Insomnia again

This is getting to be a tiresome problem especially for someone
working in the morning... And it's not the first time this year
either...

I'm not sure if it started because of work stress or bad habits
developed during the holidays or is simply the result of an
overstimulated mind. Heck it could even be ice lemon tea for all I
know...

What I do know is that it's 1245am, my alarm is set till 6 and I'm
blardy blogging simply to try to lull myself to sleep!!!

Because when I get like this, my mind runs on 4th gear even if I'm
snug in bed. Even when it drifts closer to sleep it hooks onto a
thought, catches it and reels it in and before you know I have the
workplan for 2 years in my head. Give me enough nights like this and I
may just rewrite the works of Shakespeare. :S

Sigh... Ah well, hopefully one night I'll come up with my million
dollar biz plan that will let me work for one hour a day... ( and if
you thought that was a crazy thought, you haven't read my previous
post about Mark Flindus... Scroll below and read! )

Sent from my iPod

How to earn $10million a year

Do not underestimate this man.


Or this spammish-looking website.


Because according to this article,


That guy makes US$10million [yes, that's 6 zeros] by working one hour a day.


Now excuse me while I sit in a corner and pensively ponder why I'm still in my job.

What is happening to our gahmen?

Is it me, or are the politicians in Singapore suddenly saying a lot of inane things nowadays?

First it was Tan Soon Yong writing about a very expensive cooking class, but I could forgive that because it was his money. [If you had a lot of money and everyone else was poor, is that going to make you want to give it all away and live in an attap hut?]

Then MP Charles Chong had to add his two cents worth and commented that it maybe "made less mortals envious". As if working in a middle class society made you a "lesser mortal". Lesser maybe by some other deficient being's standards.

After that I read on mrbrown that Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts, Lui Tuck Yew has declared the Internet "not an effective self-regulated regime". That's like saying that a Mercedes is 'not an effective minibus'. [I particularly like mrbrown's comments on this statement. Go read.]

And finally, to top it off, Singapore MP Loo Choon Yong has commented on ABS-CBN news that "procreation is not our forte", suggesting also that "because more free time did not necessarily result in more babies, people should work on Saturdays". Because we all suck at sex anyway, let's just spend the time making more money anyway. Because of course, workplace stress and overtime are not the reasons we aren't making babies. A lack of sexual procreational ability is.

*sigh* Singaporeans, please vote as best you can next election. If nothing else, at least to prevent politicians like the above from ever speaking in public again.

[all comments in open inverted commas taken from the source. Funnily neough, I couldn't open the ABS-CBN news website. Did someone in MICA finally start regulating the Internet? Hahaha]

Where is the time ?

Now that the work year has started again and there are no more festive
holidays for a while, time to get back to the grind of your daily lives.

I've been thinking about time, or more accurately the lack of it to do
everything fulfilling. Isn't it ironic that with all the devices we
have to help us save time, we end up with a lack of it anyway?

Take my iPod. It helps me blog, check mail and read blogs, but while I
do this, there is a stack of books waiting to be read. -_-!!

Your work computer or laptop is essential to your work, but with its
increased efficiency comes higher expectations of productivity.
( "what you mean that word report isn't ready yet? You could have done
it in 30 mins!" yea, 30 mins I could have spent doing something else...)

Modern lifestyle magazines are on the dot of this problem. I've read
articles on how to do 5 min workouts, 10 min exercises in creativity,
how X mins a day ( just minutes! ) can help you achieve whatever
regrettable resolution you set for youself this year. As if my life
wasn't cluttered enough with the big things, now I have to throw in
all these cookie crumbs just to fill up the time?

This is the real curse of 21st century life. That if you are able to
do more than your grandparents, you should be. There is no excuse for
neglect, cos look at all the wonderful gim-gams you have now! Your
life should be better! You should have more money, be smarter,
slimmer, funnier, happier.

Except that most of us living now know the real secret: that we're
not, are we?

