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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Tomorrow will be a better day (明天會更好)
Way back from 1985! Just about what i am thinking right now =)
(女)轻轻敲醒沉睡的心灵慢慢张开你的眼睛
(男)看看忙碌的世界是否依然孤独的转个不停
(女)春风不解风情吹动少年的心
(女)让昨日脸上的泪痕随记忆风干了
(女)抬头寻找天空的翅膀侯鸟出现它的印记
(男)带来远处的饥荒无情的战火依然存在的消息
(女)玉山白雪飘零燃烧少年的心
(女)使真情溶化成音符
(合)倾诉遥远的祝福
(女)唱出你的热情伸出你的双手让我拥抱着你的梦
(女)让我拥有你真心的面孔
(男)让我们的笑容充满着青春的骄傲
(男)为明天献出虔诚的祈祷
(女)谁能不顾自己的家园抛开记忆中的童年
(女)谁能忍心看那昨日的忧愁带走我们的笑容
(男)青春不解红尘胭脂沾染了灰
(女)让久违不见的泪水滋润了你的面容
(合)唱出你的热情伸出你的双手让我拥抱着你的梦
(合)让我拥有你真心的面孔
(合)让我们的笑容充满着青春的骄傲
(合)为明天献出虔诚的祈祷
(女)轻轻敲醒沉睡的心灵慢慢张开你的眼睛
(女)看看忙碌的世界是否依然孤独的转个不停
(女)日出唤醒清晨大地光彩重生
(女)让和风拂出的影像谱成生命的乐章
(合)让我们期待明天会更好
(女)唱出你的热情伸出你双手让我拥抱着你的梦
(男)拥抱着你的梦
(女)让我拥有你真心的面孔
(男)让我拥有你真心的面孔
(女)让我们的笑容充满着青春的骄傲
(男)青春的骄傲
(女)让我们期待明天会更好
(男)唱出你的热情伸出你双手让我拥抱着你的梦
(男)让我拥有你真心的面孔
(女)你真心的面孔
(男)让我们的笑容充满着青春的骄傲
(女)青春的骄傲
(合)让我们期待明天会更好
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Monday, May 26, 2008
One moment of silence...and listen...
Michael Jackson's Heal the World. Quite an oldie, but with recent happenings in China and Myanmar, this song came into my mind, again randomly. Enjoy.
What has our world become? Global warming, sea levels rising, more natural disasters, one can only say, cherish what you have right now, cherish life itself.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008
The Beautiful Game Part 2
After the World Cup in June 1998, it was on to the English Premier League, arguably the most popular league in the world today. Back in 1998 Arsenal were the defending champs, but the season of 1998-1999 belonged to Manchester United. Though i am, and will never be, no fan of United, but that season was classic itself.
It was amazing how this team carried on battling even in the face of adversity and made a reputation for themselves as the Comeback Kings. The team of Peter Schemichel, Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Jaap Stam, Ronny Johnsen, Roy Keane, David Beckham, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Teddy Sheringham, Nicky Butt, Jesper Blomqvist etc, became legends after this season. The first clip is the last game of the Premier League, where Man U pipped Tottenham 2-1 and nicked the title by 1 point ahead of Arsenal.
The second clip has to go down as one of THE games of the decade.
After drawing 0-0 with Arsenal in the semi finals of the FA Cup, an English domestic tournament, the replay was just illuminating. Arsenal 1 Man Utd 2 was the scoreline, but what drama. David Beckham, for one, after being ridiculed by his country for his red card against Argentina in the World Cup, more than redeemed himself as he struck again to put Man U ahead. Dennis Bergkamp levelled for Arsenal, but then the goal from Man U's Ryan Giggs just left players and fans spellbound.
The third clip is the European final between Man U and Bayern Munich (the German champs) in neutral Barcelona, Spain. This match to determine who will go down as the champs of Europe. Man U, having won the Premier League and the FA Cup, were chasing the Treble, 3 major trophies in the season. 90 minutes in a match, plus injury time (a few minutes), and this match highlighted why United are the comeback kings, as they won the trophy not in the 90 minutes of play, but in the dying minutes of injury time, from 0-1 down to 2-1 up. Enjoy.
By the way, i support Arsenal. LOL.
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Friday, May 23, 2008
The Beautiful Game Part 1
Enjoy... Me the soccer fanatic all these years... here's how it started...
Holland 2 Argentina 1 (the match that started my support with the Dutch, World Cup 1998 Quarter Finals). The Dutch in their classic orange kit, Argentines in their blue and white strip.
