Of Weddings and Funerals

I attended a wedding on Sunday morning and then a wake during the evening.
In less than 3 months, this is the second time it has happened. The first time round I went to both a wedding and a wake on the same day was back in end of May.

Too much going-ons for a single day.

Boredom Breeds Awesomeness

Chloe was bored. So I gave her a task.
I gave her 5 random words. She was to create something out of it. Could be a sentence, could be a ditty, could be a poem.

These were the 5 words: snowman, flower, plastic, ass, tissue

And this was what lovely Chloe came up with.

AWESOME LAH!!!!!

I’m a cute little snowman
Made out of snow
My creator abandoned me
And left me out in the cold
Here I am sneezing away
With a tissue in my hand
Nothing to look forward to
I wish I was someone’s Christmas plan
Where did my creator go?
I am so alone
Asleep I fell as the days came and went
In my dreams, I saw my vengeful self
Chasing my creator to his house
And sticking a stalk of plastic flower up his ass.

Sept 3 - Scrabble Competition

I'm excited.

The last time I played Scrabble competitively was 2 years ago.
I used to play it competitively back in uni and led the Boogle team as well.

3rd September.

There's an inter-house Scrabble competition happening within the organisation. I signed up for it. Yay!

There's a good player in the Black House who was rather cocky the last time we played together in the group playoffs. I won that game and he wasn't very happy about it.

Hope I don't meet him again during this year's competition haha.

Lame attempt at writing Chinese

我今天早上在Promenade Circle Line地铁站看到了一位女生。哦，她好酷！

头发断得像个男孩， 瘦瘦高高，黑色上衣和深灰色裤子， 手上拿着一个黑色的laptop bag。

她走路“有风”，够有帅气！

好酷！

...................

There are people who are your friends and remain your true friends even after a long time has passed. There is an initiative to keep in touch and when contact is there, it’s a genuine one with no motive.

Then there are others who remember you only when they need a favour from you. Are these people still considered friends? Or acquaintances? Or once friend but now acquaintance? Or.......oh nvm.

Point is, don’t come to me only when you need something from me.

Active aging, active learning

K’s mother has a big appetite for learning. I think it’s good and I find it an admirable trait.
I don’t know any other person who has had the tenacity to take up a Masters programme at 50-something years of age.

She’s 60-plus now and is still learning everyday. She volunteers at various social organisations, reads a lot, is proficient enough in using the computer, has taught in a school and also took sewing classes last time. She is currently taking art classes and a separate course on writing a biography as well.

Active aging. It’s good.
Much better than sitting at home and watching Korean dramas or Korean MTVs.

august

This morning, I realized my desk calendar was still showing the month of July.

I flipped the page over to August.

And I saw this phrase on the page for August.

“Fear not the future. Weep not for the past.”

How true.

Though at times, it takes courage, strength and determination to achieve this.

=========

Time has gone by in a jiffy.

I thought I just celebrated Xmas and CNY. And now it's going to be National Day already.

And before you know it, it'll be Xmas time again.

Year after year.

Babe!

I enjoy my MSN conversations with Chloe.

We regale each other with stories, complete with explicit details. We gripe to each other. We listen to each other.

She listens, she understands. :) She dispenses good advice. She is rational and keeps me sane too haha...

And every so often, we have conversations which dissolve us both into maniacal laughter. Virtually that is haha.

I miss you babe!
When was the last we met up? Two years ago?

I will drag you out in time to come.....
In the meantime, till our next conversation....hehe.

My little terrarium

It's almost official.

One of the plants in my terrarium is dying. :(

Checked it this morning and its stem was turning a dull brown-grey. It's being propped up now by a toothpick.

*wails*

Not too sure what went wrong. Either there was too much water, or there was too much direct sunlight??

p/s: Thank you Ally for your very kind offer!! I'm sure your African violets would be happier under your care though haha. Let me figure out what's wrong with my terrarium first before I take on other plants...;p

English Lessons

Yes boss. I will keep it in mind that when I write policy papers...

