|
Penny in Taipei
posted : Sunday, April 27, 2025
So I made a spontaneous short trip to Taipei for a concert.
A few interesting aspects of this trip - the furthest I flew just for a concert - there are very few artists who would induce such a thought - the spontaneous aspect of it, because I really didn’t think I would be going for another one of her concerts anytime soon considering I just went one last year, but le BFF said he didn’t mind so that got me all excited. It was a day after ticket sales open though and I didn’t think she was that popular, but tickets are almost sold out so we had to make very swift decisions. Or rather I had to make very swift decisions with respect to air tickets, spotted a somewhat reasonably priced ticket via China Airlines (although it was a red eye flight) and just heck it. Our seats weren’t the best either but that’s okay, can watch on the big screen. And with that the trip was set in stone. Oh and because Penny was sort of a guilty pleasure for me (I can’t explain why) I decided not to advertise my trip, and eventually since I had to spend on souvenirs I just cooked up a story that my parents went Taipei instead lolol. Was a pretty chill trip though! Considering I arrived as a zombie I didn’t plan to do much, and these days for cities I’ve been to in the past I’ll skip the attractions and work in stuff like cafe hopping instead. Boss Su was also in a remote working mode as usual so the pace suits him as well. There’s only a couple of components I wanted to work in which was a visit to a night market, a hotpot experience, and a revisit to 大稻埕 but sadly with just two nights and one of it dedicated for concert I couldn’t quite make the latter happen. But oh well there’s always chance for another weekend getaway.  Had wanted to visit the revamped SATS lounge in T3, and this coincided with (sort of) the end of my cutting phase where I had two months of bland food so gosh everything was nice to me.  CI uses an old A330 plane for this flight, Flighty app tells me this plane is 19 years old wah. And it’s been a long time since I last saw an IFE screen this small  Crew woke us up for meals and it was a full dinner meal at 330am uhhh. I mean I do want my meals on a full service but on a sleeper flight, really?  Manage to catch another couple hours of interrupted sleep and sun rising as we descend  I got lucky this time! Chose the 7-11 card which turns out to not be the best choice because there are many places that don’t accept it. Accommodation voucher or easy card would have been much better.  Didn’t Uber because don’t know how to choose the correct pick up point. Instead took cab and there’s this screen for passengers where 李洋 and 王麒麟 kept making appearances in multiple ads  First order of business is lounge breakfast with Globalist Su. My chin was at its sharpest from the two month cut damnit why are the fats gone from there instead of my stomach.  Caught a couple hours more of sleep while KH worked and eventually we made it out for our lunch reservation at Wu Lao hotpot. The mala soup base wasn’t too bad actually, fragrant rather than numbing but I still got irritated coz smell like a walking hotpot afterwards. All in all pretty nice food but I won’t call it mind blowing haha.  Went to self print and collect tickets at a machine in 7-11  Made it back to lounge for evening cocktails  Room had a view of 101!  Night market! Went to a nearby one, 臨江夜市  First BBT of the trip  I missed this 冰火湯圓! Had it at their 饒河branch last time round and this is their OG shop, but somehow the wow factor had gone haha there I was still trying to hype it up to KH  Breakfast next morning, we decided to go downstairs for the much larger spread.  Then proceeded to laze in room while KH worked, it was really about 1pm when we headed out. Went to explore the 中山area  Random cafe that we stopped for lunch. Sat at the balcony for the feels, it was starting to get warm actually so that wasn’t the best idea.  This daifuku from a stall at the pop up market  Oh hey 30kph  This was a viral spot, I didn’t even know that this is the area where they are at. And KH finally remembered that he was here at his last trip too because prior to that he insisted he had never been here before. This was a grape americano and it was good.  Also a random spot for a more fancy daifuku  小巨蛋. After all I heard about this place, I thought it was underwhelming honestly, like not as grand a venue I thought it would be, actually I think it’s even smaller than Axiata arena in KL? Either that or coz Penny only used like 3/4 of the seats.  Her entrance surprised me.  When she got closer to our side  Low key disappointed at her choices of guests, when she said the next guest performer is singing 別再想見我 I literally thought 許光漢 was coming out but no. They were funny though.  All time favorite song.  KH kept saying she looks like Hebe with this look.  Another concert checked off The final day I had a bit of solo trip time because KH’s flight was early afternoon which meant he left after breakfast, and the rest of my day was a bit messy too coz I didn’t really plan well, but again it’s all about chilling even if I ended up rushing a bit to the airport because it was hard to get a uber in town apparently on a Sunday.  Drop by 101 for a bit of window shopping.  Went back to 永康街 and settled for this cafe coz 油飯 caught my interest  Of course got coffee  Cafe interior  永康街  白水豆花 which I didn’t manage to try last time. Interesting, smooth but there’s added texture by shaved peanuts and what’s with coriander? Sorry it doesn’t belong in a dessert. 7/10  Soma milk tea which I have had the instant version but first time trying the actual one  Slightly newer plane for the flight home so the screen was correspondingly slightly bigger  Meal was alright again  Highlight of my meal  Bye Taipei. See you again soon. So that was a short and fun trip! And it did got me thinking that trips like this are rather feasible, that together with getting influenced by travel influencers like shutterwhale lol. More trips in the making then? And at this rate I won’t even have time to update this blog with other life happenings already (I am already severely behind on my updates haha). Let’s see! |
|
Fish
posted : Saturday, June 29, 2024
Couple months on and I suddenly remembered I haven’t talked about this, at all.
