pray for me

i'm going to be so busy in july... somebody help me. maybe i should have dropped the module during the second term. my schedule:

2 - 5 july: SDE Camp '07
9 july: mid-term exam
10 - 14 july: Union Camp '07
17 july: Reaction Paper submission
19 july: Qualifying English Test
24 july: project presentation
25 july: journal submission
27 july: final exam

i really wonder how am i going to be able to cope. tests and exams need to be studied. projects need to be worked on. camps need to be there.

but hey there's always fun in all the adrenaline rush. what a way to start off uni life! woohoo!

off centre

3.30am and i still can't fall asleep. must be that 1.5l of coke light i downed 3 hrs ago. hate it when this happens.. ruins the next fews days all the time. i don't get enough sleep tonight means i'll get up in the afternoon tmr which means i won't be able to sleep again till late, etc, etc. it's a vicious cycle i tell ya.

i've been watching this sitcom called off centre. great show, funny as hell. it stars john cho, the milf dude from american pie. he's the best part of the show. love how he delivers his lines. it's a pretty old show actually. think it aired sometime back in 2002. too bad it got cancelled halfway through the second season. why do these tv networks always cancel the best shows.

anyway show's about this two friends, mike and euan, who lives in a posh apartment in new york. their regular hangout is in chau's vietnamese restaurant. chau is this quirky asian dude who has a weird (and often humourous) perspective on life and women. living across the hall from mike and euan is status quo, a grammy award-winning rapper who loves to cook and is only in his rapper persona when he has to be. think of off centre as a kind of teen-flick (minus the actual teens) sitcom and you'll get the idea. this is one of my favourite parts in the show:

mike (after successfully chatting up some ladies in the bar): chau, can you believe this? if i were a super hero, i would be woman-man! (pauses) no no wait a second...

chau: no no no that's good, that's good. then i would be your side-kick... girlie-boy!

i should be getting the first two seasons of two guys, a girl and a pizza place (starring ryan reynolds!) pretty soon. can't wait!

inside jokes

"You're romanticulous? That's simplastic! Hey don't give me that bluook."

"That is a unicorn la... Cannot tell meh??? Got the horn what!"

"Hrmm... Shhh..... It's an oven LAH!!!"

"She's a foreigner? Look closer la, don't let looks deceive you, she's a Singaporean."

"Ni shi wo de ju ren, wo shi ni de xiao gui, wo shi yao yi dian qian!"

"Tian xia de nu hai tou shi yi yang lok oh~~ tian xia de lok gui dou zai xin jia puo!"

mumble mumble

i wish you were someone else. no wait i wish someone else was you. no wait i wish i wish...

if only you could see things through my eyes. no wait if only i could see things through your eyes. no wait...... wait...............

don't go.

i gotta change my ice mountain bottle soon... before it corrodes...

hi! i'm back! =)

sorry for the absence again. i really find it hard to keep up with the updating often.. motivate me.

I've finally started school! yeap yeap yeap back to the good ol' broke college student life AGAIN! i'm starting during the special terms in nus so that means the campus is pretty much empty for the first three months i'm there. My actual semester starts in august with the rest of the kids. i'm only doing two modules over the next 3 months. 1 module per 6 weeks so that effectively means my exams is just a short 5 weeks away although i just started sch today! yay!

ah what the fuck am i cheering about.. my brain's damn rusty after not studying since sec 4 (poly counted as studying? well yes if you consider skipping lectures to go ktv, abandoning tutorials to watch movies and then telling the lecturer off in short four lettered words when he complains about our attendance). but i'm glad to be back to studying nevertheless. i only hope it keeps up. =)

last week was an interesting week for me. had so much fun but it got cut short on thurs when i found out i was starting sch the following mon. i bloody thought i would be having a cool 2 weeks break. what the.. now i'm stuck with only 4 days?!?! no can do so it was double party mode, double time. the week went by pretty quickly. i got my entire biological clock screwed up in the process and now i gotta start adjusting everything back again. so overall: it was a blast! double thumbs up! wayyy up!

boy meets world

i was browsing through the video store on sun looking for some good shows to rent when i stumbled upon this 2002 show called cheats. anybody seen that one before?

