The new iPad

Yay! I succumbed and bought the new iPad!

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A few entries back (from several years ago) had me claiming that I have no use for an iPad. Well, I got one for my Mum’s birthday anyway then, as it didn’t do her eyes any good to play games on a small iPod Touch.

So why did I decided to get this third generation iPad now?

  1. I had enough of reading books on the small iPhone screen. Yes, it’s still very much convenient, but it really is straining my eyes for quite a bit. I’ve taken to reading e-books so screen size kinda matters now.

  2. It’s a lot more convenient to bring around for overseas trips compared to a laptop. Well, no choice there if it’s a business trip, but I like to stay connected during my holidays as well so the iPad does help. Also partly because my beloved white MacBook of 6 years seems about to conk off – takes several boots to start the OS; so instead of another laptop, the iPad fits my purposes just fine.

  3. I discovered that I can use the iPad to remotely connect to my office e-mail network. So if I do need to check on something at home afterhours or over the weekend, I save the hassle of booting up my office laptop and just do a quick check off the iPad. Neat!

And that’s how I justified my purchase of the 32gb white new iPad!

Absolutely happy with my purchase!! :D

And this is my first entry with it!!

Blogging

And so, it’s 2012! This site is as good as dead, but somehow I just couldn’t bear to let it go, renewing the domain and hosting year after year, month after month.

I was talking to my colleague the other day and she quipped that maybe I should just go into blogging if I wanted a career change to something non-legal (not that I do right now, just in case any of my bosses knew I run a blog here and reads it). The thing is, if I hadn’t lost my momentum after entering National Service back in 2004, I could very well still be an active blogger, and who knows, have a decent number of followers. After all, I was around back in the days when blogging was only just starting to get popular and wasn’t so commercialized nor studied on.

The only impediment (and probably the single most important missing factor leading to a non-successful blogging career) would be the lack of interesting content. I just didn’t read enough (still don’t) to form an opinion (or any at all) of any character.

I look into my past entries and all I documented down was my life! Seriously, who, other than my friends (I hope), would be interested in just my life? Who cares about what I watched, what I bought?

So here I am, just a lazy blog-owner (I don’t think I qualify as a blogger in this era) who writes once in several blue moons.

10 Years of Harry Potter™

I started reading Harry Potter™ only when the first movie was about to be released in 2001, and back then only 4 books were released. I remember pre-ordering the 5th and 6th book and getting up real early to grab them at Popular bookstore, finishing them in one single sitting. I got lazy for the 7th and decided to pre-order and have them delivered instead; it got to me only at noon! All that anticipation after getting up at 7am waiting for the delivery to read the end of the series! MADNESS!

Anyway, the last of the last Harry Potter movie will be released this week. I am going to do the unthinkable by holing up in GVmax in VivoCity to watch ALL 8 MOVIES in ONE SINGLE SITTING from 13th to 14th July 2011!! I haven’t actually even done something like that at home for Harry Potter™, unlike I did for Charlie’s Angels, Sex and the City, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, etc. TOTALLY MAD!

The itinerary will be as such:

9.30am – Registration & Collection of goodie bags

10.30am – HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE (152min)

1pm – Lunch

2pm – HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (161min)

4.45pm – Break

5.10pm – HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (141min)

7.30pm – Dinner

9pm – HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE (157min)

11.40pm – Break

12 midnight – HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (138min)

2.20am – Break

2.40am – HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (153min)

5.15am – Break

5.35am – HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 (146min)

8.00am – Breakfast

9.00am – HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 (130min)

11.10am – End of Event

I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I will!!! It’s gonna be SUPER AMAZING and an SGD88 well-spent (SGD196 actually because I paid for my sis who got me to go)!! Especially since I’m also gonna get:

-  Admission to all eight Harry Potter™ films
-  Lunch, Dinner & Breakfast
-  Exclusive Retrospective T-shirt
-  Souvenir Photo
-  Goodie Bag & more

SUPER SUPER!

Change, Again

I made a sudden decision last month to make a job switch, barely a year into my current (previous from tomorrow) job. I was feeling stagnant at the workplace despite the short time I’ve been there.

No doubt there are still skills and knowledge for me to learn and pick up and my boss is more than willing to teach, but things just ain’t moving fast enough and I’m not getting any younger. Prospects ain’t any good.

It helps that my new company in the private sector is willing to hire me despite my lack of experience, with a bump in the paycheck no less and seemingly promising prospects. *fingers crossed* Such opportunities don’t come along often so it doesn’t make sense for me not to take it, and thus I did.

The only down side is the location; it’s all the way in Changi while I’m in Jurong. It’s gonna be like those years when I was in Temasek Polytechnic, except that I now drive and I can’t just skip work like I skip classes when I feel like it. Need loads of discipline to get up early and arrive on time.

I’m starting tomorrow and the usual jitters and apprehensions are getting to me. It’s self-doubt phase all over again. I hope I’ll be able to keep up with the pace in the private sector. I’ve been too comfortable in the public service. No culture shock, hopefully.

Good luck to me!

