A game I cannot play

As always,

I thought of you again.

A fleeting memory that’s slowly fading.

I try to remember your face sometimes,

but the image of you is getting harder to piece as time goes by.

I suppose I fell too easily.

For what, I wonder.

I can’t seem to pinpoint the qualities anymore.

Perhaps you were just a perfect idea.

One, which I had not thought of.

Nor had I the courage to dream of myself.

Looking back, my behaviours were perhaps seen as childish.

From my lack of experience. Maybe.

If I could replay my actions,

I would have stayed away.

For alas, you are in a game that I cannot play.

Adieu 2014. Welcome 2015!

Hope everyone had a Jolly good Christmas! I know I did, or at least I think I did. Although I must admit the turkey we had was well… quite a disappointment. But of course, the company was exceptional!

After Christmas, everyone’s gonna look forward to the fireworks on New Year’s eve and around this time every year, I’ll end up doing a yearly recap. It’s like a ritual or maybe I chore. I can’t figure it out yet (ala my life).

For me, 2014 flew by with the speed of light. I still remember my first day at my current job, where someone said I looked like a teacher (ish), and in a blink of an eye New Year’s eve is around the corner!

Alas, lets cut the monologue and get straight to the point shall we? Based on what I blogged this year, doesn’t look like I have much to recap on. Hahaha but I’ll try nonetheless (warning: the post will be filled with rather mundane events, which sort of equates my life. Somewhat.).

January

A new job! Boy was I excited back then, I always dreamt of doing this and then I got thrown into the deep end albeit with a life preserver. Thankfully I didn’t drown and am still alive and kicking. Although I’m thinking “is this the career path for me?”

February

I scratched my poor car in a shopping mall’s parking lot! Part of the metal came off too! My worst “accident” to date. A few days before this happened, I hit my neighbours tiny tree too. Sigh…. This was the beginning of a string of bad luck that would befall my poor car and it’s nearly penniless owner 😮

March

• My car was innocently involved in a hit and run at the car park near my office. 😦
• Bright side of March was I got my Chartered Accountancy certificate! But I’ll lose it soon in the next “event” cause my house caught fire 😮 Smog engulfed the interior of my home! Waking up to thick black smoke in the middle of the night has got to be the most traumatic experience of all 27+ years of my life thus far. 😮

April

I obtained a basic wall course certificate from camp5! Now I can belay people! If I still can remember how.

May

Met someone but nothing happened. Doubt anything would have happened either. Hmmm…

June

• Had a wonderful short “makan” trip to Ipoh and actually had a photo with Ernest Zacharevic! I like his murals.
• Visited the “Great Singapore Garden” (Gardens by the Bay) over the weekend. I must say it’s rather impressive.

Marina Bay Sands from the Marina Barrage

• My car got hit in the rear at an almost stand still while I was happily heading to work. Sigh… The weirdest thing was the other driver had the same birthday as me (but a different year)! How odd is that?
• June was also the only time I tossed a frisbee in 2014, which is plain sad.

I miss this. I wonder if I still can throw though. Hmm…

July

• The coffeeholic got married! Oh gosh! Now I feel so old!
• Had my first beginner korean class. How exciting! Say “aye!” to lifelong learning!
• Finally climbed Broga Hill. It was a relatively easily climb and had lots of people. U probably can’t get a nice spot to view the sun rise if you reached late. However, we didn’t get a good view of the sunrise anyway.

This was one of the later shots of the sunrise as we were heading down. Looks like a sunset though.

• Went to Langkawi to enjoy sunsets everyday. How romantic…. but I went with a female friend. 😮

Sunset view at Pantai Tengah

August

C.N. Blue “Can’t Stop” tour! Had to sit on cement which was a pain in the butt. The band looked good 🙂 But they would have looked better if they combed their hair a bit more. :p But who cares? It’s Yonghwa and Jonghyun. 😀 Jungshin was the star of the night though.

All 4 of them, with a weird zoomed up angle of Yonghwa.

and of course… Color Run (the most syok sendiri run ever)!

Can just see the color of our hands to imagine what we looked like after the run. Mine is the one with the “tattoo”.

Lets just say removing the color was kind of difficult.

September

De Quarvain is officially back. 😦

October

Ran 10km in my first night run in Putrajaya. For me, running in Putrajaya is rather dull; highways all the way. I shall swap back to Standard Chartered in 2015. My time became worst but it’s a miracle I even finished considering I kept thinking “this is gonna be my last 10km ever”. Lots of willpower involved here. Funny thing in this run, there was actually a lion (from lion dances) decked out in neon lights encouraging the runners. Rather peculiar sight.

