Moving on again.....

Sometimes you bang on a door for a long time and wonder if it'll ever open. But when you're not banging on it, suddenly it just opened by itself.

A childhood friend whom I've not met for eight years called me up and offered me a position at his company. I liked the job scope and the benefits and everything else about the company, and we shook on it within days.

This one sounded much more like what I wanted to do, can't wait to complete the move.

I'm actually going to take a small pay cut, but I'll rather be happy than get more pay :) Learned my lesson :P

Some Pics from the Hols

This year was my dad's 60th birthday, it was the first time our family ever bought him a cake. It still felt too awkward to sing him a birthday song, but he still looked happy enough that we did this for him:
Midnight, New Year's eve, we engaged in the traditional (and illegal) sending off of the old year and the ushering in of the new one by blasting our ears deaf:

Family

I spent a very relaxing 6 days with my family, especially my brothers and sister whom I seldom have time to visit on normal days. I realized that with them, I can just be myself, because:-

- they don't judge you
- they don't give a damn about how important you are or how much you earn
- they're not interested in comparing
- they already know everything about you, so no need to hide or pretend

During those six days we were just like we were 20 years ago, going all over the place to search for good food, playing video games, watching movies and pigging out on CNY goodies.

It is Time

When do you know it is time to leave?

- When you don't enjoy your food anymore after another trying day ....
- when you don't even feel like laughing at your favourite comedies anymore due to worry ....
- when your bad mood affects everyone close to you ....
- when you dread Mondays so much that you want to call in sick ....
- when you feel the very life being sucked out of you when you reach the office that you can't breathe ....

What is the point of losing your life because you don't like your work?

Yes, it is time.

Remembering a departed friend ...

In a few days it'll be a friend's first anniversary of his passing on. For some reason I still kept his phone number on my mobile and his online handle on my Yahoo Messenger list. Sometimes I look at it and still half expect it to come on.

Kenny knew his time was almost up a few years ago, but he did not tell anyone about it except for my church pastor. He never gave any hint to us, and we sort of expected him to hang around forever. He was looking forward to going back to Teluk Intan to spend Chinese New Year with his family, but he passed on a week before that.

I sometimes think about him to get a better perspective of my own life. I think we sometimes spend our days as if they'll go on forever, but the reality is that they don't. It is when we realize that there will be an end that we get the courage to abandon what is not important and to embrace what is. Despite a life cut short, I know Kenny never regretted any single day of the last two years of his life, and I hope I am able to say the same at the end of every single day.

As a Christian, I'm glad to say for sure that he has gone to a better place, but a year on, the sorrow still lingers ...

New Look (Again!)

I've taken my good pal Simon's comment to heart and spent one night of my holidays hunting for a new template. Well, here it is, hope you guys like it :)

Happy New Year of the Dog 2006

Wishing everyone a very Happy New Year and a good time with family and friends during the holidays. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Going Home

In five days time I'll join thousands of others in the annual CNY exodus to go back to my hometown. Sibu was the place I lived for 8 years before I left for further studies and subsequently, work. I've stayed in Klang Valley longer than that, but Sibu is still the place I prefer to call my hometown. There's an official website that looks suspiciously like a BN propaganda site.

When back home, I love to wander around the old market area near the harbour, where most of the shops have remained unchanged for the last 30 years. Here, you can still see people selling homemade baked goods (of which the kompia baked biscuit is the most famous), spices and various jungle produce. And of course I still love to wander by the riverbank and take in the evening breeze.

Chinese New Year in Sibu is a raucous affair with people competing with each other in letting off firecrackers and fireworks, and lion dances at the neighbours' houses. Every year I get reintroduced to my ever growing legion of nephews and nieces (whose names I promptly forgot again after 2 days), but they're fun to have around with their innocent antics.

Can't wait.

Passed The Finish Line

Finally, the project that seemed to go on forever went live, but not before throwing me a few more curveballs this week .

In the end, there was no joy, just sheer relief.

Now I can have a life again. Until the next one.

Kyrie

" When I was young I thought of growing old
Of what my life would mean to me
Would I have followed down my chosen road
Or only wished what I could be"

from "Kyrie" by Mr Mister

I met up with some very old school friends (I've known them for 22 years) just before Hari Raya Haji. One quit his job last year to be a full time insurance agent, while another continued to struggle with his life and gambling habit. On the surface, I seem to be better off than both of them, but I over the past week I realized that I was more unhappy than they are. I think specifically my work and the amount of time that I dedicate to the things that matter to me. I had not felt any sense of satisfaction from either one of them for the past six months.

