2012 Resolutions Verdict

2012 has ended. Let's see how many targets I hit.

1. Read more books. Let's target 10. Without specifying a quantity, I afraid I might slack off.

Verdict: Failed! Only managed to read The Starbucks Experience, Building Wealth Through REITs and finish Eat Pray Love.

2. Pass the two exams remaining. Given the heavy workload currently, I might attempt only one this year.

Verdict: PASSED! I am officially free of actuarial exams! Woohoo, I do not need to purposely avoid vacation near May or Nov anymore! (Though much of the time I just went traveling without thinking much)

3. Reduce weight to 52kg.

Verdict: Failed and passed. I failed to reach 52kg, but my stamina grows stronger after frequenting gym for workout training. Think this is a better and long-run way to maintain a healthy body. 

Row machine

4. Grow more in career. I am not sure what are the other ways of having salary increment besides passing exam for an actuarial associate, but I will explore along the way. Perhaps recognition of hard work is not a bad idea too, except always talking about money.

Verdict: Passed. Received positive comments from supervisor and boss though was once screwed hard by boss too. Let's see how much is my annual increment in this coming April.  

5. To save an amount of money (God knows it) to renovate the house bought in my hometown. I have the amount quantified, but not going to reveal it here, for God's sake. *grin*

Verdict: Failed. I spent too much money on traveling and fitness. @@

6. To go traveling. I have bought tickets to Phuket and Kota Kinabalu. But I wish to bring my parents to somewhere this year. Let's see where they wish to go.

Verdict: Passed! I brought my mom to Shanghai in March, went to Phuket with friends in May, US West Coast in Nov and HK in Dec with family.

Besides, I made a short trip to Sibu, Sarawak too to attend my friend's wedding as well as sampled all the nice food around the town. Foochow cuisine is mouth-watering. Among all, I like zao cao the most (bottom left)!

7. Conquer Mount Kinabalu! 

Verdict: Passed unbelievably! Here is the recap of my Mount KK journey.

8. Make Online Books Recap earning USD2 per day. I am not greedy and ambitious I know!

Verdict: Failed. Gave up half way. No longer interested and determined to do it *cry*

What is beyond expectation in 2012:

1. I finished 10km marathon. It is a women's marathon held by my company in Singapore.
2. Started exploring stock market, more to REIT and dividend stocks.

All in all, I consider 2012 to be a pretty happening year!

2012 is really not my year!!

I swear! 2012 is really not my year!!!

This morning, like usual, I took MRT to go working. When it was one station away from my office, I started feeling very dizzy and my sight was getting dimmer and dimmer... I tried to hold tight the pole beside me, but the next moment, I was lying on the floor!!

I fainted! I lost conscious once again! When I fainted, some passengers made an emergency call to the ground staff. So when the train reached Raffles Place, I heard someone asking if I was alighting at that station. I nodded while I was lying on the floor.. Then some passengers carried me up and passed me my handbag, they told me to walk to the control station, there would be staff coming to my assistance.. At that time, I was very weak, I was thinking how could I walk. Because it was like the immediate moment when I regained my consciousness, I was being dragged out of the train. Luckily an auntie approached me and walked me to the nearest bench.. I think I was being dragged to the bench, as I was extremely dizzy.

The auntie is a very kind person. She hugged me as she said I was sweating cold, and even asked me to lean on her shoulder. I was leaning on her shoulder, while she was stroking my palms and hands to keep me warm. I was very touched to meet such a kind person! 

Then the MRT staff pushed the wheelchair to my direction and sent me to the staff office to rest and had a cup of water. Argh.. How I wish to take the auntie's contact number to really thank her.. She is really my Samaritan! Not to forget to thank the MRT staff too, who assured the auntie she would take care of me and make sure I am safe before I left for my office. 