10km Finisher’s Medal for BSN Putrajaya Night Run 2014

Another thing in October, I actually went for coffee with someone from tinder 😮 Upon hindsight it was kinda dangerous. Yipes.

November

• Re-visited Penang and Cameron Highlands with my family. Camerons was surprisingly cold. Must have been all that rain.
• Re-visited Bangkok purely for shopping this time but we did take half a day to visit Chocolate Ville, which surprisingly does not sell chocolates. Spent 3 days mostly on shopping. Shopping day 1, Terminal 21. Shopping day 2, Platinum Mall. Shopping day 3, Chatuchak Market. Still, there wasn’t enough time in Platinum and Chatuchak. Didn’t quite fit some of my purchases either. May return to BKK sooner than I think.

December

Got a new laptop which I’m using to type this up now. So far, I need to get used to Windows 8.1. It definitely would work better with a touch screen device, alas I’m too poor to afford that.

And… that’s the end of my recap! Looks like the year didn’t start very well and it became better and more hectic towards the middle and ended with a nice wind down. Ahhh…. Toast to a fairly good year. *cling**cling*

Differences in 2014 vs 2013

• Read more books this year (think I read 10 books this year compared to 2/3 in the year before that)
• I actually accomplished one of my targets to learn a new language (I guess being able to read is considered learning a new language)
• Had more free time on my hands but it doesn’t look like I know what to do with it
• Almost went to the gym every week which I suppose is pretty good but it doesn’t look like I’m improving. ooops
• Volunteered at a soup kitchen! But I forgot which month that was.

Time to create some resolutions for 2015. I realised I didn’t make any in 2014, it’s alright I normally don’t keep track anyway.

2015 resolutions

• Continue going to the gym. Maybe do more cardio?
• Volunteer more
• Less procrastination and lazing around
• Live in the moment
• Let what happened in 2014 stay in 2014, 2015 is a brand new year!

My resolutions don’t quite work though cause it’s so vague. How am I supposed to measure “live in the moment”? I’ve a slightly more long term target of things that I want to do before I turn 30 though, which actually makes more sense. It’s a short list.

1. Travel alone

2. Volunteer (frequently)

3. Figure out what I want to do in life

#1 & #2 seem rather straight forward but #3 mmm….

Hopefully I get to meet my targets and hope all of you would be able to meet your resolutions too! 🙂

Thank you very much 2014, you have been good but I’m going to look forward to 2015 now and hopefully it’ll be a much better year. 🙂

A Wedding Invitation (分手合約)

A friend had recommended me to watch “A Wedding Invitation” after the rather disappointing “The Stolen Years” (被偷走的那五年) and I finally got round to it.

A Wedding Invitation promotional poster

There’s leng chai Eddie Peng in this one and the same lead actress from “The Stolen Years”, Bai Baihe.

Won’t be talking bout the synopsis cause google or the trailer will help you with it.

For me, it was an…. emotional movie. I cried loads. More than “The Stolen Years” although this one wasn’t as depressing.

I do wanna share the song from the movie which I would say pretty much sums up the mood of movie.

LRT pros and cons?

Well hello there readers! I see you managed to have some time to wander here although the last entry was a good 2 months ago. Since you’ve already arrived, I shall bore you with useless knowledge which you probably would have known by now because I’m gonna talk about the pros and cons of the LRT!

“OH! JOY! What a wonderful topic!” *Now, now, don’t have to be sarcastic*

I’m gonna write ’bout it cause yours truly am considering ditching a drive to work for a fuss free LRT ride to work.

The LRTs chasing each other?

So let’s get to the good old pros and cons shall we?

Pros
1. 2014 for me, hasn’t been a good year for driving
– Mid January , I hit a branch and dented the back of my car
– A week later, I scratched the side of the car with a shopping mall parking lot pillar *le sigh…..*
– 2 weeks ago, my car overheated
– Today, my car got hit at the parking lot by a lousy driver, who probably was trying to reverse park but failed miserably and hit my car and left it there like that without leaving a number. Just wonderful.

As you would have guessed, my car seems to be in a pretty bad shape with an average of slightly more than 1 incident a month. Odds aren’t very good.

