'd processed 130 tables since 11 am.

After that, because of the unexpectedly fine weather, my friend and I headed off to Kowloon, checking out the larger shopping centres between Tsim Sha Tsui and Mongkok (namely, Silvercord and Langham Place, as I'd covered Harbour City on Thursday night), as well as Ladies Market on Tung Choi Street, and Sports Market on Fa Yuen Street. Strangely enough, I didn't manage to find anything I wanted to buy; the clothes on sale now are simply too hot to be worn back in Singapore. Curse the seasons!

Then it was back to the office to send something off (as tomorrow's a public holiday in Hong Kong, but not in the other two countries that I'm covering) before heading back to the apartment to get some rest prior to heading to Pi Club.

Addendum: Pi Club turned out to be great, as can be seen from the post I wrote right after coming back to my apartment.