Match facts: Both sides were very even heading into this match, boasting players (now legends) like Bergkamp(my all time fav), Overmars, Davids, De boer brothers, Kluivert, Batistuta, Ortega, Veron, Simeone etc. Classic match. By the way, the whole of the tournament i backed the Dutch. Lol. This was one classic moment.
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The days passes so fast...
Already midweek. Another gym day, another late night. One thing i like most about gym is the aftermath, when you don't have to feel guilty about eating and eating and eating cuz you already burn out so much! Cannot believe it sial. Munched on almost 7 bucks worth of food for dinner. And that's not fastfood priced food, that's normal hawker food. LOL. Someone pls tell me to control myself.. hahahaha.. anyway a very packed schedule, today just met up wif my senior, tmr another one, weekends packed as well.. ahh gotta take some winks off in the bus sial.
ok late liao.. sleep!
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Monday, May 19, 2008
Confessions from one's deja vu (free verse)
I need not
Applause from an admiring audience
Our reality glistened; of
Pride
Not liberty
That infiltrates the very pulse
Which drives the perhaps
Empty vessel
We wear masks, facades
Everything it takes
To live in a masquarade of gleaming gold and superficial successes
Entrapped in our ever-lusting automobile,
Convicted by our credits
Of which emulated
Was now a frightful and tentative child.
Homeward bound,
We charge to its evercharging face,
Skirting the glances from the mutes.
The saltish breath of the signing waves
Crashes with tomorrow's grounds
As if knowing of the dusk's retreat
Victorian's wisdom
Falls on deaf ears
Like hollowed bellowed echo
The forlorned language of love,
these juxtaposition (odious comparison)
Is only the tip of the iceberg
If progress only seeks
Not understands and listens
Then
One shall not bleed poetry
To stain the blueprints of our past's tomorrow
If only poetry
Could drum up courage
Reform the economic policies and politicians
And bake a million loaves of bread
My presence needs no apology.
Some random thoughts here and there. Anyway it was a good day today, went ktv with my sec sch friends. I somehow realised that i don't feel like singing that much, just like before anymore. Somewhat just preferred listening to others sing. So in the end it was alot of female vocals, me and my other guy fren were just practically resting (LOL) in the room. What a farce. Anyway so long, gotta work tmr...sleep early!
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Friday, May 16, 2008
哈哈。我想這是我生平第一次以華文來寫部落格﹐也是當兵兩年以來首次接觸華文﹐所以先以簡單的方式來寫吧。
六月雪
忽然從不同方向的小細節小靈感想起這‘六月雪’
想起小時電視節目‘鐘馗’﹐以這‘六月雪’為連續劇的小主題。
也以足球迷矚目的歐冠決賽的寒冷地點莫斯科聯想起‘六月雪’
更是為了全球變暖索造成的天氣轉變﹐從年底的雪季換成年中的冬季。
五月晴﹐六月雪﹐七月又會是如何呢﹖
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Why they still remember me?
Hai. The dreaded letter of mobilisation for reservist. Sianzz...................
Lol. In a blink of an eye, it's mid may already. Nothing's changed, just that life's been getting better with each day and getting more purposeful. I think i'm really getting somewhat lazy these days, like ehh slack lah dun chiong/pia so hard liddat. haha. slack and slack. got time sleep, got food eat, got work, chop chop do, chop chop finish, then can slack again. just like the good old days in army.
Day by day passes super fast now, and sometimes i can just doze off while say, blogging here, super shag. But i will try to keep blogging every now and then so that i don't lose touch with my languages as time passes by. Tomorrow i'll try chinese, i think already rusty beyond repair already. So long....
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The little things in everyday life
One day. 24hrs. One week. 7 days. One hour. 60min. One min. 60 seconds. These are just mere statements of how time is broken down. Time. A powerful phenomenon of which people speak of, as time flashes by in a whirl. I was out shopping with my frens a couple of weeks ago, when we chanced upon this shirt in Giordano(if i din rem wrongly). Black with gold words, it read: Soon your life will flash by. Make sure it's worth watching. I laughed inside. Another one of these quotes, yet so cliche yet very much true.
Time, and how to manage it. Many people talk about time management and their different ways of making use of it. When i was a teenager I used to like to think that if one day isn't spent productively and achieving a certain aim it would be considered wasted, and i'd feel bad about it. To tell me to read self help books would be as good as saying i needed help, and childishly, i didn't like the idea of being thought of as someone who needed help. So much for all the self consciousness. As a result? I don't learn.
