for the future me

Seriously, with our queue number, and we still got a 9th floor unit, it's quite a miracle!

So here I want to thank all the people whose queue numbers were before me, who
1) were late,
2) did not turn up,
3) dropped out,
4) switched to the Sep launch,
5) chose Fernvale,
6) chose units lower than mine

and most importantly HDB, for launching the Sep bumper flats just before my booking!! There must have been a buzz of people who gave this up and went after those :)

Yeah~~~ quite cool that we got a good grant too! it's even more than the downpayment...hehe.

So come visit me at Anchorvale Isles in 2014!! Only 8mins from the MRT! ^^

ラベル: juicy update, traffic-stopping event

Marriage

Used to think it's such a far and scary thought...but now it's not so far and not so scary anymore. it's actually just like any other commitment. A pet, a job, a religion even. If you can hang in there and put in time and effort for all these, why not a marriage? the only difference, i guess, is that people don't judge you as much if you give up..let's say..your pet..

Unknowingly, I've become one of those disrupted the "proper" chronological order and got a flat before any of the real marriage stuff. So Singaporean :( and so unromantic. And well, it's because of this that I've started to fantasize alot more about the decor of my house :) typical girl~ i still want my lala land-y stuff like my swing and walk-in wardrobe..can i have swings in my living room instead of sofa? :D

I've also started wondering why people don't take wedding shots at night with, say, the marina bayfront as backdrop. Taking photos at night so good...less imperfections captured, not as hot, don't need to pile on the powder every half hour, etc etc. plus it's special. oh well..mental note to self: wedding shoot must have some night shots.

well, most importantly, marriage is about the person you're going thru it with. you have to accept him as you know him, and not define him in the way others expect him to.

ラベル: innermost feeling, traffic-stopping event

Towards an unknown future

Gosh, it's been more than a year. I suppose there never really was something inspiring enough in my life to be worth penning down. But anyway, now I do!

I'm finally, after two years in the life-sucking vortex of a place called my company, leaving for an unknown future. I've said this many times.."anywhere is better than here", but after talking to people, I realised that's what everyone else says too!

These past two years are, put plainly, a void in my life. No one should have to experience that. I feel like I haven't learnt anything that I couldn't figure out myself. These two years felt like an eternity at some point. Really, the management could use some waking up and welcome some change in management style.

Enough about the soon-to-be past. The thing about the unknown future is...you tend to worry. And this is something I've tried to hard to stop myself from doing. Honestly I think it's the culture in my house. But that's another story. These few months I've just sorta let things be and just put in my best, and I think the results are pretty fabulous! Quite amazing actually, to have found the way to life in such a simple form.

Really gonna miss the folks there (though a good half are already not around, good for them!)...they really are the nicest ppl in the world. The fun and laughter, the bond, the lunches, the nonsense, the random odd jobs we endured together, and not to forget...the monthly pigouts...really gonna miss that. Hope they find a good escape route!

I'll try not to cry on my last day.

ラベル: innermost feeling, traffic-stopping event

食物链

真没想到一个错综复杂的感情食物链会活生生地搬演在我面前。。哈哈。。尤其是才刚刚看了两集的康熙食物链。。难道人越老，感情生活也会跟着越来越复杂吗？有点惊讶的是。。也牵连到太多人了吧！唉。。但我也了解。。这都是不由自主的。。也不是旁人能帮上忙的。。我也只能祝各位早日化解这些烦恼，早日恢复以前单纯快乐的日子吧。以后的事谁也说不上，有时随缘也不错＝）反正将来发生什么，没发生什么，就大方地接受，应该是最好的办法了吧。至少。。我是这样面对我的人生的。。强求往往没什么好结果。哈哈，好不要脸啊，说得好像真的有什么轰轰烈烈的事等着我去强求。。

我想我累了。。开始废话了。。我也该去睡了。。等待明天再变成一条虫咯～

ラベル: groundshaking discovery, spontaneous rant

Life and How to Survive It

This is delivered by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988). He was the guest-of-honour at an NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
-----

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

ラベル: motivational post

i'm (creating) content

my brain has not experienced that high a traffic in a long time. i need to escape somewhere, cut myself off from all means of communication, and not be consciously awake most of the time. i'm sure this ruffled, reckless person isn't the real me. it's just the biochemical agents called hormones that mess me up once a month that are making me like that. that must be it. there's no other explanation. i must stop myself from thinking ridiculous thoughts and doing regrettable acts. yes, i need more things going on in my life to distract myself. (new episode of gossip girl!) and also, know that storylines in drama do not happen in real life and pull myself out of lalaland.

i am not alice. impossibles will remain as they are.

ラベル: spontaneous rant

just finished watching 10 promises to my dog...

because i'm officially sick and resting at home. gosh..the worst part is i don't even know the cause of my multiple discomforts, and the doctor said they did not cause each other. i have (in order of appearance) a cold spell, nausea, stomach bloat, vomitting (self-induced. i had to. the bloating was killing me literally as i looked and felt like a corpse undergoing decomposition), full body ache, fever, stomach ache, stomach wind and possibly constipation. the doc could only diagnose a few...the indigestion aka nausea + stomach bloat + vomitting was probably caused by my lunch, full body ache + fever by a mosquito bite (i've fully recovered from that, thank goodness), and...that's it. as the other symptoms only surfaced after the first dose of meds. while i would usually die for 2 days' rest from work, these past few days have been unusually uneasy to get by. note to self: will not take unethical MCs in the future.

with reference to the title, who doesn't cry while watching a movie like that?? i only watch soppy jap dramas/movies, cos they only make soppy or crappy content..so, i took my pick. i think i've cried at much more ridiculous moments than that, such as...cartoons? and comedies. my threshold is really low. and i have soft spots for children, bears, dogs, partings, death, etc...

so anyway, i'm bored (and) stiff at home, and that could really serve as some motivation and deterrence at work should the thought of taking a day off pop up in my head again..

ラベル: spontaneous rant