2. The accountant in me says I’ll save money.
Cost of taking the car to work:
– Parking = RM120/month (RM6/day x 20 working days)
– Petrol = RM210/month (RM70/refuel x 3 avg refuels/month)
– Total = RM320/month

Cost of taking LRT to work:
– RM84/month and a lot of parents good faith (RM4.20/day x 20 working days)

Savings = RM236/month = RM2,832/year!

My oh my, I could buy a telescope with that money (which I said I wanted since I was in High School)! AND I haven’t taken into account car maintenance cost!

A telescope like Do Min Joon (from You Who Came From the Stars)?

3. I get regular exercise by walking from the station to my office

4. I can avoid those dreaded jams! Especially the horrid Friday ones

Of course I’m not going through that crazy traffic jam on the right. But it’s extremely similar.

5. It reduces my carbon foot print!

Cons
1. A major lack of freedom to move about

2. The reliance on my lovely parents to drop & pick me up from the station. At my age, it’s kinda sad. 😮

3. I may get pick pocketed on the LRT if I was caught off guard (stoning or napping)

4. Carrying a heavy laptop in the LRT isn’t the coolest thing ever. It’s heavy!

5. I’ll constantly be facing a moral dilemma of whether to sit at that empty row of priority seating dedicated to the needy when there are no needy people around. “No one’s around, should I sit? Should I not? What if someone needy comes in then barrages me for sitting there? Why is that uncle/auntie standing right in front of it instead of sitting? He/she looks needy, he/she should sit. Gah!! Look away, look away.” Think you get my drift.

And…. that’s a round up!

Conclusion: There seems to be some serious pros to it and well the cons are easily solved apart from #1 & #2. My own conclusion? I’ll just take the LRT if I’m working from office and don’t have heavy stuff to carry. For other days, I’ll just drive. I already knew the answer before I did this pros and cons thingy. I just wanted to rant about the lousy driver who can’t reverse park. Tsk.

Thank you 2013. Happy 2014!

Thank you 2013 for all the memories, good and bad, and may 2014 be a happy and peaceful year for all. Personally, a new beginning for me.

I normally recap on what happened during the year. Wasn’t much great things that happened in 2013 but I shall try to highlight the good times!

February – Chinese New Year and had an awesome buffet at Renoma Cafe. Really tasty stuff. May consider going again.

Foie Gras. Never tasted it before this. Pretty tasty stuff.

May – White Water Rafting & Canyoning at Sungai Kampar

Finally crossing things off my “To Do List” while I save money to head on over to Greece.

July – US Tour (Vegas, San Fran, NYC)

T’was an awesome trip. Such a beautiful country. Will very likely re-visit.

Vegas Baby! Where I really absolutely behaved.

“The Crookedest Street” at Lombard Street.

Times Square! Forever bustling with people.

August – Dining in the Dark KL

No pics cause well, it’s dark. Eating in the dark was surprisingly easier than expected cause the restaurant actually compartmentalised the food for the diners to eat it easily. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience. Helps in eating in cinemas in the future.

September – The Killers Battleborn tour

Finally was able to see one of my favourite bands perform. Dream come true. Brandon Flowers is still good looking in my books ❤

If only Mr ipad at the front would take his ipad down for a moment throughout the concert.

October – Standard Chartered KL Marathon

2nd time running the 10km and I recorded a slower time. Bummer. Must practice harder for 2014’s!

Prefer last year’s medal to this one. But, it’s still a nice medal to keep. 😀

November – OneRepublic Native tour

No pics of this one cause I was standing a little far too take a good clear shot.

I must say that Ryan Tedder’s voice is Amazing! If only the sound system was better I would say the concert would have been awesome! Couldn’t hear his voice in quite a fair bit of the songs. Sound was good during quieter moments though.

31 December – Official last day at my workplace. Bittersweet feeling but leaving was inevitable, it was just a matter of when? Time to move on to a new beginning.

That was a pretty quick recap. Now time to get to more serious things. Well, wordpress has this annual report on wordpress blogs and well I only blogged 4 times in 2013! And entries before 2013 had the most hits during the year. Those aren’t very good stats. Seeing as I don’t have much to blog about these days, I’m considering pulling the plug on the blog. If I continue writing/blogging, 2014 would be my 10th year blogging. I don’t blog much but 10 years is a long time! Until when I really wanna take this offline, I shall just blog like usual. 😀

That’s a little sad news to start the year. Well, to have a new beginning, something somehow somewhere has to end. To New Beginnings in 2014!

Farewell notes

I’m back! And that’s within 2 days!

