looking back at the year that just passed, 2009 was a busy yet uneventful year (yes, i know it's ironic) for me.

Labels: food for thought, personal

just when i thought that my time has come to take a breather, work just comes right smack at my face. i've always been someone who prefers to work alone on projects and all. Partly because of my personality, i've never been a big fan of working in a team like it's a mass orgy and also partly because i can't really work with people that i don't have a measure of their capabilities.

Labels: food for thought, personal, school

what surreal feeling am i talking about, you might ask?

Labels: food for thought, hall

was out with my mum the other day and we were talking about my sis' marriage which was coming soon. for some reason unknown, the topic steered to the fact that i'm graduating in 2 semester's time and my van would have to be scraped at the same time. it was then i realized that i've driven my van for a good 5 years already and in another 5 years, i'd be hitting the big three-zero.

Labels: food for thought

i've been on course at CMPB for the past 1+ week and i must say that im glad that im not working anywhere near town, or anywhere that requires me to go past 2 ERP gantries every morning to be specific. i always knew that it was expensive, but i only knew how much it hurt when i actually went through the gantries myself every morning.

Labels: food for thought

i've been so stressed for the past weeks, now that it's over. i suddenly find the peace that's finally here, a bit surreal.

it wasn't an easy time for me, having to study a module which i haven't really been to for the whole semester, and to make things worse, yes, it had to be a math module. failing it would mean that my path to a smooth graduation will be obstructed with terrible implications because of my bond.

i frankly haven't been so stressed for like years, i think it got so bad even my neighbors could tell just by looking at me. it's times like this that makes someone feel like giving up and whenever that feeling comes lingering around the corner, i'll keep telling myself that i need to have faith in myself and that i'll pull through this if i just hang on. which i think works for me.

different people put their faith in different things when it comes to sticky situations. most of my friends will know the answer they'll get from me if they ask "who do you believe in?".

my answer, "myself".

it's not that i don't believe in religions, it's just that i have my doubts about the teachings. i spent my secondary school days in Presbyterian High (the yck one, not bishan) and we have to go through an hour of preaching/storytelling during assembly everyday.

at first it was pretty interesting to hear stuff from the bible for the first time when i was sec 1 but as the years go by, i start thinking about what is being said is contradictory and ironic sometimes. maybe i didn't interpret the passage properly, or maybe i misunderstood the passage because i didn't read the ones before.

being raised in a strict taoist family didn't exactly help the cause of me being non-religious. there were too many taboos to look out for, parents follow whatever the mediums say that they should do. monthly rituals stopped us from traveling as much as we would have loved to. i didn't like any of that and it was not long before i stopped following all the strict rules that were in my life but of course i didn't let my parents know up till today. whatever they don't know won't hurt them, or hurt my ear in this case.

we worship deities, gods and look to them for answers when they are in trouble or in need. we cry out to god late at night when everyone's asleep under our blankets and ask "what have i done to deserve this". we visit mediums and consult them when we feel like we're running out of luck or we would like to know the forecast for the coming year.

so what if a voice suddenly appears inside your head and tells you what to do? so what if the forecast that was given by the medium was extremely accurate? ultimately, it all comes down to yourself, your life is in your own hands. if you don't take matters of your life into your own hands, everything will come to naught.

(here comes the part where it becomes slightly blasphemous to some, pardon me.)

what if there is no such thing as god and all the times when we prayed and got an answer was from our own conscience, nothing to do with any heavenly beings or god? you might ask god what you have done to deserve something bad and the answer that came out was just a corruption of your own conscience, which conveniently became an answer from god.

such things can be dectrimental to one's well-being, falling in one's own self-corruption and possibly becoming disillusioned when they realized that the very belief that they put their life's faith in was actually non-existant.

that would kinda suck wouldn't it?

please don't get me wrong, im not against any religion. it's just i have doubts about putting my faith in religions. for the longest time till today, my answer to where my faith lies is still the same.

my faith lies within myself. nothing can go too terribly wrong if you have your life in your own hands.

think about it.