Why am I so weak nowadays?! I was actually suffering from fever during the weekend. Sigh.. I almost fall sick every alternate week! I could not imagine the next time I lose my consciousness and could never wake up anymore.. Live is so fragile.. *sob sob*

2012 Resolutions

Well, I have no much luxury to squeeze more effort and time to achieve some luxurious resolutions but these are some I wish to do:

1. Read more books. Let's target 10. Without specifying a quantity, I afraid I might slack off.

2. Pass the two exams remaining. Given the heavy workload currently, I might attempt only one this year.

3. Reduce weight to 52kg.

4. Grow more in career. I am not sure what are the other ways of having salary increment besides passing exam for an actuarial associate, but I will explore along the way. Perhaps recognition of hard work is not a bad idea too, except always talking about money.

5. To save an amount of money (God knows it) to renovate the house bought in my hometown. I have the amount quantified, but not going to reveal it here, for God's sake. *grin*

6. To go traveling. I have bought tickets to Phuket and Kota Kinabalu. But I wish to bring my parents to somewhere this year. Let's see where they wish to go.

7. Conquer Mount Kinabalu!

8. Make Online Books Recap earning USD2 per day. I am not greedy and ambitious I know!

2011 Resolutions Verdict

1. Read more books (I only read two books in 2010 but so many in 2009). Currently on shelf: Maximize Your Memory, The Power of Body Language, 80/20, Eat Pray Love. 

Verdict: Failed terribly. Listed here are three books, oh well, I managed to read three books but of course it is not my initial intention of reading MORE books.

2. Finish all the remaining 6 FAP modules by March.

Verdict: Failed to finish them by March due to my laziness. Managed to finish and pass everything on January 9, 2012. *wry smile*

3. Pass Advanced Finance and Enterprise Risk Management (my final paper if I pass Financial Economics Theory and Engineering in January) in April.Update: I didn't pass FETE. So AFE will be my second last paper now and hopefully FETE will be my last paper in November!

Verdict: FAILED AFE twice. *very sad* no chance attempting FETE, and I still need to retake them this year.

4. Get associate credential by April and fellow credential end of the year (providing I pass FETE first).Update: I can only get my fellow credential early next year (Spring). :(

Verdict: I managed to get associate credential only by now, of course it was not May, but January 2012.

5. Grow more in career.

Verdict: Passed! Surprisingly, I am able to hop to the largest insurer in Singapore and the learning curve is steep!

6. Go traveling with family somewhere in the year.

Verdict: They came to visit me in Singapore instead.

7. Purchase a house end of the year for investment purpose.

Verdict: Nearly shared a property investment with my friend, but I eventually opted out to buy a house for my parents. I look forward to staying in this bigger and better house. The picture above is the show house unit for the house I bought.

8. Lose weight! I want 50 - 52kg!

Verdict: Passed! I managed to reduce 4kg but yet to reach 52kg on scale.

Though I failed 4 out of 8 resolutions, I still will plan some this year, 2012.
 

2011 was a year I had some breakthrough in my life, though it was still quite far from the milestone I wished to reach. But I am still grateful of what I was able to archive. :)

Search Keywords Being Hit

Without my realization, time flies, and I have been blogging for the holly 5 years, with the fewest posts of 63, and average of 70 posts each year.

And to amaze me that with the pure intention of sharing what I eat, what I read, where I go, what I hate, what I treasure; my blog does provide some pretty information people are looking for.

These are some of my blog keywords being hit last month:

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These are some of my blog keywords being hit last week:

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These are some of my blog keywords being hit this week:

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Pretty cool huh?

What is Stress?

Stress is when you have to do things within a very tight deadline and the things you produce are affecting others' work. Everybody is like asking for your things every few seconds minutes.

Pretty cool huh? I experienced that when I was modeling a government scheme. @@ Everything seemed to be fine as I was too focused of making sure the coding has no bug. Not to forget, and I need to admit that I was too confident with my coding that I did not realize it shared an indicator which crashed with some products. That is the whole holy shit! Fixed the whole thing in two hours.. Rerun 300++ products in more than 12 hours, and god bless, things flow smoothly.

