Tossed salads and scrambled eggs

Lately, I've taken to finding solace in watching Seinfeld and Frasier. Besides the pointless mafia wars, this is about the only predictable event I have lined up every evening. I like Frasier Crane, he's a very likable man with some very unlikable habits, the subject of which is central in quite a few episodes. It is interesting to see how an "elitist" like Crane can sometimes be confounded by ordinary problems that are readily solvable by Joe Sixpack. The effort the guy goes to just to find a satisfactory answer is well worth my 20 minutes every night. Many nights, especially when its raining(which is quite a common occurrence nowadays), it feels so good to just stay in, have a scotch, and sit back laughing along with the Crane brothers. Sometimes, I really wonder if I'm finding excuses for myself for not going out and meeting more people. Damn. All that psychiatry must be rubbing off me if I'm psychoanalyzing myself. LOL.

Anyway, last Sunday was Sean's wedding. I must profess, that my friendship with Sean was fleeting at best. After all, we did not exactly keep in touch after graduation. Which was why I was especially touched that he remembered me and invited me for his big day. When I met him at the wedding reception, it was as if time never left. He recognized me straight away. We greeted each other with warm smiles and firm handshakes, filled with the silent recollection of days gone by. Ah, those were fun and grueling times. My study years will never have been the same without them.

 His wedding was eventful for me. This was the first time that my table consisted of less than the optimal number of people required to "maintain" a table. More than half of my table was absent, and so me and my companions have had to join another table.  Now this is a first for me. I've always seen tables being broken up and people joining other tables, but I've never been part of the "joinees". Eric was remarking that those who accepted wedding invites but never send word they will be absent should be shot, and in his own words, "no friend liao". While I wouldn't go that far, I do agree some consideration is in order. But I guess there's nothing much I can do about that. These people will always be there, in a multitude of other scenarios, whether we like it or not.

Face it

Well, I'm dead beat. Got back to work on Tuesday and was greeted by a truckload of work. Work always seems to pile up faster when you're away for extended periods. My initial thought on restarting the blog was to make it almost a daily affair, but I guess I probably spoke too soon. I was so drained at the end of Tuesday that I hit the deck after going on Facebook for about half an hour. Almost exact same routine repeated itself the next three days. Things seems to be looking better now, but then I guess for my line of work, something unexpected always seems to be lurking around the corner. ~_~.

Speaking of facebook, I can never really get why some people bother to post the most nonsensical and mundane things. I do understand that the facility is all about sharing what you are doing currently and keeping friends up to date, but is there really a need to tell all your friends what time you woke up or what you saw on the way to work today? Maybe I'm not that into the social networking thing yet but I've always thought that people should ease up on those updates. Just start a blog instead! Then they can write all the nonsense they want, like yours truly here.

 One thing I'm guilty of on Facebook though, are the games. Heck, I think I'm hooked on Mafia Wars. Its almost like its a daily thing for me. that's pretty much all I'm checking Facebook for every end of the day. The silly updates are pretty much just obstacles in the way of subjugating my fellow mafioso.lol. And the ironic thing is, its not even a proper game, its just words and text. There's no action involved, no hand-eye coordination needed, no thinking necessary and no brownie points for thinking about it either. Why are there so many people wasting their time on this? Its a mystery that will probably never get unraveled.

Quote of the day: "why don't you tell me what everyone else seems to know?"

Cheerio!

It's kinda out of the blue, but I thought it would be a splendid idea to resume blogging, an activity that for some reason, have seemingly escaped me the last three years. Much has changed since then, and much has remained the same. Ever since the last entry, I have been in my job for coming to 3 years now. Time has passed, perhaps a little more quickly than I have hoped. Although filled with its share of anguish and disinterest at times, the job has been engaging so far, and provide a much needed source of funds to support my other engagements.=).

Anyway, it was not an easy task resuming blogging. For starters, my previous blog was hosted on Friendster. As I already have another blog here, I thought it would be easier for me to consolidate this foundation. First off, let me begin by saying I searched high and low as to how to migrate old posts from Wordpress into Blogger. The first search result I found involved some archaic steps on editing .bat files to run a java program. For some reason, this method did not work well with me, seeing it wont import dates of past comments. Finally I stumbled onto this. What simplicity. All I had to do was to export my blog from Friendster and convert it there. Likewise, the subsequent importing into Blogger was a simple affair. 

However, I did realised that the formatting is a little off. Paragraph spacings are a bit out but I guess thats something I can live with. In any case, I look back at my past entries with amusement. It is easy to remember what I must have felt at those times when you have a corresponding entry in soft copy to refer to. I find myself chuckling and shaking my head as I go through those past months in fast forward. Mine was not a glamorous or exciting existence, but still, it was an enjoyable reread.

