A Mind of My Own

10 Promises to My Dog is a family movie that teaches about a dog’s unconditional love and support to his owner. Socks, the Golden Retriever, wandered into Akari’s house as a young puppy when she was 14 years old. His presence in the family brought about some relief when Akari’s mother passed away due to an illness.

I like this touching movie because of its simple message. Animals have only us for companionship when they are our pets. Be it dogs, cats or guinea pigs. They depend on us for food as they can’t hunt on their own. They remember what was done to them even if they can talk.

Dogs have a lifespan of 10 to 15 years and neglecting them over the years or even abusing them will make them be afraid of you and even hate you. Don’t forget, dogs are natural hunters and their sharp teeth do hurt. 10 Promises teaches about Socks being a therapy dog; there is a few scenes about how he does it simply by being there and playing the “See There” game.

I feel this is a touching movie as it reminds me of my lost pet. The tears refused to stop! I feel that it is a pity that people adopt just any pet thinking it’s cute or “KAWAII” and then abandon them on the streets after a few years. When a pet has been domesticated for a few years, the hunting skills don’t just magically appear so that they will survive in the cold streets.

Just like if you have been used to being served with food at home without cooking, you can’t just magically cook a great meal when you are living on your own, do you?

There have been too many things going on. I’m quite confused as to where I should be starting. It’s hazy and yet I have so many things to do. Such as finding ways to earn money without resorting to working in an office. Unfortunately, Singapore isn’t really a good place to start. Or any other country for that matter.

Image via Wikipedia

I still need a day job. Unless I can work 4 hours a week. It will be a dream come true. I haven’t gotten over Latte’s demise yet. It is a traumatic experience if you witness your beloved pet grasping his last breath in front of you despite all the efforts to save him. It was really unfortunate that Latte died as a virgin.

I haven’t been sleeping well since. Some of you may scoff at the idea of losing sleep over some guinea pig. However, any pet owner will be upset at the lost of their pets because they have been spending time bonding together and gotten to love each other. Imagine living together with your Labrador for 15 years. It passed away due to sickness or old age. You have been walking around the neighbourhood every day and the loss has changed the routine. How does that feel?

I have been thinking about life. It’s so short that I just want to spend more time with my family rather than spending so much time at work earning more money but it’s useless when you can’t be there when your family needs you.

I have been thinking of starting my own business but it isn’t going to be easy since I have absolutely no idea where to begin. I do know there is someone who wishes to help. That’s so sweet. At this moment, I would like to think about the business type and strategies before jumping into the bandwagon.

6 unimportant things about me. Gee, I wonder if there’s anything so unimportant that anyone would truly want to know about me. Modobs, for you.

1. I’ve always secretly dreamed of marrying someone who has a huge house like a bungalow, with 2 maids, a golden retriever and a private swimming pool. Oh no, now it’s no longer a secret.

[via Flickr]

2. Somehow the idea of living in the era where martial arts are dominant has always fascinated me. I like the idea of flying from tree to tree with ease. Does make it a whole lot cheaper if I can fly to work instead of depending on the public transport with prices that are exorbitant and unreliable at times.
3. I have a driving license but I prefer DD to lovingly drive me around.
4. I like to do many things but lack the maintenance drive for them. Things get started by be enthusiastically but the tying up of loose ends are by others. Oh dear.
5. I prefer to stay at home and devour books. I used to be able to do that because I didn’t have to worry about bringing home the bacon. Now I have to do the latter. Sad. So very sad.
6. I’m still proud of that horse picture I drew many years ago. It was displayed on the art board of the day!

[via Flickr]

With these, I shall now tag Jian, Jasmine, DK, Cris, Pubed and Xinyun.

The weather these days is weird. It’s either raining heavily in the morning or it’s sunny in the morning. When it’s afternoon, it pours. I don’t know what to expect during this supposed rainy season of the year. Last year, it poured every morning. It was wet everywhere. In other words, raining cats and dogs.

Ah, Family Day. What a wonderful day to spend with your family, no? The Sentosa is always a favourite place to hold Family Days by companies. They have balloons, telematches, lucky draws, beach, sea, dogs, babes in bikinis and hunks in shorts (don’t they ever wear their sexy swimming trunks?). I went to Sentosa with DD. His company had organised a Family Day there. I was hoping for something more worthy than just an umbrella for the goodie bag. Unfortunately, there was only an umbrella.

