Slow Day

Ever did a test to find out your Myer-Briggs profile? If not, try this to see which type you are, and how much of each trait you have...

Then see this to get a more detailed profile of the type that you are.

So what are you? Share! I'm an ESFJ:

The Extraverted-Sensing Feeling-Judgers' four preferences equip them to be gracious and effective in dealing with others. They use their subjective Feeling decisions to bring harmony and goodwill to almost any situation in which they find themselves, at the same time imposing order and structure on any situation--gently, yet firmly. They are exceptionally in turn with specific individual need and especially sensitive to the nuances that make for happy and wholesome lives.

As a type, ESFJs probably personify "motherhood." Their gentle, caring nature, in its Extraverted way, takes them beyond their own needs to serve the world around them. As a result, they are the hosts and hostesses of the world. ESFJ males, who have less need to be "in charge" than to be concerned with others' needs, may as a result be torn between expressing the more conventionally masculine parts of their personalities and giving in to opposing tendencies. The male's Sensing-Judging temperament, sometimes described as "stabilizer-traditionalist," demands macho, objectively cool, yet aggressive behavior, while the Extraverted-Feeling preferences demand a warm or more caring and gentler role.

If the ESFJ male is something of a fish out of water, the ESFJ female, in contrast, often represents the eptiome of femininity. She always wears the right clothes, says the right words, and behaves the right way. ESFJ girls are the perfect children who never get dirty, and even as adults, never seem to get mussed. There's something about an ESFJ--especially the female--that just reeks of appropriateness in all aspects of life.

Don't think that ESFJs have found perfection, however. As EJs, for example, they are given to quick, abrasive comments whenever their routines are interrupted. As SFs, however, they are critical of their own EJ behavior and compensate for their abrasiveness with extra sweetness. To paraphrase Isabel Briggs Meyers, they have many "shoulds" and "should nots," and they express them freely. They may especially overlook facts when they find a situation disagreeable or a criticism hurtful. As a result, they may sweep problems under the rug rather than seek solutions.

ESFJs' careers often lean toward those that serve humanity; nursing, public school teaching, clergy, and psychology. Sales and other public service-oriented jobs also have particular appeal. More impersonal tasks (related to computers, for example, or bookkeeping) and jobs that demand theory and speculation (such as college teaching, consulting, and especially investment brokering) can be particularly stressful to an ESFJ.

Many years ago

You know how sometimes a faint smile leaks out of our mouths when we recall moments from many years ago?

It's bizarre, but I've recently smiled on at least 2 occasions when I saw the names of cases which were drilled into us back in year 1 of law school.. good 'ol Pao On v. Lau Yiu Long and Suisse Atlantique Société d'Armement Maritime SA v. Rotterdamsche Kolen Centrale NV...

Which also reminds me the "poems" we used to memorise:
1. consideration must be sufficient but it need not be adequate ("sufficient" and "adequate" got difference meh?)

2. past consideration is not good consideration (forget this and it will come back to bite you in the ass one day)

Lame

Man 'ol man did I hear a lame joke at a seminar yesterday.... it goes something like:

A ship carrying blue paint collided with a ship carrying red paint.. as a result, the crew were marooned.

Right after the speak said it, I swear I heard a couple of soft groans, and the delegate next to me go "tsk".. hee hee..

Oxfam Unwrapped

I can't remember where I read about it, but I think it's today's Sunday Times.. Anyways, you can buy stuff from Oxfam's website for use in places where they need it most...

You can buy a whole variety of stuff, from tree saplings to toilet bowls to a 5% share in a mango plantation, but what I like are the four-legged friends.. I wanted to get a donkey for £50 but the Oxfam Unwrapped UK site doesn't have Singapore in its purchasing details, so you can't buy if ure using a Singapore credit card..

But there's an Oxfam Unwrapped Australia site with a scaled down (and slightly different) catalogue... I bought 2 goats instead...

See if you can help!

Come to Papa!

I of the things I end up doing with great pleasure when I'm overseas is checking out their supermarkets... so whilst my colleague was buying shoes and bags after the meeting, I spent 20 minutes walking up and down the isles of the Isetan Supermarket, wondering whether to buy some ice cream, how come there are so many different brands and types of canned tuna, when guess what I saw?

Woo Hoo!!! Didn't buy any from the supermarket as I wasn't going to look silly wearing a suit and carrying a small plastic bag with 3 cans of smoked oysters, then putting them through the x-ray machine and all.. as it turned out, I'd have looked even sillier running after an aeroplace clutching tins of smoked oysters!

But at least I know now that in all likelihood the Isetan supermarket in Shaw Centre has them! Isetan, I love you!

p/s: thanks everyone who's suggested places to get them from!

Run Forrest Run!

