Be FrEe To FlY

저는 가족에게 할말이 없어요. 자주 싸우니까, 저의 기분이 너무 안 좋아요. 집에 있고 싶지 안습니다.
I've nothing to say to my family. The frequent quarrels make me unhappy. I don't want to be at home.

Ok continuing from above, I've decided to be strong and rely on myself. If I confide in others, I'll only be burdening them. And when I hear myself confiding, it just sounds like a whine, a continuous whine. From now on, I'll rely on myself for emotional support. When I cry, I'll wipe away my own tears. When I fall, I'll get up by myself. I'm 23 this year. If I don't learn to deal with my own issues, I'll never learn.

Why is the timing so bad? My mum wants to renovate the bloody house when I want to go on grad trip. I don't know why she wants me around, it's not as if I know how to operate a drill. She even asked me why I didn't discuss with her the date of my grad trip or invite her along for my grad trip. Firstly, I don't know the exact date. Secondly, why do I need to REPORT my every move to her? Thirdly, a grad trip refers to a trip taken with FRIENDS. If she wants to go on a tour, she can jolly well take leave and go by herself. Always talking about taking the whole family and then end up quarreling on the trip and making stupid memories. What's the point?! And I should go on grad trip when the bloody house is being renovated! Why breathe in all that dust? Furthermore, my room only needs painting. It's the fucking toilet tiles and ceiling that need to be repaired. I should really float the idea to her. She's been grumbling and looking up at the tiles and ceiling with a troubled face for a YEAR. Drama mama. Like that's going to help the tiles stay put. It's a 25 year old flat, for pete's sake and we're the 1st owners! Any sensible home owner would have renovated some time back. Enough said.

I finally articulated these negative thoughts. Whew, I thought I was going to burst!

오늘 점심에 닭고기탕을 먹었어요. 닭고기탕에서 감자를 넣었어요. 참 맛있었지만 조금 짜요.
Today I drank chicken soup at lunch. I added potato to the chicken soup. Though it was very delicious, it was slightly salty.

whee results came out 2 hours ago! didn't really feel nervous b4 it came out and was playing Country Story pretty calmly haha. think it might be because i went to see my CGPA in my degree audit this morning and it was 3.98 meaning that my GPA for this sem is only 3.74! this made me a little moody and sian. but it turned out to be wrong!! i received a GPA of 4.3 this sem with 1 A+, 1 A, 1 B+ and 1 B :) Who'd have thought of a 4.3 GPA in YR 4?!!! I'm relieved and more motivated for FYP and next sem, my final sem at NTU! 

Tonight I went to Vic's church for a musical called the Tin Soldier. It was pretty entertaining, especially in the Elitoys shop. I liked the lyrics although the quality of singing was only so-so. "I can't rewrite the past" is the only line I remember now haha. And the part where the landlady was calling to demand that Nick and his dad pay the rent was hilarious :)

The pastor came on after that and thru certain extracts of the musical portraying various aspects of life e.g. having a birthday and a death on 2 different sides of the stage, the toys fighting, the selfishness of the rich children, the snobbishness of Wallace the tin soldier etc., he gave a sermon. His message was to KCS: Keep Christmas simple. Focus on the true meaning of Christmas, which is the birth of Christ the Redeemer of our sins. One of the things he mentioned was that Christ said He was the Light. Basically, if we embraced him, we would not be in darkness. He also gave anecdotes of how the Hand of God touched people, like when his motorcycle headlight miraculously worked again after giving out in a dangerous part of Indonesia and when the Indian lady literally rose from the dead. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't moved by his speech at all. But after all these years, I still am searching for what I really want to believe in. I've been born into the Buddhism-Taoism religion so I haven't had a choice in my religion. I know I won't be able to bring the Bible home because we have an altar of deities. And I'm not sure if I will have the faith to have a relationship with Jesus/God because I find it hard to believe in something that I can't see. And I don't know much about Buddhism so I don't have any reason to not believe it. I'd like to know more before I decide anything. I don't want to just keep burning incense to deities I know nothing about just because my parents say so. Though Vic said that perhaps the rational mind cannot decide the faith, but I guess it's easier for her to accept since she's been thru this earlier than I have been.

