Kamigawa is just round the corner. That should take my attention away from some of the things that has been on my mind alot these days. Have a happy weekend everyone.

Yesterday certainly opened up new perspectives for me. I went to work as usual, blogged a daily weekday post and proceeded with my work. Towards lunch time, i started to feel very weak and cold, feverish in short. And after failing terribly in trying to down a meal of fish soup rice, they call it fish porridge although it is only rice in fish soup, i went to tell my boss that i cannot make it and have to go see a doctor.



Took bus 91 out to the main road and took a taxi back. So cold i was i had to tell the driver to turn off the aircon and lower the windows. Visited a clinic near my house, got a queue number 15, checked the lcd display, currently serving queue number 6. So i sat there waiting for my turn.



I never thought this would happen to me, but as i waited, i started to hyper-ventilate. The quick short breaths soon saw my hands go numb. Then as the agonizing moments passed, the numbness spreaded to my legs, cheeks and even tongue. Bet you didn't know the tongue could go numb huh :p



"Ding", serving number 15. I ambled in to see the doctor. Compared to having to amble with both legs suffering from cramps in the sheares bridge run, think i would prefer cramps. I had wanted to tell the doctor i felt weak and cold. But when i sat down, i only manage to say that my whole body is numb. Doctor did the sop, including poking my ear to measure my temperature. A little more about these ear poking device later. Doctor said i had high temperature.



We waited awhile for my hyer-ventilation to subside, but it didn't. Called my brother to come and get me while doctor wrote a referral to tan tock seng hospital. Doctor asked me if i wanted an ambulance. Now isn't it nice that i was being asked and that i had a choice? Knowing the high cost involved, i said "no, i'll take a taxi with my brother". Waited a couple more moments, the doctor asked a different question, "You like that how to take taxi?" Doctor being the wiser on such matters, we called an ambulance.



Now, for one who had never taken an ambulance in his entire life, one who have never seen a doctor for the past couple years, well i did see a doctor, but not for being sick, it was for dog bites and possible fractures, taking an ambulance becomes a daunting task. My first thought is that "i'm gonna die". My second thought is that, "Be a man, stop crying."



Ever felt like a package? More object than human? Take an ambulance :p The ride was pretty uneventful, poked my ear again, said i had low fever. Anyway the time taken was enough for my hyper-ventilation to subside. By the time i reach tan tock seng, my numbness was gone. I was ready for discharge before i even entered the hospital. When they were unloading me from the ambulance, the first words to my brother was, "This is a waste of money"



In the hospital, the staff all wore a mask. They came and did their stuff, didn't tell me their names or their position. All they said was what they were doing. One of them said, he was gonna do an ECG for me. For all i know he could have said EGG. Coz EGG is high in protein and is good for patients despite costing 60c per EGG. Apparently, he really meant ECG, not EGG.



When they started clipping metal contacts onto my limbs, alarm bells went off. Metal conducts electricity so did he mean ECG or ECT? I'll do an ECG anytime, but i'll never do an ECT. You hear ECG on tv program 'ER' all the time, and you hear ECT from my mum all the time. Fortunately, they were really doing ECG and not sending electrical signals into my brain. I would have prefered the EGG though.



Waited more, then doctor came, did more sop, which again included poking my ear. Average fever. Now the bits on these ear poking devices. How could my temperature vary so quickly within a couple hours? Doesn't it say something about the accuracy of these devices? If it is as accurate as in my case, then why is the hospital using such equipment? Bleah.



Anyway, went home with a couple slabs of panadol, and $70 dollar lighter bank account. Went to bed at 1800 and missed mooncake day with my family for the fourth year in a row. *sigh* Happy belated mooncake day.

Wake up at six, leave home at seven, reach home at nine, go to bed at ten. One of my cousins said i had no life. This coming from someone who work seven days week, i think i shouldn't work so hard :D



The morning mobile tv news has changed its tone, don't quite like it. I prefer the old style, it had that lazy morning feel to it. Now the words are more crisp, and a bore in the sleepy mornings.



Well, ain't gonna say much. See my 'unky mood' on the right. Anyway, taking a cue from karate kid's blog, i'll just say i'm not suicidal.

