A series of Japanese shows

Before going to Japan I kept watching Japanese shows to learn the language a little but after that I came back and watched more. 

Cooking shows like The Makanai and What did you eat yesterday made me want to really cook/eat Japanese food. 

I just finished first love yesterday and it made me want to go to Sapporo for the snow. Urgh.

The Utada song is stuck in my head.

Sore throat days

A few days of eating junk food had led to this. Last Saturday I was craving for Sushiro and went there to order the 4 piece sushi and then browsed for a side dish, then I saw mentaiko fries. Order! The fries came piping hot but I continued eating and felt a bit of sore throat, probably because the fries were too hot but the sushi were so good.

And the sore throat never stopped and I ended having sore throat for 3-4 days and coughing a lot. One of the reasons is also I have been pushing myself to go to the gym on Thursdays, increasing my gym routine and additional intake of protein powder is probably too heaty for my body so my body goes into a state of adjustment. 

Well it's not covid because I can still taste things and I don't have a fever. 

It's just like me in Tokyo November. I'm just coughing too much. 

Lozenges helped. Cough syrup helped. The time is ripe to go on another holiday.

Frozen musical

When I saw Frozen musical was coming to SG (last year) I was so excited and was looking for somebody to watch with me. Then all the overseas trip, I almost forgot about it, until Neab come here specially to watch it, and I realised there's only 2 weeks left.

Then Kat texted me and I casually asked if she wants to watch and she said OF COZ lol. So I was looking at the prices of the tickets... sighs... more than 150 each. Then I texted my cousin who works at MBS and he said there's no staff discount.

A few days later he said suddenly they announced that there's staff discount! LUCKY! And after the discount it was less than $100 for each ticket! But the catch is, they can only buy on that day of the show or tomorrow's show. We wanted the Sunday show so I accompanied him to buy the tickets on Saturday morning, after his night shift.

We bought the Sunday 1pm show because the seats were better. We had the $250+ seats at less than $100 and the view was amazing. There were a lot of Elsas and Annas and even some Mums cosplay lol. 

The first 10mins of the show were kids singing, but when the adult pros came out to sing it was wow. The lighting were so on point.

The first act ended with Let it go~ and everyone was really waiting for it. It was so GOOD. I had goosebumps when she started singing, and the gloves flew off and the transformation and the stage became this beautiful ice castle and just let it go let it go, just wow. 

After that Kat said we can go back already lol.

The second part was a bit boring. Olaf was a huge surprise, and he was amazing. They added new songs and did a medley using Let it go tunes to end. The light effects were awesome, so high tech, the timing was impeccable.

I still liked Lion King for the animals props and interactions, there were more surprises, but Frozen was not bad, Let it go was the highlight and the peak. 

Luckily we booked the afternoon show, we went for dim sum afterwards and some window shopping, then I went over to Suntec for the IT show. 

Let it gooooo let it goooo...

Back to routine

Ok now I'm more or less settled, no more travelling until further notice. 

I'm restarting my daily routine: Wake up, breakfast, email, gym, shower, lunch, green tea, work, game, dinner, watch shows, sleep.

Priority is gym. I haven't been seriously gyming/running for 2 months because of Manila, CNY, Japan where I sprained my ankle, and then Jakarta. I haven't ran for 1 whole month and today I just ran 2km and I feel like the first time I ran after Covid urgh. Such a hassle to build stamina. 

Also there are so many little little things to settle. Like my watch, my work, my expiring snacks, Domi stuff, Angus travel stuff, Rakuten stuff, Gundam stuff, sometimes I think I'm adding more trouble to myself. The more I know/do, the more things I have to settle. 

Oh wells.

Jakarta 2023

I've been linking up this team in Vietnam because they want to visit the Indonesia office since I visited the Hanoi office, then they decided on the dates and I thought I didn't have to go Indonesia but Kenki said it would be good for me to join them. Then I asked my boss and he said yes we have budget please go. Within 2 days everything was booked and here I was 5 days later.

I took Garuda because I want to avoid the lousy SQ food and it turned out to be the right choice. At least there were appetizers and they served metal cutlery.

The walk from the plane gate to the customs were super super long -_- I walked about 20 minutes? That's about 2.4km already. They could have installed a monorail train or something. But the customs were super quick for foreigners, no queue at all and he just paste a sticker on my passport and I'm off with the hotel car. 

Checked in, the hotel was average, while the other team was staying at Westin just beside mine. Jelly. I was looking at grab food on the way to the hotel and was craving Mee Goreng so I went to the mall beside the hotel and got it.

And also got the kueh kinda pancake thing that Brian recommended and I was super full. The pillow was too high and I didn't sleep well the first night.

The breakfast was average too, I only liked their latte and oatmeal. The driver took us to the office and we settled in, exchanged name cards and I was just day dreaming the whole day while attending the meeting. Smart casual coz I'm only the observer. The rest of the Indo colleagues were wearing batik shirts, so cool.

Lunch was this amazing fried duck rice and satay. They continued with their meeting and I continued enjoying my sparkling water. I finished 6 bottles and many snacks lol. The end of the day, they exchanged gifts, photos and I thought it was the end but the VN team pulled me for dinner and drinks. 

Mainly drinks. Beer and Chivas. And they were literally toasting only me because I'm the only Singaporean. I didn't expect them to drink so much because they had to wake up at 6.30am the next day lol but I only had a meeting at 11.30am haha. But yea the guys all got quite tipsy.

The next day after breakfast I started with a lunch meeting at this popular satay restaurant.

I really love the Jakarta team haha all the amazing food.

Then back to the office, continued casual chatting until 5pm, then the driver sent me back to the hotel to put down my bags and sent me to Grand Indonesia Mall for dinner.

After buying my lapis cake, Andrew brought me to this nice traditional Indo restaurant and it was quite cheap - dinner for 2 about $30??? Amazing. The mee goreng was too salty tho, but the satay was nice.

Nothing much to do the next day as well, breakfast, packed, checked out, airport. The airport was quick as well, no queue for foreign passports.  Flight was good and empty, food pretty decent. I was craving for rice.

It's all eating and eating in Jakarta, nothing special except it was raining the whole 3 days and I experienced their famous traffic jams. I didn't spend a lot, I brought about $177 in cash and I only used less than $100 because of all the free meals. Yea it was good meeting the team, they treated us like VIP  until I was embarrassed. I didn't stay another night because there's nothing much to do and I have a birthday party to attend to on Sunday.