There is also another favourite question pertaining to time. If you could turn back time, what would you change? Lol. Just like perfectionist players (in video games) like to save and replay if they lost, and to go through it again an again just to make it right, i would think that if i really had the choice of turning back time, there are just too many things that i would want to change. HOWEVER. Things happen for a reason. And that's why the movie Butterfly Effect was all the more impactful. That going back in time to change things would probably mean that our fates would change 180 degrees and even become totally warped, not to our liking certainly, simply because many things are beyond us.
Moving forward, there are quite a couple of things i'd like to do before the start of uni. I'll categorise them under Health, Wealth and Relationship.
A. Health
1) To keep fit and bulk up, hit the gyms often
2) To maintain a reasonably healthy =p diet, of course the more calories the better, though not too much unhealthy fats
B. Wealth
1) To stick to my job all the way even if i get bored
2) To do more reading up (i've gotten a couple of books for self reading)
3) To understand the subject of Business a little better before uni, especially pertaining to current affairs and economics. As for the more intricate Business stuff like Actuarial Science and Marketing, ahh leave it to uni bah. Lol.
C)Relationship
1) To keep up with frens through leisure/serious/crappy/fun activities, be it out in the blazing sun or in the airconditioned room, to find out how we are doing with our lives.
2) To appreciate my family even more than before, to spend quality time with them
Goal setting is important, yet i don't quite believe in going into the nitty gritty details of goals as of now, cuz for me it's just going to be another case of paralysis analysis.
Anyway, this post is getting a bit too serious. Getting very tired liao, tomorrow will be a great day. so long...
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Sunday, May 11, 2008
Happy mother's day!
May 11, 2008, another mother's day. Some call it commercial, others take it as a day to celebrate with their mums or spend quality time with her. Though it may sound very nice, as in Mother's Day, taking the time off to be with someone you hold so very dear, but something that has always occured to me, or to many of us, that Mother's Day is just an excuse, in fact every day is Mother's Day if we do something special for Mum, a little every day. But truth is we don't.
Prior to Mother's Day, every morning before i set out for work, i'll hear tis program on radio called Tokyo Tower. Originated from Japan (duh), this short segment on radio is actually a serial that depicts how a mother does stuff for her son out of pure love, like all mothers do, but the son does not appreciate it and finds his mum troublesome. Though, for one, the son wanted to bring his mum to Tokyo Tower to see the scenery. Eventually, the mother passed away, the son was full of regret, what he brought up to the Tokyo Towers wasn't his mum, but his mum's picture. Sad ending. Lots of tears.
So how? What could have been? Is it even relevant if one finally finds the answer after your loved ones pass away and nothing can bring them back? Truth be told, no one wants to live a life of regret. I don't. I accept that things happen for a reason. It's true that if someone whom i care for walks out of my life, i will undoubtedly be very sad, eventually ngei ngei still pulling myself together and getting on with life, albeit with a slightly heavier heart.
If i had a choice now, i would choose to make a positive difference in others lives. No one knows what is going to happen in the future. I am a pragmatist, and i am fearful too. But despite of my uncertainties, i will take that step forward, because if i don't, i know i will regret, and i certainly don't want to.
Life's not meant to be stressful or pressurizing. And i don't want to stress myself or people around me. 平常心 ba, and one'll be happy. I don't want to hide from my fears, i welcome it, because ultimtately fear is indeed an important part of our family of emotions. Ok time to go out, a wonderful day with Mum awaits. Peace out =)
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Saturday, May 10, 2008
It's the weekends again!
Nothing much to write here tonight, partly cuz i'm thoroughly shagged out after work and gym. So here's a song by Takashi Sorimachi, actor of Great Teacher Onizuka, this song is called "Poison". One of my favs.
Used to watch this show back in 2000 thereabouts, then rewatched it again in 2006. Great inspiration for folks like you and me.
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Thursday, May 8, 2008
An extraordinary day in an ordinary day
I'd like to tribute this post to this word called "stress". Something that tingled my thoughts a little, yet something that has been lingering like a shadow in my life. Stress. My workplace happens to be at a call centre, where stress management is important for one to be even carrying out daily work, especially when handling difficult customers. Customers who don't give a hoot about what you have to say, customers who have that i'm right you must be wrong mentality. Thankfully, my calls haven't been tricky. And i'd like to attribute it to a few moments in my previous job at Dell, plus other nitty gritty stuff that made me see through all this.
I am someone who takes things seriously. A little too serious at times for my own good. Something that can be good, yet backfires on me other times. When i first started out at Dell i had goals. Goals to achieve, hitting sales targets, talking to customers, doing successful sales pitches, and at one point of time, i felt really great, as i accomplished my goals one after another. Till the point came when i got stressed. Not for the first time. Some customers are just plain difficult to handle. Just out making trouble for you, just because you're a salesperson, doing service for them, and the expectations of difficult customers tend to be very high.
