resolve

I'm not stupid, I can see what you want, but I am not sure if I read it right. For a while, I have been dragging my feet over this issue because I do not know what to do about it. Fear is a difficult element to handle. Unlike fire, you can never extinguish it permanently. Ignorance was easier to handle. Now I know what I want and I am sure about it. I will give you an answer once this week is over. I hope I get my answer too.

L just try to not make it too hard for me.

[I hope I am not wrong about this. would be embarrassing if I am..]

missing Paris

"it's probably snowing in Paris now."-cj

i remember the first time i saw snow it was 3am.

update

Remember the last post Google vs Facebook? Here's another post I saw today "How Facebook could beat Google to win the Net". Read this and ask yourself if it is true, do you log in to Facebook just to 'like" something?

Seems like the punters have their money on Facebook for now.

make life easy

Here's a pic that shows how you can make your life more difficult. While the chain may serve to make it harder for stranger to slip their hand through the door to open the door fast, it makes it harder for you to leave the house easily too. But do not worry, soon your muscle memory will kick in and you can solve the maze in seconds. When that happens, that's when you get a bigger/ more complicated maze.

"door maze"-cj

While some people come up with inventions to make our life difficult, there are also people who try to make our life easier. Remember how difficult it was to color within the lines. My pre nursery picture coloring book is nothing to be proud of either. So Toronto Zoo has come up with the perfect coloring book for toddlers who love to color animals (effortlessly). The 20 page coloring book allows kids to stretch their color creativity as they alternative between the 5 Crayons of snowball white, polar white, frost white, igloo white and the popular Arctic white. So is this 5 colors or 1? I would think its more like 5 shades of the same color. Kids no longer have to worry about coloring outside the lines anymore. They just have to make sure they use the polar white, and not igloo white, to color the polar bear.

"it's all white."-cj

i think i like Polar white more than popular Arctic white.

investment

From the Straits Times' article, Woman now 'owns' the Sun, a document issued by the notary public declared Ms Angeles Duran as the owner of the Sun.

The owner of the sun (yes, the sun in our solar system) said "she now wants to slap a fee on everyone who uses the sun and give half of the proceeds to the Spanish government and 20 per cent to the nation's pension fund. She would dedicate another 10 per cent to research, another 10 per cent to ending world hunger - and would keep the remaining 10 per cent herself." wtf and wow. Talk about an eye for investment.

then won't tropical countries have to pay more than temperate countries to use the sun now? o.O

profit taking

Osim: Sold

:DDD

tonight

The library was freezing and dry. The wet weather caused the temperature to drop further; the cold penetrating. The two mock papers I tried today were long and intense. Despite all these, the day ended surprisingly relaxed and enjoyable. It could be the tempo. It could be my improving ability to follow the beat. It could my company I had for the evening. It could be the people. It could be the possibility of finding another social life/interest outside work. It could be the stupid jokes during supper. It could be a lot of stuffs. Now I look forward to Thursday, it's like my secret other life.

All good things come together on Thursday.. and Sunday too.

Totally sums up my evening. It was a good night.

ethics

8 out of 18.

i guess i am easily compromised.

read

Instead of studying for my exams, I ended up reading Zachary Burt's Blog. It's a pretty good read, especially the post on "what makes people click with each other".

i clicked with it immediately.

card

I came home one night and I saw a birthday card on my table. It's handwritten, home made and had kiddy stickers all over it. On it, it says...

Happy Birthday,
Brother!
I know there have been
times when I bugged you,
teased you and pestered
you. But on this special
day, I just want to let
you know. . . . I PLAN
TO CONTINUE! :D

some people are just looking for trouble. (:

[Thank you. It almost turned me into fuzzy, cuddly teddy bear.]

a simple solution

I do not try to double guess, I do not to anticipate and I try to not correlate things and events. Some people have many layers and each layer comes with its own complexity. Truth is it's tiring to try to figure out people.