So this was concert number 3 and 4, this year alone. I think I maybe attended 3-4 concerts my whole life previously so this was some sort of record, post-COVID revenge style. I am not sure why but I didn’t entirely believe in spending money on concerts last time, and to be honest the artists themselves were also on this revenge tour of sorts too coz well, it’s good money. Which means opportunity to attend concerts is higher. And yes, I did say 3 AND 4. Because I ended up attending twice LOL. I didn’t have high expectations going in, in fact I was totally expecting her to butcher a song or two. As it turns out she was pretty okay, I think not really the best vocals wise because she maybe spent too much time being emotional and crying. But I think she was very smart with the setlist - she knew what sort of crowd she was bringing in, those of our age in search of nostalgia so she duly delivered all her hits from the past, and only limited herself to a couple of songs from her new album which not many are familiar with. And with the correct partner in crime - Boss Su - we went into a full on 3 hour karaoke mode. All my favourites were in, so engrossed that I almost didn’t notice the somewhat lacking vocals and only when I watched back the videos I took then it dawned on me hahaha. But it’s ok, the atmosphere was one to remember.  Think this was taken by Boss Su  We had very good views, Cat 1 yo.  One with Boss Su So much so that on the way home, I started googling for ticket availability for her KL concert 3 weeks later, air tickets, and I didn’t stop at my own, I checked BWN-KUL tickets and somehow managed to get Stel on board too hahahah. That and KahSiong who had to give the SG concert a miss coz of other familial commitments, waited a bit while Stel finalized her work commitments while anxiously watching her air ticket prices go up, then all of a sudden a second KL trip of the year is on! And to think when KH asked me to come along for the KL one previously I flatly said no coz I didn’t think I would attend the same concert twice lolol. So the KL concert I went in knowing what to expect, she repeated most of her SG setlist but swapped out a couple of songs and added a couple in the encore segment, vocals wise I think she held it together better this time round too (less crying). Our seats were less ideal than the SG one coz we bought late and I wasn’t prepared to splurge that much anyway, intention was to sit down and listen rather than spending energy on something else like filming so that was what I did.  Take two, zoom like 9x or something. Heart was full from these two concerts! Not sure if I will end up with more this year. Hahaha. |
|
Abandoned
posted : Sunday, October 23, 2011
Eeps...even with more free time this sem, blog is more abandoned than ever. Not sure whether anybody is still reading this though :S
FYP update: Still not progressing a lot, and I suppose it's getting alarming because during the last meeting with prof, he was instructing two of my classmates about what they can start writing about for their interim report. He appeared to be satisfied with the reading I have done, claiming that I am finally confident about what I am saying, when what I am telling him is really what I have found out the week before =.= No instructions about interim report so that means I am the slowest among all 4? Eeps. But then again, what he was telling the other two was really rather trivial stuff like "you can start writing about the procedures of the experiment you conducted"...which is really straight out of the textbook? And the information I have are really jumbled up and I am not too sure how to link them all up or make enough sense out of them to stuff into my interim. :S Oh well. Looks like I need to spend more time during vacation on this and I can never get any work done at home, plus I am pretty sure I need to meet him once a week as well, unless he fly off for some conference or trip (I hope). Was planning to do enough work to impress him last week so when he is in a good mood, I can ask him about it...but then the graduate students and the other Prof were all around and I decided it was a bad idea to ask. But it really doesnt look like I will be home for more than 3 weeks. And it is probably the last time I can have a long vacation (by long I mean one month and above) at home T.T CNY tickets are settled though, actually went to plan for my timetable next sem (i should not have any difficulties securing any module I want) and I can have a one-day week LOL. Therefore awarded myself a 10-day CNY holiday at home hee hee. As for the other two modules....ITS project is progressing really slowly because the program