Isabella - Search

I used to listen to English & Malay songs when I was in P5 & P6..right up till Sec 1 actually where I switched to mainly Mandarin songs..
And back in 1992, this was my fav Malay song..Most Malays would know this group...:)

Enjoy this song..Isabella
By the group Search

Slash!!!

Sibei talented..!!
One of the most revered electric guitarist of all time!!!

Each GNR concert will have a solo section just for Slash to strut his stuff...

November Rain

What can I say man?
Ultimate classic from Guns n Roses.

Almost 20 years on. And the song still pulls at my heartstrings...

Rock on GNS!!!
Rock on Axl Rose!
Rock on Slash!

hahaa...

The Duckie Encounter

As usual...Put 6 ladies together and you'll get...
Gossips, screams, laughter, giggles, sniggers, guffaws, more screams, more laughter, lots of banter and the list goes on...
It's an infinite equation.

We had 6 ladies and 1 gentleman last night.
Coupled with a pot of chicken curry, some white rice, some baguette...
And we got lots of gossip, lots of screams, lots of banter, lots of guffaws, lots of blah blah blah....
Voila, it's yet another infinite equation. haha....

It was a gathering of souls of the DK gals again. It was an especially good one this time round...
Why so? Cos everyone turned up.
Venue was at Ee Hong's place...

Ee Hong, Selin, Tricia, Lydia, Ginger, Sashi & myself...7 of us.

Crowded around at the dinner table...As the tradition goes, each took turns to give the rest updates. But oh well, needless to say, my life ain't very happening these days. Hahaa...I've been relegated to one of the boring ones already lol....

Lydia as usual bore the brunt of it all with her over-the-top antics and her stories about guys/boyfriends.
Selin claimed to put on weight though I simply couldn't see it. haha...
Tricia had good updates this time round...there's a guy chasing her.. haha..
Ee Hong...poor thing lah..stuck at home with a very painful slipped disc...HANG IN THERE YAH!
Ginger was "chau tah"...having spent 10 days in the States..
Sashi was loud as usual!! His bug eyes every twinkling in mischief, his mouth ever rattling away and his body ever in huge theatrical actions...

Till the next time again! It'll be a long hiatus perhaps...Lydia will only be back in November...
Hmm...we'll see, maybe we can squeeze in something in between.. haha...
Force Tricia out for some updates or something.....hiakzzzz

*burp*

Realised I've been eating alot of curry stuff this week.

Wednesday
They served vegetable lemak during the buffet lunch break for the 1-day seminar I had at SMU.
Went home for dinner at night to discover...voila! Mum cooked vegetable lemak too...

Thursday
Dinner with the DK gals was the humble chicken curry...complete with white rice & roti...

Friday
Family dinner, celebration of Fathers' Day. Went to the Chinese Restaurant at Paramount Hotel.
One of the dishes was curry prawns...complete with fried man tou, the same as those served with chilli crabs...


Think I might have an overdose of coconut & curry this week...
Must lay off for next week! haha...

How Gracious Are We As A People?

Let me clarify from the onstart, this post is not meant to glorify myself for my politeness haha lol…

Since 2-3 months back, I started a daily habit while on my way to work.
I’d get a copy of the free tabloid-sized newspaper, usually My Paper, because I would pass that stand first en route to the MRT station.

I’d say “Thank you!” to the lady handing out the freebie newspaper to me. Or if she happens to greet me “Morning!” first, then I’d reciprocate and do likewise and greet her a “Morning!”.

Many a time, there’d be a short queue of perchance 2-3 pax…on some days there’d be up to 5-6 pax crowding around her. Yesterday was one such day.
With many an auntie or executive cutting queue in front of me, I was naturally jostled to the back of the small crowd. What the heck, wait lor….
I am not “rushing for reincarnation” anyway, as those familiar with the Chinese saying would comprehend.

Out of the 5 or 6 who took the paper from her, only one male executive in his 30s said “Thank you!”. The rest, young or old, working adult or retiree, just took the paper and left, rushing back into the streaming path of zombified people heading to the MRT station.

Abit sad lah. I mean come on, only 1 out of 5 pax said “Thank you”.
If you take this proportion and extrapolate it across the entire SG population, that means what?? Only 20% of folks have the decency to be somewhat more polite than the other 80%.

I know my sample size is small and therefore non-representative when used to measure the attitudes of 4.6million people.
But this is prolly just a simplistic example to highlight the long distance Singapore needs to run before it calls itself a truly gracious society.

Look at the debates in the papers on the issue of giving up seats on public transport for those who need them more. Many folks have compared the attitudes of locals with those from the Western countries and even Japan. And what I read is that we are so so so lacking in many areas.


Kinda sad lah. How did we as a people morph into such a state?
Am sure we can do better than this??

Scaling Everest Vs Helping the Community

I thought to myself that day.

Singaporean lady Ms Linda Tan attempted to scale Mount Everest a few weeks back...
And for her attempt, her company Great Eastern Life sponsored $50,000 worth of funds.

Wouldn't that large sum of money be put to better use helping the poor and needy instead?