I like simplicity and I think its best that I try to stick to simplicity.

hour glass

I chanced upon an unique design idea on Yanko Design's website. Among the other cool stuffs they have on their site, I found this one particularly amusing. If you ask me how this is going to be any different from the ones we use in Singapore; those with the numerical countdown. This is actually not an improvement. It is just cooler to look at LED sands dropping through the hour glass's waist than watch the numbers flip from 20 to 1. If Singapore adopts this, they will have to change the signs and symbols in the highway codes for basic theory test.

"LED hour glass."-cj

"green. amber. red."-cj

"intuitive. its main selling point."-cj

maybe we should change the green and red man too.

baby

Have you ever wonder if it is really possible to do a triple chin smile like the text icons :DDD ? This pic shows that it is possible.

"yip!"

i can't tell if the baby is smiling or frightened

wow

I woke up this morning and I was radiating with joy. Now I have to got eat my birthday cake for breakfast.

Good Monday morning!

Nov 21

Thanks you all for all the well wishes. I had a really great time throughout the whole week. Stuffing myself silly with food, jokes and stories. Yesterday, in particular, was good and it almost felt special. I won't describe what happen throughout my week. Happiness cannot be put down into words.

merci beaucoup a tous.

race

It has been a long time since I stepped into a race expo. It feels good. It's like walking into a place where everyone shares the same interest and conviction. We love running and we want to be runners. It's too bad I have to give SC race a miss due to other commitments. But I have already signed up for Sundown Half Marathon next May.

i should seriously start training.

mahjong

Net Loss: $5.80

Lesson learned: Priceless.

Never sit upstream of aa, because you will spend most of the time guarding her tiles instead of playing your own game. Never sit downstream of aa, because she is not going to feed you anything. It safest to sit ACROSS aa, where she can do the least damage. Better still, DO NOT even sit at the same table as her. I witnessed how dangerous she can get at the mahjong table yesterday when mercilessly she hit me twice with a 5 fold combo (I am a still considered a quasi debutant, btw). Without flinching. Anyone who had watched her play few rounds will wonder if she is lady luck's BFF. How often can you open up your tiles and see that two third of your tiles are from the same suite? And then, there is hj - the silent femme fatale.

i was lucky to get away with not too heavy losses.

race pack

crap. better sleep now. if not I cannot wake up early enough to collect my race pack. there's long day ahead.

you guys have a great weekend.

sing

Singing is not really my kind of activity, but I obliged when I was asked to belt out a number or two. Despite the fact that I forgot some parts of the song's melody, missed a few beats, could not pronounce some of the Chinese characters, could not read the texts fast enough, did not articulate properly and was not able to hit some of the higher notes, my friends claimed that I am actually not too bad a singer. It was the first time they hear me sing, so I guessed they were really polite.

did any of you know that there is a Party World KTV at Vivocity. o.O

motivation

What is motivating me to study? I am not sure. Maybe I care about my future. Maybe it's because i am looking forward to this evening's dinner. Maybe it's the exam dates that are closing in. Maybe it's the feel good from yesterday's dance. Maybe it's from looking forward to the weekends. Maybe it is generated from my individual will power. I have no clear idea. But I know, right this moment, I am motivated to study. When it comes to mugging, I know I am as good at it as anyone.

I'm up and off to school! work work.

B Company

Finally, I got the call for interview! I have always preferred working in a news and media company above banks.

B anyone?

sambal ikan bilis pizza

"I want spicy ikan bilis pizza." I could not believe my eyes when I saw this message. You have to be pulling my leg. I have heard of Hawaiian pizza, Margarita, Seafood and even Duck pizza, but ikan bilis pizza? It's quite a stretch you know. Seriously, who would put sambal, cheese, cucumber and ikan bilis together to form a pizza? I really cannot imagine how cheesy and spicy and ikan can go together. But it does exist on a menu (see below). Urgh. It felt like someone know my dietary weaknesses and decided to put them all together into one special pizza combo. Don't sweat for me man, I am adventurous enough to try it; even if I have to drink 100 cups of water to remove the spiciness and drown all the ikan bilis (heh^^) afterwards. Maybe it might even appeal to my taste buds, after all this pizza has 'Singaporean' screaming all over it.


can't wait for your Shepard pie.

the danger

The sky was dark and we were walking along a relatively deserted stretch of road. With the occasional car, the pulse of the traffic was probably beating at below metabolic baseline. It was tranquil; peaceful. Suddenly, maybe it was a flash or a blinking light, something caught her eye. Reflexively, she lunged herself onto the road and shouted, "Hurry! Cross the road!" I caught the urgency in the voice and made a quick sweep of the T junction. There was only a car slowing to a stop at the red light.