A little on yesterday's run. The run was good, lots of nice looking babes and all. I think i managed to pop my head into one of the babe's boyfriend video shot of her :p :D But it really should be memorable. I was with her for quite a couple of km, until the 16km mark. However determined to run i was, i had to stop and start walking at the 16km mark. I was hoping i could complete the run w/o walking :(



It's lucky i didn't do the 12km run. My brother had to walk 3km together with the 5km walkers before he could to any running. Took him two hours to complete. Which means he could have done the full half marathon.



My timing was around 2:38:??. Around 20 minutes later than i hoped. If i didn't have to walk, i could probably have made my own target. Think i'm gonna have to train up for december run. Then atleast the babes wouldn't catch up to me and then leave me behind. Oh, i think i was the last guy in the men's open category :p



Mooncake day is tomorrow (i hate tomorrows. i am never sure of its spelling.) Hafta meet up with Jeannie today to get my box of mooncakes, which is actually supplied by Layling. Stoopid procedures, couldn't the mooncakes be sent to me directly?



Anyway, for all who live under the moon, have a happy mooncake day. Tomorrow that is...

I am seriously having doubt on whether i can complete this sunday's sheares bridge run. I went for a light run yesterday, and it took me out with cramps and pains. But then i could have under-estimated the distance, over-estimated my stamina and under-estimated my pacing.



My fitness had never been good. It had always been difficult to train up, two steps forward one step back. And when i wasn't exercising, my fitness would 'kerplunk' into a bottomless pit. Of course, that's a lie. It should go 'weeeeee' and not 'kerplunk'; read bottomless pit :p

I was hoping someone would reply to the reader's letter in Today by Alison Burns. I thought her response to Ben Ong Seng Wee would generate some kind of response from the anti-discrimination people.



Ben Ong Seng Wee wrote in to Today about unjust exclusiveness of Tanglin club. In his letter, he stated that the club banned maids from entering. Alison replied saying that the decision to ban maids "has nothing whatsoever to do with racism or snobbery, and everything to do with social responsiblity."



What does social responsiblity of clubs and customers consist of? The separation of people into classes by profession? While we cannot ascertain whether it was racial discrimination, it certainly does appear alot like class discrimination. Class discrimination where people are prejudiced based on their profession, income, wealth or even looks.



Alison states that, "I know from experience that when a gaggle of maids gets together around the pool or in the playground, they can get so caught up in their converstions that the kids take it as a chance to run wild and disturb other members."



If maids can get too caught up in their conversations, could not the same happen to the parents? Would the children not run wild all the same without the pressence of the maid? What has banning the maid got to do with controlling children? If the club was indeed concerned with children running wild, they should ban children, not maids.



Last but not least, Alison said, "Many clubs follow the same rule". If mob makes right, then the world should have been flat, not spherical.

Yay! I've finally found my blog in the web. The search engine is search.starware.com . Search for keyword 'lbandit' and you'll see my blog pop up as the first result. Five Minutes w lbandit, it says.



One result down and you'll find my guest book entry in Yvonne's Haven. Fourth result is my guest book entry in a now dead web-site that was about Anti Politically Correct Brown Ribbon Campaign.



Scroll down to the bottom of the page, at result number ten is my Web of Nondescript web-page. Um.. that's about all of me from this search engine.



[this occured abit later] Woah... I haven't used yahoo for a very long time. Suddenly i find my blog on the first result of yahoo. Web of Nondescript is in it too! Haha, now i really do wonder if there are any readers whom i do not know and whom i am not known to.



What's up with google? I love google, but googling with keyword 'lbandit' only comes up with my old retired web-site, World of Laughter :(

Today's bus ride took me by surprise. Last week, the buses were virtually empty. This week was spilling with both commuters, and students. Now where did all these student come from? Don't they have to go to school or something? oh wait... they were going to school.. I guess vacation is over now.



There's this blog i came across, www.joeyyroo.blog.com and woah, was that post talking about having nookie!? Um.. didn't read the other posts, generally i skip black background pages. I don't know why people like using black background for websites. That includes me, i used to make black background webpages but i don't do that anymore. White background has better readability. This blog would have been white background, but my dearest couzin said white background was dull.

