42 click killer

At 4am in the morning of 5th Dec when the alarm clock rang, I jumped out of my bed with a jittery feeling inside of me. I managed to get to the start line with the help of my bro who sent me there.

The Standard Chartered Marathon route had pretty awesome scenery I must say which relieved me of some of the pain I was feeling at the point in time. Immediately after the run, I went to see a tieh tah physician who gave me a 1 hour hard core massage and placed suction over my knees.

Since then, I found the pain in my knees coming on and off which greatly affected my badminton training for the upcoming race (1st and 8th Jan 2011). This is when I found out I have Posterior cruciate ligament (PCL). Sigh...

Home made jellies

Wah! It's my first time making jellies. I am so happy it turned out successful haha. =D

My, they look so yummy don't they? I put rambutan and pineapple inside le.

Oooooo.. they taste really yummy too!

2 weeks break

What a relief it is... it's almost the end of the 2010. After my compliance leave which starts tomorrow, I will only be back in the office on the 23rd dec to round up for the year, enjoy the christmas celebrations and plan for my personal and job objectives for 2011.

There are just soo many things that I want to do within this 2 weeks. Think I am just setting very high expectations for myself and perhaps on the people around me as well. Also note that things can backfire if not applied appropriately and at the right individual. Oh well, I am applying pygmalion motivation at work now and it seems to work really well for the people I need to help develop.

Probably, I just need to use this time to relax and take a breather.

Spend, Save, Invest?

I just want to enjoy life where it is. The future is still insight, just a slow down in pursuit. Sometimes, I think we work hard everyday but we fail to stop for a moment and think what the end goal is. I am using this time to re-evaluate my choices, my performance, to restrategise, to recharge before I continue chasing dreams.

I can't decide what to do with cash that I have. I suddenly find myself not as discipline as before to read up on money matters. While I have some time today, I have made some pointers for each of the moves with some after thoughts.

Reasons for a down market
- Non-performing european economy i.e Ireland.
- Sharp move in food prices could drive China’s CPI inflation higher in October
- Price rally in global copper market hurt China’s demand for imports

Reasons for a up market
- Recent US QE2.. with negative repercuccions?
- Asia giant - China's economic growth is 10%, huge foreign reserves to invest at higher prices.
- Fast emerging developing markets but their mpact?
- A pledge to avoid competitive FX devaluations is expected in the closing statement

Reasons to stay neutral
- FX impact is likely to be muted, but risk appetite may get a boost; USD may soften as a result
- Most of the companies are now nearing their 52 week high with little room for upside
- Pending outcome of G20 on global imbalances and financial-system regulations
 
Overridding conclusion: None.
 
I'm still stuck in limbo.

Enjoying while it last

It was birthday week but I was swamped with work and more work. Fred and I went kuishimbo for a hearty meal stuffed with hokkaido crabs which we didnt each much of.

Then, my exams are finally over last Saturday. Phew! Finally I am no longer binded by late night project meetings and evening classes. I hope I will pass all papers and practicums first time round.

Immediately after my exam, I had to help out my family with a roadshow in P.S. Thereafer, I rushed down to for badminton training for a tournament that I know nothing of. The training site was at Singapore Swimming Club at Tanjong Rhu. Never knew such a club existed, I found myself driving blind for an hour before I reached my destination. I met new friends whom were much older and of course very experience in badminton.

My girlfirends, Kerly, Mellow, Rongers, and I ventured into what I called a attas brunch at wild honey at mandrian gallery. Unfortunately, the queue was atrocious and we settled for Ippudo which was also nice. When Candice and Zee arrived when we were almost done, hence we headed towards P.S cafe at paragon. Wooo, the desserts there were yummy I say. My only regret was that I didnt manage to take a group photo.

I would love to return for the sticky dates pudding with ice cream and caramel sauce. YUMS! Thank you for making my day :)

Bright city lights of Shanghai

Whlist Fred preparing for the exams and with some days of leave to spare, I decided to follow my dad on his business trip to Shanghai along with my brother, Andrew, hoping to assist my dad in wherever possible out of pure goodwill and also spend some quality time with them.

I went on-site to visit the rescently expanded outlet within a new mall, and found it in a not so healthy state. Minimal sales were made since inception 1 month ago. Hardly enough to cover the cost of rental and the worker's expenses. Junior sale staffs are inexperience and thus have little understanding of the ranges of products. The only senior staff aka assistant manager is incompetent and is highly arrogant, thinking that he is highly indispensable. Junior staffs reports that the AM comes and goes at randoms times of the day. There are no safeguards in place to ensure the senior staff is working the right number of hours and doing the right things as he hops between branch and office. Who knows he may be meeting his wife secretly or sleeping at home whlist he is supposed to be at work? Further, no accounts were being maintained - a very blury picture of how the money was spent was estimated through the few receipts which did not reconcile. Inadequate resoures to support after sales service and the list goes on.

