A Mind of My Own

I had a wedding dinner to attend. I was late because my father cooked dinner late. Ok, so I didn’t tell him the time I was going out and he was busy with his work and I am supposed to be learning to cook but I didn’t because I went out to buy stuff to make new jewellery for Cheri Divas. It is in desperate need of new stuff.

If anyone is into buying second hand but usable stuff, do try Bazaar. I will be uploading more photos for the next few days too. Now, where was I? Oh, a wedding dinner at Conrad Cennetial Hotel. I took the cheapest route even though I was late. I even walked through Pan Pacific to get to the hotel thinking that it was just around the corner. I was almost there. The faster way would have been via Millenia Walk but I have a direction problem unless I have been there before. Except, I was but I wasn’t the one leading. ES was.

Actually, walking from City Hall MRT to Millenia via Suntec would have been horrifyingly long. I hate Suntec as it’s too far from the station. I hate Vivo as it’s too huge a turn to the shop opposite. Now, back to my wedding dinner. I had to attend an ex-colleague’s dinner and I liked the decorations in the ballroom.

However, I found the ballroom had an odd shape. T-shaped. The tables were arranged too close to one another and my chair was hit a few times throughout the dinner. Food wise, it was quite nice and it wasn’t too bland or too salty.

Did I mention that I arrived at 8-ish? No? The reception was still going strong although the invitation stated 7pm for reception and 7.30pm for the dinner. Did I mention that it’s the usual Chinese wedding dinner style? Oh wait, only the Chinese do such stuff.

Personally, I wished I can make weddings lively since it’s supposed to be a happy ocassion. 8-course dinners are so 50s. Now, if only I can convince the elders.

I must be crazy but who can say no to a movie that is half the price you will be paying for in Singapore? Economy is going down and my pocket is shrinking. Watching a movie in Singapore is getting more expensive with each month. As if I am watching them at the cinemas everyday.

Since DD will be free only this week, I felt that a trip to JB would be nice and perhaps we could catch a movie or two. We managed to watch Twilight and Bolt. I saw one scene in Twilight that was obvious cut off and the flow wasn’t there anymore. A pity since I wanted to know why the swoon-worthy Edward Cullen was flying off from Isabella Swan. Oh dear, am I giving away too much?

As for Bolt, it was really a show for kids since it tells of how a dog truly believes in his owner so much that he even believes in his powers. I like the part when he discovered that he was hungry. I think I am giving away too much.

After watching two movies, I realised that Edward Cullen in Twilight doesn’t make my heart pulpate unlike my teenage years. Oh crap! I am getting old!

After watching Twilight, there was some time left to have some late lunch. 4pm for a lunch is really late. Thinking that Sushi King at City Square was having a discount for showing the Cathay ticket stubs, we decided to have our meal there. Unfortunately, the promotion was over. To ensure our eyes weren’t deceiving us when we saw the poster at the box office, we checked and found the poster gone. *&@$*@YHE@*U

Should have gone to the slightly more expensive Japanese restaurant just next to Sushi King since it looked like the food would be fresh. Sushi King doesn’t have exactly quality fresh food. For dinner after watching Bolt, we decided to have cheesecake at Secret Recipe. Yogurt Cheese was sweet and sour at the same time.

Lemon Cheese was lemony sour while New York Cheese tasted of Oreo chocolate since the base was made from chocolate. I was rather disappointed that the staff wasn’t that fluent in English. Meaning, I should go learn Bahasa Melayu soon. Except, where the heck do I even try to find someone I can converse with regularly?

Eventually, our trip to Johore Bahru ended. However, with the same amount of money spent there and in Singapore, we got to eat more and watch more movies.

Image via Wikipedia

Over the years, wars began and ended with both sides suffering devastating losses. Some wars began because of great beauties. Think Helen of Troy and Xiao Qiao from Red Cliff. These days, acts of terrorisms begin due to irreconcilable differences.

In the 21st century, kamikaze styled acts exist purely to drive home the fact that something is better. I am again reminded of the horrifying acts on Sept 11, 2001. The attack of the Twin Towers in USA. In order to drive home the fact, the terrorists made use of thousands of innocents to fly two commercial planes into the towers that the engineers took years to build.

All the planning and workarounds while building them gone in just minutes. Lives lost in just seconds and minutes. Singaporeans abroad have been spared the horrors of being terrorists victims until Ms Lo Hwei Yen. Watching all these acts, I wonder if we are animals or worse.

Ms Lo’s unfortunate short life was snuffed out in Mumbai due to the people who claimed they were doing it for Islam. As religion is such a sensitive topic, I have been avoiding talking about it online. You never know when those followers (I call them extremists) will just attack you when you least know it.

Animals attack each other for food and territory. They do it for survival. Humans attack other humans for? Some out of jealousy, others out of anger. Here, the acts of terrorism exist because of beliefs. Osama Bin Laden has never been caught due to his high intelligence in hiding.

