It's been awhile - ass buddies

 It's been awhile since I got back from States...

It's been awhile since I got kids...

It's been awhile since I bought a bigger place...a bigger car...to make space for the bigger things in life

It's been awhile since I tried doing some things for myself...like trying to write and pen out my thoughts, so many frequent thoughts as I drive or fly alone in the past few years.

From losing my uncle a few years ago, who was a close father figure to me, he always made it a point to teach me the finer things in life and never be afraid at work if you are right, hold your ground - things my own father was unable to relate or touch on. At his wake, I found out he was a mentor to many who are now high flyers in many big MNCs. Spoke to many and realised he touched many people's hearts and lives and everyone knew him as a generous person. This set a new perspective in my life.

No more chasing after the work goals, higher titles, no more chasing after a pay scale. Family should be above everything else especially in this pandemic...family and friends. The pandemic has definitely helped to define who's the most important to you- which friends and even which family member.

So after so many life events, I still never got out to set some time to reflect and write - reflect ; yes, write ; not so important. To put off as long as I can and hopefully old age will help erase some of these reflections.

Yet today, I felt a sudden sadness,... a sadness I realise that when someone close to you, been there for you, mean a lot to you suddenly feels sad - I can actually feel the pain and sadness too. Yes the joys of celebrating your friends' successes or accomplishments are typically easy, but when I realised brotherhood encompasses even the sad events... I guess this is life. To find our soul mates in life besides our spouses...I am thankful for having great brothers from another mother...I am fortunate to have so many friends whom I can count on, and equally, I hope I can be counted on as well. Like love between two person, it takes time to build the trust and understanding; brotherhood is also built over time gaining trust and understanding - so much so unspoken words are often the default mode and we feel the joys and pain without saying a word. Like how one buddy of mine likes to call our relationship - ass buddies, or butt cheeks separated by a shit crack. All the shit comes through, we still together.

Be thankful when you meet friends you can call ass buddies for life.

Saw this somewhere on Insta recently and thought it made so much sense now. My best buds have been with me since before I turn 18. Easily about 30yrs of crazy adventures together, before army, before adulthood, before realities set in. That way we know it is all true.

I wish my kids will be lucky enough to make such friendships in life - go find your ass buddies and make it last.

People management

Lately I have been so busy with the renovations of my new abode, I actually lost some weight, given I have to still work and managed the contractors, painters, carpenters, electricians, plumber etc.

A Tony Bennett night

It's been a while since I had a bad day...
Tonight will be a Tony Bennett night as I indulge in my new jazz CDs...all 3hrs 9mins and 10secs of them

Finally...a shoebox to call my own

After all the months of looking...finally :)

What do you want from me?

Ten Rules for Being Human - Live and Learn

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. "There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.

- Cherie Carter-Scott

For a friend.

Don't lose track

For a friend.

Quite often for new couples, without re$ource$, they will spend lots of time and effort finding a home which belongs to both of them in their new future journey. Very often in Singapore today, money becomes an issue since housing often is very expensive and becomes a 25-30 year liability which adds on to undue stress on top of marriage preparations. Typical woes of new couples in Singapore. Baby? That can wait...the non-conducive marriage life in Singapore. What SDU, what baby bonuses? Singapore Government should help in ways that actually matters...control inflation, control housing, control wage levels...do what real governments do.

Hang in there my friend, don't forget romance, don't over commit, don't forget what really matters and lose track of why and how. Prioritise your life...sometimes what you see ahead won't matter because what's just next to you might all be gone quicker than you think.
Good luck.

Belonging to someone

Often wonder how worlds can revolve around each other and yet remain totally spinning on its own axis?

The return to normalcy as your sleeping time reverts; your weekly routines start to take shape with new timetables, and somehow realising you ain't missing much as schedules which went away isn't worth your time anyhow. What was seemingly important at a certain point in time, somehow isn't anymore.



Recent days have been great and you wonder how much happier you have become as past blog entries appear way too invested, too crappy. You start to have more days of wondering-how-could-24-hours-just-pass-like-that? Days like those could not have been possible...your usual skepticism has thinned within months and you have moments classified as nothing short of a miracle.

