what a clumsy/sucky day...
-broke my one and only compack foundation case
-forgot to bring the things that i needed to mail
-drenched my uniform sleeve with the restroom faucet. again.
(and this was all before 9am!)
-no progress on my industry information gathering
-informal business lunch got cancelled (and i gave up my sis' porkchop bento for it today!)
-manager changed her mind on parts of the project, leaving me to handle the bargaining process with the publishers
-not much progress on research paper
-spilled coffee in my bag, because the mug was not fully closed, with my pink uniform shirt in it. the spilt coffee was on the shirt, the vanity pouch, and in my USB...

hm... i am taking the last one as a sign. maybe it's saying that i shouldn't wear it anymore...

**deep breath**life is good**

1 more week and i'll be in a far better, happier place where i can leave all this behind for a while. come next thursday, COME~~~~~

Ma monkey trip to Panama (part II)

ok, i should NOT write blogs in different sections. the first part of the trip entry was like what, 1+ week ago??!! now i feel like procrastinating. gosh... i suck...

aaaaanyway, i finally got the complete set of pictures from all my colleagues, so it should be able to make things easier and fancier. if i really get too lazy, i can always stop blogging and post pictures to tell the stories instead. not a bad idea.

Sunday, March 4th
The one and only day when I had some free time in the morning to enjoy the hotel facility, which is my favorite of all hotels--the POOL baby~! Nope, I'm still not that good at swimming, and yes, I still turn my croll into my "almost drawning doggie style", but I like the pool~ it's nice! Actually wasn't able to stay in the pool for too long, dipped myself in the pool for about 20min in the early 7am so I have enough time to get ready for the busy day ahead.
The expo was 3 days away, and still a lot of work to do. However, since Mr G was away for the day for airport pickups (the delegation and my manager finally arrived) and not on our back, Charmine and I took thing easy. We checked on the progress of the project for a bit, and later decided to take a break with a short grocery run for emergency hair colorant. Hahaha~ Girls will always be girls. ^___^

The highlight of the day was in the evening, when the ambassador treated our entire delegation for dinner at a (freaking) Chinese restaurant nearby. Dinner was normal, ok food, plenty of boring social, people doing their toasts, me being oblivious with whatever that was around me, occational chit-chat with people sitting next to me, and making funny faces with Charmine.
Then, probably because of nostalgy or they just want to cheer up the mood, they've also had the karaoke ready for those who were interested. Of course, my team had to go up for a song, but since the songs they picked were, uhm, unknown to me (i.e. too old!!!), a couple of us decided to move along the song with some silly moves/swings while the rest sang.
Not only did we danced for our song, but we also volunteered as "backstage dancers" for this nice company rep that was dying to sing. It was a fun thing to do for a boring event such as that day's, Charm and I were quite enjoying being stupid. Little did we know that it was a wrong step to make which led to our misfortunes the next day...


Monday, March 5
With the entire delegation, we visited Colon Free Trade Zone, which was approximately 1 hr away from Panama City. Zero memory of the roadside view since I passed out quite quickly on the bus to avoid hearing Mr G's bla-bla as the tour guide.
A semi-informative seminar was held for the exhibitors when we arrived, follow by lunch (more Chinese =__= ) and different activities for them to choose from. They were split into groups for business-matching meeting, Panama Canal (Colon side), and shopping at the tax-free FTZ area. My manager (Lydia) and I were ready to spend some cash when we were asked to visit the FTZ Administration Office... Oh well, what could have we done? The representatives of the office were quite nice, and luckily that their presentation was interesting enough to keep me awake. Just as we were about to head back to the meeting place, the van broke down on us, on a scorching sunny day. So for the sake of our dear lives, we pushed the van until it could run again.


Intersection of 15 1/2 and B Street. Can pple be any lazier?
When we pushed the van. Mr G didn't seem to be contributing much...



Evening, one of the embassy counselors invited us for dinner. Guess what? Chinese food and karaoke, AGAIN...
This is the day when we all got trashed. Because someone brought a box (12) of red wine for a table of approx 13 people, ready for a sucky traditional chinese social dinner. We chugged like 2 bottles before we really ate any food, stupid not knowing how to be firm to stop the madness on time. So it all began, the toasting, the drinking, the kampais (I HATE doing red wine kanpais. WTF is that??) the pushing others to drink, the singing, and more drinkings.
Needless to say, we were out. I was absolutely out. A few of us girls went to the bathroom first to escape from the drinking madness, and second, to grab something to hold on to. I was sitting on the bathroom floor (ick, I know) because the one and only toilet was taken (Lydia was hugging it dearly). And after some waiting, my body couldn't resist anymore so we found the next best thing to a toilet bowl--the trash bin.


Yeah... I drank too much that day... But it was good that I puked in the bathroom because not only did that helped me get rid of all the alcohol in my system, it also let the other SOBs know that we could not handle sip of wine anymore. Later I realized that the trash bin had a crack, so it was leaking, so it was nasty and disgusting... Ewwww.... =___=lll
I didn't return back to the table but found myself a comfy couch to pass out, like my old drinking ritual. Ah... that felt really nice...

cuando deje de contar este dia
cuando las noches se liberen de tonterias
cuando deje de mirar atras
el momento que pare de importar
el momento en que pueda estar inmovil y en paz

quzas el dia que me convierta en ti
quizas ahi recien sera el dia en que realmente pueda decir que estoy sola

Ma monkey trip to Panama (part I)

Finally finished my first business trip, 10 days in Panama, and now I'm back in Taiwan. As my first business trip abroad, I found it overall, quite interesting. Especially when it comes to dealing with the "unexpected" people and events that one may encounter.