That was actually what piqued my interest in restarting my blog. I have just come off a one week long break, and although refreshing, there were times when I felt that I should write certain things down. I was deliberating between getting back to journals or the blog. In the end, convenience won. I still have my old journals, and from time to time, I like to look through them and reminiscence about the past, although it gets hard when I come across faded ink and falling out pages. I guess thats not a problem when you are clicking instead of flipping.

In any case, it has been a while, and at the time of writing, we are coming to the end of 2009. It has been an eventful year and things can only get better as the days go by. I hope I will be able to document events as much as I can, though that is of course, subject to daily inconveniences such as work and sleep. I will be continually sprucing up the page layout as well, so expect to see minute changes every now and then. I will not be publicizing this blog much, so if you are reading this, you got here by yourself.=).

Saville Row?

The last week has been quite a flurry of catching up for me. The strange thing is, its catching up with all the same people.-_-'. Had dinner with Sock and a few friends a few days ago; one of the rare occasions when she's back in Singapore so I couldn't really find it in me not to go, and just yesterday, Sam asked the guys out for some chilling at Balaclava, a place that Brauns once snidely remarked that I will be spending a lot of my time there in future(i don't think so lo).

And then we still have a BBQ thingy planned for tomorrow at Sock's place. It seems 2006 looks like a somewhat good year for the class of 97s8 to get together, or what remains of it. We didn't meet up as much in 2005, 2004, or any other year. Strange thing is, we only seem to want to meet each other and hang out only near the end of the year. I would very much have preferred it if we could have spread out our meetings more consistently throughout the year.

Anyway, today was the first time i went to a tailor. A friend of mine, due to start work as an intern next week at a big foreign bank told me it would be a good idea to shop for workwear together, and he has got a contact of a very reliable and outstanding tailor, of whose services, he is planning on making use of. Now, my impression of tailor-made clothing is quite skewed. I've always thought that people who custom clothes are people with extreme dimensions, or people with weird tendencies or really irrational dress sense, not your everyday salaryman looking for a decent shirt for work. I guess I have a new opinion now.

Anywyay, you can say today is my first introduction to haute couture in its simpliest form. There is the quintessential tailor, with his tradmark measuring tape around the collar,spectacles on his nose bridge, rolled up shirt sleeves and well-spoken English with an accent that i find it hard to place. And catalogues and catalogues filled with all sorts of different materials. As a matter of fact, I was momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer choices of cloth available at our disposal. Anyway, the tailor, whose name was Daniel, was quite a character. There was this young lady who was giving him instructions on how exactly she wants her outfit; the shape of the button-holes, how the pocket's gonna be, etc. Daniel took everything in silently and then said in a stoic voice, " Girl, I know nothing, only fashion".

Well, I didn't know what that was supposed to mean but I thought it was something incredibly corny to say. Though i guess its always reassuring to have someone who knows what he's doing. Anyway, both of us found it prudent to start with 2 pieces each, just so we can find out if he really is suitable for us, and considering one shirt costs us about the same as what we would expect to pay at G2000, I think its not that bad a deal. Now what remains to be seen is the end-product, whether our dear Daniel(not the cat) can really walk the walk as well as he can talk the talk.

97S8. Its been a while.

Yesterday was fun. It was the biggest turnout for our college gatherings as far as i can remember. The highlight for me was the appearance of Chunde aka Axl aka Wayne, an ex-classmate that i have not seen since college graduation. A fact which serves to remind us all of our age, considering that was 8 years ago. We were all curious as to how he seemed to have vanished these few years, despite our best efforts to get a hold of him. Turns out he changed his number and it so happens that none of us have the new one. If it weren't for the fact that Celine accidentally bumped into him one fine day, I don't think I'll even have the chance to catch up with him.

Anyway of the 20(or so, i think) people in our class, 14 were present. Not a bad turnout at all. Everyone was busy digesting information of what everyone else has been up to and that was enough to keep the evening entertaining. Its interesting though, despite everyone not seeing Wayne after such a long time, there weren't any feelings of awkwardness or unfamiliarity at all. It was like we last saw him 8 days ago, instead of 8 years. In fact, Wayne later remarked to me that he was initially apprehensive about coming but was glad that everyone got on so splendidly. In fact, he was so sorry he had to leave early, due to an unavoidable company function.

Anyway, we had dinner at Brewerkz and apparently that proved to be quite an evening for the ladies since all of them decided to retire for the day. The rest of us adjourned to St James Power Station for a second round of drinks and catching-up. We talked about loads of things, from Junxian's impending wedding, Wayne's disappearance, to me and Shouqian's both finding employment at the same time. Unfortunately, we had to wrap the session up early since most of them have work the next day, else i think the management will be hard-pressed to get us to leave the establishment.

