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.