I write this blog entry huddled in a small corner of the bed, surrounded by my clothing, bags and other personal belongings. Half-packed bags spilling their contents litter the room around me. My luggage on the floor shows evidence of the struggle to pack as much stuff in as possible. This is reminiscent of the scene of my room when I first arrived more than 6 months ago when I took up the assignment to relocate to Beijing as part of my company's expansion into China.

It was with mixed feelings when I stepped out of the airport; excitement mixed with just a little dose of anxiety. On the expressway away from the airport, the scenery around me was an blurring kaleidoscope of tall billboards and rows of trees bare of leaves. I can understand the words on the signboards, as well as the DJ's voice blaring out from the radio, but there is also a hint of intriguing unusualness. The juxtaposition of familiar words and exotic accents added to the jumbled sense of recognition yet strangness.

Six months later, under the same surroundings, breathing the same air, the mood is distinctly different. I have been terrified by the traffic conditions, appalled by the hygenic conditions, and frustrated by the abundance of touts at tourist spots. But at the same time, I have also been pleasantly surprised by the courtesy of the general public, impressed by the professionalism of the people, especially those working in the service industry, and enticed by the many exotic cuisines that are on offer here.

For a city of such size (about 24 times the size of Singapore), you can expect to be offered a multiude of facades. Beijing is steeped in rich history and traditions, yet it is also a modern city. Beijing has huge malls and arcades, yet it also has dodgy cigar and liquor stalls. Beijing has unshaven sullen labourers, yet it also has bubbly rosy-cheeked children. You can be dining on la cuisine francaise knowing that within a few minutes of walking, you can just as easily be sitting by the roadside, munching on 肉串 and drinking beer by the bottle. You can see the tai-tais in their elegant fur coats checking out the latest LV and Gucci wares; you can also see beggars braving the snow, clad in scant clothing and clutching their few worldly belongings with grimy hands. The deeper your explore into its people, its culture, the more contrasting are the impresssions that are made on you.

I have always believed that to fully appreciate a new environment, we have to embrace it with an open mind. Giving it a chance to endear itself to us means we are also giving ourselves a chance for it to accept us. As with many, many other things, to take something out from a situation, to benefit from an experience, we sometimes have to give a little of ourselves before we can take anything out from it.

These six months here have taught me a lot; that the world may viewed mostly be in black and white, but I will be doing myself a great disservice if I petulantly ignore the many shades of gray that lies between. Nothing is ever absolute, and often, it is up to us ourselves to decide what we make of it. I could so easily have condemned my stay here as unpleasant, and believe me, it is certainly not difficult to do so. The weather, the climate, the hygiene and the food does take some getting used to.

But luck is on my side. I have met some kind hearted people, and I have made some good friends. I have enjoyed many mouth-watering cusines, and I have seen many wonderous sights. I am glad that I have taken the plunge to embrace Beijing, and let it accept me in turn.

Beijing, thank you and fare well.

Heh, corrected some typos. Thanks Mr Lowem.

When i first came to Beijing, and when we go to restuarant for lunch or dinner, once we asked for bill, the waitress will ask us naturally whether we want receipts (发票）or not? Wai will normally say no to them but i have always wondered about them.

So one fine day, i insisted to take the receipt lo, curious why Wai dowan to take everytime they asked. The receipt is not those normal receipt we see in Singapore, it's not the breakdown of what we eat, rather it's sort of a voucher. eg. if we ate $83, they'll give us 1 $50 receipt (voucher look alike), 3 x $10 and 3 x $1 receipt. There's no use for us cos we didn't get to see the breakdown on individual food we consumed. So i never asked for receipts anymore.

Today is my last full day in BJ so i decided to do some last minute shopping, went to this 王府井, shop around and had my lunch. I was having sushi, seated at those sushi train alone. A lady sat next to me also alone, so when she asked for bill, the waitress asked her the magic question: "要开发票吗?" and she says yes.

As usual, you know i'm very chatty wan so i approached her, "Excuse me, I'm jus curious, what's the receipt for actually? Do you use that to claim from your company?"

She said, "Oh... no..no.. the BJ government actually encouraged people to ask for receipt everytime they eat or buy anything from those resturants and retail shops. So to encourage them, they actually have this "Scratch & Win" printed on the receipt.