And finally I have a restful day today and enjoyed the department dinner :)

Lesson learnt: always be conscious, full testing on modeling is very very very important!

Ironic Feeling

When I am too bogged down by work, all I wish is to sleep. When I do not have much to do, all I wish is to have more things to do.

What to do over this free weekend? READ BOOK to kill time :)

An Embarrassing Finding

It has been quite a while that whenever I wear sport shoes for a few hours, my legs stink. I was upset about it as I thought I had skin disease.

I washed my sport shoes (after 3 years since bought) last week, I wore it again today for more than 6 hours, and to my delight, my legs didn't stink! I even lifted my legs to smell if that is true! *ignore me*

Banana Muffin

Mom wanted to bake chocolate-butter muffin but I suggested banana muffin. This is the ever first time I bake muffin. It turned out to be satisfactory! 

To bake 7-12 muffins (depends on the size), we need 3 big banana (or 7 small banana), two eggs, half cup of sugar, 1.5 cup of self-raising baking flour, a little bit of butter and half-teaspoon of salt.

1. Smash the banana

2. Stir the egg

3. Mix the flour, sugar, butter, salt, stirred egg and smashed banana evenly.

4. Bake for 30 minutes at 160 degree. 

5. Ready to be served. :)

Frenzy Week

It has been a frenzy week for me. I have been working past 9pm in a row last few days; initially 10.00pm, then 12.30am, then last night 4am!!! It is not something I am proud with nor wanna brag about. I finally believe that working long hours consecutively can cause a great toll. Last night, I felt some pain in my chest. Not a good sign, it's time to get back to the normal human living!!!

Appreciate health!!

Chronology

I afraid my postings might confuse you all.

It is my bad. And it is time for me to make a chronology.

All the farewell posts before Singapore are referring to events happened from July  16 to August 6. 

I reached Singapore on Aug 13 and started working on Aug 15. It is around one month after I worked, I joined my colleagues to donate blood and I fainted (it was on September 9).

Hope this paint a better timeline of the happenings around and on me.

First Weekend before Working

And yeah, finally after weeks of relaxing and enjoying, I got to come Singapore to start working! But I was blessed enough to have two gentlemen tag along with me. Thanks Alvin and Shane. Well, they were actually here for the career fair held on Sunday, but too bad, we were actually conned. Even the advertisement said Sunday was open for non-PR, but when we approached those booths, all asked if we are PR, and said sorry after knowing we are not. *sad* 

Shane and Alvin boarded Tiger Airways,  while I was waiting for my flight.

Entering Singapore. Greener pastures?

After I reached Changi Airport, we then took a cab to my new house! Excited and worried to wonder how would my room be. I saw some pictures from the finding room website, and just asked a friend of mine to help me pay deposit.  We were all very satisfied with the house and room condition. It is really a nice room, and until now I still like it very much.

Toa Payoh HDB. Photo courtesy to Shane

After settling down, three of us went downstairs to see what to eat. And again, I was very blessed as Alvin and Shane helped me to try out a few food and let me know which is nice, and can try in the future. The food in Singapore is dirt cheap! I mean if compared dollar-to-dollar with food in Malaysia, especially KL. We then took MRT (which is less then 3-minute-walk from my house) to Marina Bay.  

Scenic Bay

Concrete jungle!

What are we pointing at? Casino!

After getting our stomach filled at the food court, we enjoyed ourselves with Wonder Full held every Saturday night at Marina Bay Sands.

Vista of Marina Bay

Awesome water-scenes

Dynamic

She was singing "A wonderful world",
indeed she really gave us a strong sense of
feeling ourselves in a wonderful world.

We then sat down on the deck to enjoy the view, chit-chat, and watch people walk-by and take pictures.

This building has no function yet,
but to let tourists take pictures
It is an art-science museum

After that, we dragged our sweaty body all the way to Malayan Tower there to grab the view of the Merlion. We were totally-worn out by the time. 