I was flipping through the sunday times's lifestyle when my eyes caught onto an advert for 'her world' magazine. The advert had the cover of 'her world' magazine on it. On the left column, it had a catchy phrase "Buy a $1.6m condo before 25". And i went, "I'm too late for it now :(" Then my eyes wandered to the right, which said "Proven in the lab! Nookie makes you smarter, richer, healthier". And i went "dam, that explains why i'm so stoopid and poor and have breaking knees"



Um... i don't know what that has to do with anything. Anyway, my colleague is in bali today, and for the next two days. She asked me if i wanted anything from bali. Well, i don't really know much about bali, so i didn't know what i would want if i wanted anything. I told her simply that i can't think of anything. um.. i don't know what this has to do with anything either.

I promised ginlai i would come up with something for her java assignment by monday. Came home pretty late on friday, went off on saturday for kamigawa pre-release and sunday went by with lots of good food. I kind of forgot about it until just now (which really is sunday night. i'm typing this at night to publish next morning in the office). Come monday i have to watch movie with my cousin and i can only do it on tuesday. I hate breaking promises.



I've printed yvonne's assignment, but lost the printing. I also haven't look at it too, but since its a entity relationship diagram, i think i should be able to do it in one night. Provided i don't fall asleep by ten o'clock. Waking up 0600 everyday makes me sleepy earlier in the night. Um.. yeah... i don't know what this has got to do with anything too.



The time now is 2145, i'm becoming very sleepy very quickly. I can't link things up to form the big picture, which kind of explains why i don't know what everything has got to do with anything. Did you know that the symptoms of losing sleep is the same as getting drunk. You enter that dreamy land and become a zombie.



Speaking of becoming a zombie, i remember talking to yinyin about me becoming undead. Think the topic was also about losing sleep. I told her i was becoming the living dead but i made a mistake and wrongly said that i was becoming the dead living instead. We were conversing in cantonese (um.. we only converse in cantonese, and yes, my most often used language in austrlia is not english but cantonese.). So the dead living in cantonese would actually mean i'm scolding myself. um... i really don't know how this has got to do with anything.



So i don't really know why people wanna spend all that money on alcohol when they can get the same effect by not sleeping. One might argue that drinking can effect socialism. But i'm sure you could socialise equally well by chatting on irc all night without sleeping.



Think the longest i ever gone without sleep was in gippy. Well... no mom to nag me about not sleeping. Think it was when bryan and me were having wierd ideas about resetting the body clock (we were sleeping at around 0300 or 0600). We played warcraft3 throughout the night, till the lil birds started singing to the tune of dawn. Think the sleepless marathon lasted 40 hours.



There was once i went to bed in evening daylight, and woke up with the sky already dark. My mom was washing clothes at that time. Since she was known to wash clothes both late at night and early morning, and i thought that if i missed dinner someone would wake me up, i immediately asked her "Is it morning or night?" That was the longest sleep i ever had, a full 15 hours.



I think i'll stop here, since nothing seems to have anything to do with everything. Maybe catch some sleep, or as ben always say, maybe play catching with uncle zhou's daughter in the garden.

Suddenly, my love for fridays grew a couple folds. After a whole week of waking up at 0600, i'm can finally wake up on saturaday at um... 0600 too... Well, that's because i'm going for the magic the gathering pre-release tourney for the "kamigawa" set.



The kamigawa set is japanese themed. It's a wonder, why people love all things japanese. There's sushi, jap idols, jap cars, jap toys, manga. In sg, jap version of the cards sell for a higher price.



My little white dog is growing old. His hair is starting to turn gray. The brows becoming droopy. Then again, the brows had always been droopy. And it's always has a too short leash tying it to my handphone. Maybe i should keep it in my pocket more, to avoid the harsh weather of dusty wind.

i'm turning into a zombie, very quickly. My mornings are turning sluggish and its taking more snooze rings to wake me up. my posts are degenerating into daily boring happenings of my life, I can't think of anything to write in the mornings, and i'm too tired at night to write. Gotta change a perpective soon to start getting ideas on what to write.



There's this tiny portable fountain in the office on a desk behind me. Every morning i heard a sudden splash of water. Its like the electricity for the fountain is controlled by the main lights, and when i on the lights, it'll slowly fill up the bowl and when it overflows, it'll splash to the next level. But these are just my assumptions. i've not yet examine the thing carefully. must remember to watch the bowl when i on the lights. yes, i'm the one who on the lights. i'm not the last to leave, but i'm the first to arrive.

