Flying

‘ve spent most of the day at Jurong Point today. I had a late start due to not sleeping well again, and then read up on a case study for MBO. Anyhow, so I went to JP to check out the prices for the various flights I’ll be making soon. It turned out that the travel agent there could offer good prices, so I spent a while booking everything. The best part was, they could arrange my Chinese visa for me, which means I don’t have to go to the Embassy in person (which I was planning to do tomorrow). Thanks to the new budget airlines, I’ve got a cheap flight to Bangkok to go to the meditation course. The bad news is that I have to check in at Changi at an ungodly hour in the morning. The good news (apart from the price) is that I’ll get in to central Bangkok mid-morning, so there should be a good chance of getting reasonable accommodation. My flight to Beijing, back to Singapore (for the 1-week summer course) and back to Beijing are also confirmed, though I don’t have to pay until my passport and visa get back to the travel agent next week. Because I hadn’t expected to get the visa application done today, I had to get a passport photo taken in one of the shops at JP and I say without doubt that it is the worst photo that has been taken of me in many years! Still, despite my concern about the weight I’ve put on over the last year, I still look thinner than I did a few years ago!I’ve been informed that I’ve been selected to participate in the ‘Singaporean mid-decade national survey’. Participation is compulsory, of course. This being Singapore, I immediately wonder how random this is… I’m invited to fill in a form online, which has been happily timing out for the last hour or so. I though Singapore was meant to be a super-advanced, highly internet-ready nation? Their statistics section obviously got passed by and have their server running on a crappy old 486, judging by its performance. Oh well, got a few days left before the deadline. Have to submit to a phone interview too, sometime… Eeek!