| You Are a Seeker Soul |
 You are on a quest for knowledge and life challenges. You love to be curious and ask a ton of questions. Since you know so much, you make for an interesting conversationalist. Mentally alert, you can outwit almost anyone (and have fun doing it!). Very introspective, you can be silently critical of others. And your quiet nature makes it difficult for people to get to know you. You see yourself as a philosopher, and you take everything philosophically. Your main talent is expressing and communicating ideas. Souls you are most compatible with: Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul |
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
When you need a break...
Taking a break from work now and followed the link from a friend's blog to do this test... interesting... hahaha
Funny stuff I have heard
"Is that a reservoir?"
- quoted from someone who was standing at the beach and looking at the Straits of Johor
Person A (in all seriousness): "Have you ever thought about dying?"
Person B (in equal seriousness): "My hair? It doesn't look nice like this?"
"One of the groups chose to conclude their presentation with the phrase 'I hope we have enlightened you...'
Does that mean we have been living in darkness until you presented your points?"
- quoted from my Professional Communications tutor
"Did you hear the story about the 3 wells? No? Well... well... well..."
- quoted from an LC NUS EB member
Girl A: I'm going on holiday this coming December. We're going skiiing!
Girl B: Wow that's so cool! Where are you going?
Girl A: I'm not too sure... I think it's North Korea...
Girl B: (thinks for a while) Isn't that the place with some weird president? Shouldn't it be South Korea?
Girl A: aiya something like that la... I know we're going skiing that's for sure
(This is part of the conversation I overheard in the canteen one day)
"I have to run now. I just got a call from a farmer. His sheep just fell into the lake and is shrinking at an alarming rate"
- quoted from Mathew Perry's character in Serving Sarah who was trying to get away before people realised he wasn't a real vet
ahhh.. ignorance.. it's interesting how it's so linked to humour...
- quoted from someone who was standing at the beach and looking at the Straits of Johor
Person A (in all seriousness): "Have you ever thought about dying?"
Person B (in equal seriousness): "My hair? It doesn't look nice like this?"
"One of the groups chose to conclude their presentation with the phrase 'I hope we have enlightened you...'
Does that mean we have been living in darkness until you presented your points?"
- quoted from my Professional Communications tutor
"Did you hear the story about the 3 wells? No? Well... well... well..."
- quoted from an LC NUS EB member
Girl A: I'm going on holiday this coming December. We're going skiiing!
Girl B: Wow that's so cool! Where are you going?
Girl A: I'm not too sure... I think it's North Korea...
Girl B: (thinks for a while) Isn't that the place with some weird president? Shouldn't it be South Korea?
Girl A: aiya something like that la... I know we're going skiing that's for sure
(This is part of the conversation I overheard in the canteen one day)
"I have to run now. I just got a call from a farmer. His sheep just fell into the lake and is shrinking at an alarming rate"
- quoted from Mathew Perry's character in Serving Sarah who was trying to get away before people realised he wasn't a real vet
ahhh.. ignorance.. it's interesting how it's so linked to humour...
Friday, October 27, 2006
The Little Things
It's the little things that we share
the love and joy that's in the air
the children's laughter everywhere
and all our favourite things...
Over the years
I've grown accustomed to your ways
and no matter where I be, it warms my heart
To know that you're always here for me...
lyrics from a song from my primary school days... strangely I only remember these 2 stanzas...
suddenly popped into my head... and somehow felt that I had to put this down...
the love and joy that's in the air
the children's laughter everywhere
and all our favourite things...
Over the years
I've grown accustomed to your ways
and no matter where I be, it warms my heart
To know that you're always here for me...
lyrics from a song from my primary school days... strangely I only remember these 2 stanzas...
suddenly popped into my head... and somehow felt that I had to put this down...
"Famous" Quotes
We just had a great country visit by Ryan, our AP Director, and I can't help following in the footsteps of Mindy in quoting some of the interesting stuff I have heard in the 5 days that Ryan spent in Singapore...
p.s. I don't have that good a memory so this is reconstructed based on what I can remember =)
Ryan on Motivation:
As you move into different roles and take on more responsibilities, it is only right to expect that the highs and lows you experience will grow as well. So many people go into taking more responsibilities with the expectations that things will remain the same, that the lows won't go lower or that the highs won't go higher. But that's not going to happen.
The difference between any normal leader and the outstanding leader is that the outstanding leader is able to channel the energy from the low moments into a drive to aim for a high. Remember the high moments and the excitement and satisfaction you felt. And remember the low moments because that is where the challenge is, to pick ourselves and the people around us up, channel the energy into that fierce drive which will bring us to the high again.
Ryan on diversity of ideas and making decisions:
With so many diverse individuals on the team (not just in nationalities but also opinions, backgrounds, thoughts) it may seem hard to come to a consensus or make a decision that every single person is 100% satisfied with. Which is why we spend so much time getting our fundamentals right. Fundamentals such as the identity, the vision, the AIESEC Experience, the Brand Promise, being what is central to the organisation and what we do. And when we all have a clear consensus and understanding on the fundamentals, there is so much space and flexibility beyond for each individual to contribute. And of course, it takes that level of commitment to making the best decisions and delivering the best for the benefit of the organisation as a whole
Ryan on AIESEC and It's Up to You:
AIESEC is like sitting on a couch and watching television. If you don't like what you are seeing, you just have to make that decision, get out of that couch and make that change.
Ryan on some AIESEC stuff:
It's meant to be a tool, to be used as an indicator. It cannot be taken as a science, because sciences always have their flaws.
Ryan on AIESEC being global (which he quoted from Taco)
You know you're working in a global organisation when you turn on the television and what you watch on the news actually affects your work.
Ryan on Singapore:
(wiping sweat from his brow) Phew it's hot!
I'm looking for a satay stall
Thanks Ryan for all the sharing, the inputs and the advice!! All the best in the rest of your country visits and we look forward to seeing you back in Singapore again!!!
p.s. I don't have that good a memory so this is reconstructed based on what I can remember =)
Ryan on Motivation:
As you move into different roles and take on more responsibilities, it is only right to expect that the highs and lows you experience will grow as well. So many people go into taking more responsibilities with the expectations that things will remain the same, that the lows won't go lower or that the highs won't go higher. But that's not going to happen.
The difference between any normal leader and the outstanding leader is that the outstanding leader is able to channel the energy from the low moments into a drive to aim for a high. Remember the high moments and the excitement and satisfaction you felt. And remember the low moments because that is where the challenge is, to pick ourselves and the people around us up, channel the energy into that fierce drive which will bring us to the high again.
Ryan on diversity of ideas and making decisions:
With so many diverse individuals on the team (not just in nationalities but also opinions, backgrounds, thoughts) it may seem hard to come to a consensus or make a decision that every single person is 100% satisfied with. Which is why we spend so much time getting our fundamentals right. Fundamentals such as the identity, the vision, the AIESEC Experience, the Brand Promise, being what is central to the organisation and what we do. And when we all have a clear consensus and understanding on the fundamentals, there is so much space and flexibility beyond for each individual to contribute. And of course, it takes that level of commitment to making the best decisions and delivering the best for the benefit of the organisation as a whole
Ryan on AIESEC and It's Up to You:
AIESEC is like sitting on a couch and watching television. If you don't like what you are seeing, you just have to make that decision, get out of that couch and make that change.
Ryan on some AIESEC stuff:
It's meant to be a tool, to be used as an indicator. It cannot be taken as a science, because sciences always have their flaws.
Ryan on AIESEC being global (which he quoted from Taco)
You know you're working in a global organisation when you turn on the television and what you watch on the news actually affects your work.
Ryan on Singapore:
(wiping sweat from his brow) Phew it's hot!
I'm looking for a satay stall
Thanks Ryan for all the sharing, the inputs and the advice!! All the best in the rest of your country visits and we look forward to seeing you back in Singapore again!!!
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Finally...
I finally got down to asking my mom what I have been meaning to ask for the past 3 weeks plus (gosh... has it been that long already?? It's so hard to keep track of time these days).. and the concerns are quite what I expected... so unfortunately, there can be no confirmed answer at this point... just more planning and sourcing for options...
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Divine intervention...
Alas, all good and free things must come to an end...
the owner of the wireless network that I have been leeching from for the past year or so has probably finally figured out why his bitrates aren't that fast as he expected (cos laptop users from the estate are probably using his network)... now it's security enabled and I have to say bye bye to that... Sigh... I will miss the amazingly fast and ever present network called 'Raj'
and it doesn't help that my own router has died so basically I don't get very consistent internet at home anymore. Depends on whether other wireless networks are on (1 or 2 but the connection is really weak) and whether my bro is home (so I can plug in via cable directly to the modem, which is usually connected to the PC in the living room)
But I guess you can call it divine intervention... have so much stuff to clear this week and next, what with the school term coming to an end soon and all... but I've been distracted these days... so much on the mind, so much to do... so much that I no longer know what to think or do...
I feel like 1 confused and distracted individual...
Damn....
the owner of the wireless network that I have been leeching from for the past year or so has probably finally figured out why his bitrates aren't that fast as he expected (cos laptop users from the estate are probably using his network)... now it's security enabled and I have to say bye bye to that... Sigh... I will miss the amazingly fast and ever present network called 'Raj'
and it doesn't help that my own router has died so basically I don't get very consistent internet at home anymore. Depends on whether other wireless networks are on (1 or 2 but the connection is really weak) and whether my bro is home (so I can plug in via cable directly to the modem, which is usually connected to the PC in the living room)
But I guess you can call it divine intervention... have so much stuff to clear this week and next, what with the school term coming to an end soon and all... but I've been distracted these days... so much on the mind, so much to do... so much that I no longer know what to think or do...
I feel like 1 confused and distracted individual...
Damn....
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Taking the time to ask yourself...
It suddenly occurred to me last night... What do I miss in the life I am leading now compared to anytime before this moment? Who are the people I miss? Will they know that I miss them?
It helps to ask such questions once in a while, just so we appreciate what we have, and appreciate what we had but don't have anymore...
It helps to ask such questions once in a while, just so we appreciate what we have, and appreciate what we had but don't have anymore...
Is it just me?
I attended a Round Table Discussion event this evening by Proctor & Gamble. They organise this every year to reach out to graduating students from my university. I wasn't too sure what to expect but the topic "Think Global, Act Local" did look interesting and the line up of speakers was very credible so I figured why not...
It was an ok session... most of the sharing by the speakers followed by panel Q&A was ok... people were mostly asking about P&G's marketing stragegies, surviving as a global company with so many brands and all that... not too bad, but I guess I just wasn't that impressed (considering how we've seen some REAL SUPER speakers at IC)
Anyway, the Q&A was followed by dinner (GOOD FOOD!) cum networking. So they had tables for different functions within P&G and 1 or 2 employees per table to speak with us undergraduates and address our questions... I think I kind of scared the guy at my table cos I was asking quite a lot of questions...
Is this your first job? Why did you leave the previous one for this job? Does your degree matter in what you do? What do you do? Does P&G provide trainings? Is it compulsory or how do they encourage employees to take these up? How diverse is the workforce in P&G? How does P&G get involved with the local communities (CSR)? Are there internal postings outside of Singapore? Are the operations handled by P&G or outsourced (since the guy was in logistics)?
And I wanted to ask the HR people stuff like how they build the learning culture in the company, how they see the youths of today being able to cope with a diverse and team based work environment, how they identify with their values (which are quite similar to those of AIESEC coincidentally).. but yeah the HR people went off before I could bombard them....
But anyhow, what I noticed was really the type of questions I asked VS what some of the other undergrads asked...
