The Last Chapter in Atico

I sent out my resignation letter this morning.
I kind of felt an electric wave flowing thru my head while I clicked "send" button.
Then I got a phone call from my boss at 12pm.
She spent the whole lunch break 1.5hrs to ask me for reasons and persuade me to take back my idea of resignation.
At the end of converation when I still said "sorry I've made up my mind", she started to talk in a begging tone and ask me not to do it.
Yes she needs me.
Because among all the seniors and assistant managers, I'm one of those she's relied on.

I didn't think I've ever done anything marvelous or successful in my life. But this one became a triumph to me.
My boss relies on me and appreciates my value, this is already a success for me in my career life.

I guess I've achieved something in this company in 3-1/3years, although my 5 year plan of reaching the position of assitant manager has to be given up for the unexpected change of company structure.
I think this achievement is enough to me and it's time for me to leave.
World is big and there're still a lot of things waiting for me to explore and learn.

I'll be excitely expecting the next journey of life.

Double Tenth 十十

How's my 5-day holiday is like? Hm... let me see... I got ofF the plane around 3pm on the 6th, got the rest of work done and emailed out from my place, then straighted toward to my grandma's house for a family dinner for moon fest. A great news from my family, that my sister-in-law is pregnant, and we're going to have a bady in our family in 7 months!:D It's a great gift for my 83 year old grandma this year, and i'm glad to see her joyful smile again.

After dinner I went for an ourdoor beer at Le ble d'or (金色三麥), the moon was covered by the building but it was nice to hang out with my lovely friends again after 3 weeks away. Then we continued drinking and clubbing at the new pub next to roxy99 (forgot the name). It was packed with local college kids and the music was just ok. I drank too much and left with drunk sleepy muddy head at 3am, but no matter what i was more than happy to have fun here with my friends than go to Lan Kaui Fan (蘭桂坊) in HK (where my HK coworker planned to take me to if I stayed longer.)

The next day I went to Hsin Chu for Terry's friend Vivian's dinner party. She's a great host and we had a great german dinner at her cozy house. Everyone in the party was pretty funny and the whole night was just full of cold jokes from different coutries. That night I saw the biggest full moon this year from her balcony on high floor (can't remember which floor...:P).

On the 8th I decided to chill out 1 day after having been working partying travelling this and that. I slept till noon and then finished watching a series of japanese tv drama. Ah... what a great rest...

On the 9th in order not to waste of God's gift of a sunny holiday, we went out hiking on Tsao-Lin historical trail (草嶺古道) in north coast. We started at Fulong where a new trail was just re-organized a couple of year ago to link to Tsao-Lin, where we used to have to walk on car lane for 40 mins or so from Kon-Liao (貢寮) to the trail entry. The new trail actually crosses a mountain (虎子山) and is more like a bike lane for locals and farmers, but comparing to Tsao-Lin it's much more quiet and with countryside atmosphere. Tsao-Lin old trail was, on the other hand, full of tourists and families as usual. From 虎子山 to 草嶺 then 2 hills to Tao-Yuan Valley (桃源谷), we hiked for over 5 hrs and again we had to find ways out in dark trail and scary nighty jumgle.

On the double ten my coworker Micky had an engagement party. We got closer when we were on our working trips in China & HK. She's been with this guy for 11 years since college, and the photo album showed their footprints around the world, with each other. Amazing isn't it? The first and the last in life, this connection must have been made in thousand years' rotation. I would give up everything to exchange a thousand-year connection with someone like that.

Macau 澳門

I didn't plan for this trip. In fact I never thought of it until a friend brought it up when I complaint about the boring days in HK on msn. It was quite a stimulant, but I completely had no idea how it's like there, except for some images from discovery of casinos, a remain church front, and portuguese egg tart. Oh and I don't need visa and I can take a boat there.

So I went to star ferry harbor where I was quite familiar with, but it's not the right place for ferries to Macau. The correct harbor is 10 mins away up north as I was told, but it actually took me half an hour to passed thru the huge harbor city shopping mall to get to central harbor city, where I can buy ticket from. The building is another shopping mall, but it looks like airport lobby on 2nd & 3rd floors for deparure to & arrival from Macau, Shen Zhen, and some other port in China. Surprsingly there's no crowds as i expected due to china's long holidays. The economy class is full so I accepted to pay 40 bucks more for luxurious class for one way, and again i had no idea how it's like but just relaxed and see.

