Uncontacted Tribes

A lot of information condensed into a 3:47m video. It gets a little choppy and abrupt at times but still a good, interesting and informational video.

I know there are tribes around in the rest of the world and even in neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia. But I never knew there are uncontacted tribes elsewhere in Latin America, the Pacific Islands and the Africas….

Interesting…
Wonder how they live, what they do, how they feed, what languages they speak, etc…

Morning Gripes

I don’t enjoy Christmas group gift exchanges.

And especially not when you’re exchanging gifts with a bunch of folks you don’t really know.

I mean, I love Christmas and all but I find the concept of such group gift exchanges rather superficial and just for the “sake of doing it”. And how am I supposed to get a nice heartfelt gift when I don’t know who the hell I am giving it to?? The whole exercise only results in the boosting of the economy by that little bit but potentially increases wastage by a whole lot.

End result = costs outweigh benefits.
i.e. NOT WORTH DOING.

If it’s buying for my family, I also find it a tad cumbersome but I’ll still do it.

I’d rather just have a quiet gathering with some food and drinks and chill. In the words of the Gen Z…Chillax….

Longer Than - Dan Fogelberg

This song suddenly popped up in my head this morning. I remember that I when I first heard this song when I was little, I thought it was a tad boring. But over the years, I've grown to appreciate it much more. Mellow and soothing.. :)


Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
I've been in love with you.

Stronger than any mountain cathedral
Truer than any tree ever grew
Deeper than any forest primeval
I am in love with you.

I'll bring fire in the winters
You'll send showers in the springs
We'll fly through the falls and summers
With love on our wings.

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow
I'll be in love with you.
I'll be in love with you.

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there've been stars up in the heavens
I've been in love with you
I am in love with you..

Blackie!

Ok. I did it again. I got myself another black dress.

It's my 7th black dress.

But but but.

Given a choice between electric blue, electric pink and black...the only logical choice is to take black right?

Yes. Ok, I'm convinced.

Yay!

...........

She did it again.

Made my blood boil twice in a day.

Winner.

HELP!

Uh-oh, I’m surrounded by Twilight fans in office.
My female lunch kakis are talking about it almost everyday!!

HELP!

Coll the Troll

I don't like it when some anal person comes to me early in the morning and bugs me about non-consequential stuff.

And why bug me about finance issues when you're the finance person and SUPPOSED to be doing such consolidations???????????????

Seriously, WTF.

She really has a way of making my BP rise.

Footsie!

I really should go bathe now. And scrub my foot at the same time.

Giving K a pseudo pedicure last evening has motivated me to give my own pair of feet a good pick-me-up session with both the foot scrub and a pumice stone.

I'll prolly drown my feet in moisturiser later on too....:)

One should not neglect one's feet (and legs).
Because they're the ones who will carry you around everywhere till you're old.

Read rhymes with eat

I used to have a voracious appetite.
For books that is.

Now I only have a voracious appetite.
For food.

Not healthy at all.
Hmm.

Wonder what made my brain synapses go through such a 180 degree change.

Maybe because read rhymes with eat.
And "eat" is a command which the brain takes shorter to process given that it has only 3-letters (compared to 4 letters).
Hence. The brain subconsciously prefers that I eat than I read. :)

Wah! I'm so smart I admire myself.
......
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Not.
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....Hehe.

Experiments do pay off!

Golden Pear - diced
Lettuce - cut into bite-sized strips
Pommery mustard - aka wholegrain mustard

Mix all together and you get a great perk me up salad!! :)))))

*chomp chomp chomp*

*grins*

dollars and cents

It is always a motivation to check your bank account early in the morning and see that your pay has already come in. :)

It is also a motivation to see that the AWS has come in too! :)

Ok, I don't feel as bad now about spending money liao. Muahahhaha!

Admin Matters

Insurance
I think I really need to sit down and consolidate whatever insurance policies I have.
Be it health, life, travel, accident.