Was checking out the stats page and noticed that I still get visits. Odd. Why would anyone wanna visit a dead blog? Heck! Even I don’t visit blogs anymore. Except food blogs.

Had an interesting thought today. Well, maybe it’s not all that interesting but it has something to do with this blog. I’ve come to the conclusion to write more. Or rather, to type more. But, who likes reading these days, unless it’s nicely animated. So I suppose whatever I write here from now on its more for personal reading and writing practice?

I’ve recently tendered from my fairly ok paying but stressful/time consuming/”learn a lot” job. While at work today, I was thinking of the farewell emails that all those previous people that left wrote and sent to the whole department and wondered if I should write one. But these farewell notes tend to be rather self publicising about one’s relationship with the colleagues they are leaving behind ala…

“I would like to thank xxxx for always being there for me and giving me the encouragement when I needed it the most.
I would also like to thank *you know who you are* for being my good friend through out these tumultuous times”

Hmm… so how would one write a farewell note? If I run through the years that I’ve been there, the experiences and friends I made, I might end up shedding a tear or two myself.
I suppose a simple
“This email you’re reading now is the last email you’ll ever get from this address. Adios.
P.S. Unless I forgot to write something and have to send this email out again. Jeez that would be embarassing.”
would suffice.

It’s been 5 years.

Woah… It’s been too long.

I meant to blog about all sorts of things. But it just slips my mind. It appears that blogging is losing out to tweeting! *GASP!* The horror!

I came back here cause I got a comment in one of my posts. So I thought “Hey! Maybe a little update would be cool.” But then again, like always, I don’t have much to talk about. Bummer.

The first and only thing that comes to my mind is the feeling of being old.

See, I had an opportunity to attend a wedding of a uni mate whom I went to Australia with. We had great memories there. Meeting people, playing, traveling, eating, wasting time, etc… During the wedding, there was a slide show of the “life of the bride” and of course the pictures of life in Australia was there. Seeing the friends we made there and the places we’ve been. Can’t believe it’s been almost 5 years!

We still look the same *maybe a little more make up* act the same, talk the same but we’re just older inside. Boy how time flies.

Moral of the story: Cherish the moment. It won’t last forever *Easy to say, so very hard to do*

Now… let me get back to my “Running Man” teehee….

Work & Travel?

Every time I reach this page, I forget what I want to talk about.

I realise I like to talk a load of incoherent rubbish. Crap.

Crap about this, crap about that. Even now I’m crapping. What this is not crap? Of course it is! It has no reason for me to even talk about it so I better shut up. For the rest of the entry, you’ll see a total blank page. It’s my tribute to silence.

(awkward silence)

(awkward silence)

(awkward silence)

(awkward silence)

(awkward silence)

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(awkward silence)

Right. Looks like I don;t do awkward silence very well. Anyway. Kelly Clarkson is coming to Malaysia! Finally another big name. Not to mention Wyclef Jean and Fat Boy Slim are here this weekend. If you want to count, Lionel Richie was here too. =)

Did I mention it’s the Malaysian F1 GP this week! Very excited. Lotus F1 is in it! They’ll be the backenders but it doesn’t matter. Having a Malaysian-ised F1 car on the grid is quite a feat, don’t you reckon?

Man! I’m excited!

Now time to talk about work. hahahhaha… That’s like my life now so If I don’t talk about it what can I talk about? Nothing! Cause I don’t get to do anything else! sad sad life that is.

Anyway, have been feeling pretty demotivated lately. I think I don’t have the correct working mindset yet. All I can think about is traveling. It’s not a recent thing actually. I’ve been thinking of it ever since I started working. I don’t seem to want to take up the working responsibility as yet.

Looking into work and travel options. But it seems pretty irresponsible. Not sure though. Is it irresponsible? Your parents raise you up, pay for your education and expect you to return and help them so they can retire peacefully and the child which they raised up doesn’t really want to come home and help them retire peacefully but wants to continue to galavant and explore the world and “wasting money” maybe.

Oh life. What sort of roads can we take? The well trodden path? The black tarred road? The dirt road? The little alley behind that coffee shop with stray cats wandering around looking for food scraps?

Let’s say I pick a road. How am I gonna travel it? By foot? By car? By bicycle? Tricycle? Motorbike? Boat? Plane?

So many decisions. Life = Decisions? Maybe.

Road and traveling mode of my choice

It would be nice if the picture above was my choice. But one won’t have a lot of money. But is life all about money. What about living?

