My Grumblings

Okay folks, time to turn on the heat for me. Sigh. My colleague (aka my homeboy/partner-in-crime/etc) is leaving me to my doom. He’s going for a better pie out there. Oh well. I do wish him good luck. I guess I’ll just have to eat breakfast and lunch alone from now on. The thing about this guy is his humour and I appreciate his humour and vice versa. We were always trying to find things to make fun off. Oh well…and another thing too, this would be bad in future for me because I got no one else to rely on, no one else to CMB (cover-my-butt).

In future, I’ll be doing things with another person? How I feel about this? I ain’t sure. Leave me a message if you want something more personal. Why? Because….

Being a technical trainer I have to CMB just like everyone else. I actually gathered my own group to help each other out. Initially there were three, then one guy quitted. This leaves two, now, I’m all alone to face the wrath of the management and what-nots. Our group often chipped in efforts to CMB for each other. Each of us recognized our strengths and weakness and so we deal with every problem that comes our way and try to uplift our morale whenever we get a bashing/trouble from anywhere. So now, I guess I have to do this "rambo" style. Problem is, I don’t have a big gun like "rambo" does.

My department now would left with two, myself and my senior. I had already make an agreement with him saying that I’ll do most of the not-so-tough courses and he’ll deal with the much tougher courses. Hey, don’t look at it as I’m cheating or anything like that because most of the courses that are running are the not-so-tough courses. So I’ll be doing the bulk of the business. Oh well, since I’m here in the working environment, I might as well do something useful.

A funny thing happened today too, my GM gave me an ang pow. How much? Enough for me to spend in MacDonalds. Why? I don’t know. I have several guesses but nothing concrete. Anyway, time to go home. Will post something tomorrow.

I found out that this blog site is not able to show my first
blog article due to the limited features. If you, the reader would like to view
my past blogs for whatever reason, you have to click on my last post in the
*Recent Post* column, then you can navigate at the top of my last post for the
older posts. Sigh, cumbersome but can’t complain much after all, it’s free.
Once a while I’ll post this portion to let the newer readers know about my
previous posts.

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I’m pumped up. Yeah! Bring on the cows! Yeah! Come get some!

At least that’s what I was hoping when I finished my first training. My first
training? Let me clarify… my first training of a new course. You see, as a
story-teller I mean trainer, one must continue to find more subjects or courses
to train and thus it is akin in learning a new story to tell. A new story may
not come up as nice as the older stories because you have little or no practice
in telling this new story and as time goes, your ability to tell the same story
will progress and will later be master in telling that story. So, first blood
was spilled by me. Several mistakes but livable. I’ve been telling enough
stories to cover and smoothen things out and not let it go out of hand (meaning
that I don’t look TOO foolish). After all, that’s what the company is paying me
to do anyway.

Things pretty quiet in my office today, my boss is not here (yea!) and my
senior instructor quitted and not showed up as the rumour has stated since two
weeks ago and so my colleague, who came in earlier than I did, stepped into the
shoes of the senior who left without telling anyone else. So I bid you
farewell.

Now on the bigger news! Yea! I got a ljackpot! Not really, I just counted my
money once more and I manage to have enough dough to service my car’s air
conditioning. I’ll set it on next Saturday to do the servicing. Sigh. Reminded
me of the times when I was in

Canada

.
You sometimes need both air conditioning and heater. But heater is a must.
Thank God this is the tropics! I can’t go through life if I have to service
both. I’ll starve to death. Speaking of starving…. I suppose to go on a diet.
My lunch today? BIG Mac meal…medium sized meal. Yeah. I know….sigh… feeling a bit
tight around my waist is slightly uncomfortable so you guys and gals out there
don’t have to tell me.

Back to reality, guess I’ll have to start rehearsing my next chapter in story
telling now so that at least I won’t flop the story tomorrow…at least not as
much as I would not like.

