looong trip back

due to snow, ice, bad flight bookings and what not, my trip back consisted of:

train from Da Qing to Beijing
Hang out in Beijing for 4 hrs with aunt, uncle and cousin who wanted to practice english
flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur
sleep for 4 hrs in KL
head to airport and fly back to Singapore and take a cab to work

during all of this travel, I thought of the following:

CREATE TABLE MISSING
AS
SELECT
home
where
home.location = 'CA';

yea..i actually just wrote that...

Fortune Telling

I'm in China for the week visiting relatives and one of my cousins has recently gotten into fortune telling.  I asked him to take me to his shi fu and with only knowledge of my name and time of birth he said the following:

[note that under ying yang fortune telling, only 80% of your fortune is predetermined, the rest of determined by free will]

- I like to move around alot.  This basically continues until I'm 35 at which point I move less but I only settle down when I'm 45

- There is fortune in my future.  I make decent money from when i'm 25 to 35 as part of a company and after 35 I can start my own company and be successful.  After 45, I make good money until I'm 55 as well.  I should beware of starting a company before I'm 35 but after 35 it should be a success.

- I can go into the machinery business but not the raw materials business.  Fire businesses don't suit me but earth and water ones do.  Opening a restaurant is fine because food is under earth and water.  I shouldn't wear too much read and instead stick to water and earth colors.

- I'm really good at spending money.  I can earn lots of money and save lots of money but "girl, you can spend it too!"

- I have peach flower luck?  There are always people interested in me.  2010, 2011 are okay years to get married, but if I do, I'll probably get divorced and remarried, because of another guy.  2012 and 2013 are bad years for marriage.  In 2013, someone will set their sights on me and if I don't escape them gracefully, they will do great harm towards me.  2014 and 2015 are good years for marriage and won't result in divorce.  

- The guy I should be with is either much younger than me or at >2 and <6

- 2009 and 2010 are years for learning.  In 2010, I will not have too much money

Rawa

is pretty... Come visit!  

Some pics here... more pics (from me) to come.  http://www.malaysia-islands.com/html/rawa/beach/main.shtml

I spent the day getting up at 5am, getting a bus from Singapore to Mersing at 6:30am...40 mins after getting on the bus, we got off the bus and walked to customs to exit singapore.  We got back on the bus and 10 mins later, we walked to customs to enter Malaysia.  Why do you have walk across the border??

We got to Mersing at 9:30 and found out that all the hotels for rawa (there are 2 owned by rival siblings in a sultanate?) were fully booked.   The next ferry to Tioman was at 3:30pm and this became 5:00pm and eventually 8:00pm by the time I went to the ATM and had Ringgits.  Luckily, we checked back with Rawa and some people had not shown up so we were on our way on our little speedboat to Rawa..

The way to get to the boat was...get on a jetty, walk an unsecured plank to a boat carrying 2x4s, cross that boat, go to the next boat, then cross that boat again and walk onto the actual speedboat.  All in the pouring rain.  Awesome.  No seriously.  The scene was something I'd only really recognized from movies abt the war in Vietnam.  

Then, we realized that it was low tide so actually, our motors were trudging up mud.  Our boat went very very slowly for the next 20 mins which was a little disconcerting bc we were really low to the water and it was pouring outside...but eventually we found some deep water.  

We arrived in Rawa and the story gets more typical: lunch, suntanning on a pristine beach, wading in water (with corals), looking at little fishies (I think I saw Dory!), taking a looong nap in a hammock secured by 2 palm trees, looking at peacocks fighting chickens, "hiking" to the top of the island and around the island, dinner, cards, ping pong. 

There are a LOT of Americans here.  I think about 80% of the people here are american and the other 20% is taken up by one huge japanese family and us.  Surprising considering this is such a small island and is supposed to be a resort island for people in singapore?  Most of the people I meet in Singapore are British or Australian.  

Tomorrow: breakfast, kayaking, lunch then leaving for singapore again. 

I think a one day trip was actually perfect for Rawa... the only thing we didn't do was diving.. and I don't think my mom would really have been up for that.

Oh, other interesting fact.  Rawa is a private island owned by a sultanate or founded by one and that sultanate also started Bintan, the main Singaporean getaway resort island!  I wish I were part of a sultanate and could find and own these islands...though then I'd have to fight the Portuguese...

New Gphone app idea: image recognition for fish and bird matching?