2018, briefly

Well, 2018, that was quick.

Travels - brief notes:

Israel - Tel Aviv, bus tour around Nazareth etc, Jerusalem, Eilat - what an amazing and educational experience, didn't spend enough time in Jerusalem though, and lots more to visit around Israel.



Niseko - the powder was just...wow. Lots of fun going through trees, thanks to my powder buddies who led the way and knew what they were doing (or at least pretended to). Getting lost in the woods for 2 hours by myself wasn't so great though.

Lots of other skiing weekends.


Seoul, South Korea - a quick dip in, mostly for food and coffee pics. Probably gained a kilo.

London, UK - quite a few times, for work. London in the summer is beautiful, and made efforts to catch up with different friends on each trip.


Singapore - friends, food, food, friends.

El Nido, Philippines - fantastic diving! And thumbs up to El Nido's ban on single-use plastic. And Pe's great mentoring skills. I just need to try never to lose the camera with all the good pics in it on the airplane on the way back *cries*


Hiking weekends around Japan - Yatsugadake, Mizugaki, Oze, Okutama, Nabewariyama...ohhhh I'll always remember the first taste of that nabe udon on the top of Nabewari! And the ridges of Yatsugadake...!


Helsinki, Finland - work. But amazing dinner on a tiny island where the only thing on it is the restaurant! Also Finnair wins best office of the alliance.

Bangkok, Thailand - to see Dad, eat, relax, and explore just the tip of the booming coffee culture in the city.

Miyakejima, Japan - to swim with dolphins! Tents ideally need to be ant, water and sun proof though...

Hokkaido and Aomori, Japan - with Jeff and Pe! Seafood, apples, blueberries and post-dinner 7-11 runs for snacks. Also unexpectedly enjoyed the Aomori Prefecture Art Museum.

 

Spain - Toledo, Sergovia, Granada...oh Granada - the Alhambra is magnificent magnificent magnificent! Your food equally so. Best of all - tapas are...FREE!








Egypt - Giza pyramids, Aswan, Luxor, the Sahara Desert - so. much. history...sometimes a bit of information overload. But at least the info is still standing upright, on walls and in pyramids and in graves etc. Also - there are the occasional creeps and crooks, but there are also fantastic people. And simple home-made food is the best.

 



Nakasendo, Japan - educational, easy; sneaked into the shinkansen reserved-seating area with an unreserved ticket...oh how very cheeky of me!
 

Hong Kong - home, dog, dim sum, wah sing, weddings.

...I visited 10 countries (if you include Hong Kong) this year.

Accomplishments - brief (very brief)

1. The main one is probably to quit my city office job - something that seemed unthinkable until only 10 months ago, decided to leave the city, packed up / gave away / sold off my possessions, and moved to the mountains to start a new job in hospitality - something I've never done, to do a temporary job (gasp - saying goodbye job security!?), in an environment I've never lived in - surrounded by free-spirited snow-sports loving souls that are almost always excited and sleep-deprived, surrounded by enormous alpine mountains, snow, woods, and where convenience stores are very few and far between.

2. Done a bit more solo travel this year. Spent half the time in Israel traveling alone (Nazareth, Jerusalem, Eilat...) but met lots of others along the way, some I still keep in touch with today. Roaming around in Spain (Granada) alone allowed me to spent 7 hours inside the Alhambra taking an obscene amount of photos without pissing any travel buddies off.

3. Survived a 24-hour food poisoning sesh in Egypt just before embarking on a 2-day desert tour.


4. Made, sustained and developed good friendships, some of them definitely life-long friends. Managed to take up a whole restaurant (OK a very small restaurant)

5. Snowboarding in trees in Niseko. Getting stuck, a lot, and even got very lost once and had to hike an hour out of the woods back to civilization...but survived, and learned, and encouraged to do more tree-skiing (safely).

