The Singaporean Disease

You know, the way to handle stress is to actually concentrate on other things long enough to make you forget about what is causing the stress. The trick of relieving stress is not exactly to take your mind away from things. It is to take your mind off things long enough for you not to think about it. And that, is stress management.

I was thinking of the uncertain future, a while ago. Thinking of how perspectives have changed since back when I was in primary school, secondary school, through polytechnic, National Service, a glimpse of work life and now finally in University. It had drastically changed quite a considerable bit. Back when I was in primary school or way before that, my ambition was actually to become a pilot. A fighter pilot. I just feel it exhilarating to being able to travel fast and doing something for the country. Yes, I was that patriotic.

Soon, when I started going on into secondary school, perhaps, it was a chance that I got to know that there were no Malay fighter pilots. Knowingly or unknowingly. So I decided to change track. I was very competent in programming languages back then. It had become second nature to me. I was able to do very well in it other than my academic grades. To be honest, I didn't really study that hard for O levels but it got me through.

Decidedly, I took up a Mobile & Wireless Computing course in Polytechnic. Earning me a diploma in 3 years. Nothing short of an achievement. Even though it was without a Merit award, my parents were equally proud. I could tell from their faces during graduation. From that moment on, I passed a hurdle in life albeit a very important one. It was due to the hard work of my parents and the support they had for me. I wouldn't have achieved what I had back in the days.

Now, the funny thing about National Service. No disruptions for University studies for average blokes like me. Slaved for 2 years. Nothing much to talk about other than being a waste of my time and youth. No son of mine will be Singapore citizens. I do not want them to suffer from the elitist disease.

The Awakening

I've been really slacking off from writing my blog posts. Evidently, since my last post was on 1st April 2012!

A lot of things had happened since then; obviously. I went for my first solo trip to Seoul, South Korea where I met my really pretty Korean friend in October/ November last year. I enrolled myself in a Korean language class every Saturday to learn more about the language.

Currently, I'm working at Singtel as a Product Executive. A nice name for a temporary job position. I'm working on this app project called Contactive. Its a cool app! Go download it from the Play Store! It's only available for Android though.

Basically, that sums up my time for the past year.

I should be really practicing my Korean language since I skipped Level 1 Elementary. The lessons are all in Hangeul which I have not fully grasped yet.

Back to work! ^v^

Nights We Wished Wouldn't End

Totally enjoyed my time with Mas, Ivy and her husband today. Went to 'Strictly Pancakes' at Prinsep Street, its opposite Pomo mall. Its quite a quaint place in the evenings. I kinda liked that rustic feel and ambience, though it was actually beside a major road.

Anyway, the food was pretty filling, it was my first time eating pancakes in the evening! I'm not complaining, just appetite stimulation. I had the strawberry and blueberry with the vanilla sauce and vanilla ice-cream. It had 3 pancakes costing $10 for the whole dish. The pricing was a little bit over the top, its just pancakes. An 'okay' place to chill.

Four of us talked for quite a while, laughing to our hearts content. We headed to Ivy's house to chill at the pool and talking nonsense. I hadn't had that kind of talk for quite a while since I went back to Uni. Really enjoyed my company with them.

Now, I'm like 5 hours away from the next class. Better head to sleep. Its been a wonderful night. =D

Someday, Somewhere, Somehow...

I'm just quite sick of studying of accounting. There's so many things to learn and grasp! I almost have this feeling that I can't cope. Feeling pressured all the time. Its like being in a bottomless pit. Not knowing how much more depressed you can be, and how far the pressure is going to push you down.

I hate that feeling. A feeling that which you have absolutely no control over. I hate being a person that don't have control over things. I get upset. That's why, in all honesty, I will do anything by any means necessary to gain control.

I thrive in absolute dominance. It is in-built in me and it works like clockwork. Above all, I'm someone with always a plan. Though, my plans sometimes do not usually collide with people. So I reserve them away in a little box in my head for the best has yet to come.

The workload of the subjects is just immense!! Its maddening.

I can take the comfort of knowing that I'm taking it one step at a time. If you think that I'm someone who gives up without a fight, you're most dead wrong. One can attest that giving up is never an option. It should not be and it will never be. We must continue to fight, continue to persevere for without it, we will not attain greatness in all its light.