I guess talking to Vic after the musical has made me have a clearer, though still murky picture, of what the direction of my beliefs are. I don't really feel scared to go and know more about both religions. I feel that I have a more open mind :) Whew.

The weather this few days is oddly similar to Amsterdam's! It was so gloomy in Amsterdam last November. I remember coz the weather made me gloomy. The sun only came out 5 times then!

My father made me cup noodles this afternoon for a tea break. I'm touched.

I want to do anything besides studying ;)

After about 3 years of not really living at home, I've been feeling the awkwardness, irritation and tension of staying at home. Going to Amsterdam especially, has shown me greener pastures. These include very importantly, the independence and freedom of having no parents by my side. No one to nag at me or expect me to fulfil family commitments. The Chinese equivalent sums it up in 4 words: 我行我素. And for once, I'm not willing to buckle down and change myself to adapt to this stifling environment, where every movement and phone call is questioned. For now, I will work towards detaching myself from this place and perhaps moving away for work/school. I've been holding myself back e.g. stopping myself from thinking of going overseas to find a job, because my ageing parents are always on my mind. Yes there's still my sis who's not married and who might take care of them, but I just felt this nagging guilt that I've not done my part. But now, I'm not going to give a damn. Home is now only a place for me to sleep and do my work. Don't misunderstand, it's not that there's no love given. Care and concern are given pretty abundantly but expressed in a stifling way (to me). Their good intentions are appreciated but I can't stand them.

Back to doing work now.

Libra  -  October 1, 2009

You may find it difficult to take action on any sort of practical matter today, dear Libra. If you find that this is the situation, don't even bother pressuring yourself into making it happen. Today you are more concerned with the fanciful side of life. Daydreams - both physical and mental - can be a wonderful escape for you today. Do something that will take you out of your current frame of mind. Go see a movie or a play this evening.

Every time I look at my horoscope for the day before, it just seems to fit the day's happenings to a T.

Yesterday (1st oct), I had a blissful day out with Dear. On the day before (30th Sept), I was having so many negative thoughts about our relationship, which I didn't want to take action on because it'd spoil the bdae celebration. And yesterday, I managed to clear the air with Dear about what I felt so it was a great ending to the day. This part suits the 1st 2 sentences of the horoscope.

For the rest of the horoscope besides the last sentence, my day happened just that way :) We went to the Mint Museum of Toys on Seah Street first. It was 5 stories with exhibits on different themes on different stories. I especially liked the exhibits on Popeye and his memorabilia and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves because those were almost the only things I could relate to. The other exhibits were from our parents' and grandparents' generations and were priced at 4 figures (USD). This got me wondering if I can put my toys in a museum in future, since I still have some toys in my house haha :)

After that we headed to the Singapore Flyer. This was in the plan because from now till December, there's a $10 promotion for students which is 1/3 of the original price! Though it was slightly cloudy and hazy and the Marina Sands incomplete project was spoiling the view, the view was gorgeous. I guess the Flyer is good for literally showing Singapore at a glimpse. The bad thing is that it's really super builtup and I could hardly see any patches of green :( Well Singapore is not known for its nature anyway. And another feeling that I had was that what goes around comes around. I was very excited about the view up till the point where the Flyer reaches its highest altitude at 165m (don't bother hiking up bukit timah hill, just pay $10 and u'll reach 165 m in 15min with no mosquito bites). After that, as we came down, I was sitting down and taking pictures of Dear and me and not of the view any more haha. Thankfully, the day was planned well and there were no lack of enjoyable things to do. We lunched at the Flyer's Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits. I absolutely love the chicken and mashed potato! Beats KFC hands down! The mashed potato tastes more homely as there are spices and pepper sprinkled into it, compared to KFC's powdery mashed potato mix. And the chicken wasn't as fat as KFC's :)