I couldn’t update my blog last night cause my stinkin’ ADSL line decided to be a "flapping" communicating line. Flapping is a term used by network communication engineers as "sometimes work and sometimes cannot work in a short period of time" (say in one minute the line can be up or down several times). It just pisses me off. I mean, there I was trying to get on line and each time I get a successful connection, I type the url and then when the page is almost ready, the line got disconnected and thus I need to wait for the line to synchronizes itself then try logging in again and then finished where I left off, then the annoying thing happens again. Arrrggghhhh. It vexes me. Then I gave up. So I’m postponing my blog till I get a decent line speed and more importantly, stabilized connection.

Anyway, what was that I need to write in my blog? Nothing serious and nothing much. Just that I’ve gained another inch and I don’t know if I can fit my pants that I suppose to be wearing tomorrow. I think I’ll skip wearing my tie (cause the throat around my neck seemed to be a bit tight too. Sigh. Price to pay for being a glutton. It only happens once a year right? Fat chance (intentional pun).

Where was I? Oh yeah, I met up with my uncles and aunts that I hardly seen for almost a year now. It doesn’t help when I wasn’t there during all those tea parties held on previous occassions. I often skip those, after all what is a tea party without gossiping right? Those I choose not to join but what else could I do in a tea party? Anyway, the Chinese New Year tea party yesterday was kinda fun…for them. I wasn’t having fun (personal reasons…too personal to mention in this blog).

Anyway, since I am in the party, I decided to entertain myself by watching Lord of the Rings: Two Towers once more. After all, it’s my place that the tea party was held. Since I bought the DVD extended version, I have an extra half an hour to the original movie. So there I was eating edible food and watching the Orcs decimating the humans and humans try to fight back while my nephews and nieces fighting in the background. The adults were enjoying each others company by asking questions about each other’s lives with the usual "how are you doing’s" and "how’s your kids", etc.

For me, since I am alone (the only English speaking joker among the group of Chinese speaking group), I find it difficult to connect to even my cousins. Not only the language barrier but also the thinking. Yeah, their thinking is rather different from mine and so I choose to smile and continue to watch Treebeard and his ents destroying Saruman’s lair. Since it is an extended version, it is a four hour long movie so I have legitimate excuse of saying, "don’t disturb me, I’m watching it…for my fifth time".

One bonus thing though, more ang pows. Problem is, everyone keep asking me to get married so that they don’t have to give me an ang pow. Jokingly…I hope. Sigh. Things are good thus far, I get a bit of more cash, probably I’ll need it since I need to service my car’s air conditioning (a must in a tropical country for most people…sigh…aren’t we humans pampering ourselves just a bit too much? Look at our parents…this would be another topic next time). So all in all, I’ll rate it as a "six-out-of-ten" day. By the way, happy belated to all, the Seventh Day of Chinese New Year is also known as "everybody’s birthday" day too.

Yup. I still can’t find the switch to turn the "brian has updated his blog" off.

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I have to come down from my high level of enjoyment since today is the last day of holidays for me and so next week, I’ll be back to work. This may also mean that I won’t be writting my blog so often (so discipline it seemed) and I know that most of you will say ‘thank you for not writting so often’. Anyway.

Today’s life began at about noon where I went and get my engine oil changed, add coolant to my radiator, and my spark plug changed as well. Total bill came up to 130 and my total ang pow was 135 bucks. Great huh? I think it is.

Then I went and did my errands, i.e. banking. Got to all my three banks and settled my stuff by four thirty. That five bucks extra from my ang pow? I spent it on travelling via LRT to Citibank where I have to pay my Credit Card that I owed the bank. Ha! From today onwards, Citibank owes ME money. I still have one buck plus (positive surplus) in my Citibank credit card account. Ain’t that great? Yeah, that’s a great feeling. Now I got to settle my other bank. Which is not that bad. Probably I’ll get it all paid up by middle of this year or something like that. Oh yeah, next item to mention about today is dinner!