We do not know what the future will bring us, but success is never achieved by just knowledge in entirety.

The New Year Starts

A happy new year to us all! Its 2012!

Its been doing well so far, at least for me. New Year's Eve, I spent waiting at Fullerton area to watch the countdown's fireworks with my family. It was worth the wait. Pretty fireworks were waiting for us when the clock struck 12 midnight.

I've uploaded the clip I took of the fireworks to my computer but couldn't find any suitable place to host them. Youtube maybe? Or I could go with just the 'ol Facebook video. I think it was average standard compared to other cities hosting countdowns. Firstly, look at the light pollution! Unlike the video I saw of Japan's fireworks. The latter was much,much, MUCH more brilliant due to the pitch darkness surrounding the fireworks display area.

Anyway, the place that I was hanging around was so crowded, my phone's reception just dropped 3G connection altogether. I saw a few cute Korean chicks around our place, but they moved away after a while. What a bummer, they were eye candies, literally with their cute speech facial expressions. And for the record, I would wanna date a Korean if I had the chance, having dated other Asian races before, it would be quite the experience.

Somehow, I wished I was up at Marina Bay Sands' infinity pool when the fireworks went off; smooching with that woman. It would have been a perfect date. Alas, I didn't have the luxury of time to begin with.

Before New Year's Eve, had planned to meet up with some old colleagues; Mas and Ivy. My, I think Mas has grown much prettier since the last time we met. Hehe! So anyway, we decided to go NEX Mall in Serangoon to have our dinner first since we were actually to meet much earlier but I got delayed. So in the end, I ended up having dinner with her and meeting Ivy later at Holland Village for some ice cream. And believe it or not, in NEX, it was my first time that I couldn't actually find the carpark entrance to get to the car.
We were basically circling around the mall looking for the carpark door entrance. I think we spent a good 10 minutes walking. At least Mas could explore the mall as we walked. To be honest, I was also exploring the mall, though having been there for a number of times.

When we finally found my car, it was around 9.50pm ish? I didn't keep track of the time. We drove to Holland Village, carpark was packed as usual. Went to Cold Rock Creamery to have our ice cream! Stayed till 12.30am ish. It actually felt weird not to send a girl to her doorstep after bringing her out, as I usually do. I'll try my best to not let it become a norm. I think its kinda rude to actually not send her back safely to her home.

By the way, I feel that she's somewhat a marriageable material. And that's just sexy. Not many women I've dated have her kind of maturity dipped with some light humour. I just find it extremely attractive. (That's just me, I'm pretty much easy-going with almost everyone.)

School kept me busy for most of the time. Assignments, revision, tutorials, tests. If I hadn't known better, I would've just did what I did last year. Wait till the eleventh hour. It didn't work out that well, that's why I'm repeating some subjects. Though I gotta say, the subjects have become much more easier to comprehend than before. I just need to keep this going, I should be fine by exam period in May.

Till then, study hard, play hard, and live hard.
Oyasumi!

Management accounting is killing me.

3000 word essay, what's not to like?

And its about Activity-based costing. Not that I'm complaining, I think there are better ways to learn it.

Daddy just got me a new netbook. A HP Mini 110-3800TU. NICE! I like it.

Its been raining an awful lot lately and its kinda depressing. At least I get to see the sun while I was out swimming earlier in the morning today. Too hot no good. Too cold also no good. I want it to be just nice.

Oh well, I've still got this darn assignment to complete.

A Girl Named Anna

Hi!!!

I've finally gotten myself a replacement for my Sony Ericsson K800i. Its pretty ancient by today's standard. So without further ado, I present to you the Nokia E6.

Nokia E6-00

It has the best of both worlds, a touchscreen and a full-fledged keyboard. I've always disliked typing on a touchscreen phone. I prefer the tactile feedback of a button.

A brief introduction on this phone. It runs on the new Symbian Anna OS. Which is miles better than previous version of Symbian S60 and before. Think of when Google's Android OS was somewhere around the 1.5 Cupcake version. It runs without much hiccups. Other than the menu/submenu structure which I have to get used to. (For the record, I've been using Android/W7 phones lately)
So this needs some time getting back used to.