So the meeting yesterday ended by 12:30pm, and we had lunch, before splitting up to do our own thing and rendezvous-ing at 5pm at a cafe..

Decided I was done with shopping by 4pm.. didn't see anything I really wanted to buy except for the Dunhill Blackberry case - simple looking, black on the outside, camel colored leather on the inside.. yummy! But also too expensive..

We caught a cab to the station for the airport train at 5:25, and was so busy yakking away that we didn't notice that the cab was making very little progress until 6:05, when the cab driver must have figured out from our conversation that we were heading back to Singapore, and told us to get out of the cab, walk to the monorail station, and then take the monorail instead..

Reached the airport-train station at 6:35, but the train didn't leave till 6:45, and reached the airport only at 7:13..

Thankfully me and the colleague I travelled up with got our return boarding passes earlier in the morning already; she took off her heels, held them in her hand, we both ran all the way, cut the queues for immigration, only to realise that we had to take a train to the departure gates... reached the departure gate 6 minutes before takeoff!

The other guy with us wasn't so lucky as he had to check-in at the counter, which was closed for the flight by the time we reached the airport.. thankfully he managed to get on the later flight..

My reward to myself for vigourous exercise this first time week? Going to Terminal 1 for a Popeye's 2-piece meal. Yums!

Dawn

Have to go somewhere nearby for work tomorrow morning, and the flight's at 6+ am! which means i have to be there at 5+, which means I have to leave home at 5, which means I have to wake up at 4:30am.. which means I should be asleep in bed by now..

The upside's that I'm already thinking of where I wanna go for lunch.. heh..

+++

Come sometime next week, I'd have been at my current job longer than I have been at my previous one, which frankly at 1.75 years isn't all that much...

I can safely say that the past 1.75 years here have passed a lot more quickly and painlessly than in the law firm... I've been able to travel for a long-ish stretch without having to beg anyone... hopefully more long holidays next year if I get more leave days if promoted...

But more than that, I think it's the trust that my boss and colleagues have in me to do things right, and that I seldom have to clear my decisions with someone or fear that they will question my judgment... which maybe was what made last week so bad..

Anyways, want to leave soon also cannot.. bonus is only paid out in March!

Craving

I've got a world-class craving since yesterday for smoked oysters (the kind that comes 20+ packed in a little metal tin) on crackers..

Gotta leave the office soon to reach the supermarket in time!

Update: I anger... there are no damned smoked oysters in the 2 supermarkets I went to.. how can that be?!

The Brick Testament

Link

This is amazing!

Ewww

Was so stressed and drained last night that I went home at 9+, made sure that the work matters were bedded down for the night, and then crashed out without even showering..

This morning, as I was using tissue to "scrub" my face, I noticed that the grime was vaguely, err, green.. I'm an alien!

Bleah

I just had the worst day in my 1.75 years at my current workplace... I need a hug!

Suck

Was just MSN-ing with a friend, who is in the midst of exams... oh how far away exams seem right now... my last major exam was in November 2001... 4 whole years!

Sometime last year, the thoughts of doing an MBA dissipated into the air... I remember also that in my self-appraisal form at work last December, I mentioned the possibility of getting the New York state bar certification in the "Career Advancement" section... that's slowly vanishing as well...

But I digress... what got me started on this post was me wishing said friend luck for her papers, and this memory surfaced - when we were in Sec 1, HJ would go round wishing people luck for their exams, and once he had grabbed your hand, he wouldn't let go, and kept chanting "suck away your luck.. suck away your luck..." man, how far have we come... 16 years... sad to say, he's still the same old prick he was at 13... heh... BoY, I bet you were a victim too!

Whatever...

Only found out this week re the fuss about this allegedly misrepresenting lady blogger... not familiar with the details and frankly, neither do I care..

The only thing which caught my eye was some comment made by her about a USD15,000 Mercedes SLK being cheap.. Got so cheap meh? Just went online and saw that a USD15k one would be model year 1998 thereabouts.. now why would I want to buy a 1998 SLK?

For USD15k, I'd buy a 2003 Saab 9-3.. heh..

+++

Was clearing my stuff, and found that there was a half-shot roll of black and white film in my old camera... wondering what photos are in there... I feel sian just thinking of having to go all the way to Peninsular Plaza twice to develop and pick up the mystery photos...

Jonah and the Whale

Source

Awesome! Gives you an idea how freaking huge this plane is!

Childhood Food Memories

Tagged by Ditzy Spice.. my turn!

The task it to recall five childhood food memories I miss/not miss:

1. Chicken maccaroni / pork mee cheh mark

Those were definitely staples when I was just a kid, and the love for them still hold true today. I especially love the former with a little shredded salted vegetables... yums!