All day long looking at documents and computer screens in an air conditioned room with bright white lights confined in a building whose windows are covered with blinds.

Where’s the enjoyment of life?

Auf Wiedersehen

4 months plus seems to pass by very fast… It’s going to be CNY soon! Boy! Time just passes by without you noticing. Anyway, it was time to move on and seek a different challenge, a challenge which I hope I can face. Good things must come to an end eventually. If it’s regarding one’s future, it has to be done either now or it’ll be too late and soon enough, it’s 10 years down the road and you’re wondering where did the past 10 years go. So it’s…. Time to….. Say goodbye….

Was a little sad when I left though, it was a very nice place to work, the culture and people but work wise, wasn’t what I was looking for. Then again I don’t know what I’m looking for. Will I even know when I’ve found it? Tough question to answer. I’ll tell the whole wide world when I find it.

Alright… that’s what I wanted to say. time to go… LOL I kinda lost the urge to blog about everything that happens. I never really had that urge… hmmm…

Oh! I bought myself a new phone. *Was kinda forced to change… I’ll still remember my nice old slim phone* Nokia 5230.. happily typing smses with a QWERTY pad… hyuk hyuk hyuk… Answering calls need getting used to though and I desperately need to get a cable to get the Maps working!

Apart from that, all seems well in my world apart from dwindling finances. 😦 What about the world in general? Not very good I presume. Let’s not talk about it. It’s just depressing. 😦 The end is nigh!

P.S. I’m a little nuts today. What’s that? I’m nuts everyday? Well.. maybe you have a slight point there.

Bye bye Brisbane.

Ah! Readership has nosedived! Time to pick up the pace!

I would like to share with my readers about something which I don’t think I have ever shared before… *a quick check proves I haven’t* let’s run along now. The story begins.

The taxi is honking. My friend’s housemate checks if it’s the taxi. They help me carry my stuff down, I struggle to get my overweight luggage down a flight of stairs. The taxi driver offers his help. They load the stuff into the taxi. I drop the postcards into the mail box and a thought runs through my mind “The postcards will be in Australia longer than I will”. I bid goodbye to Aza and her housemates. My phone is ringing as I get into the taxi. That few minutes are up very quickly and the taxi pulls away from the driveway as I wave to Aza and her housemates. Lian…. calls me. She missed the farewell party. It’s 9:11pm. I receive another call, wishing me goodbye.

I leave with a heavy heart and wonder if I’ll cry in the plane. I sit in the taxi looking out. I go over the hills and curves that the 412 always goes over. The taxi stops at the lights at Toowong, Coronation Drive. I give Toowong village one last look. The lights turn green and the taxi moves along giving me a full view of the Brisbane river. I don’t remember if there was a citycat on the river when I was looking out at it. But my mind began to wonder, thinking that this is the last time I’ll be able to enjoy this scenery. Bicycle lanes and Jacaranda trees * I assume* that line the road and river. The river glimmering in the dark and the city not far away with it’s bright lights. The Regatta with a long line snaking around it. College students going out to party.

Postcards going out to the people with interesting stamps!

Approximately 12 hours before. It’s the 1st of August. I wake up and head out to the market. It’s a Saturday, have breakfast and have a last walk around the market at West End. The food stalls have changed from the first day I came. They have Japanese food now. The crepe stall is still there, so is the kebab stall and the Hungarian food stall. The buskers are still at it. A lot of dust is still kicked up when we head down towards the lower part of the market, the “free samples” apple store is still around. They have more hot dog stalls now. Hmm…

Went to the City with Aza after that. Had my last cup of Boost juice. Ordered from Top Sushi for the last time. Took pictures of the names of stores that mean something to me. Went to the Museum of Brisbane and got myself a “I ❤ BNE” shirt. Waited at the bridge *Yikes! Forgot the name of the bridge* and took pictures of the sunset. Since it was winter The Sun went down rather abruptly. Headed back and started writing the postcards.

My last Boost Juice

The last Brisbane Sunset in my eyes

Fast forward to approximately 2200 hours. I’m at the airport checking in my luggage. Being the law abiding citizens they are, I get charged for excess baggage. Obviously. Was thinking “Should have shipped my luggage back.” Went through duty free and now I’m regretting why I didn’t get some stuff then. Soon enough I’m boarding the plane, finding my seat, pushing my bag into the overhead storage, the plane lifts off and the last image of Brisbane is *probably* the dock which slowly fades into darkness.

Bye bye Brisbane.