week 24th to 30th March

Uncle Daniel's Indonesian maid went home after getting an emergency call that her toddler daughter is critically ill. my aunt scrambled together quite a sum of money from all of us, you know, each chipping in a couple of hundreds will help.

my next door neighbour passed away. she was 77 year old and lived with her son, daughter and son-in-law. all cramped in a three room flat. aunty was always independent, speaks mostly english, neatly groomed all the time. at the wake, the daughter showed us a photo album of her mom as a baby, as a youth, all poised with an unusual display of confidence and dignified look for a young woman in fifty century. she worked till just over a year ago i think, when her boss laid her off without even telling her. she told us just one morning she waited for the company bus that never came to fetch her, and that's how she found out she was being laid off. what an asshole boss. so anyway, i would want to remember aunty as how i always remember her, an independent, strong woman. she was always smiling when we exchanged greetings. the son-in-law narrated to us that she had fallen in the bathroom and probably had a stroke but it was too late when the son got home that night when he so happened to work till eight. i cannot imagine that i was at home but the world just went by.

saturday-- tim-- my sis' BF has a project to rush and called for assistance. he does designs and the work at hand was to showcase some artists' work on external environment's interwoven link to our daily lives. for details, visit the esplanade next week. i am very much a visual person and i enjoy looking at people's work. fabricating props is hard work, i must tell you. there are hundreds of things going on before you see the final product, little will you know that we got to hand-pick the "holes" on alphabets "a o b p q d B Q A D R O P" on scrolls of text. the beauty of the work is also to see an idea from concept to product. this time, it was slightly more bearable then the last time when we worked on the floor from dusk to dawn breaking our backs. this time, we had tables and chairs. so anyway, i am always happy to hang out with my sis cos we have a lot of talking to do. we can yak and yak and i am so glad to be rattling off with her. my sis is my most precious person since i was 7. so anyway, it is always nice that we go eat something after the job is done and this time, we even had a little spare time to go see those mini bikes racing at the car park outside the old national stadium. too bad tim's friend's bike got a punctured tyre or we could have a go at it.

in the pipeline
booked 2 tickets on Air Asia to Bangkok, going for a short trip with mom on 16th May
Anna's wedding 11th May!!! so soon!

Mom's Cooking

I try to make a point to see my mom at least on alternate Fridays

most of the time now, without Brendan. because i know that my mom is more relaxed without his presence. 

because he sometimes he is impatient or has strong comments.

most of my relatives are not at ease with people who are opinionated 

I often joke with Brendan that he is not a welcomed figure and he understands it and is often so sweet, he lets me go spend time with my mom and other relatives without tagging along.

I am glad that my relationship with Brendan is very open, honest, and mature. 

I don't know if there is anything to do with my Enneagram or Astrology or character, but freedom is a very important thing for me.

I hate people telling me what to do, and especially what not to do. 

you know the song?.. from movie - The First Wives' Club - "you don't know me,......don't tell me what to do...... and don't tell me what to say, just let me be myself,... don't put me on display"...

I don't know how I end up telling you this in this entry but there was once, i was with a friend and we were at kind of a cafe at a cinema complex and that cafe had very high ceiling but whatever the case, the table behind me sat one guy and a girl opposite him. that guy was lecturing his girlfriend about how she disgraced him in front of his family (i think the context was that she went zouk and either got drunk or high or something along that line when she got to his place) and he went on and on and on about "so you enjoyed it! behaving like that! you think you are so cool! or whatever,, i can't remember, but he was a bastard talking to her like that. it went on for like a whole 15 mins and the girl just sat there looking i think a bit passive. I hated it but it was not my business. but if it happened now, i would tell the girl to just leave the guy. i don't know, i may be wrong, because maaaaybe, just maybe, you can say that maybe that is the way the guy shows his "care". but no. i disagree. the whole time he was caring about his face and disgrace. well, back to the point of me telling you this. ok, so i told my friend "if i were the girl, i'll walk away. i don't need a guy like that"    the punch line was my friend said that she got it worse from her BF (NOW EX). i went dumb and couldn't say another word.  come on, girl, what's happening?  ya, i agree some of us may be doing silly or even dangerous things like getting drunk but this is part and parcel of growing up, and may i add, "building of character" or "discovering yourself". whatever.  and this,  is also freedom my friends. freedom to make mistakes is freedom too. everybody deserves the freedom to make mistakes. 

i'm done. talking.

Ramen at Great World City

you know, sometimes, or should i say... many times, 

we run out of idea what to eat.

i am sick of "outside" food

how much of a restaurant, hawker or subway can you eat?

day in day out, most of the time we annoy ourselves with the question: 

what do you want for dinner?

is eating such a chore?

there is no time to cook at night. 

occasionally, i go visit my aunts, my mom, his mom, and i savour the home cooked food. 

dinner at royal plaza

20th to 23rd March Good Friday Weekend

what have i been up to the past week?
eve of good friday-- dinner with colleagues at royal plaza on scotts.
nice spread, good quality, $800+++ for ten of us. quite expensive, but i guess it is worth the quality.

good friday holiday
went out for the whole day with pammy & joo joo.
city plaza offers hair extensions and eye lash extension from $50 onward. i see more malay teens as patrons. that place reminds me of people's park where you get lots of hong kong & korean fashion but at slightly cheaper prices.
next stop to marina square. pam's mom needed good walking shoes for her china holiday and the family likes crocs. i am not a fan but joo joo's bronze/gold pair is especially nice.
good that i have a home to retreat to and pam came over to unwind, chat and watch HBO till late. joo joo is a very intelligent kid and she understands when her mom tells her she needs her personal time and space to be with her friends. pam, in my opinion is doing the best job as a young mother among my other friends. i don't know if it is the genes, the food nutritient, the nurturing or all the above that have joo joo be such a bright and intelligent girl. although some people may feel pity that pam is a single mother or that life is unfair for mother and child, for me, i see that they are being loved more than ever and that they are free from abuse and free to be themselves, albeit life must be tough but life should be good, if not better.

