I'm baaack!

Crap! It's been a while since I last blogged, thanks to a sudden business trip to India followed by a 3-week company training course in Blogger-blocked China. I had no idea so many things were blocked here: Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Wordpress, Youtube, various weather sites (why oh why?!)...

Anyway, it's been an interesting few weeks. India was...well, incredible! It was my first time visiting and of course I was in utter fascination the whole time. Here's just a short list of the things I learned about India:

• There are quite a few Muslims in India (especially in the North)
• Many Indians these days speak better English than Hindi
• The Indian accent is actually not an accent(!) It's just the way they speak English, similar to Singaporean English
• The bobblehead behaviour may have come from the cows and is used when agreeing
• Arranged marriages still happen
• A bindi on a woman's forehead tells you that she's married
• Indian transvestites do exist
• All Indian women have between 8-10 sarees, at LEAST
• Do not, I repeat, do not drink the tap water
• Indians do not say 'meat' but use the word 'non-veg' instead
• It's not shameful to be poor and/or a beggar
• The traffic is INSANE!!

Imagine a narrow alleyway that is about the width of 1.5 cars. Now imagine 5 rickshaws, 2 scooters, 3 bicycles, 2 SUVs, an ox-pulled cart, one giant tractor with 10 men clinging on, 3 water buffalos, a baby goat, 2 horse-drawn carts, 5 wild dogs, and 20 pedestrians trying to squeeze themselves into this narrow alleyway. Multiply this by 10-20km, and don't forget that everyone's honking non-stop, and people are climbing over bicycles and cars just to try to get ahead...Crazy!!!

If you get a chance to go, I highly recommend it! Undoubtedly, it can be a little shocking, but it's definitely worth it!!

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Use it or lose it

Before I moved back to Hong Kong, I had always thought things would be much easier here. I mean, coming from the Netherlands where the three most spoken words (in English) must've been "That's not possible", I had just expected HK to be a place where rules, no matter what, could always be bended.

Fast forward to today. Me and my colleagues are having lunch at a modern Shanghainese restaurant in Wanchai. Our party of five is not yet complete, but we want to order the Set Lunch for 5 consisting of 5 appies and 5 mains. We ask the lady if we can order 2 appies to start with while we wait for the rest of our crew, but she puts on a pained expression and says, "Oh, so, so sorry, our system can't handle that. Either you order everything at once, or you wait until the rest of your party arrives to place your complete order. There's no way to just order two appetizers first..."

My colleague pumped up the nice factor and asked again if we could please stagger our orders, since we had no idea what our other colleagues wanted to eat, but the lady frowned once more and explained the system in pain-staking detail again.

I stared at her and thought...What do you mean you can't? Since when did technology become such a big obstacle for simple everyday matters, especially for something as basic as placing an order in a restaurant? Why can't you just physically get us what we want, take a mental note (or write it down somewhere non-digitally *GASP*) and then enter everything in your silly system after?

Boggled, we ended up making the whole order at once, but I just couldn't get over her stupid, stubborn ways. I know we rely on technology a lot these days and it generally does help us work more efficiently, but technology can also cause many people to forget that they have something called a BRAIN.

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Can't we all just get along?

Last night, I contributed to the death of the biggest cockroach I have seen to date. What had he done to deserve such a cruel execution by way of flipping, scraggling and drowning in a never-ending stream of RAID poisonous spray? Nothing, really. He was simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

You see, if you're a giant cockroach who happens to be hanging around on the doorbell outside my apartment, and by the time I actually notice you, you're a mere 2 inches from my face, I have no choice but to (shriek like a banshee and then) KILL YOU.

Obviously, I didn't kill the guy myself. After letting out a shrill scream, I backed up slowly, froze for 5 minutes and then threw my house keys against the front door. There was no response, so I called for back-up.

Another 5 minutes passed before C came out of the apartment armed with the almighty poison spray, which he used to blow the roach off the wall, onto the floor and finally onto its back, where it struggled for a good 30 seconds before his hairy brown legs eventually stopped kicking around at odd angles and folded slowly into their final resting place.

Apparently, I had been screaming all the way through because one very annoyed neighbour poked his head out with a WTF!? expression. I explained that there was a giant cockroach, but his facial expression remained the same.

Staring back at the cockroach corpse, I wondered... Why did we just kill a seemingly innocent creature? Is it just because he looks so damn frightening and ugly? It's not really his fault he looks that way, is it? I know we don't want roaches inside our apartment, but did we really have to kill it so brutally? Do all cockroaches deserve to die?? If so, why?? Why can't we all just get along??

Still, I'm kinda glad it's dead.

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