the reason it caught my eye was because of the actor (yes, for once not the actress). matthew lawrence was one of the mains in the show. well i used to like matt lawrence as an actor when i was younger. this was way back in my primary school days. but funny thing is i can't seem to figure out exactly which show did i catch him in. i'm thinking it either has to be boy meets world or brotherly love. higher chance it's brotherly love. the rest of the shows he acted in doesn't seem to ring bells of any kind.

i have no idea what happened to him though. these days i hardly see him in any big budget hollywood flicks. his most commerical offering thus far was a small part in hot chicks. i always thought he could have made it pretty big in hollywood but i have a feeling he's not very well known in singapore. well here's a picture of him. looks familiar to you?

newfound jealousy

shirlyn tan's new album is finally out!

went down to the esplanade outdoor theatre for the album launch today.

first single off the album is window. sounds damn good. you can check it out from her link on the right.

=)

CATS Recruit

Booker T. Washington said: “I have learnt that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has to overcome while trying to succeed.”

It may be just a simple quote to you but it spoke volumes when I read it.

It is just here as a reminder to me that this phase has already been said and acknowledged as true.

The Wall of Fire

Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire. Play Scenario 2 as Sun Ce. Try to see if you can get him to be Emperor before he passes away. Sun Ce dies at a really young age. So when Sun Quan joins your army (he’ll join in about 4 – 6 years after you start the scenario), you’d better already be on the way to ascending the throne. And don’t cheat, play Historical mode on Pro difficulty please. Here a hint: getting the Secret Books of Healing to prolong your life really helps here. I know it’s a really old game (it was available in 1995) but I still enjoy the classics. =)

My understudy finally came today. He’s a Malaysian from Sarawak. But he’s already stayed in KL and JB for 3 years each, and he’s joined our company after graduating on the Dean’s List. Quite an accomplished fellow. I’m still waiting to see if getting good grades in school would equate to performing well at work. So far, he’s shown he is intelligent enough. He asks me questions which shows that he thinks. He’s observant enough to notice the small details (which I’m pretty particular about). And he’s shown a little enthusiasm by asking to look through my files even though I didn’t ask him to. Not a bad start. But he’s experienced only the tip of the iceberg so far. Still credit must be given where credit is due. I think if he continues on like this, he can make it pretty far.

I went to lunch with him this afternoon and we got around to discussing politics. I asked him whether, as a Malaysian, he preferred the ruling style of Mahathir or Abdullah. He said Mahathir, which both surprised me and made sense at the same time. It was only fair that I, as a Singaporean, would be thinking Abdullah is the better leader, primarily because Abdullah is more receptive and open towards Singapore. He argued that Mahathir was the one who actually stood up for Malaysia while Abdullah was more of a soft-approach leader. Come to think of it, it’s really true in a way. Mahathir did speak up against the US when he thought the US was being unfair to Malaysia. Plus he took a firmer stand with Singapore as compared to Abdullah. The most recent example being Lee Kuan Yew’s comments on Singapore marginalizing the Malays here. I had a feeling that Abdullah had demanded an explanation from Lee Kuan Yew only because of intense pressure from the media. And Abdullah didn’t press the matter. He just let it rest after Lee Kuan Yew offered his explanation. I felt the situation would have been very different if Mahathir still was in charge. He would have definitely blown up the matter beyond proportion.

Ugh.. I’m disgusted. I just heard my sister say to me “Kor, another guy going after me leh! He very rich!” I don’t mean to put my own sister down but come on, can she be more shallow here? Utterly disgusted with her. I’d expect her to show more class than that. With girls like this in Singapore, I can pretty much throw intelligence, character, etc out the window. Why bother when I can just use money to buy their filthy, materialistic pussies..

after hours and resignation letters

The first episode of After Hours just aired. I love the feel of the show. Don’t ask me why but I’ve always liked shows that depict the next stage of life that I’m about to embark on. For example I loved Spin when I was in secondary school. Why? Cause Spin was about a bunch of poly students. It portrayed the kind of lifestyle that I wanted to have in poly and guess what? My poly life turned out exactly the way I wanted it to! Better than how I imagined it would be actually. Then during poly days, there were quite a couple of shows that caught my eye. Two of them were Chase and Chemistry. Now these shows were about people in the working force, juggling their jobs and social/love life. Now I know the next stage after poly was NS and then uni then working life but still.. Hey it never hurts to look ahead right? Well After Hours is essentially Chase part 2. And did I mention the theme song? Written and composed by Linda Liao no less. I have an idea of what kind of life I want to lead when I start working and I hope that I would be able to achieve (and maintain) it.