Merlion, the landmark of Singapore

 But to our surprise and delight, we had another chance of watching the symphony of light!

Actually the water-scene plays and symphony of light are performed together. If you're at Marina Bay Sands, then you can only watch the water-scene plays. If you're at Merlion there, then you can only watch the symphony of light.

Great show!

We were really satisfied with the loads of nice pictures taken on that day (all the pictures were taken without the assistance of  tripod!). But what is more precious, we could again gather, talk about our dream and have some sharing on the random topics!

Black-Out

I think dying is like blacking out. And today I experienced it! 

Well, as you all know, I am a keen blood donator. Whenever there is a blood donation drive, I will surely contribute if I do not encounter menstrual or fall sick. Yesterday my colleague asked me to donate blood together, without any hesitation, I agreed. 

But then I stayed back working until 10pm, by the time, I reached home and bathed, it was already 10:30pm. I surfed net for a while, then went to sleep. But surprisingly, I woke up at 3am, fell asleep again, woke up again at 5am. I guessed I was stressful. After being worn-out at work, I was still worried about my studies progress, which caused me a bad sleep.

When the clock struck 12, we all happily made our way to Fitness First at Raffles Quay to donate blood. To my horror, when I almost finished donating, I felt my hand a bit numb. But I thought it was okay as my colleagues complained that too. Then gradually, I felt I was very giddy and tired, and I told myself to close my eyelids for a rest. And the next moment, I lost my consciousness. I was flabbergasted and scared when I slowly regained my consciousness and sight.  As the people around me were strangers! After a while, when I really "woke up", I only recalled I was at the donation drive. They were the staff there. All I would say was when I blacked out, I was in another world having some tiring dreams. The feeling when I woke up seemed like I was having a long sleep. 

After that, only I knew that I lost grip of the stress ball in my hand, then the staff all rushed to me to stop the blood, and adjust the chair. So it added the feeling more of I was sleeping, as I was lying flat. Then the doctor approached me to examine me, and said some comforting words like it happens sometimes, take some good rest, drink more water and fruit juice, etc. When I asked him if I blacked out, he tried to avoid my question, and kept saying things are okay. 

Our elbow will be wrapped like this in Singapore
after donating blood :)

Soon after, everyone was done with donating blood. And it was my hard time! As I gotta walk under the hot sun back to the office and have lunch! But I survived it and was getting well after I settled down in the office.

The lesson I learn hard today, and I warn everybody, if you have insufficient sleep, please don't donate blood. You're risking your live! 

But if you're fit and healthy, please donate blood!

Final One Week Before Singapore

My colleagues had a so-called farewell trip with me one weekend before my move to Singapore.. 

We kicked off our journey early in the wee hours. Practically trip nowadays is nothing more than food sampling trip! 

We filled up our stomach in the morning in dim sum in Ipoh.

Yoke Fock Moon beside the famous Foo San.
Heard that this is better than Foo San

The never-missed order!

I feel that the Lau Sa Pao in Jin Xuan (in Uptown) is nicer

And to my surprise, our food sampling didn't end here. We continued enjoying Ipoh White Coffee,

It serves very aromatic coffee.
But the shop right in front of it serves even nicer and thicker coffee.

The must-try in Ipoh!

and famous Tao Foo Fa at Funny Mountain, 

 

Soft and smooth

 until Rachel complained if our trip is to Cameron Highlands or Ipoh! 

We then only made our way to the top. Along the way, of course, it was not without laughter. And everyone of us reached the tip top in one piece, nobody puked or fainted with pale face.

After we checked in our apartment to settle ourselves and the food we brought from KL for steamboat, we headed to Boh Tea Farm. I never know the way to the farm is so narrow and winding. It is practically just sufficient for one car on the single-path. And we have to be extraordinarily cautious to avoid and give way to the car against our direction. We took a lot of pictures there,

The BOH Tea sign always marks one's foot on Cameron Highlands

and enjoyed our hi-tea with breathtaking tea bushes surrounding us. 