Gosh. It scares me that I don't have a clear inkling what I' m covered for and what I'm not.
And what existing policies I have at the moment...

Forex
I've got too much foreign currencies in my hands now. Korean won, Chinese renminbi, Mexican peso, Phillipine peso, US dollars, Euro, Indonesian rupiah, Vietnamese dong, etc....

I need to change them back to Sing dollars! Didn't realise so much liquidity is held up in all these currencies...

Info Info

Currently reading up & researching on:

- Sponsoring a child in a 3rd world country
- Honour Killings
- The Cold Storage Management Trainee Programme
- Jobs ;p

Bleah!

Feeling somewhat harrassed.

My boss is supposed to be on holiday with his wife in BKK. But the way he is hounding myself and some others, it's like as it he never went away. If I were his wife, I'd be screaming my head off at him by now.

He spent the whole morning on Saturday calling me 3-4 times and SMS-ing me.

He sent me SMS-es yesterday morning.

And he sent me an SMS at 3am last night while I was sleeping. I woke with a shock.
What the hell? Others need to sleep even if you don't leh....I'm a full-fledged zombie today..

He's sent me 4 SMS-es this morning. And it's not even 11am yet...

I will not marry a workaholic. Even if I unknowingly marry one, I'll drill it into the other half's head that there needs to be work-life balance.

After the Run

My Birthday!

These are some very very overdue pictures....;)
I had a very lovely dinner with K over at Dozo in Valley Point.
I'd been there before already and loved the place.
Iwanted K to experience the place for himself and so we ended up going there for my birthday dinner.

A lovely bouquet of white roses to start the evening with..:)

Starters. Left: A Dollop of Cream on Smoked Salmon. Centre: Fresh Seared Scallop with Truffle Sauce. Right: Foie Gras with Bread.

Sliced Tuna Sashimi with Asparagus

Crab Salad

I loved how this flower looked on the plate as a decorative piece!

Bamboo Clam with Truffle Sauce by the side

Escargot with Cheese

Lobster Bisque

Beef on Hot Stone

Herb-crusted Prawns

A surprise for me from the restaurant!

It was really a nice touch on top of their already excellent service.

Brownie with vanilla ice-cream. Heavenly.

Refreshing fruit tea to wash it all down....:)

SCM 2009 - Women's 10km

I completed the Women’s 10km Standard Chartered Run this morning.

My first time completing a 10km run. Well, it was more like a walk-run-walk kind of thing. But still, I completed it and it was around the timeframe I thought I would complete the run.

I thought I would feel good about completing the run. I don’t know why but it felt a little empty and less of an accomplishment compared to when I finished the 5.8km Yellow Ribbon Prison Run back in September.

I spent a good part of the whole afternoon and evening curled up in bed resting. I didn’t feel good physically. I didn’t prepare nor train for the run properly and I think I over-exerted myself. I didn’t have a good breakfast before the run too.

I’ve got a sore upper right thigh now and am walking a little like a duck or penguin. Not quite sure how I’m gonna walk to office tomorrow. Hmm.

Some other things have been running through my mind. I’ve been thinking and asking myself these. What’s the purpose of me joining these runs? For fun? For leisure? To challenge myself? Who am I trying to prove things to? Myself? Others? What am I trying to prove? That I’m not a weakling? So what if I complete these runs? So what? Then what?

A part of me thinks I’m over-compensating for my younger years during which I was not allowed to do any physical activities (due to a mis-diagnosis of a heart condition). Another part of me thinks I am doing these to prove (to no one in particular? I don’t know really…) that maybe I’m not some princess who can’t do such things.

I’m feeling damn shacked out now and yet another part of me is saying that perhaps I should admit to myself that I can’t compare myself to others who are more physically fit.

Ok, I am babbling already. Sigh.

???

My boss cc-es me for both financial stuff and tech stuff.
Like what is exactly my job role??
Am I supposed to know and handle these things tooooo????

