2013

2013 has to be the year of travel for me: i had been to the US of A four times: trice for work and once for holiday. in addition to that i also went to korea (4-day stopover back from hawaii), and also to new zealand.

little wonder, that i received my krisflyer elite gold membership! =)

other than that, life has been ok. not much major successes at work but not much setbacks either, i guess. seems like i will have to wait till 2014 for any change in my work environment and taskings. in any case, it does look like the end is getting closer and i am giving change a more serious thought.

sports-wise, i did some decent runs, particularly for the sundown marathon (did 1:45hrs for 25km), and AHM (1:30hrs). also cycled the entire ironman kona bike leg with only one bike training the week before to boot! haha.

time flies when you are having fun. see you in 2014!

the beginning of the end?

in an age of facebook, instagram, twitter and a gazillion other social-sharing platforms, i fear the end is near for la merde en direct.

with it possible for me now to insta-beam my thoughts and feelings to all my facebook friends (and get instant feedback to boot), i no longer find the need to constantly jot down my thoughts and blog only about them later on. in any case, i also find that there is no longer any need for me to write lengthy blogposts when people hardly have the patience to read more than 160 characters nowadays.

this is, as they say, the beginning of the end.

with increasingly heavier work schedules and other means of accessing the internet, my time at the iMac has decreased drastically. hence the reduced updates and articles.

unless there are no major happenings or updates, i should not be posting here anymore.. so long blogspot, and thanks for all the fish! =)

5 room is better than EM

working in the army, i am also the housekeeper by default at home.

every week, i will do some area cleaning after running on saturdays - the chores are part of my extended workout. i do not do much, just simple sweeping and mopping of the floor and other miscellaneous items.

but even then, those two things alone can already add up to be quite a bitch. only after you have mopped the floor using just a cloth and your bare hands, can you appreciate the largeness of your apartment.

these are times when i appreciate my relative poverty at not being able to afford a EM. imagine mopping the stairs! well done with level 1 - now go on to level 2; how do you even clean the ceiling?

 sometimes, less is better than more. =)

gong hei fatt choy!!!

gong hei fatt choy!!! not quite into the new year yet, but its already turning out to be quite an expensive year - this year is the first year that we are handing out angpows, and those little buggers don't come cheap.

give too little, and you are labelled a miser.
give too much, and you have to survive on bread and water for the rest of the month.

just like at weddings, angpow giving is indeed an art!

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here's to an advance happy year of the snake!!! this year, we should embody the spirit of the zodiac animal of the year and eat more snake, draw snake add leg (please, the dragon is so passé already), or sell snake oil. Huat ah!!! =D

happy new year

pull your ear!

2012

2012: the year of the renovation and the wedding.

needless to say, this was a very busy year for me. most of my weekends in the first three-quarters of the year were spent on conducting market surveys for household items, coordinating my renovation, and chasing bo-chup contractors. and then there was the wedding too. more countless evenings of prop making, dance rehearsals and table arranging. heh. then there was work too. 2012 had turned out to be quite a good year for me professionally. i have spent about a year+ at my new job and have grown into my appointment after some struggles initially. indeed, i have expanded my horizons and learnt a lot this year. went to the states too, for my first overseas conference. to cap it all off, i also managed to obtain my ippt gold again! unfortunately, things were pretty dismal again on the automotive front, as i got into yet another accident. phroar! why do singaporean drivers love to jam brake so much? for sports, i was glad to have won the uphill run in oct; this means that i am concurrently holding on to both uphill run and x-country titles. =)


2013 will be a transitional year, as i take some time off to consolidate the past 28 years of my life, and figure out what i would like the next 28 years to be like.

save the day!

D-8

i always get the flutters before an important race; the shorter/ intense the race, the worse the feeling.

anyhow, it had been quite fun getting to this stage. all the morning hill intervals, sharing of running techniques and morning breakfasts. great to know that some of us in camp do actually love running.

on the other hand, there is also the persistent silence from the select few and race attire procurement process that puts its leopard tank counterpart to shame.

oh wells, time to just forget everything and focus on that 15 minutes tomorrow.

up the hill, down the slope.
up the slope, down the hill.
any sweat?
no sweat chicken feed haha all the way!!! 