6. Started training with Mitch, a PT that V introduced to me. It's been a journey of discipline and perseverance - committing to the extra commute (and usually by bike) twice a week up that hill in Azabu, not quite in the way of my regular commute (takes me a bit of commitment especially if somewhere is 唔順路...). I had never seriously lifted weights on a regular basis before, but it wasn't as monotonous as I had always imagined (scenes where those 'gym rats' just spend hours puffing their chest and standing around looking sweaty). It was actually fun when there's someone to help and push you, and you see that progress quite tangibly. By the end of the year, Mitch had me lifting these weights
Upper body:

• Chest press / DB  12kg 
• Back/ one arm row , 14kg 
• Shoulder/ Shoulder press 6kg 
• Shoulder / side lateral 4kg 
• Reverse flys 5kg

Lower body:

• Squats 50kg 
• Hip ups 50kg 
• Romanian deadlift 45kg 
• Split squats 20kg 
• Lunges 14kg!!

Egypt - thoughts on the road

Ramblings from the desert...

I had forgotten just how much I enjoy the desert, or maybe I was just already really tired, being towards the end of our week-long trip. And SICK. Catching food poisoning one day before the desert tour isn't ideal - I didn't sleep at all the night before, didn't eat for 24 hours, and so I wasn't feeling the most excited about endless expanse of sand. 

But this probably ended up being my favourite part of the trip.

One doesn't think of the desert as a place that has much of anything. But the Western Desert in Egypt was quite the contrary! (In my 1st desert experience back in 2014 in Wadi Rum of Jordan we mainly spent time making fun of each other in the car, climbing rocks and hills, and taking lots of photos). This time, our guide Osama spent a bit of time explaining all the geological history and characteristics of the desert - how the oasis in Egypt is usually a depression in the land (and the Bahariya Oasis in Egypt has a population of 60,000 - quite different to the image that some of us have of an oasis simply being a few palm trees surrounding a pool of water); how the desert is actually full of underground water, and that a lot of palm trees (among lots of other fruits) are grown in the area which produces dates and Egypt is the world's leading exporter of dates, and that the harvest is in October (so yes we got to pick and try some FRESH dates during our visit!).

 

...and that the desert used to be part of the ocean, so if we were to do a longer tour (we only had 2D/1N) we could have driven further out to see whale bones and fossils strewn across the sand; that magma and lava and volcanoes formed the topography (hills and valleys etc) and gave the desert its different colours (black and white etc). 

At night, the millions and millions of stars absolutely plastered the sky, we didn't even know where to look. The milky way was clear as day. Shooting stars waiting to be spotted and wished upon. While the temperatures dropped to somewhere a little too chilly to be entirely comfortable, we were too mesmerised by the wonder of the night sky, and comfortable with the bon fire at our feet, and ended up spending a long while lying outside on the sand before retreating into the warmth of the tent and blankets. 

A lot more can be mentioned - the foxes' paw prints in the sand right by our tent in the morning, the sand-boarding, the crystal mountains, the fun trying to make out shapes and characters from the rocks...but one particularly memorable moment was: breakfast.

Our guide Osama mentioned the unwanted attention that some of his guests feel when they're in Egypt, and empathised and understood when guests distance themselves in order to protect themselves. But as guides and representatives of their country, they try hard to make sure that guests feel safe and relaxed, being extra patient with guests and giving them options to have their own space, so that they can enjoy being in the desert. I felt very reassured and comforted by him saying this and for empathising with us. Not least because of an incident that happened to me just a few days before in another part of Egypt, where things came very close to indecent harassment. And in general, as foreigners - especially as FEMALES in Egypt, we attract a lot more attention than usual, often more than what we're ready for. We had come across many people during the trip (tour guides, people driving us in cars / horse carts / camels / sail boats, hostel/hotel staff etc) - most of them nice, but also some not so nice, a few downright rude and indecent.

At the start of the tour, I did think: it's just two of us girls, and two of them, "strangers", men, going out into the desert - with no one around. We knew we had to stay cautious and conservative. But thankfully - we couldn't have asked for nicer people. 

The HUMAN INTERACTIONS can really make or break an experience. And don't get me wrong - most of the Egyptians we came across WERE nice and decent. But it just takes 1 or 2 to ruin your impression of a country. But it could also take 1 or 2 to rectify it. Thank you, Osama & Mr Jamaica. Because of people like you, you've made this trip even more positively memorable. 


