i read sometime ago on the webdesigner magazine that micro-blogging is now the trend and 'traditional' blogging is slowly phasing out. despite being an ardent blogger since secondary school, i do agree that micro-blogging is in much higher usage considering the limited time and busy schedules people have. so instead of your daily rants on your blog, it's all compacted into a short phrase or sentence you'd leave as your facebook status message. and of course the general liking for others to read and comment is something that drives us to use such platform. like it or not, i guess we are all attention-seekers in our own way.
currently spending my 3-hour break in the library. i'm supposed to clear some work right now but for some reason i decided to blog. blogging is just a very random thing i do on impulse, so my posts end up coming in like once or twice a month. well, at least i still blog. it's fun and i kind of like it that it's open for others to read but not having heavy traffic like facebook. it's like people can read what i think and feel about but i don't exactly want content here to receive high traffic with practically everyone whom i know reading what i'm writing. it's just a balance between private space for my thoughts and public viewing that for some strange reason i feel very comfortable with. plus i removed the comment system cos i blog not to receive comments from others. i just blog cos it's shiok. =)
i hate being chased for work. okay, that's a redundant statement cos i believe no one likes being chased for work anyway. still, i hate always being in a position to be easily and often chased for work. i think i'm just too lousy at rejecting opportunities so i end up taking more than i can chew. in other words, i'm the cause of my own plight yadayada. and i totally empathize with what my mum feels when it comes to household chores. it's like my work - it never ends! like some sort of freak never ending cycle! i must must learn to sleep over decisions i'm about to make and not just comply/agree only to realise that i've got a hell lot to do already. i'm such a greedy person haha.
ah well, we all make mistakes don't we. keep learning and we'll keep improving =) aja aja fighting! (haha)
TUESDAY \\ 4 AUG 2009
anger - frustration - disappointment - hurt.
it always happens in that order. and i will have to deal with my emotions and pick myself up again. life is the sum of the choices we make. for the past 20 years of my life, that is the principle that i have been living by. i have learnt that when a setback is met and you feel like you're falling apart, you have two choices - cry your heart out & stand up on your feet again, or drown in your sorrow. there is always an option. when you're emotional, you become irrational. you think with your head and not your heart. if you want to be miserable, by all means take that path and don't blame anyone but yourself for the plight you're in. life is hard and the world is cruel, but dwelling in your own misery is being even more cruel to yourself.
i don't give up, cos that's just not how i work. whether i am being idealistic or just optimistic, it doesn't really matter. as long as it can give me enough courage and hope to persevere. you say i'm living in a lie, but i think living in a lie that keeps you positive and happy every day is better than being swallowed by your self-perceived miseries. it all boils down to your own perceptions, doesn't it? half empty or half full; light at the end of the tunnel or impending death - everything in our life is about how we interpret events. again, it's a choice, a choice of which angle we want to see the same thing.
deep thought in isolation always helps to clear your mind, allowing the emotions to slowly fade away and letting rationality and composure return. this time, i choose to take this as a personal challenge. five months - that's the time frame.
SATURDAY \\ 18 JUL 2009
had a fantastic day yesterday! haha was super shagged by the end of the day but shiok cos i slept till 12.30pm today AHA. sales yesterday was greaaaaaat! wooohoo was super super happy, of course won't expect it to be like that every day, but i really hope it'll pick up! everyone's rather demoralised lately, so the sales figure yesterday definitely uplifted the mood :)) starbucks just opened at the first floor earlier this week and when i went down to get a coffee, it was like almost full house on the second floor! RESPECT man. that's how powerful customer loyalty and branding is. new york new york opened at 11am yesterday and my dad and i went down to patronize during lunch. i think every 10 minutes a customer would walk in to take a lunch order. so cool lah. i'm really really envious of retail brands that are so well-established and have a huge customer base following them wherever they go. compared to them, we're considered infant, but i still wanna do my best to achieve better. everyone's saying that i'm working too hard this summer, but i think it's worth every bit of my energy. it probably would have been much better if i hadn't taken on so many other commitments, but i know myself well. if i have only one commitment to focus on, i tend not to chiong and end up slacking too much. somehow i work best & most efficiently under pressure and when i need to juggle multiple projects at a time THOUGH i think i've gotten myself into too many projects this time rahh.