The careful slow steps you take is slowly leading up to a mad pace towards an imaginary finishing line which somehow seem unreachable...then you pause for sanity and start to breath deeper and ponder with walks of patience.

Over time, the perfection I once knew, erodes with the attrition of compromises, yet the inner stubborn nature never relented, praying and holding on. Then suddenly with a sneaky accurate strike of an arrow, hitting you in an unlikely fashion - you belong to someone...perfect.

Perfect

The only true version found out on youtube, despite the Spanish lyrics and terrible feedbacks, the song is a classic.


Trying to ruffle the leaves, so that the magic is gone; guess that's the only way to know if things are as perfect as it seems and indeed if you're all I need.

Communism a better choice?

Well recent spikes in housing prices and COEs, with an onslaught in creeping inflation from 30% increase in wet market rentals, commodities etc; it is no wonder the market talk about a awesome V recovery with no sights of a bubble seems to be an acceptable fact. Yet, we have news of homeless people living on beaches being chased off, fined or even housed into temporary flats with many rules in place. We have many young couples telling the HDB they cannot afford public housing, but only to be told to be realistic and accept the 2nd floor flat situated next to a rubbish chute. It seems to be a different paint coat over at different parts of our tiny city.

Yes city, not a country - our celebration of independence is but a facade. I have a Law minister who went overseas to proclaim that the island we live in is not a country but a mere city. We also have our highest titled minister telling us that our pledge on democracy is simply an aspiration. So what else should we be realistic about, what else should we wake up from and accept new known facts about the place we now live in?

I wonder if we should just accept being daft and welcome a "lesser mortal" branded on our foreheads; then accept the fact that we are not a democracy but a communist society...perhaps life would be easier now that we can expect a roof over our heads, food from soup kitchens sponsored by our governments. Well it is claimed by our Minister of Community Development, Youth and Sports, our government do give out such benefits.

“If you were a poor person, anywhere on this planet, Singapore is the one place where you will have a roof over your head, where you will have food on the table…Even if you can’t afford it, we will have meals delivered to you.” – Vivian Balakrishnan, 2010

Wouldn't life be more bearable?

Life After Army

Weekend was great and back to work soon. So some after-thoughts after the recent 2-weeks reservist stint. I finally had a SAR21 technical handling course as well as a range shoot using the electronic and real life bullets. Love the scope on that thing, little need for calibration and adjustments and the fact that the technical handling course was completed within 30mins. I could strip and assemble the weapon under a minute in total.

The technical handling course was conducted by a Warrant Officer who was observed to be very dedicated and passionate about teaching us reservists, whom many can be seen to be simply "bo chup" otherwise known as I-don't-give-a-shit attitude. Seriously, quite often we give less thought about the training we receive and even much less thought when the trainer tells you about his 31 years of dedicated career in the force. From an uncompleted secondary school education to signing on the army and give it over 30 years of your life, you wonder what would this Warrant Officer do if he was asked to go? Recently with the streamlined establishment of several appointments and job scopes, we have heard of many of such long-serving soldiers being asked to leave army. And I wonder what is life after army for them, what can they do, what holds for them? Security guards? Did the army think about it for them, with plans on integrating back with the society like the Yellow Ribbon project with the Prison Services? Ask any employer of any industry what useful role can a 40-50 year old Army Warrant Officer do to stay employed in their company?

Life passes by so quickly

Trying a panning shot and missing the slow times in Siem Reap. 

Sometimes life stays still for some, while others keep moving on.

Wow it's almost April!

Army Life

It has been a restful yet tiring week. Restful because of the lack of thinking during office hours as I am on reservist this couple of weeks, tiring because of running around in camp and IPPT which I managed to clear in camp - a respectable feat despite the terrain and hot humid weather this week; and also due to the fact that my company does not have a HR leave policy of a staff being on reservist.

Well, I was hired from Hong Kong where my Asia Pacific HR is based, and my company is American. Besides the fact that my direct boss who was based in Singapore before, the concept of 40 days of reservist duty by Singaporeans is quite peculiar to the rest of the company. So nevertheless, the job must be done as I come home to work till 2-3am every day and up at 6am to book in every morning.

