This is my 9th day. So far I have:
- spent 3 days in Singapore, 2 days in KL, and (technically) 2 days in Penang, but it was really only 1 day. Long story. And another day in Langkawi Island.
- almost missed 1 ferry and 1 (long distance) bus. Arrived 5 minutes before it departed.
- got bitten by bed bugs, had my whole legs itchy, and had to go to Penang hospital to calm my mind (It’s supposedly not that serious)
- met an old friend in KL (Hi Jo! :), visited my ex-school, and ate the same Nasi Lemak as the one I ate 8 years ago at the same spot with the same seller, exactly the same menu and the same shape of fried egg.
- wandered around 8 o’clock in the morning in the port to get the ferry tickets
- wandered around KL at 8pm at night and called about a dozen hostels to find out that they’re all awfully full during chinese new year
- stayed in a very low class room without air-con (remember the bed bugs?) and 3 stars hotel (remember the full hostels?)
- saw a Malay (tried desperately to) talk Japanese to Koreans
- ridden a rickshaw many many times
- eaten in a Sushi restaurant full of Malay workers (I expect the owner is a Japanese, or they should at least know some Japanese people in their life)

I will continue when I can..

I’m going tomorrow.
(To refresh your mind, I’m going backpacking to Singapore, Malaysia (KL, Penang, Langkawi), Thailand (Chiang Mai, Bangkok), Vietnam (Hanoi), and Hong Kong for 4 weeks)

I went to travel doctor for vaccinations. He happened to be really smart. He knows all cities and places around the world in details with the local diseases, sickness, etc. Since I grew up in Indonesia, he said I should have got all the basic vaccinations when I was small. I said yeah, I know I got a lot of vaccinations when I was a baby. So the only thing I needed to get yesterday was Hepatitis A. He talked about other diseases that I’m very familiar with, like rabies, diarrhoea, and dengue fever.

I had dengue fever once. Lo and behold, if you get it 3 times, you may DIE. Sure, that time I was extremely sick, got severe headache, couldn’t get out of bed because I was too weak for more than a week, and almost ran out of white blood cells. But I didn’t know that I CAN DIE if I get it 2 more times!

He warned me not to get it the second time (As if I try to day by day, and will be so dissappointed not to get what I want), because, of course, then I would have to consider to NEVER go back to any Asian countries ever again. You know, since I may DIE if I get dengue fever for the third time. It’s like cat’s 9 lives more or less. But it’s 3 instead of 9. I have 2 more lives.

On more serious notes.. I can’t help thinking… There were many many times in my life before, when I so wanted to fly by plane. Not until I was 17 that I got into the steel bird. Since then I literally take flights countless times. Literally. I take about 1-3 flights a year (times 2 to return :).

There was a long time in my life when I thought I would never go anywhere outside the island that I grew up in for the rest of my life. Going to the other city nearby to go to Uni was my small dream. Now I’ve been studying and living in 4 different countries, and have visited at least 15 cities in 7 different countries.

Life takes you to interesting places. And I don’t mean geographic locations.

I’m going away in 5 days. Before that I have tons of things to do. So next time I write, I probably will be in small internet cafe in one of South East Asian countries. I want to try to write a little bit in each country. We’ll see how successful my plan will be.

I’ll be away for 4 weeks. People in my office ask when I’ll be gone and until when about 24 times a day (Okay, I may have exaggerated a bit. But I assure you it’s a LOT). We have only 9 programmers altogether. One person holds his own sections pretty exclusively. So when one is gone, it’s not that easy to pass on all the work to the others.

We had interesting (and funny) conversations today. You were not there, so you wouldn’t imagine how funny it turned out to be, and it’s not that funny if I write it here. But anyway, in a few sentences, we were discussing the following:

Would you rather work as a data entry in any random IT company, don’t have that much to do, have to dress up every day, cannot be late even for 5 minutes, but get paid MORE

OR

work in a game company, make games for a living, can go to work in beach attire, while nobody really counts how many hours you work in a day, but get paid LESS??

< snippet of our conversations >

dee: I don’t mind dressing up for work. it’s the data entry that will kill me
sal: yeah but you get paid like 10K more, with less work
sal: i should just do data entry
tan: but don’t forget that we get to make games!
tan: they pay us to play games!
dee: yeah but the incentive is getting worn off after a while =\
sal: it’s so depressing. it’s all because of the hocking stuart guy
dee: hawking
dee: did they insult you or something? :D
sal: just because i saw some people get so much money just by sitting on their bum the whole day
tan: well we sit on our bum the whole day too
sal: but their money is just leaking
sal: this company sucks
tan: and it sucks even more if you listen to Tag
(Tek is a senior programmer that complains a lot. But I know him quite well, so I know that in spite of his complaints, he actually cares about this industry :)
dee: if you keep listening, you’ll get more depressed than him
dee: coz he doesn’t have to listen to himself, but we do
tan: hahaa
sal: argh lee is coming
sal: ask her for money. she gets paid more
(lee is one of our tester and she was looking at tan’s screen then)
dee: yah she got nicer shoes than mine
dee: look at my shoes!
tan: you’re not wearing shoes!
dee: yeah coz i dont have any
dee: and ones that i have got holes!
(I’m famous for my hole-y shoes)
sal: argh i dont feel like working today
tan: c’mon people, we’re trying to be positive, right?
dee: i thought we’re trying to be negative today
sal: :(

< / snippet >

Take care until then people ;)

Yay! My first post in 2006! Happy New Year everybody. Sorry took me a long time. I was going back to Sydney for Christmas and New Year. It was heaps of fun! In a way I’m kinda always scared to go home. It’s too comfortable, like going back inside mother’s womb or egg. I may never want to go back to my normal life again =9. Even if I have been living alone since I was 17, life still can be difficult at times and it apparently never gets any easier.

The highlight of my years will always be new things that I have never done before. In 2005, it’s the first time for me to:
- graduate and work in game industry
- publish my first game
- live in studio apartment alone without housemates
- have the first adult relationship (considering I had my first bf was when we were in high school and my other ex was like someone just out from high school - he wasn’t!)
- buy many books in Australia (and most of other stuff) without worrying too much about money
- buy original DVDs and games (if you know where I’m originally from, this is quite a big deal :)
- pay attention to western (US/Europe) games
- get my Australian passport
- sponsor a child in Africa
- plan my first backpacking plan
- have expensive dinners in classy places
- take a painting class (but the second class with nude model)
- invest money in business
- run around the block 2-3 times a week after work
- buy things online
- volunteerily and seriously learn Mandarin (I did when I was small, but didn’t really care because thought I’d never use it anyway. Boy oh boy, how wrong was I)
- etc. (I’m tired)

I got a few pics to show you. Later.