Had a great dinner with an ex-colleague. Tori-katsu, beef terriyaki, miso soup (ordered seconds) and other stuff just makes it great. My ex-colleague is such a good company to eat with, we never seemed to have enough time to chat. So good food coupled with great conversations (everything from Narnia to ’see the waitress with HUGE jugs’ note: this is NOTHING to do with the jug of water she’s carrying) just ended my day for today. Ah. Nice.

I found out that I cannot turn off my message being sent out every single time I update a blog to my friends. I try to find but I can’t so if my blog update thingy is flooding your mail, believe me, I do not want it to be so. If you do find the setting to turn it off, let me know.

Anyway,

Today is a day of rest, nothing much, just doing some chores and tomorrow would be another day to do some banking. This is great because when the holiday period ends, so will the easy life. Schedules would be tight once more and doing banking would once again be a rush task.

If you stop and think about it, life is about rushing and it seems that the harder you push yourself, the harder you have to continue to push. Probably this is the reason why people are pushing themselves so hard until they develop all kinds of phobia, neurosis, etc. Ever wondered why a shrink would not be able to do well in a village? Because in a village, you won’t have stress and with stress comes mental disorders. Yup, mental disorder is a urban disease (quoting from a friend).

In a village, you may be thinking about the next meal or the next harvest but life in general is pretty stress free. Here, in the urban society, stress is basically self-induced. Why? Self-induced because of "keeping up with the Jones’s", "grass is greener on the other side", etc. If someone says, so what if the cost of living goes up, I’ll just spend less or I change my lifestyle instead. Problem is, most people does not want to change to a lower lifestyle but a bigger lifestyle. By chasing a bigger lifestyle, it’s again telling yourself that grass is greener on the other side. So to rush for it make it harder for anyone to reduce the mental stress. This may, in turn, cause some mental disorder of some sort.

If you are staying in a village, though you may not be living in luxury, you may be better off since you won’t have a headache of getting a better car, bigger house, etc. Sometimes I wish I would be stress free, just like the villages, wouldn’t you?

It was a slow morning and afternoon but the evening made up for it. Had a good time with a German family (the wife made lasagna) and it was rich and good. Yup, I’m definitely going to be fat this month. Sigh. Feeling my waist I think I should do something drastic…such as exercise. I use to do some form of exercise but my partner went away, I was pretty active with badminton then I had to hang my racquet because my partner stopped. So I’m partner-less and now looking for another partner or sport. I guess I like swimming but it’s hard because my mind is not active enough. I mean, if you do play badminton (or any other sport), you would know that the mind plays a very important part. Developing a new strategy, identifying techniques to be used in different scenarios, etc. However, in swimming, you can’t do that. That is why my mind tells me that it is boring. I don’t mind swimming for fun but I prefer something more… I don’t know… challenging?

Typically, when going for a swim, I would do about 20 laps non-stop with a moderate speed using breast-stroke but at the end of the 20 laps, my body feels warm (which is good) and my heart pumps harder (which is also good) but my mind tells me… so what else to do? Let’s try free-style…there I go practicing my free-style but nothing of strategy and what-nots. I wish I have someone to play tennis with me too but (there’s always something isn’t there) the weather. Being in the tropics, the weather is pretty unpredictable (actually most of everywhere else) and so having a serious game of tennis means have to bear with bad weather. The problem is, whether you play or not, you’ve booked and paid for the court before hand. If it is not that then, if you travel all the way there, play for about ten minutes, the sky starts to piss on you. Then you need to stop, pack your bags and wait for the rain to stop then try as much as you can to dry the court (this may take sometime) then continue to play or go home. Yup, I’ve been there to know this. Squash? I’m an old man…can’t take the speed anymore. Sigh. Jogging? Same as swimming. So what else is there? So I’m going to try something…anything at the end of Feb. Let’s see how it goes.