After this hearty lunch, we headed to Kallang Leisure Park for ice skating! I was seriously scared because the last time I went ice skating, I ended up with blisters and boot burns on both shins. I escaped unscathed yesterday save a few aches :) I finally knew how to brake and fall and get up and also progressed to skating without holding on to anything or Dear :) I only fell 3 times! hahahahahaha. The rink was an obstacle course yesterday because there were so many kids and other people on it but I managed to skate for 2 hours without sweating much :) Such a sense of accomplishment. After skating, we thought of either bowling or playing pool and David said ECP might have both. When we went to the car to set off for ECP, we found a parking summons :( Super hardworking carpark attendant! We saw her when we first parked so we only put coupon for 1 hr. Thot she'd leave and not come back and check. Sian ah, 2 hrs later still come and check. Luckily only $20. Waste of money but not much.

Anyway we decided to go back into Leisure Park and bowl :) The bowling lane we were in gave us faults but in a good way coz I had more spares than I actually scored :) And there were bumpers available so the ball would never go into the longkang. They guided me in my aim and my game improved (101 pinfalls) :)
There was this family of 3 playing beside us and their kid also used the bumpers. The comical thing was that the ball was too heavy for the kid and he just basically dropped the ball at the beginning of the lane and watched it roll down the lane. He even managed to get 8 pinfalls once! I was laughing quite hard coz he was so cute :)

Lastly, it was dinner time at ECP! We went to the Playground@BigSplash area which is newly rejuvenated. There were a number of eateries and we chose Yoshimaru. It's a Japanese Ramen Bar, similar to Ajisen in the food they serve but different in ambience and service. I had the DIY Hakata Ramen while David had the Pork Shabu Shabu Ramen. Both were yummy! The soup was very rich and porky-tasting while the noodles were sliced thinly so was not too gelat. Here are the pictures (which can't upload at the moment). The sesame seeds in the bowl with mortar acts as a seasoning for our noodles.

After dinner, we went to the beach for a chat and David gave me my present. (I had already given him his present earlier: 2 Domokun, 1 small, 1 big. + a handphone pouch) His gift to me was super thoughtful: a Perlini's bracelet with 3 hearts hanging off it symbolising "I love you" and our relationship. (What we talked about is private though.) It was a wonderful atmosphere with the waves crashing against the sand and a light breeze blowing and few people around us. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday celebration!

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Libra  -  October 2, 2009

Whether you willingly partake or not, you will most certainly play a key role in the action that is taking place, dear Libra. There will be times when you feel like the pivotal player whose decision or physical movement will decide the fate of the entire game. This is a time when you must close your eyes, take a deep breath, and find the answer from your heart. Don't look to others for support because they will have their own agendas and biases about what you should do. Only you know what is best. 

Sometimes this is what I feel. I want to shut out all other opinions and just listen to what I want first. But sometimes it's not the best :)

• Under autocratic rule in FYP -- lost the right to speak up or think, feeling of continuously being underwater due to unfamiliar topic and complicated readings to read
• Flooded with readings & presentations -- just seems more this sem, I don't know why.
• Getting used to the traveling, which is usually productive reading if I get enough sleep the night b4.
• Attended 2 recruitment talks, which have made me more decisive about what I want and don't want to do about my life in future
• Trying to squeeze on the shuttle bus to Pioneer -- I think I've leveled up :)
• Beginning to see the true colours of some of my coursemates and getting to know some of them better
• Having a 4 day week is sth I really appreciate coz I get to sleep just that bit better on Tuesday nights :)
• Taking Korean 2 now is increasing my standard. Hope to be more proficient :)

Can't think of much right now.

After blog surfing today, I feel oddly reflective and sad. I guess it so happens that this is convocation period. 1 yr from now, I'll probably be attending convocation and working or looking for a job. It'll probably be difficult and odd to leave this 15-yr-long life of schooling, step into work clothes and deal with work everyday. First thing, I don't even know line I want to go into. How do some people know?

