Sunday, February 24, 2008 10:18 p.m.
It's the mid semester break this week and there's not much to rejoice over or look forward to. Last semester, I spent the term break in Italy, eating gelatos and pizzas, visiting the Pope, sitting on the field of Miracles and staring at the leaning tower of Pisa, crossing the numerous narrow canals in Venice and now, all I am doing this mid term break is projects, cases and essays. Not forgetting having to study for the 3 mid terms next week. This is madness.Saturday, February 23, 2008 11:42 a.m.
My dad got me the same phone as the boyfriend (just a newer version) because he claims E can orientate me to its functions and we can share programs. I like it except that I haven't figured out how to sync my iCal to the Palm so that I can import it into my phone's calendar. Well, so much for dropping a dozen hints to my father and expressing my deep interest in the sleeker and slimmer Samsung i600. And for all the times I laughed at E for carrying around a brick phone, I now have one.Friday, February 22, 2008 10:17 a.m.
If there was anything in the newspapers this morning that made me really happy, it sure wasn't the fact that Singapore won the bid for the inaugural youth olympics games (Congrats Sandra!), or that Obama won more states and Clinton's advisors are torn, or that Edison Chen the hottie is quitting show business, but it was definitely the fact that 2009 public holidays are out and Singapore's going to have 8 long weekends!! Woot woot! The ST wrote that with a little more creativity, you might be able to extend your long weekends to 9 or 16 day holidays! Now work suddenly doesn't seem so dreadful and uneventful and if my boyfriend ends up being an investment banker, I think it'll be Barcelona again in 2009! :)
Thursday, February 21, 2008 10:49 p.m.
Look what I saw in E's garden!? A bird nest! His mum told me that the mother bird has been flying in every few minutes with some twigs to make the nest and it took her only 2 days to built it! If you look closely, there's even a little door which I suppose would be for the mother bird to go in and deposit her egg! It's really a very heartwarming sight! :)
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 06:07 p.m.
I know this sounds like the craziest and most unprofessional thing I've ever done but there's a high possibility I might un-sign my contract and go and work with the bank. I'm torn and I honestly feel like I am playing some career tug of war. Signing it 2 weeks ago really felt like the most sensible thing to do and is still probably is. I think I knew that the firm was offering the best learning opportunities among the four and I felt at peace choosing it but I think I might be more interested in a career with the bank, working in a fast paced environment with new challenges everyday, being in the market, meeting people, and coming home at a decent hour. I honestly don't know what I should do. My older cousin wrote an email a few days ago saying "I don't know if I want to be a hotshot banker or a litigator, all I know is I desperately want to do what God wants me to do, and day by day He shows me. That makes me immensely happy." His email echos my thoughts and feelings exactly (except that I am not deciding if I want to be a lawyer) and I am reminded that all I want to do is walk right in the center of God's will and be in the place He wants me to be. I know how much joy and peace there is from walking in God's will (recall all the painful decision making in JC and University) so this time around, I want to continue doing the same thing; Go where God leads and walk right in the center of His will. That, gives me much more pleasure than anything else in the world.Saturday, February 16, 2008 05:48 p.m.
Attended the 10th edition of the Sepang Formula 1 launch yesterday evening with the family. It was hosted by Mahathir's son and they launched the BMW Sauber and Red Bull cars for this new F1 season. It was honestly the most boring corporate event I've attended except for the fact that we got to see the cars up close. One of these cars weigh about 675kg and that's not including the driver or fuel! The driver's seat is really very cramped and tight and his steering wheel is some sophisticated panel with lots of buttons so that he can maneuver the car! Nothing beats seeing it for yourself and realizing it take a lot of skill to sit in such cramped conditions for more than an hour and race and recognizing how much work has gone into the design of the car to ensure that it is the most aerodynamic machine. I still believe Formula 1 is the best sporting event around (at least better than soccer) because it's one of the few sports that require so much money, research, skill and team work and it's really adrenaline rushing when you see the cars attempting to dangerously overtake at some tight corners. The good thing is that the races take place all over the world so you get to see sneak peaks of each city too! Anyway, I half suspect the Malaysians are jealous that we got the rights to host F1 too. Haha. Well, they gave out free air tickets to KL so I'm going to see if E and myself can squeeze a short holiday up there next week during mid term break!