Mas Selemat is still out there in the open probably laughing and plotting something up his sleeves. Many other terrorists are still out there, plotting something to haunt us for life. Something that will devastate the human race more than the predators; lions, tigers, alligators, sharks, owls, snakes, etc.

We are our own worst enemies. Not the animals. We don’t need to have wars between countries. Just the mindless killing of execution without any valid reason will simply wipe us out.

At work, you may get asked to spell a word that is simple and everyone should be able to spell but the same person keeps asking you how to spell that word every time. You get frustrated because you think the person is stupid and should go back to primary school to study again.

Have you ever thought that maybe that person could be suffering from dyslexia? It is not an illness but a form of learning disorder that makes learning spelling a difficulty for the dyslexics. They are unable to read and write properly and their speech may sound impaired.

However, they are able to think in multi-dimensions and are visual thinkers. With the relevant learning tool guides, they do learn how to read and write properly. This learning disability can be discovered in the early years so that the child would have the right tools to help him/her learn.

What they need is your patience and some guidance so that they wouldn’t give up on learning and think they are stupid. What matters is that they learn so that they won’t feel pity for themselves in future. Parents are obsessed with their children getting the highest marks in class and often compare with other neighbours in front of the children.

This brings a subconscious need to compete and the child starts to compare among his/her peers with grades and name callings. Learning should not be only about competing for the highest score without understanding what they have learned.

Understanding what we have studied in school is more important than getting first in class without understanding what was taught.

Mediacorp celebrated its 45th birthday on 23 Nov 2008 with a show that spanned 3 hours with impersonations and short skits. I like some of the impersonations as they looked quite a like in their wigs and makeup. Guo Liang looked quite similar to Chen Shu Cheng while Michelle Chong was quite a laugh attempting to look like some of the ex-hosts.

This gala celebrates 45 years of hosting and broadcasting dramas with some awards for the memorable news anchor who still speaks great Mandarin (I still can’t remember her name, sorry), Jack Neo’s portrayal of Liang Po Po for the best comedy character and others.

We decided to celebrate my maternal grandmother’s birthday on the same day too. As usual, my first aunt was full of comedic timing and quotes. I’m glad that DD came along despite his severe lack of sleep. We took a few family photos with grandmother and I saw too many flashes again.

The champagne flavoured cake tasted quite good. I tried the champagne flavoured chocolate and decided that I won’t have that and rum flavoured chocolates as they don’t taste good. I would prefer bitter or dark chocolate than alcohol flavoured chocolates any day.

Now, where are my dark chocolates?

I have been doing some stuff at home that can’t be seen by anyone including my parents. Everyone in my family thinks that I’m doing nothing except surfing the net for games and just shaking legs. When I do help with the housework when my mum was out at work and hospital, nobody saw me doing it because I have no CCTV installed.

When I blog, nobody can see because they don’t know how to use the computers. I get paid online for the things I have done so far but I haven’t withdrawn the money due to the hosting fees and the USD being low in value at this moment.

I haven’t earned in tens of thousands or even thousands monthly just by blogging. It isn’t easy doing things online even with the global market available. I don’t even get any review units even when I love to play with gadgets because I am a faceless blogger online and companies want faces instead of some nameless coward blogging.

Sometimes, it’s because my traffic isn’t that high as XX and DY. Maybe I need to show more cleavages around here? Whenever my dad is reminded of me being at home, he will ask why I don’t look for a job. When I look at the current economy, I ask myself if I want to join in the crowd. I asked myself what is my life’s purpose.

Do I work in some recession-proof jobs and be a robot doing it weekly or work out the passion and bulldoze my way until the efforts are paid off? When I go through the mill daily, will I be missing out on life in my attempts to pay off the bills?

What if I may get to earn lots of money but I don’t have a life to enjoy it because if I stop working, the money isn’t coming? Why do I have to work so hard for money? Why can’t the money just grow without me needing to be so physical for it to grow?

I am not a realty agent. I am not an investor with a good eye. I am not a famous author whose books are selling like hot cakes. I am just someone trying to find out alternatives that will still work when one day, one day I am physically unable to work.

Life is unpredictable. I don’t know if I may end up being unable to work because of some illness that will take my health away. I just want to find ways that will let the money come in even when I am sleeping. That’s all.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I am utterly bored by Chinese wedding dinner styles but won’t have a say in mine although it is mine. Because of face. Just that one word. I don’t think there is a need to show off the wealth since I can jolly well put all that money into better use such as good renovations and a further honeymoon place to have fun.

Unfortunately, the elders won’t be that easily convinced especially when the son is the eldest in the family. ARGH! Another reason why I dislike Chinese wedding dinners is because they always start late. As in 1.5 hours after the stated time on the wedding card.

Last night was the first time I saw people arriving only at 7pm. The card stated dinner would be starting at 7pm. DD and I arrived at the place only to see his tired friends resting at the sofas just outside the Grand Ballroom of Orchid Country Club.

They had been helping the groom in the morning and were busted for the rest of the day. The dinner eventually started at around 8.30pm. For my wedding, I will not care about late comers if I am forced to hold the traditional wedding dinner style. You jolly arrive on time.