We know that humans are kind by nature but are driven by greed and money at the same time. How much can we trust these people when we are not physically there? Or is it better to not trust at all and leave no room for doubt. Do we want to wait till our fingers are burnt before we place the neccessary precautions?

Disheartened, I made an effort to understand how things are the way they are. It was quite difficult as I struggled to speak broken mandrian. It is only through the assessment and close interaction with many there that I learnt a lot about how the Chinese think and act. In order to succeed, I believe that understanding the country's culture and labour and relevant regulations is pivotal for a successful overseas business.

Apart from business, we took this chance to visit the some attractions as well as Expo2010 Shanghai which ends this month. As part of national day celebration, it's public holiday from 1-7 October in China. I naturally thought the expo would be packed with people during this time and planned my visit to the Shanghai Expo on the 9th of October. Apparently, the day we went the Expo clocked 900,000 over people in a day - the highest number by far. We managed to visit close to 12 out of 200 over pavilions there. For some, we had to queue 2 hours before we can get in. Can imagine how tired I was at standing and walking for 12 hours straight...

Shanghai is indeed a virbrant and beautiful city. In fact, I think anywhere is beautiful with the people you love. I intended for more play than work but the trip turned out the other way round - most times being my dad's personal secretary. Nonetheless, I am glad I made the trip.

Happy Brithday Fred, my one and only love

I could not bear to let myself miss this chance to blog today. We had a hearty meal in brazilian churrascaria sixth avenue yesterday evening. 14 cuts of meats in total - my favourite was topside whlist fred's favourite was the chicken hearts. The birhday song was in Portguese by the entire restaurant staff waiting the tables. I am glad I made the right choice on the restaurant. The mentioned cake was a strawberry shortcake from Cannelle which was yummlicious. I am savouring a piece of it now.

We spent half the day in Sentosa. Highlights was the Segway ride which we went back and forth the paths trying the maximise the one round of ride we had. My favourite picture of the day.

Not everything went perfectly as planned.. the bet on the gift was not that great. The roads were closed unexpectedly, forcing us to forfeit the time we waited for the bus. I had class scheduled in the evening, else we could have caught the songs of the sea.

Nonetheless, I was real glad that we again spent quality time together. :)

Phuket- our anniversary trip

Us enjoying good food.

I got a first brillant cut diamond ever with scope and certificate. haha...  you can see a glimpse of the necklace in the picture.

I got us a pair of emporio armani watch below with our initial engraved on the leather skin. It still has the plastic cover on.

Unlimited ways to profit from what we call democracy

"Governing power is derived from the people i.e. direct referendum or by means of elected representatives of the people."

However you want to define democracy, is it a known fact that our government's projects and so called inititatives are fueled by the tax payers money, higher COE, new distant fares, night parking doubled and the list goes on. Maybe we should stop requesting for rebates, for subsidy, for new facilities and be content with what we have. But really can we? Humans are all greedy and lazy to a large extent. It's difficult to fight against these two evils that we encounter everyday in our lives.

Recent Today's headline on 4th August read as "Why S'pore must 'robustly' defend its courts, police force EmailPrint Why S'pore must 'robustly' defend its courts, police force". The first word that came to my mind was " Propaganda". We wonder why the newspaper Today is free.

Next half of 2010

Top 3 priorities at work remain for this year...
1) Deepen relationship with the existing countries I am managing
2) Document and track progress of my portfolio effectively
3) Develop assertive leadership with balance

Keep pushing...

Paralysis of ATM, NETs, Mobile Network

This is clearly a sign of operational risk whereby the team used outdated data to do a batch run resulting in a malfunction of their backup system leading to a system crash. Not going to be an easy time for DBS to clean up this mess.

Damn Bloody Slow bank - This is what my chinese therapist joked about with me. In a way, it is pretty true judging from the long lines of human waiting to withdraw cash from their machines on a daily basis.

Hopefully, they would have learnt from this lesson and implement tighter controls over data management.

iPhone Saga

I was typing a message to Fred. She ran past, with her shoulder hitting against mine. The impact of it made me twisted my body and allowed the phone to slip through my fingers.

She didn't realised what she did. She did not even bother to say sorry the very least for running into me. She managed to ran up the company shuttle while I just stood there.. stunned. I missed my company shuttle as a result and ended up taking public transport to CBP.

The phone was newly replaced just 3 weeks ago for three hundred and fifty due to liquid damage. I can't believe that such a thing happened to me.

Should I fault her? Make her pay part of the damage? or let it pass?

What does it does to be a good manager?

K - Know me
F - Focus on me
C - Care about me
I - Inspire me

It's not easy to be a good manager given the constraints one has. It's especially difficult to balance between the four key actions, I reckon.