What are working hours like, what is the dress code to work, what is the salary range, how much do the grades matter, will there be training if we go into a function not related to our degree... And the "best" questions of the night came from this guy to the HR hiring manager for Product Supply: Some of the people gave us some tips about the application process. Does it really help if we look at the Purpose, Vision and Principles of the company? What do you look for in a resume? Should we answer the online test according to who we are or really aligned to the values which the company are looking for? Like do it just for the sake of impressing the company? (I suspect this was why the HR manager wanted to go off before I could ask her questions... If I were doing HR and someone asked me questions like this, I would be so not impressed...)
but anyhow, yeah the experience definitely got me thinking... what I ask and seek to find out does seem different... the rest or you even probably think I'm quite silly to not ask about salary and what experiences they look for in recruiting...
but anyhow, I think after this bit of reflecting, I realise that perhaps it is simply because I look for that diverse, dynamic, challenging learning environment more than the material perks a job can offer... and I think that well.. I am happy with what I am looking for =)
It was an ok session... most of the sharing by the speakers followed by panel Q&A was ok... people were mostly asking about P&G's marketing stragegies, surviving as a global company with so many brands and all that... not too bad, but I guess I just wasn't that impressed (considering how we've seen some REAL SUPER speakers at IC)
Anyway, the Q&A was followed by dinner (GOOD FOOD!) cum networking. So they had tables for different functions within P&G and 1 or 2 employees per table to speak with us undergraduates and address our questions... I think I kind of scared the guy at my table cos I was asking quite a lot of questions...
Is this your first job? Why did you leave the previous one for this job? Does your degree matter in what you do? What do you do? Does P&G provide trainings? Is it compulsory or how do they encourage employees to take these up? How diverse is the workforce in P&G? How does P&G get involved with the local communities (CSR)? Are there internal postings outside of Singapore? Are the operations handled by P&G or outsourced (since the guy was in logistics)?
And I wanted to ask the HR people stuff like how they build the learning culture in the company, how they see the youths of today being able to cope with a diverse and team based work environment, how they identify with their values (which are quite similar to those of AIESEC coincidentally).. but yeah the HR people went off before I could bombard them....
But anyhow, what I noticed was really the type of questions I asked VS what some of the other undergrads asked...
What are working hours like, what is the dress code to work, what is the salary range, how much do the grades matter, will there be training if we go into a function not related to our degree... And the "best" questions of the night came from this guy to the HR hiring manager for Product Supply: Some of the people gave us some tips about the application process. Does it really help if we look at the Purpose, Vision and Principles of the company? What do you look for in a resume? Should we answer the online test according to who we are or really aligned to the values which the company are looking for? Like do it just for the sake of impressing the company? (I suspect this was why the HR manager wanted to go off before I could ask her questions... If I were doing HR and someone asked me questions like this, I would be so not impressed...)
but anyhow, yeah the experience definitely got me thinking... what I ask and seek to find out does seem different... the rest or you even probably think I'm quite silly to not ask about salary and what experiences they look for in recruiting...
but anyhow, I think after this bit of reflecting, I realise that perhaps it is simply because I look for that diverse, dynamic, challenging learning environment more than the material perks a job can offer... and I think that well.. I am happy with what I am looking for =)
Monday, October 09, 2006
I will get there
This is a very meaningful song by Boyz II Men... for all those out there searching for answers, searching for a path, searching for direction... we'll find it... we will get there in the end...
Oh…oh…ah…
Hey…
Yeah… I've been wanderin' 'round in the dark
Been lost somewhere where no light could shine on my heart
I have known a pain so deep
But I know my faith will free me [Get there]
And I'll get through this [Get there]
I'll find my way again
So don't tell me that it's over
'Cause each step just gets me closer
(I will get there) I will get there
(I will get there) I will get there somehow
Cross that river (Cross that river)
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night (Oh, yes, I will)
And make it through to the other side
(Get there) Get there
(Get there) Get there
I've been in these chains for so long
I'll break free and I'll be there where I belong
Hold my head up high, I'll stand tall
And I swear this time I won't fall [Get there]
I will do this [Get there]
No matter what it takes
'Cause I know no limitations
And I'll reach my destination, I will get there
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there (Ooh) somehow (Somehow)
Cross that river (Cross that river)
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night
And make it through to the other side (Ooh, get there)
Get there (Get there) Get there
Well, the night is cold and dark
But somewhere the sun is shining
And I'll feel it shine on me
I'll keep on tryin', I'll keep on tryin'
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there somehow
Cross that river (Cross that river)
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night
And make it through to the other side
Get there, get there
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there somehow (Somehow)
Cross that river (I'll cross that river for you)
Nothing's stoppin' me now (Oh…whoa…I)
I will get through (Through) the night
And make it through to the other side (Oh…ho…oh…ho…)
(Get there) Get there
(Ooh, get there) Get there (Whoa…oh…)
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there somehow (Somehow)
Cross that river (I'll cross it for your love)
Nothing's stoppin' me now (No matter what)
I will get through the night (I will get through the night)
And make it through to the other side
(Get there) Get there
(Ooh, get there) Get there Get there Oh…ho…oh…
I'll get there
Oh…oh…ah…
Hey…
Yeah… I've been wanderin' 'round in the dark
Been lost somewhere where no light could shine on my heart
I have known a pain so deep
But I know my faith will free me [Get there]
And I'll get through this [Get there]
I'll find my way again
So don't tell me that it's over
'Cause each step just gets me closer
(I will get there) I will get there
(I will get there) I will get there somehow
Cross that river (Cross that river)
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night (Oh, yes, I will)
And make it through to the other side
(Get there) Get there
(Get there) Get there
I've been in these chains for so long
I'll break free and I'll be there where I belong
Hold my head up high, I'll stand tall
And I swear this time I won't fall [Get there]
I will do this [Get there]
No matter what it takes
'Cause I know no limitations
And I'll reach my destination, I will get there
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there (Ooh) somehow (Somehow)
Cross that river (Cross that river)
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night
And make it through to the other side (Ooh, get there)
Get there (Get there) Get there
Well, the night is cold and dark
But somewhere the sun is shining
And I'll feel it shine on me
I'll keep on tryin', I'll keep on tryin'
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there somehow
Cross that river (Cross that river)
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night
And make it through to the other side
Get there, get there
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there somehow (Somehow)
Cross that river (I'll cross that river for you)
Nothing's stoppin' me now (Oh…whoa…I)
I will get through (Through) the night
And make it through to the other side (Oh…ho…oh…ho…)
(Get there) Get there
(Ooh, get there) Get there (Whoa…oh…)
I will get there (I will get there)
I will get there somehow (Somehow)
Cross that river (I'll cross it for your love)
Nothing's stoppin' me now (No matter what)
I will get through the night (I will get through the night)
And make it through to the other side
(Get there) Get there
(Ooh, get there) Get there Get there Oh…ho…oh…
I'll get there
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Emails...
After letting the emails in my outlook inbox accummulate past the 2000 figure (and this is just in the main inbox... it excludes all the rest within my sub-folders), I decided that a virtual spring cleaning was very much needed...
So I just spent the last hour or so clearing emails.. for now, I only have 1190 emails in the main inbox after much sorting and deleting... I will have to go through my sub-folders after this (since some emails I transferred from main to sub for classification sake)
anyway, in the midst of clearing the emails, I of course have to open some of these emails to see what the content is (email subject titles aren't that descriptive after all) and it was interesting to see how things and people have changed and moved along with time...
from emails congratulating the team on our appointment as MC 0607; to emails from the 0506 team discussing how to do transition to the 0607 team; to emails from the 0607 then-elects to each other (some of these emails start with "Dear LCP elects" hehe) asking about plans and ideas; to excited emails about the selection of our international MC; to excited emails of incoming trainees or successful events or meetings; to emails that sound so charged with emotion as people fight for what they believe in; to emails where the MC 0607 makes decisions after being updated on all possible scenarios; to crappy emails with content that you just can't help but smile at....
Looking back, it has been 9 months of journeying together as a team and what a remarkable 9 months it has been... what an amazing story it would be if we put down all that we have gone through in these 9 months...
Even the emails tell a story... and what a wonderful story it tells... it is a story about growth... growth of individuals, growth of the team, growth of our own legacy...
and I cannot wait to start clearing my email inbox again 6 months from now when the term 0607 is over... for then our story will be pretty much over...
then again, I think we will realise by then that it isn't that much of a story... well maybe a story for us... but all in all it's just another chapter in the book titled "AIESEC in Singapore"
So I just spent the last hour or so clearing emails.. for now, I only have 1190 emails in the main inbox after much sorting and deleting... I will have to go through my sub-folders after this (since some emails I transferred from main to sub for classification sake)
anyway, in the midst of clearing the emails, I of course have to open some of these emails to see what the content is (email subject titles aren't that descriptive after all) and it was interesting to see how things and people have changed and moved along with time...
from emails congratulating the team on our appointment as MC 0607; to emails from the 0506 team discussing how to do transition to the 0607 team; to emails from the 0607 then-elects to each other (some of these emails start with "Dear LCP elects" hehe) asking about plans and ideas; to excited emails about the selection of our international MC; to excited emails of incoming trainees or successful events or meetings; to emails that sound so charged with emotion as people fight for what they believe in; to emails where the MC 0607 makes decisions after being updated on all possible scenarios; to crappy emails with content that you just can't help but smile at....
Looking back, it has been 9 months of journeying together as a team and what a remarkable 9 months it has been... what an amazing story it would be if we put down all that we have gone through in these 9 months...
Even the emails tell a story... and what a wonderful story it tells... it is a story about growth... growth of individuals, growth of the team, growth of our own legacy...
and I cannot wait to start clearing my email inbox again 6 months from now when the term 0607 is over... for then our story will be pretty much over...
then again, I think we will realise by then that it isn't that much of a story... well maybe a story for us... but all in all it's just another chapter in the book titled "AIESEC in Singapore"
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Meaningful words...
I found Dey's blog and found these really meaningful extracts, which Dey found from someone else's blog...
so... enjoy :)
_________________________________________________________________________
You can`t make someone love you, all you can do is be someone who can be loved, the rest is up to the person to realize your worth. We spend too much time looking for the right person to love or finding fault with those we already love, when instead we should be perfecting the love we give.
There`s a purpose to life`s events, to teach you how to laugh more or not to cry too loud.
Extracts from a poem by Heinz Shalloff.
so... enjoy :)
_________________________________________________________________________
You can`t make someone love you, all you can do is be someone who can be loved, the rest is up to the person to realize your worth. We spend too much time looking for the right person to love or finding fault with those we already love, when instead we should be perfecting the love we give.
Free your heart from hatret;
Free your mind from worries;
Live simply.
Give more.
Expect less.
My hope for you is that you will finally discover the happiness within you.
When you feel down because you didn`t get what you want, just sit tight and be happy, because I thought of something better to give you.
My friendship.
It is like wine, it gets better as it grows older.
There`s a purpose to life`s events, to teach you how to laugh more or not to cry too loud.
Extracts from a poem by Heinz Shalloff.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Have you ever...
have you ever closed your eyes after working on the laptop or reading your notes and tutorials for a long time, and felt literally the waves of tiredness wash over you?
I have, and I am always surprised when it happens...
have you ever lay down on your bed after a long day of meetings and work and felt the waves of tiredness wash over you?
I have, and sometimes I find that liberating...
have you ever closed your eyes and felt the wind blow in your face, and feel the waves of relaxation wash over you?
I have, and I love that feeling...
have you ever felt the wind blow away the waves of tiredness?
I have, and I remind myself to give thanks for the moment...
Life is made up of little moments...
Have you ever noticed?
I have, and I am always surprised when it happens...
have you ever lay down on your bed after a long day of meetings and work and felt the waves of tiredness wash over you?