After the F1 launch, I went over to Choey's house for our cell steamboat party! It was definitely nice seeing the girls again considering how I rarely go down for Friday cell now and I also enjoy all our dinner parties! We played Wii before steamboat and oh my goodness, I have completely misunderstood Wii and it is now officially the best gaming machine in my books! The games are so fun and it feels like you're really playing tennis or boxing your opponent! I played this cow/horse game with Choey where we had to jump across hurdles and knock down scarecrows! Haha. I'm half tempted to buy a Wii with my first pay cheque so that I can play games to de-stress after work and it will also be my form of exercise and my boyfriend is obviously supporting me fully. Haha. Well, I really had fun hanging out with the girls and looks like we might have a Wii cell championship soon! :)
Thursday, February 14, 2008 05:36 p.m.
Happy Valentine's day sweetheart! :) You still make my heart skip a beat after all these years.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 10:54 a.m.
During sermon last Sunday in church,Pastor Terence: Why did Moses spend 40 years wandering around in the desert?
H (whispering to E): Because he refused to ask for directions!
E: Was there a woman beside him?! Haha. Our sunday school teachers are going to be so disappointed if they hear about this.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 01:32 p.m.
I took the leap yesterday, after months of consideration, and signed. I get scared just thinking of what's in store for me and how crazy work might potentially get but honestly, this feels like the most sensible and right thing to do and when I put down the phone, I just felt a sense of peace.Monday, February 11, 2008 10:13 p.m.
Chinese New Year celebrations was definitely much quieter this year because my younger cousins are in Vancouver and I miss them and all their noise but it was still a time of feasting on pineapple tarts, drinking copious amounts of Marinda Orange (why don't they ever have diet coke?) and happily collecting ang pows! Haha. Reunion dinner on the eve of chinese new year at my grandma's house and because one aunt is away in the states and the other one is also away on holiday, dinner was noticeably quieter and we didn't even had to eat on separate tables because there was enough space for everyone to crowd around and eat together! Dad insisted on bringing us to Chinatown after dinner because he wanted us to soak in the festivities and it was packed with sweaty, inconsiderate people that it really turned me off. I think my dad was the only one enjoying himself (he says my grandma used to bring him to chinatown on the eve so he must do the same with his kids) and even asked me to take a photo of him standing next to a whole row of hanging pomelos. Haha.
On the first day, we did the mandatory visiting to both my grandmas because going over to my granduncle's place for lunch with my dad's extended family. My cousin's getting married in March so everyone was happily discussing and listening to her plans and after lunch, we played scrabble and I got trashed by my grand aunty. Haha. Visited my great grandma in the late afternoon and she's 98 years old this year and we hooked her up on skype to talk to my cousins in Vancouver. Haha. She was a little confused with the webcam and microphone and I think after a while, she got tired because it seem as if she was talking to my uncle whom she couldn't see or hold a telephone to talk to. Haha. Visited another grand aunty and ended it off at my grandma's place for dinner and met my second cousins (mum's cousin's kids)!
We were supposed to visit a few of my mum's aunts (her family is huge) on the second day of new year but Sarah and myself took this long 4 hour afternoon nap after lunch (much to my parents annoyance) and so by the time we got up and shower, it was time for dinner at my grandma's. We couldn't skip that because the second night is apparently important for the Cantonese because that when my dad's married sisters can come back home and have 'reunion' dinner with the family. So my grandma cooked another feast and it felt like we were continuing part 2 of our reunion dinner.
The third day was definitely much more interesting because E and myself went to visit our friends. At about 11am, we picked up ice cream from Island Creamery and drove over to Jasmine's house for lunch with the NTU folks. She cooked baked rice and it was really fun just sitting around, talking, playing cards and just seeing each other outside of school. After Jasmine's, E and myself picked up another pint of ice cream and went over to Yihao's to celebrate new year's with Shaun, Chee Hao, Benny, Jame, Clement and a few others. He was bringing us round his house and it's beautiful! I like his roof top terrace! Haha. E was Yihao's tennis mate back at ACS and he and shaun were together in ACJC and there were a few other AC boys there as well so half of my friends actually know him longer than I do!
