Well, if I can't be honest on my own blog...

Where else can I be?

To round up the sorry saga in the last post, I've gotten back all my money from the Japan trip. The part which is not so happy making is that there are still loose ends from the Sydney post, part of which is the reason that I can't post about it just yet.  It's contributed to a sense of dissatisfaction about my friends and who exactly they are.

Making matters worse is having some of my core assumptions challenged.  Part of it is due to the friends issue, but part of it is also learning that I am very alone in some of my assumptions.  Some of these are core values to me.  For instance: "Would you thank a policeman for keeping the peace?"
My peers: "No! That's his job!"

Me: "So you don't want to be thanked for doing your job? Then why are you asking your bosses to be more appreciative of you?"

What makes it worse is that airing my views would get me booed down before I even got past the "So". And it's making me unhappy.  If they're all about giving the other side a chance, then why can't they give me a chance? What's wrong with a diverse range of views?

At the same time, I don't want to lose their friendship, but I feel increasing that they care little for losing mine, if it's so easily lost just by airing something different. The very thought tires me, but it's true.

In fact, I've been very tired lately.  Emotional bombardment is never fun.

In happier news, I found Star.me! It's a cute website where you can throw stars at your friends. And feel a little better about yourself in the meantime too =)

(Edited) The Art of Making Me Feel bad

(Edited - decided that it wasn't passive aggressiveness.  Oops)

For the first time, I realised that my Business Chinese class is a good thing. Without it, I may not have noticed the hint I was given today.

To give some context, due to some concerns about a damaged nuclear plant in Japan I had to start cancelling my arrangements in Japan.  While I knew the rest of Japan was ok, I had to pass through Tokyo on my flight in, which had suffered too much radiation contamination for my comfort.  (Even a water plant supplying Tokyo was affected.  Although the levels of radiation were not dangerous, the fact that it spread that far was a concern.)  That's why I was really apologetic when I had to cancel my hostel stay in Kyoto, which is really far away.  I even suggested that I would go back to this hostel in the future.

My email was replied really quickly, and surprise plus the fact that I was rushing for a meeting made me glance through the reply.  When I first read the email, I thought it was a really pleasant reply - the hostel staff said they understood my concerns, and even kindly proved a situation update on the nuclear power plant.  As a news junkie who had been reading up on the nuclear power plant situation, I appreciated the concern and care in giving me an update.  I even contemplated a thank you email.

After some hours when the first impression had a chance to die down, I read the email again.  The impression I got was really different!  Mostly because this time I read the situation update.  Only then did I realise that the nuclear power plant update was a thinly veiled rebuke on my cancellation.  There is no adverse impact from the nuclear power plant on Kyoto, the update declared.  To top it all off, it attempted to pull at my emotional heartstrings by pleading with me to reconsider my decision and declaring that the hostel was "very much willing to support northeast Japan, but if all the tourists are gone from Japan, we can no longer exist. (Unable to support them or even ourselves.)"

Definitely no thank you email then.  I considered writing a passive aggressive email about how I would definitely provide support to Japan through receptive hostels, but decided against it.  Silence, I decided, would be passive-aggressive enough.

Edit: Then I realised that I was being an ass and was actually feeling bad about it. Oops.

Too many things

Since I started writing my last blog entry, too many things have happened.  Since then I have, in brief:

- Been reading up on the Japan earthquake and nuclear crisis
- Started stressing about my trip and stressing other people out
- Prepared for a chinese test
- Fallen sick.

I wish I could say that my thoughts were as brief.  Since 11 March I have had many thoughts, some annoyed, some downright mean, mostly not good.  I wish I had a forum to put them in, but I have to admit that I'm superstitious in the end.  Writing things makes them real, and I wish these thoughts would just go away.

Money makes the world go round

(Note: I wrote this on 11 March 2011, but didn't post it for some reason)

I did some budgetting so that I could figure out how much money to change before my trip to Japan.  I have suddenly discovered that I love numbers.  It's a good way for me to get my head around it in a different way from words, and a lot faster too.  And sometimes numbers can tell a story.  For instance, when one restaurant charges $10 and another charges $44, my mind goes kaching! WHICH IS MORE VALUE FOR MONEY. And then I look at the words. Or the pictures.

In the course of doing the budgetting for my trip, I discovered that I might be spending $1.5k in total. While less than the $3k that I had been warned by others of, I feared that it was too much - this was supposed to be a budget trip!

I consulted my parents, the seasoned travellers, and the first thing they said was "Oh, that means you ought to bring $2k of spending money."

Me: o_O

"In case of emergencies."