I have, and sometimes I find that liberating...
have you ever closed your eyes and felt the wind blow in your face, and feel the waves of relaxation wash over you?
I have, and I love that feeling...
have you ever felt the wind blow away the waves of tiredness?
I have, and I remind myself to give thanks for the moment...
Life is made up of little moments...
Have you ever noticed?
You Raise Me Up...
"You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up... to more than I can be."
You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban
Be thankful if you have found that someone who has that effect and impact on you in your life...
Be proud of yourself if you are that someone in another person's life...
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up... to more than I can be."
You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban
Be thankful if you have found that someone who has that effect and impact on you in your life...
Be proud of yourself if you are that someone in another person's life...
Friday, September 29, 2006
My Wish
Rascal Flatts is a good band...
hehe... been taking some time out to enjoy quite a bit of their music.. Love their songs!!
anyway... this is for everyone out there who cares and that I care for... I think I am rediscovering the joy of being able to shed off some layers of that thick outer shell... thanks guys... :)
My Wish
hehe... been taking some time out to enjoy quite a bit of their music.. Love their songs!!
anyway... this is for everyone out there who cares and that I care for... I think I am rediscovering the joy of being able to shed off some layers of that thick outer shell... thanks guys... :)
My Wish
I hope the days come easy and the moments pass slow
And each road leads you where you want to go
And if you’re faced with the choice and you have to choose
I hope you choose the one that means the most to you
And if one door opens to another door closed
I hope you keep on walkin’ ‘til you find the window
If it’s cold outside, show the world the warmth of your smile
But more than anything, more than anything
Chorus
My wish for you
Is that this life becomes all that you want it to
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small
You never need to carry more than you can hold
And while you’re out there gettin’ where you’re gettin’ to
I hope you know somebody loves you
And wants the same things too
Yeah, this is my wish
I hope you never look back but you never forget
All the ones who love you
And the place you left
I hope you always forgive and you never regret
And you help somebody every chance you get
Oh, you find God’s grace in every mistake
And always give more than you take
But more than anything, yeah more than anything
This is my wish
I hope you know somebody loves you
May all your dreams stay big
And each road leads you where you want to go
And if you’re faced with the choice and you have to choose
I hope you choose the one that means the most to you
And if one door opens to another door closed
I hope you keep on walkin’ ‘til you find the window
If it’s cold outside, show the world the warmth of your smile
But more than anything, more than anything
Chorus
My wish for you
Is that this life becomes all that you want it to
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small
You never need to carry more than you can hold
And while you’re out there gettin’ where you’re gettin’ to
I hope you know somebody loves you
And wants the same things too
Yeah, this is my wish
I hope you never look back but you never forget
All the ones who love you
And the place you left
I hope you always forgive and you never regret
And you help somebody every chance you get
Oh, you find God’s grace in every mistake
And always give more than you take
But more than anything, yeah more than anything
This is my wish
I hope you know somebody loves you
May all your dreams stay big
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Engineering Materials
I remember in Year 2 or 3, one of the modules was talking about materials and the strength of materials. And I remember there was something called cyclic loading, which is especially common in testing components used in aeroplanes. The component is subjected to a load, say tensile stress, that increased from zero to a maximum value within a certain time, and then is decreased to zero again within a certain time. So the cycle is repeated many many times to investigate when failure will take place.
Some materials don't withstand cyclic loading too well. They fail quite soon into the cycles. Other materials are a lot better, either because of their natural properties or that they have been reinforced (by material or by structure)
I also remember that there is a method of strengthening some materials which is quite interesting. The material is subject to a load (i.e. stress or heat) and then after that relaxed. And because the load induced more stresses and stress lines within the materials, they eventually prevent further cracks or stress lines from propagating throughout the material. So by subjecting the material to an initial load and initial stresses, the material becomes stronger and can take even more load eventually. So it doesn't mean that initial stress and cracks will always lead to failure of the material; sometimes it makes the material a lot stronger.
I also remember that in crack propagation, while many cracks and stress lines in the materials can strengthen it, sometimes all it takes is just one crack in the material for absolute failure. One crack to start snacking its way through the internal structure, moving quickly through, inflicting simple and direct damage.
I never really liked the materials part of the engineering courses (I didn't take chemistry in Junior College) but one can't deny how relevant it is in the world today...
Some materials don't withstand cyclic loading too well. They fail quite soon into the cycles. Other materials are a lot better, either because of their natural properties or that they have been reinforced (by material or by structure)
I also remember that there is a method of strengthening some materials which is quite interesting. The material is subject to a load (i.e. stress or heat) and then after that relaxed. And because the load induced more stresses and stress lines within the materials, they eventually prevent further cracks or stress lines from propagating throughout the material. So by subjecting the material to an initial load and initial stresses, the material becomes stronger and can take even more load eventually. So it doesn't mean that initial stress and cracks will always lead to failure of the material; sometimes it makes the material a lot stronger.
I also remember that in crack propagation, while many cracks and stress lines in the materials can strengthen it, sometimes all it takes is just one crack in the material for absolute failure. One crack to start snacking its way through the internal structure, moving quickly through, inflicting simple and direct damage.
I never really liked the materials part of the engineering courses (I didn't take chemistry in Junior College) but one can't deny how relevant it is in the world today...
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Chilling out...
If you don't consciously think about it, you never realise how long you've known some of the people around you...
Took some time off yesterday afternoon to meet up with some of the wushu mates ... went for lunch at Wisma followed by a walk-walk around...
key discovery points of the day:
- We've known each other for like 6 years! Since 2001!! Gosh!
- You can never squish the crappiness out of people like us, no matter how old we are
- It feels so fulfilling to be with a group of Singaporeans and be able to have discussions around things like politics, children psychology (thanks to Kunz and his the BBC show "Child of our Time") and environmental issues (marine biologist VS cynical lawyer)
- the flower decorations along Orchard road is an OK move to impress the IMF delegates. But the decoration of trees with red and white polka dots is SO SO SO WRONG!
Anyhow, it was a good outing with good food, good people and good conversations...
Yes! I have a personal life after all! and a bunch of cool friends :)
Took some time off yesterday afternoon to meet up with some of the wushu mates ... went for lunch at Wisma followed by a walk-walk around...
key discovery points of the day:
- We've known each other for like 6 years! Since 2001!! Gosh!
- You can never squish the crappiness out of people like us, no matter how old we are
- It feels so fulfilling to be with a group of Singaporeans and be able to have discussions around things like politics, children psychology (thanks to Kunz and his the BBC show "Child of our Time") and environmental issues (marine biologist VS cynical lawyer)
- the flower decorations along Orchard road is an OK move to impress the IMF delegates. But the decoration of trees with red and white polka dots is SO SO SO WRONG!
Anyhow, it was a good outing with good food, good people and good conversations...
Yes! I have a personal life after all! and a bunch of cool friends :)
Thursday, September 14, 2006
One Phone Call
It's amazing how much difference just one phone call can make in one's life...
just when everything was going in its usual routine, your phone starts ringing... thinking it's something work related again, you pick it up without really glancing at the number (not that it matters cos I didn't recognise the country code)
when you say "Hello?" this strangely familiar voice answers "Hello!" and a laugh... and you run through the database of names and voices in your head to try and place that... somehow it doesn't work so you ask "Who is this?"
and when you finally know who it is? Gosh that feeling!! It's like walking around on the streets and bumping into someone who means so much to you just like that!
I honestly felt so so so so happy at the moment I learnt who it was...
Thanks for calling! It was a great way for me to voice some of my thoughts, get some inputs and advice as well as to share from one friend to another =)
just when everything was going in its usual routine, your phone starts ringing... thinking it's something work related again, you pick it up without really glancing at the number (not that it matters cos I didn't recognise the country code)
when you say "Hello?" this strangely familiar voice answers "Hello!" and a laugh... and you run through the database of names and voices in your head to try and place that... somehow it doesn't work so you ask "Who is this?"
and when you finally know who it is? Gosh that feeling!! It's like walking around on the streets and bumping into someone who means so much to you just like that!
I honestly felt so so so so happy at the moment I learnt who it was...
Thanks for calling! It was a great way for me to voice some of my thoughts, get some inputs and advice as well as to share from one friend to another =)
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
My IC 2006 Bring Back
Finally decided to take some time out to relax a bit.... I'm now alone at home with the radio on after a shower... and it only seems apt to take some time to think...
This IC 2006 has been an interesting experience, simply because it's like going there wearing a different set of glasses (not that I wear any but you get the point)... things really do take on a different perspective...
so I decided to put down some of the key points that have left an impression on me:
You can tell about people's personalities through the way they take photos
It's amusing how different people look for different things to take photos of. For me, most of my photos contain scenary, buildings, other people, everything except myself... You probably may not even guess that I've been to that country, simply because I hardly appear in my own photos. I look to capture things the way I see it, which is why I am behind the lens.
Yet some people take mainly photos of people; people are the foreground and the background is not that important. Perhaps I should learn from them and be more open about showing the/my relationships with those around me.
Diversity in AIESEC also means Diversity in communication
I love the diversity in AIESEC, not just because it presents so many perspectives on issues but simply because there is so much to learn from others in communication styles. Through the facilitators, the speeches, the conversations with the PAI and AI, the delegates, the chair, I can pick up so many tips on how to address crowds and capture their attention. I pick up pointers on how to bring messages across by using stories and by asking questions.
The impressive and irrepressible nature of the Human Spirit in everyone
At every international conference, I meet people who face the greatest of challenges back home in their AIESEC chapters. I meet people who face challenges at IC itself in being able to understand and communicate with other delegates. And what always impresses me is how these people simply never say die, how their passion drives them on so strongly. Everyone at IC is a hero or heroine in his or her own way and I salute them for that.
The Bonds that Bind
It's amazing how friendships made at a 10 day conference stay the same or become even stronger after a 6 months gap with hardly any online communication. Some may say that it isn't very possible to make very good friends in such a short time but to me, AIESEC is proof that it is possible. I think it stems from knowing how each of us are going back home to fight our own different battles, yet sub-consciously being aware that the battles aren't that different in essence after all. We may feel lonely, misunderstood, super challenged at times, but we can always seek solace in the network that is out there and in the bonds that bind.
for sure the sessions, the trainings and the content have left an impression on me... but let's face it.. life is transient, life is fragile...
More often than not, it's the softer and invisible things in life that speak the most to us, and stay with us for the longest time...
This IC 2006 has been an interesting experience, simply because it's like going there wearing a different set of glasses (not that I wear any but you get the point)... things really do take on a different perspective...
so I decided to put down some of the key points that have left an impression on me:
You can tell about people's personalities through the way they take photos
It's amusing how different people look for different things to take photos of. For me, most of my photos contain scenary, buildings, other people, everything except myself... You probably may not even guess that I've been to that country, simply because I hardly appear in my own photos. I look to capture things the way I see it, which is why I am behind the lens.
Yet some people take mainly photos of people; people are the foreground and the background is not that important. Perhaps I should learn from them and be more open about showing the/my relationships with those around me.
Diversity in AIESEC also means Diversity in communication
I love the diversity in AIESEC, not just because it presents so many perspectives on issues but simply because there is so much to learn from others in communication styles. Through the facilitators, the speeches, the conversations with the PAI and AI, the delegates, the chair, I can pick up so many tips on how to address crowds and capture their attention. I pick up pointers on how to bring messages across by using stories and by asking questions.
The impressive and irrepressible nature of the Human Spirit in everyone
At every international conference, I meet people who face the greatest of challenges back home in their AIESEC chapters. I meet people who face challenges at IC itself in being able to understand and communicate with other delegates. And what always impresses me is how these people simply never say die, how their passion drives them on so strongly. Everyone at IC is a hero or heroine in his or her own way and I salute them for that.