I must apply this learning to work everyday.

Love

I love the love I have now.

It's always there in my mind somehow, alive in the air I breathe and tangible in the vision I have in life.

It's a powerful force, that drives me to work every morning, that motivates me to do better everyday.

It's uncanny how two people can quibble and wake up the next day as if it were yesterday.

It makes me do funny things that I wouldn't have done it before.

It makes my heart sing and head light to the point of utopia.

It makes me look forward everyday with a bigger smile. :D

Traffic Offence

I refer to your letter dated 09/04/2010

We have reviewed your case and note that a traffic offence has been disclosed but we have decided not to take further action against you in this instance. However, a warning will be recorded for our further reference.

Bintan Getaway

Nirwana Gardens we stayed - it burnt our pockets! I didn't think the resort was worth the price we paid.

We tried Jet Ski-ing this time and managed to get a personal photographer for our adventure. How lucky! I love these magical photoshopped free pictures.

We did some Kayaking thereafter around the sunset island. I can't get the boat to move straight; it kept going in circles. I reckon my left arm is stronger than my right. Otherwise, I think my stroke was different on each arm. Fred did some explaining on the butt positioning and body weight shifting technque which I totally do not comprehend. He ended up steering the boat most of the time, whlist I lay there enjoying the cool breeze in the deep blue sea.

My Lucky Rose

Wee! I am so happy! I got my good luck flower from Fred once again for the paper tomorrow. Prior to this, I had one from him for FRM and I passed. I hope the flower will do magic once again.

He's been buying me fish soup for the past week because he believes its good for the brain. Guess I can't let him and myself down tomorrow for all the hard work we each put in... for the many weekend sacrifices he's made to accomodate my studying.

I will do my best tomorrow, and be sure to keep cool, to be careful and sharp throughout. Good luck to my other pals taking the same paper. May the force be with you.

emo emo...

I am hurt by the things you say sometimes when you get mad. I think through what makes you say the things you said and reflect upon myself.

I hope my period is coming... so it'll just me being silly and paraniod again.

Pasir Ris Park

We had a fruits and salad picnic at pasir ris coast today in good weather. It was my first experience at the park itself. I am glad I spent it with Fred.

There was adequate open space for kite flying and soccer? Ha, we wanted to tie a hammock for ourselves but sadly the coconut trees were too far apart.

Though short, it was fun! I will upload the pictures soon. :)

Stressed

The other day i was so sleepy that I mistook my facial foam for the tooth paste

Workdays have been hectic as each of us are busy preparing for the upcoming offsite. I had to cancel my block leave for the offsite as team building is really important for us especially in the next 6 months with multiple projects in the book of works.

Fred's been working late everyday now and dealing with tons on orders very minute. Hope things will turn out for the better for him.

Can't wait for my paper to end and for myself to pass this time. Anyhow, I think I deserve a good break after all these late afternoons with coffee.

Marina Sands Bridge Link is Open!

1000 have already gone on the opening day.

Nothing really fancy though, but anything w you rocks. Let's GO baby!

Iron Man 2 and the rest you know

In the morning we went IKEA for the first time to try their breakfast. The queue was horrendously long and Fred was disappointed that the mee rebus ran out by the time it got to our turn. I was upset that they didnt have waffles... where can I get nice yummy waffles?

Later in the afternoon, Fred and I watched this amazing show which relieves us of the days of our childhood. After the movie, I would hear sound effects of all sorts coming from him. Really cute!

A day w Style

I survived without bringing my wallet to work! all thanks to the free tiong bahru shuttle and stored money in my staff card which I use it to purchase food from our own canteen.

Muahahah.

Headache

Maybe its too much coffee.... I felt like crap on my way home in the tiong bahru bus. Wonder why I can never sleep on the way back, but always on the way to work.

The tide has turned

There is so much going now. Too much to even put down in words.

Most of the time we just have to play by ear and see how things goes.

I'm just observing now... too scared to react.

My iPhone

What's app is cool. Finally you get to see if people have read your text and when they are typing. You'll know if they deliberately ignored your message, or it's just that they're too busy.

I like to play what's the difference, take weird photos on the go and flip the hard cover over to close it.

I am very happy with my iPhone thus far. If not for Fred who downloaded everything for me and created ringtones, I would have thought it to be a white elephant. Everything about my iPhone reminds me of him.

186

SG bus arrival shows 3 mins...refresh 2 mins.... If I don't manage to hop into this bus, I would have to wait another hour for my next shuttle to CBP.

I stood up from my seat, peering to see if the bus is arriving. Not yet. Click again. It says it's arriving.

Soon enough, 186 is arrived. As I head up the bus, I stuck my hand into my bag. Gosh, that's when i realised that I didn't bring my purse out!