...I should use the Active Voice and not the Passive Voice.

...and I should put the recommended policy position as the bottomline concluding paragraph.

Lunch Today

I had lunch with a New Zealander today. He could have been my father, given his age of 62 years. In reality, he seems younger and is still very much a go-getter.

We first knew each other in Mexico back in March 2009. Nice guy. No airs. Very easy to talk to. Back then I didn’t even know he was the president of the Internet governing body in New Zealand. He had run out of business cards when I first met him and so it was only very much later that I found out that he was actually holding a high position. We last met in Sydney 2009 at another conference.

This time round he’s here chairing an event and so we decided to catch up. Over a bowl of wanton mee, a plate of chicken rice and two pots of Earl Grey tea haha. He was staying at M Hotel and so I went down to Café 2000, which is located at the hotel itself, to meet him.

Discovered that he’s actually Scottish, holds both a British passport and a New Zealand passport. He speaks Gaelic, a little French, English, Spanish, a little German and has studied Latin before. Gosh, what a linguist. His Dad speaks German, English, Hebrew and Arabic. Wah, another linguist!

All in all, a good catch-up.
My conclusion. Australians and New Zealanders are really quite nice people and are quite easy to get along with. :)

Buy or Sell? Domain Names that is

Some people just trade domain names for a living, some do it on the sidelines.
I didn’t know about all these things before I joined the industry.

But gosh, it can be a lucrative thing. So lucrative they even have brokers to seal the deals. There are also many online auction sites catered for these purposes.

029.com was recently sold for USD$110,000. Underdog.com was sold for about US$62,000. Cured.com was sold for US$25,000.

But these are just small amounts I think.

I’ve heard of bigger price tags on a single domain name, up to US$350,000. If you put it in perspective, that’s like SG$490,000 which is just about the price of a 5-room HDB resale flat in Singapore.

These people who sold the names probably got them at very cheap prices in the early .com days. Registration fees could have been as cheap as US$30-40 a name for a year during the 90s. Keep the name for maybe 10 years and that only puts your total investment at US$400. In return, you could get back more than 50 times your initial investment. The Return on Investment would be more than 100 or 500 times for really sought-after names.

Keeping names for 10 years is just a conservative estimate. With technology these days, the turnaround time is probably much faster at maybe just 2-3 years for some of the popular names. This in turn, would put ROIs at even greater figures.

That much money for something as simple as a domain name.
If this is not lucrative, I don’t know what is. :)

Go figure.

My Own Terrarium

I did it. :)

After reading about terrariums for a few days and thinking about what I could do, I finally went out with K two weekends ago and got myself some plants and cacti, vase, potting soil, peat moss and pebbles which I needed to start one with.

And I made my first terrarium on Sunday 18 July!
I decided on building an open terrarium because it was easier for a beginner to do so.

In that time till now, I’ve bought more things including some activated charcoal, and two more pots of fittonias (one’s pink veined and the other’s white veined, can’t remember their scientific names though haha). All that’s left now is to find a suitable glass container or vase and then I’ll start making my second terrarium already!

Two days ago, I added some decorative seashells to my first terrarium…:) The way I like things, simple, uncluttered but still aesthetically pleasing.

Hmm, maybe I could make a closed terrarium and bring it to office.
Yay! Decorate my table a little…

p/s: I have not been able to find a universally accepted definition of a terrarium. But suffice to say that it is miniature garden landscape designs encased in a container (usually glass) with no drainage systems. Sometimes, animals are also added to terrariums. If so, then they end up being called aquariums (of which we are very familiar with) or vivariums.

Of beauty

The lengths women go to to make themselves look prettier.

My colleague is 44 this year. Looks rather good for her age and still has a good figure too. Divorced with a 16-yr-old son.