MAybe the ironic part is this part that I read in a fitness mag: the
article said that we were getting more sedentary because public
transport and things like escalators took away the need to walk
around as much anymore. Thus to lose the weight, the mag suggests that
you walk more, instead of relying so much on modern conveniences.

So to slim down, live like your grandparents used to. -_-!! we spent
all that time and money on these modern gim-gams and now it turns out
we didn't have to. Next thing you know someone will tell you that to
have more money, work as a housewife or clerk and earn less first.

Sent from my iPod

My nose again...

Damn the flu. Unlike other illnesses, it leaves you healthy enough to
do some stuff in town, like go out with friends brave enough to risk
meeting you, but deletes all the taste from the food and drink you
love :s I can't wait for this bout to be over.

Sent from my iPod

Just a bit too tired...

I always go through the same mental process when confronted with something new:

1) Approach warily
2) Do some skeletal planning
3) Procrastine
4) Panic when deadlines are near
5) Get it done
6) Relax again

And this is almost with every new arrow lodged in my back.

Inevitably it is always stage 4 where my nerves become the most strained, because I was stupid enough to ignore it for too long. When the panic takes over, I forget that actually the work can be done, and that I can do it. It takes me a bit more time to actually confront the damned thing, get it over and done with, and then I realise it wasn't as bad as I thought.

That's what I have to keep reminding myself about: Nothing is as bad as I make it out to be.

So the CNY reunion dinner was at the same place that we had dinner for the past 5 years or more. :S

One bright side was that the food came faster. Much faster, because we were seated promptly at 8 when we arrived, and most of the food came before 9, ala conveyor belt sushi-style. This time also, they remembered all our courses, only forgetting the order in which they were supposed to serve it, and also almost earned us an extra serving of duck. :p

Then my aged grand-aunt came back from the toilet and almost seated herself at the wrong table. I suppose she thought the South Indian family bore a slight resemblance to us.

Other than that, the CNY went on as usual and we went for the usual family visits, munching on goodies and feeding on the family gossip as usual.

Happy Niu Year! And especially to all those who sent the SMS greetings that I was too lazy to respond to! :p

Just another ordinary day...

I've been constantly urged to blog more often, and since it's a rare
night that I'm actually home early, maybe it is because I am fated to
do something other than lie back on my very comfy bed and pretend I'm
Jabba the Hutt.

So let's have some life updates, whether you've heard them or not.

Work started with me getting shot in the back by an arrow, and
henceforth I've been going around trying to discount its presence as
much as possible. Hard to do with, well, a shaft being shot in your
back by a psychotic hunter. ( oh you have to hear this story one day,
but not over the net ) I'm trying to look on the bright side but I've
been too busy going on one hunt after another.

Sigh. Damn the cryptic references.

Lifewise the year has started innocently enough. I stuck to one
resolution and have returned to the gym like the prodigal daughter. If
all goes well I hope to lose another, er, 500grams?

I still wanna join more courses and the unexpected development at work
has opened more avenues than I previously had. I've been looking
around but they all seem to require unexplainable amounts of money.
Sigh again on cue...

And lastly I just want more sleep. I dunno if it's a carryon effect
from the hols, but I've been struggling to wake each morn. For my line
of work, definitely not a desirable trait. I feel though that it's the
result of trying to wake up before the damn sun does.

Hai... Well the Chinese calendar says that the year is almost over.
Here's to another new year then, and may it be full of sweet pineapple
tarts. ;)

--
Getting all the slack I can...
http://boredslacker.blogspot.com

I'm trying...

Now trying to stuff 3 chapters of Japanese grammar n verb conjugations
before Wednesday... And by the looks of this procrastinating blog
entry via iPod, not succeeding very well...... sigh... Yenn, ganbateru..

