frutti.gummi

I have been going to bed late almost every night, for the past two weeks. To me, after 1am is late, especially on weekdays. I ended up waking up late and feeling tired. I know I could have gone to bed earlier as I wasn't busy with work and I wasn't even out most of the time. Somehow, I just spent the time at home and by the time I looked at the clock, it was past midnight. Still had to take a shower before going to bed. Tonight, I shall break this routine and go to bed before midnight. I just hope I could fall asleep soon.

After three years of being away from work, my savings is gone. When I decided to go back to school, it never occurred to me that this could happen. I thought that since everything is paid for, I didn't need to use any money. Well, that held true when I was abroad. However, I forgot that I still had ongoing expenses in Malaysia. I've spent the bulk of my savings paying off my car loan, giving money to my parents and buying Europe-Malaysia round trip air tickets. Just the air tickets alone had cost me about 15k!

When I moved back to Malaysia, I was aware that I didn't have much money left. In spite of this knowledge, I still chose to start work in January instead of December. I thought it was enough to sustain me for another month but I forgot to take into account that I need to use money when I go to work (lunch money, toll and gas) and I'd only be paid at the end of the month. Lol, it's amazing how quickly I forgot about these things just after a few years of using almost free public transportation and cooking my own lunch. Anyway, I managed to survive the first month without incurring any debt and was overjoyed when I received my "first" paycheck! :D

Now, after two paychecks, I have a bit more savings and feel more secure. Also feel more comfortable going out and spending a bit more on food. For the past two months, I wasn't very keen on spending more than 10 bucks for lunch and I went home for dinner most of the time. I'm also not in a shopping mode and I think it's mostly because I'm still a bit averse to crowds. So instead of having much social life, I've finished reading 3-4 books and still catching up on quite a few episodes of some tv series that I was watching.

The plan is to stay debt-free, keep expenses low and grow savings as much as possible this year. Hopefully will be able to amass at least 50% of what I had.

My black clothes are covered with an unusual amount of lint. When I want to wear a black top or pants, I have to spend a few minutes getting rid of the lint. Under room lighting, they are not so obvious but under sunlight, they really stand out! Since there's no window in my room, I have to go to the next room and stand next to the window to do that. Even then, I only managed to get rid of some because my house don't get much sunlight in the morning. It'd the totally weird to stand outside the house to do this. Hahahha. Now, I keep a lint remover in my car and I do it in the car. The problem is, if I'm already wearing it, then I can't reach the back. Lol

Anyway, I don't remember having this problem before. I wonder if my place has more dust now and they start sticking on my clothes. They seemed alright after I washed them. I hang them to dry outside under the sun but I don't know if they are covered with lint after they dry coz I'm not the person who collected the clothes. Then,
they usually sit inside a basket for at least a week before I iron and hang them inside my closet. By the time I take them out for ironing, they are already covered with lint/dust. I have the impression that even if I remove them before/after ironing, they will have lint by the time I want to wear them. So now I just remove them when I want to wear them.

I'm going to find out the root cause of this problem and fix it so that I don't have to do lint removal every time I wear black.

My 7-year-old wireless router have started to show signs of aging. The connection dropped suddenly just now. I can still see it on the network list but could no longer connect. I tried with my phone and it also didn't work. So, I restarted the router a couple of times but the phone still wasn't able to connect. I thought that I needed to buy a new router and wondered if the new routers are backward compatible with wireless-B. I know that's ancient technology but I still have a very old Mac iBook running. Anyway, I got an idea to change the SSID and the router is working again! Hehehe. No need to buy new router for the time being.

Now that I think about it, lately,  I had to restart the router as well as the modem about once a week on average when the internet connection dropped. The indicator lights on both the router and modem are blinking fine and no warning message in Windows. However, I just cannot load any website or connect to any IM. Am not too sure that it's the router and modem problem because I know my laptop has problems with wireless connections sometimes.

Having spent the last few years living in non English-speaking countries, I've pretty much got used to seeing words and hearing conversations that I don't understand. Although I don't understand the words, I still could read them because they consist of Roman alphabets. So when I was deciding whether to go to Shanghai, I was a little apprehensive because it's more challenging. More challenging in the sense that I can't read Chinese script, in addition to not speaking much Mandarin. Then I  thought it shouldn't be that bad since it's Shanghai where lots of expats live so people there should understand some English.

Having convinced myself that I'll somehow survive, I decided to volunteer in Shanghai for a month at the end of last year. Overall, it was a rather unique experience and I shall expound on that in another post. Coming back to the language challenge, there is another element which I did not take into account. Because I look Chinese, people expects me to speak the language and it takes them a while to realize that I actually don't speak their language and they get confused and don't know where to place me. And this in turn makes me feel like I don't fit here nor there, and sometimes like an outcast. I could sense that they are uncomfortable talking to me but I don't blame them because it is out of their normal experiences. 

I did manage to go about town on my own because the street signs and subway have English words that I can match with my map. However, the English words are not useful for asking the locals where a certain street or place is located because the words have no pinyin intonation. Chinese words can have totally different meaning in different tones and some streets have similar sounding names. So it's possible they point you to a different place! Furthermore, some of the name of the landmarks are in English and not a translation from Chinese, e.g. The Bund, People's Square, and Oriental Pearl Tower. It took me a while to know the respective Chinese names because when my co-workers asked me if I've visited any place, they said the name in Chinese and they don't know the English name. Eventually I managed to match the two together. Hahaha. Besides street signs, the ticket machines for the subway and train stations have English version. So if you can read a map well, you shouldn't have any problem getting around Shanghai.


Besides fast-food and upscale restaurants, most of the restaurants and food stalls do not have English menu and the staff don't speak much English, if at all.  As a result, I had limited choices when I'm on my own. There is a small restaurant around the corner from my aunt's apartment and we order food from there once in a while. I memorized the name of the few dishes I like from the menu so that I could order them when my aunt is not around.  Otherwise, I could still cook instant noodles. Hahahaha.

After spending a month in China, I'm now more comfortable speaking Mandarin, not that my Mandarin improved much though.