Today

The end of today will mark my 2 years in the current workplace.. I know it's not a long time by most counts, considering people like my dad worked for the same company for almost 40 years, but increasing are the days when I'm feeling that the end is not too far away..

There's so much I want to say, but blogging about work is never a good idea...

But now I remember why the sailing experience on the immediately preceding post was so special - it happened on the day before I was to start my new job with the current place.. the uncertainty of what it would be like, the transition from shipping litigation to corporate in-house work, and the relocation to a place far away from my ex-classmates.. all that with 1 of my best friends spending the afternoon with me just made it so much easier...

Oh well.. in any case 2 years is definitely cause for celebration! And to await the bonus payout which should come in the next 2 weeks! I feel like some retail therapy, but can't quite think of anything not cheap but not too expensive to buy...

2 years ago

2 years ago, sometime around today, we did 1 of the 10 nicest things ever, in my life...

LG's bunch of friends and I took a J-24 sailboat out... the sun was glorious, and we spent the morning just cruising lazily about before anchoring the vessel just outside the cordon set up by the coast guard during the Asian Aerospace... we saw all sorts of planes do their flypasts - civillian jetliners doing their steep climbs which in real life would make some passengers scream, helicopters briefly flying upside down, and of course, military jets forming all sorts of patterns with their colored smoke...

I don't know what it was in particular, but the entire afternoon was just awesome...

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Did you know the Triumph maximiser bra is 10 years old? I didn't until I saw 2 salegirls yesterday wearing these t-shirts saying something along the lines of "empowering women for 10 years"...

I'm so crever

Was at one of our offices overseas 2 weeks ago, and had to print out some documents, so I routed my documents to print out from their printers...

Then I went on reservist and when I came back to work last weekend, I was happily printing out quite a bit of my work documents, before realising that no printouts were emerging from my regular printer.. you can imagine why - they were coming out from the overseas office's printer still!

Thank goodness there were no super-sensitive documents, otherwise there will be hell to pay! Imagine the local office staff crowded around the printer and reading Chief-whatever-Officer's employment contract on a Monday morning.. that would make their day!

Keluar Baris

Reservist is finally over!

What we had these 3 days was a company mission, which frankly speaking, was quite slack. Some pics from our training at a disused housing estate:


Doing planning at what must have been a chinese chess table really popular with the old men who lived in the estate.


Making our own wasabi mayo salmon sandwiches because we thought it was going to be a long mission


Army food: This was the yuckiest meal we had: bony fish with 2 fish balls, and chop suey vegetables, accompanied by lychee jelly, and then pineapple tart and crackers for nightsnack (a.k.a. supper)


Awesome sunset!

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I never used to believe those people who told me to say "excuse me" when I went to pee in dark places, until this time when I was in BMT, and pee-d at the side of the rifle range without saying the magic words. That very night, I got a high fever, and spent the next day (a Saturaday) at the camp medical centre all alone, until my mom was so pissed off she came down and insisted that I be released to be taken care of at home. The fever continued for a few days, without any other symptoms, until my mom told her mom, who then went to see someone (must have been a person connected with some religion), and within a few hours thereafter, my fever went poof!

So these days, I feel silly, but say "excuse me" all the time... some of my buddies say it in all the 3 major languages, just to be safe - "siam", "dui bu qi" and "excuse me"... hahahaha...

Somehow got a slight fever the day I came back from the mission, but it disappeared within 18 hours, so I think I didn't pee on / in front of anything I shouldn't have this time round.. heh...

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Back to work tomorrow... Hope I get to travel again soon, and often at that... feeling a little restless and sian of staying in the office... The next month or 2 might contain some changes work-wise, and I'm pretty excited about what they possibly hold!

And it's less than 1 month to the bonus payout!

Harnee, I'm home!

Came home not too long ago.. am sitting in air-con comfort, really thankful that the sun chose to come out blazing today rather than a day when we had outdoors training..

Didn't get to sleep the 10 hours a day that we enjoyed last in-camp, but for some reason I don't feel sleepy... think I'll just laze at home and finish up the last few episodes of Grey's Anatomy I have...

Some random thoughts and photos from my short holiday and then in-camp-training:

Trip


I saw her face just about everywhere in the city during the trip.. both my travelling buddy and I didn't know who she was, but on a scale of 1 to 9.9 (there being no such thing as a perfect 1o, and I'm not so mean as to give anyone 0.5.. heh), she is certainly a >9... sure, the photo must have been airbrushed, but she didn't look more than 19 years old.. yummy! 1 of the first things I did when I came to camp for reservist was to ask my hokkien peng buddies who she was... apparently, she's Rene Liu... my new Chinese idol!

Reservist

It's amazing to see how much the army has changed since I did my NS.. u realise many of the regular soldiers are now younger than you, which is a slightly weird feeling..