What was there? Did I missed something? Was there an incoming car? Was she worried for my safety? Was the bus we were trying to catch arriving?

"Hurry!", she insisted.

My heart skipped a beat. I glanced at her; she has already cleared the road. I held my breath and made the split second decision to dash across the nearly empty road. Once I was by her side, while gasping for air, I asked with concern, "what happened?". Happy that we had made it across on time, she chirped..

.."the pedestrian crossing. the green man was blinking already."

potluck

So I am not allowed to order pizzas on Saturday o.O ?

mon morn'

Today felt like it's going to be a great day! Good Monday morning! Monday blues are for people who have to work on Monday. HAHAHA.

Not me! (and does the Italian 'take that' sign) =p

it's all in the hands

If you have been to Italy, I bet you would have noticed this. Italians speak with their hands, just like how Indians speak with their heads. At least this reference pic is more useful that what my Italian friend taught me. Most important word she said is Bonjourno. Second, cagna. Third, the wtf hand sign. (refer to first picture below). Haha you will notice that most of them are unfriendly..
my most important phase, "uno cono due gustos del gelato"

facebook humor

i like funny people

House

Mugging whole day alone in the library for a week can seriously impede your ability to communicate effectively with people. Without Internet, without anyone to talk to and without and noise in the library, it's beginning to feel a bit like solidarity confinement. Boredom and brain overcapacity is a deadly combination. Your brain urges you to find alternative entertainment to studying, but there is simply nothing else you can do without Internet in the library. Right then, I felt a need. A need to have someone with an evil witty sense of humor in my life.

Hahaha guess what. The first person I thought of was myself years back. As far as possible I try not to revert back into that arrogant sarcastic character. It was not even an option anyway. I don't like the idea of talking to myself and answering myself back. Next, I thought of Gregory House. So that's when I dropped all my studying and headed home to re-watch Season 1. I need to fulfill my need to balance my life with a bit of witty dark humor.

His mantras, it's all coming back to me..

"It's never lupus."-cj

"Or it could be Korsakoff's syndrome spelt with a C"-cj

my entertainment. my guilty pleasure.

Google vs Facebook

I don't know why, but I am getting all excited over this. Google vs Facebook

bookmakers get ready your odds.

bookridden

I guess 150 pages is as much as my brain can read for one day. Beyond which, all the words just float around the page like in an alphabet soup. God forbids as I try to persevere further. At the 152 nd page, all the floating words lose their form and elongate into squiggly lines before dispersing into a blank page. My eyes took in this information and mind quickly follow suite and turned into an equivalent tabula rasa..

argh.. screw IFRS and GAAP..

China to USA

You know, traveling is no long as easy as it seems. Google Maps suggests that to get to USA from China it would take 38 days and 3hrs to cover the 18,266 km. And along your way you have to..

"42. jet ski across the Pacific Ocean!!"-cj

"Kayak across the Pacific Ocean.."-cj

haha. they dun have fly..

magic shoes

He: You know why you cannot do a smooth consecutive 3 spins?
Me: please tell me why.
He: It's the shoes. With this, you can 1,2, spin.. spin, spin, pose..
Me: It's the shoes?
He: Yes, it's the shoes. It's always the shoes.

ahhh.. so it's not because I cannot balance myself.. it's the shoes.

wallet

There, everything fits nicely into the new wallet. Despite the faded leather and torn sides, it's hard to throw away the old one though.

thanks (:

going to school

For the past week, I had been heading back to school. I must have forgotten how week 13 of the semester felt like. Because. Even though I was in school by 930am, there was already no available power point in the Central Library. From my scouting around for the power point, I can tell that probably a few hundred people came earlier than me to study in the Central Library. The nus exam fever! The intensity inside the library is amazingly conducive for studying. Walking around barefooted at 9pm.. ahh.. the library feels like home. A good 8 hours of studying daily! Woot! I'm rolling.. yeaaaaa.