It has 768MB of RAM, not much for a smartphone, but it gets the job done. I was stress-testing it a while ago. I opened up the music player, went to the OVI store, downloaded some stuff and just nice, a Whatsapp message came. It freezed for like about 20 seconds before I could get anything moving on-screen. Bottom-line: Don't do too much multi-tasking, you'll get yourself killed while waiting for it to respond.

The 8MP camera does well for a casual shooter; the times when you find yourself needing a camera but you're not holding one. Decent pictures, though not very polished. I've seen better quality images from HTC and Apple phones.

I liked how they made it a touchscreen though sometimes it might be a little bit too small. Nokia made it so you won't be relying on the touch too much. There's always the D-pad and the physical keyboard.

Oh yes! A gripe that I had earlier on when I wanted it to connect to the Internet using 3G. I wanted to update the OVI store version, it refused to connect using 3G. Thankfully, I did a diploma in wireless computing back in the days. So I changed the Access Point name. Instead of using 'shwap', I added an 'int' at the back. Works like a charm. The phone had no problems connecting using 3G after that.

So far, I played with the Ovi Maps, the music player. Pretty much the same as what you'd get on previous Symbian OS. Which would cement the conclusion that Anna upgrade was more towards on the cosmetic side. Visual improvements.

That said, I haven't tried any calls with it yet. And I'm already looking forward to a new version of the Symbian version called Belle.

I'm rather happy with the phone overall and my only complaint is the SERIOUS lack of apps.

What Is Love?

school life rocks in a way but not exactly for me.

I had to repeat Intro to Econs mod because the previous examiner was so anal in setting the questions that only 30% of the cohort passed it. 14 students out of a total of 7,700 students got an A grade compared to the usual 200+ normally.

Besides that, I had to retake Principles of Banking & Finance module, failure which is due to my over-confidence in the paper. Math 1 paper because I didn't really study for it.

However, I did clear my Principles of Accounting and Statistics 1 papers.

So this year, I'm taking 1 more foundation unit, Principles of Sociology and a further accounting unit, Management Accounting. Alrighty!

To be honest, I didn't really do much revision for management accounting part during POA. My focus was more towards financial reporting, balance sheets, income statement (PnL), cashflow statements etc. I loved doing it, its like clockwork, you do it, balance it out and you get the figures right. I find a sense of great satisfaction doing that.

So, the reason why I took up Management Accounting unit?

Simple, I plan to go after ACCA accreditation once I've graduated. I figured besides being in the banking/finance industry, its good to have some sort of professional certs. CPA is a good start, besides being a CFA.

Now CFA, is a totally on a whole new level. CFA? Chartered Financial Analyst. Now that's what I call pro. I'm still deciding on whether to go into the banking route or the finance route. Either way, having a CPA and a CFA would greatly help to gain exposure. If only they had cheaper course fees....

Moving on, away from school. Is school really that boring?....

There's this girl that I like... Or should I put it, I have a crush on her. She's potential wife material. I mean, c'mon, guys my age don't really wanna play around with little princess-y girls rounding clubs at night anymore. Not saying that they're not marriage material but I'm merely suggesting that personally, I don't go for those kind of girls.

So, what makes me like a girl?

The eyes; intense, big, round eyes. That would be what I look at first. Not the breasts. (Okay fine, I admit, sometimes its the latter that comes in first.)

Next, the hair. Oooh, I love it when a girl takes care of her hair. Smooth, silky, preferably not dyed. And when it smells nice, that's kind of my weakspot I guess.

If I meet a girl that I could really talk to real well, I'd take an extra step to actually get to know her. If not, I really wouldn't bother.

I look for honesty, confidence and poise apart from the usual physical attraction. I like girls who have fair skin, though its not really a deciding factor.

So far, this girl in my mind has scored in my list. She's attractive, good family background, honest and she has the most beautiful pair of eyes I have ever seen.

I think I'm falling in love again. =)

When The Sun Shines

I nearly forgotten I had a blog and haven't updated for a while so bear with me. Things have been pretty hectic and done with since the last meaningful update.