The Bonds that Bind
It's amazing how friendships made at a 10 day conference stay the same or become even stronger after a 6 months gap with hardly any online communication. Some may say that it isn't very possible to make very good friends in such a short time but to me, AIESEC is proof that it is possible. I think it stems from knowing how each of us are going back home to fight our own different battles, yet sub-consciously being aware that the battles aren't that different in essence after all. We may feel lonely, misunderstood, super challenged at times, but we can always seek solace in the network that is out there and in the bonds that bind.
for sure the sessions, the trainings and the content have left an impression on me... but let's face it.. life is transient, life is fragile...
More often than not, it's the softer and invisible things in life that speak the most to us, and stay with us for the longest time...
Monday, September 11, 2006
so much has happened...
So much has happened since the last blog posting...
Prep for IC, IC itself, prep for Jump Start, Jump Start itself, catching up with school work, family stuff...
Things always happen for a reason...
I'm blogging randomly it seems...
anyhow, I hope my voice is back by Wednesday night... I have an interview on Thursday morning!!
*sigh sigh*
Prep for IC, IC itself, prep for Jump Start, Jump Start itself, catching up with school work, family stuff...
Things always happen for a reason...
I'm blogging randomly it seems...
anyhow, I hope my voice is back by Wednesday night... I have an interview on Thursday morning!!
*sigh sigh*
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Caught in the wave of things...
that's exactly how I feel like now...
the list of things to do doesn't seem to run short, it seems to add on to itself...
sometimes, I feel guilty that I would let myself get washed away in the wave of things... what happened to enjoying a slow leisurely walk, or a random chat with a friend... everyone's wrapped in their own little coccoon...
will be looking forward to Poland in few days time... at least a short break before the wave comes back...
Just wish I knew magic so I can pack at the speed of light...
and boy will I miss my hamster while I'm away...
the list of things to do doesn't seem to run short, it seems to add on to itself...
sometimes, I feel guilty that I would let myself get washed away in the wave of things... what happened to enjoying a slow leisurely walk, or a random chat with a friend... everyone's wrapped in their own little coccoon...
will be looking forward to Poland in few days time... at least a short break before the wave comes back...
Just wish I knew magic so I can pack at the speed of light...
and boy will I miss my hamster while I'm away...
Monday, August 07, 2006
Keeping the Dream Alive
From Freiheit's "Keeping the dream alive"
The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we had to try
No need to hide no need to run
'Cause all the answers come one by one
The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive
Hang in there, guys :)
The hopes we had were much too high
Way out of reach but we had to try
No need to hide no need to run
'Cause all the answers come one by one
The game will never be over
Because we're keeping the dream alive
Hang in there, guys :)
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
The Giving Tree
I think at any point, we are meant to be both the tree and the boy...
So...
If you are the boy, have you found your tree?
If you say you haven't, have you searched hard enough for the opportunities?
If you are the Giving Tree, how much have you given?
And how much more can you give?
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Once there was a giving tree who loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come to play
Swinging from the branches, sleeping in the shade
Laughing all the summer’s hours away.
And so they love,
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon the boy grew older and one day he came and said,
"Can you give me some money, tree, to buy something I’ve found?"
"I have no money," said the tree, "Just apples, twigs and leaves."
"But you can take my apples, boy, and sell them in the town."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my home."
"I can’t give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I’ve nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And after years the boy came back, both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I’m nothing but an old stump now. I’m sorry but I’ve nothing more to give"
"I do not need very much now, just a quiet place to rest,"
The boy, he whispered, with a weary smile.
"Well", said the tree, "An old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did and
Oh, the trees was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
So...
If you are the boy, have you found your tree?
If you say you haven't, have you searched hard enough for the opportunities?
If you are the Giving Tree, how much have you given?
And how much more can you give?
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
Once there was a giving tree who loved a little boy.
And everyday the boy would come to play
Swinging from the branches, sleeping in the shade
Laughing all the summer’s hours away.
And so they love,
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon the boy grew older and one day he came and said,
"Can you give me some money, tree, to buy something I’ve found?"
"I have no money," said the tree, "Just apples, twigs and leaves."
"But you can take my apples, boy, and sell them in the town."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
But soon again the boy came back and he said to the tree,
"I’m now a man and I must have a house that’s all my home."
"I can’t give you a house" he said, "The forest is my house."
"But you may cut my branches off and build yourself a home"
And so he did.
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And time went by and the boy came back with sadness in his eyes.
"My life has turned so cold," he says, "and I need sunny days."
"I’ve nothing but my trunk," he says, "But you can cut it down
And build yourself a boat and sail away."
And so he did and
Oh, the tree was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
And after years the boy came back, both of them were old.
"I really cannot help you if you ask for another gift."
"I’m nothing but an old stump now. I’m sorry but I’ve nothing more to give"
"I do not need very much now, just a quiet place to rest,"
The boy, he whispered, with a weary smile.
"Well", said the tree, "An old stump is still good for that."
"Come, boy", he said, "Sit down, sit down and rest a while."
And so he did and
Oh, the trees was happy.
Oh, the tree was glad.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
You and Me by Lifehouse
I know posting song lyrics never is useful cos you can always google for them anywhere else... but I like this song...
You and Me
by Lifehouse
What day is it? And in what month?
This clock never seemed so alive
I can't keep up and I can't back down
I've been losing so much time
Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to lose
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
All of the things that I want to say just aren't coming out right
I'm tripping on words
You've got my head spinning
I don't know where to go from here
Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to prove
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
There's something about you now
I can't quite figure out
Everything she does is beautiful
Everything she does is right
Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to lose
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to prove
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
What day is it?
And in what month?
This clock never seemed so alive
You and Me
by Lifehouse
What day is it? And in what month?
This clock never seemed so alive
I can't keep up and I can't back down
I've been losing so much time
Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to lose
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
All of the things that I want to say just aren't coming out right
I'm tripping on words
You've got my head spinning
I don't know where to go from here
Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to prove
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
There's something about you now
I can't quite figure out
Everything she does is beautiful
Everything she does is right
Cause it's you and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to lose
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
and me and all of the people with nothing to do
Nothing to prove
And it's you and me and all of the people
And I don't know why, I can't keep my eyes off of you
What day is it?
And in what month?
This clock never seemed so alive
Monday, July 24, 2006
Out of balance...
my life is lacking balance and discipline!!
time to change that... tomorrow marks the start of whole new training regime...
\
time to change that... tomorrow marks the start of whole new training regime...
\
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Tomorrow is 4th of July... and it's freaking hot!
Yes... tmr is Independence Day... Why do they call it independence when things are still being decided by someone who shares the same name as a piece of vegetation? ah well... i'm being crappy here...
sitting in the NTU AIESEC office... the air con has seriously died... when you turn it on, it rumbles and spews out air... well minute amounts of it... you can vaguely see the poster on the opposite wall flutter... strangely enough you can't sense any no matter where you stand and whatever whiffs of breath coming out of it isn't cold... anyway it's off now... opening the windows and the door has a much better effect on cooling the room...
must be the heat... feeling quite lethargic now... i wonder what the temperature is outside... i wish i could be at the beach... in a kayak out on the sea...
i wish i wish....
sitting in the NTU AIESEC office... the air con has seriously died... when you turn it on, it rumbles and spews out air... well minute amounts of it... you can vaguely see the poster on the opposite wall flutter... strangely enough you can't sense any no matter where you stand and whatever whiffs of breath coming out of it isn't cold... anyway it's off now... opening the windows and the door has a much better effect on cooling the room...
must be the heat... feeling quite lethargic now... i wonder what the temperature is outside... i wish i could be at the beach... in a kayak out on the sea...
i wish i wish....
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
'You've got to find what you love' Jobs says
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal.
Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal.
Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Friday, June 23, 2006
These days...
remind me of a period of time in JC2 and again in the 1st Semester of Uni year 1...
both involve training for wushu competition (either Nationals or Inter-school) which was
- intense to say the least; trainings at least 4 days in a week for a few months
- a real challenge to push oneself to the limit; imagine waking up everyday with muscle aches and trying to finish assignments upon reaching home at 10 plus at night after training
- the one period of time I felt so tired while doing my routine I wanted to scream to keep myself going
- the one time I saw a friend actually crawl off the carpet after finishing her routine (that would be annabelle)
- when I cried at how helpless I felt in being unable to improve to where I wanted to be
Yet it was during that intense period where
- I enjoyed slices of watermelon with the team almost after every single training session
- I actually better understood how much I could push myself
- I looked and felt really fit (yes the training did pay off)
- The team bonded and grew more like a family than anything else
- I saw people grow and improve at a remarkable pace
- I saw how passion and discipline makes things happen
- I understood that sometimes, it's not the final results that matters... it's more of the process and the people that stand out
- I realised that the least I can do is help my junior team mate be as good as she could be, and eventually to be better than me
interestingly, history (or at least the lessons) are repeating themselves in how things move these days...
but anyway, I guess it is clear that to me, Wushu is more than just a sport. It is about values, team spirit, discipline, passion, pushing oneself to the limit.
It is a way of life and I would not be who I am or where I am today if not for it...
both involve training for wushu competition (either Nationals or Inter-school) which was
- intense to say the least; trainings at least 4 days in a week for a few months
- a real challenge to push oneself to the limit; imagine waking up everyday with muscle aches and trying to finish assignments upon reaching home at 10 plus at night after training
- the one period of time I felt so tired while doing my routine I wanted to scream to keep myself going
- the one time I saw a friend actually crawl off the carpet after finishing her routine (that would be annabelle)
- when I cried at how helpless I felt in being unable to improve to where I wanted to be
Yet it was during that intense period where
- I enjoyed slices of watermelon with the team almost after every single training session
- I actually better understood how much I could push myself
- I looked and felt really fit (yes the training did pay off)
- The team bonded and grew more like a family than anything else
- I saw people grow and improve at a remarkable pace
- I saw how passion and discipline makes things happen
- I understood that sometimes, it's not the final results that matters... it's more of the process and the people that stand out
- I realised that the least I can do is help my junior team mate be as good as she could be, and eventually to be better than me
interestingly, history (or at least the lessons) are repeating themselves in how things move these days...
but anyway, I guess it is clear that to me, Wushu is more than just a sport. It is about values, team spirit, discipline, passion, pushing oneself to the limit.
It is a way of life and I would not be who I am or where I am today if not for it...
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Do you believe in horoscopes?