Perhaps not being able to find a power point to plug in my laptop is a good thing. (:

supper

I guess the late night supper did its trick. For once I had no doubts about what to do moving forward.

thks.

diamonds

I was led to understand the psyche of women when I sat in a 3 way conversation among women about diamonds. Good thing I had a prior knowledge of diamond rings, else I won't be able to understand what's the whole fuss behind 0.5, 0.8 and 1 carat. Truth is, they DO look very different in size. Each of them expressed different opinions about what is the market rate; varying from 1 to 3 months of income. One even suggested an exorbitant 10months! (perhaps I can tell my company that I will work BOTH Asia pacific and European hours). Then again, a sample size of 3 women is too small. I should at least include the ah lian who got hitched at 18 years old in my survey and ask what she got from her ah beng husband. To made sure I understood what is expected of me in future, they regularly punctuated their sentences with "jy please always remember this". If there are any take home lessons. I guess it is important to at least find out what her peers are getting and benchmark against them; because they are the ones who will be compa(ring). In case you guys forget..

diamonds are whose best friends?

yorkie

Have you seen a chocolate that discriminates? The Yorkie bar is NOT for girls. I wonder what's the feminists' take on this. Should every girl take one bite out of it to show their triumph over it? Or should women boycott it totally to show their displeasure? I wonder if they are selling it in Singapore? Come in dark, white, peanut and honeycomb flavors.

"chocolates!"-cj

Ms Quah. i know you ate one.

pointers

"your spin is too strong"

warning

Remember my earlier post on facebook. Now I think they really go out of the way to address social relationships. Web development taught me how easy it is to just create pop ups. pm me if any of you can verify this.


actually.. i would be less miserable without the pop up to remind me

mbs

Made a trip up the the sky park at Marina Bay Sands last weekend. If you are not there for the fine dining, there is pretty much nothing to do up there. They do not allow tripods at the Sky Gardens so I tried my best to come up with clear pictures for you all to see. voila~

"can you see One Raffles Quay"-cj

"Singapore Flyer"

"Fullerton and Esplanade"-cj

i really tried to keep really still.

the rescues

they have five songs featured on Grey’s Anatomy

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.

"I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone."

i like what he wrote.

outside the fences

Taken from "Outside the fences" - Huffington Post,

"Only in humility can we begin to find the beauty in everything. Do you have the barefaced wonder to drift outside the lines? If you dare, you could rise up to be the shameless architect of the unknown, charting new ground that the critics will never know. For the rest of the crowd, there's safety in numbers. But for you- you and your brave soul, there are no guilty pleasures. Just pleasures." -- Walt Whitman

This is why I say my opinion of people does not matter.

nuclear

"Prepared for N-power option." - The Straits Times

why am i not surprised.

exercise

Defying good sense, I went for a run while nursing a cough. Not too long into the run, I was already trying to catch my breath while stiffing the reflexive throaty cough. Like most people, I was not adept taking in sucking in deep breathes into the rib cavity while trying to squeeze the trachea shut to hold the cough in. A terrible ending quickly ensued as my intercostal muscles worked out of tandem. My abdominal muscles went into a quick contraction like as if it was being sucked in to fill the space of the lungs. As quickly as it came, the pain was gone in a second.

i stopped and walked back home.

returns

for a moment i thought there some damn good news in the market that i missed out?
end of the month portfolio re-balancing...

lots of

Lots of things have been happening recently. The subsequent few months will unfurl a lot of opportunities, a lot of moments of self discovery, lots of changing expectations, lots of learning, more commitments and hopefully not a lot of disappointments. I can feel the rising energy in me everyday, the feeling that something good is going to happen. Even though it does seems like as if the universe is conspiring for me, I cannot help but feel the need to stay grounded and to reconcile expectations with reality. Lots of things are beyond my control.

just need to keep my head in place.