What?! Not even a beach mat? I wished I had borrowed my sister’s instead. Note to self, remember to bring the one-man tent too. While DD didn’t win the lucky draw, I was getting sunburnt under the shade of the coconut trees. Note to self, coconut trees are just coconut trees, either they drop coconuts on your head or they just sway with the wind.

There were dogs, mostly, white. Now I know that white furry dogs are the in thing. One particular dog was very kaypo curious and definitely a male. He was marking every tree and his friend was marking his too. Both love to meet new friends and in the process, my newly bought beach mat, had his urine on it. I had not even laid down on the inflatable pillow and he felt that it was his. OI! Dog! It’s my mat. Mine! I think the other dog he wanted to show off to was a female.

On retrospect, I should have demanded a refund for the mat from the owner. Despite him showing off his hunkiness. Rather irresponsible too because he didn’t apologise on behalf of Nike, the dog that peed on my new mat.

Overall, I felt that if the lucky draw had limited number of prizes, the goodie bag should have contained more than just an umbrella. The umbrella was alone. It was definitely lonely. A beach mat and a cap would have made the trip more worth it.

DD had to apply the cooling gel for me at the end of the day. Note to self, put the sunblock la!

While I enjoyed the stay at Hard Rock, it was time to check in Ritz Carlton. I managed to get a friend to check if I could get a free upgrade to villa and all I had to do was to SMS him the day before. I sent 2 SMS that never got to him because Singtel’s partners had only 3 networks that supports GlobalSMS. I forgot which network I was using but the SMS never got received and I never got my free upgrade.

The driver drove us to the hill that Ritz Carlton was located at. I love the view but the drive up sure was long. We had welcome drinks and cold towels. How wonderful. DD loved the cold towels. As we engaged the driver’s services for the next day to bring us to places we haven’t been to, I decided to explore Ritz as it would be too dark during the evening. They don’t install street lamps there.

Ritz has a lot of swimming pools. There’s the wedding reception area facing the sea. What a wonderful place to hold ROM. Unfortunately, how the heck am I supposed to fly in my relatives and still let them stay overnight?

The driver drove us to a Barong and Kris Dance as our first stop. We had to pay Rp 6,000 per person to watch. We were mistaken for Japanese or Korean most of the time, my eyes are extremely small, I know. The dance was interesting despite the lack of understanding their language. However, we were provided a translated paper to explain the dance sequence.

We went to a temple next. Anyone wearing shorts will have to wear sarong and DD wore a sarong for the 1st time. He looked good in that red sarong too. We explored Goa Gajah, the Elephant Cave. This was the place where this guy explained its history and finally asking for donations outright and saying Rp 1,000 can buy nothing. Of course I know it can buy nothing. I thought it was Rp 10, 000. I think he asked for Rp 20, 000. I didn’t have small change and left with Rp 20, 000, I had to give him. Other than that, the history was richly explained to us throughout.

We went to the Holy Spring temple where DD had to wear sarong but this time, the sarong colour didn’t suit him. To think a donation is voluntary, we had to give another Rp 10, 000 at the man’s insistence. A sash had to be worn for this case. There was no one to explain to us the history this time. There were some praying and a sign saying we should never stand in front of those who are praying. We didn’t see much statues here. I saw white and yellow umbrellas, not sure what’s the use.

We had an expensive buffet lunch while viewing the wonderful volcano, Mt Banur and Agung. Their tax is at 21%. The food served can easily be bought in Singapore and we felt ripped off for the fried noodles and fried rice at Rp100, 000 per person excluding tax.

If anyone is going to have seafood at Jimbaran, do take note that they provide free taxi back to the hotel, any hotel. Don’t let the taxi driver wait for you.

I wanted to watch the sunset at Tanah Lot but would need to pay the driver some OT so we headed back to Ritz instead. The sunset at Ritz was also wonderful and I captured a few shots. I will be splitting the photo albums as it got too long to load all the photos.

Thus, this ends my holiday at Bali. I want another holiday. Anyone got free stay at Ritz Carlton villa, do make use of it. I saw part of them and they looked comfortable to stay in. If you don’t want, can give me?