0820, i'm blogging in office. i woke up 0630 yesterday, but reached here close to 0900. so i thought i'll wake up earlier today and reach earlier. i woke up 0600 today, missed my breakfast of eight o'clock orchard jam, but manage to get the eight o'clock queensway jam. Stupid traffic, don't these people know that the world revolves around me, and that they should make way when i'm coming through? well, i wasn't exactly coming through, the bus i was on was going through, so i guess they didn't realise i was on the bus.



I read and reread my last post couple of times before sending it, but still i missed out on the last part. i meant to say, "'not' be ashamed of it". why would i be ashamed of the truth.



I didn't realise that my blog's setting was still using the australia/melbourne time zone. Now the time should read accurately as the time of publication in sg.



After more reading, i came up with even more admendments. Couple posts earlier i said "it would suffice to assume that, with current policies, personal information put onto the web are no longer private." that's wrong. personal information put onto the web is still private. What i meant to say was "it would suffice to assume that, with current policies, personal information put onto the web are not protected adequately."

This has been a rather interesting weekend. Um... where weekends begin on fridays and end on sundays, for the purpose of calling the time frame 'a weekend' in this post. I'll start from just now and go on backwards, where just now is the night before the time of this post (Yes, i like to type it out at night and publish it the next day, i'm a night philosopher.)



Turn clock back a couple hours: I had a game of monopoly with my cousins just now. My cousins said that there was a rule that requires no buying of properties until the first player reaches go. I told them i wasn't playing such a rule, turn out that it worked utterly against me. The reason was that i was going second last. So players before me had the chance to buy up properties before i even start. Mid game saw me with less than adequate property to survive.



After some tricky bargaining on my part, it's easier to persuade the younger cousins, i ended up with three pink color properties which allowed me to build houses. But the bargain left me with no budget to build houses. I then turned to other money making schemes.



I offered another cousin, her properties were worse than me but have more money than me, a proposal. My proposal was that i considered my game as a company with ten shares. I sold her 3 shares at 300 dollars each. Being a share holder, she would not have to pay me for entering my properties. And all income i earn thru the properties, she'll recieve 30% of it. It does sounds like good investment. But bad dice roll and luckless turns saw my company go broke :) She wasted a good $900 investing in three of my shares which only payed around $30+ in dividends :D



With my company facing bankrupcy soon, my assets were becoming less valuable as its houses become deconstructed to pay my debts, i gave away my company to my wealthier brother. Game ended pre-mature as usual when everyone needed to go home.



Turn clock back one day: Siew ling's boss gave me a call and asked me to turn up on monday to sign the contracting document. So far the plan was to try me out for one project before making me a perm staff. The company is a rather small company, which is the kind of environment that i really like. I think a small company wouldn't see its staff doing internal politics. I hate politics. The technology employed by the company is interesting and in my view, has a good future. So working in the company is really a good opportunity for me.



The boss and i have not really discussed the salary thingy at all. But i guess i'll be signing the contract regardless of the salary paid out. Money really was never a priority in my life. Well... yeah, my dream house is a bugalow house, which is around two million which means i'll never be able to purchase it in my life, so money isn't really a concern. So long as i have enuff to eat, pay transport and bills, and occasional gaming, give my mom and save a little then life is good.



Of course, this would come across as rather contradicting to you, with me always complaining about being poor, and that money could buy me everything from one night nookie to all the other mundane pleasures of life. But as i told roy the other day, i am merely a nondescript person living a nondescript life. I don't have high expectations.



I think my job scope's gonna be software side of the technology, involving programming and stuff. As in all other small company, i think it would probably be a 'bao gar liao' job scope. Personally, i've always thought that bao gar liao, although tough is kind of fun. Call me sadistic :) lov for tough life and workaholism runs in my family (the big one, not the small one). Job scope doesn't really matter to me, i've imagined myself in all possible professions, everything from prostitution to politician.



Turn clock forward a couple hours (That should put you at friday night): I was having dinner with my aunties and a couple of my cousins at a rather posh place. Come to think of it, i had no idea what the event was about, just that my aunties took leave that day. Anyway, good food for free, i'm not complaining.