We drove back to E's house but I was craving for Haato gelato so we stopped by their Serangoon Garden's outlet and got a tub! We were paying and I couldn't take it anymore and asked the cashier if she could feedback to her management and ask them to open a branch at Novena. E almost died of embarrassment because he couldn't believe I was so desperate. Haha. In the car, I got nagged at for being a stupid business student and was reminded that we were taught to analyze the demand, evaluate the options, seek fundings and consider the general market conditions before opening a new store. Haha. Dinner was at the boyfriend's parents' friend's house at Marine Parade and this year, they catered dinner from Peach Garden. I've heard pretty mixed reviews about their food and E tried it a few times with his folks but he says their portions are really tiny and it was expensive. He says the food they were serving that night tasted like the ones they serve in their restaurants but I only liked the shark fin's dumpling and asparagus with scallops (everything else tasted normal) so I don't think I want to go eat at their restaurant. To be honest, it was quite boring because it was mainly E's parent's friends but thank goodness we had his sister and her boyfriend who talked to us and the four of us made a quick exit at around 11pm to go over to Dick's house for his chinese new year gambling party. Haha. I was so tired by that time because we've been out the whole day so E played mahjong till 1am before we headed back home!
We didn't have to do any visiting yesterday because we went to church and had lunch with Adrian and I spent some time over at E's house before he dropped me at my aunt's place for dinner! I'm completely washed out now from today's presentations and so I am self declaring Tuesday and Wednesday school holidays. I don't really care if I miss anything out in class because I am so damn tired and when I start work, I'll probably not have the liberty to self declare holidays and not turn up for work at my whim and fancy!
Monday, February 11, 2008 01:26 p.m.
Finally. Auditing presentation is finally over. I think it was really messed up because this morning, someone forgot to bring the advertisement that told our case story. After that, while the drunk girl was presenting, the tutor stopped her and asked if the erroneous deductions was caused by a line error as she had pointed out. I don't think it was, and I remember telling her to take it out but she insisted so what can I do. Because she also changed much of the slides (even though we weren't allowed to), you could see the tutor frantically flipping through the old powerpoint slides we handed up a week ago and desperately trying to reconcile our new slides with the old ones. I don't know how badly we'll get marked down for it. The other girl that presented on the Singapore Standards of Auditing got shot down by the tutor because she misinterpreted the standards. I don't know. It was so terrible and I felt it was like some year 1 presentation. Another girl presented a list of audit procedures and the tutor asked her which was the most important procedure in her opinion but she tired it two times and still couldn't hit the nail. I've honestly never had such an incompetent project group before (why do people like standing behind the desk and presenting?) and it really makes me angry just talking about it but at least it's over and my tutor didn't ask me any questions and I think my part went quite well. My second presentation in the business valuation class went pretty well so really, no complains about that group or that presentation. At least I know my group members are competent and hardworking and are willing to work to do well.Tuesday, February 5, 2008 08:45 a.m.
Oh my goodness. My auditing project group is one of the worse project groups I've worked with!! It's about 6 hours before we're supposed to hand in our powerpoint slides and this one girl, claims she's drunk and she hasn't worked on her slides!! She even called up K early this morning and asked him how to do her part because she didn't copy down our discussion the last time we met!! I believe she was tasked with question 1 but early this morning, she told K to do the second half of question 1. The other 3 people, happily submitted their parts and washed their hands off the project. To be honest, I don't think they cared about what we did with the slides. One of the other guys is so damn lazy (even K agrees with me), every time you ask him to change something in his slides or if he's agreeable to do a video and all, he'll always try to find some excuse so that he won't have to do any work. Honestly. He is one of the laziest guys I've ever met. But the drunk girl is really classic. She not only lies but complains our slides are bare and all but don't bother lifting a finger to do anything. She even had the cheek to send out a mail at 5.35am this morning asking us to work on our parts because it's either too messy or bare but when I looked at her part because it didn't seem to link to the question, she told me it's because she took the slides from our risk management class. It's atrocious!! Seriously. She made herself sound so hardworking that she is doing some editing to our slides at 5.35am but honestly, no more than 2 slides were edited and she didn't even work on her part. I don't believe this. Their attitudes really really suck and I don't know if it's because they've all got jobs already so they're slacking off in their last semester or what but honestly, it paints such a bad picture of them. I guess they are ok as friends, but definitely not ok as project partners. I don't understand why people cannot do a decent and good job and why they don't find pride in producing a good work. If I had my way, all except K would have been shot dead. ARGH.Monday, February 4, 2008 04:16 p.m.
My dad, who is obviously not kept up to date with home affairs, saw the ugly dry patches of skin on my shoulder blades and arms and immediately went "You rode a motorbike yesterday night is it?!? Why come home so late? Then you fall and scrap your arms and shoulders right! I told you never to ride on a motorbike!!..." And he goes on and continues nagging about how guys in motorbikes are irresponsible, that my future will suddenly get cut short if I sit on another motorbike and that he'll never let me date a guy who drives a motorbike while my sister and I giggled away. Finally after 2 minutes, I reminded him that I went to Sentosa about 2 weeks ago, got a really bad sun burnt and hence, my shoulders are peeling so badly and I am flaking black skin all over the house. I can't believe my father and his wild imagination sometimes.Sunday, February 3, 2008 09:31 p.m.
