Consultant tales...

I had a MAJOR boo boo this week - it was my turn to do kitchen duty and I didn't know how to use the dish washer.

Anyway, acting "clever", I poured loads of the normal dish washing liquid into the machine as I just didn't know how long it will last - the normal wash is an hour long. But 45min later, someone came into the room asking... "any one did the dishes just now?" It turned out that the dish washer was bursting with foam and flooded the kitchen floor!

Spent 20min hand scooping the foam, then threw the dishes back in and restarted the machine, this time no soap, just water. Then I went home.

The second morning, my manager told me that the machine once again "exploded with foam" and he had to clean up the mess for me :) Oopz!!

I finally bought my return tix home.

Was eyeing 19 Dec for SQ for some time and I had planned all along to save by redeeming my miles. But when I saw the SQ website having no tickets on that day left, I started to panick... it is after all Christmas season!

The news then came out saying that oil prices have fallen below US$100 and I thought.. wonderful! That should feed into lower ticket prices. The next morning I checked, the tickets mysteriously went up to €888.05!!! Ouch...

Spent the weekend in anticipation, hoping to find a website that will yield good ticket prices since it is all dynamic and found one - Opodo.de with a €679 ticket on the 18th! I grabbed it and proudly declared to my housemate who worked with Air Canada that I've got a bargain :)

He said.. "that's still expensive". Then he searched his own employee portal and found that all flights are indeed booked for 19 Dec. So I felt good about this bargain. Until he said.. let me try Expedia.ca. Then he called up a screen that showed a China Airlines ticket from Frankfurt to Singapore for C$906! He then converted it - €566!!!

ARRGH!!!

Finally received an email from the MBA office notifying me that... I've graduated!

I asked for a softcopy of my transcript and saw a mistake in the records - tech business transformation was scored the lower project score rather than the higher of my individual assignment grades! Thankfully Simon acknowledged it with no issues and promptly amended the transcript :)

Better yet, I did relatively well for my Individual Project thesis which I thought I will barely pass because I was really too tired to put in my 100% effort. Really thank God for a good outcome! :)

Went down to Maychoss for a wine festival... and got really drunk this weekend drinking Reisling wine! Got to know a new friend, and was fun for the day time.... esp thanks to Mei for sacrificing and not drinking much to drive us back! Just that I woke up on Sunday with a splitting headache...

Tonight is the first time I'm clocking a 16 hour work day... new record! The only good thing was... free orange juice and pizzas, and a lift home from my manager. Not toooo bad :)

Thank God I've got a superb landlady!  

1) The internet connection at the house was somehow locked and the password she had didn't work.  I sent an email to her asking her to put me in touch with the previous tenant who might know the settings.  She took it upon herself to fix it - called T mobile, and paid 70 Euros to get a technician to reset the whole thing! 

2) She provided extras like towels, bedsheets, pillows, etc!

Sweet :)

  

Yet another fantastic weekend to Stuttgart :) The quality of life in Germany for me is improving - from "surviving" to "enjoying"!

Started with an evening at the mini Oktoberfest... then the next day we headed to Metzingen for shopping at the largest outlet branch in Germany.  We finished off with a dip at Capella hotsprings! Shiok! 

God is so good!  Had such a fantastic weekend :) 

I joined three colleagues to visit another colleague's family house who owned St Laurentius vineyard.  What a bargain we were offered - 6 Euros for a bottle of white, and 12 Euros for a bottle of fine sparkling brut!   Continued to a nearby town of Neumagen-Dhron to bask in the Wein Strassen Fest :)

Enroute, we stopped by Trier, the oldest town in Germany!  Relaxed and sipped afternoon coffee coffee Al Fresco by a coffee house.... Such a pity that the tourist guide books we saw at the bookshops only told us about the roman baths but not where it is!

Derek cooked dinner - authentic Chinese fare! rice, beancurd, beansprouts, minced pork... simple but absolutely tasty!  How blessed...