We were going thru the menu, then suddenly my cousins were talking about steamboat with live prawns. Then my other cousin, i'll call her karate kid, um... i don't think the name needs further elaboration, does sound self explanatory to me, began to go on her usual routine of saying how cruel it is, and asking me to imagine if myself as the prawn, deer, rabbit, whatever was on the menu, and to imagine the pain that has to be endured before becoming food. No she isn't a vegetarian, and she's a wierd one, (did i mention that all my cousins are wierd? yes that includes you my dearest couzin, you may be 'jie bai', but that still makes you my couzin :p)



Now where was i... so karate kid mentions all the holy kind of thing. I didn't give her the standard reply. I think the standard reply was that i'll eat her portion of the food for her :) i gave her a rather controversial gem, i said "Didn't you realise that the world revolves around me? So it is only right that the prawn/deer/rabbit/animal was slaughtered for my consumption."



You wouldn't hear many other people saying such things. You'll hear the usual, "I'm fat, i'm this, i'm that", normal superficial stuff. But you wouldn't hear people claiming that they are egoistic and think that they are self-important. Sadly, while few people claim so, many people do think that the world revolves around them.



The problem lies in that people who think that the world revolves around them cannot fathom the concept that they are not the focal point and that they have such an incapability. So focused on the self they are that they have forgotten the age old technique of putting one self in another's shoes. As such, these people would not claim that they think the world revolves around them. Thus resulting in the disproportion in the numbers when it comes to people thinking that the world revolves around them and people who admit it.



Oh um.. do i really think the world revolves around me? i guess at some point of time, now and then i did/do. It's not really that bad anyway. I mean didn't you realise that the world revolves around me? So it is only right that i claim so and be ashame of it :p

Just went thru xiaxue's post. *sigh* Hopefully none of my friends get confused by lingua. The english language has one alphabet. The english alphabet has 26 characters. If the english language had 26 alphabets, we won't be using it as an international language. I'll be dam if anyone could answer to the question, "How many alphabets are there" without doing extensive research.

I was talking to one of my cousins the other day when i said, "One of these days, i'll make a bonofi pie for you people." She went on about what's a bonofi pie and that she's never heard of such a dish. She being the boss when it comes to stuff about food, there isn't a dish called 'bonofi pie' if she says there isn't. But then again, it might be called something else in sg, maybe 'homemade banana pie' or 'english dessert'. Anyway, some of the ingredients which i use for bonofi pie isn't available in sg, and i'm too lazy to try out replcements, so i won't be making it anytime soon.



I made a bonofi pie for my adorable housemate yinyin for her birthday. I didn't get her any presents though, since i was kind of a poor man. But of course that's just an excuse, the truth was that i didn't really know what to get her. I didn't even ask my other housemate phun tscho to join us for the bonofi pie. The main reason was that she usually come as a bundle with her friend chimmi. I don't know chimmi that well, only that she's a vegetarian. I'm not sure if she can eat the pie i made. If you asked me, the bonofi pie is vegetarian to me, but it really depends on how strict the vegetarian is with the diet. I've got a friend who looks at the ingredients of a food to ensure that certain enzyme (no, i'm not kidding) is not included before she would consume it. So to avoid asking her to come over and chance that she might not be eating anything, i didn't tell phun tscho about yinyin's birthday too. But turned out that just as we were setting out candles on the pie, she came back for a phone call, and i asked her to stay for the bonofi pie.



Yinyin and i were always watching tv. In fact, we were more like some old couple whiling away the last days of our life in front of the picture box than students. Now for the bandit to yell out some rant, "whoever took our tv remote, that's very mean.". You don't just take a man's beer and remote from him ya know. But then beer won't apply to me, i don't drink beer. ok... i do drink beer, but only socially. Its not my kind of drink, if i were to quaff alcohol, i rather down raw vodka. Some friends swear that i can hold my alcohol well, but that's just becoz they assume that drunk people either pass out or say/do wrong things. I usually just keep quiet when i'm drunk to avoid saying the wrong things. Hitting people with my shoes is not my kind of thing.



This days i'm more of a coffee person.

I drink coffee to stay awake,

drink coffee to fall asleep,

coffee when i'm sick,

coffee when i'm beat,

coffee to make me tick,

coffee to make me.. dam i'm running out of words.



Bonofi Pie



Ingredients :

- one roll of plain arnott's biscuits.