i was supposed to finish book cloud last weekend, but shit always happens and it didn't materialize. i think i'm closer to completing it this weekend, i.e. today. got a couple of things left on my to-do list for book cloud in terms of functionality. beefing up of content and beautifying can be done along the way. gotta make sure it takes off soon. next week will be very busy again because of final video deadlines on tuesday and friday, plus will have ASP.NET classes from wednesday to friday. and many many meetings to attend. soon after, it'll be the end of july. urgh can time please slow down!!!
back to yesterday, i was reading da vinci code on the bus. was pretty cool cos i got a seat (which is super rare for 36), but then again, it was like 9pm already so shouldn't have so much crowd anyway. haha i know reading on the bus is bad for eyesight, but it really makes the journey more enjoyable and a lot less stonning involved. ahh i think i'm gonna read all the 4 dan brown books. he's a superb writer i must say. excellent in keeping you at the edge of your seat. then coincidentally met a bunch of skaters at concourse haha. those are super hardcore skating-lovers. i doubt i can skate that long without my feet getting cramped. ah i need to skate soon. maybe once im done with book cloud and with convoc videos. which would be like the week after next :) yay.
AND I LOVE PICASA 3! i think i'm a fan of all google stuffs - chrome, gmail, analytics, adwords, adsense, picasa. whee. and i heard they're coming up with a new OS. i'm sure it'll be good. (and better than IE AHHAHAAH. i hate IE)
ah random thoughts.
FRIDAY \\ 10 JUL 2009
i really need to sleep earlier. even though i'm getting something like 9 hours of sleep, i wake up and start my day feeling so tired already. YAWNS. *pokes myself
anyhow, i'm very glad today cos my bro's coming home from 2 weeks of reservist! whee. haha although i'm pretty much the noise-maker at home, it still sucks when he's away in camp cos there's no one to bug and to listen to my crap hehheh. AND!! i'm finally getting started with building Book Cloud!! It's a new online book rental service that our shop's going to be providing! It's been very fluid in discussion for quite sometime, plus also my fault cos everytime i'm busy or pre-occupied with my other projects & commitments, it gets delayed. but not this time!! I'M SETTING THE TARGET TO THIS WEEKEND! there's only a month left of my summer break so really have to launch it, wanna see how the response goes. i think it's a fantastic and very refreshing concept in Singapore, so i'm hoping for a good, positive response to this new service :) *prays hard.
THURSDAY \\ 9 JUL 2009
today's one of my rare days that i can actually take my time and not have to chiong for deadlines. whee.
tuesday was pretty mad actually, i had both of my web projects having deadlines on the same day - one at 6pm and one by the end of the day. guess i underestimated the workload for both of them, because i thought it wouldn't take that long to edit content and upload the new files. i was SO WRONG man. i chionged till 5.30am the next morning (yes, i didn't sleep at all) to complete everything. after that slept for about 3 hours and had to get up to go for dental appointment. super super shag. could hardly concentrate where i was walking and what i was doing when i was out lol. luckily i didn't walk into a wall or something haha. that would be utterly embarrassing.
you know, you really can't judge a book my its cover. really. first (few) impressions can be so deceiving, and sometimes you can really get a shock when you see people's true colours. human psychology is and will always be a complex matter, but there's seemingly unlimited things you can learn about people and how they behave.
for one, we must learn how to put ourselves in the shoes of others. empathize with others, cos in many situations we'll feel more relieved, less frustrated and upset because we realize that the other party isn't exactly in a happy plight either. on the other hand, we must also exercise control with regards to the extent we empathize with others. too much empathy and we might get taken advantaged of - of course not everyone will do that but in the working world, i guess it is rather common. people might see that you are so accommodating and as a result they take the opportunity to get more out of you. putting these down in words really makes such people sound so devious and sly, but sadly, it doesn't seem to be something that rarely happens. too little empathy and people will see you as someone very cold, and perhaps to the extent of being unreasonable and inconsiderate. a delicate balance must be struck, but in reality we can never know exactly how much is too much and how much is too little. i guess it's something that comes with experience and also some intuition.