The wedding album was another thing altogether. I liked the outdoor shoots as they were taken in China. I like the forest-like shots and the stream shots. Unfortunately, Singapore doesn’t have that kind of nature except for that Bukit Timah hill stream that is too tiny. I don’t want lalang shots for sure. I don’t want fake backgrounds of forests and stream shots either.

I don’t even know when I’m getting married either.

With a computer training session for kids, you will expect them playing games immediately. As long as they had the login ID and password, they will search for games like Adventure Quest, Y8, etc for games. Even when they are supposed to be learning.

Basically, the parents have paid for the courses so that their children could play in the school’s computer lab. They will fight and mess up other classmate’s work. Fighting is a norm since they love to push each other. Shouting at them to keep quiet won’t work for long since they start talking with each other after 5 seconds.

Since my job was to help those who didn’t know, I tried what I could and more. Since this session for 4 days, I have a slight sore throat from shouting at them for talking too much, fighting and arguing. Threatening to throw them out of the class worked for 10 minutes and they would be at it again.

They would drink water, request for toilet breaks, shout, scream and argued with another one for copying their work. Others would ask for the next set of instructions to be given out. Yet others often request for play since they had completed their work.

Some were experienced enough to bring their thumbdrives while others left theirs at home. There were a few who brought toys and games in CDs to class. In their excitement to go home, some have left their art pieces in the lab.

I did enjoy my time as it showed that some of the kids had the talent for designing PowerPoint slides while some needed guidance. Each kid learned at different paces and there were simply too many of them for those who learned slower to catch up.

Often, the ones who didn’t play in the lab were the ones who had the best slides. Unfortunately, they took too long and not all managed to present their slides to the rest.

My only wish is that the kids won’t be so hyperactive and keep quiet when necessary. This reminds me of my younger days. No wonder the teachers all screamed at us and eventually used loudspeakers

This is madness! I thought that November would be a good month for me to start on National Novel Writing Month and that was why I finally decided to join. However, I didn’t anticipate that I would be taking up a part time job, attending a Korean Fiesta, visiting Night Safari and attending a wedding dinner within the first week of November.

I make it sound as it they take up a lot of my time. Actually, traveling will take up most of the time since the buses can’t be trusted despite what the newspaper said. I have waited for buses as long as 30 minutes for a feeder bus.

I got this part time job all thanks to The Young Businessman. Frankly speaking, I like how flexible my time is now provided I remember to check and key in my appointments into my trusty Samsung Omnia.

8.30am: Wake up.

9am: Type NaNoWriMo

9.45am: Chop ingredients for soup.

10am: Type NaNoWriMo

10.25am: Keep the dried clothes.

10.40am: Give up trying to complete NaNoWriMo

11am: Prepare to go VivoCity for Korean Fiesta.

12.05pm: Reach VivoCity and unsure which organiser to look for to retrieve the tickets.

12.20pm: Just sit at the benches at the amphitheatre without the tickets.

12.30pm: Korean ambassador gave a speech.

12.45pm: Singapore Minister George Yeo gave a speech.

12.50pm: Show started with excellent drumming from the girls.

1.20pm: Show ended with great breakdancing and drumming from the girls.

1.25pm: Sat at Coffee Bean with HF while she lamented the lost of her mobile.

1.30pm: HF’s younger siblings arrived.

1.45pm: Went to the family car to check if the mobile was stuck between the seats. No success.

1.50pm: Walked around VivoCity to check out the mobile phones.

2.15pm: Went to IMM to look for someone familiar working at Singtel.

2.45pm: The girl was on a break. Thus, went to Burger King for a lat lunch.

3.15pm: Looked for the girl again.

3.45pm: Finally settled on a new mobile.

4.15pm: Finally settled on the payment after checking the details.

4.45pm: Arrived home.

5pm: Bathed.

6pm: Prepared for meeting HF and RK to visit Night Safari for the Halloween special.

7.05pm: Arrived at the MRT to wait for HF.

7.10pm: HF arrived.

7.20pm: Reached Chua Chu Kang MRT.

7.22pm: Checked the bus going to zoo.

7.30pm: Went to Wang to have some light meal.

7.50pm: RK finally arrived.

7.55pm: RK bought some mineral water.

8pm: Waited for the bus.

8.30pm: Arrived at the zoo and walked towards the Night Safari’s entrance.

8.35pm: Squeezed through the crowd taking photos of the ghosts, draculas, vampires hanging near the entrance.

8.45pm: Queued for buying the tickets.

9.15pm: Finally bought the tickets.

9.20pm: Queued for boarding the Halloween horror tram.

10.15pm: Finally boarded the tram with The Joker.

10.30 – 10.45pm: Got scared by all the horrors.

10.50pm: Alighted the tram and started walking around.

11.45pm: Got reminded by the staff they were going to close.

12mn: Took a few more photos before leaving.

12.15am: Queued for the taxi.

12.45am: Reached home.

12.50am: Bathed.

1.20am: Sleep.