The third day of Chinese New Year seems like the best day for me since I don’t know when. I have been waiting for this third day to happen (ever since beginning of this year) and it seemed that this day did not disappoint me. Started out with a warm day, I then washed my car then went to pick up Esther. Off we go to an old friend’s place, actually the friend is old though our friendship is not so old, had a whale of a time (for me at least). I guess the relationship I had with others there at the first party was good and it kinda bond even further on the relationship that we have is the one thing that I was looking forward to. At the party, found out that we had a friend who just gave birth to a baby girl (Caitlyn Luiza Lim), a new friend, though only hours old, became a part of our group when we proceed on to visit the two new mom and pop. Yup, friendship like these wished it would last as long as I shall live. A warm, fuzzy kind of feeling is felt when I see a whole group celebrating each other’s presence and a sense of belonging too. Oh how long since I felt it last.

Then moving on to a dinner with more old friends, more food and having a ‘jolly good’ time. A jovial party with pizza and barbeque chicken (all from the nearby Domino’s Pizza) not to mention great cakes. I have to say great cakes because I ain’t a cake fan. I eat them but I don’t sweat over them but this one… wow…. the fruit cake with rum was just the type that hits my taste buds and send me to the moon. I ate five or more slices if I can recall and this does not contribute to my diet program that I am trying to follow and achieve.

Ending the day with a nice group and a nice dinner just made me feel like a young puppy that the master gave a five-star bone to. Having said that, I just wonder will I have a nicer party like this ever with another group? I would say  not very likely …friends are hard to come by when you are older and the older you are, the more you want to keep your friends. Making friends such as these often takes a great amount of time and the older you are the more difficult to find time to reinforce friendship. In school is much easier since most of the time you spend is in school and classes and activities helps bonding. When we work, it’s sometimes tough to find time to share our lives with your colleagues. Anyway, it’s time for me to hit the sack, it is already ‘tomorrow’…the fourth day of Chinese New Year.

Today is the second day of the Chinese New Year celebration, the celebration has 13 more days to go and it seems that I may enjoy this form of coming togetherness event. Long friends that you haven’t heard let alone seen since the last time you’ve met, distant relative that you didn’t know much about but rekindled every year, etc. Each of these group starts with a greeting, a warm shake of hand and looking unsure after that. Too close in relation for small talk but can’t go anywhere else because you haven’t met since a long time and don’t know where to start. Then the converstation begins with a few "how-are-you-doings". Like ‘how is your job’, ‘how’s your new car’, etc. But to say a hello and followed by a ‘how-are-you-doing’ seems like a universal ritual of greeting. I’ve written a stuff about this one so I’ll not elaborate but just my personal feelings about this issue and just wanted to share out.

A shake of a hand and a smile following the "hello" greeting. Doesn’t it seemed odd or suspicious since you shake hands but do you actually, sincerely want to know how is that person doing in his/her life? If you are sincerely wondering how is she/he doing then that’s fine but in my opinion, most people say that without even realizing what each other is saying/doing. So if I were to shake your hand without a slightest intention of wanting to know how are you doing, then I just might as well not do it. If it is to be one, please do it more sincerely. A ‘hello’ followed by a ‘how-are-you-doing" should be sincere and the other person would be able to pcik out the genuine from the fakes. Be sincere about what you do, that’s my bottom line and not just do it for the sake of a ritual.

A goodbye should also be meant like a goodbye and not just a bye. A goodbye is when you wish that person well and wishing to see or hear her/him again. What most people would have is an empty goodbye, pretty much like a ‘how-are-you-doing’ but it is meant for a short parting but don’t know when to meet up again.  A goodbye is also important for a sincere termination of communication but with a hope of meeting up again where the two parties left off. A ‘bye’ as oppose to a ‘goodbye’ is just an informal termination. My point is not to look at the words but the sincerity behind the words. Don’t just use words as a ritual but also mean what you say, especially the first and the last impression of communication.