I just discovered she spent more than $25,000 a few years ago on veneers for almost her full set of teeth. It costs $1000 per veneer per tooth.

How did I find out?

Um, the veneer covering one of her two front teeth unfortunately dropped out yesterday while she was having her dinner.

She showed me her original tooth this morning. It was small, long, yellow and looked slightly decayed. A total opposite of the beautiful veneers she had and which I initially thought were her real teeth.

And because the original tooth is small, there are gaps between it and the other two veneer-capped teeth on both sides of it.

Gosh.

Apparently she was given a guarantee that the veneers would last 10 years at least. She called up the dentist to complain and she’s going down later during lunch to get a new veneer if possible.

In the meantime, she’s trying not to laugh or smile to hide the strange gap in front.

Interesting.

The amount of money some people would go to to make themselves look better.

She has spent tens of thousands of dollars on body wraps, facials, treatments, acupuncture, tui na massages, laser treatments, pulse light treatments, manicures, pedicures and a whole host of other treatments and packages.

And she's thinking of going for liposuction next year.

My guess is that she’ll be spending more in the years to come. :)

do i lack folic acid?

I read with amusement Chloe's recent post on her lack of ability fo focus.

Partly because it is so her, partly because she has shared other anecdotes with me.

And partly because I'm like that as well at times.

Forgetful and blur. Distracted and fidgety. Absent-minded.
And this multiplies a few-fold when you add in the factor of tiredness or sleepiness.

I brushed my teeth twice on Friday afternoon.

I brushed after lunch, came back to the office and left my toothbrush and toothpaste on the desk.

Was hard at work for the next 2 hours and then when I saw my toothbrush and toothpaste on my desk, I thought I had not brushed my teeth yet. And so I went. Again.

Oh well.

she.

in darkness sat she
solitary
calm
ruminating
everything
nothing
attempting
reflection
achieving
vacuum
faith
presence
hope
force
know
not
things
in
darkness
sat
she

..............

even a rubber band has an elasticity limit

------------------

I do not enjoy
The uncertainty
I do not know if
My melancholy is justified
But my heart does not feel good
My senses do not bode well

Jen

I had dinner with Jenaline the other night. Everytime I see her, I get reminded of the time when we were both hired by our ex-company. I was only 23 then and still clueless about many things in the working world. She on the other hand, was already in the workforce for almost 20 years and had been a high flyer at various MNCs. Needless to say, she was my boss and she took me under her wing.

6-over years have passed, we have both moved on from that company and I am happy we are still in touch. It's always a joy talking to her. I quite admire her openness and ability to talk to people of all ages, backgrounds, professions, etc. Maybe that's one reason why I feel comfortable with her. She has always said that my strength lies in my "ren yuan". My ability to make people feel at ease when I meet them or talk to them. I always tell her maybe she sees me this way because she's the one who is making me feel comfortable around her in the first place.

Anyway as usual, she has encouraged me to strike out on my own. And see if I can put my strengths to good use at the same time haha. So encouraging and enthusiastic haha. :) She said a few things. One of them was that to try and fail and try again is an advantage the young have over the old. Not in her exact words of course. But generally the notion she was trying to put across.

She shared with me some of her own big dreams as well. I think it's good to continue having dreams and aspirations even when you're close to hitting 50. I think it keeps the mind going. And I'm glad she's still got the strength, energy and enthusiasm to run around and get things done. Bravo to her!

Her church service is now held on Thursdays at Suntec. So she said perhaps we'll meet up more often than before given that I work at Suntec as well.

We'll see we'll see. She's a busy bee and I won't hold her to her word hhaa.

?

How does one define success? What makes one succeed? Should one align his definition of success to that of his parents, his friends or even the society at large? When one sticks to his beliefs and preferences, is that determination, perserverance or stubborness? How does one find oneself? How does one see oneself clearly? Does one usually see another more clearly than he does himself? What makes one grow? How does one grow?