I spent the entire Saturday that just went by at home. I notice my life goes in cycles. There’ll be busy periods jammed packed with social outings, busy at work, busy at home, etc.. And then it’ll all cool down after awhile and life takes a breather before picking up the pace again. Is it just me or is anyone else experiencing the same thing as well? Anyway, I thought staying at home to chill once in a while is always good. It gives me some time to find myself again. Or to go back into my cave, as some experts would put it. I think this kind of days are going to be hard to come by once I start school so I’d better treasure it right now.

Speaking of which, I’ve finished typing (and printing) my resignation letter. Was easier than I thought it would be. Just google a template out and there it is.. Freshly minted resignation letter. I’ll be starting school again come May so I gotta be quitting my job end April. Lots of things to hand over. My understudy hasn’t even arrived yet. Plus I need to guide and train him up before I go. And not forgetting I got to make sure the new contract is administered properly and past records are settled. The contract with Keppel Seghers is ending this week but I think we’re more or less going to sign the one year extension with them. Their Zone Engineers have been in contact with Air-Temp regarding this issue so yeah no worries on that front. I’m sure Ah Goh will be able to whip something saucy up!

pm lee and the turtles

hm.. the title sounds like a band's name... ah never mind.

There was an article in the straits times sometime this week about PM Lee commenting on the pay of civil servants. Apparently they don’t get paid as well as people in the private sector. And he wants to review their pay structure. He added that it would be hard to maintain and motivate a clean and proper government if their ministers and workers are not paid enough to do their jobs. Well, last I heard, the GST was going up to 7% come july. Hm.. I wonder where the ministers’ pay raise is gonna come from.. Probably not from the increase in GST, cause it’s supposed is to help the poor.. Not to make minister richer than they already are.. no no… And what did you say? What? Singapore’s PM earns more than the US President? Ah.. but he still cannot compare to the top shots in the private sector la. So it’s ok to review his pay.. no wait.. it’s right to review his pay.

So anyway enough about the government. I caught TMNT in the movies today. It was good seeing those turtles in action again.. it brought back many many memories. My fav turtle has always been Raphael. I think it must be the whole tough guy anti-hero thing plus that cool attitude of his. Haha.. Cowabunga dude!

sispec warriors!!

kids don't try this at home.. we're trained professionals who are getting paid by taxpayers.

life is tough being a soldier.... look at what we have to do for the country...

dream a little dream... (of me?)

my laptop's on the verge of breaking down.. it keeps shutting down on me. i've typed this entry like twice already but haven't got the chance to post it before it auto shut down. argh too lazy to go into the details for a third time.. so i'll just keep it short.

- saturday

went east coast park to celebrate pei pei's birthday and do some roller blading. almost none of us knew how to blade so we ended we tripping over each other, falling into mini-drains and crashing into bushes. it was an utter humiliation... imagine a 5 year old kid whizzing past you. ugh... i fell twice. the second time was on a friend and he had to knee me in the chest while doing so. it still hurts now as t'm typing this.. so anyway after blading, we went to cafe vienna at novena to grab some dinner. international buffet at 40 bucks per head. my bank's gonna be wiped clean after this weekend. the food itself was ok.. not fantastic but not bad either. but not worth the 40 bucks.. definately. we went over to pei pei's place after dinner and played some dumb naming games because pock mun wanted to do it. started with naming soccer stars, then moved on to celebrities and finally childhood cartoons!