Damn... I had to walk home, wondering what I would do for the next hour.

One Jervios

We ran from zion to tanglin through the entire jervios estate and back from orchard. My my.. what fastinating houses they have there. Fred was drooling and dreaming about becoming that rich to own one of such nice houses. I was thinking what would I do with such a big house now as it will be largely underutilised as I come home so late these days and only stay in my room till bedtime. Nonetheless, it's something that drives us to work harder each day to bring back the dough.

Backstreet's Back Alright

"Everybody yeah
Rock your body yeah
Everybody
Rock your body right
Backstreet's back alright"

all this with BF!

ESTJ

ESTJ is my personality type! Pretty accuarate I would say.

HCMC

Wow, what an amazing post V-day trip it was. I enjoyed every single moment of it. Fred and I backpacked for the 4D3N in Saigon with a budget of 300SGD including airfare and taxes.

Day 1 - We went hotel /hostel shopping the day itself. Then, we toured the city on motorcycles, had numerous bowls of Pho bo, continued with barbequing our own prawns. Thereafter, we had full body massage in a lousy parlour. Lousy because the woman scratched me with her fingernails on 3 occassions despite having told her not to.



Day 2 - We did Mekong Delta in Cai Be and Vinh Long tour. We saw how coconut candy and crispy rice popcorn are made. We also tasted honey and some other complementary products from a honey farm and then cycled back to the boat. I am sooo much tanner after baking in the hot sun there.



Day 3 - We crawled through narrow Cu Chi Tunnels and tasted wartime food - steamed tapioca (topped with peanut coating). We then continued the day shopping in the heart of the city.

All was smooth as we met many kind souls along the way whom helped us get around. See the photos Fred uploaded onto Facebook!

Friendships and Valentine's Day

It somehow pains me to see how friendships can tear apart. Everytime, I meet up with my friends I can't help but feel slightly empty from losing a friend.

I can't say that I don't miss her. I can't say that she is not at fault either. Tricky situation it is.

Very soon, we will cut her from our emails, we will not hear or speak of her. We will slowly forget the happy times we had... and all is lost.

Politics

The easiest way I believe to get into someone else's good books is to talk behind people's back. People who uses this tatic, will not get far in their career as it will backfire. I am a victim of such, owing to my boss whom do not deserve any of my respect.

I am being caught in the middle of politics now if that what it is... Not sure how am I going to get out of it. Come'on Laurene think!

I got some insights from some sites and saw some of the mistakes some of my colleagues fall prey to. I guess I will read up further to talk things through before I act.

Unstoppable

Some people rise up the ranks without having real substance and ended up looking like a fool when put to the test. I tell myself to not be to hung up for pay rise and promotion but focus on the right things in life. I need to acquire the capability and the knowledge that is needed for me to succeed in my field and put my boss to shame. When that day comes, I know I will be unstoppable.

Paddle

I went night cycling with Fred... all the way to the end of east coast and back. Wahaha another happy weekend yet again.

Night Safari Tour

We could hardly see the animals through the cage/glass as they tend to camouflage with its surroundings. The poor lighting in the vicinity did not help either. I was pretty disappointed with the place. I would have expected 5-6 animals within an enclosure, instead of the pathetic few which are either hiding or sleeping somewhere in the dark.


Midway, we saw the Otters that Standard Chartered adopted. Considered to be semi aquatic fish eating mammals, they have long slim bodies but relatively shorter limbs with webbed paws. They were rather active, playing around each other making noises as they do. Really really cute i'd say..

Even the tram ride as medicore...the tour guide was practically speaking to herself the whole time; I could not make oout what she was saying. Being hungry people, we decided to give the night show a miss and head for good dinner instead.

On the way out, we took some really funny pictures which clearly depicts what more fun there is outside than inside.

HK 2010

I started 2010 with a trip to HK. Relaxing and fun indeed, hopefully this is the case for the rest of the year. Wondering what will happen when i return to work... as my boss is leaving, pending many important annoucement.

Before this trip, Fred and I cooked some snacks and ordered pizza for the 2009 year end countdown. Together with drinks, we played monopoly with my cousins immediately after the countdown. We planned to catch the sunrise the next morning but was too tired. Hee

Yesterday's hotel was awesome! We stayed in Venitian Hotel, Macau. It had a mini walk in waredrobe, a separate living room and a majestic looking toliet. The pictures say it all.

Today's hotel is really amazing as it has some special switch beside the bed which you can turn on the magic glass to see the person inside naked. (I got my dad to be my model.) The kids are fiddling around with it, laughing over the free show.

I am missing my little round one badly. I still have 2 more days in HK, pretty much left with shopping as we decided to leave disneyland out this time. Enjoying while I can. :)