A staff who mans the general enquiry mailbox asks me for help with technical questions and operational questions which come in. Her boss (i.e. my peer aka The Coll aka the finance/admin manager) does not know how to answer most of these questions. I end up helping this staff out.
Why am I doing someone else’s job?

My vendor gets me to help out sometimes when they can’t find my tech manager.
I end up knowing how to do simple technical things now.

What exactly is my job role???

RAWR!

I woke today raring to go. A little tired still but with enough adrenalin to get me up and about.
It felt good. Hell, it felt GREAT! Haha..

And then I heard a wonderful piece of news on the radio this morning.

Class 95 is available again on the Internet!!

It's been almost 9 months since they took it off the Net and apparently they've received considerable feedback from listeners wanting to have it back online. And so voila, they're back online....Wheee!!

Did my French homework whilst on the train to work and revised for the next lesson.
(Fell asleep on my textbook last night though haha...)

Stepped into office and cleared up a paper for submission already.

Time to "kill" off the other items on my to-do list...:)

La Fin de L'Annee

Voila, it’s December already. Feeling nostalgic and pensive.

Maybe it’s the weather, the coolness and the general feeling of year-end approaching. Year-end brings Christmas along with it, which I love. At the same time, it brings with it questions and thoughts of how much one has achieved or experienced in the past months or year as well.

Looking back, it has been a rather eventful year and time has zoomed by in a jiffy. Right from 1st Jan till now. Friends, work, family and self…enough has happened to keep me on a constant whir. So much so that I feel as if time has never passed by faster than over the last 11 months.

I remember mentioning that it seems as if the older one gets, the more occupied one seems to get. Haha. I’m not sure about others but it sure does seem like that for me. :)

Friends. Reconnected with some, lost some and made new ones. Got disappointed with some others as well. But I guess at the end of the day you know who are the ones who really matter. I used to be more proactive in maintaining relationships. Unknowingly, I’ve somehow taken sort of a backseat this year. Maybe I’ve just grown more anti-social? Haha..

Family. Same old same old. Parents still drive me up (and over) the wall sometimes I still feel awkward with my nephew. And I’ve been on my weekly visits to my granny’s nursing home for 2 years and more now. Mum’s getting better after her recent kidney stone blasting. Dad’s gonna be discharged today after 20 days in hospital. A cousin’s had a cyst removed from her ovary and a distant relative has been diagnosed with kidney failure.

Work. Abit of a love-hate relationship here haha. Travels have been interesting definitely and I can’t gripe about that for sure. Being given the opportunity to fly around for work was something which I used to think would never happen to me. Projects have been assigned to me over the past year and one of them has been the cause of my edginess over the last months and probably will for the next few weeks/months as well. The boss can be a pain in the ass at times and a nice guy at other times. A bright spark was when I had a promotion and a corresponding increment. Woot! Haha…

Self. Set some targets at the start of the year, met some, barely reached some, en route to reaching some and had to write off some other stuff due to changes in circumstances and direction. Glad I took up blading. It was something which I’d wanted to do for close to 8 years. Along the way these past 11 months, I’d taken a few tumbles for sure, both literally and metaphorically. I can’t say I’ve grown 100% wiser as a result but I‘ve definitely learnt some things along the way that should be in everyone’s “guidebook to life”. I’m still learning everyday though and I’m glad I’ve got K around me, to catch me should I fall.

K. My beacon of light. Haha…who’s brought me many a good thing and shown me quite a number of stuff as well. It hasn’t entirely been smooth-sailing and I’d be lying through my teeth if I said it was. But still, it’s a walk we’ve chosen to take with each other and kudos goes to my king for bestowing much kind patience towards my idiosyncracies. ;p

Onward we march towards 2010 and yet another year ahead. What comes forth? What lies ahead? I guess no amount of planning will prepare us entirely for the unforseen.

So oh well, let’s take it slow and steady….In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my warm cup of tea and lovely cookies. :)