yes i'm indeed green (red, blue and purple) with envy. is this really true? starting pay of business graduates at S$3k?
fuel price has been soaring rapidly recently. i find it near madness as to how drivers are going to keep up with it.
Christin’s email was thought provoking and caused me to implode into my own life. In some ways, I’ll derive that things goes down to perception; how I choose to perceive.I very much know what I want and where I want to be at, just the route to get there doesn’t seem so clear and certain. Maybe that’s where faith comes in, knowing that I don’t deserve it yet still stretching my arms out to grab hold of it.
There are times we walk to a very dark corner in our lives, somehow the front seems like a dead end. Yet in the undefined gloom that’s where senses become most acute. When we don’t depend on sight, we go by gut feel, touch and faith.
I’ll say don’t look back because there’s little significance in dwelling in the past. Only the way ahead is within our control to change.
Perceive life like playing lego. Each lego block with undefined possibilities, like the events that happen every day. What would you like to build today? A house? A plane? A crane?
There’s endless possibilities. You define what these possibilities are. =)
I’ve been quite free at work as I wait for the reports to be reviewed before I can make further amendments to it. hence, I’ve been doing more reading for my research. I’m not sure if it’ll proceed as I hope it will; reason being I would need to run a survey through the group of companies and I’m not sure how supportive the management would be with that. I’m trying to gather help from the HR manager, who hasn’t quite gotten back to me yet. Meantime, I’ve started drafting my research draft introduction and filling in the flesh into the research paper skeleton.
After resolving to save money, I had a God-sent today from my boss. He bought prima deli waffle for all of us in the department and that filled my tummy on top of the bread I had for lunch. Woowee! I paid nothing for a filling lunch. =) (tricia’s such a cheapo…)
So, that marks a good start for my thrifty-tricia june endeavour. i’ll impress all of you with my minimal expenditure! Wait and see.
After the stint at taka, I’ve been wondering how I can earn more extra allowance, without having to be squashed in pasar malam crowd. Being the slug I am, I’m hoping to earn money without the suffering. Bleah.. nothing comes for free in this world hor?
I’ll be putting some of the things I’m not really using for sale up soon. Just to exchange them for some cash since I won’t need them much. tonight I’ll pull them out and get photos taken..post them online..and then start selling =)
At the moment I’m hoping/wishing/dreaming for:
1. a sideline job which I can earn extra for saving.
2. an opportunity to be exposed to some taxation work. maybe somewhere I can volunteer and learn? Like a part time internship programme of some sort?
3. significant progress in my research paper
4. scholarship to study will fall from the sky
Hoping, wishing and dreaming..
The weekend that has just passed was tiring. Dearie and I worked at taka’s talking hall as folding-clothes-statues, just to earn a little more. I hated the feeling of being squeezed around and seeing people toss and throw the clothes which I’ve just nicely folded, all over the place. it was like a pasar malam with the crowd which didn’t appreciate cycling jerseys and hydration belts. They were sneering at how small the fuel belt bottles are and how the amount of fluid would not be sufficient for runs.Whatever that is, I’m just thankful we made it through the “suffering”. It seemed as hard as interval training! Oh yea, talk about training. I pulled my ITB since eco-xcapade and training has been dragged down by it.
I couldn’t last through sat’s training, having to slow down and at some point hurt so much I had to walk. I am just hoping it’ll heal soon for sundown. Meantime, dearie has been giving it good massages and I’ve been applying a whole lot of Chinese ointment on it. please please please heal! Dearie suggested we run with full length cw-x for try-out and also to keep my itb compressed on Tuesday velocity run. I concur to that and I’ll be taking things easy until sat.
I’ve been spending quite a lot through the week and I’ve given myself a challenge for the month of june. I’ll only spend on groceries (with no junk food) and wedding stuff. No more self-appeasing retail therapy and no wasting of money on things unnecessary.
i’ve got to be wiser in spending because money is really very hard to earn. this is something I understand from deep in my heart because we’ve toiled hard to keep every cent. Because it’s hard earned, hence we learn to treasure it more.
I feel accomplished today, notwithstanding my training that fell short because I rested yesterday and will be meeting my mum, Bimo and Johnny later this evening. Never mind about falling short in training. I don’t get to spend time with family and friends all the time. there’s always another day for training.After gathering the information from the library last weekend, I’ve finally had the time and energy to redraft my research survey. The first draft was crap in my view. Ambiguous, undefined and not purposeful. I didn’t know what I was trying to find out. I didn’t know if I’ve gotten the topic right in the first place too.