I never really believed the whole fuss about horoscope.. but I can't deny that at times it is quite funny and interesting...
found this on the net at http://www.astrology-online.com/cancer.htm
The Cancerian character is the least clear-cut of all those associated with the signs of the zodiac. It can range from the timid, dull, shy and withdrawn to the most brilliant, and famous Cancerians are to be found through the whole range of human activity. It is a fundamentally conservative and home-loving nature, appreciating the nest like quality of a secure base to which the male can retire when he needs a respite from the stresses of life, and in which the Cancerian woman can exercise her strong maternal instincts. The latter tends to like and to have a large family. `Nest like' is an appropriate adjective for the Cancerian home, for its inhabitants tend to favor the dark, mysterious but comfortable type of house which has something of the air of a den about it, a place which belongs to the family rather than existing as a showcase to impress visitors. That is not to say that the Cancerian is unsociable, just that for them there is a time to socialize and a time to be solitary, and this is part of the apparent contradiction in their nature. Outwardly they can appear formidable - thick-skinned, unemotional, uncompromising, obstinately tenacious, purposeful, energetic, shrewd, intuitive and wise, sometimes with a philosophical profundity of thought verging on inspiration. Their intimates, however, may see a very different character, one with a sympathetic and kindly sensitivity to other people, especially those they love. They are able to identify with the situations of others because of the keenness of their imaginations. They are often over-imaginative and prone to fantasy, sometimes trying to shape their lives to fit some romantic ideal. They are appreciative of art and literature, and especially of drama, where the spectacle and ebb and flow of action and feeling particularly excite them. They may themselves possess considerable literary, artistic or oratorical talent. Their sharp ears and talent for mimicry can sometimes give them success on the stage, though their tendency to be emotional may make them overact. Interestingly - because they give the impression of being down-to-earth - they are often fascinated by the occult and are more open to psychic influence than the average. If they can reconcile the personal conflict of their urge to be outgoing with the reserve that causes them to withdraw into themselves, then at best they can inspire a generation, especially the youthful part of it, by their idealism. A job in which they can express this, and in which they can do well, would be as a leader in a youth organization.
sounds like me???? hmmmm... food for thought....
found this on the net at http://www.astrology-online.com/cancer.htm
The Cancerian character is the least clear-cut of all those associated with the signs of the zodiac. It can range from the timid, dull, shy and withdrawn to the most brilliant, and famous Cancerians are to be found through the whole range of human activity. It is a fundamentally conservative and home-loving nature, appreciating the nest like quality of a secure base to which the male can retire when he needs a respite from the stresses of life, and in which the Cancerian woman can exercise her strong maternal instincts. The latter tends to like and to have a large family. `Nest like' is an appropriate adjective for the Cancerian home, for its inhabitants tend to favor the dark, mysterious but comfortable type of house which has something of the air of a den about it, a place which belongs to the family rather than existing as a showcase to impress visitors. That is not to say that the Cancerian is unsociable, just that for them there is a time to socialize and a time to be solitary, and this is part of the apparent contradiction in their nature. Outwardly they can appear formidable - thick-skinned, unemotional, uncompromising, obstinately tenacious, purposeful, energetic, shrewd, intuitive and wise, sometimes with a philosophical profundity of thought verging on inspiration. Their intimates, however, may see a very different character, one with a sympathetic and kindly sensitivity to other people, especially those they love. They are able to identify with the situations of others because of the keenness of their imaginations. They are often over-imaginative and prone to fantasy, sometimes trying to shape their lives to fit some romantic ideal. They are appreciative of art and literature, and especially of drama, where the spectacle and ebb and flow of action and feeling particularly excite them. They may themselves possess considerable literary, artistic or oratorical talent. Their sharp ears and talent for mimicry can sometimes give them success on the stage, though their tendency to be emotional may make them overact. Interestingly - because they give the impression of being down-to-earth - they are often fascinated by the occult and are more open to psychic influence than the average. If they can reconcile the personal conflict of their urge to be outgoing with the reserve that causes them to withdraw into themselves, then at best they can inspire a generation, especially the youthful part of it, by their idealism. A job in which they can express this, and in which they can do well, would be as a leader in a youth organization.
sounds like me???? hmmmm... food for thought....
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Push and Pull....
what I wouldn't give to be able to have a worry-less week, to be able to wake up feeling well-rested, to not be pondering over this and that...
yet... I wouldn't want to miss the chance to work with a team of cool people, to do my best at managing people and an organisation, to build skills and networks I know I definitely can't get outside of this...
push and pull... high tide and low tide... attraction and repulsion... winning and losing...
opposing feelings and thoughts exist to make us appreciate both sides of the situation...
who cares if the glass is half empty or hal full? Enjoy the water while it's there!
yet... I wouldn't want to miss the chance to work with a team of cool people, to do my best at managing people and an organisation, to build skills and networks I know I definitely can't get outside of this...
push and pull... high tide and low tide... attraction and repulsion... winning and losing...
opposing feelings and thoughts exist to make us appreciate both sides of the situation...
who cares if the glass is half empty or hal full? Enjoy the water while it's there!
Monday, June 12, 2006
Leadership is about...
being self-less... a leader has a team to take care of and many times, the team's need comes above that of the leader...
knowing when to be protective... a leader who overly protects the team ends up with team members who aren't exposed to various stuff... the team needs space for them to explore, experience, meet adversity and thus grow... sometimes it "hurts" when they fall or meet set-backs and it is with discipline that a leader can stand by and let them proceed...
a quote from Angels and Demons by Dan Brown:
“So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?”
“Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn.”
reading the moods of the team and customising your style to their needs... everyone is different and unique... customised approaches should be better in bringing out the best in each person... (perhaps :))
hmmm... kind of in a reflective mood today....
knowing when to be protective... a leader who overly protects the team ends up with team members who aren't exposed to various stuff... the team needs space for them to explore, experience, meet adversity and thus grow... sometimes it "hurts" when they fall or meet set-backs and it is with discipline that a leader can stand by and let them proceed...
a quote from Angels and Demons by Dan Brown:
“So although you have the power to interfere and prevent your child’s pain, you would choose to show your love by letting him learn his own lessons?”
“Of course. Pain is part of growing up. It’s how we learn.”
reading the moods of the team and customising your style to their needs... everyone is different and unique... customised approaches should be better in bringing out the best in each person... (perhaps :))
hmmm... kind of in a reflective mood today....
Monday, June 05, 2006
Leaping Towards Excellence
Our Commitment to ourselves, what we aim to deliver and to all those around us...
but no leap can be as excellent as the one done with a team of cool fellow MCs...
but no leap can be as excellent as the one done with a team of cool fellow MCs...
* Missing Doreen and Adam in the Picture*
I had a great MC Consolidation Weekend... and I'm looking forward to even greater things in the months to come...
Thursday, May 25, 2006
My Hamster
My pet hamster... I've had him for almost a month (I think)... He doesn't have a name yet... I'm tempted to call him Nemo as he lives in a fish tank (minus the water and the fish of course)
He's cute and smart... I do believe he's starting to plan how he can escape the tank... smart little fellow...
Thursday, May 18, 2006
I'm alive...
Just dropping a note to indicate my presence... =)
been busy the last month with meetings and reports and planning... would have blogged but just got kind of lazy.. don't think the people who read this would be interesting in knowing what exactly I've been up to these days... hahaha... it would have been too technical for some of you...
anyway... have been thinking a bit these days about inner strength and support.... I think every day in our lives, we come across people who really impress us, who exemplify themselves like the role model we have been looking for... and they're like role models because we see in them something that we would like to have but don't quite have yet.. interestingly enough, strength is a quality that usually stands out, be it strength physically, mentally, in terms of discipline etc
Perhaps it is because of this that sometimes we tend to forget that these role models of ours are as human as we are, that they have their fears and worries and down moments... so I think that if we really see them as role models, if they are the people we want to be like, then it would naturally mean so much to us to be able to help or "be useful" to these people...
And the best way to do so is to thank them, to show our appreciation to them for being that model in our lives, for having it in themselves to be who they are today.... So this is a tribute to all the role models out there... if they're playing that crucial role in our lives, let's find our way of playing our role in their lives....
Role modeling is a powerful thing; and so is appreciation... when there is both conscious appreciation and role modeling, only then can we build a culture of excellence and self-improvements...
been busy the last month with meetings and reports and planning... would have blogged but just got kind of lazy.. don't think the people who read this would be interesting in knowing what exactly I've been up to these days... hahaha... it would have been too technical for some of you...
anyway... have been thinking a bit these days about inner strength and support.... I think every day in our lives, we come across people who really impress us, who exemplify themselves like the role model we have been looking for... and they're like role models because we see in them something that we would like to have but don't quite have yet.. interestingly enough, strength is a quality that usually stands out, be it strength physically, mentally, in terms of discipline etc
Perhaps it is because of this that sometimes we tend to forget that these role models of ours are as human as we are, that they have their fears and worries and down moments... so I think that if we really see them as role models, if they are the people we want to be like, then it would naturally mean so much to us to be able to help or "be useful" to these people...
And the best way to do so is to thank them, to show our appreciation to them for being that model in our lives, for having it in themselves to be who they are today.... So this is a tribute to all the role models out there... if they're playing that crucial role in our lives, let's find our way of playing our role in their lives....
Role modeling is a powerful thing; and so is appreciation... when there is both conscious appreciation and role modeling, only then can we build a culture of excellence and self-improvements...
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
I am happy today!
I am happy today because I bought two new books:
blink by Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html)
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm)
Next on my list will be "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell...
cheers to the wonderful books and authors in the world!
blink by Malcolm Gladwell (http://www.gladwell.com/blink/index.html)
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm)
Next on my list will be "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell...
cheers to the wonderful books and authors in the world!
Saturday, April 15, 2006
I like the nights...
It is quite enjoyable to work late in the night or early in the morning (depending on how you see it.. some people consider it night at 2am simply because it's still dark)
but yeah it is enjoyable...
1. It's a cool temperature at night
2. It's quiet and peaceful
3. Most people are no longer on MSN to bug you
4. Most people are asleep or don't do phonecalls at such times so you get left alone
5. No DJ is on shift through the night so they play nice songs one after the other without DJs talking and with very few advertisements interupting
only problems are
1. If I get hungry, I can't cook something (cos it'll wake my mom) so there's only biscuits
2. If it rains, it gets freezing (by my standards)
3. I cant get replies to my SMSes and emails very soon when I work at such hours
You win some, You lose some...
but yeah it is enjoyable...
1. It's a cool temperature at night
2. It's quiet and peaceful
3. Most people are no longer on MSN to bug you
4. Most people are asleep or don't do phonecalls at such times so you get left alone
5. No DJ is on shift through the night so they play nice songs one after the other without DJs talking and with very few advertisements interupting
only problems are
1. If I get hungry, I can't cook something (cos it'll wake my mom) so there's only biscuits
2. If it rains, it gets freezing (by my standards)
3. I cant get replies to my SMSes and emails very soon when I work at such hours
You win some, You lose some...
Sunday, April 09, 2006
The Alchemist...
The Alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pahes, he found a story about Narcissus.
The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.
But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.
He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
"Why do you weep?" the goddesses asked.
"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.
"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."
"But... was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.
"Who better than you to know that?" the goddesses said in wonder. "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!"
The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my bank, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."
The prologue from "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho, a book I have read many times and will never tire of reading again...
The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus.
But this was not how the author of the book ended the story.
He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
"Why do you weep?" the goddesses asked.
"I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.
"Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus," they said, "for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand."
"But... was Narcissus beautiful?" the lake asked.
"Who better than you to know that?" the goddesses said in wonder. "After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!"
The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my bank, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected."
The prologue from "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho, a book I have read many times and will never tire of reading again...
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Tribute to the Master
Today's picture shall be a tribute to one of the greatest martial art masters the world has ever seen...
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Photo of today
I have decided to try and post a photo everyday. It really is a refreshing break to look through all the past photos that I have taken or been in..
so here is today's post: taken in the Netherlands. Thanks to Shamnoon for being the photographer!
so here is today's post: taken in the Netherlands. Thanks to Shamnoon for being the photographer!
Saturday, April 01, 2006
When will it be?
When will be the day when the sun comes out from behind that big piece of cloud?
I know the sun is there, but for now the shadow is still overhanging...
When will it go beyond that slight sunlight peeking just over the edge of the cloud?
Someday... but when?
Friday, March 10, 2006
IPM 2006 in the Netherlands
If I were to describe all that happened, it will probably be enough to publish a book. So since pictures speak a thousand words, here are some to share!
Seeing Snow for the 1st time and enjoying it...
The official gala dinner for IPM 2006
The AIESEC Network...