Sent from my iPod

On Thursday, I sent off another of my friends to the airport, one who was flying off to further her studies. While a group of us were there earlier for dinner, they took out a handmade photo album stuck with long, long, and I mean, long ago photos that we had taken as a group. And I knew they were old, because I saw shirts that I.... haven't fitted into for a number of years. -_-!!!!!

I remarked that the only 2 occasions that brought me to the airport were 1) departures for holidays and 2) to see friends off to other countries.

On a number of occasions, I've seen friends off to studies in other countries, and back then, the only online communication was ICQ and emails. [gosh, how primitive] We would see the friend in question off, and then not see her face for about 5 to 6 months. When she came back for holidays, we would meet up, catch up, and all too soon, it would be time for her to go back for the new term. We would send her off at the airport, knowing that 5, 6 months later we'd see her again. This would be repeated for a couple of friends. [yes, you know who you are]

In our point of life, though, it has somewhat changed. Now I still have friends leaving, but instead of leaving only to come back a few months later, they left with no clear point of return. They left to purposely start new lives wherever they went and who knew when they would be back again.

Funny how the time spent together in our youth was taken for granted, only to be re-appreciated again when we were older and such time was even more scarce than before.

Now when we meet, there is no time for small talk anymore, because we all know that this is all we get anymore. The friendships have become more valuable because of its very lack of frequency.

Thank goodness for small mercies like blogs, MSN and even *shudder* Facebook. At least with these you don't feel as if you haven't seen the girl for very long, because you can see from her Facebook that she has just had cornflakes for breakfast and is now waiting for the ice to thaw. ( ok, I made that one up :p ) Funny thing that now a less intimate form of communication has instead deepened the intimacy.

At my age, [hm, I sound older than I really am] I think I've seen enough farewells that I've almost become immune. Maybe I've just come to realise that we all have our own different ways to go. And I've also seen enough to know that the last sendoff will never be the last. If God and airlines be willing, there will always be ways for us to meet again should we want to.

And for all else, there's always Facebook.

Either a brand new start OR the same story over again

I started the new year with a lapse in the blogging. :p don't know whether this augurs well for the start of the new year.

But up to this point of my life, every new year and every birthday starts to feel like one more in a series. Like a long running drama series, the plot slightly changes, the people come and go, but the lead actress is always there. Similarly like in a sitcom, the lead actress also manages to somehow get into the same scrapes over and over again. :p

For example, look at the new year's resolutions you made for last year. Did you fulfill yours? 'Cos I didn't -_-!!! and I'll be repeating the same resolutions over again this year. -_-!!!!!!!!!! Repeat of last year's plotline over a new season.

After the holidays, when you went back to work, didn't you feel like it was the same thing over again? I'm back to my one month neglected cubicle *Major SIGH* and when the year really started, it was the same routines over again. I'm back to the planning, the pens, the wishful dreaming of June holidays..........

What if we could run out of our own programmed life? A lead actress that stays for too long in one series faces the risk of being typecast as that particular character for the rest of her career. [Gillian Anderson, Courteney Cox, Sarah Jessica Parker] When we get too much into our lives, are we running the same risk?

What if we could run out of our own shows, and take up another role in another entirely different show? Can Sarah Jessica Parker play a cutting edge forensic scientist on CSI? [I wonder]

Can we ourselves break out of our own mold into something else entirely? Without suffering too much of the consequences?

Maybe that this what we should be doing each new year instead. Forget making pointless resolutions that you may or may not keep. Instead reflect on what your life has been the previous year. Then think of what you can do to make the next year as radically different as possible.

Here's to your 2009. :)

--
Getting all the slack I can...
http://boredslacker.blogspot.com

Merry eX-mas?

So this is a bit late.... yar.... :p but Merry Xmas to all...

The party went great, thanks to all who came, saw, and demolished the turkey ;) You guys are the reason why my mom still likes to go crazy and strangle disemboweled birds every year.