Out of desperation, I scoured the net and emailed a lady professor from a university just to gather some help. I’m thankful that she graciously replied to my queries, despite I wasn’t a student from her university. She gave me very valuable pointers that made me venture into the library for more information. This time I wasn’t just going to the general reading section; I stepped into the reference section and found just what I needed.
Today I managed to arrange the information into a constructive survey. Something deliberate and purposeful. A piece of work I am proud and satisfied with. I sent it to dearie, christin and to my mentor for review.
Starting with the end in mind. That’s something I learnt today. By knowing where is the end point you want to reach, gearing towards it becomes a whole lot simpler.
i need to strike lottery..toto..4D..whatever.
One person who holds a significant place in my life, apart from my dearie, is my mother. Yesterday evening was an emotional one for her and as I saw her home, I couldn’t help shedding tears to the pain she had been going through.I penned a mail to her, 3 pages long (small notepad), telling her there is a lot more to life and many things worth our time and efforts, instead of mulling over things that did not work out the way we hoped they would.
I wrote in Chinese.. and shared with her..
Is life really unfair? We often feel it is, isn’t it? it only becomes unfair when we compare with the people around us; accounting what they have, hence realizing what we haven’t got compared to them. For example, mr x has a 3 storeys bungalow..drives a posh car and owns investment all over the world. Oh dear! Life’s not fair! I only have a HDB flat. No car. No investment (except my bikes).
Stop and think again. If we haven’t compared and instead give thanks for what we have, probably we won’t feel life’s not fair. God is fair. Life is fair. We have some, we don’t have some. I don’t have a bungalow but I have a flat which gives me shelter. I don’t have a posh car but I have ez-link card to commute. I don’t have investments all over the world but I have relationship investments with the loved ones around me. I don’t invest money but I invest time and love to people which yields returns that can never be quantified by money. Relooking now. is life unfair? Not really so.
It’s only human to want more and weigh things in monetary terms. I do not deny that I sometimes compare myself with others and wished I had more money to do the things I want. It’s carnal. It’s realistic. It’s human. Nothing wrong about that in my view.
Yet most importantly, out of all the whines and complaints, we must know what is lies paramount in our hearts. Is it money?
Simple exercise, let’s all spare a few minutes and do this.
Think about 3 things or events brought a smile to your face in the last 3 days.
What are they?
For me, my 3 events are:
What are yours?
For the first time since the Central Lending Library opened, I have not ventured further than its basement 1, which I would head straight for all these while. On Sunday, dearie and I went up to the 8th storey and spent the entire noon in its business and arts reference section. I got my hands on the Watson Wyatt’s publication which I felt was the best publication I have had the opportunity to go through thus far. The survey that was done is relevant to my research paper and after having spent 4 hours perusing through it and typing it out into a summarized report of my own, I am now sure of what information I want to capture and how I am going to structure my survey.Dearie kept me company through the entire afternoon and was the chocolate dispenser, discreetly popping m&ms into my mouth. Next time we’re going to bring a bigger bag of it!! =P
The ambience of the library is conducive for reading and learning. I liked the light that filled the library with glow and warmth.(the air-con got colder in the late noon) the collection of books is comprehensive and I will definitely return to do more reading. It’s a good escape from the usual distractions at home – bed, television, running shoes. I could just read, process the information and make sense out of what I read. Thumbs up for the national library board! (now could you please write off the fine outstanding? Grins)
I hope I haven’t bore dearie much as he patiently stayed beside me till I finished doing reading. Thank you for your time. I truly appreciate it.
The weekend that has just passed was one that I found exceptionally fulfilling. Team Runfanatics had our inaugural track training with Sham which was despite being painful (think: lactic acid build-up on your legs), was very insightful. I never quite had a running coach who would observe what I was doing and corrected my mistakes. The only person who came closest was dearie who constantly reminded me of my running posture and breathing method. He was the only coach I’ve had all these while. Sham graciously offered to coach Team Runfanatics and everyone who was present that day would definitely agree with me that we’ve benefited much from it.Honestly I’m really looking forward to continue training with the Team and under Sham’s coaching. People from our Team share the same passion of running and fervently desire to improve. With that common embraced goal, training becomes fruitful. We put in our 101% and I believe when we do our best, we will gradually yield the results of hard work sowed.
No pain, no gain!