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Before Chinese New Year
Since I have been absent from the blogging scene for quite a long while... more than 3 weeks to be exact... I figured I might as well do a quick update before Chinese New Year...
so yeah.. wat has happened?
Industrial Attachment
I started my 6 months attachment on 16th Jan 2006 in an engineering MNC and I am now known as a Product Design Trainee. (haha) So what I have been doing so far is to familiarise myself with ANOTHER graphics software (this is the 3rd one after ProE and SolidWorks), learning as much as I can about how a company on such a large scale functions (from design to manufacturing to sales and marketing!)
People are nice, the work is ok for now... not too challenging and much yet but I'm not really complaining about that... most important is that people there are keen and open to answering my questions, having me bug them, and offering their small tips and advice...
AIESEC
Super busy with AIESEC stuff... now I feel like an engineer during office hours, and an AIESECer the rest of the remaining time... Lots to do for my current role as VP Learning, lots to do also for my future role as President... Speaking of which, I really want to thank everyone who's given their support in any small way possible... It's really helped!
Taichi
Yup I am still taking Taichi classes, though I haven't attended the training in a while... It's been raining a fair bit this month resulting in class being cancelled... but yeah... still looking at how to move things a bit forward from here...
Doesn't seem like much has happened right? Just 3 categories, simple as that.. but enough to render late nights and exercise for brain cells...
speaking of that, it's time to get back to work...
Happy Chinese New Year!! :)
so yeah.. wat has happened?
Industrial Attachment
I started my 6 months attachment on 16th Jan 2006 in an engineering MNC and I am now known as a Product Design Trainee. (haha) So what I have been doing so far is to familiarise myself with ANOTHER graphics software (this is the 3rd one after ProE and SolidWorks), learning as much as I can about how a company on such a large scale functions (from design to manufacturing to sales and marketing!)
People are nice, the work is ok for now... not too challenging and much yet but I'm not really complaining about that... most important is that people there are keen and open to answering my questions, having me bug them, and offering their small tips and advice...
AIESEC
Super busy with AIESEC stuff... now I feel like an engineer during office hours, and an AIESECer the rest of the remaining time... Lots to do for my current role as VP Learning, lots to do also for my future role as President... Speaking of which, I really want to thank everyone who's given their support in any small way possible... It's really helped!
Taichi
Yup I am still taking Taichi classes, though I haven't attended the training in a while... It's been raining a fair bit this month resulting in class being cancelled... but yeah... still looking at how to move things a bit forward from here...
Doesn't seem like much has happened right? Just 3 categories, simple as that.. but enough to render late nights and exercise for brain cells...
speaking of that, it's time to get back to work...
Happy Chinese New Year!! :)
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Monday, December 19, 2005
NLDS Singapore 2005 - "Discovering Passion, Unleashing Potential"
It's been a while since the last posting cos things have been moving soo soo fast since my last entry...
One of the greatest highlight of my term so far: NLDS Singapore 2005
The conference was from 8th to 11th Dec, with the facilitator pre meeting from 6th to 7th Dec 2005. So from 2nd Dec onwards, everything was just crazy with so much to prepare.. didn't help that I fell quite sick even before the conference... must be a curse of NLDS... I think I have been sick almost every NLDS since my 1st year in AIESEC :)
Anyway, the delegates this time were really cool people... the turnout was quite small but the people were really enthusiastic and eager to learn... they really made all the difference to the entire atmosphere of the conference...
The facils had a great time as well, especially with our guests from overseas, Bomi from AIESEC Hong Kong and Jasmine from AIESEC Malaysia... I'm glad they enjoyed themselves so much here also and I'm thankful for the help and perspectives offered by them... =)
I didn't bring my camera but there were delegates taking photos all over the place so stay tuned while we consolidate all the photos...
All in all, it was a great experience... all the months of hard work really paid off in the end, with NLDS ending with a bang and all leaving with fond memories, new knowledge, rediscovered passion and a chance to look at their potential... =)
One of the greatest highlight of my term so far: NLDS Singapore 2005
The conference was from 8th to 11th Dec, with the facilitator pre meeting from 6th to 7th Dec 2005. So from 2nd Dec onwards, everything was just crazy with so much to prepare.. didn't help that I fell quite sick even before the conference... must be a curse of NLDS... I think I have been sick almost every NLDS since my 1st year in AIESEC :)
Anyway, the delegates this time were really cool people... the turnout was quite small but the people were really enthusiastic and eager to learn... they really made all the difference to the entire atmosphere of the conference...
The facils had a great time as well, especially with our guests from overseas, Bomi from AIESEC Hong Kong and Jasmine from AIESEC Malaysia... I'm glad they enjoyed themselves so much here also and I'm thankful for the help and perspectives offered by them... =)
I didn't bring my camera but there were delegates taking photos all over the place so stay tuned while we consolidate all the photos...
All in all, it was a great experience... all the months of hard work really paid off in the end, with NLDS ending with a bang and all leaving with fond memories, new knowledge, rediscovered passion and a chance to look at their potential... =)
Friday, December 02, 2005
Visitor in the house...
My house had a visitor in the night...
I walked past my brother's room this morning to find something hanging from his light...
A bat!! and quite a small bat too... hanging there, sleeping peacefully (at least I assumed it was sleeping)...
Never seen one this close up before... most of the time I just see them swoop past the glare of the street lights at night, the kind where you can just vaguely make out the shadowly profile of the bat...
but here... wow... it's quite cute really....
my mom tried to prod it to fly away but it just hung there swaying as my mom prodded it, looking around the room... must be quite disoriented...
oh well.. we'll just have to see if it flies away this evening... :)
I walked past my brother's room this morning to find something hanging from his light...
A bat!! and quite a small bat too... hanging there, sleeping peacefully (at least I assumed it was sleeping)...
Never seen one this close up before... most of the time I just see them swoop past the glare of the street lights at night, the kind where you can just vaguely make out the shadowly profile of the bat...
but here... wow... it's quite cute really....
my mom tried to prod it to fly away but it just hung there swaying as my mom prodded it, looking around the room... must be quite disoriented...
oh well.. we'll just have to see if it flies away this evening... :)
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Mockingbird....
Aileen was right... everyone of us should go do something we used to do but haven't done in a while...
last night, I took out the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee and read it again. The book was my 'O' level literature text so yeah... it's been a while since I've looked at it again... it was interesting...
for one, the book was full of my scribbling down of notes here and there... this paragraph is to show prejudice, to show this and that... I could see parts where my highlighter ran out of ink and the colour was so faint... I could see some scribblings in pencil which started out clearly and then got fainter and blurrer, indicating the parts of the lesson when I tried to stay awake and take notes but failed halfway... I could see doodlings and random marks here and there, indicating the times when I was either bored or testing out the ink in my pens... fond memories...
and then it brought back the ideas we used to have that perhaps Harper Lee didn't really mean to convey so many hidden messages.. that perhaps she was trying to write a nice decent book about prejudice (that message was obvious enough) but that literature teachers and students around the world got so serious about reading in between the lines that the book has become a celebrated literary work... after all, Harper Lee didn't have anymore works after that book... maybe she got freaked by the reaction of the literary world...
reading the book again also brought back memories of us sitting in the lecture theatre watching the film version of the story.. it was really old, being in black and white... the unfortunate part is that I don't think I finished watching the entire show... maybe I had to leave the class early or something... or maybe the teacher didn't show us the whole film in the first place due to time constraints... I really can't remember... but I bet it was a great show... I won't mind watching it again... hmmm... and I certainly won't mind if some director or producer decided to remake it... after all, prejudice and the innocence of children is a theme no one gets tired of even in this century... I'll think it's even more relevant today...
amazing isn't it? how much a book like that can bring back...
but good thing is that it's a proper story... I don't think I want to read my Romeo and Juliet text again..
last night, I took out the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee and read it again. The book was my 'O' level literature text so yeah... it's been a while since I've looked at it again... it was interesting...
for one, the book was full of my scribbling down of notes here and there... this paragraph is to show prejudice, to show this and that... I could see parts where my highlighter ran out of ink and the colour was so faint... I could see some scribblings in pencil which started out clearly and then got fainter and blurrer, indicating the parts of the lesson when I tried to stay awake and take notes but failed halfway... I could see doodlings and random marks here and there, indicating the times when I was either bored or testing out the ink in my pens... fond memories...
and then it brought back the ideas we used to have that perhaps Harper Lee didn't really mean to convey so many hidden messages.. that perhaps she was trying to write a nice decent book about prejudice (that message was obvious enough) but that literature teachers and students around the world got so serious about reading in between the lines that the book has become a celebrated literary work... after all, Harper Lee didn't have anymore works after that book... maybe she got freaked by the reaction of the literary world...
reading the book again also brought back memories of us sitting in the lecture theatre watching the film version of the story.. it was really old, being in black and white... the unfortunate part is that I don't think I finished watching the entire show... maybe I had to leave the class early or something... or maybe the teacher didn't show us the whole film in the first place due to time constraints... I really can't remember... but I bet it was a great show... I won't mind watching it again... hmmm... and I certainly won't mind if some director or producer decided to remake it... after all, prejudice and the innocence of children is a theme no one gets tired of even in this century... I'll think it's even more relevant today...
amazing isn't it? how much a book like that can bring back...
but good thing is that it's a proper story... I don't think I want to read my Romeo and Juliet text again..
Monday, November 21, 2005
This feeling...
I don't like this feeling...
where it feels like no one else but you still care about how things go... that everyone is too caught up in their own little world to bother about you, even though you're working for something bigger and beyond your own little world...
doubt, anger, confusion, helplessness...
why???
where it feels like no one else but you still care about how things go... that everyone is too caught up in their own little world to bother about you, even though you're working for something bigger and beyond your own little world...
doubt, anger, confusion, helplessness...
why???
Friday, November 18, 2005
Photos
Forgot to include the link to the photos... so here they are:
http://wwwsharontan.myphotoalbum.com/
they're in the album titled accordingly...
http://wwwsharontan.myphotoalbum.com/
they're in the album titled accordingly...
Malacca
Got back from Malacca last night... yup... went for a short 2 days (1.5 days if you don't count all the travelling time) with my parents and my aunt... my bro didn't wanna go cos he was still having classes..
Anyway we took the coach down and boy it was quite a long journey... but then again, after travelling from New Delhi to Agra, nothing really counts as long anymore... we went by the 2nd Link and it was my first time there... the place looks nice enough.. only setback was that it was super empty... there weren't anyone in the lines and hardly any vehicles using it... so that kind of cut travelling time, since there was zero traffic all the way from the link to the expressway leading from there...
we stopped over at Ayer Itam (I know it means Black Water but I'm not sure if I spelled it right... never did learn Malay) while the driver lunched... pretty uneventful except for the fact that they were playing the chinese version of the Dragostea Din Tei song (Numa Numa hey... yup that AIESEC song) continuously... sounds quite horrible and in case you're wondering, the singer is actually Singaporeans and is singing about cockroaches in that song...
anyway, after that it was directly to Malacca bus terminal... another sprawling place and you can tell it's quite new... reminds me a bit of our own HarbourFront, where the terminal is housed in a shopping complex selling all sorts of stuff.. oh and the terminal comes with a very cool looking overhead bridge.. I've never seen one so long in my whole life...
so after admiring the place a bit, we headed off to this hotel my aunt found on the internet... not too bad for 69 RM a night... it's just a 3 storey building with pretty decent hotel rooms... at least there's aircon and a TV :)
anyway by this time it was like 2 plus in the afternoon (we boarded the bus at 9am in Singapore) so we headed across the street for some Chicken Rice Balls... I have a photo of the rice balls in my album... see if you can figure out which is the fishball and which is the rice ball... that was quite interesting cos the few chicken rice ball stalls in Singapore sell rice balls that are the size of your fist and not so small as those in Malacca...