Anyway, Christmas is coming. Very obvious, considering the torrents of rainfall I've been seeing the past few days. Other places have blizzards, we have floods. And falling tree branches instead of mistletoe. Instead of sleighs, we have stalled taxis. Not much reason for cheer in this yuletide season. In spite of this, i guess the local people have lost none of their fervor in commemorating the occasion.

Well, I don't particularly think of Christmas as a special occasion, I'm just glad of the opportunity it provides; a chance for me to get to meet friends who has been too busy to just sit back, relax and just talk about old times. Its also a good time to recap, and think about the trials and tribulations of the past year, and look forward to what the future has in store for us.

Anyway, I've been a good boy this year. I hope Santa brings me some pleasant surprises!

Looking to the future.

Woot. Its been about a month since my last posting. I've been kinda busy. Moving house is really quite an ordeal. Even after shifting everything to the new place, the effort required to get everything in its proper place is mind-boggling. And in my case, its not your normal house-moving. Whys that? Because for whatever box i unpack, there might be a need for me to box it up all over again come next year, when our old place is all reno up. That's right, my change of address is not permanent. And that is precisely what makes things a little bit confusing.

Anyway, the initial situation was that I have cartloads of stuff, and i have no idea where to put them. I'm faced with some sort of an anomaly at my new place. Even though in floorspace, this new place is quite a bit bigger than our old flat, it seems we have lesser space.0_o. For example, my room is slightly more than half the size of my previous place. On the flip side, the balcony here is like 4 times the size of our previous one. talk about priorities.=/.

Anyway, now i'm fairly well settled in, with most stuffs that i need at my convenience and most stuffs i don't need jammed packed into every nook and cranny i can find in my confined quarters. After about 2 weeks of living here(if u discount the additional 1 week of unpacking day in day out), I'm more or less used to everything. the only down side is each unit only has one parking space. And ours is not for me. So now I am resigned to parking my car at a place where it transforms into a really sorry sight every time it rains. Which is a daily occurrence if you look at recent meteorological conditions.=(.  I can see no way around this and i guess i need to schedule a polishing session(any lobang?) once i depart from this location for good.

Anyway, readers of my nondescript blog would have known that since graduation, yours truly have been searching night and day(well, more or less) for a job without much fruition. Well, i'm glad to say the exhausting search has been over. Moi has finally found employment. The company in question has extended an offer and most probably, i will commence my duties at the start of the year. Its ironic that this job offer is the first application i sent, dating back to the first of September. Most of the ones in between didn't really work out. It was either i got "regretted" or i didn't like what was being dangled. What really did it for me for this one was was the entire interviewing process, although that very process took about 5 weeks, I'm really impressed at the thought and effort shown in the whole process, as well as the people i have the opportunity of interacting with. Although that is no less what i would expect from such an established company in the business. Well, I'm actually kinda psyched up about it and i guess i will post in more detail once more concise arrangements are made known.

Or u can ask me=)

Shifting.

This has been a gruelling week. My whole family was literally shuttling to and fro the old place and the new, trying to bring all our stuff over. Its strange, I don't even know we have so much stuff, until we empty everything that we can empty. Now the old place is getting empty but the new place is filling up.lol. Even at this moment, I'm basically typing this amongst a pile of boxes, hoping the wireless will hold before i hit "Submit".

This week has also been the first time in a really long while that I had the chance to sit at the back of a lorry and make horrified faces at passing cars, while pointing at their tyres. Although that was the only fun part. We made about 6 trips with full loads on a Cabstar and we still have stuff left over. Even as I am typing this, my mum is still at the old place trying to figure out how many of her precious plates she can bear to throw away.

Due to the mountains of stuff we had, its obvious we had to throw some away. We're not gonna decorate the new place with 16 year old antique chairs. especially ones where sitting on them is a challenge in itself. We threw out so much stuff that the rubbish dump guy actually got fed up and told us we need Town Council clearance in order to proceed further. We nodded sheepishly, told them we'll get to it, and then on the same night, me and my brother began "Operation Covert". We waited till the dead of night and then stealthily bring our old furniture down to other blocks. Thats right. We threw our stuff at the rubbish areas of other blocks. And we managed to spread it out evenly. So by the end of the day, the whole estate looked like every block have someone who's moving out.lol.

Really dumb thing to do, right?

Well, our main aim was just to avoid the ire of the rubbish guys. though i guess with the overnight appearance of so much debris, they'll pretty much narrow it down to us anyway.=/
No big deal though, since we'll be out of there by Sunday. And by the time we got back, i think it wouldnt really matter anyway.

Anyway, its good to take a break after all that packing. After a week or so of moving stuff everyday, my back is starting to hurt a bit and i'm beginning to feel the drudgery of repetitive cleaning and clearing. I guess i'll just finish up this post, surf the net for a while, and then i guess its back to the much dreaded "Operation Clearup".