Been doing a lot of thinking about my life and discussing them with my other half.

In a sense I feel trapped, but maybe I'm not thinking right. Maybe I just need to break a few assumptions and see things in a different way in order to find a way out.

I first heard Kyrie when I was in Form 5, trying to decide where I wanted to go after the exams. Now, listening to this song again, the answer seems to be "only wished what I could be".

Hope I will find an answer soon.

New Look

Decided to switch to a new template, hopefully it'll be easier on the eyes for everyone :)

Let The River Run

2nd of January 2006 marked the 10th anniversary of my working life. I came back from UK in November '95 and started work in MCIS (now known as MCIS Zurich) on 2nd January 1996.

One thing about working life is that so many things happen and time passes so fast that you seldom really look back or even remember what happened to you. But over the last few days I thought about where I was 10 years ago today:-

1. I was dead broke in 1996. I didn't feel like asking from my parents anymore, and had almost no money when I started work. Thanks to my good friend Stephen's generosity, I was able to bunk at his place in Cheras for a while. Yeah, I didn't save any money at all when I was younger, drank it all in Belfast (oops!).

2. I'm still quite broke in 2006. This is not really true, me and my deer have some savings stashed up. But still, some months we just scrape by. And this despite a combined income that is 5 times my 1996 salary. So many bills to pay, so many obligations to meet, sigh.


3. Public transport works in 1996. Back then I could take mini bus 32 from Cheras at 7 am, be in Kota Raya by 7.30, hop on another bus in Klang Bus Stand at 7.40, and be at my office in PJ by 8.10 am. Nowadays I leave home at 6.45 am, and it takes me 90 minutes to travel the same distance to my current office by car.

4. I was naive and idealistic in '96. I quarreled with my then boss over his pessimism and negative reaction to new ideas, on my first day of work. But over time, I learned to understand his problems and benefited fom his guidance. I remember him as kind and fair, with a good sense of humour to boot.

5. Those days there were Celcom, Adam, Mobikom, Mutiara Telekom, Maxis and Emartel. Nowadays its just Celcom, Maxis and Digi.

6. There was this wonderful bank called Phileo Allied that broke all the rules and gave amazing service to its customers. But the powers-that-be chose to destroy it in 2000 by forcing it to merge with Maybank. The former CEO of the bank was recently named one of the top 10 CEO's in Canada. Go figure.

7. The company sent me to a motivation seminar in April '96 along with 70 other people, and I came back a changed man. But cynicism soon set in as I realized things only changed for a while, everyone reverted to who they were after a few months. I was to be sent to another five motivation seminars over the next four years, including one in Ulu Langat where we had to find our way out of the jungle at 2 am in the morning. And still nothing changed.

8. My office PC then was a Pentium 133 with 32Mb RAM, 200 Mb hard disk. My current office notebook is Pentium IV 1.5 GHz, 512 Mb RAM, 60 GB hard disk.

9. The whole office shared a dial-up internet connection. I kid you not.

Ouch!

Me and my other half finally got around to doing the health checkup at Pathlab last Tuesday, and we went to collect the results on the last day of the year.

I sort of suspected it, but it still came as a bit of a shock.

I was over the limit in terms of bad cholesterol and uric acid.

The guy at Pathlab gave me two leaflets on how to get them down. No meat. No coffee. Exercise. No alcohol. Yipes! No life! :(

I was really looking forward to a gathering of ex-colleagues that night to count down the new year, but wasn't really in the mood anymore after that and decided to cancel. Still quite sore today that I missed it.

A Chinese Movie Worth Watching (Finally!)

For the past one month, I was bombarded with ads for this new Mandarin movie called "Perhaps Love" headlined by Jackie Cheung, one of the four "heavenly kings of pop" of the 90's. It looked for all the world to me like a tacky musical, so I decided to give it a skip.

But good word of mouth from friends and friend's friends prompted me to drive all the way to Summit last night to catch the movie with my wife. And what a movie it was.

If you're the type who loves melancholic romantic movies, you'll be a fool not to catch this. It was brilliantly mounted, and did not veer into tackiness at all as I've feared. The music was really great, too, and was a very integral part of the proceedings. I plan to get hold of the OST soon.