something i learnt during the past month or so doing freelance work and handling clients is how to compartmentalize your thoughts. especially when juggling more than one commitment or when you have more than one thing on your mind, it's really important to be able to shove everything else in a small little compartment in your brain, lock it up and think about it later. just concentrate on what you have at the moment, focus on one thing at a time. very often i would get flustered and overwhelmed when i have multiple deadlines crashing upon me at the same time and i would have this phobia of opening my email in fear of seeing floods of work requests etc. but to be honest, being flustered really doesn't help. can't concentrate and end up wasting time panicking. so i guess i have somewhat learnt how to control what's running though my head and how to KIV others. i think one of the best way is to take everything off your mind and pen them down onto paper instead. when your to-do list is written down very systematically, it really takes off a lot of necessary worrying. haha once when i had an entire mountain load of work to complete in one day, i wrote everything down and next to every item, i jotted down an estimated completion time. then i started counting how many hours i'd take to finish everything. and that actually helped! subconsciously as you're doing each item, at least you'll be reminding yourself how much time you have to finish it. it does speed things up a lot.
when you meet nasty and unreasonable people, it's not necessarily a bad thing i guess. for one you learn a lot about yourself, how you handle your emotions and thoughts. you also find out how to handle such people and not take things to heart. you discover that you need to find better ways of working to make things as smooth as you can. you realize you need to learn how to stay in control of situations and not be led by the nose. and lastly, you'll start to appreciate nice people when you get to work with them. i started to realize how nice most people are haha.
:)
SATURDAY \\ 5 JUL 2009
past two weeks have been rather crazy but woohoo! i survived haha. alive and kicking yeay. ah got lots to blog about, learnt a lot during this period of time actually. shall blog about it when im done with work and convoc videos. in a rather good mood today cos i SLEPT FOR 3 HOURS PLUS in the afternoon hehheh. knocked out completely till i didn't even hear my phone (and the house phone) ringing TWICE. but 'twas good. sleeping makes me happy haha such a pig.
WEDNESDAY \\ 24 JUN 2009
woots, finally got premiere pro up and working properly. in the end i surrendered and turned to my dear desktop instead. my poor laptop just couldn't take the load. it can take like 5 minutes just to respond to a click, and after which it hangs. -.-
anyhow, probably need to reinstall sometime soon. think the installation's not done properly but it's still functional enough for me to do the editing first. wanna finish it by tomorrow (though im supposed to have finished it today, but well, my laptop just refused to cooperate). if i finish the video tomorrow, means i've got to chiong the rest of my web project in 2 days. that's no joke man. there's a super hell lot to code AND to THINK as well. okokay no complaints, this is what i'm paid to do so yup. fine, just do it.
i find it quite unimagineable how even adults can behave so immaturely. it's so stupid to behave like that over such a trivial matter, in fact it's such a small matter that it's not even worth to be angry about. i really can't comprehend.
SUNDAY \\ 21 JUN 2009
i've always preferred to learn martial arts properly, meaning from an established training school & with a rigorous syllabus and curriculum. i think i might stop jujitsu actually, cos i find that the training isn't very consistent. okay, in fact it isn't consistent at all. the beginners' and seniors' training class are merged together, so when there's very few juniors during class (like 2 people), we're kind of ignored and sometimes we're asked to join the seniors' training. find it very disruptive because you don't really learn things right and even when you do, it takes a lot more time to master a technique. initially i thought that the classes are separated into junior & senior classes - well they actually are, but because there's too few students so they just combined the class together.
for one, the juniors get really really lost in training at times when they're asked to practise advanced techniques (which usually i have a super hard time cos i entirely have no clue). and on the other hand, seniors' training gets compromised when they have to accommodate to having juniors around so that would mean taking things easy on them and going slow. and that's wasting their time as well. honestly i don't think the students really learn well there. ok, i don't really attend trainings very regularly to be honest. but sometimes i get quite scared of the trainings because they're not consistent. like last week's training could be super slack and this week's one is super hiong. the basic exercises are more or less the same every week but sometimes i kinda feel that i'm going for a gym or strength-training class of some sort rather than martial arts.