what else did i do.........?

trying to recall.... saturday,, oh ya read "the five people you meet in heaven" and "tuesdays with morris"

not bad la, the second one squeezed a few drops of tears out of me.

it is always easy to let the daily churns and routine in life loose our sight of what's important.

so, the question is,,, what is important for you?

oh ya, i remember what i did on saturday

we went to the bank to meet our "financial planner" again.

you remember the other time this guy helped invested my CPF money?

i think he made 3 thousand dollars for me out of 40K or so. 7.5% is not bad at all.

so this guy,, his name is Steven Foo, worked as a FPA,, i don't know what it means,, financial planner associate? or something,, just the guy sitting at the table, selling you some investments you know nuts about, using the money you are detached with (CPF) and often people have the grave mistake of feeling to distant with the money in CPF and take risk they normally wouldn't have, had they been using the cash in their hands. i said distant, because our government makes a point to keep our untrained hands off till we age or need it for a terminally costly illness. (for the record, i feel that it is a good idea. and brendan says that it is because i am the younger generation who benefits from the scheme) so anyway, back to Steven.

Steven has been promoted from FPA to manager for three branches.

this is POSB we are talking about and i congratulate him and i think he must have done an EXCEPTIONALLY good job for him to be recognized and promoted over just 18 months, given that i think POSB must be one conservative bank. the last time we met him was that long ago and i asked him how does he make his living. it is a simple question and not rude to ask. he said mainly, he relies on commission and he has to make i think he said a million in profit or a million invested money, in the portfolio he carries, every month. i think i heard it correctly or remembered it correctly cos it was 18 months ago. but anyway, what i got from him was his determination to succeed and more importantly, he was humbly determined. i got the feeling that it is not a job he is depending on but rather, it was some kind of challenge he has given himself. so anyway, having read that i don't need to know everything about investing but rather, just put my money with someone who knows and is himself an investor, to make him my planner is a good idea to me and that was what we did. so again, i am back this time with 56K invested. Steven is now training a young chap who somewhat made Steven his mentor & wants to achieve what Steven did in the same short period. but hey hey, he was not even listening to me when i was asking a question. he was talking at the same time and talking about his product all the time. i don't get the feeling he cared.

this is the big difference between a stamper and a star performer. a stamper is just doing a task,, stamp passport (sorry, excuse my example) and a star is either born or self made.

i don't think my point is credible,, my point is,, a star probably has gone through some really rough patches and emerged wised and grand.

i told that to my friend Sueanne before. i asked her. hey Sueanne (she doesn't like being called Sue), i said you know, Sueanne, i always feel that some people eludes a kind of compassion, calmness and has an air of grandness, all these qualities come out at the same time all the time, it is the persona and i always feel that these people are outstanding and also, they have gone through some troubled times but somewhat came out of it a victor. i said she has those qualities, "did you have a hard life before?" i asked.

she totally knew what i was driving at.

she smiled and told me her story.

so anyway, back to why i'm telling you this.

there are just some people, not many of them i see, are like that. ,,,,, an air of grandness not born from the grandness of their family but the grandness of life. life's tougher sides most of their younger time. there is a sense of them "getting it". as in, not being bitter or sour but in fact, appreciating it or embracing it. and these people are just so good to look at.

their humility and calmness make them walk like Mosses.

Great Doors Swing on Small Hinges

Recently, i re-read the book - "the one minute millionaire"

and experienced many re-affirmed A-HAs, (awareness and clicking of the brain)

Chapter on Great Door Swing on Small Hinges, talks about leverage.

To do any mountainouse task, it will be laborious to do it alone; like moving one giant door aside to enter a room.

We need leverage. like hinges are levers for doors.

Then, the task becomes effortless.

There are many forms of leverages, for example, we could employ other people's time, money, experience, expertise, labour, strategy.
We don't have to "do it all over again", we read, learn, digest on other people's work, their success and failure stories. we could also learn to delegate.

So that's what i've been doing. and i am glad to tell you that i now leave work at 5.30pm, hitching a ride from a new colleague who leaves the office on the dot (due to the long distance home, she has to leave early to avoid traffic jam) and i try to hitch a ride as often as possible so that it becomes a habit for me to firstly be more efficient at work, secondly, have a balanced life after work.

I watch Korean dramas, cable, read, go for a walk. anything, just to unwind.

I also have to tell you about one other chapter on Strategy from the book.
you see, the gist of the book is that to be a millionaire, it will only take a minute.
life changes with small, minute thinking, action, behaviour, etc.

So anyway, the story goes like this:-
A lecturer puts a tray of Zirconia crystals to the class. there is one real diamond among 59 crystals. each student could attempt to spot the real diamond and the diamond is his / hers to keep if they could do it under 60 seconds.

Everyone was excited and wanted to try, but no one was able to succeed at it.

The lecturer demonstrated by flipping every piece of the gem to rest on its flat side. one by one, and he did it in 55 seconds or so. then, it is easy to spot the genuine diamond as it has some fickle / spot, while the rest of the crystals were uniformly shinning. this is obvious even to the naked eyes.

Now that we know the strategy, it seems like an effortless or do-able task doesn't it?

The point is, there are or may be, simple ways to achieve seeming impossible tasks.
we just need to know the strategy or locate the person or resource (knowledge eg: books) who knows it and is willing to share with you, that is.

so on and on.

Interesting?