we are using only has one license key and while one person is holding on to it, nobody else can do anything. Not even writing report because the simulation results are not out yet! And these two weeks we practically have zero progress coz the person holding the key didnt do anything and we were waiting for Circle Line to open before collecting more data because we anticipated changing travel patterns. Then came the data collection part....think I was attracting weird stares from everybody at the bus stops...like "there is this weird guy recording down bus arrival schedules and counting the number of people alighting and boarding". Especially since we are mainly collecting on busy bus stops during peak hours. A few times I have to sort of wave away people I know because I was halfway counting the sea of humans and they came over to chat :S Pretty glad by the end of the third and final day of collection. As for the Traffic Flow module...report progress have stalled since the second report because data collection partners are always busy. Sometimes have half a mind to just do it myself...SY=procrastinate therefore ended up just waiting. First two reports were graded and actually turned out not too bad. Given that this is a class of just 12 people, there shouldnt be any bell curve and possibly wont turn out bad? I hope. This is probably the only semester when I find all my modules interesting (save for FYP, dont really count that as a module), very much due to the fact that I have unofficially specialized in a field that I am interested in. I don't even fall asleep in class anymore and it's a three hour class! Though admittedly I havent been revising either and am having trouble recalling what lecturers said two or three weeks after the class, but I am feeling positive. That sure is a good thing. *********************** Skipped half of my ITS class on Tuesday to attend Concert, rebranded as RHMP this year. Was really glad that I skipped class, show has flaws throughout (the singing!) but was thoroughly enjoyable. The music composition was good! I thought publicity and PR did very well too this year - they had the correct people leading them. The sets were grandddd (okay for hall production standard) though it means they were immobile and we see sets people doing sets change in broad "stagelight", something I was rather uncomfortable with. Didn't have to go down to advise tech but I guess they din really need me and they did okay too. Was very glad to see concert back on track...after the no-freshman crisis, it seemed like things are finally going back to normal for most of the big comms and traditions, Orientation being one, Concert being another, and I think Float probably has least chance of going back to the norm after what they have gone through this year. Though, on closer examination, the people holding concert together this year are mostly alumni and final years (majority of the music is composed by alumni, script by alumni, producer is a final year and alumni). How much have been learnt and absorbed by the juniors is unknown, but good to see that most of them are having as much fun or "fun" as we did in our freshman year. We shall see. ************************** Signed up for three volunteering events over the last two weeks: grabbed Stel to volunteer for Standard Chartered Marathon Singapore with me, then got emails about volunteering for the FINA/Arena Swimming World Cup 2011 (Singapore Leg) and The SGX Bull Charge 2011 and signed up for both. Another side interest of mine :) which I have abandoned for a while too because didnt have time to + was sorely disappointed by my volunteering stint during YOG. The first two are confirmed too. ************************** Havent been actively reading up about career related stuff or even attended a single career talk this sem. I guess that makes me an apathetic final year student? Hahaha. Maybe, it just means that I don't feel ready to go out there yet...... Sometimes when I can't sleep and my mind wanders around...I started thinking about job interviews....they always emphasize a lot about looking smart for your interview and how first impression counts etc etc...and I can't help but wonder if I am at a disadvantage right from the beginning. Would I not be able to make it pass an interview for my dream job because of the-stupid-p-word? How much of a disadvantage am I at right now? And I am not just talking about work...about a couple of other things actually..... ************************** Wow..actually spewed out that many words in less than an hour...would be greattttttt if I was this productive while writing reports... Labels: concerts, FYP, NUS, thoughts, volunteering |