I love reservist, its a time of bonding with old friends who go through the last 5-10 years of idle time and thoughtless conversations ranging from cars to politics. Similar to our local "kopitiams" (coffeeshops), where old men sit around and drink beer in the afternoons while chatting over the latest gossips or Jack Neo's "Honey No Enough" escapades.

The Singapore Government tries its best to sell the idea of defending the Nation to Singaporeans but not understand the problems we face at work with the constant pressure of having a cheaper, "faster" (not necessarily true), and NO-RESERVIST-up-our-asses options of worthy Foreign Talents. The citizens clamouring for equality in this context is easily shut with their latest initiative of setting up Business Centres in 3 Army Camps where employees can bring in their laptops to work. Great, as I thought I can do some work during the idle period. Well, as all other wasteful initiatives previously thought of like renaming Marina Bay to Marina Bay to the tune of S$400k, this will be another while elephant in-waiting. Why so? I was briefly "entertained" as my training camp is one of the sanctioned camp which will be ready come 1st Apr and we were allowed to have a trial.

The top three white-elephant potential reasons :

1) We must inform ahead if laptops need to be brought - nothing wrong here, except only there is a limited number allowed per business centre, I believe depending on the network restrictions, so I foresee a tie up with Singtel and probably personal mobile broadband will not be allowed.

2) The laptops will be sealed before entry and are to be under lock and key in lockers (probably chargeable) with a manned reception with CCTV readily watching you protecting your laptops.

The lamest one yet 3) The laptops can only be used after training hours. And since the business centres are manned, its operating hours are like 8am - 530pm. So bite me...


Ok time to sleep as I have a long week ahead and a physical day tomorrow of morning range and afternoon route march. I have more thoughts about my reservist from more idle observations, hope to blog in the coming week.

Be like the sun

What's the point of brilliance if you can't light or shine the world.

Google

Sometimes I google too much...

Crap Whiskeys

 

So Glenlivet is available at Taiwan minimarts.

And the new Mac reserves, not found in Taiwan, is available here in Singapore as they removed all the Classic 12, 18, 21, 25 and 30 years from the shelves in DFS and decided to sell us Reserve crap after running out of stock, which we have tried from the cheapest to the most expensive - it's all crap!

Don't buy that crap, above is an Estate Reserve version, supposedly 25 yr equivalent (maybe price wise, but tastes like crap compared to the Classic Mac 18 yr old which is still found in Taiwan). Strangely the 18s are still available in Taiwan DFS.

So don't believe Singapore DFS ladies selling you whiskeys, they do not know anything, and try to sell you crap - obviously crap is not wanted in Taiwan, the asian capital of whiskeys!

Oh and perhaps wine as well...they tried so sell me some Australian overpriced whites, which I decided to stick to Robert Mondavis though 20% higher, but you can't go wrong with Mondavis.

What is wrong with the world these days?

It gets worst via the Firefox toolbar

 

And on my way home...

Why our public transport idealogy has failed in Singapore

I can't put my finger to it, but I really like this post from Lucky Tan about the recent increase in COE and why our government/public transport companies do what they do.

Now I understand truly why we have to continue to pay COEs and ERPs on top of road taxes and taxed-fuel to drive a car though it was meant to be discouraging with all the costs involved. Singaporeans still suffer from the lack of a good alternative from unsafe roads for cycling to sardine-packed-often late-buses/MRT services. Really I would ideally love to take a dependable public transport as I really want some commute time to play my PSPs and listen to my MP3s. And I wonder how Taiwan, Japan and even China does it even though they have a lot more people to move...which eventually reminds me..we pay them millions for?

Anyway this is not a rant, this is merely reminding us we need alternative voices in high places so we can put more creative people who take public transports instead of gods who fly around from ivory tower to tower.

Nice charts

Got these charts from a forwarded email today and thought about sharing. How true..daily living..issues with computer, driving, work and behavior on the internet.

Be Hungry, Be True to Yourself and Live it

The one speech every student should watch before deciding what they want in life.

Steve Jobs at 2005 Stanford Graduating Class Ceremony

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.