It sucks to be sick on planes

I'm back in Singapore, but unfortunately, with a bout of what I would classify as, maybe moderate, food poisoning. And I can tell you,the plane ride was sheer torture.

Why moderate? Because its moderate in comparison to the last time I got food poisoning, which was when my mother was away in China and I ate some chicken pie that had been left in the fridge for too long. Then, I woke up at 5 in the morning, and from then till 1pm, puked three times accompanied with acute stomach ache. The amazing thing about that episode though was, I did not cancel my skating lesson. So at 3 pm, I dragged myself out of the house, walked to the MRT station, took the train to Jurong East, and went for my skating lesson.

This time, on the day of my flight, I woke up not feeling well. It must have been the beef and tomoto noodles I foolishly decided to try. The stomach did not hurt as much as last time though. What I did not expect nor realize was that I was slowly getting a fever. I mean I passed through the temperature checks at the Hong Kong check point perfectly well.

But as the flight progessed, I got colder and colder. Even though I was wearing my thick grey jacked and had the airline blanket tucked right up till my ears. And besides the cold, my eyes ached, and the seat seemed to be slanted too far back and the space was too cramped. So all I could do was obsessively monitor the flight path, and endure till the journey was over.
It sucks to fly while sick indeed.

Do British tabloids have too much time to spare?

Posh's Footsie Index: Or how much her heels cost per inch

The daily mail spent an entire article analyzing how much Victoria Beckham aka Posh Spice, spends per inch of heels. They compiled 11 rows of the above close-ups of shoes she wore on various occasions. They found out the brand of each pair of shoes. They found the cost of each pair, the height of the heels, and divided the cost by the height to find the price-per-inch, or PPI as they call it. Too much time, no?

PS: Of course, this means I confess to reading this daily time wasting gossip about celebrities. I mean, its pretty good brainless fun. Hehe.
Here's the article

'Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated'

I've always found this phrase amusing- theres just a certain ironic wit to it.
Edit: No wonder! I've found that it was Mark Twain who first said it.

Here's an interesting instance

Found on wikipedia:
Jonathan Agnew: in January 2007, this alumnus of Cambridge University heard that his death had recently been reported in the Trinity Record (presumably a newsletter of Trinity College, Cambridge). He contacted the Record saying he had apparently also been removed from its mailing list, and requested a copy of the obituary so he could check and if necessary correct it.

And here's what was published in the newsletter:
Exaggerated Reports
of My Death

Philosophy is supposed to reconcile us to death, and even
to reported death. It is nice to confirm that it can indeed
do so. This message was sent in January to the Trinity
Record by Moral Scientist Jonathan Agnew (1960).

Subject: Exaggerated reports of my death

To the Editor of the Trinity Record

Dear Sir,
I have been informed that the latest issue of the Trinity
Record reports that I died last August. I am unable to
verify this information directly since, with a certain
internal consistency, you are no longer sending me a copy
of the Record. I am pleased to tell you (and I hope that
you will be pleased to learn) that I am alive and well and
assure you that, within the limits of my powers, I will
inform you if the situation changes. I should be most
grateful if you would publish a correction before reality
catches up with your report and send me a copy of the
latest issue of the Record so that I can read and, if
necessary, correct my obituary. Without parapsychological
means, I remain a devoted reader of your Record and give
you my permission to publish this email.

Yours faithfully, Jonathan Agnew

Here's a few more amusing incidents:

• Dick Cheney (US Vice-President) in the CNN.com incident. The draft obituary, which had been based on the Queen Mother's, described Cheney as 'Queen Consort' and the 'UK's favorite grandmother'.
• Rex Alston (sports commentator, journalist and sportsman): when The Times updated its internal obituary file for him in 1985, it was accidentally published as an obituary. Alston remarried the following year (aged 85), thus having the unusual distinction of having his marriage announced in The Times after his obituary. He lived until 1994.
• Daphne Banks, a resident of Cambridgeshire, UK, was declared dead on New Year's Day, 1996. However, while she lay in a mortuary an undertaker noticed a vein twitching in her leg, followed by breathing and snoring. (wth? I'm sure!)She recovered in hospital. Local authorities and Mrs Banks' family refused to name the doctor who had declared her dead; her local GP would not comment, citing patient confidentiality.

Frozen Grand Central

This is absolutely cool, and the reactions of the NYC communters are hilarous. This is seriously good- these are seasoned commuters who don't notice crap- you know, the ones that tut if you walk like a milisecond slower than usual- and they were TOTALLY bewildered.



I know something similar happened in Singapore recently, but check out the poses in the videos! There were some really good ones.

Moving on, moving on

Yea. The very lesson after I wrote (typed) the previous post, my instructor moved on to new things. *looks a bit sheepish*

I'm in China now and will be back in Spore end July

Unfortunately, this means that I will have to miss the Judo team prelims and finals as I will still be in China at that time. All the best to those participating though! Good luck!

And now, an update on what I've been doing in China:

Skating
Thats basically the bulk of what I've been doing now so far. Shen zhen is an ice skating haven, with three rinks in relatively close proximity- large, not very crowded rinks some more. Having grown acccustomed to super crowded fuji ice palace, the rinks are fantastic here.

The coaches are top notch too, all former national team competitiors. The bad thing though, is that my previous coach was not as careful as he should be in teaching me my basics, so now I'm back to working on basics again- forward and backwards crossovers. There were so many things I didn't realize I had to do. I'm also a bit impatient with myself. I mean, how long does it usually take to get backward crossovers working properly? It seems as if I've been doing them for forever, and I KNOW I'm still not gettting them right. Argh.

Skating takes up like about 8 hours each day, including transport, time I spend slacking, plus lunch.

Shopping/exploring
If I have free time and energy after skating, which is not a lot, I explore a bit, do grocery shopping as I'm now responsible for cooking the meals.

Oh, and I'm like single-handedly bringing down the style quotient in Shen Zhen, China. Here, most people take the effort to dress up properly. Not Singapore- T shirt and jeans= properly, properly.

I mean, its like 80% of the girls/women are wearing high heels? Don't their feet get tired? And they wear nice dresses or slacks. I hardly ever see any one wearing jeans even. And me? I'm usually in a T-shirt and trackpants, since thats what I've brought to and bought in China. And birkenstocks. I wore FBTs out once, and kept on feeling like people were staring at me- I was literally the only one wearing shorts that day in the area.

Watching TV
Watching sports on HD TV is fantastic! Need I say more?
Oh, and I watched the Fed-Nadal final at Wimbledon. So heartbreaking!

Yea, basically, I'm slacking and I'm enjoying it.

This is a dream come true