argh basically i feel like discontinuing because i don't really feel enriched.
my plan now is that when i get better and my stamina reverts to normal, i think i might join yoga. during jujitsu training i'm always being told that my body's very stiff so perhaps yoga might do the trick. it's good for relaxation too, so it'll probably be a good stress-reliever and outlet anyway.
for now, i'm looking at a better martial arts school or training place. kendo has always been one of the martial arts that i've wanted to learn. and like i said, i always prefer serious training. don't like slackish ones which may not be as harsh & more relaxing BUT in the end you don't learn things the right way and it's a waste of time. was googling just now and came across Singapore Kendo Club. looks like something i'm looking for :) apparently they only have 2 intakes for beginner's classes. one in april and one in october. and believe it or not, you have to be selected to get into the class. lol either it's a marketing stint or they're really popular. either way, from the way they present their info on their website, it looks like it's serious training. they expect 90% attendance, full commitment and training's twice a week, 1.5 hours each.
the thing is that the next class begins in october and ends in march - it's a full 6 month basic training course. and bingo, it lands right across my second year. haha so i'm thinking SE, PMSB, Finishing Touch, Management Comms, AS/CT then ETI, AA, Negotiation (or some other career skill mod), CAT and Ethics. okokay no excuses. i need some training amidst my heavy workload so the best way is to have a set schedule. seems good. i shall go search for other places that offers japanese jujitsu - maybe i should relearn from scratch? argh i don't know, got to think about it.
SATURDAY \\ 20 JUN 2009
after 47590582035823523 days, i'm back in school. okay it's much earlier than planned but i concluded that it's just too inconvenient not to come to school. anyway it's good exercise. i can't do "real" exercise so the least i can do is to walk more i guess. your mind actually feels fresher when you change your working environment. and anyhow, aircon at GSRs in school is always good.
okay at least the workload for the first FTB video doesn't seem as bad as i thought. i almost plucked out my hair yesterday when looking at my packed calendar with the To-Dos for each day. hopefully we can finish in good time before we hit the deadlines. the filming was very well done, so im really really glad.
emotions are just part of a passing phase; don't let them interfere with your decision-making. i think that makes a lot of sense.
FRIDAY \\ 19 JUN 2009
ok i'm back to blog again, apparently i've still got some unfinished thoughts to clear from my head.
this month has been like yucks. stuck at home for weeks for post-op recovery, no outings no fun & truckloads of work. seriously everyday i'm on the same routine as the day before, and the day before that. not going out sucks cos the weather's supremely hot (see how much we've hurt mother earth) and i feel like i'm in an oven all day. not to mention being surrounded by the same walls everyday drives me crazy (been there done that, actually). perhaps not to the extent of claustrophobia but it's definitely NOT a nice experience. and sometimes i think i'm being a slave to my work/projects considering my eyes aren't on the computer screen only when i'm having meals or sleeping. stress creeps into my subconscious mind and perpetually stays there. then again, i don't really feel that stressed. so it's either i've learnt to manage stress levels or i've grown ignorant to it. either or. doesn't matter anyway.
i think the number one side effect of being stuck at home too long is being prone to having a foul temper. the previous entry testifies to that. i snap way too easily these days. i think when people spend too much time alone, they start thinking a lot and questioning a lot. then they become more emo and more angsty, no? lack of human interaction is bad. at least for me. talking to people (and being retarded) keeps me sane. oh, and exercise too. dang, my two most important outlets have been confiscated from me for the time being.
okay i think that's a pretty logical explanation for my behaviour. just pardon me for snapping la ok?
FRIDAY \\ 19 JUN 2009
sometimes i'm really such an idiot. say that and i'll fully agree. i have a problem with uncontrolled erratic emotional rollercoasters. sometimes i become too nice to people and get stepped on, sometimes i behave like a superego idiot. and for a moment i actually thought i had self-cured my temper. i've no idea why i got so worked up all of a sudden, sorry.
archived out all my old entries. about time those stuffs are cleared.