I remember one stressful moment when at least a dozen chinese prc students came into the shop to order laptops. Well the bargaining began of course, and cuz they didn't have credit cards (duh) so i went with them to the bank to do a cashier's order, plus all the bargaining and stuff about "your colleague gave me a 50 dollar discount, why not you?" yada yada. Plus an indian couple who also went with us to the bank to do the cashier's order. Nothing less than chaotic. The bank people literaly had to quieten our whole expedition down cuz it was a din at the bank. My head went big. But at least i had the sales. However, the next time a dozen indian customers came into the shop, we were all like: noo.................!! In the end we sat by the side and watched one of our poor saboed colleagues get himself super stressed, buried in the avalanche of indian men. So much for the enthusiasm. This was when stress can be funny. At least for those watching.
Though..other times it ain't funny any more when the customer does not understand your plight, screams over the phone and demands stuff from you or he'll start complaining. Unfortunately, this case happened when i was on off at a chalet, damn i hated it when customers start bothering me with stuff on our off days. Well normally monitoring their orders already takes up a chunk of your time, and i thought i had settled my outstanding cases before going to the chalet. However, this particular customer had to call upon my hp, my mistake too in picking up, and sorta affected my mood for the night. After which thinking about that incident, i made a mental note not to be so "responsible" for my clients. Even if i was God lol.
That's how workaholics are born, and i know that i am a potential workaholic myself. Thing is, when to be a workaholic, when to just chill? Our minds are not computers. Even computers need rest. There must be a healthy balance. The other extreme, stoning, is also a definite no-no, btw.
So today, i saw this colleague of mine break down because of a customer's harsh words. Several people were looking at her, and at that moment i started to feel for her. Yes, being responsible for your customers is a good thing. But when the other party does not appreciate your efforts and demand more from you, then i suppose it might just be more worth to just take it easy and laugh at the customer's supposed angry expression, albeit innately that is. Why burst your brain cells for nothing?
Looking back (i somehow realised that looking back isn't such a bad thing, i used to resent it), i feel for myself too. Getting stressed over things which you cannot change, which is beyond you, or even shedding tears over it (wah that was super paiseh, but as for tears i'll leave it to next time), that's just not worth your time. 24 hours 7 days a week, doing little things that make us smile, should be the agenda instead. Have a break, have a kit kat! (When you're furrowing your eyebrows and tensing up that is).
What's past is past. However, stress in the past will become stress in the future if one does not know how to control this bad habit consciously. 3 years down the road, when our batch graduates from uni, our future selves might even be strangers to us now. Though.... strangers with better habits. 3 months left to uni, it seems a long way from army now, an even longer way from jc/sec sch, yet it's never been closer. Stress? nah. a little will do.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Personality Secrets in Your Mp3 Player
Once past saying 'hello' and 'how are you?' to someone you've just met, what is next? How do we make friends and get to know other people? Psychologists have talked about the importance of body language, physical appearance and clothing but they've not been so keen on what we actually talk about. A recent study put participants in same-sex and opposite-sex pairings and told them to get to know each other over 6 weeks. Analysing the results, they found the most popular topic of conversation was music. What is it about music that's so useful when we first meet someone and what kind of information can we extract from the music another person likes?
"how good is music as a measure of personality?"The number of people who talked about music was surprisingly high. In the first week on average 58% of the pairs discussed music compared to 37% of all the other categories of conversation combined. Other categories included books, movies, TV, football and clothes.
Why then do we use music as a first port of call in getting to know another person? We probably think that music is indirectly telling us something about the other person's personality. For this reason, the second question this study tried to answer was: how good is music as a measure of personality?
Top 10 personalities
To measure this, participants were asked to judge people's personality solely on their top 10 list of songs."...a person's openness to experience was best communicated by their top 10 list of songs."This was compared to participants results on a standard type of personality test measuring the big five personality traits: openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Overall the results showed that music preferences were reasonably accurate in conveying aspects of personality. Of the five traits, it was a person's openness to experience that was best communicated by their top 10 list of songs, followed by extraversion and emotional stability. On the other hand, music preferences didn't say much about whether a person was conscientious or not.
What some music preferences mean for personality:
Likes vocals: extraverted
Likes country: emotionally stable. On the face of it, this is bizarre really because country music is all about heartache. Either the emotionally stable are attracted to country music or it has a calming effect on the unstable!