Prelim exams in March, revision classes in April and final exams in May. If I were to describe those months in words, hectic would be an undervalued of a word. First paper we had was Introduction To Economics.....

oh wait, to start things off, we had our exam sitting at the Singapore Expo Halls 7, 8 and 9. Intro to econs was mad tough and it was an excruciating paper. I'm hoping to just pass. Second paper was Statistics 1, this was okay, not too bad, not very good either.

Third was Mathematics 1, the most horrible paper I did. Next comes Principles of Banking and Finance, not very well done. Lastly, Principles of Accounting. This is the only paper that I must say that I've done well in.

Overall, I'm hoping to just PASS and move on to 2nd year.

A week after I was done with my papers, me, Vanessa and Leonie had planned a trip to Hong Kong!! Well, actually, it was pre-planned before the prelims so we had ample time to prepare the finances.

We went from the 16th of May till the 20th. The flight was by JetStar and it costed me around $320+. It was a 4-hour flight filled with boredom even with the PSP and music by my side.

When we had landed in Hong Kong, we took the airport shuttle express bus to our hotel which had a convenient stop just opposite of the hotel building. We stayed in Ibis North Point Hotel. Pretty small room, just enough room for a big person like myself. It had the basic necessities, cable TV, fridge, in-room safe, a table and most importantly, a bed.

A double bed all for myself since the 2 girls had 1 room to themselves. The bed was a little too firm for my liking, I ended up having sore aches throughout my body at the end of the 4 nights I stayed. Its a no-frills budget hotel. I say hotel because unlike a motel or backpacker hotel, it has a restaurant, minimal room service (they serve can drinks) and they have a building of their own. You have to pay an extra SGD$15 for breakfast. That's abit too steep for students like us.

That's that.

First day, once we checked in, we bought some groceries, bottled water, snacks for the 4 nights. Its all cheap thanks to the exchange rate of SGD$1 = HKD$6. I bought the Octopus card for like HKD$150 which had a deposit of $50 and a value of $100. Armed with that, Hong Kong will be conquered! At least till the end of 5 days. We went to The Peak. From the bottom, we had to ride the upward-going tram. It had a spectacular view of Hong Kong; especially during the evening but it was also covered with some fog. One might be forgiven to think that its actually cloud. Its not.

We ended our day there to return to our hotel for some rest.

The second day, a fun-filled adventure awaits us at Hong Kong Disneyland. And since Leonie and Vanessa had pretty much wanted to go there. Tricia joined us as she was in Hong Kong too at that time with her parents. So it was me and pretty much the 3 girls. And WOW! Disneyland is just simply...wait for it... magical.

The place makes one feel so kiddish...well, sorta. They had a Space Mountain ride, Buzz Lightyear attraction, Winnie The Pooh, Tarzan treehouse, some go-kart ride, tea cup rides. And that's about what I can remember. I enjoyed the rides but what I found most impressive is Hong Kong Disneyland's Flight of Fantasy Parade. Its where all the Disney characters parade around the grounds with massive (read: HUGE!) floats accompanied by extremely addictive songs.

Fei hei! fei hei! fei hei! Its that song played over and over again with a mix of English and Cantonese. I don't really know what they mean unfortunately.

We wanted to stay on and watch the fireworks at night but we were simply too tired and too hungry (note: Disneyland food outlets sell very expensive food). That said, we planned to get out of there and head to Tung Cheng, Citygate where the factory outlets were. Hong Kong is a shopper's paradise. I bought this Adidas shoe for just SGD$30. Cheap huh!?

And we headed back to the hotel as we just couldn't bear to stand anymore.

Third day, was shopping at Central! We went to Langham place for H&M and the street markets, mainly Ladies Market and the Temple Street Night Market. Awesome stuff, though hardcore bargaining is a must for these places.

Fourth day, we went to hunt for mango desserts and egg tarts. It was worth it I must say!

The last day, we did nothing much, we went to hunt for biscuits to bring back home and that was pretty much it and back to the airport. By 8pm, were safely back in Singapore and back home. I did enjoy the trip very much and so did the 3 girls.

Now, back to reality.

I've been hunting for jobs. Part-time office jobs and I haven't had any luck so far. Pffft. So on that note, have a good night folks! =)

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i'm still hereeeeeeee!!!!!!! =D