I also remember how my cousin (who would stay over once in a while) would butcher the word "maccaroni" and somehow pronounce it as "micro-yee-wei", and his mom would say "kasi lema" instead of "nasi lemak".. hee hee.. which reminds me I nearly burst out laughing today when a colleague tried to use 1 of the Top 20 lawyer words "mitigate" but said "mi-gi-tate" instead.. so mean!!!

I also wonder how the Americans and Chinese abducted maccaroni from the Italian world, in the sense that the Yanks have mac-and-cheese, and we have chinese-style maccaroni, but I've never seen maccaroni being the pasta in an Italian restaurant.. I stand to be corrected though..

2. Siew Mai

I was a really skinny kid growing up, and my granny was convinced I had worms in me... We used to stay in a Chinese kampong, and there was a provision shop no more than 30m from my house.. every day, my granny would troop me to the provision shop and buy 2 siew mai from the giant steamer, placed on the enamel plate with a dollop of ketchup... I grew phobic of it really fast..

3. Roast Pork, especially char siew

Sometime when I was like maybe 10, someone in my extended family decided to do one of those "make offerings to the ancestors / gods" things, and ordered a roast pig... it came on a red wooden plank, and lay on a table overnight.... the sight of the pig was enough to make me sick, not to mention the smell of roast pork (unseasoned, so it had a bit of the raw porky smell) wafting in the house for 12 hours... to top it off, after the offerings part was done, everyone had to bring a bit home to eat over the next few days... I didn't eat char siew for the next 3 years...

4. Mee Suah with bittergourd

Mine's the only family I know of which eats mee suah with bittergourd in it.. if you ask me, it's plain amazing! As a kid, I loved the slightly soggy texture of mee suah, and how it'd expand as it sat in the broth, soaking up all the broth if I wasn't fast enough in eating it...

5. Packet Milk

Together with communal teeth-brushing, the tumbler with dymo-tag and the little red tablet, the milk program is way up there w.r.t. the things I remember about primary school... we'd get packets of chocolate, strawberry or plain milk in a tetra-brick everyday, and sometimes the packaging would contain winning pieces in inter-school art competitions.. somewhere along the way, a new flavour was introduced - banana! Do you also remember the Magnolia pyramid packs of milk? You snip the top off, stick a straw in, and suck!


Ok, not gonna tag anyone, but I had lotsa fun with this post... please do it!

Too Honest!

Was clearing out my desk over the past few days, and I found 2 movie vouchers I bought earlier in the year, which I thought I finished using (from a bunch of 10) before they recently expired..

With a sigh, I tore them up and threw them into the bin... I only just realised that there is a 80% chance I could have passed them off as valid ones! I mean, the company suffers no (real) harm right? There goes $15...

I obviously got A* for Hao(3) Gong(1) Ming(2) in primary school...

Remember This?

I only have vague recollections... a fellow blogger and I were talking abt cleaning ears for other halves, and something stirred in the deepest recesses of my brain and spitted out J&J's baby oil... I think my mom used to dab a cotton bud with some of the Oil to clean my ears out... and belly button at that too!

I can fly!

Firstly, many thanks to The Dear Friend who not only occupied the blog and wrote some wonderful stuff, but also even cleaned it up in the manner I always wanted to but was too lazy to get round to doing... despite what you will likely say when I make this offer, I want you to know that I'd be most delighted to give you an account so u can blog here anytime you want! Just no pink color! hee hee..

This is the nicest photo I took in NZ, which doesn't say very much about my photography skills, considering there were tons of photo opps, but I was just too lazy / inept. There was quite a lot of things that crossed my mind or wanted to blog about whilst I was there, but most of it seems to have been left there.... It's amazing how much real thinking abt the stuff that really matters u can do when u have nothing else to do during those 6 hours drives every other day... and I say 6 hours even though I drove only half of that cos I can't sleep in the car knowing there's a possiblity HJ might drive us to our deaths off a cliff without my knowing how I died (I'm not kidding).

I'm the kind who likes to be in control of the situation, and has things planned out to a large extent before I reach the place, particularly since this was a short trip and we didn't have too much time to waste... so you can borrow my Manual of places to go and things to do, which is all nicely ring-bound... heh...

