Nature-ish photos

I took these 2 photos with a typical digital camera.. really do like them quite a lot... they were taken in Kinmen, Taiwan...

Weather should be a factor in driving consumption

Just came back from lunch at the shopping centre near the office... walked in to find that all the stores are full-blown into the fall season fashion... boots, turtlenecks, sweaters... probably even winter-resistant make-up if there's even such a thing... must be a good excuse/reason to go shopping...

"Autumn is coming.. I need to get new clothes cos summer clothes just don't work"
"Winter is coming.. that cardigan back home isn't warm enough.. need a new one!"

(or other aspects of the weather) "Look at that rain! need boots to survive walking around in that"

(or on the other hand) "Typhoon! can't go shopping outside!" (and hence the birth of online shopping... did you know that the one of the most purchased items online is actually clothes? who says we need to try them on?)

I suppose that's the down-side of sunny Singapore, though I am very sure the weather isn't stopping people from going out to buy more stuff...

But all in all, I never really had a thing for shopping.. and I don't like the cold weather either... 

After a long absence...

After a long absence from the blogging scene, I have resolved to get back to writing...

I do too little of it (in English anyway) these days, and seeing as I'm surrounded by lots of English notices and signages with grammatical errors, spelling errors and basically usage of the wrong terms, I figured I better get back to it, just so it doesn't deteriorate... (on a side-note, I am sure that if a company can win the job from the city government to revamp and review all public notices on their Chinese-to-English translations, that company will be super rich)

Anyway, am looking forward to writing more from now own, be it random thoughts, book reviews or updates on some travel...

Taipei City at night

Taipei city at night is actually really quite pretty...

On habits...

habits are interesting... I remember taking a while to get used to traditional chinese when I first arrived in Taipei, since I've been learning simplified chinese all my life in Singapore... even my office computer was in English, since it was the interface I was used to...

but now, after almost 1.5 years of immersing in traditional chinese, I now find myself being so used to it that I can no longer distinctively differentiate between traditional and simplified... it's now just chinese words that I can understand, and it takes a while and a bit of conscious effort for me to tell the characters apart...

also, I have been using the company laptop (of which the OS and Microsoft Office are in traditional chinese) for about 6 months now... and during this period, I have rarely been using my own laptop (which is in English)... but about a week back when I moved to Shanghai, I started using my own laptop again (cos I left the other one in the office) and suddenly I found myself "surprised" at everything being in English... it was an interesting feeling...
and now, I'm actually just bringing the office laptop back home to use... (partly also because my own laptop is getting old and slower)

but it's just interesting how these habits become habits without us really realizing it...