Likes jazz: intellectual
This raises the question of why people listen to particular types of music. One theory is that people simply find some music more pleasant for aesthetic or cognitive reasons. Another is that people use music to regulate their mood: I want to get hyper for a night out so I put on some dance music. Another is that music is related to identity; people listen to music that expresses they way they see themselves. It seems likely that a combination of all these theories is probably true.
"...this finding might not hold in different age-groups."One really important caveat for this study was that the average age of the participants was around 18 so this finding might not hold in different age-groups. My experience is young people talk about music much more than older people. This raises the question of what, for example, might be the most common topic of conversations for other age-groups getting acquainted. Any suggestions?
Despite this limitation it seems that talking about music might be a very powerful way to make a connection with another person.
I like both slow ballads and fast, catchy tunes. How about you?
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Make It Personal: Improving the Common Denominator in all Your Relationships
Jesus taught an important lesson about relationships. Essentially, what He said is that if any of us tries to improve a relationship by getting the other person to change (working hard to get the speck out of the other person’s eye), energies are being expended in the wrong direction. The place to begin is with our own failures (the plank or beam in one’s own eye).
Alone with God, simply ask, “Lord, what’s wrong with me? What are my faults? What are my sins?” Get your pencil and paper ready, for that is a prayer God will answer. Make a list of your sins.
Go back over the list and agree with God that these are wrong and, at the same time, thank Him for Christ’s death on the cross and therefore for forgiveness. Work through your list and accept God’s forgiveness for every past failure. God does not intend us to live under the emotional load of past failures. We can be forgiven.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man.” I believe that this is the most important principle of mental health and, consequently, of healthy relationships. We empty our conscience toward God when we confess our sins. We empty our conscience toward another person when we go to him or her and confess our failures.
Any time you become aware of friction or ill feelings in your relationships, the first question should be “Lord, what’s wrong with me?” As you see where you are wrong, confess it, accept God’s forgiveness, and ask His Spirit to control you. People do not “make us miserable.” We choose to be miserable. The immediate emotion that arises after the action of another person may be automatic and beyond your control, but what you do with that emotion is your decision.
If you are willing to search your own heart and confess any wrong discovered, then you can feel at peace, even though you are not particularly happy with the situation at hand. You then can be a positive force for change, rather than compounding the problem with your attitude.
Somehow through these couple of years, i have had a few brushes with the religious/spiritual side of my soul, and this was always something worthwhile knowing and thinking about. To feel totally at ease confessing your mistakes ain't easy, but as i found out, it ain't difficult at all either. All it takes is a little courage. And speaking of God, I remember myself standing in front of my platoon as an instructor and lecturing them about their unwillingness to ask questions because of the fear of making them look silly in front of their peers (equivalent of losing face). It goes like this: God gave us a golden mouth to open up and ask, so why aren't you asking(in typical army tone)? Ironically, when i look at the mirror after that, i think to myself, so why am i not doing it? I begin to laugh.
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Monday, May 5, 2008
The "why" of keeping your keyboard clean:
Did you know? Eating after typing on a dirty, dusty keyboard is as good as eating after touching a toilet seat! Lol. Found this article in the newspapers, sounds really scary, the things we associate with "not dirty" can actually contain so much germs. I must make it a point to clean my keyboard every now and then, most importantly, not to touch my face/eat food after working on the comp!
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Sunday, May 4, 2008
1/2 a year later...
So long since i blogged! For a start, i thought i'd just put in my few cents worth about "Your conscience or your job".
"In every job we do, there are bound to be situations for us to make difficult ethical judgment calls. Luckily for most people such situations are rare. But if we constantly have to choose between going against our conscience and keeping our job, then it's time to make a decision. Ethical issues normally fall under 3 categories: the industry issue, company issue, or a few individuals."
In Chinese there's a saying: 人在江湖 身不由己. Sometimes we have got to do what we don't exactly feel comfortable with doing, just because the system is beyond what you as an individual is capable of changing. Be it social dynamics or office hierarchy, it works the same everywhere. In army lingo it's called " by left", the opposite of "by right". At the same time, it's always healthy to stay true to our personalities and not let the temptation of promotion or glory obscure our already tunnelled visions. Or worse, to get lost in the corporate world that we don't even know ourselves anymore.
The importance of this is that we're all going to be entering the workforce proper in a couple of years time. To start with a good habit is always necessary, but more necessary than not, to develop the right mentality towards work so that we can at least enjoy our job better, rather than always looking at the clock, counting down towards the end of the day. After all, we're going to be spending 2/3 of our conscious hours at work, so why not make the best out of it?
Time to knock off liao. Lol. Ciaoz!
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