=)

minefield

been walking into minefields lately.

not sure why, but i think i have very bad synthesis, persuasion and communication skills, and am also very bad at reading body languages. in sum, i am quite the bumbling bull in a china shop when it comes to meetings or project reviews.

i mean, just this evening, i came out of a meeting with my boss, and both of us had different interpretations of what the chairman wanted! to set the record straight, although i wasn't that too far off the mark, but when it comes to urgent project demands, misreading a "should do" from a "must do" could lead to disastrous results!

damn.. i seriously need to get a WLR soon. =\

favourites

i have a favourite car, its the volvo v50.
i have a favourite type of beer too: IPA.
for brands, my favourites would be casual-preppy labels such as nike, a&f and lacoste.

given the number of products and brands in the world, it is inevitable that all of us will have our preferences and favourites. amongst people, it is the same thing. have you ever felt supremely comfortable with this particular group or person? have you ever heard of the term bff?

but that's only one side of the story. newton third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. so for every blue eyed boy, there is also the sway kia who kena anything and everything just because he is nobody's child.

sometimes i do feel like i'm the latter. but that drives me on to work harder and faster to prove myself. afterall, life wouldn't be that interesting if it were so smooth sailing right? =)

when september ends II

as usual, i just feel like singing that green day song, "wake me up, when september ends.." because somehow, september has never been a good month for me.

have been so swarmed at work recently!!! guess i got more than what i bargained for.. *dang* (>_<)"

anyhow, it seems like the pothaus should be done by mid-sep, so i guess we should be moving in by october!!! *hooray* remember to wake me up when september ends!!! =)

reno woes

sorry for the lack of updates, but we have been busy for the past few weeks navigating the home renovation and décor landscape in singapore - everything just seems so nice yet so expensive at the same time!

indeed, projet pothaus has been a project like no other project that i have handled before. whereas my other projects involve of sums running into the millions, projet pothaus is the first project that i have done involving my own hard-earned money. and therein lies the fundamental conflict of wanting everything in the fastest time at the lowest cost.

performance, schedule, cost. as they say, you can only choose 2 out of 3.

if it is good and fast, it will not be cheap.
if it is good and cheap, then production will take some time.
if it is fast and cheap, quality will definitely be dubious.

can't wait for all of this to be over. don't get me wrong; the process is somewhat enjoyable seeing your concepts or designs being turned into reality, but renovation is really stressful, especially if you have a full time job yet want to be as hands-on as possible during the renovation process like me. of course, seeing your slowly depleting bank account is not exactly most encouraging either.

oh wells, at least we'll be done soon!!! after about 4 months of hacking, painting, drilling, puttying, cabling, fixing and screwing (not me), its about time, isn't it? =)

in the zone

where i aim to be at every night. =)

倒霉

argh another series of unfortunate events. seems like i can only choose 2 out of 3 at any one time: personal life, work and sports.

if my personal life and work is doing well, then my tennis would suck, or i would get some running injury.
if all is fine for my personal life and i'm hitting like nadal, then work would be terrible.
if work and sports are fantastic, well you get the idea.

any tips on how to improve my luck? *grahz*

sit! roll over! play dead! good dog!

mostdays i feel fine. somedays i feel as though i'm zipping down mont ventoux. on raredays i feel as though i've just won the french open. nowadays, i just feel like giving up.

its amazing how effective the pixelated camouflage is. put it on and tah-dah - one can be almost transparent, even in an urban terrain such as an office!

honestly, i'm quite tired and sickened by all these in/out-groups. i'd rather you be very honest with me and tell it to my face that you do not want to work with me, rather than give me those very condescending comments from time to time; i know very well my own capabilities, thank you very much.

and yes, "thanks" too, for saving the day once again, 'cos no one can do it quite like the way you can!

epiphany I

being singaporean means that we are all free to make the same choice.

the day that time stood still

recently, i've been passing by silat estate a lot more frequently as it is a shortcut between my parents' place and the pothaus.