Soon we'll lose this convenient identity of student and become a working adult where we have to put the name of our occupation on forms and file tax blah blah. On top of that, we have to start providing for ourselves and our families, take care of ourselves and our parents and maybe even start our own families. No one is going to hold our hand, there'll be no syllabus, no exams, basically unchartered territory.

I suppose I'm thinking too much at this point haha since I have time on my hands when I'm at work. But I really really would like to know what job on earth I want to do!!

1 more question I want to ask myself is why did I do such a useless "internship"? Haha. I guess work experience is impt now? Bah a whole lot of disconnected thoughts.

I'm certain I will never look for an admin job again. It's totally full of shit. And I'm bored out of my mind.

When can I find a job that I really will enjoy most of the time? Ah really frustrated at the moment!

http://timharford.com/articles/deareconomist/

Dear Economist,
My young son came home from school and asked me: “Mummy, what’s a credit crunch?” How can I explain this to a five-year-old?
Ms LG, London

Dear Ms LG,

Once upon a time, there was a blameless girl called Consumerella, who didn’t have enough money to buy all the lovely things she wanted. She went to her Fairy Godmother, who called a man called Rumpelstiltskin who lived on Wall Street and claimed to be able to spin straw into gold. Rumpelstiltskin sent the Fairy Godmother the recipe for this magic spell. It was written in tiny, tiny writing, so she did not read it but hoped the Sorcerers’ Exchange Commission had checked it.

The Fairy Godmother carried away armfuls of glistening straw-derivative at a bargain price. Emboldened by the deal, she lent Consumerella – who had a big party to go to – 125 per cent of the money she needed. Consumerella bought a bling-bedizened gown, a palace and a Mercedes – and spent the rest on champagne. The first payment was due at midnight.

At midnight, Consumerella missed the first payment on her loan. (The result of overindulgence, although some blamed the pronouncements of the Toastmaster, a man called Peston.) Consumerella’s credit rating turned into a pumpkin and Rumpelstiltskin’s spell was broken. He and the Fairy Godmother discovered that their vaults were not full of gold, but ordinary straw.

All seemed lost until Santa Claus and his helpers, men with implausible fairy-tale names such as Darling and Bernanke, began handing out presents. It was only in January that Consumerella’s credit card statement arrived and she discovered that Santa Claus had paid for the gifts by taking out a loan in her name. They all lived miserably ever after. The End.

I love his tongue-in-cheek humour, which my current favourite author, Bill Bryson, also possesses :)

http://timharford.com/articles/deareconomist/

I have worked full time for six years and presently earn £40K. I am also about to attain chartered engineer status, which sounds good. However, I stumbled on an old letter the other day that confirmed my admission into nursery aged four, 29 years ago! Looking back at all the money invested in my more than 20 years of formal education, I feel short-changed by my income and quality of life.

Do you know how I can calculate a “fair” figure that will reflect my master’s degree and international experience? I want to use this as the minimum salary for my next job.
G

Dear G,

I’m not going to attempt to calculate your “fair” figure: it would do you no good. Employers care very little about what salary would be a fair reward for your background; instead, they want the best possible people for the lowest possible cost. Competition from other employers typically leads them to compromise on both counts.

Your fair figure might eat away still further at your fading happiness. It seems that you were satisfied until you reflected on your education and inflated your aspirations. This is sad but typical, if the economist Andrew Oswald is to be believed.

Oswald has compared people’s circumstances with their happiness. He finds that, other things being equal, happiness rises with money, good health and a successful marriage, but falls as a person’s “expected income” rises. Expected income is the income that another person of the same age, sex and education level would typically earn. In other words, more educated people have richer peers and so tend to be less satisfied.

What is especially sad is that your income would comfortably put you in the richest 10 per cent of UK citizens, who are themselves relatively rich. As for being short-changed, I doubt that you personally paid for your nursery education. Put away your admission letter, and forget about it.