Ah. The first day of Chinese New Year. I’ve collected enough ang pow to satisfy my selfish desire. I have roughly eight at the moment and probably get about five to ten in the next 14 days. I have no qualms about receiving them just my consciousness is telling me about those people that I took from. (Refering to my previous post). It is better this year, for me at least, to see my extended family visiting and setting a more joyful atmosphere. My nephew and nieces have all grown up now (duh) and now working or furthering their studies in their respective fields. My only regret is that I don’t know my cousins, nephews and nieces. I should keep in touch with them. I should get to know them better. I wish I have better opportunity but I only see them once a year. Funny, I see my friends more than I see my own flesh and blood. Yes, I know it’s normal but should it be like so? It’s like it’s normal to run through a red light but should you do it?

Out of touch, out of mind.

That is what I fear too. I have not been close with my elders…for several reasons of course but I don’t have a reason NOT to be close to my cousins (okay some I do have problems communicating with but not all) but not my newphes and nieces. I got a hold of one of my nieces’s e-mail and now part of my "friends" in friendster.

But this is what new year is all about. A new year, a new opportunity to learn, grow, change and hope. I’ve written about what is hope to a person in my other blog (haha! I won’t tell you what is the link) and with this new year, I hope that I could be closer to those I have not been close to. Keeping in the dark is fine with me if you are an introvert but it is still not good to lose ties with your kin, especially if you can do it then by all means do it.

This year, with this day being anew in my perspective, creates a hope that I hope to nurture it and fulfill it. Yes, it is a good day for me indeed. Happy holidays.

Chai Shen Tao. Here comes God of Prosperity. Yeah, MacDonald also launched Prosperity burger too. Yes, Chinese New Year is here. Red is seen everywhere. The colour of prosperity. Funny thing is I don’t feel properous (except my tummy that tells me that I’m rich in other areas) and I’m wondering, is it just me or I don’t feel the mood of celebration? I’m not saying anything but I just don’t feel like celebrating, however I feel good about the days of work leave though.

Back in the old days (I’m old you see) Chinese New Year was THE celebration that I wait for, year after year. Fire crackers of all types and sizes were found in almost every street corner and waited to be bought and I was the one buying. That time money has some value, more chunks in a note, than now. I usually bought about 100 bucks worth and it was ALOT at that time. By the end of the 15-day celebration, I would have used up about 4 boxes of 144 sticks of Moon Travellers along with other brands and types. I played the red firecrackers so much that I nearly blew my fingers off…several times. Will that deter me? Ha! I laugh at my mother…not in front of her at least. Ah yes, those were the days my friends. Sigh. (I noticed that I sigh alot too).

Ang pow was the second thing that I often look forward too during Chinese New Year. I have no idea that Ang Pow was the primary thing that everyone seek for during the festive season. Now I look at both my parents, it would the last thing I wanted them to do, to part with their money that they have saved for us kids. I’ll never find the heart to ask from them but it is customary to take, sigh, I wish they have a rule saying that no adult above age 21 would be allowed to receive the ang pows. I wish but most people would say, try to get off your parents as much as possible (yup I met these people before) so that you don’t have to pay so much. I can’t. I just don’t have the heart. How I wish I could pay them all in return but with my current pay, I could only pay slightly more than half of what the expenses incur in a month. Damn it! Why life can be so hard on the ones I cared for. Now I got to think of my future too. Another sigh.

Coming back to Chinese New Year, I look around and I see that the whole atmosphere is fading. Commercialism is high but the culture is fading…fast. The actual concept of celebrating is heading towards commercialism and lost its meaning of celebration of a New Year. Hope, family reunited, clearing of debts (a Chinese thingy - by new year, all debts should be cleared before the new year), etc. These and more have lost its meaning. Tradition is good but when the meaning is lost or no recognized then tradition would be lost, faded into history books.

Hmm….today is the New Year’s Eve and a family gathering is often done and eat together. I looked at my setting in my own household, it is fading too. Just a few of us but tradition is tradition. Anyway, I got too much to say but I can’t…my dinner is ready and my father beckons me to the table. Happy Chinese New year readers. Happy Chinese New Year.