IMF, East Coast, Mini Golf

As everyone knows by now the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently came to Singapore and created a little storm in a teacup when contentious issues such as the unwilling compromise of the Singapore government on protestors raised the irk of the members. Although I agree on one hand about the lack of freedom of expression in Singapore, they should also consider why they chose Singapore in the first place. Isn't security their topmost priority? They should look at the sacrifices we have made as ordinary citizens behind the facade of 4 million smiles. I'm sure the campaign has lost quite a few smiles from its citizendry including the motorists, pedestrians and the traffic policemen who had to juggle with difficult traffic situations:


Oh well, at least that's over. Let's hope Suntec will continue to look as wonderful as it has been during IMF.

My family went to East Coast Park last Saturday for a walk and the weather was alright. We came across the renovated pond in East Coast Park that has now been transformed to a wakeboarding circuit where wakeboarders are pulled by this machinery that traverses around the pond. Price? A whopping $40/hr or $8/round. God forbid the woeful beginner who buys a one-round ticket and falls off on his maiden attempt! Most of the cliente I observed were foreigners which comes as no surprise given the exhorbitant ticket.

We also chanced upon this venture(read: capitalistic) "shop" which sells sandcastle-making mould sets at $30 each. A few pieces of plastic to be used on public sand? Good for corporate activities where the company pays I guess.


So that was last Saturday. This week at work - not many things happened, but I think I am much ready to move on to RP. We finally had a meeting with IT to discuss the scope of the new website which is supposed to be my pet project, and it turns out that my involvement will only be for a pretty minor component. I personally don't see much value in that and it sounds pretty administrative, so I should start counting my calendar down. I've got a response from RP that I can start next year too, so I guess I will do it once it is approved.

We also went for a department lunch yesterday, as a sort of welcome party for me and an excuse to hang out. We went to au Jardin at Botanical Garden, and it is french cusine and very expensive~! It was my first attempt trying foie gras (goose liver), and I almost retched. What an awful experience! However, it was very fun to people-watch. Behind me was this table of tai-tais and according to AGL who was sitting opposite to me and had a clear view, it seemed like a birthday party with them exchanging gifts. Sigh the life of taitais! In front of me was another table of guys in suits which wasn't the most exciting.


In the afternoon after returning from the lunch, it was back to work as usual but the afternoon was cut short when the whole company trooped down to Lilliputt at East Coast for another company get-together. I scored a hole-in-one out of 18 holes, no easy feat! (actually it's luck, really) However, amongst the 18 holes I still threw my face away with a grand total of 100 (so far only one another colleague hit 3 digits, the average being around 80). So paise!

JN of my detail. She's part of the rec team and the impartial scorekeeper.
This is Z from IT. He's a pretty fun guy from what I gathered around in office.
That's M in the background, a New Zealander and Oracle programmer.

That's AT, a colleague who sat in front of me when I was temping in the IT department before I moved over to Communications as a perm on probation.

Another blurry picture.

Benefits are great, perks are great, but I have yet to experience job satisfaction which I think is very important to last long in a job. Sigh.