All the Cs you can fit into a blog entry

Instead of work today, everyone at the office was undertaking ye olde grande spring cleaning of the year, more succintly known in Mandarin as 大扫除. Boxes and black trash bags were filled to the brim and beyond, paper was shredded with great glee, and there were occasional hollers from various ends of the office as people unearthed things they didn't know they had and/or didn't need: "Anybody want a _____? If not I throw away!" At the end of the massive cleanup, we toted much stuff down to the street, where I'm sure the local karang guni man (rag-and-bone man, see fuller definition here) had a busy afternoon weeding through it all for whatever was worth something to him.

I've seen several karang guni men and women operating in the area, actually. Most of them are past middle age and one is downright elderly. I see her after lunch, sitting near the upper end of the Duxton Hill car park, typically sifting through various bits of cardboard and such. I smile at her; she smiles back.

After all that not-altogether-ceremonial cleaning, it was time for what is apparently the traditional distribution of oranges from yesterday's loot, along with a festive little ang pow for every employee. The perks of not working for the government anymore! (It's not about the money, of course, it's about the good cheer all round.)

For lunch, I found myself, interestingly enough, at the same dim sum shop where almost a year ago, I grabbed a late-night snack last Chinese New Year. The dim sum's still tasty and none too expensive, and it meets the very important criteria of having fluffy char siew baos. I wish I knew the name of the shop to plug it, but it's in a shophouse along New Bridge Road near Oriental Plaza. Note to self: don't wait till next Chinese New Year to make a repeat visit.

Especially since across the road from lunch was this gem (just look at the bottom poster and imagine it in all its daytime glory).


Taken by ampulets2.
Another clue (besides this faint one) as to my current area of work: I was thrilled to stumble upon Lorem Ipsum - All the facts, and I can totally get behind the campaign to ban comic sans (links via onomatopoeia). Edited to add (February 1, 2006): Why comic sans was designed (link via A Capital Idea).

In other news, photoblogging may be on hold for a bit, as the camera has freaked out and refuses to boot up. I turned it on last night to take a picture during the UnXpected's gig, it took one picture, which dutifully illuminated the display area, then the display area decided it would be more fun to show just noise/static instead and all the buttons were unresponsive.

We popped the battery out of the camera to stop that nonsense, and since then it's refused to boot up. When I turn it on, the red light that typically blinks 3-4 times as it starts up blinks for something like 30 times before giving up, and the camera mechanisms don't start clicking and whirring as they should. I've tried changing batteries and starting it up without the memory card inside, but it just refuses to come alive.

Dammit!

So it might have to make its first visit to the shop next week. If anyone would like to hazard advice, the camera is a Kyocera Contax SL300R T*.

This better not be an omen for the New Year.

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