Honestly, what's fun and good about Panama? I have no freaking idea. How so? Because we were all stuck with the expo for our entire stay. And even if we did have some free time, we would be assigned or being last-minute scheduled for meetings. It was basically working for 10 days straight. Add the flight time and the work days that I had back here in Taiwan, then I had been working for 3 weeks non-stop. Normally, what makes people slightly happier after all the work is to indulge themselves with some exotic food from the new country; but nope, that didn't happen either. Nope. Zero. Nada. We had freaking CHINESE 80% of the time!!! Argh...

Here's a glipmse of my itinerary/journal while I was in Panama.

Friday, March 2nd:
3 people from TAITRA , Paul (head in charge the expo), Charmine (designer of the pavilion) and I (the apprentice noob) arrived Panama in the morning. Dropped our bags in the hotel (too early to check in) and went straight to the embassy to meet w/the counselor. Mr. G is one of the bossiest, nosiest jerk ever. Definite suck-up to his boss (the ambassador), but an absolute tyrant to his subordinates and us. Gave us a very cold welcome by first criticizing the design of the pavilion (without seeing any of the blueprints and graphs that we had sent weeks and days before), then ordering each of us who to do what at when moment (we "obeyed" his commands out of respect, but we can heck care what the embassy wants to do because we don't work for them). Later he cordially invited us to lunch—Chinese takeout lunchboxes—but there was this whole drama of how other colleagues took away some lunchboxes instead of laying them all on the table so Mr. G can see what are the dishes of the day. He nagged and biatched at his employees and then generously asked all of them to join lunch at the same table (WTF?! Hypocrite!). As for us, we didn't swallow that luch easy either. We were forced to eat some not very good Chinese food with the obligation of tasting/selecting the better dishes (AKA. guinea pigs) so he can later tell the travel agency what to order for the exhibitors.
In the afternoon, we headed to the expo to see how the pavilion was coming along. Mr. G was still not very happy because he finds the whole structure was too cold and frigid. I mean, of course you find it like that, you brainless ass, because the workers had only set up the initial skeleton!!! It was only the 1st day of set up!!! UGH!

Evening, he "extended his welcome" by inviting us for dinner. Regardless of how tired we were from the 1 1/2 day flight and jetlag, we accepted his invitation (Charmine and I passed out a few times in the car nonetheless). We were driving to Amador, this man-made stripe of island that was originally US territory. It had an amazing view of Panama skyline, similar to the Seattle waterfront view that one would have from a ferry. But here's the kick: it was a Friday night, party of 5, WITHOUT reservation at any restaurant. All the restaurants were packed (at least the decent ones), we were really tired, wanted to give up, yet he insisted on treating us. So we finally ended up in this ok restaurant, had our first taste of local food: yuka (Panamenian French fries, tastes like a combination of yam and potato), ceviche (cured raw fish with lemon), and asado (BBQ. Ok, this was not really Panamenian). We started dinner with 3 servings of fries, so by the time we finished the 2nd serving, we were almost full. I guess this is a good tip on how to invite people for meals with low budget: just stuff their stomachs with some cheap food, like a bunch of fries to share, so what you order afterwards won't mean anything because they'll be full.
After dinner, instead of directly sending us back to the hotel, he stopped at the supermarket and asked us to join to see if we wanted anything from the store. The grocery store was nice but we already have all the necessary things. All I wanted at the time is to go back to the hotel and SLEEEEEP!! In the end, we kept Mr. & Mrs. G company for their grocery shopping. How fun. T___T

fried yuka and ceviche. and this is how yuka looks like

Saturday, March 3:
We woke up early to be at the expo to make sure the pavilion was on schedule. Around noon, Mr. & Mrs. G took Paul and I to tour around Panama while ordering Charmine to stay in the expo for oversee the workers. For lunch, we had Chinese gyoza, dumplings, pancakes and other side dishes (yay, how exotic...). We drove around and got dropped at this place where we could see a part of the Panama Canal.
Despite that Panama holds the narrowest section of land between Atlantic and Pacific ocean, the distance between one side of the ocean to the other is still quite long; hence the Panama Canal is actually split into 3 sections: the largest one located in Colon, with 3 “steps” that the cargo ships need to go thru; the second largest one in Panama, with 2 steps; and the smallest one with 1 step in xxx (forgot the name because, well, it's insignificant).

To the least of my surprises, Paul and I saw the smallest, least impressive one. Why? Because Mr. G dropped us there since it's free (it was alongside the road) while it requires admission fee for the other 2. The Panama Canal charges $5-8 dollars for the admission, which is not that bad, I was willing to pay. But I guess this has always been a problem when you're travelling abroad, if your host doesn't feel like taking you around or did a not-so-good job when arranging your tour itinerary, then it's very likely that you won't enjoy much of your trip. We toured around some more, nothing very interesting, and were finally dropped off at the expo so we could help Charmine with the pavillion.

Dinner was at a tradicional Panamenian restaurant (that was the only once we enjoyed authentic Panamenian food) that offers performances while we dine. The show was ok, seems a bit short now for some reason, and the food was ok too (too salty for all our tastebuds).
Felt like a long yet unproductive day, but oh well, what the heck.

i wonder if it's too harsh when i say that being in tw depresses me...

Happy late Chinese New Year!

Eventho this year's New Year break was a total of 9 days, it still felt a bit short.

But it doesn't matter, coz I'm going to Panama for expo for 2 weeks!! YAY!!!

I'm more excited about being able to travel (AKA take the plane and leave this tiny island) and not because I get to visit a new country... Oh well, can't wait for the inflight movie!! Hope I get tho take those planes with personal tv screens. =P

Panama, here I come!