- half butter (the whole butter cut in half, yes lots of butter)

- one can of condense milk

- one small bottle of thickened cream

- some bananas

- two bars of chocolate flakes (not available in sg, ya have to find something else)



Process :

1. Pound the biscuits into fine crumbs.

2. Melt butter and mix butter with crumbs. Spread batter out on a pie dish evenly. Then refrigerate batter overnight to make it harden.

3. Boil condense milk for one hour (put the whole can w/o opening in boiling water). Be careful when you open the can later. Hot compressed caramel will shoot out, literally.

4. Spread home made caramel onto batter evenly.

5. Slice banana into pieces and spread on top of caramel.

6. Use mixer to turn thicken cream into whipped cream.

7. Spread home made whipped cream on top of banana.

8. Break chocolate flakes into crumbs and sprinkle on top of whip cream. refrigerate bonofi pie to harden caramel and cream before serving.



Note :

- you can use a blender to blend the biscuits, but the result is a little too fine for my taste

- you can use caramel instead of condense milk to save on the effort. but its no longer freshly home made.

- you can use whipped cream instead of thickened cream to save on the effort. but its no longer freshly home made.

- you can use fruits other than banana, but banana seems to be the best.

Haha, made a link to Gloomy Afternoon blog. Good selection of coloring, it fits the theme making the place looking rather gloomy too.



I didn't know my lecturers have graded my project. They said they'll email to tell me about it when they've graded it. Well, good thing i've finished with MIT. Now i'm just waiting for my article to be accepted/rejected. today's a lazy wednesday, i'm not gonna type much in here. ciao.

Some people do ask me when my convocation is. Most are horrified when i tell them that i don't have one scheduled and that the university is mailing out the certificate to me. They would go, "It's a one in a life time thing. blah blah". Which i agree it is. But i usually don't look good in formal photographs, so i don't really see a point in going to shake the hands of someone i've never met or will ever again meet. I don't even like the chancellor/vice chancellor of the school. In fact, i participated in one of the strikes when they were gonna raise the school fees.



Not that the raised school fees was gonna be in time to affect me or anything. But since i can't strike in sg w/o going to jail, i thought i'll try it while i was still in gippy. Plus, its not right to raise the fees. okay, maybe i don't put it as elegantly/detailed as the student union leaders, but i assume a simple 'its not right' against rising fees is usually adequate.



So i went to school that day to play neopets all day. Although its not like i don't play neopets all day every other day, but atleast there was that one day amongst all the other days that playing neopets all day was the right thing to do. um... you get what i mean don't you?

Ah... loyal updating of friendster. I like that. You can usually glean some information from the profiles off friendster. Yes, welcome to CSI Bandit, world of online profiling. Oh wait, there some hot looking pic (ain't it nice of me to say pic instead of chick) on the random gallery. Woohoo, one more bookmark on my friendster account. Now, her profile;

- Name, Natalie

- Age, sweet 18

- Location, Sg

- Occupation, Student

- Status Married

- Interested in Meeting People for, Friends, Activity Partners

- Last Log In, 09/05/2004 (not too long ago, america uses mm/dd/yyyy)

- Number of friends 378

- Testimonials 68

Now, married at 18 does seem unlikely, but still entirely possible. But married while still a student? Seems like she had the thought "I'll just put married for the heck of it". Looking for friends and activity partners, which implies not looking for romance or relationships, which coupled with married while still a student seem to indicate the status as 'in a relationship'. Huge number of friends and testimonials coupled with recent log in, indicates that she likely updates her friendster account loyally. Checking photographs... woah she looks even more hot with glasses on. found a pic of gal and guy looking sweet, confirmed the 'in a relationship' status.



Yvonne might disagree with profiling off people's personal pages and... and... gee, i don't know what to call these friendster, multiply etc websites. But surely the fault lies not with me. I'm not a stalker (albeit i do bookmarks to nice looking pics) and i'm certainly not a 'hum sup' guy looking for some excitement. The fault lies not with the profiler, but with the user of the web services who does not read the EULA (i'll make a bet with anyone/everyone on this claim). surely the eula would have warned the user about making personal information available. while i'm not going to go into the finer points of how privacy should be protected in the web, it would suffice to assume that, with current policies, personal information put onto the web are no longer private.