A comparison of the new and old army - when it started drizzling slighty during our IPPT test:
Old army: Warrant officer would should "you [insert expletives here], take shelter for what, will melt [he meant dissolve] ah?"
New army: "Eh, stay in the training shed! Want to get struck by lightning ah?"
I swear some years down the road, they will be shouting "want to catch a cold ah!?"


My new "wife", with my really old and garang helmet..



Buddy taking a leak in the jungle, even though there was a porta-loo just 15 steps away.. we're too used to peeing au naturale...



The new army - Reading AWSJ and playing PSP in the field...


I realise people behave very differently when they have to wake up at 5am... I'm terribly grouchy and just want to be left alone... some people remain very cheery and keep talking and asking questions, which makes me want to bash them..

We've all put on weight over the past 10 years... there's only 1 guy amongst the 20+ in our platoon who still wears size S army pants... some of us have graduated to L, including myself, although I swear I can put both my fists in the waistband of my pants even with the tightening buttons maxed out... 1 of the guys insisted on wearing size M, and we could see his VPL!!! hahaha...

I thought I'd lost my dog tags, which have seen me through some of the worst shit in my army days, but thankfully found them again...

Just about the only times I watch horror movies are with my army buddies, and this year was no exception... we caught this Chinese one called 49, which was really lame...

Speaking of movies, we realised it was definitely possible to do an army version of Brokeback Mountain, since the underlying themes are quite similar.. we had a really good laugh - ours would be called Point Four Four (the 2 other contenders were Point Three Seven and Duck Farm), which are all the names of the hills we used to charge up to vanquish the enemy... the 2 dudes would be reunited every year during reservist, even though they have their own lives back in the real world...

Ok.. guess that's it for now.. gonna try to fall asleep again...

Placeholder

It's the 3rd day of reservist and I'm back at work at 9pm whilst the rest are out galivanting!! haha... admittedly a part of me wants to solicit for sympathy and for u all to say "poor thing".. heh..

Anyways, it's been a pretty decent reservist thus far.. some perspiring but nothing too strenuous... and a chance to make $200 tomorrow when we do our range.. watch me shoot a smiley face shape into the target board! right..

Just had good Jap food from the restaurant near my office.. much better than the "fish and chips" dinner I had in camp at 5:30pm, which contained, as a buddy said, "fish too fishy, fries too dry, and soup too starchy".. but no matter what, much much better than the sandy vegetables and fly-soup we used to get back in the NS days....

Take care!

Doods

Okay, I'm off on my work / relak trip, and reservist next week! Take care everyone! And if you've bought Toto for the draw this Friday, here's wishing you the best of luck! Remember, if you win, I'd like a Volkswagen Golf GTi please.. heh..

Fingers Crossed

Tomorrow might turn out to be the worst day of my life at the current workplace - am really keeping my fingers crossed...

Anyways, I had 6 of the really good jumbo chicken wings at Ikea for dinner tonight, but felt positively sick after the 4th one... am quite surprised that I only can eat 3 or 4 of their wings these days...

*Stretch*

It's been a nice, quiet weekend..

Had dinner and a cards session at a colleague's place on Friday night... when you sometimes get a little too used to the life u and ure regular friends live, it's funny / necessary to jolt the routine out of your system... this colleague eats dinner everynight at home with bone plates, heaters for the serving dishes (which happen to be nice claypots, casserole dishes, etc.), in a home which you'd have to walk for 20+ minutes from the main road to reach if you didn't have a car...

Anyways, it's 3 consecutive winning streaks! Who says the year of the Dog is going to be bad for dragons? haha... we played this variation of Blackjack called, well, Californian Blackjack, where based on your first card u can decide whether to double / triple ure initial wager, and after you've decided, the dealer can then further double / triple ure wager if he wants.. which means that a $1 bet can end up being $9!

Got Season 1 of Grey's Anatomy, which I finished over the past 2 days.. quite good, except that, as with most dramas, it's very quickly "descending" into everybody sleeping with everybody, ex-girlfriends, betrayal and lies...

At the end of the day, there's still nothing like The West Wing... I never blogged about it, but I was awfully sad when John Spencer / Leo Magarry died... he was the one who held everything together on the show, and who didn't have any ridiculous idiosyncracies which made the others seem flippant, considering the relative importance of their jobs...

Anyways, it's a short work trip this week, followed by a weekend break at the destination, and then 11 days of reservist! I can't wait to fly again... Hopefully this year brings me to many new places (and on business class.. haha)!

Argh!!!

Was just asked to go on a short work trip in Europe next week, but can't, because it clashes with some pre-existing engagements! There goes my PPS membership for next year (not to mention 20,000 FF miles)... boo hoo hoo..