Hah! I like the last sentence :)

Your progress and sense of satisfaction are high, and you'll make great strides at work and with friends. The gentle energy of the Pig leaves you feeling renewed. It may seem as if many people are eager to be in your company. Love and major commitments are likely to commence effortlessly. Your gregarious social life may also keep you quite busy, so make sure to keep a few hours open for any party invitations you may receive.


My wonderful Internet at home is down so I haven't been online at all! I think my Pet Society pet is dead haha :) Luckily darling is in reservice right now otherwise I'll be quite sad without MSN :(

Today is so bloody hot that I can just stand there and the sweat will roll off me. This made me think of the weather in Laos.

Well, I just felt like reflecting on Laos. I didn't when I came back last year. I miss the simple life that we led there. It may seem like they're doing nothing much in Singaporean terms, but it makes me feel much more content with the world. They wake up, make breakfast of rice and yesterday's dishes / new dishes, go to work on the farm/school, come back, weave and make dinner, eat dinner together and watch tv, then go to bed. That's all they do everyday. They don't have to go to the cinema, meet up at malls, have fancy dinners at fancy restaurants or engage in meaningless rat races. Yes, that may be why they're so-called less-developed, but so what? Their standard of living in terms of happiness is so much higher than ours. Being the economist, I can't help inserting the term "opportunity cost". Something has to give. We kind of complement each other because we have what the other country doesn't. Singapore has all it wants in material terms, but are we truly happy? In our struggle to remain competitive, I'm quite sure many of us yearn for a simpler/happier life, because at the end of it all, life isn't about grades or numbers or wonderful statistics. And I feel the Laotians have a very happy simple life, though they might have their worries that I didn't observe.

And by moving the bricks manually, one by one, humbled me. The primary school had no crane which can just haul all the bricks in one load, so we had to form a human chain from the 1st to the 2nd floor just to move the 1000 bricks up to the room which was meant for the library. It is a place where things don't move at the click of the finger, where you can feel the kampung feeling (e.g. a drinks stall outside the school erected just with canvas) And the guys had to devise some kind of pulley system to shift the cement up to the 2nd storey because it was just too heavy to lug it. And after recalling all that, there is still one more thing that humbled me or I guess all of us. We were trying to construct a 1.5m long pavement from their school canteen to the stairs which will lead to the 2nd floor. It took us an afternoon. First we had to collect numerous buckets of pebbles from their field and throw it on the ground where we constructed the pavement. Then we had to stir the cement with alot of water and our strength to make it of a certain thickness. Because the shovels were so heavy and because we kept getting stuck in the cement with our boots, we took a bloody long time. The construction workers were there to help us but we felt we were delaying them haha. Lastly, we had to shovel those lumps of wet cement onto the pebbles until the pebbles were covered completely, then make the pavement even. We were all sweating lumps after that but happy :) Looking back, I don't think I did our work justice with my words haha. But it'll be a humbling memory.

We came out of the villagers' homes one night and looked up at the starry sky. It was so beautiful. There were no streetlights, only our flashlights or the occasional vehicle headlights. I felt so insignificant underneath all that but awestruck at the beauty. In Singapore, all you can see is high-rise, high-rise, more development and construction. But at that moment, time just passed by slowly.

I don't know how to continue without sounding weepy/mushy. There have been many thoughts about many things, but I can't seem to relax and put it all down. We'll see ok? :)

Libra  -  May 26, 2009

If you're angry about something, find the best way to communicate it, dear Libra, without hurting someone. While anger is a healthy emotion that signals you when something isn't right for you, how you express it makes all the difference in the outcome of any situation. There is considerable skill in effective communicating. It's not just words but also tone of voice, facial expression, and body language. If you're unfamiliar with an "I statement," you may want to read some books on the subject to help you express yourself in a better way.

Libra  -  May 27, 2009

You are likely to enjoy the day ahead, dear Libra. You have been changing so much lately that you were in need of a brief reassurance such as today will bring. You may have feared losing yourself to some extent, or losing your friends. You may have been afraid that your partner would no longer be able to understand you. But today, you are glowing, full of hope for tomorrow. How could anyone resist loving your bright spirit?