What we did:
a. swim with dolphins (8/10),

b. hiked up and down 200+m for a full day in the Queen Charlotte Track (6.5/10; would have been 8.5/10 if not for the fact that it was so shack and if someone had carried me up on a sedan chair.. haha),

c. sipped Sauvignon Blanc (to my unsophisticated palate, a $17 Shingle Peak SB still tastes mostly like a $17 Oyster Bay SB still tastes mostly like a $35 Cloudy Bay SB),

d. stared at stars (10/10) - we stayed at this quiet town along the West Coast called Hokitika... we had a splendid Indian curry dinner, found that there was no tv in the B&B at all and so had to amuse ourselves by making mugs of hot tea and wrapping ourselves in our bedroom comforters whilst talking nonsense (inevitably the topic moves to the ones who got away) on the deck chairs in the verandah waiting for the clothes dryer to finish (never knew it takes 3 cycles to be done with half a load)... when it was time to go to bed, I took off my specs, switched out the lights, and noticed that there were white spots outside the window... put my specs back on, and Goodness, they were the brightest and many-est stars I've seen in a long long time! It was truly amazing... I must have stared for a good half hour lying in bed before succumbing to the z-monster...

e. got a free upgrade on the car from a 2-litre Holden / Opel Vectra to a 3-litre Mitsubishi Airtrek... at some point when we were overtaking a Triumph Spitfire, we realised we were more than twice as tall as the really beautiful Spitfire!

f. played golf - we got fined NZD200 each upon entry into NZ because we failed to declare that we had used golf shoes (yeah yeah, nag me all you want, and rub in the fact that I am a lawyer too)... we managed to play only twice, but at beautiful places... once on a links course by the beach, and once in Hagley Park with people strolling across the fairways

g. climbed walked up glaciers (7/10)

h. Water-water rafted (5.5/10 cos it was no where near as scary as they made it out to be) and Hang-glided (9/10.. amazing! Believe me when I say u really feel like a bird and that you can actually fly!) I was just going to black-out the eyes part in my photo on the right, but considering I had the widest grin possible, which showed my yellow-ish teeth, the latter had to go as well)

i. watched Pride & Prejudice in Dunedin... if nothing else, the music's perfect! (check out this site for some of the music) It's always been my bugbear that you can't really find a mainstream movie these days where there is no gratuitous sex and kissing, and this was a really refreshing change... trust me, they could have made Jane Austen turn in her grave and put in some kissing scenes really easily, but thankfully they refrained from that.... as I was watching the movie, I kept thinking that in my view the perfect person for the role would have been Colin Firth, and it was only later that I found out he acted in the BBC adaptation some years back... for the record, I think Rosamund Pike is prettier than Keira Knightley.. now HJ and I are totally convinced that behaving like Mr. Darcy is the way to get chicks... hee hee... very tempted to go buy the DVDs of Sense & Sensibility and Emma on Ebay... hope they don't cost too much! Doubt they sell copies in JB anyway

There's so much backlog to be cleared over the next week or 2... am just hoping that the regular work does slow down towards the end of the year, and let me have a peaceful November and December... hopefully some travel is in the works too! heh.. in the meantime, I shall be poring over a copy of Pride & Prejudice as I eat Yong Tau Hoo in the office at lunchtime to save time and money...

HJ has definitely caught the travel bug, and might do a backpacking trip to Europe over CNY... I wanna do Hokkaido sometime next year! hopefully with The One... :o)

finito

美美的早晨。。蔚蓝的天空。。漂亮的心情。。

On this very sunny and beautiful day, I decided that I better pen my parting words before I get too comfortable here and refuse to budge and eventually gena evicted by woof! when he comes back.. ;p

my messy messy workstation..
a reflection of my disorganised thoughts and my confusing little world..

Special thanks to woof! for his generosity in loaning me his blog and his accommodating audience who put up with my inconsequential musings for the past 1 week.. it has been a refreshing experience.

But now, I got to move on.. and that I will. :)

hopefully, a clean slate now..

ok.. just did the laundry.. I must seize the day now so that I will have clean sheet that smell of the beautiful sun to sleep on tonight.. :)

Ciao all!

The whorish blog owner will be back soon!

the trick to capturing an awwWWwWWwww moment

Have you tried taking pictures of animals before?

I did but the pictures usually turn out horrid as the animals basically don't know how to pose and are always so active and impossible to capture on print.

Look at the following pictures I took of my friend's dogs, miu miu and zee zee just now..

miu miu.. look here.. be STILL..
LOOK HERE..

zee zee.. look into the camera.. zee zee..!

AIYA!!

miu miu.. c'mon.. stand again..
I wana take a picture of you standing..

miu miu.. dinner will be served shortly..
but now, let's take a nice shot of you..
eh! mai dong dong hee lei..

And finally, after a lot of food and a decent workout, they finally relented..

the trick is to feed them so much food until they lembei lembei and nua nua


then play and tire them out.. and they will be guai guai..

Allow me to introduce to you..

miu miu..
(the gifted dog that knows all the tricks, the supposed darling of the night)

and zee zee..
(the normal tech dog whom the owner got at lay long price because of some birth defect
but so yang oh/sai nai that you cannot help but love..)

look at zee zee who was so tired that
she promptly fell asleep on my lap after I sayang her for a while..


ha.. like this a dog's life also not bad wat..


so cuteeeee hor...?


look at them.. they can do no wrong lor..