Thanks to all who played along the Twister game and for embarrassing yourselves in the name of mass entertainment. Now I know why Twister is still the classic party game. ;)

Thanks to those who took the effort, and braved the Xmas crowds to buy gifts for the gift exchange. Your gladitorial bravery is commendable.

And even if he doesn't read this blog, thanks to a DF who flew by and made an attempt to socialize with my friends, something that I've been bugging him since, well, the start of the relationship. :S hey, it's a start.

Thanks for the gifts, the cards and the reaffirmation of friendship, the greatest gift of all.

Here's then to next year, and to more of the best, less of the rest!

What I consider a droolworthy Christmas:

Namely consisting of just about everything in that picture, if you can find them.

Note: I didn't get any of them -_-!! but a dream's a dream, hey? ;)

I just finished through clearing and deleting a lotta old email from my main yahoo accounts. *keeps the spade*

Out of curiosity, how much stuff do you keep in your inbox? I ploughed through my accounts, tidied up a bit, and I realised that in my personal account, I have mail that reached all the way back to 2002 -_-!!!!! I had mails sent to friends, mails with stupid jokes, [that I still found funny, haha] and so much old mail I kinda felt like an archeaologist. -_-!!!!!

The interesting part is reading through the mails I had written to friends back then when I was still in uni. [how long ago that was] I read about some of the crap I went through back then, and now I think: man, I was an angsty teenager then :p Thankfully I *think* I'm more mature now so that all that stuff back then seems..... too long ago. Despite all the *angst* I seemed to have put in my emails, I don't even remember some of that crap that I was so anxious about back then anymore.....

Chalk it up to one more advantage of age: Other concerns are now literally long gone. ;)

New Hair

A trip to the hairdresser and a thought about change means that now I slightly resemble this:

Without the egg, hor.....

Why I did it? Honestly when I saw the photos that she showed me, the hair I saw was a lot straighter and longer. -_-! So I thought, ok lor, just for a change and pretty curious to see myself with curls too.

IT was a long laborious process of wash, cut, and getting hair zapped in some sci-fi alien anime contraption, only to see hair that, at first, looked like this:

Later on, after some washing and drying and brushing, the curls have sort of settled. It's still like freshly cooked maggi, and I'm not exactly sure whether it's the greatest follicle faux pas on my part, but I'm still fascinated by myself in the mirror. [my hair is actually curly!!!] Not to mention at least it's got more volume than it ever did when it was straight, and on a good mood, I think it adds some spunk to my look. ;) Let's just hope the good mood lasts ;)

The both of us are back from Bintan with slightly charred skin. -_-!!! Thankfully for us, the weather was sunny and cool for the 2 days we were there, and only rained on the last day when we were due to leave anyway. Ha!

I did think of going on that mangrove trip, but when it came to whether we should 1) sit in a boat out in a swamp looking for snakes and 2) sit in a massage bed and get a cheap massage and sleep, -_-!!! You can guess what we chose......

The 3 days were the most slack holiday I had ever taken. Previous holidays saw me rushing from venue to venue, wildly taking in the sights and taking in the shots with Kenny. This one saw me lying by the pool for half the afternoon, and then swimming in the pool for the rest of the afternoon. [sea out of bounds due to strong monsoon winds]

Actually, the 3 days were so slack that I just realised I have nothing to blog about anyway! -_-!

Overall a good relaxing trip, but next time I think I'll try Batam or somewhere cheaper. The prices are outrageous even by Singapore standards....

Random rambling 1:

Am going to Bintan tomorrow for 3D2N to do nothing but slack and forget that I ever have to go back to work.

Random rambling 2:

Opened email at 1:45pm to find that had entered wrong amount for Bintan trip and had to pay additional to make up the difference, or face reservation being let go without notice. Deadline of payment: same day, 12pm. -_______-!!!!!!!!!!!! [My understanding: If I do not pay on time, I could potentially go all the way to Bintan tomorrow morning only to find that the room would have been given to someone else.]

