Start of a 5-days week

16th January 2006, Monday

It seems like it have been a while since I would be working 5 days a week with the fact that I had taken one day leave on the Monday preceding X'mas, follows by 3 weeks interluded with the likes of X'mas, New Year and Hari Raya Haji..now we will have to grind our teeth and braced ourselves for the usual 5 days week at work..but no for long guys..cos every cloud has it's silver lining and our salvation resides in the Lunar New Year break at the end of this month..woohoo!!
...except my Remedial Training schedule would duly begins shortly after that..DAMN!

With the absence of a public holiday in sight for the month of February and March, it is nice to know that our Japanese friends over at Iwate, Eriko and his beau, Sou would be dropping to our Lion City in the middle of March and with much coincidence, just in time to attend our solemnization ceremony...so now my lass and I had to crack our heads to figure out where to bring them to with the limited time they would spending here.. (just around 2 days but 1 day would be preoccupied with the ROM itself)...

My weekend had been pretty much up to expectations as stated before...
I managed to watch some of the Japanese entertainment shows I had downloaded which after a while become quite dry..
Nonetheless SMAPXSMAP is always up to some queer antics, with the revival of the SMA World Cup in commemoration to the World Cup later this year..
They had done it before in 2002 when the WC was hosted in Japan and S. Korea...
This time round the lads dressed as footballing superstars (Shingo as Beckham; Kimura as Guti, Goro as Nakamura Shunsuke, Nakai as a popular former J-League star Alcindro and Tsuyoshi as a really ugly Ronaldhino) were up against some of the best footballers in the Japanese entertainment scene led by Moriyama Naotaro (who has a No. 1 hit in 2003).
SMAP was helped the real Alcindro who is often running of of breath and carry a beer-belly now and tends to shoot on sight as if he was expecting weak opposition...
Nonetheless the SMA All Stars lost 3:4 to the Japan All Stars who was awarded tickets to the finals in Germany in June....

Talking about football, of course my addiction for FM 2006 grew roots deep but my Barca team is not as ravishing and sweeping all opposition as the previous reincarnation but it was really sweet to rout Real 7:1 at Nou Camp with my alter ego, Krystofur van de Heinz scoring double hat-tricks (though 3 are penalties, I'll take it)...that is of course after the 3rd attempts as the previous 2 resulted in both draws which I simply could not accept.

I had also managed to find some time to do update my webpage which is a real achievement with respect to my discipline not distracted by temptations to play the game which could result in a massive backlog to be done for the webpage if that was so...

On Saturday I did made my way down to La Tendo and was impressed by the new display cabinet installed to sell the loose figurines. It is sort of what i had in mind except there was absence of lighting on th top and was replaced by glasses to allow transmission of natural room lighting to illuminate the display...
They had enlisted the contractor father of Zack, one of the owners of the neighbouring toy show which had shut down operations recently (which also led to the failure of our clothing retailing shop to materialize); and at that kind of dimensions (around 2 m in length which is what I had in mind as well) cost only around $2K which is a reasonable price if you ask me...

There wasn't any new stocks to interest me and as I intended to depart for home as my lass who was attending a seminar for her sidelines would be staying over that evening.
Then Miyano and Reedy appeared from the office and the former invited all of us to their place for dinner...
Well it wasn't nice to reject that hearty offer plus I had already missed out the karaoke session on Monday, so I felt it would be an opportunity to hang out with my clique and with my lass just nearby (she was having course in Tanjong Pagar while Vincent's place is in Jln Membina in Tiong Bahru) so she could joined us after her affairs especially with red wine promised by Miyano.

So after the absent-minded Vincent had finally done the accounts for that day, we set for their place as Eng Kiong gave those of us without transportation a lift.

Miyano prepared quite a spread including some Japanese style soup with corns, Enoki mushrooms and kelps as well as a chicken meatballs in sweet sauce sponsored by Reedy..actually it was left overs from the previous night mini celebrations for Tay-chan's birthday but we are not ready to complain a bit.
It was hilarious to see the interaction of the bickering couple with Vincent shaking legs and ordering Miyano as a maid; only to be chastised by his wife for not helping a bit...
Then with a stomach which is wide as an universe, he kept prompting us to have more food, to the frown of Miyano of course despite the fact that all of us said we are full...

My lass came at around 11 plus, just in time to savor a rather tardy red wine as we chat about the funny customers seen in the shop as well as how people came to befriend only to back-stab them with much deflated prices to literally make the look bad with the customers...
There was even a case when a newly opened toy shop at Funan IT Mall, even send someone to distribute flyers in front of their shop under broad daylight which really irked me..However the seasoned businessmen like Vincent dealt with that person correctly and in the end the shop actually closed down after a while...sucker....

The chat carried own till wee hours in the morning as we touched on charity in Singapore, comparison in lifestyles in Japan and Singapore, Studio Ghibli productions, personal hygiene and anything and everything possible and even gauge our personalities via the anime characters we like...meanwhile my poorlass who was totally exhausted slept on the couch till the time we made our way home at around 3 in the morning...yikes...
I slept at 4 that morning and woke up around 10 and last evening only had another 6 hours of rest...so seriously for me weekend is definitely not about rest and recuperation for the torrid week ahead...

Japanese word of the day: 相違(Differences) Miyano and Vincent are a pair of strange bedfellows which made their relationship even more interesting for themselves and for the rest of us as well.