Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Nice picture...

I found this cute little picture on Heidi's blog... Don't you think it's so physics? hehehe....


Seems kind of apt though... thinking back about the many many weekends spent on AIESEC transition and planning... each weekend flying by so so fast...

now that the hustle and bustle is kind of slowing down slightly, it feels weird to be sitting back home, communicating not by voice but by words through MSN and gtalk and stuff like that...

guess it's times like this that one really appreciates the company of those around...

missing all of you guys... you know who you are :)

Saturday, June 23, 2007

New Books!

Went to Borders bookstore today and finally used my book voucher...

and bought two books!


For One More Day by Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom was the author who brought us Tuesdays with Morries and The Five People You Meet in Heaven...

Both are very much about life's little lessons and appreciating life, so this one is not that different... but it's told from a very different perspective as compared to previous two...

But all in all, still a very heartwarming story with a message about relationships between a mother and a son...

(if you are wondering, yes I have finished the book. Couldn't help myself!)

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

I haven't started on this book yet but I think it might be in similar style as The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell... The authors take different real life scenarios and explores the implications and cause and effects within these scenarios...

Read a few pages once some months back... and definitely looks interesting...

will update once I have finished the book!

Thursday, June 21, 2007

The Tipping Point


Amidst all the busy-ness with AIESEC and all, I managed to take some time out to finish reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.. this is the same guy who brought is Blink! and in similar fashion, he presents very thought-provoking way of looking at our environment and at changes...


The excerpt below is taken from http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/

1. What is The Tipping Point about?

It's a book about change. In particular, it's a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. For example, why did crime drop so dramatically in New York City in the mid-1990's? How does a novel written by an unknown author end up as national bestseller? Why do teens smoke in greater and greater numbers, when every single person in the country knows that cigarettes kill? Why is word-of-mouth so powerful? What makes TV shows like Sesame Street so good at teaching kids how to read? I think the answer to all those questions is the same. It's that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.


I would definitely recommend this book! So much implication on how to do marketing, or to communicate with people, or to generate hype... not that it's meant to be taken as a guide book... but well.. if you're looking for something to challenge conventional thinking, THIS is the book to read...

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Tagged by Shub

Shub tagged me some time back... haven't had the time to finish the whole list at one shot but after multiple attempts, it is now complete!

Three things that scare me:
  • Cockroaches: the most disgusting and terrifying living things on Earth.. even worse when they fly
  • Complacency: letting achievements get to my head can lead to complacency if one is not careful or aware… and complacency can easily lead to pride or too much ego which affects performance at the end
  • Being very expressive: sounds kind of weird.. but being expressive is something that is not very part of me.. perhaps it is because my own true feelings scare me.. or I am scared of being rejected on my feelings

Three people who make me laugh:
  • My brother: we talk all sorts of crap, and have the same quirky sense of humour…
  • My AP Sisters: Can I group them all as “1 entity” in this case? They really do cheer me up.. love talking to them about everything and anything
  • My dad: he’s funny, he’s quirky, he tries to be “lame” at times…

Three things I love:
  • Music: soft rock, some instrumentals, I think I enjoy most music as long as they’re not too rap or too vulgar or too pop
  • Company of good friends: nothing like the company of good friends… doesn’t matter where we go or wat we do.. the company is enough really..
  • Traveling: AIESEC has gotten me hooked onto this! Can’t get enough of seeing all the amazing things and meeting all the amazing people in the amazing countries and sights of the world!

Three things I hate:
  • Being ineffective: I think I kind of built my life and schedule around being as effective as possible.. yeah I get my lazy days and stuff but somehow it irks me off.. especially if I’m spending my time cooped up in a waiting line.. or in a class with a lousy tutor
  • The rigidity of the Singapore education system: I suppose it happens with most education systems… but just can’t stand the one in Singapore… where things are all based on grades, on fulfilling processes and procedures and requirements… whatever happened to real learning?
  • Cockroaches: I’m terrified of them.. so I hate them to bits…

Three things I don't understand:
  • Myself: why am I who I am? Why do I find difficulty in being expressive? Why do I value these things more than others?
  • Love: What is love? How do you know when it is love? Where does love stem from?
  • Life: I don’t think I ever will.. and that’s where the wonder of life comes in… some things in life, you don’t need to understand.. just need to appreciate

Three things on my desk:
  • My laptop: how else do you think I am typing this?
  • My passport: was registering for AIESEC International Congress 2007 earlier today
  • Lots of papers and notes from sAIESEC: have to confess.. haven’t started packing my things

Three things I am doing now:
  • Listening to Class 95 on radio
  • Replying AIESEC emails
  • Chatting on MSN

Three things I want to do before I die:
  • Fall in love
  • Visit at least 1 country in each of the continents (Except Antarctica probably)
  • Go hang gliding

Three things I can do:
  • Chinese martial arts and Taichi
  • Burp at will
  • Think random thoughts

Three things you should listen to:
  • Song: Nickleback’s “Far Away”
  • Silence: in a far away village in northern Thailand, or in the forest of Arnhem, The Netherlands on a wintry Sunday morning
  • You heart: don’t stop talking to your heart, don’t stop listening either… I think I listen… I just need to act more on what it says…

Three things you should never listen to:
  • Too much praise: that gets you big-headed and inflates your ego.. and as I firmly believe, Pride comes just before a fall
  • Words that are meant to put you down: you don’t want to get too ego.. but at the same time, there is worth in every single human being… who are you to put others down? Or put yourselves down? Who are they to put you down? Do they know you enough to determine and judge your self worth?
  • Peer or societal pressure: they act as good feedback and good guidelines.. but sometimes, we can be strong enough to go beyond them and to break into our own realm, our own niche and pursue what we really believe in

Three things I'd like to learn:
  • more Taichi
  • Thai
  • More about myself

Three Favourite Foods:
  • Fried sambal ladies fingers cooked by my Grandma
  • Seafood
  • Tom Yam flavoured instant noodles from Thailand!

Three beverages I drink regularly:
  • Coffee: my MC teams will know this very well
  • Plain water: not as much as my mom would like me to drink but well.. common beverage nonetheless
  • Milo: lower caffeine intake than coffee… sometimes gets me high too!

Three TV shows I watched as a kid:
  • Cartoons like Captain Planet, Ninja Turtles.. err.. transformers, He Man and all those stuff from that era…
  • Earthvision Documentaries! I love them
  • “funky” local chinese drama serials.. like The Invincibles (the gambling one) and one other series about Vampires whose english name I can’t remember

Three books I read as a kid:
  • The Three Investigators
  • Tin Tin and Asterisk comic series
  • Osbourne Book series: stuff like Amazing Animals of the World, or Inventions of the World and geeky stuff like that.. hahah

Three people I would love to tag:
  • Pui: because you have more time now to put something interesting on your blog
  • Amy: I miss you AP sister!! Update update 
  • Eeling: gosh we haven’t met up for lunch these days yet!!

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Bye Bye University

Most people know anyway, that with the final year project and all that, I am in my final year of study of university...

so anyhow, the results for the last exams of my last semester of my last year in university finally came out last Friday...

All I can say is that I am very happy with the results and relieved as well that it's over for real... now... just waiting for the graduation ceremony in late July...

byebye university... hello to great big world out there, which has shrunk considerably actually thanks to AIESEC :)