Looking at the pics of my friends' friendster account and the month is september, i think they went for gippy's SRA ball recently. nice. i get to look at gals in grand dresses and there's helen, looking drooling in her bare-back dress and nicely styled hair.

Bumped into quite a few friends recently. One i met onlong the road and i recognised a face. Actually, to be more exact, recognised a face containing the facial expresion of recognition. Seeing such a face prompts me to think back and remember that the girl and i was in the same primary school. Well, don't remember her name or anything about her, so didn't really exchange more than pointing, smiling and saying "eh...".



Another i met in the mrt to the stoopid interview yesterday. This face i recognised. The unmistakable constant sub-conscious nodding was not difficult to miss. But again i do not know the name. Met him a couple months back in a small magic tournament. Played him once or twice, but never really got his name.



Also yesterday, i met up with roy. I didn't see him approaching at all. was busy with other stuff. Chat up with him abit. Been quite awhile since i last saw him. CCNA, good job, good money. We did come up with an unusual topic. He asked whether i would leave sg to live in au. He said he would if his parents would go with him. I thought abit and i replied that i loved sg and i wanted to do reservice.



Considering that these few weeks i've been thinking that if ever there was a job that required me to go overseas and maybe even into the middle of a war and that i'll gladly take it, my answer was rather contradicting.



What do i really love about sg? other than security and safety, there isn't much. what don't i like about sg? its politics (ah, but i dislike politics everywhere not just sg), its competitive life (meritocracy is good, but still...), its high cost of living, its sheltered perceptions of the people (do not ask me to elaborate this), and our rising obnoxious behavior (i learned of this from close honest foreign friends). If i were to weigh all these options on a scale, i would be au now.



Perhaps the difference between 'taking a job that would make me live out of sg' and 'going out of sg to live' lies in the source of initiation. I would not initiate a change of country, unless the environment requires me to. I'm not a person who would advocate changes to my life, i like things to remain the way they are for a long time. But that does not mean that i do not adapt to changes. It only means, i would adapt if forced to change, but untouched, i would remain the same. i am a reactive person. i want to do reservice, not because i am patriotic, but because i not changing anything anytime soon, unless the environment requires me to.

Haoster,

how do we answer stoopid questions like

- "What can you offer to this company?"

- "What are your plans for the next three years?"

stoopid questions, but stumped me during the interview leh, interviewers are all so mean :(

busy. bump.

And yes, my dearest couzin too. But ya were kind of quiet on the tag board, so i couldn't really know for sure :p :)

I originally wanted to wait a week before making the next post, but seems that these few days would be kind of busy, so... Anyway, i think the reader which the previous post was intended for don't seem to be reading my blog anymore. Though you can imagine my shock when out of the blue she sms'ed me on monday, saying she worked OT until very late and if i wanna join her for dinner. I almost sms'ed back to ask, "why, you read my blog ah?" Maybe i'll make a couple of posts to bump that post out of the main page :) :p



Thanks Haoster, for your response. There is a slight difference though, in that there is no pestering to persuade me to go :p but your words are weighty, and i'll give more thought to it. I'll see how it goes for the next few weeks. Which incidentally would also be the end of this whole saga.



Hi Helen, didn't know you were reading my blogs or maybe you're surfing in to say hi, i don't know. After all, Yvonne did say she was gonna report my website to you :D So how's life in Gippy? How many more semesters have ya left? Discounting summer, you'll be nearing four years in gippy. btw, what are you doing over there? initially heard you say you wanna do business information systems, but didn't coz it was offered only DE... oh wait, that was exactly the same kind of reason why my visa was invalid and i couldn't stay to apply pr or get my driving licence :(



Hmm... helen reading my blog, it is times like this that i wonder who's reading my posts. My website links to this blog, but both don't seem to be searchable on google. I did some advertising of my blog in friendster, but i didn't know people would actually mind my bulletin posts. My cousins are linked to me on friendster, so sometimes i wonder if they're helping my mom and aunties to keep tabs on me while keeping hush hush about it. hmm sneaky... but paranoid. And recently, i knew of another form of advertisement. My blog was actually spread by word of mouth!



Hmm... so far my most avid readers (whom i know for sure, that is) seem to be haoster and yvonne. thanks guys (ok, to be politically correct, gals).