4 days to go before going home to michelle.

it was a good day at work for me even though i did not excel - there were quite a few people ready to pounce and draw blood from wherever they could get it. the stress is getting to everyone and today, i somehow managed to not let it gnaw at my gut. what was good for me today was the fact that i was able to implement my intentions at work - to be in control of the process and to not just keep my head above water, but to keep moving in what i think to be the right direction. i created my list, assessed it and executed it. i'll take the flak if they want to take potshots at the easiest scapegoat when the going gets tough, knowing that i'm gaining so much for the opportunity.

need some rest now. more updates when i get some sleep.

today i bought the hong kong lottery for the first time.

call it beginner's luck - i struck the lottery but only the minimum possible taking.

since it's not a fortune by any stretch of the imagination, it must only serve as an answer to a question i kept to myself while marking the six numbers on the form.

"how much do we have to pay?"

"hk$5 per sending"

(to myself) "per sending? why would i buy more than once for the same number? ...."

now i know the answer - i am sharing the prize with approximately another 89000 'winners'.

with a handomse return of 300%, i could've made a real killing if i bought a few more tickets! say ... another 89000?

anyway, Thank the Lord.

what a difference a night makes.

for the first time since i arrived in hong kong, i had a full 8 hours' sleep. it's been 2 and a half weeks, and it's now 13.56hrs on a saturday but i have none of the sloth's waking-past-noon flak to dust off. i feel fresh and ready to take on the world. i feel brave and snapped to a decision to not feel obliged to go see more of hong kong, to go see chiang's village, to see his mother's village's once-a-decade festival nor to have to do anything but spend some time alone.

its nothing spectacular - far from it. i have laundry to do, grocery (i.e. crisps and cold drinks for after work) to stock up on, michelle's shopping list to check off. i will do all these and then decide whether i do anything tonight. rayvees has proposed something later in the evening and that is something to look forward to.

why? only a little ode to them would suffice as explanation.

rayvees and anng, the lovely couple, have been making me feel at home in hong kong - taking me to food hotspots and making sure i don't mull at home when i have bad days at work - are absolute gems. rayvees and anng, bold husband and wife tandem venturing not just to the midlevels of hongkong but who have spent their years together in all sorts of wild lives. rayvees, exchange student in cornell, architect in boston, landscape architect in hong kong and china, two years' of being true to a love a long distance from his body but obviously not his heart; anng, brilliant malaysian neighbour in singapore showing everyone there how it should be done, brilliant in school and still working on her own terms, architect and interior designer in singapore, architect in hong kong, steadfast and strong through two years' of separation from her now-husband, modest but unmistakably intelligent, and always a joy to have around. rather than chasing lifestyles, they take on all sorts of work and places to occupy themselves, they live their lives in very adventurous tangents and far from the lost being able to judge others' decisions, i do think they will become a very potent force to come. all that, plus the fact that they are excellent company - intelligent and funny, caring and happy. gems.

all the churnings in my stomach are in subsidence, if not permanently going away. the worries that i have about the guangzhou west tower project and whether i have communicated all the important decisions and deadlines, facts and crucial whispers back to mothership in wea-uk, london for them to chase, seem a bit more manageable. there seems to be a way to manage (that favourite word of the English) the feeling of having the carpet pulled under you daily and not being able to come to grips as things keep flying past you as you struggle to not fall flat on your face. it's a slightly helpless feeling i am fighting and i do think that its a symptom of being overwhelmed not just by the tight programme jetting me from office to office, meeting to presentation every two days but also to the novel nature of my job-scope. but in line with the optimism that good rest and a clear head brings, i will deal with it all properly through tactics of organisation and keeping to it - checklists and priorities list, follow-up schedules and daily-t0-do lists.

alright. laundry room, stationary store, lunch, grocery, laundry room, tv (epl anyone?), laundry room, mich's shopping list. that is all that is important today. all else are bonus. simple.

it's another late night in hk - the city which never sleeps, with a 7-11 and an OK 24-hr convenience store at every street corner - for me. only i'm in my cool super-comfy, daily maintained, newspaper delivered to my door daily serviced studio apartment and not in the slightly humid streets flanked by 10storey blocks or needle-thin point blocks all over whatever sky you can look up at.

it's been an exciting 2 and a half weeks in WEA-HK, a little makeshift office with a free-direct dial line to london and one extension from the main switchboard in an corner office of arup-hk at festival walk (mall), kowlooon tong. a lot of travelling on modes of transport - fast (direct trains between Guangzhou and Hong Kong) and slow (a rented minivan between Shenzhen and Guangzhou when we are unable to get direct train tickets), quiet (the HongKong trains in GZ-HK route) and noisy (the chinese trains in GZ-HK route), comfy (same HK trains and new audi a6 bought for this project by our LDI) and not (GZ taxis and said chinese trains) in the space of this east asian sojourn. i've also come some distance during this time. at least i feel the detachment from the design project since i've come out here to liaise with the client, with arup and spending more than 95% of my time doing admin work.

it's silly but i was also very conscious of being the only representative from WEA, the architect's office, attending a design team meeting with 11 engineers speaking about all things engineering in cantonese. when i could pry myself away from self obsessed thoughts from a virtual bird's eye view, i focused on the issues being discussed and the architectural implications, or the impact on our design development or its progress. it was refreshing and i hope i absorbed a lot more than i'm conscious of.

i'm supposed to head to work tomorrow and then fly back home to london at 1.10am. as it stands, i'm to be in HK for another week and i get on said flight exactly 7 days later.

3 things stand out in my mind - 7 more days of allowance, has dominic (assoc. director) voiced my concerns and requests to rest of directors?, how to contribute better next week.

and suddenly i have a sense of arduous gritting of teeth as a picture of me being in the same (small) room with andrea for another 5 days flashes in my mind. argh.

will update all on how this turns out.