- sunday

the guys came over to my place for some fun in the sun. started with playing basketball.. pock mun was complaining non-stop throughout about how tired he was. singapore's just not producing proper soldiers these days. order some mcdelivery and we chilled in the pool while waiting for lunch. it's nice to finally do this with some friends.. more often than not, i'm always doing this alone.. chilling by the pool, listening to some good music, catching the sun, etc. they came up to my place after that and we spent the entire day playing the very retro romance of the three kingdoms 4: wall of fire! built our armies up for 5 hours only to kill ourselves by duelling with our kings. let's see.. cao cao got beaten by ma teng. yuan shao got executed by liu bei because of internal politics (hahaha...), liu bei, guan yu and zhang fei lost to ma chao and all three got executed. ma teng eventually lost to an injured sun ce in single mortal combat.. and got executed! yeap.. lots of heads were rolling that night.

- monday

so starts another working week. market's looking pretty good.. sti's gaining some points again. i'm hoping for a full-on recovery after the correction last month. so far my investments are all still in the green.. looking pretty good with some dividends heading my way soon (i hope). ascott is too expensive for me but it's one of the counters i'm hoping to be able to buy and hold soon. during the correction, it went down to about 1.45+. it was seriously undervalued then. then it recovered in the past few weeks to about 1.60+. and not forgetting their declaring dividends too. it's way out of my budget now.. what after all the money spent over the weekend. i went over to my grandad's place for dinner after work. guosh and cheam came over to my place later that night to chillax (chill + relax). cheam has this business idea which he thinks is gonna make him a bundle and he broke up with his girlfriend the previous night. so being the buddies the army taught us to be, we had to lend a listening ear and of course provide some manly cans of beers to ease that hurting heart. we stayed and chatted till about 2am and they left and i went up to catch some eye shut.

- tuesday

that's today.. my chest still hurts from the fall on sat so g-ku brought me to the polyclinic. we went to the office first and left at about 10+. had a consultation session at marine parade, then had to be referred to tampines for an x-ray scan, then head back to marine parade again for the review. after going all over sunny singapore on a sunny day, the doc told me i'm looking ok.. the pain is probably caused by the muscles which on injured during the fall. i'm feeling a little guilty right now about causing g-ku to spend so much time away from the office today.

all right i gotta run.. going to head for my haircut appointment with kandy right now. catch ya around!

hello linda liao

hey anybody got after hours' theme song on mp3? send it my way please... it's a really good song plus linda liao looks sooooooooooooo cutesy trying to be rock in the mtv.

and in other (more serious) news.....

the stock market continues to plunge again... what the hell. the sti's combined drop is about 130 points for today and the day before. that means an easy 3% off the index. i guess i'm lucky to still be holding onto paper profits even after the previous mini-crash of sorts. g-ku tells me of one of g-kim's friend who is a trader at kim eng. that guy lost a couple of million dollars when the market crash the week before. imagine how much money that guy has.. i mean to be able to dump millions into stocks and equities means he has got to have even more in reserves right? after all, nobody puts all their money just into equities. i guess the two crashes have their benefits as well.. for one, the counters are cheaper now. plus most companies are going to give out their dividends soon. so picking up and holding to stocks right now might just be a good idea.

scholarships and npra

2 things are causing me much grief right now.

first one's the scholarships. okay maybe this one is worth all the headaches and frustrations if i actually manage to nail it. chances are, it's not gonna happen. my results in poly ain't exactly fantastic and i think i didn't leave a very good impression with my lecturers.. hm wonder what chee hock wah wrote in my (confidential) character reference report. anyway no use thinking about all this. i'm just gonna submit the applications and hope for the best. hey no harm trying right? i'm applying for 4 different scholarships btw.. nus, mas, ocbc and keppel. wish me luck!

