Thanks to the free satellite photos provided by Google, here is where we stayed in Beijing. Our apartment is the white apartment that is in the centre of the photo. The sandy rectangle to the left is a olympic sized running track with a football pitch in the centre. The slim and long red rectangles on the right is the Beijing West Railway Station.

Marvellous stuff. Too bad the satellite photos for Singapore aren't as detailed.

Been a feel day since I updated anything. Work has been pretty heavy this week, most of it trying to figure out what is happening in the code, before it gets changed everytime I do a CVS update.

Not all has been work though. Somebody found an old but working table tennis table in the storeroom, so we are adding table tennis to the staple entertainment diet of table soccer after office hours.

Jas' mom has been recovering, and should be discharged from the hospital soon. A big thanks to the well-wishers. She's staying for a few more days to cleanse the toxic in her blood. According to the doctors, her condition has been brought along by a history of irregular meal times, and unbalanced diet.

Joo Huat, an ex-colleague of mine, has started a freshwater aquarium for about 4 months, and has taken some pictures of it here. It's very nice, and his selection of fish is very colourful. Take a look.

How has your week been then?

We had a busy 2 days over the weekend. We had dinner with some of our friends on Friday night, and even though it has been a long week, somehow you don't feel like going to bed early on a Friday night.

We did have a lazy Saturday though; I woke up late and watched the marathon of Lost from 12 noon to 5 in the evening. After that, we went for buffet at Traders Hotel. It's a bit pricey, at $42+++ per person, but it is the most enjoyable buffet dinner that I've ever eaten. I ate until I almost puked. The selection of food is just awesome. There were like 6 different sections, each with 4 or 5, and sometimes more, different selections. The special thing was this chocolate fountain, which Jas absolutely adored, where you lance pieces of fruits with a bamboo stick, and dip it into the fountain, and get this glob of molten, shiny chocolate covering your entire piece of fruit...

I had planned to play football on Sunday morning, and then meeting my family for lunch, but I didn't manage to find enough people for football, so I thought I could sleep late and wake up just in time for lunch, but something came up.

Jas' mother, who had been sick with flu for a week, was very ill on Sunday morning. She didn't manage to take in much food during the week, as she often vomitted out what she'd eaten. In fact, she has not been eating for a few days, and she woke up on Sunday feeling very weak. She was admitted to hospital in the morning, and was put under observation. We waited for a few hours before the doctor came to talk to us, and told us that she may have got a lung infection. We were told that they needed to run more tests before they can be sure, so we went for lunch. When we came back from lunch, the nurse told us that she was to be warded for further observations. By then it was 1+ in the afternoon, and we were told to go home first, as beds are mostly available around 3+.

We left the hospital to pack some of her personal belongings for her. By 3.30, the hospital called and told us that they've got a bed for her already. So we went down to the hospital shortly after that. But not before buying 4D for the ambulance number, the ward and bed number.... That's the Seah family for you.

When we reached the hospital, there was another doctor examining her, and he told us that it's either lungs or urinal infection. It's nothing serious but she has to stay warded for a while. In the meantime, they took some tests with her blood, and she went for an X-ray as well. She was put on drip, and as soon as her condition has improved, she can be discharged.

We hope that she recovers soon. It is never good to be ill, especially the elderly. Furthermore, it is especially damaging when she was unable to take in normal food for a few days. It is at times like this, that you realize the importance of a balanced diet. We are, we always are, what we eat.

It's been quite some time since I looked in on the developments of 和群. For the benefit of those who don't know, he's my secondary one classmate, who brought his wife Gina and baby boy, Ranen to Angola for missionary work last September.

There's been some new photos uploaded, and the journal has been updated. Everybody is well, Ranen has grown a lot, as far as I can tell from the photos. 和群 didn't change much, in more ways than one. Same hairstyle, even the same t-shirts!

I'm not too sure whether they'll be back in September, as what they said originally, but as always, let's hope they're safe.

I have been pretty busy with work for the past week. I am working with Swing in my current job, and moving from web application development to desktop development is not that easy. I've just gone through a steep learning curve, so things are a little better now, but there's still a long way to go before I feel comfortable.

Jas should be pretty free at work though, since her boss is on a business trip at the moment. She's on more casual dressing this week, still smart and pretty, but not the power dressing that she sometimes need to go to work in. She's also forbidden to wear contact lenses for a week.

She had an eye infection last Friday, scaring the wits out of me, when she called me at 5+ in the afternoon, to complain that she had difficulty keeping her eyes open. She rushed to a clinic, in some state of fear, only to be told by the doctor that it was just a wee infection. The doctor gave her some eye drops and some ointment, and went out for dinner without even breaking a sweat, while she was worried that she will lose her sight and all.

I was caught in a traffic jam, so I reached the clinic after she'd seen the doctor. Having seen her condition first hand, all I can say is that it probably looked worse than it was, as it was pretty bad at first sight. She was still a little shocked, but soon recovered, and was soon busy taking pictures of her swollen eye on her camera phone and sending MMSes to her friends.

Yuanxiang and Melinda have uploaded their "official" photos of their wedding, and they have also compiled a video of their trip to Perth here. Do please take a look.