If you'll like to know more, go to HERE. Be warned, its in Flash and VERY heavy, so make sure you've got broadband.

Christmas '05

Christmas this year was really hectic, I had church service at 10 am, then had to drive two hours to Bahau for a wedding lunch, then rush back again for a Christmas party at 7 pm. To top it up, there was a bad jam on the way back from Bahau due to an overturned milk truck at the Nilai Utara interchange which spilt milk all over the highway!

The wedding lunch at Bahau was a typical hometown style affair, the food as usual was much better than the usual hotel stuff (to all my unmarried friends, take note :) ) Annice looked great, and it was good to see the gang again.

Luckily the next day was a holiday and I got to sleep in, hehe.

Merry Christmas

A blessed and joyful Christmas to all :)

Singapore Trip

Went down to Singapore for a much needed break and spent a relaxing 3 days there. Here's a few things I noticed when I was there:-

1. Their toilets are clean. VERY clean. I was in a shopping mall that looked slightly run down, and was surprised to see that their toilet is as nice as the KLCC ones.

2. Second link is the way to go if don't want any hassle and jams. I was able to get from Kluang to my brother-in-law's place in 1 hour 15 minutes flat.

3. If you can afford a double storey house there, you are definitely a big shot. If you ever want to see Mercedes, Jaguars and BMW's parked at the roadside outside normal terrace houses, head over to Mandai/Ang Mo Kio.

4. They get a much bigger choice of cars there. I almost cried in frustration after my brother-in-law took me to Alexandra to go car viewing. Damn you, Proton!

5. I can get Miller beer there, yay!! Managed to smuggle six bottles back.

6. Cost of living is actually cheaper there, if you work there and earn S$. A typical meal in the suburbs is only 2.50 on average.

Working Late (Final Round)

Felt refreshed after the trip to Singapore, but found out that the guys did not progress the issues/bugs I assigned them last Thursday. What the... Anyway, boss told me tonight is the last night the project has to complete, so here I am, typing this blog at 10 pm.

At 7.30 pm I overheard the guy who was working with me on this complaining to someone that he's been in the office for 12 hours now. At that moment, I really felt like jumping up and smashing his face in. Where were you when the CEO and me were debugging your crap code until 4 am in the morning??!! Where were you when the CEO and me stayed late four nights in a row trying to get this done??!! He left at 7.45 pm just now, and me and the CEO are still here......

I've really had it up to HERE with these bozos......

The Living Years

The Living Years was a song popularized by Mike and The Mechanics back in 1989 after the death of Mike Rutherford's (the band's main guy) father.

Ever since I came back from UK to work exactly 10 years ago, I began to appreciate my parents more and more. My main regret at the moment is that even as they get older, I seldom see them. Even when they do come down to stay with me, most nights I work so late that by the time I get home, they'll all be asleep, and by the time they get up, I would have already rushed off to work.

My dad will turn 60 next year, a major milestone for a Chinese. Me and my siblings will all be going back to celebrate the occasion.

The problem with most dads is that you don't get to have much close conversation with them, you tend to end up talking about the weather, the economy, China and whatever else except what you really feel inside.

In The Living Years song, Mike Rutherford expressed his regret that he never got to tell his dad how he really felt inside, all the things that hung heavily in the air but in the end never got spoken.

I think I'm gonna give my dad a call soon.

Feeling Useless

This my second night staying back in the office to try and complete an integration project for a client in UK.

I really miss the team I left behind in my previous company. Over here, almost the whole team is new, and there's no strong sense of ownership and responsibility, everyone cabut at 6 pm irregardless of whether they finish their work or not. End up myself, CEO and the system admin guy doing all the dirty work.

I think my CEO is too nice a guy, I still have not seen him scold anyone in the office despite what's happening. Me, I'm getting more and more frustrated by the day. Sure, the pay is good, but working with a bunch of people who don't care and don't know what they are doing really sucks. The worst for me is that no one reports to me, so I cannot tell anyone off, I cannot control whether they come or go, I cannot do anything to them.

Sigh.

Took a walk to KLCC just now to clear my head (no traffic! crossing the road was a breeze). Its been crossing my mind these few days that this might not be a good place for me. My other half is advising me to stick it out. I'm glad I'll away from Thursday to Sunday in Singapore, hopefully that'll clear my mind a little bit.