Ok sure, if she really did manage to reach the top, she would have put Singapore on the map as an achievement.

But what of that?

Wouldn't the money be put to better use helping a needy family send its kids to school, helping a kidney patient afford his or her dialysis treatment, sponsoring an old folks' home, sponsoring a hospice, aiding a special needs school, aiding ACRES (Singapore's own wildlife sanctuary) and the list goes on and on and on...??

My two cents.

There might be others who disagree with me.

But I cannot think of a reason why spending $50,000 on helping one woman achieve her dream is more fruitful than spending that amount on possibly helping many others in more meaningful ways......

Food for thought....

shell...seafood..GEODUCK?

Ok, the latest nickname I have in office is......well...as the title of this entry says...
Geoduck.

No idea how the hell that came about though...

Oh well, did a Wiki on Geoduck and here's the URL....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoduck

Lol...at least it's a more expensive species of clam.. ahha....up to US $56 per kg of it lol...
Nothing like cockles...hmm mm....

Intellectual Property Law & the Internet

Voila! This is the one-day course I will be attending tomorrow.

Hope it is not as boring as it sounds.

At SMU - School of Information Systems

To Listen. To See. To Learn. To Enrich.

Keep Looking, Don't Settle.

That's what Steve Jobs said.

Work forms a major part of your life. And you gotta love what you're gonna do. If you haven't found what you're looking for, keep looking and don't settle.

Which brings to mind. What exactly am I looking for?
I know what I day-dream about but is that what I am really looking for?

Some find their calling early on in life. Some take longer. I suppose I fall in the latter category...

I see myself plodding along the streets. Looking into every shop window that pops by along the cobbled path...I shun some windows, perhaps they are grimy and gritty. Or perhaps because they are the windows sheltering goods of haute couture within. Which I know I cannot afford and which might not suit me anyway so why bother stepping in?

I look in through some windows once in awhile when a shop sign catches my eye. I step into these shops once in awhile. I try stuff but I don't buy anything.
So I step out again and walk again.

Finding that elusive something.

There's a restlessness in me that cannot quite get settled down. I thought the current stint shushed out those threads of emptiness and feelings of being lost that I felt before.
But I'm beginning to think the embers are starting to be revived again. I am not stoking them vigorously of course. It would not be wise to do so.

I am thinking.....what value does the current work stint add to my CV? Is my restlessness only due to the uncertainties in my career aspects? Or some other issues?

surprise email..

An ex-colleague left my previous company in end May. We were only colleague for a very short 3 months since I jumped ship quite early on.

Truth be told, I have not kept in touch with him ever since I left the place, except for the one brief SMS conversation we had a few months. People come, people go. I asmit I did not bother keeping in touch with him. I've not seen him for the last 8.5 months and it was a shock of some sorts when he dropped me an email.

It was a farewell email. One of those farewell emails that you'd send to your current colleagues when you're leaving the company to bid them "goodbye", "thanks for all the wonderful memories", "glad to have known you", "keep in touch", yada yada. That sort of email.

Except that he included some ex-colleagues in it as well. And I was one of them. It was a pleasant surprise...definitely something which I did not expect. He said this:

Michelle : Your flair for Marketing is superb, and your sensitivity Surpassing many a young lady executive… St James was FUN!

Needless to say, I did feel honoured that I was included in the farewell email, with a small little paragraph within dedicated to me. Didn't think that I would leave such a lasting impression on him.

Ok, you can discount the last sentence of the paragraph haha. What struck me more was that no one has ever said that I had a flair for marketing.

And this came at a time when I was just thinking to myself the other day if I would ever go back to marketing sometime in the near future.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Transcript of a speech by Steve Jobs.
Delivered at a graduation ceremony at Stanford University in 2005.
An ex-colleague sent it to me.

===================

Thank you. I'm honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl.

So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, "We've got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?" They said, "Of course." My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.

This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life.

So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed.

Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever--because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We'd just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I'd just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started?

Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out.

What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I'd been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life.

During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.

In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months.

My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors' code for "prepare to die." It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share.

No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.

Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along.

I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish."
It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Thank you all, very much.

Les Couleurs

I was decidedly a black, brown, grey, white, beige person..
Neutral, earthy, plain and well...perhaps a little dull?

After some suggestions by others...and some self-thinking last year...
I decided to add some colours to my wardrobe..

I still have alot of black stuff. But now I also have violet, pink, green, yellow, blue, magenta, lime, bright orange, red, peach, silver (or is this just stylised grey?)....

I am still plain & simple....but yeah, colours do make a difference I guess...haha.
Sometimes I feel happier wearing more colours...:)

And voila, the green spaghetti I wore yesterday received quite a number of positive comments!
Whee! Haha...someone said "I think you look good in green! Next time buy more green!"

I don't quite know how to react..

It's scary when you see a different side of a person...

Because when you least expect it, it pops up on you suddenly...

And you're not prepared at all to see it when it happens...

Saw a very different side of a friend today. Anger in its most raw form.

It was etched all over his face, all over his features.

I don't know how to put it. It was like the devil manifested....sounds like I'm cranky hor? haha

But I have to say. It scared me to death.