Me: O_O

I feel very extravagant, all of a sudden, just due to the mere fact that I’m going on holiday. And I sort of understand the $3k now. (Though I wouldn’t do that. I think. I hope.)

Chinese New Year means new things

Happy Chinese New Year!

I would have posted earlier, but I was having too much fun. Too much fun due to the holidays being too close today - one month to prepare for Chinese New Year is no joke! Especially after the Christmas and New Year Holidays, which are always a double whammy. However, after this the next holiday is very far away. =PPP Hopefully I can take leave despite disappearing in April.

There was also excitment - Lynn nearly couldn't go for the Japan trip, but arrangements have been made! *v-signs*  However, Tracy is now busy preparing for exams and can't exactly do much research, so I've taken on the research for Tokyo. It's a lot more troublesome than I expected, especially since a lot of my research material is in Chinese.

However, more importantly I've been thinking about an online trip planner. Something that already has all the information I wanted in one place while putting it in a functional aspect of churning out a schedule. I'd been fantasising about it since the US trip, and doing research for the Japan trip just cemented that.

So I went to check out some existing online trip planners. I settled on two that seemed to fit my needs - TripIt and Yahoo!Travel.  After using them, I'm starting to think the two should get married and have babies, or form a chimera with Google Calendar.  Why?  I'll see if listing the pros and cons help.

Pros of TripIt

1. Logical way of presenting a lot of info in an easy to read manner
2. Forces you to think about what details you need for travel through forms
3. Can automatically pull details from confirmation emails
4. More leeway on adding personal details for various locations
5. Portable to calendar or mobile devices

Cons of TripIt

1. Has annoying blanks if you don't have all the info on hand - best to use when everything is more or less confirmed
2. Emphasis is on the travel aspect - not so much on what you see when you get there
3. Calendar view SUCKS because you can't specific start and end times for notes, which are usually used for adding places of interest, and Google calendar automatically schedules one hour BEFORE your note - no sensemaking is this.
4. Map view only shows one location at each time - no way of specifying where places of interest are in relation to each other, or places of interest within one location (e.g. places of interest within Georgetown, Washington DC).
5. Directions are only available for cars, despite tapping on Google maps which has walking, public transport and driving options.

And on the flip-side, Yahoo!Travel

Pros of Yahoo!Travel

1. Lots of info contributed by travel sites and other users
2. Allows for selection from a drop down menu on locations so you don't have to type the info over and over and over again
3. Lets you see at a glance what is popular and what's not with ratings, no of trips with the same location added etc.
4. Lets you specify start and end times for each activity
5. Lets you keep a corresponding trip journal

Cons of Yahoo!Travel

1. Info and ratings from users is kind of outdated, since it seems to have dipped in popularity round about 2007 o_O
2. Locations in drop down menu seem to be added with no particular logic. In addition, adding new locations requires you to know everything about the place - might not be feasible
3. No calendar view I can find
4. While the map view does aggregate all places of interest into one map, Yahoo!Maps has such little info as to make this endeavour laughable - I'd rather do my own in Google Maps kthnx.
5. Sometimes doesn't have all the info needed in an easy to see manner

Given that I'd embarked on this wanting a schedule (with enough details to navigate) both of them don't really give me what I need. But I'd say TripIt edges out Yahoo!Travel slightly for telling me what I need to get. Still, if they only merged or something... *wink*

Japan trip 2011: Accomodation

After a litany of emails yesterday, it's confirmed - we have our accomodations for Kyoto and Tokyo.

I think Tracy said it best when she wrote "This feels like some kind of macross assembling an uber mecha sequence with various little individually piloted parts joining up to form a major kick ass bot with a HUGE gun."  First, we bought the tickets, which firmly put us in Japan for that time period.  Then we confirmed the hotels, which set where in Japan we'll be.  All that's left is how to get around in Japan itself, and what to do once we're there.

I am looking forward to activating this major kick ass bot.  And I really hope it has a huge gun =)

In other news, I may have resumed letter writing. Maybe.

Japan Trip: Accomodation is insane

Remember I said in the last post that my friend Tracy wanted to get ALL THE THINGS done in December? It turns out there's a pretty good reason for that - the rooms that we wanted to stay in are no longer available! In December! When we're travelling in April.

This reminds me of the fiasco that we had with the plane tickets. I was monitoring the SIA website, when suddenly the deal that I had been eyeing was GONE. GONE. with the WIND.  It's also why we settled with Delta Airlines, even though the flight timings into Japan aren't the best - better to get the tickets now, at the cheap price, than not at all.

So I've email the hostel in Kyoto that I want to stay at, but I'm not too sure whether the same thing will happen with them.  We shall see. *crosses fingers*