I managed to hurry my mom so she'll eat faster and then we set off for the attractions... we walked about 20 mins to get to Christ Church (which is the famous red church building you always see when you look up Malacca) It's quite something to actually stand inside a bulding that's more than 100 years old... you don't get such old stuff like that in Singapore.. we're like so young compared to Malacaa...
most of the historical sites were around the area of the Christ Church... there was a hill behind with a dutch graveyard and remains of another church... the last standing wall of the fotress A Farmosa is just behind that hill... there we saw lots of museums as well (though we didn't go inside).. most of the museums are housed in buildings that were built more than 80 years ago...
after that we walked over to the river and the maritime museum. It's an actual model of a ship used back in the days when Malacca was a bustling port of trade (even earlier than when Singapore started) and they've included exhibitions of actual equipment used in those ships, models of other ships that visited the ports in the old days etc.. we weren't allowed to wear our shoes in (I assume they didn't want us to damage the floor, being made of wooden planks and all) so we carried our shoes about.. felt quite like being in a real ship, because the aircon was leaking at place down under the deck so you get wet spots and leaky roofs :) but all in all lots of interesting displays and definitely worth it for 2RM entry fee. the air con was quite enjoyable as well..
anyway, after that we decided we'll go hunt for some of those tasty Malaysian foods that Singaporeans and Malaysians always talk about.. we headed in the direction of this hawker centre stall place only to find a carpark and a sports complex there... there's lots of construction going on there, probably to make the place more modern etc... anyway the food centre was gone... apparently the last time my aunt was there was 5 years ago so I guess the changes weren't so surprising after all :)
without the roadside stalls, we headed for this shopping complex across the road... tried some KFC cos we heard it's better tasting than the one in Singapore... I thought it was quite ok.. at least it's not as oily as those in Singapore... and we said we're healthy... gee... well we didn't spend much time in the complex... My dad said we should go to the Portugese Settlement and the Portugese Village so we headed in that direction until my mom complained that it was a tad too far to walk... in the end we turned into this area with lots of Nonya restaurants and ate at the same one my aunt visited 5 years ago... it was quite ok... I really liked their Otak Otak... :)
after dinner we headed back to the hotel... I wanted to continue to Portugese Settlement but my mom said they're probably closed at night.. I didn't think it was likely cos I imagine it would be a place where tourists, especially the westerners would visit and have a drink at night.. in the end I was right... the hotel manager told us that place sells food and stuff at night.. must be something like CHJIMES in Singapore... haha..
well we were too far away and it was late to turn back so we headed to the 5 start hotel nearby for some drinks (my mom wanted to try cocktail :)) there was a live band playing when we got there... the male singer's quite ok and the electric guitarist rocks... only the female singer was a turnoff... she ruined many a good song that night...
so that marks the end of the 1st day in Malacca...
Day 2 saw us heading off to the "Antique Street" area of Malacca... it's on the other side of the river from Christ Church and the other historic attractions... quite a lot of chinese and nonya stuff there... the adults I was with were reminscing about their childhood when people still stayed in those double storey shophouses... that was quite interesting... we saw some temples along the way as well... yeah the place kind of reminds me of our China Town, just that it's still less commercialised compared to ours... which is a good thing I feel... oh yah we tried Chendol at this supposedly famous stall... man their syrup and coconut milk were thick... it's the real thing!
anyway we spent quite some time in that area and finally headed back to our hotel area for lunch at the Bulldog Cafe cos we found some recommendations to eat there on the Internet... sells nonya food as well and it was pretty good food... just that the owner was quite scary... she tried to "force" us to but her pineapple tarts... we declined, having bought fresh ones at Temple Street so she wasn't quite happy... she kept trying to compare how hers were better and that we should just get hers as well... :S
well after lunch we took a cab back to the bus terminal... had to be early cos we hadn't bought tickets back home... we got there at 3pm only to find that the next bus leaves at 5pm.. well no choice... ended up roaming the shopping complex for roti canai (Singapore calls it roti prata) but they didn't have it anymore... so we went to A&W...
did you know that A&W was the 1st fast food restaurant to open in Singapore? Unfortunately it was also the 1st to leave the Singapore market... couldn't keep up with competition from McDonalds and KFC and the rest... so we poor Singaporeans have ever since been deprived of root beer floats, curly fries, coney dogs and ice cream waffles... we would have packeted some home for my brother but I doubt the food would survive a few hours coach ride home...
good thing we didn't... it was freezing on the bus, partly cos there was a huge thunderstorm on our way back... because the expressway travels along the outskirts of the states, we got to see lots of natural scenary like moutains, plantations, small villages here and there... there were no skyscrapers or buildings to block our view of the night sky, which was dark, cloudy and would flash once in a while as the lightning streaked through the sky... there weren't as many street lamps along the road as well so it was really dark... it was quite an experience sitting in a coach zooming across an expressway that was hardly lighted underneath the lightning-streaked sky... must be something to live in those villages we passed by...
after some hours, we reached JB (different route from when we travelled into Malacca)... but before that we stopped over at Ayer Itam again and horror of horrors... they were still playing that chinese song... the poor hawkers there...
well that pretty much rounds up the 2 days in Malacca... not too bad for a short trip to get away from it all in Singapore... the only sad part comes when we get back and all the deadlines and things-to-do rush in our faces once again...
Anyway we took the coach down and boy it was quite a long journey... but then again, after travelling from New Delhi to Agra, nothing really counts as long anymore... we went by the 2nd Link and it was my first time there... the place looks nice enough.. only setback was that it was super empty... there weren't anyone in the lines and hardly any vehicles using it... so that kind of cut travelling time, since there was zero traffic all the way from the link to the expressway leading from there...
we stopped over at Ayer Itam (I know it means Black Water but I'm not sure if I spelled it right... never did learn Malay) while the driver lunched... pretty uneventful except for the fact that they were playing the chinese version of the Dragostea Din Tei song (Numa Numa hey... yup that AIESEC song) continuously... sounds quite horrible and in case you're wondering, the singer is actually Singaporeans and is singing about cockroaches in that song...
anyway, after that it was directly to Malacca bus terminal... another sprawling place and you can tell it's quite new... reminds me a bit of our own HarbourFront, where the terminal is housed in a shopping complex selling all sorts of stuff.. oh and the terminal comes with a very cool looking overhead bridge.. I've never seen one so long in my whole life...
so after admiring the place a bit, we headed off to this hotel my aunt found on the internet... not too bad for 69 RM a night... it's just a 3 storey building with pretty decent hotel rooms... at least there's aircon and a TV :)
anyway by this time it was like 2 plus in the afternoon (we boarded the bus at 9am in Singapore) so we headed across the street for some Chicken Rice Balls... I have a photo of the rice balls in my album... see if you can figure out which is the fishball and which is the rice ball... that was quite interesting cos the few chicken rice ball stalls in Singapore sell rice balls that are the size of your fist and not so small as those in Malacca...
I managed to hurry my mom so she'll eat faster and then we set off for the attractions... we walked about 20 mins to get to Christ Church (which is the famous red church building you always see when you look up Malacca) It's quite something to actually stand inside a bulding that's more than 100 years old... you don't get such old stuff like that in Singapore.. we're like so young compared to Malacaa...
most of the historical sites were around the area of the Christ Church... there was a hill behind with a dutch graveyard and remains of another church... the last standing wall of the fotress A Farmosa is just behind that hill... there we saw lots of museums as well (though we didn't go inside).. most of the museums are housed in buildings that were built more than 80 years ago...
after that we walked over to the river and the maritime museum. It's an actual model of a ship used back in the days when Malacca was a bustling port of trade (even earlier than when Singapore started) and they've included exhibitions of actual equipment used in those ships, models of other ships that visited the ports in the old days etc.. we weren't allowed to wear our shoes in (I assume they didn't want us to damage the floor, being made of wooden planks and all) so we carried our shoes about.. felt quite like being in a real ship, because the aircon was leaking at place down under the deck so you get wet spots and leaky roofs :) but all in all lots of interesting displays and definitely worth it for 2RM entry fee. the air con was quite enjoyable as well..
anyway, after that we decided we'll go hunt for some of those tasty Malaysian foods that Singaporeans and Malaysians always talk about.. we headed in the direction of this hawker centre stall place only to find a carpark and a sports complex there... there's lots of construction going on there, probably to make the place more modern etc... anyway the food centre was gone... apparently the last time my aunt was there was 5 years ago so I guess the changes weren't so surprising after all :)
without the roadside stalls, we headed for this shopping complex across the road... tried some KFC cos we heard it's better tasting than the one in Singapore... I thought it was quite ok.. at least it's not as oily as those in Singapore... and we said we're healthy... gee... well we didn't spend much time in the complex... My dad said we should go to the Portugese Settlement and the Portugese Village so we headed in that direction until my mom complained that it was a tad too far to walk... in the end we turned into this area with lots of Nonya restaurants and ate at the same one my aunt visited 5 years ago... it was quite ok... I really liked their Otak Otak... :)
after dinner we headed back to the hotel... I wanted to continue to Portugese Settlement but my mom said they're probably closed at night.. I didn't think it was likely cos I imagine it would be a place where tourists, especially the westerners would visit and have a drink at night.. in the end I was right... the hotel manager told us that place sells food and stuff at night.. must be something like CHJIMES in Singapore... haha..
well we were too far away and it was late to turn back so we headed to the 5 start hotel nearby for some drinks (my mom wanted to try cocktail :)) there was a live band playing when we got there... the male singer's quite ok and the electric guitarist rocks... only the female singer was a turnoff... she ruined many a good song that night...
so that marks the end of the 1st day in Malacca...
Day 2 saw us heading off to the "Antique Street" area of Malacca... it's on the other side of the river from Christ Church and the other historic attractions... quite a lot of chinese and nonya stuff there... the adults I was with were reminscing about their childhood when people still stayed in those double storey shophouses... that was quite interesting... we saw some temples along the way as well... yeah the place kind of reminds me of our China Town, just that it's still less commercialised compared to ours... which is a good thing I feel... oh yah we tried Chendol at this supposedly famous stall... man their syrup and coconut milk were thick... it's the real thing!
anyway we spent quite some time in that area and finally headed back to our hotel area for lunch at the Bulldog Cafe cos we found some recommendations to eat there on the Internet... sells nonya food as well and it was pretty good food... just that the owner was quite scary... she tried to "force" us to but her pineapple tarts... we declined, having bought fresh ones at Temple Street so she wasn't quite happy... she kept trying to compare how hers were better and that we should just get hers as well... :S
well after lunch we took a cab back to the bus terminal... had to be early cos we hadn't bought tickets back home... we got there at 3pm only to find that the next bus leaves at 5pm.. well no choice... ended up roaming the shopping complex for roti canai (Singapore calls it roti prata) but they didn't have it anymore... so we went to A&W...
did you know that A&W was the 1st fast food restaurant to open in Singapore? Unfortunately it was also the 1st to leave the Singapore market... couldn't keep up with competition from McDonalds and KFC and the rest... so we poor Singaporeans have ever since been deprived of root beer floats, curly fries, coney dogs and ice cream waffles... we would have packeted some home for my brother but I doubt the food would survive a few hours coach ride home...
good thing we didn't... it was freezing on the bus, partly cos there was a huge thunderstorm on our way back... because the expressway travels along the outskirts of the states, we got to see lots of natural scenary like moutains, plantations, small villages here and there... there were no skyscrapers or buildings to block our view of the night sky, which was dark, cloudy and would flash once in a while as the lightning streaked through the sky... there weren't as many street lamps along the road as well so it was really dark... it was quite an experience sitting in a coach zooming across an expressway that was hardly lighted underneath the lightning-streaked sky... must be something to live in those villages we passed by...
after some hours, we reached JB (different route from when we travelled into Malacca)... but before that we stopped over at Ayer Itam again and horror of horrors... they were still playing that chinese song... the poor hawkers there...
well that pretty much rounds up the 2 days in Malacca... not too bad for a short trip to get away from it all in Singapore... the only sad part comes when we get back and all the deadlines and things-to-do rush in our faces once again...