The boat is again a luxious jet boat, the inner and seats are like airplane and in luxurious class 1 drink and light meal would be served for free. I was lucky and glad to have accepted the upgrade. The journey takes 1 hr and due to the bad weather the waves were quite big, so no hot drink was allowed to served. In this 1 hour I started to know about Macau by studying its map, where i took from an information center right before on board, and the first time I got to see how Macau looks like and started to wonder how I get around.

After getting off boat, I decided to go to that "remain church front" (Ruins of St Paul's) first, so I got direction from information center and took a bus to "city center". It was a bad idea cuz the bus kept driving forth and back in same streets and the route is like S shape to cover every corner of one area. I saw a lot of people just walked and everywhere I saw walking tourists. Then I realized perhaps it seems far on the map but all spots are actually in walking distance. i should've just followed the crowds. But if i wasn't on the bus, how did i realize it? With all the tourists (and perhaps much more on china's long holidays). Macau looks even more crowded. The whole old alley was covered with people, people, and more people. The both sides of alley are 3 stories buildings in old Portuguese style, but without looking up at upper floors you can only see the neon signs and embellishment of fashion shops, resturants, cake shops, pharmacies, souvenir shops...etc. The alley ground should be covered by beautiful mosaic stone art, but now you only see tourists' feet. The fountain in "city center" was covered behind a big lantern stage for moon fest show. The sceneries all looked quite different now from the pictures on the map.

Ruins of St Paul's is the most famous landmark in Macau. It's on a small hill and behind it the Mount Fortress and big cannons are just 5 mins away. The whole Macau can be seen from the top of the fortress and except for tourist areas the village is actually quiet and not very developed with dense houses and slender alleys. Most of the houses are lower than 5 stories and made in concret. I believe this would be a more beautiful and down-to-earth place if no such many tourists. I didn't try any good food even tho this is the thing you can't miss here. I didn't have any idea where is good except for pork burger (豬扒包), while I don't really eat pork neither burger. A lot of people were buying cookies and cakes and also dried pork slice, but no one was buying portugese egg tart (isn't it famous??) So for those gourmets, sorry for disappointing you for no food info to share.:P

Finished sightseeing, I left myself 3 hours for casino and tried to earn a free late lunch. Since I figured everything is in walking distance, I decided to walk back to casino area. The first one I passed by is Lisboa (葡京), but the casino is far in the back from the lobby and I don't like such hiden way (my image for casinos is right in the entrance like all vegas casinos that you can hear loud and exciting ringing bell of slot machines), so I left for the next one. Then I saw the flow towards "Wyun"(永利)- a new casino hotel which just opened several months ago, so it turned out to be my lucky casino, even tho I needed to queue for everything- bag storage, entry, drinks, and slot machines.

Here the machines are much different from vegas' and no ringing bell and noise. In fact it's too quiet to have joyful atmosphere. There're neither many 777 machines but a lot of fancy ones like japanese keisha, egypt, horse, bird... etc. I didn't really know what those icons mean but who cares, the way of bet and line is same, and just keep pressing bet key then I believe i would get something "some time". So again I chose 20 cent machines, inserted 100 hk bill, then concentrated all my mind on free lunch... free lunch... free lunch. 1 hour later I gladly decided to cash out 150 bucks and left with my happy stomach.:D

There are also some weird simulated architectures along the coast like chinese castle, roman arena, volcano, little europe...etc. They look cute and interesting but weird to be in the city not in amusement park. Those are actually resturants, shopping mall, exhibition hall, casinos, kids' fun land...etc, just to keep tourist excited with some new fun in Macau. I didn't have time to check out each of them... well it's ok, why not leave those as an excuse to come back to Macau again?;)

More photos are up here.

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Back to HK, just intended to take a bus back to the dorm, I found the bus lane was blocked and police everywhere. Has the firework not started yet? I wondered. So I changed my mind to join in the flow even tho my legs were sore to death from whole day walk (wow... again see how much i like to take part into crowds!>_<) The main streets- 3 blocks away from harbor- were all blocked for pedestrians and no cars could drive in. It felt like a city march when walking on car lanes and it's fun to see traffic lights worked normally for nothing on the other hand. Since no one can approach harbor area anymore, I could only watch firework from the gap of 2 buildings. The firewark actually doesn't have many varieties but still it's one more experience to me to spend another country's national day and see the firework.