(these guys: https://www.westerndeserttours.com/ ) 

The beginning

The beginning of the end:

On Friday the 24th August 2018, after a hearty bowl of Vietnamese noodles from Cô Thành and an overpriced coffee with Reg on Kao U Fong plus a cheeky egg tart on my way back to the office, I send the email - the email I had been planning to send for the last 4-5 months - to my manager.

A few seconds later, a new email appears in my manager's inbox, with an attachment and title reading "My Resignation".

OK OK perhaps I'm being a tad too dramatic for describing my resignation from a job I've worked at for a mere 3 & a half years. 

But this resignation isn't just a resignation from my current job. It's a turning point in my career, in my life. After 8 years of jobs in full-time, 'normal' or (what Chinese parents would seem) 'safe' office positions, I'm about to become a TEMP. 

And I won't be working in a city. 

I won't be even be using EXCEL (at least much less than I need to now, I think). 

....but until then I still have to serve my 3 months' notice. 

So - gonna binge on the duty travel, take full advantage of the last of my business class travel experiences, enjoy the remaining days of city life and my city salary, and prepare for the next chapter. 

For Winter Is Coming. 

Japanese drama musings...

On Monday's Terrace House episode, Taka shaves his moustache to appeal to a girl on her birthday who had told him that she wished he was a few years younger.

On Tuesday at a colleague's farewell dinner, we talked about one of our very young-looking colleagues and joked about how he looks about 10 years younger than he is.

On Wednesday I bump into this young-looking colleague at work wearing a mask. "Do you have a cold?" I asked. He mumbled something, took off his mask and revealed that he was growing a moustache 😂😂😂

No Friends On Powder Days

Moiwa, Niseko.

Part 1: No friends on Powder Days.

I stopped to listen, but all I heard was silence, the sound of my own heavy breathing, and a nagging in the back of my brain saying I am fuxxked. I was fuxxked. I saw a river a little further below me, and recalled Julian telling me just before we split that one needs to be careful of valleys and rivers in this area. I dared not go any lower. I had followed these skiers tracks, but that doesn't mean they weren't also fuxxked, but they're also now long gone. I checked Google maps on my phone - I was well and truly way outside of the ski area. In the middle of nowhere. Below me a river. Fuxxed.

Thankfully I had the backpack, full of water, food, charger and an extra layer. But that was more for peace of mind, and extra support - I wasn't in real danger, unless there were bears around. And more importantly, for cell phone signal. I sent the group chat a googlemap screenshot of my location, while at the same time venting my anger (at myself) in text message form, and got reassuring messages back. Thank God for friends who cared. 

What I was upset about was how I ended up in this situation, how stupid I had been to follow random skier tracks, to not have familiarized myself with the trail map beforehand. The sense of regret of having only done one run before getting myself into this shit was heavy, as well as the overwhelming sense of loneliness, and tears welled up several times under that weight. 

Walking through powder in snowboard boots while carrying a snowboard is not one of my favourite activities. But snowboards come in handy in order to climb uphill to avoid falling into the river. 

After about an hour, several Googlemap checks, and wanting to metaphorically strangle myself for such stupidity, I finally got back to civilisation - a quiet road with a few hotels along it. Another 15 minutes walk I was back at the ski resort. Drenched in sweat, snow and shame. 

I had goggles on so my friends couldn't see me tear up when I saw them after my little walk in the woods. 

Part 2: Trailblazer

After a couple runs back on the slopes, we were back indoors de-icing our neck-warmers and goggles and filling our stomachs with greasy noodles. 

Stomachs filled, jackets dried, but still no sign of the boys. It's been almost two hours since we last saw them or heard from them. Then a screenshot came. Almost the exact screenshot I had sent earlier when I was stuck in the woods, but from the boys. "We are here lol". WTF!?

They had ended up in the same exact spot as I did! Chimaki and I were in tears and almost on the floor in the middle of the floor laughing and crying and dying from laughter. I feel bad for saying this but I was kinda happy and found it hilarious they ended up there, and didn't feel an ounce of bad for them at all at that time. The difference between us and me was they were 5, whereas I was alone.

Moreover, there were people just as stupid as me! 

I suppose that's why we are friends :D

FML