alrighty the second one.. now this one's the real killer. npra - normanton park residents' association. that's the association where i live. there's an issue going on right now regarding the purchase of the common properties in normanton park (let's just say np from now yeah?). you see, the flats that the residents live in are owned by them. no surprises there. but the common property (walkways, field, playground, swimming pool, etc, etc) are owned by mindef. shocking isn't it. i had no idea about this as well. ah to cut a very long story short, npra wants each unit to pay $25k for the purchase of the common properties. problem is, i ain't got so much cash. take up a loan then they say.. yeah but i'll incur a 6% interest.. that's an additional $1500.00 of money going down the drain. it's kinda hard to afford that luxury when my family is already neck deep in debts. on top of that, my sister don't give two hoots and my mum can't really be bothered, my dad's in china so i guess that leaves me having to deal with this. i'm thinking to myself why do they have to purchase the common properties because of an en-bloc potential. the key word is potential. there's no real offer coming up yet because technically npra can't sell the place if they don't own it. so then why in the first place do we have to prepare for a potential en-bloc that might not even happen? why can't we just continue to rent the place from mindef? i don't really trust npra.. they're made up of ex-army officers and who knows.. npra's dealing with mindef here of all the government bodies. yeah they can pull strings but they might be pulling the wrong strings.. pulling the strings for themselves, not the residents. there's an extraordinary meeting coming up this sat. my mum's working so she can't attend. my sis can't be bothered. so... that leaves me again doesn't it? so... anybody willing to accompany me there?

another post? hey that's pretty fast..

"Every story has an ending. But in life, every ending is a new beginning."

I just watched a show that ended with that line. It's one of those lines where you go "wow that's so true" and just sit there pondering on that life sentence while the credits roll. Seriously I can't imagine just how meaningful that sentence is. Imagine every relationship that didn't work out. Imagine the time you finished primary school, then secondary school, then post-secondary education, etc. Imagine every job change you've had. It all ended a chapter in life. But that ending only heralded a new beginning. And it's usually after that chapter has ended that we really start to appreciate that chapter for being what it was. I look back on my poly days all the time and wish I could turn back the hands on the clock. It wouldn't be the same if I simply just enrolled into poly again. The people that made my experience what it was would not be there anymore. And it's people (and more importantly, friends) that add so much colours to my life. Of course family plays a major part too but that's a different kind of colour their adding.

Recently The Best I've Ever Had by Vertical Horizon keeps playing in my mind. There's just something about that song that brings back memories. The starting of the song has that haunting feel to it. I guess the one word to describe this is nostalgia.

I met a friend last Wednesday. It was pretty late after a movie and I was having a smoke outside with some friends. She walked by and our eyes caught. She came over and we said hi. We chatted for some 5 mins or so and then she went on her way. It's funny how such a simple event can trigger so much feelings. I was never close to her at all during our time in poly. In fact, she was closer to one of my very close friends. Sure I always admired her, always thought she was good-looking, intelligent and can carry herself well. But it never went anything beyond that. Then 3 years after we graduate, we bump on the streets, exchanged numbers and I find myself wanting to ask her out for coffee to catch up on good times and find out how she's been doing all these while. It's a funny feeling that I really can't explain. Maybe I'm just acting on the nostalgic side of me. Maybe there's something more.. I honestly can't tell.

hey he's back.. but do we really want him back?

the steps leading up to me finally being able to write my entry is.. well unfamiliar. had to go through all the upgrading to google stuff. it's been pretty long since i last posted. like what about 4 months or so...

where'd i go, i hear you ask? well, nowhere really. i just got a little tired and lazy to blog. nothing much to write anyways. plus i don't really have a digital camera so any dreams of a picture blog would definately not materialize.

what's been happening since the new year? loads of stuff.. too much for me to even remember actually. i've got my license (still no car though), i managed to squeeze time inbetween doing nothing to lug my ass (which is getting flabbier and bigger) down to cdp to open my account and then up to the 12th floor to open my trading account. january saw me applying for 3 ipo's, getting only 1 of them (yay cityspring!) and now i'm holding on to 2 counters as investments. really getting into this stock market thing. but then again i don't know how long it can last. more precisely, how long my money can hold staying in the market before i eventually have to liquidate. not a sound investment path to go down i agree but where's a guy supposed to start right?

i'm still waiting for the confirmation letter from nus to arrive. really really hope that they get enough people to start the two special terms. it would mean so very much to me to actually graduate earlier. even just one semester would make a difference. otherwise, i'm looking at 27 before i start working.. and that's pretty late even for guy standards here in sg.

hm.. another working week ahead tomorrow.. wonder what the week ahead brings. g-ku's birthday is coming up this wednesday. gotta go shop around for a birthday gift soon.

alright it's getting late.. i'm signing off.

till next time.. i don't know when though...