While I did list out what I would do with SGD1 million, this tag by SentosaGirl was to list what I would do with USD1 million. Let’s see now.

• Buy a house in Australia and rent it out.
• Donate 10% of the remainder to animal welfare groups, namely, Cat Welfare Society and SPCA.
• Buy my own flat.
• Renovate the flat (have to live in it one.)
• Give 20% of the remainder to my parents.
• Setup a business with DD.
• Travel to those countries I’ve been meaning to visit with DD. (should have some leftovers.)

Now, the rest of you have to do this tag.

1. Jian
2. Bill
3. Miss Loi

My skin’s peeling. Urgh. Not nice in any way. I’m more tan now. Would like to keep this tan though. Been a long time since I’ve been tan. Let’s see how to keep it.

I went to Wild Wild Wet again because there’s still some free tickets to be used. DD brought me to 3 different pet farms after that. All the puppies are cute! Some of the cats, such as Persians, Persian Cross are so cute! The Beagles and Golden Retrievers are so cute too! Ok, too many cute here. I know some of you might just want to puke if I say one more. Last one. Cute.
We went to Pet Movers, Ericsson Pet Farm and the smaller one next to Ericsson. I love the Persian Cross. They look so adorable and seemed to love to be hugged and cuddled. However, I don’t have the time to spend with pets that need a lot of interaction now.
To get to those pet farms, you’ll need to drive, the bus stop is too far. The best time to watch people train their dogs would be morning where the dogs are not so hot and sleepy.

For those who love dogs but are unable to own a real one, do check out PerfectPetzz. The sleeping puppies and kittens do breathe! I wonder how much does it take to actually buy the Golden Retriever puppy and ship it here.

[via Cute Overload]

I went to the zoo with DD. DD had a free pass that could be used and we decided to go today. Of all days, we chose today and totally forgot that the kids would be there. It’s the March holidays! Anyway, since it was a weekday, there wasn’t much crowd even with the excited kids yelling at the bunny and guinea pigs to go to their open arms.

The most crowded attractions were the Asian Elephants, Children’s World and polar bears. I had taken a lot of shots today and totally used up my 128MB and 32MB CF cards. I haven’t found out if A95 is able to take in 1GB of CF card space yet. Can some kind soul let me know? I had difficulties taking the photos, the polar bear was swimming and diving happily in a fixed route and all I got was the blue water and blurred face of it. Frustrating, I tell you.

I had more butts than their faces too! The white tiger, wolf or whatever it was and leopard loved to pace around. The otters were frolicking in the water cooling off even though the sky wasn’t that bright, the temperature was high. There’s a new addition to the white rhino. This few weeks old rhino was running around looking for its mother and food. Very cute!

The performance at the Children’s World was similar, strange thing was that people always use their watches to give their kids. The watch was again “swallowed” by the dog that was supposed to look for it. The watch was again hidden in the big red box that was supposed to be the electric box. The cat was released to hunt for the rats that had somehow escaped from some where. A new addition, I guess.

It was a good thing that the rain only started near the closing time. We were near some sheltered restaurants and sat there to wait out the rain. My legs were aching and sore from all the walking. Unfortunately, there were no free tram rides. I wanted to take a horse carriage ride and saw 2 families taking it. It’s expensive lor. Everything at the zoo is expensive. Even the ice cream cost 2x the usual price. Drank quite a lot of water. DD brought the water
At the reptile section, there was this enclosed area where some of the creatures are allowed to roam freely such as the komodo dragon. It was huge and was on top a platform. There were 3 little monkeys climbing along and the girls in front of us screamed in terror each time any of the monkeys moved. It’s just monkeys, not cobra, girls. The monkeys were more afraid of the girls because they kept moving with each shriek.

The only out of the ordinary event that happened at the Children’s World was that one of the miniature horse tried to chew the fallen foundation that a girl had accidentally lose hold of. It’s the zoo and the animals can’t differentiate anything, so, if anything falls into their path, they will taste it. Where was the zoo keeper when you needed one? No zoo keeper after the show. I sure hope the horse is alright. Since I would be perspiring, I felt that there was no need to make my make-up melt. I would have to touch up every 5 minutes lor. Some sun block should do.

Now, my shoulders are aching because I was carrying the thing that can’t be reduced in weight, my tripod. I need massage.