Labels: food for thought, personal

it's been a real mad rush for the past months and here i am finally, making a post for the first time in 2 months.

was watching the most recent episode of Heroes named "I am Sylar". it showed how after Sylar got a shape shifting ability, he started losing himself as he keeps changing his identity from one to another. i feel like we tend to lose sight of who we really are, we may or may not take a very long time to find ourselves again and pick ourselves up.

when was the last time you actually thought about who you really are?

i find it hard to get emotionally attached to anything -- people, teams, things, events. i don't get particularly excited when some big event that i was involved in planning finishes or runs smoothly when it's suppose to. i just feel like it was the way it was planned to be and it happened. nothing to be excited about. i can stay away from home for months and don't feel home sick although my family is pretty tight.

when i play any sports, i play to win, i go competitive, it's just me. losing just isn't my thing. scoring a point in a game is meaningless unless you win the game and winning the game is pointless if you don't win the whole competition. people always ask me why im so emotionless even after winning a big match, this is exactly why.

im a walking contradiction. i'm not fussy when it comes to food but i love good food and i complain about food that is bad when im eating it. yes, i'll still eat it even when it's bad. i hate procrastination in a person but i procrastinate. i want everything to be perfect, but i overlook details when im not particularly interested in the thing that im working on.

i trust people and i would like to think that people trust me as well. the only way to lose my trust is to doubt or betray it. when i lose trust in someone, the person usually doesn't get it back. grudges are meaningless to me but if it's a matter of betraying my trust, i get very bitter even when everything is over and i just think about it.

i don't judge people and i don't really care if people judge me or not. i am who i am, i will never hide it and show a different facade just to adapt to someone else. if i have to put on a facade everytime, how long am i going to be able to pull it off? the best is to go with the flow, just be myself and let people accept me for who i really am.

so have you started thinking about who you are?

Labels: food for thought

some point in time when i was younger, my mum pointed out that im way too independent, to a point that i probably won't be homesick even if i was away from home for a few years. i wouldn't say that she's wrong.

was telling val online yesterday that it was the first time in 3 weeks that i actually came back from hall and my sis and mum had been talking to me at every chance they can get, not asking me about what im doing in school, but just updating me about themselves. val said that if her sibling goes away for a few weeks, she would catch up alot with her when she gets back. i guess they must really miss me. haha.

somehow at night when my sister started talking and showing me stuff, i started to get a little restless but at the same time, i didn't want to disrespect her and go on with my own stuff so i still stayed on to listen and watch whatever she wanted to show me.

i realized that after 3 hectic weeks in hall of playing IBG, running DnD, thinking up proposals and rushing school work, all i was looking for when i got home was to have a little bit of quality "alone time". i needed some time alone to get away from all the work and just let my mind cool down a little.

this sem already seem very hectic, although it's only week 4. hope things will get better soon.

Labels: food for thought, hall, personal

not good enough.
just simply not good enough.

i know the weekend's and the tournament's over, no point brooding over it, but i just can't help it. there were a lot of what ifs in my mind after the last game on sunday. what if we were more calm, what if we were better drilled than we were over the weekend, what if nobody was bothered by the pressure.

i wish i could have done more, or rather, i know i could have done more, if i was as fit as i was back then, if i wasn't injury laden, if i tried pushing my body to work harder.

would there be a difference if these were more than just simply "what ifs"? i don't know and i'll probably never know since it's over now.

5 yrs into building this team and i really thought we were going to have what it takes to get a result finally, i really wanted it damn badly, but i guess things don't always go your way. that's how life is, you just have learn how to deal with it.

im trying to deal with it now, it's just that i can't swallow this harsh reality fully right now. it's a result that's unbelievable even to bystanders looking at us.

it's time to regroup, get back to peak fitness and time to push this body to new limits.

guys, a year's a long time to make a difference.
less thinking, get to work.
i know i will, what about you?