FML #2

Haha! This is ridiculous!

Today, I learned my boyfriend had another girlfriend, his excuse was he was bipolar and each of his personalities need a girlfriend. FML

Dream Of The End

I’ve been up since like 6am. On a Saturday. Mad.

Here I am blogging again. Yay. I think I blog better on weekend mornings. In any case, I’m blogging because I want document down a dream I had two nights ago. It was bizarre.

I blame it on reading the news about finding Noah’s Ark (or so those people believe and trying to confirm) a few weeks back.

I blame it on watching 康熙来了 and listening to this actress talking about how the end of the world is near and so she has no qualms revealing her love life with another actor.

I blame it on Meiyan giving me a link on 2012 that afternoon before I had the dream at night.

The story goes that I was at home on the 12th storey with my Mum and Dad. My Mum was cooking and my Dad was sleeping. My sisters had gone to the airport to pick my other sister up. I was peering down through a window, expecting them to alight from a cab that was arriving any minute.

It began to rain, and soon after I realised that there was flood – a two-storey high flood. I told my Mum about it and asked her how the cab was going to drive while submerged under the water and how my sisters were going to alight.

She came over to the window to see it for herself and we realised that the flood had become ten-storey high. She then told me as-a-matter-of-factly, “Oh. Today is the end of the world.” We looked afar and saw huge waves of water in the sky.

Water started flooding the whole of our apartment. I was holding my breath and the water was murky. The water level then lowered till my Mum and I had time to talk for a while and breathe. Then it rose again, and it lowered. It repeated for about two to three times.

The next time it lowered, my Mum went to wake my Dad up, who I have no idea why he wasn’t dead yet. He woke up groggily and went to the kitchen to find food, either oblivious or not concerned about what was happening.

The water continued to rise and lower and it just kept repeating, with periods of it being at a full height longer and longer, until I had trouble holding my breath, thinking of giving up, thinking that I am about to finally die with everyone else in the world as the world ends.

I woke up feeling like I had really held my breath for intermittent periods of time. I wondered to myself why I had dreamt of something so bizzare.

I was recounting it to Cara last night and it suddenly dawned upon me that it could be the drowsy-inducing cough mixture that I’ve been taking for the past two weeks that was screwing my mind. Damn these medications.

Till the next dream.

Tale of a Cleaning Lady: Why I Avoid Talking To Her

There is this very old cleaning lady in my office building; I reckon she’s in her 70s, slightly hunched but doesn’t walk too slowly. Everyday at about 12 noon, she would knock on my office door (e-passkey system and she doesn’t have access), come into my office and collect our trash. On Mondays, she would come in twice; once more in the early morning at about 9.30am to vacuum the office.

Initially I was pretty friendly, like I always am; stopping whatever I was working on, making small talks, asking her if she needs any help. I mean, considering her age, it feels like it is something that I, as a younger person, should do. Probably out of respect.

I suppose she felt some sort of a connection and decided to talk to me about everything; ranging from my education background, my pay (!!!), her complaints about her terrible management and how stupid they were (don’t we all?), her grumblings about inconsiderate people whom she collects trash for, all the way to whether my boss is hei-gu (Hokkien dialect for asthmatic).

All is fine to me, really (maybe not the hei-gu part, because, HOW THE HELL WOULD I KNOW??), but my gripe about her is: SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP!

I can be working hard on a file and giving her monosyllabic answers to whatever she’s talking about after I have said my usual “Hi” but she just couldn’t get the hint. I can be at the lift lobby running an errand for my boss, or trying to get to a lunch appointment, or on my desperate way to the loo and she would chat me up. I have tried giving her the awkward “I don’t really have time to talk to you” smile and look but nope, she can’t take the hint.

There was once I even bumped into her in the men’s loo!! She was getting toilet supplies (somehow it’s stored in the men’s loo) and ain’t she glad to find someone to talk to. I quickly hid myself in a cubicle (I use the cubicles for everything because I don’t like to use urinals – don’t ask) and she went like “ok, ok, you go 大便 (shit)”. =,=” Like I would when she’s around! (Well, I wasn’t going to, but that’s besides the point, ha ha).

My politeness had become annoyance.

Now, I have to say that I had no problems with the cleaning ladies in my previous office. I would very gladly wave and greet them whenever I see them along the corridor. They’ll talk to me, yes, but briefly. They know when is the appropriate time to do anything, which is very nice.

So, at some point in time, say, 2 months ago, I decided guiltily with restitute that I shall avoid and ignore this cleaning lady at all possible circumstances. By avoid I mean not meeting her gaze to encourage her to talk to me, greeting her hastily and quickly focusing on something else, or, simply, avoid her literally.

You don’t have to tell me I’m rude, but really, there are times where you just can’t stop yourself from being annoyed, however you tell yourself not to.

That worked. She finally got the hint and since then, we’ve only been nothing but cordial to each other.

I appreciate the work the cleaning ladies are doing. I have all the respect for this old cleaning lady, doing such a laborious job at her age, but I think I want to draw the line at just that. Silently.