Life Snippets

Greetings from 上海! June 19, 2011

Woohoo! It’s been a long while since I’m active here… My apologies but it is an utmost challenge to connect to non-local sites… (I marvel at the censorship and thank god I have a somewhat-connecting VPN. ha)

This is almost my second month here. All’s been pretty good so far, as I have a steep learning curve. Moreover, I realised the good of leaving with parents. I never had to worry and buy so much stuff just to make the space more liveable. Had the revelation that I was able to focus so much on work, because home is already taken care of. Never really understood the depth of this until now.

Though new in the environment, I am learning to better my language skills. When I first came, people thought I was a Taiwanese / Hongkie. 1 month later, I sound like I’m from Guangdong. 1.5 month on, Singapore colleagues said I have a slight Chinese accent. Maybe in 2 months or so, I might really sound like a Shanghainese.

Work-wise, has not been a challenge yet save for the reading of Chinese proposals. As I (finally) sort out my invoices, I realised I have not been working really hard. While I really appreciate the punctual hours, but I kinda miss the hard work. I know I sound sadistic but I just wonder with a mixture of curiosity and fear, on what it would be like to be working my ass off and having to handle the daily independent household stuff.

Travel-wise, I have done a few. But the lack of company for the upcoming trips will need a lot of getting used to. But well, I will probably get used to the out-of-comfort-zone feeling. It is often a headache to plan my trips as there were a lot of impromptu trips for work. We’ll see how this works out. At least, this seems to be the ONLY weekend where I am at home in June. Ha.

And what I really missed is having friends whom I can simply call, when I need to bitch, share and to simply talk. Colleagues have been rather nice, but there are quite a few who I treat with caution. So guys, just so you know, I have Whatsapp!!! rofl.