Labels: food for thought, personal, Ultimate

was reading some stuff online and this suddenly hit me, when you lose yourself at some point of time in life, it's really hard to get back to what you were, or at least you won't be able to be the same you again.

im still looking for myself, or rather, what i can become. it's easy to just live the way i am right now, simple but not fulfilling and knowing myself, a flawed perfectionist (i'll touch on that some other time), i wouldn't be able to stand this for long before i feel empty everyday.

i can feel that there are things inside me that are already lost through a series of events. i have lost drive and interest in certain things that were initially very important to me. it's really hard to try to get a similar feeling back but i guess i should carry on trying.

is this random or what? =/

Labels: food for thought, personal

it's been a hectic 2 weeks since i last posted an entry here. orientation, bash, dinner and dance took up way too much of my time (and my sleep).

so much has happened when im back in camp and back in school that i feel that im becoming more and more "in-your-face" when it comes to addressing problems in work that i think people are thinking that im very obnoxious although they don't say or show it infront of me.

i used to hate confrontations, it blows everything out of proportion and leaves an unpleasant taste in everyone's mouth. i'd just try to be nice to everyone and try to settle everything peacefully, even if people think that im just trying to make everyone happy.

but i guess things change over time when i realize that people don't realize that im just trying to resolve things peacefully and in turn tries to screw me over (and some of them succeed in the process). then i thought to myself, "im doing this out of good-will and you're trying to screw me over", at the end of the day, everyone is happy except for me, so i started standing up for what i thought was right, even if it meant being extremely blatant.

i guess it worked, ticking people off in the process. now when i start talking seriously, at least people know that i actually mean business and they actually would try to make more effort to listen to me. the only drawback, people are afraid to let me settle some problems that are pertaining to members of a working group for the fact that they're afraid that the person might kill himself after having the cold hard truth smashed into his face.

i'll always try to be nice before i'll go into my "asshole" mode, im not THAT obnoxious. and no, i am not like this normally, im only like this when im working on serious things. i wonder where all this angst is coming from. im complaining way too much these days about things, i have a feeling the guys are going to getting irritated with me soon, better find some other channels to let it out.

ps: i can't believe they're calling me 老良. i don't look that old do i?

Labels: food for thought, personal

it's been a very long time since i've felt so genuinely disappointed about something and today i felt this dreaded feeling once again. it was pretty bad i guess, to the extend that i didn't really feel like going for the team dinner (sorry guys) and stayed in hall to help out with the orientation instead.

i asked myself why i was feeling so disappointed: was it the fact that i expected too much of my teammates that when they under perform, i'll feel that it's not enough? or the fact that i have too much faith in them and when we don't do well, i feel like we're selling ourselves short in the game?

came to a conclusion that it's more of the latter and when i look back, i realize how people react to my so called "faith" in them. some people think of it as a joke and smirk when i become too serious when im explaining things during training. a few think that the "faith" that i put in them is too much to take, in turn told me that they think that not good enough and want to go to the second team instead.

im sure there will people think that im being emo and all because i didn't go for the dinner, frankly, i really don't care because this is how much this team means to me, so much that it's one of the main priorities in my life and it gets frustrating for me sometimes.

maybe im just tired, maybe i should try having people telling me what to do instead then maybe they'll know what im talking about.

i just hope that something like today won't happen again because i really hate feeling like this, makes me feel like an asswipe.

Labels: food for thought, personal, Ultimate

was talking to 2 of the guys after training today and they asked me how many years i have left to go in NUS. told them that i had 2 more years to go and they said that it was a very long time and i agreed.

then one of them went on to say that he didn't regret not studying hard enough to get into NUS because the degree he got from SIM is giving the same salary as a colleague who graduated from NUS. the other went on and said that he chose not to go to NUS so that he could save time and not study for 4 years, when i was the one who helped with all the applications for NUS a few years back. im sure he would be saying otherwise if he got the acceptance letter back then.

it's funny how they were frantically applying to get into NUS last time.

i'm not angered by all this talk, it's just weird that people can just write off something that other people worked hard for simply with their own perception of how things are, failing to look at things in another person's shoes.

but then again, everyone's entitled to their own views i guess...

Labels: food for thought, misc, personal

i was talking to a friend the other day about being at work and how life is becoming like a routine for me since i started going back to work for the holidays.

he then mentioned that there are 3 things that are present in life -- time, money and health.

when you're studying, you have time and health, but no money.
when you're working, you have money and health, but no time.
when you're retired, you have the money and time, but no health.

it's just quite impossible to have everything in life at any period of time, i guess it's how we make the best out of the situation :/

Labels: food for thought