17 Jan 2018
It's already been 11 years since the beginning of this blog, and I don't feel it. Maybe because the past has become fogged up and I can't see too far back.
23 Jan 2018
Seems like it's close to impossible to defer from the coming ICT unless it's a matter of life and death. Partial loss of income is no excuse, and it probably has to be at least the risk of losing your job to be able to defer from this training. Pulau Tekong for ATEC Phase 2 this time, not looking forward to it.
Trying to get myself back in shape for it now. Haven't exercised much since leaving for Europe and the activities have mainly been for my legs (walking and snowboarding) so my arms are in bad shape. Not square one yet but I could only do 13 standard pushups and 3 military pushups before having to resort to knee pushups yesterday during the P90X3 session "The Challenge".
Nowhere close to my brother's rate of over 1 pushup per second sustained for at least a minute. I imagine it must feel like pushing air at first for him to be able to go at that speed.
Left arm hasn't healed completely though, and my guess is something is in the wrong place in the shoulder joint somewhere due to the different method used to put it back in during the first snowboarding class and the way I pushed it in more (it wasn't in the perfect position after that class but it wasn't painful) during my sleep later that night.
There is a chance the next time it goes back in the perfect position is the when I dislocate it and put it back in again. In the meantime, I have to be careful when I raise it up because for some reason it can sometibe painful like I'm pushing the upper arm bone against something in the joint.
24 Feb 2018
Went to Danang again. This time I'm going to note down the prices of the coffee I bought.
The 200g bottles of Hello 5 brand Culi beans and Arabica from Big C were 83.9k VND (S$5-6) each. The two 500g packs of Robusta (tbh I prefer Arabica but they weren't very common there) were 115k VND (S$6-8) each. The 500g of fake civet coffee was 200k VND (S$12-14).
Honestly, the fake civet beans smell much better outside of the bag and I can't open any yet to test, so as far as I can tell now, the 200k price seems more worthwhile than the 115k ones, just because if I had wanted regular coffee, I don't have to fly to Vietnam to get it. On the bright side, regardless of whether this is regular or Vietnamese, the prices are below my personal threshold of S$25/kg for whole beans.
Hoi An was a bust. Too touristy, even if the HoiAn Sincerity Hotel & Spa was much much nicer than the Sea View DN Hotel despite being in the same price range. Danang was just much more interesting to us than Hoi An, regardless of how easy things were for us in the latter city.
Heck, the coffee alone was better in Danang than in Hoi An.
Unfortunately, we were in Danang too early in the Lunar New Year so most shops were closed, otherwise I believe I could have gotten better deals and/or beans. Oh well, at least what I got were still cheap.
Lost a lot of arm strength during this trip. 10 perfect pushups were easy, but after that I could only pull off one perfect military pushup. This is a far cry from the 4 that I could do before this trip, and the 8 that I managed to hit before Europe. At least my lower limbs feel much stronger now. All the slopes and steps in Vietnam helped keep that part of me in shape, so that is good for the coming weeks of ICT.
Anyway, if I hadn't mentioned this before, the fast food in Danang and Hoi An and maybe the entire Vietnam come in tiny portions, though in all fairness, the prices were low too. With a la carte burgers going at below S$5 each at Lotteria, it is easy to afford a veritable feast without hurting my wallet as a Singaporean, though eating burgers in Vietnam is only for when you or someone in your group needs some easy and affordable food in a relatively comfortable environment.
Otherwise, I'd rather just keep pointing at random food in the little eateries along the streets of Danang. During this trip, by doing this, we discovered this noodle in an orange soup that we believe to be pumpkin soup. I didn't even know the Vietnamese eat pumpkins!
Also, the seafood at the restaurants near Sea View DN Hotel were awesome for relatively low prices. 250k VND (S$15-17) for 6 shellfish (600g total when alive) that we believe to be rather large razor clams about 10-13cm long, barbecued and garnished with a mix of fried shallots, fried peanuts, fried chopped garlic and fresh chopped spring onions. Not sure if this was really cheap, maybe we were ripped off, but this was not expensive for what they were, at least for us tourists.