Each of us yearned for that moment to last as it was really relaxing.

We really need to slow down at times in life
to wind ourselves down. It is so rejuvenating!

We then visited a cactus farm to buy some cactus back to office, mainly for two reasons. One is to live up our monotonous office. And another is to let the cactus suck up a bit of the radiation from the computers around! 

Soon it was dusk. We went back to the apartment to rest, to shower, to watch TV, to play cards and to prepare for dinner! Never know that guys nowadays are good in cooking as well! They can wash vege, cut vege, boil soup, wash dishes properly and well! 

At night, guys were having drink while we gals were having our pillow-talk until the guys invaded our territory to invite us for drink.

The seemingly a must thing for chatting for adults in this age.

After that, we pranked on one of the colleague to make him dance and we laughed out loud! Soon it was midnight, some went to sleep, some continued to play cards. The next day, we had Alicia to cook us breakfast! Everyone was so lazy to give her a hand. *felt bad* 

We then drove down the mountain to try food at the famous hawker stalls in Ipoh. 

Red bean

But the food for me is not very impressive. Yet, always the memory outweighs everything. We had some good laughter there.

When we thought that we were so full and all we wanted is to drive all the way back KL, Beng Hui gave us a call asking us to exit at Sungkai to eat pork leg! At that time, everyone was so reluctant to take up the spoon and fork, until he cut the meat to each of us!

 Famous pork leg at Sungkai

We then reached KL at around nine, and after some Facebook browsing, everyone went to bed early to get ready for work the next day. 

Few days after, we had our one last dinner before I really focused tidying up and throwing away my things. It was really a precious meal we ever had.

It is really a fond memory that etches on my heart. This bunch of whacky friends are my one-year-old-met colleagues. But we are blended as one! If I were to say the thing I miss the most in KL, I would say it is this priceless friendship we build.

2nd Last Week Before Singapore

I went back home 2 weeks before Singapore! The home always embrace me with warmth and love.

My mom is younger and prettier than me.
I'm always asked if we are siblings :(

This is the time mom cooked the least when I go home. I don't want her to be too busy and tired. We started the morning of Saturday with dim sum.

some snapshots of the dim sum we ate and like

For brunch, we ate asam laksa, the one which is the most famous in my hometown now. After that Alvin and I went to his house for lunch of curry chicken (his mom's mastered dish)!

I then came back home, having some tête-à-tête with mom and dad. Dad is always a cool and nothing-is-wrong type, but mom is more to the fragile and full of worries of us type.. Couple should always complement each other I guess XD. Dinner time, my sis was out for serving at St Anne as a scout, dad was out with dinner with his friends, my bro, mom and I then went to eat the ever best Pork Noodle nearby my house.

Drooling?
with my perverted polite bro
mom banned me from uploading her picture here

I then rushed to meet up with my old friends since primary school! The chat was more to work and relationship. *grin* Felt funny as time creeps by, the topic is evolving too.

Pictures were taken by XY's dad..
All our parents are retirees/retiring..
does that signify we're grown-ups now? *sob sob*

On Sunday, I spent the day lazying at home with my family, chatting, watching TVB series and getting my hair permed and dyed. My mom always critized me of my rugged look. So to keep her from nagging, I finally tidied up myself a bit. :)

Then came the dinner time, I insisted to treat my family for dinner, but at the end, still dad paid. :(

Camera-shy dad was still unwilling to take pictures with us.

my perverted bro insisted portrait pic should be big,
so this looks like a passport pic

Then came Monday, after lunch, and bidding farewell with mom and dad, I headed back KL for work. It was the time like the first time I went PJ to further my studies. It was so hard yet have to say good-bye. Though I have been away from home for studies and work for quite some time, but doubling the distance now is like doubling the feeling of letting go.

Guess that my mom should be more relieved now as I move from the more dangerous KL to the safer Singapore :)