Random rambling 3:

Frantically log onto website only to find that payment was unsuccessful.... twice, with 2 different cards. Frantically call agency 5 times, only to find...... phone call mysteriously hung on other side. Wondering if my late payment among many others has been responsible for financial downfall of travel firm.

Random rambling 4:

Finally get someone on the line, spoke to her as *politely* as I could without actually shouting *too loudly, I hope* at her, and she confirms that the reservation will be held till I come back to Singapore. *phew*

Random rambling 5:

Finally feeling my heart beat go back to normal. Sighing over how job has quickened temper. At least I'll be able to go on my 3 days as planned.

There is a rather discordant [read: f**king NOISY!!!] symphony being played in my house at the moment that is drowning out anything else played in the house.

This symphony is played by the HDB Construction Unsymphonic Orchestra, and the programme is as follows:

Opus of the Thumping Hammers
Clattering Planks
Symphony of the Drills

The performance is for the benefit of Replacement Metal Roofworks and is performed free of charge for my block every afternoon. Because it is held on the roof, I have Category 1 seats to this engaging performance.

Here is my resounding response to their performances:

Done by one Seb Lester on Flickr.

This is a post about Kuroi, who has so completely integrated himself into my life in a way that Shiroi [the iPod classic] did not.

Yes, a month or so with Kuroi, the iPod touch, and I'm in danger of selling my soul forever to Steve Jobs. How do I feel about Kuroi? Well, after using him a while, my predominant thought is:

Why didn't anyone THINK of this before? It's GENIUS!!! *end fangirl drool*

Through sheer ingenuity and possibly the backing of the devil, Apple has managed to come up with something that is not quite an iPod, but more of a mobile entertainment device. Other than the usual storage of music, videos and photos, [was it that long ago that MP3 players could only hold music?] Kuroi also holds contacts, notes, a calendar. It also holds the one killer app that killed me, namely, a wireless adapter .

Paired with the Safari browser, this made the iPod into a mini PDA, but the one that really killed me down was the App store. Connect to this baby, and you get games, utilities, games, note-taking tools, games, photo apps, and did I mention the games?

And half of them are free!!!!! The other half you pay for, but some are as cheap as 99cents. Argh!

Ok, if I sound bad, it's because I know I really got it bad. I started out with a few games in it, and I used it to read blogs and mail on the go, but last night I opened the App store and that's when it all tumbled down for me.

In went drawing software, note-taking software, an app for a fashion website, and a Japanese dictionary -_-!!! And in the space of a few minutes of each other........

But on a more sober note, I can't help but think that this is what mobile computing should be all about. Here I have a device that fits into my pocket, that can surf the Internet on wireless, and that can download straightaway and painlessly, numerous other applications that would make it stronger. The reason why I was so hooked on the App store was that it was so darn easy to download them. A matter of clicking on a button, waiting a few minutes and then the app was downloaded. No opening of new and unnecessary windows, no having to choose a file to download it in, since it went straight to desktop and all free.

I have run into some problems with it, of course. A lack of office tools makes it unsuitable for office drones who need their Microsoft packages, and also means that I am not able to do work on the go with this, unlike my previous PDA, Suss. [Although with something this sleek, you won't want to do work on it anyway. :p] Typing is a chore without a stylus. And don't talk about connectivity to other devices. No infrared and no Bluetooth, so everything I keep in there is stuck in there, unfortunately.

But other than that, the touchscreen, the Apps, the games are addictive enough for a leisure user to keep in her pocket. The OS is simple enough to quickly understand and get used to. If only I could hook this baby onto mobile broadband, it would be perfect... which makes its big brother, the iPhone look more and more tempting.............

*end hungry fangirl drool

It's getting more and more addictive to play with Kuroi on a wireless
connection... Makes those mobile broadband plans more tempting anyway,
if not for the threat of me becoming a permanent resident of the
Internet... Sigh...

--
Getting all the slack I can...
http://boredslacker.blogspot.com