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Slow Dance...
Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask
How are you?
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,"hi"
You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift.... Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask
How are you?
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,"hi"
You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.
When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift.... Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.
Monday, November 14, 2005
Counting down!!
Lots of things to count down to:
2 more papers till the end of exams! (and which means no more exams until this time next year!)
1.5 more days before heading off for a one-day trip in Malacca!
1 more week till the start of taichi classes again! (had to stop this sem cos classes ended late on taichi days :S)
1 more week till I can catch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in the cinemas! yes I'm a self-confessed Harry Potter fan... and if you're asking why not catch it this weekend? That's because it's freaking expensive to watch movies except on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.. Also, I'm guessing the cinemas will be fully booked with other even more ardent fans...
3 weeks more till the start of NLDS Singapore 2005! (find out more here)
5 weeks more till Christmas!! Presents, food, fun with friends!
6 more weeks till the end of 2005! well I'm not sure how this will work out to be something worth looking forward to but hey it's significant enough... oh now i remember! End of Dec 2005 marks the start of 1st Jan 06 which is someone's birthday... hehe...
can u believe it? 2006 is coming! and that means 2 more years till Olympics in China 2008 =)
2 more papers till the end of exams! (and which means no more exams until this time next year!)
1.5 more days before heading off for a one-day trip in Malacca!
1 more week till the start of taichi classes again! (had to stop this sem cos classes ended late on taichi days :S)
1 more week till I can catch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in the cinemas! yes I'm a self-confessed Harry Potter fan... and if you're asking why not catch it this weekend? That's because it's freaking expensive to watch movies except on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.. Also, I'm guessing the cinemas will be fully booked with other even more ardent fans...
3 weeks more till the start of NLDS Singapore 2005! (find out more here)
5 weeks more till Christmas!! Presents, food, fun with friends!
6 more weeks till the end of 2005! well I'm not sure how this will work out to be something worth looking forward to but hey it's significant enough... oh now i remember! End of Dec 2005 marks the start of 1st Jan 06 which is someone's birthday... hehe...
can u believe it? 2006 is coming! and that means 2 more years till Olympics in China 2008 =)
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Because You Live - Jesse McCartney
what a nice song...
Because You Live
by Jesse McCartney
Staring out at the rain with a heavy heart
It's the end of the world in my mind
Then your voice calls me back like a wake up call
I've been looking for the answer
Somewhere
I couldn't see that it was right there
But now I know what I didn't know
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has twice as many stars in the sky
It's alright, I survived, I'm alive again
Cuz of you, made it though every storm
What is life, whats the use if your killed inside
I'm so glad I found an angel
Someone
Who was there when all my hopes fell
I wanna fly, looking in your eyes
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has twice as many stars in the sky
Because you live, I live
Because you live there's a reason why
I carry on when I lose the fight
I want to give what you've given me always
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has twice as many stars in the sky
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has everything I need to survive
Because you live, I live, I live
Because You Live
by Jesse McCartney
Staring out at the rain with a heavy heart
It's the end of the world in my mind
Then your voice calls me back like a wake up call
I've been looking for the answer
Somewhere
I couldn't see that it was right there
But now I know what I didn't know
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has twice as many stars in the sky
It's alright, I survived, I'm alive again
Cuz of you, made it though every storm
What is life, whats the use if your killed inside
I'm so glad I found an angel
Someone
Who was there when all my hopes fell
I wanna fly, looking in your eyes
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has twice as many stars in the sky
Because you live, I live
Because you live there's a reason why
I carry on when I lose the fight
I want to give what you've given me always
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has twice as many stars in the sky
Because you live and breathe
Because you make me believe in myself when nobody else can help
Because you live, girl
My world has everything I need to survive
Because you live, I live, I live
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Voicing my thoughts
Everyone has so much to do...
but everyone only has 24 hours a day...
So why is it that some people can do more than others?
Reason 1
they cut down on the number of things they have to do... either outsource, or arrow it to someone else, or heck care and chuck it aside...
Reason 2
they make full use of their time by improving their efficiency... read faster, type faster, think faster, learn faster...
I can't think of any other reasons...
Everyone has so much to do...
but everyone only has 24 hours a day...
but everyone only has 24 hours a day...
So why is it that some people can do more than others?
Reason 1
they cut down on the number of things they have to do... either outsource, or arrow it to someone else, or heck care and chuck it aside...
Reason 2
they make full use of their time by improving their efficiency... read faster, type faster, think faster, learn faster...
I can't think of any other reasons...
Everyone has so much to do...
but everyone only has 24 hours a day...
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Have you found your Missing Piece?
interesting powerpoint... makes you ponder...
http://www.geocities.com/tuitionmatch84/themissingpiece.ppt
http://www.geocities.com/tuitionmatch84/themissingpiece.ppt
Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Xiao Xiao Stick Man Fighter
Hey to everyone...
Because the link I put for Xiao Xiao (left column) seems to have died, thought will just make things a bit easier for everyone since I have the files in my computer already...
those interested can download the Xiao Xiao Flash Movies from the following links. Just right click and "Save Target As"
Enjoy!!
Xiao Xiao 1 - One Vs One (Avi File)
Xiao Xiao 2 - Game
Xiao Xiao 3 - One VS Many (My favourite!)
Xiao Xiao 4 - Shooting Game
Xiao Xiao 5 - One VS One
Xiao Xiao 6 - Game (bit of error in this cos it gets stuck at one of the stages)
Xiao Xiao 7 - Mutilator
Xiao Xiao 8 - Mutilator II
Because the link I put for Xiao Xiao (left column) seems to have died, thought will just make things a bit easier for everyone since I have the files in my computer already...
those interested can download the Xiao Xiao Flash Movies from the following links. Just right click and "Save Target As"
Enjoy!!
Xiao Xiao 1 - One Vs One (Avi File)
Xiao Xiao 2 - Game
Xiao Xiao 3 - One VS Many (My favourite!)
Xiao Xiao 4 - Shooting Game
Xiao Xiao 5 - One VS One
Xiao Xiao 6 - Game (bit of error in this cos it gets stuck at one of the stages)
Xiao Xiao 7 - Mutilator
Xiao Xiao 8 - Mutilator II
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Are you stupid?
I got bored and found this link on a friend's site...
The site says:
You are 14% stupid. This means...
You are far from stupid. Congrats on a great accomplishment!
Thoughtful them even provided a table...
Stupidity Score Requirements
Status Needed Score
??? -------------------- 0 - 9
Pretty Smart ----------- 10 - 24
Fairly Smart ---------- 25 - 39
Smart, but Stupid ------ 40 - 59
A Little Stupid --------- 60 - 79
Stupid ------------------ 80 - 89
??? ---------------------- 90 - 94
??? ---------------------- 95 - 100
but seriously.. if i weren't stupid... why am i doing a stupidity test instead of studying for exams?? hmmm....
*ponder ponder*
The site says:
You are 14% stupid. This means...
You are far from stupid. Congrats on a great accomplishment!
Thoughtful them even provided a table...
Stupidity Score Requirements
Status Needed Score
??? -------------------- 0 - 9
Pretty Smart ----------- 10 - 24
Fairly Smart ---------- 25 - 39
Smart, but Stupid ------ 40 - 59
A Little Stupid --------- 60 - 79
Stupid ------------------ 80 - 89
??? ---------------------- 90 - 94
??? ---------------------- 95 - 100
but seriously.. if i weren't stupid... why am i doing a stupidity test instead of studying for exams?? hmmm....
*ponder ponder*
Oh bother...
hmmm... my 1st exam paper is on the 2nd of Nov.. which isn't too far away... so what the hell am I doing blogging at this time?
I dunno... so much to do so little time... even when there is time like now, so hard to keep immersing oneself in work... need to take a break from the books or the whatever other stuff I need to do...
yet, so few forms of entertainment... TV shows nowadays are just crappy if you don't have cable... I haven't gotten hold of any new books yet... only entertainment is radio... sad state of life when one doesn't want to leave the house or to spend some money.. haha..
ah well.. this is just a blog entry with no real meaning in it... maybe there is some meaning la.. just to waste a few minutes of your time to read this till the end.. haha...
I dunno... so much to do so little time... even when there is time like now, so hard to keep immersing oneself in work... need to take a break from the books or the whatever other stuff I need to do...
yet, so few forms of entertainment... TV shows nowadays are just crappy if you don't have cable... I haven't gotten hold of any new books yet... only entertainment is radio... sad state of life when one doesn't want to leave the house or to spend some money.. haha..
ah well.. this is just a blog entry with no real meaning in it... maybe there is some meaning la.. just to waste a few minutes of your time to read this till the end.. haha...
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Wise Words...
"Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly.
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.
What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.
What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such."
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Dear friend
I know how you are feeling now...
I can tell you feel so lost... so misunderstood... so unappreciated... so at a loss... I look and see you with so much to do... and so much popping up out of the blue...I see you try to deal with things today but they never seem to really get dealt with.. and when tomorrow comes, it brings new things to for you to face...
I've been your friend long enough to know that you will keep going, you will keep standing... because you know that there will be consequences for people aside from you if you don't... and I applaude you silently, because I know that these people may not always be aware of what you are doing... they don't see everything that you are doing, everything that you are dealing with...
You tell me that sometimes you feel like you are nothing but a small insignificant part of this vast universe... and you wonder if you really do make a difference... I think you need assurance... you need someone to listen and to comfort you... and I wish I can be that person... but I'm not the best... I can only hope that you find someone or some people who can do that...
I know you feel like crying... like breaking down... but your pride holds it back... but the barrier will break one day... you know that... and as your friend, I can only say that you need to let it all out... to cry and break down... to acknowledge and show that you are not as strong as you, or others, think you are...
Dear friend... you know who you are... and in these hard and stressful times, I wish you strength... I wish you clarity of mind and thought... I wish you humility to accept that you do make mistakes... Take care... and may you soon find that freedom which you seek and which you treasure...
Love,
Your Friend...
I can tell you feel so lost... so misunderstood... so unappreciated... so at a loss... I look and see you with so much to do... and so much popping up out of the blue...I see you try to deal with things today but they never seem to really get dealt with.. and when tomorrow comes, it brings new things to for you to face...
I've been your friend long enough to know that you will keep going, you will keep standing... because you know that there will be consequences for people aside from you if you don't... and I applaude you silently, because I know that these people may not always be aware of what you are doing... they don't see everything that you are doing, everything that you are dealing with...
You tell me that sometimes you feel like you are nothing but a small insignificant part of this vast universe... and you wonder if you really do make a difference... I think you need assurance... you need someone to listen and to comfort you... and I wish I can be that person... but I'm not the best... I can only hope that you find someone or some people who can do that...
I know you feel like crying... like breaking down... but your pride holds it back... but the barrier will break one day... you know that... and as your friend, I can only say that you need to let it all out... to cry and break down... to acknowledge and show that you are not as strong as you, or others, think you are...
Dear friend... you know who you are... and in these hard and stressful times, I wish you strength... I wish you clarity of mind and thought... I wish you humility to accept that you do make mistakes... Take care... and may you soon find that freedom which you seek and which you treasure...
Love,
Your Friend...
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