I just couldn't shake his image off for hours after that. Well, actually till now.

And I'm not the only to say that it was scary. Another lady confessed to me as well.

When I am indirectly involved in the reason which led to the anger....it's even scarier.

:(

The friend did assure me that he was not angry with me but with someone else.

But still, it felt bad enough.

Found myself being on my toes treading around him carefully during the afternoon & evening.

In gist

Not a good week.
Department morale low. Boss driving us nuts. Colleagues behaving weirdly.

My own emotions are running wild. My morale is abit low too.
And I feel kinda tensed up.

============
Will be heading to Paris. Leaving on 20th June.
Very last minute decision by the boss. Attending an international meeting there.
A gathering of international representatives of the domain name fraternity.

Desperately trying to find hotel & tickets there. Alot fully booked.

Feel abit bad for HC. He was supposed to go. Boss went back on his word and made me go instead. Said he needed HC around in SG to manage projects.

I feel bad. And I felt worse when the boss said "It's a pity we can't make it. We have projects and urgent matters to attend to....so well.....you go LOR".

Might extend for a few more days after the meeting. Take the chance to visit some of the things in Paris.

============
Went Balaclava last night.
Guess I broke my 7-year promise.

7 years ago I think..or was it 8 years ago....I once said to myseld. I will never step into Balaclava again.
Cos I was throw out from there last time for being underaged.
And it was in an unceremonious manner. Perchance it was also cos we were dressed slightly casual.

Anyway, ya, was there last night. And was at Oosters as well.
Some beer to booze the grey spells away.

Heading to ICB with XL & Kym tomorrow night.
Hope they can cheer me up...

SO MUCH

There's so much I want to do

So much I want to try

So much I want to experience

So much I want to see

So much I want to feel

So much...

So much..

Bittersweet Symphony

This here is another song from The Verve.

I think this one was more popular than Drugs Don't Work.

Drugs Don't Work

I cannot remember if I have shared this song before.
But it's one of my favs...from all those years ago..I think this was when I was in JC. Which makes it about 9 years ago?

Used to listen this late at night..when all was still and quiet and I was all alone in my room...

Sad song made great by the chords of The Verve.
And of course, the lilting British vocals...

When they first appeared as a band, people compared them to The Beatles...

Enjoy...Brit pop rules!

twitterings

The Butterfly and The Diving Bell was shown in the movies a few months back.
A really sad French movie and also motivational I think...
I wanted to go watch it. But somehow didn't have the chance to.

But I'll soon watch it!!
Alliance Francaise is showing it on 24th June! Woohoo and Eric has got 2 free movie passes which can admit up to 4 pax!

Wonderful...A mini outing with my French classmates...
Looking forward to it!!

=========
I didn't do well on the mini-run just now...Had a stitch so was reduced to walking hmm mm.

=========
Time to take a small shower...and then get to work on opening my Nano package...
Lol, havene't had tht time to fiddle with it.
It's still sitting in its plastic case in the Harvey Norman plastic bag...

I guess with this gaadget...I'm almost an Apple-convert hiakzz

=========
I'll be a photographer's assistant come 26th June.
Or should I say a bridal assistant???

XL called me this morning...She needed a helper for her bridal outdoor shoot..
And voila...so I became the one to help with her gown changes blah blah blah...

I think XingNi (her sister) couldn't make it so she called me...

Anyone lend me a PSP so I can entertain myself while they're shooting?
Afterall, my services are only needed when she needs to change clothes...

Ok, need to remember to submit my leave tomorrow for the 26th....=)

SATC

Went to watch it last night.

It was a nice show...but not as nice as the serial itself..

There were some scenes or little ditties which were not "finished" and were just left hanging.
And well, Charlotte still irritates me haha..
The 2hr 20 mins was not justified too...kinda got draggy...

But of course, there's still the same friendship theme...
The same essence of love, both lost & found, which permeated the whole movie...
Sadness, hurt, anger and their counterparts: happiness, passion, forgiveness, healing, blah blah...appeared in well proportioned parts.

There were parts where I yawned...and parts where I felt just like them (sans the fashion statements though ahha).

I'm glad they brought back most of the people we saw in the series...
Anthony and the bald guy with the tinted glasses (forgot his name)..
A pity they did not bring back Aidan though...He was a really good man (wonder why Carrie dumped him back in the series)....

Steve looks visibly older than he was in the series...but he's still got his puppy-dog deameanour..

Mr Big still looks as delicious as he was in the series...

And the girls...they still look gooodd...Charlotte, or Kristin Davis in real life, put on a bit of weight though...
The clothes this time round are still nice, but not as nice as those in the series haha...
Maybe there wasn't enough time in 2.5hrs to make a big impact...
But they still managed to squeeze in 300 costume changes for all 4 ladies...a mean feat! Haha..

Ahboy was visobly bored...Oh well, presumably so for the MCPs out there...

I have a simple wish..if you could even call it a wish...
And that's to get my hands on the full set of Season 1 to 6 again...
And watch it all over again...

I think I watched Season 1-3 twice liao ahhaa