Thoughts while in Sunny Singapore

1. Rude drivers ...
Never fail to impress me. On one occasion I wanted to filter to the right. I signalled my intention early, and I was preparing to go in right after the car just beside me has passed. To my disgust, the car just behind the car next to me sped up and closed the gap. Fine, I thought, petty man, I'll go after you. As soon as I changed lane to the right, the car behind me flashed his lights at me! WTF! As though he couldn't see me. As though he couldn't see my intention. As though I obstructed him. He'll be like what, 2seconds slower? If it was me I'd have let the poor guy come into the lane. I've driven in the US and the UK, and in all honesty, even though the drivers in Singapore are without a doubt more highly skilled, they are undeniably more rude and inconsiderate.

2. Tiffany
never fails to amuse me. She remembers my name. She exclaims "w- kor kor come back already! But L- biu je and H- kor kor did not come back!". She throws a towel sized piece of cloth over her back and pretends to be a fairy. And flys around. Then she poses as prettily as she could in front of L's father. He gives her a shocked and disgusted look and she laughs and runs forward to "hit" him for mocking her.

3. Friends
Looked through my old cards that I received from friends on past Christmas/New Year/Birthdays. Cards from friends I haven't met in a while. Friends I used to be really close to, but got distant thru the years. Friends I wish I didn't neglect. Eh, I even got a Birthday card from a super slack JC classmate. nope you won't be able to guess - you'd never expect someone like him to send a card. Looking at all these cards made me think - how did an ordinary guy like me end up with such amazing friends.

4. Fire Alarm while opening accnt.
I was in a bank, opening an account. On the 30th storey. The lady was very professional and sorted out all the application forms. Halfway through, the fire alarm rang. You know normally its just a freak accident, or some form of vandalism that caused the alarm. Thats what I thought it was and brushed it off. All the while she was trying to explain something to me. And had to pause many times because of the alarm ringing and a guy shouting over the PA system, "Ladies and Gentlemen. May I have your attention please. The fire alarm has been activated. We are currently investigating it. Please remain at your desks and keep calm." Then in 30 seconds, "Ladies and gentlemen, there is an incident on the 18th storey. Will people from the 18th storey please head down to the plaza via the staircase. Please do not use the lift." Hmm.. the lady in front of me was determined to get it processed asap. And so was I. I wasn't prepared to make another trip. I nodded and nodded while she went through all the details, pausing as and when the guy over the PA interrupted. Towards the end, he was speaking almost all the time (very loudly), so the lady was forced to shout even louder to get her points across to me. Finally we settled everything, I got my stuff, went to the toilet first, before I climbed 30 storeys down the building.

So many things happened this week.

1. Cornwall trip. Went down with a couple of friends. Oh man, the scenery was really awesome. Never imagined that a part of England could be so beautiful. Helps that the weather was good. I'll post some pictures soon... or maybe not.. scroll down to see why.

2. At work yesterday, I stood up for myself in a small way. But I felt proud of that. Because usually I'm so acquiescent. Its a long story, but basically somebody decided unilaterally that the presentation should be postponed because the other guys had already taken too much time - and I asked to be given just 5 minutes to present, instead of postponing my 5 min presentation to sometime (who knows when) next week. Eventually I got my way, and I'm happy I did.

3. I had fun at football on Tuesday.

4. I'm going back to Singapore! Tomorrow! That means that I won't be updating the blog (because I don't think I'll have access to the internet. I live in a Kampung hut without a telephone line, not to mention cable/broadband.) for two weeks. Dear friends in Singapore: call me! you know my number!

5. I lost my keys. Its sad.

Security level has been downgraded to severe.

Just to let you know... Nothing bad has happened yet.

Played football just now. with real good players. Its always more fun to play in a team with good players. Reason being
- higher chance of winning so you feel better already
- more passes get to you
- you anyhow kick your teammates also get the ball
- less defending because they don't lose the ball so easily
- more attacking because there's less defending
- you look good when they score with a pass you made
- you look good when you score with a pass they made

going for a "team dinner" tomorrow night. Will update when i feel like it. =)

Security level: Critical.

Folks, if you haven't heard/read, police in the UK has apparently thwarted an attempted plane bombing. The current security level is "critical", which apparently means an attack is "imminent". Security has been stepped up in all UK airports. Yeah you can read it up on BBC if you haven't read about it.

I thought something was wrong this morning when I got off the tube at liverpool st. First you hear announcements like "Customers are advised that because of hightened security, delays may be occuring on all undergound lines". Then you see like twice the number of policemen standing around crowded areas. Then in the office my colleage mentioned something about the airports being closed. Hmm..