sila--wat? you may ask: its a quiet and quaint 4-storey kampong just opposite the old KTM station in tanjong pagar. i suspect just like its taller brothers just opposite kampong bahru road, it used to house the KTM railway workers.

i used to have a primary school friend who stayed here, and on occasion we would come to his house to play sega games. he was quite a rich kid (although i never found out why he stayed in such a relatively run-down estate), and i remember sitting on a swing chair in the flat's rather large balcony. in primary 6, this was the same place where we would spend afternoons listening to boyband songs, and later on go on to practice and win at our primary school's talentime competition (if you must know, we sang i can love you like that by all-4-one). eventually we lost contact after we went on to separate secondary schools.

so i've been walking by this shortcut for the past few month since renovations for the pothaus started. and i observed more and more rubbish being collected at the rubbish dump (the red-brick building in the photo). huge pieces of furniture, tvs, discarded clothing, what-have-you, were slowly but surely piling up. then i realised that the occupants of silat estate were being relocated - probably to the newer hdb flats that had TOPed recently at kim tian.

last saturday, i passed by silat estate again after a 2 week absence, and i could tell that most people had already vacated their premises. judging by the mountain of sofas stacked up by the refuse collection centre, i guess that the cleaners had also given up on maintaining the estate - just waiting for the dump trucks and construction vehicles to flatten and clean out the entire place.

then i saw it - one singular household that still had its clothing hung out to dry; just like any other day, as though it had not one care in the world.

of course, i am sure that in the next few weeks when i pass by again, the occupants would have moved out already, but i just can't help but feel that one part of my childhood is already gone.

party in the USA

so other than south america and antarctica, i have now been to the other 5 continents.

recently, i had the chance to go to the states for a conference, so i took the opportunity to explore the west coast since my conference was in california. to be exact, i visited LV, the grand canyon, SF and LA (in that order).

frankly, other than some attractions like the aforementioned grand canyon and perhaps hollywood and alcatraz, i didn't find the US too interesting. perhaps i am not your regular tourist, having been to arguably more interesting places like the sahara, mongolia and north korea, but i guess the US has no novelty for me as a singaporean.

if i wanted to shop - i would have gone to orchard.
if i wanted to eat burgers - i would have gone to any local shopping mall.
if i wanted to experience american culture - i would have just watched family guy or the simpsons.

compared to europe, american culture is relatively young and probably not as interesting. true that they have some great people and great monuments/ parks/ buildings, but they just don't cut it for me. call me unappreciative, but that's what living 26 years in a congested-urban and west-idolising environment does to you.

oh well, the only consolation is that now i've been-there-done-that. any suggestion on what next to better satisfy my wanderlust? =)

hey..

i'm back - and right back to work as well! =(

in other news, its only 3 more days to beerfest! =)

a house is not a home

facebook has made it so easy to share thoughts and articles (and reach out to a wider audience at the same time) that i fear that the end might be coming soon for blogs.

over the past few weeks, i had shared quite a number of articles on facebook. those were mostly social commentaries about singaporean life, and how difficult life is getting in singapore. i must admit that i am already much better off than most of my peers or singaporeans, but i always get a sense of foreboding doom whenever i read the newspapers. yes, it might not happen to me now, but looking at things, it will not be long before my cohort belongs to the "past" of singapore.

i think that the thing about singapore is that the government tries too hard to be open to the world. in our quest to attract foreign investment, we have almost forgotten who we are, where we came from, and where are we heading to. in our haste, what happened to this place that we call home? what happened to the swiss-class standard of living that we were supposed to attain? if the government can always beat their chests and loudly proclaim that the singaporean brand is so strong, why are they so afraid that foreign companies will close shop and shift elsewhere if we increase the wages of our low wage workers? i opine that if we are really 真材实料, then investments will continue to pour in because people recognise our value, not that we are cheaper, better and faster than our neighbours. 

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talking about transformation, projet pothaus is coming along nicely. less than a week, and the apartment is a shell of its former self. walls have been hacked, built-in wardrobes removed and existing wires ripped out. now it is a skeleton, waiting to be zhng-ed into a proper liveable habitat. doubt much can be done in the next two weeks when i'm away, but well sometimes fast is slow and slow is fast! =)