It's amazing, isn't it? Only until my last full day then i realised and i had missed so many chances of winning. *sigh* The highest prize is $3K somemore leh . So I thanked the lady and say goodbye

So when I asked for bill this time round, i asked for 发票 too. And I scratched the receipt on the spot. Guess what??? i struck a prize!!! *yipppeeeee* So happy leh. Never in my life i ever won such "Scratch & Win" contests leh. I was so happy leh. First time in my life!

Hmph...btw, it's jus RMB$10 (SGD$2) It's not how much I won, is I ever won before now *jin happy leh* luck is coming my way now..........

I even took a picture of my voucher and winnings leh. Click on the thumbnail, and you can see a bigger picture. The original 发票 is the one on the top, where the Scratch & Win is on the upper right. Once you've redeemed your prize, they'll tear away the right part and give you back the left portion, which is the one in the middle. The one at the bottom is my winnings!

....sucks!

And so does my satellite TV, which has been down since CNY. I kept calling the housing agent to get the repairman to come down, but he kept dodging me. He has already collected his commission, so there's no incentive for him to service me.

Yes, housing agents here sucks too.

And even when it's working, I get ESPN Philipines, not ESPN Asia, so most of the time, they show snooker on Saturday night. Can you believe it? Snooker on a Saturday night?

This CCTV signed a multi-year deal with the Bundesliga to telecast their games live. Who on earth watches that? Except the Germans, that is. Their website doesn't even have an English version. It's even worse than then S.League. And the players' kits are gay. You often have teams dressed up in pink, purple and green. They probably signed the deal with the Germans because it's cheap.

I'm left with Dragon TV and BTV, which don't keep accurate programme listings on their websites. You can happily confirm that they are broadcasting a certain match live, and then on the actual day, you find that the telecast has been replaced with one of the local basketball, or their local football league, or another league match. If you are lucky, after they have finished with the current telecast, they'll then give you a delayed live telecast of the match that they are supposed to broadcast.

What this means is that they will telecast what you wanted to watch at that time, minus what you missed earlier. The presenters even have the cheek to tell you that they will transfer you to the live telecast match without further ado, as the match has already progressed for half an hour, and then gives you another 5 minutes of TV commercials.

I have checked and re-checked so many times, on the broadcaster's website and on the football forums that they are showing the Chelsea Arsenal match live, on 4 different channels. Now, 1 is showing Juventus Milan, 1 showing Milan Chievo, 1 showing Everton Man-U, and the last one showing late night commericals on some mythical pills that can cure you of all illness, prolong your life, and probably does your laundry as well.

Lately, Dragon TV has even resorted to putting a message on their TV programme page: "Programmes are accurate as of actual time." Basically telling you to switch on the TV at the given time to see what you get. Why on earth bother with a TV programme listing page then? Those people responsible for the online programme listings should be forced to watch a whole season of Bundesliga matches continuously, and after that, fed a truckload of those mythical pills and then shot.

After they've done my laundry, of course.

We rolled in the following enhancements:

• SGT timing

  The date time for entries and comments has been updated to reflect SGT, which is GMT+0800. Initially I thought this caused me a login problem, but it was a separate issue. Many thanks to Mr Lowem for pointing this out.

• New editor for comments input

  After some searching and hacking around, we have a new editor for better editing of comments. Simple text editing controls are provided.

  And ... SURPRISE!!! ... smileys are included. Heh. The class of smileys are from YM, which has quite a number of smileys, so loading make take some time. The good thing is that the smileys are loaded in another window, so if you don't want to use smileys, then the loading time is avoided.

  The bad thing is that the new editor only works with Firefox and IE. So if you are using Opera, it's back to good old TEXTAREA. Then again, it may work with version 8, which has just been released, so you never know. Hmm... come to think of it, I should give it a try tomorrow, maybe if I change the User-Agent, it may work....

As mentioned in the previous entry, Jas has already settled her ticketing issue, and is flying back to Singapore on the night of 22nd on Air China. She should be touching down about 6 in the morning on the 23rd. This has gone according to plan.

However, due to some unforseen circumstances, Wai will not be travelling on the same flight. Wai will be flying back on the 25th instead, taking the afternoon SQ flight, and touching down at 10+ in the evening.

Hope to see our friends and family soon.