I'm supposed to say "don't worry, i'll be fine." But I know you're not worried anyway. hah.

by the way, I finally found my contact lens that I dropped on the toilet floor. I was feeling constipated one day and sat down on the toilet seat just, you know, relaxing and looking around when I saw it sticking to the side (the outer side) of the bathtub. Quite surprised that nobody else saw it, nobody brushed it off, it didn't drop back down to the floor, the cleaner didn't clean it away... that it was left there since 2 weeks ago.

It must have been flung 1.5 meters away when the case fell to the ground. So weird. You know after I spent ages looking for the lens, I actually filled the contact lens case with water and "simulated" as exactly as I could the way the case dropped, just to see how far the water would be flung out. The result of that experiment was that it was at most 20cm. Hmm. Now I know at least by how much I must widen the search scope.

A day in the life of a typical corporate finance analyst.

Yesterday, yes SUNDAY, I spent 12 hours at work. From 1pm to 1am.

Its a long story, but basically there was some work that I had to do by Monday morning.

It started off pretty cool actually. Lazed about in the morning, had a nice chat with my gf over the webcam, then headed off to work in a casual outfit by cab. Boss came in about 15mins later with a banana-caramel frappucino in his hand. Soon after I went out to get myself a strawberries and cream frappucino.

The work was challenging. I had to simulate the performance of a quite complicated product. It involved correlation, Cholesky decomposition, geometric brownian motion, and a lot of skill with Excel. So challenging indeed I spent the next 6 hours glued to the computer. (Boss left at about 5pm).

Dinner time came, but we were nowhere near completion. I decided to order some chinese takeout - to be claimed from the company of course. The food wasn't nice at all, given its price, but it was fun eating in the largest meeting room with two of my closest colleagues.

As time wore on, it didn't seem anywhere as cool as before. I started feeling like the time I'm spending in the office won't be noticed.

Finally, we neared completion. Not as ideal as I would have liked but it was 12.30am Monday morning already and I really had to go home otherwise I wouldn't be able to make it back to office 7 hours later.

So I took a cab back home, and promptly fell asleep in bed, groggy from the whole day's work.

I guess this is the life XP is living everyday. I can do this once a month, but no more than that.

Anyway, the next morning I woke up at 7.15 for my usual chat with my gf.

Her first question was "What time did you get back last night?"

(sleepily) "... 1 a.m...."

"Go back to sleep, quick" she said.

mmm.. I said goodbye and crawled back to bed for another satisfying 45mins of sleep.

I have a wonderful gf, I know.

Achievement this year: Solved Rubic's Cube

Three of my colleagues were given Rubic's Cubes as a toy/collectible/marketing widget. You now like pens, highlighters, post-its, stress-balls...

I was bored one day and picked up one of them and attempted to solve it.

And I did it in 11.75 seconds.

Just joking. I didn't do it at all. 11.75 seconds is the world record for solving the cube. I tried solving it and gave up after 10 minutes -> I had only solved one face.

I had played with the cube before, but never managed to solve it. And I wasn't happy that I couldn't solve it.

So I looked online. Trusty wikipedia... Actually had a page on "How to solve the Rubic's Cube"! Did a bit of reading and found out that its really not difficult. There are algorithms to swap pieces, say, or to "turn" a piece such that its rotated the right way etc. And there are clear steps to take to solve it.

Following instructions, I've managed to solve it in 30 minutes. Subsequently, with practice and memorising some algorithms that I otherwise wouldn't have known, I can solve the cube in 15 minutes.

If people ask me right now, what's my proudest achievement... I think I'll tell them I can solve the Rubic's cube. *victory sign*

Football again!

I played football again on Tuesday, and I've re-affirmed my hopelessness at being a goal-keeper.

You know in street-soccer (or court soccer, or indoor soccer) where the field is small and there are lacking goalkeepers (keepers are always lacking - you won't EVER find 3 of them in a court) we usually take turns to keep the goal (haha that sounds weird).

When I played in SG in the past, we usually rotate when a goal is scored/conceived. Over here its not so obvious... People just "volunteer" as and when they think they should be keeper.

So anyway I had played for about 20mins already, had to catch my breath a bit. And the poor guy was keeper for quite some time, so I volunteered.

Soon after, I conceived a goal. And then another. and another. and another. and finally one more, before one of the players decided that I was crap, and took over as keeper. All that happened in a span of maybe 5 minutes. Just to clarify, I wasn't intentionally trying to get substituted.

But that suits me just fine. =)

And I'm happy that I've used my new boots three times this year.