I had the yummiest green tea and milk tea gelato this afternoon after lunch! I think Haato's gelatos definitely beat Venezia or even the daily scoop and I'm such a big fan of milk tea so their gelato just really did it for me! :) Adrian had strawberry and mocha coffee gelato and he claims it's nice but I think it's a weird combination. Haha. Japanese lunch today after church with Adrian, Chang and E at Liang Court. The whole mall is some ghost town but when you step down into their basement, it's bustling with activities, people, the meidi-ya supermarket and small japanese food stores selling chicken katsu curry, sushi, udon and yakitori, you kind of forget that there's nothing selling upstairs except for McDonalds. After lunch, E and myself went down to Apple Center to look at their new Macbooks and check out the iPod touch (nothing fantastic and I think Apple is slowly losing their edge) before I went over to my grandma's for dinner!
Sunday, February 3, 2008 12:39 a.m.
My Aunt turns 50 on Monday and my other Aunt (who was my boss for 3 weeks last summer) turns 51 on Monday too so my mum's family met up for dinner at this chinese restaurant at Marina Square! Now our family has kind of shrunk because my 3 cousins are away in Vancouver and Christian is in LA so that's almost half our family and so family dinners are a lot more quieter now since my younger cousins that are still left in Singapore don't have their evil accomplices to join them in their bully war with my older cousins and I. Haha. The food wasn't excellent but we had a really good bottle of champagne and the buddha jumped over the wall we had was mildly interesting. I don't think I've really eaten buddha jumped over the wall but I always thought it was some dry appetizer and there would really be a wall but we had soup and the first layer was sea cucumber, scallops, abalone and don't know what else, the second layer was chinese mushrooms, fish maw and don't know what else and then there was this third layer. I don't know, it was nice, but I don't really fancy chinese food and the name of the dish sounds weird. After dinner, we went over to my Uncle's house to cut the birthday cake and played around with their new 24inch Mac Computer! It's huge but I think my dad now wants to upgrade his current Mac and get this bigger one too because he claims his eyesight is getting worst! Haha.
Met my business valuation project group members this morning for breakfast at Burger King before we moved over to Starbucks at Untied Square to do our project. I'm thankful they relented and came down to Novena instead so I only had to wake up 30 minutes before we were supposed to meet. Haha. We kind of settled our Fiat case study and they're really quite a nice bunch of hardworking people. Met E after that, got reacquainted with Raffles City shopping center, walked inside Coca trees and realized they were selling almost all the chocolates we bought and saw in Europe but it's probably at least 2 times more expensive here than it is in Europe! They sold the cote d'or chocolates for like S$8 when I only got it for €2. Rittersport chocolates from Germany cost about S$2.80, I only got them for €0.60. The worse was the Galler chocolates. We got plenty of those Galler chocolates from Brussels for our friends because we thought it was really good and I think we got the orange tube of pralines for €3 but the Galler shop at Raffles City is selling it for S$23!!! The Galler chocolate bar only costed us €1 but they're selling it for S$7 here!! That's crazy!! Even the Godiva truffles I got for my dad is about half the price it'll cost me to get it from Singapore. I never knew chocolates in Europe were significantly cheaper! We walked around a bit more, I bought a new pair of shoes (yay!) before E walked me over to Marina Square and I met my cousins for a while to do a spot of shopping before we had dinner.
Saturday, February 2, 2008 01:15 a.m.
Met up with my classmates from the best home class in junior college and it was really fun and noisy!! At least 15 of us (out of a class of 24) turned up for the chinese new year reunion and to celebrate Rachel and Yong Chun's birthday! All the guys in our class turned up and it was definitely nice catching up with Jeremy and Terence and hearing their stories of studying in Australia and also seeing Yong Chun and Ben have curly afro hair. Haha. I can't believe we've known each other for 5 years already and the class is still taking the effort to meet up once every 2 months or so to celebrate someone's birthday or just find another opportunity to eat together. We had tze char first at Victoria Street Food Center before moving over to Brauhaus at United Square for beer, peanuts and birthday cake! Good food, excellent company! :)
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