Sleepy day. I’ve been yawning a lot today.I managed to pull through 1.5km of swim yesterday with dearie’s encouragement. Today I’ll be going home early to clean up the place a little before heading out for abit of speed training if possible.
Runfanatics will be having track training this Sat. the anticipated training looks really painful but I’m sure it’ll do us a lot of good in the long run. Dearie and I will be biking there, and we’ve arranged to go swimming with Eugene and Isabel after the hard run. Just a slow recovery swim will be nice for the sore muscles.
Sunday I’ll be heading to lee kong chian library to get my hands on the Watson wyatt workasia journal. That’s something I’m desperate to read of as it’ll be helpful to my project.
I’m hoping to do some biking with dearie on Sunday as we’ve got to get ourselves into the momentum of biking.
Got to plan on making a trip to
My research paper hit the brick wall recently. I found myself stuck in a dead end, not knowing what to do next. I was on the verge of turning back and restarting from square 1 again.Dearie kept me going and told me whatever I’ve read will not go to waste. It’ll always be knowledge that’ll come in useful one of these days.
I wasn’t ready to accept defeat so easily. As I was rather free yesterday, I took the research guide and re-read each line thoroughly. Further to that, I pored through all 20topics listed on the suggested list and segmented them under different broad topics. Having done that, I gained another perspective of the entire research paper.
Hence forth, I relooked into the survey I’ve drafted earlier and reorganized it again to be more deliberate in the attempt to collect data.
Strive on, tricia. The degree is the goal, keep moving towards it and I’m sure I WILL get there.
it's been a long long long while since i last biked on the road. i've been doing occasional spinning on my bike but that's about it.
dearie bought me TOTORO!!!! i love totoro!! it's my favorite cartoon character. nothing beats it!
we cooked curry udon today..it tasted exactly like the one we had at kopitiam ..our version is much much cheaper and we could have like 2servings each! slurpo!
i spent 3 days of the week at ICPAS doing the corporate taxation course. it's been a good refresher and update for me. taxation has always been a pet subject and it's been my ambition to go into tax consultancy during my school days. however, life doesn't always go the way we want them to..some how i never got around practising tax.. i find the course insightful..and things seem to make alot more practical sense, now that i encounter quite a bit of them in my present work.
Yesterday was ct’s last day with us. I’m pretty reluctant to see her go as she’s a nice supervisor who has given everyone in the department a fair chance to learn and undertake new challenges. She is one person who has excellent personal relation skills..but somehow, something along the way must have gone a little off course causing her to leave. I’m getting used to not having her around to guide me. It’s not easy as I am still not totally versed with the work she has handed over to me. I guess things just need to be learnt, just like rules.In a week’s time, a new financial controller will take over. This leaves many of us wondering what other changes that may come with. What kind of person will she be like? Will she implement a lot of changes which we have to work and adapt to? I can only tell myself that I’ve got to stay optimistic and ensure the rest of the team remains united.
I spent the weekend understanding the meaning of being rich and affluent. As I stood there waiting for time to go by, I observed the people that came and went through the aisle.Every game has its rules; some of them a pain in the neck, some of them a little easier to adhere to. No matter what rule it is, like it or not, you either play according to it or you’ll be kicked out of the game. I was pretty appalled how restrictive the rules were but I reckon it’s just a matter of getting used to.
I’ve been surveying for the air tickets and stuff for the planned It’s really disheartening to know how little my bonus can cover.. and just for us to go on a trip, it’ll really require quite a substantial budget.
Talking about budget, budget airlines aren’t that budget after all. Perhaps what it means is that it’s meant for people with a decent budget.
Flying to
I think budget airlines better rethink the whole concept of what they mean by budget.
On one hand I frankly do not have that big a budget to bring us all to
Now that I think about it, my colleague’s idea of going to a beach in
I can virtually see my dollar shrinking in light of inflation.
Dearie suggested we swim to
The feeling is likened to being run over by a car driven by the rocketing prices of commodities. Even going for a holiday is becoming such a woe to plan for. Now having a clearer pictures of how much it would actually cost, I probably might need to save up for a year more.
I have all reasons to be envious of those who get to fly all over. It’s now becoming a luxury good to fly, mind you.
In aid of my shallow pocket issue, I’m habouring intentions to bury my money in the pot of soil and hope a little tree springs up with more money on its branches.
Yea, tricia’s fat hope: if only money grew on trees.
look at the totoro keychain..totoro holding bag going to run away.