Friday Night

I met up with a friend for dinner and now is at the Gravity Bar in Carlton Hotel. We always come here if we want live music in an indoor situation, as Timbre at the Substation has a good band but is outdoor. Gravity Bar has a Filipino couple singing songs with the guy playing the keyboard. They normally sing old songs, mainly due to the crowd being more affluent and older. After a few weeks of going, I requested the song 'Just the way you are' by Bruno Mars, which they haven't even heard of. A few weeks later, when I walked in with my friends they put that song in their song list. They actually purposely learnt that song for me! And every time I walked in since, they have automatically added that song into their song list. :)

My fave drink here is Caiprioska (I think that's the spelling, I could be wrong). It's a mixture of lime and absolut citron. Its citrus tasting. We love the roasted broad beans they serve with the drinks. :)

Tomorrow I'm meeting my friends at Clarke Quay. We are having Mr Curry. I may go earlier to maybe the Starbucks there to work. Project Proposal due on Monday. Sigh.

Friday afternoon at Shaw Towers

I came to Shaw Towers at Beach Road, because I was here last Friday for late lunch, and there was nobody. But today, maybe it's because of being the school holidays, the Starbucks was full. I actually brought my laptop here to work. :( So I walked to Tom's Palette to have ice-cream. They were having an ice-cream making workshop, so normal customers can only use about half the shop. I got salty yuzu and longan red date flavours. Apparently, whichever cup of yuzu they sell, they request to the customer to put the money into a donation tin for Japan instead. Not a bad idea of donating. I'll blog more later if I see more things...

Japan's natural disaster (and their man-made one)

It's been a few days since I blogged. I was busy with work. I was so busy with work for the last week that I only knew about the earthquake in Japan, like the late morning of Saturday when I glanced at the newspapers and saw it glaring back at me.
I once went through a stage of wondering what it will be like to be Japanese, or even to just live in Japan. Via all the japanese drama and anime that I love to watch, I have in a way cultivated a deep fascination with all things japanese, be it its culture, language, or food. However, when I went on the internet to watch those news snippets that I missed, my hair on my body stood up as never had I imagined the 'dream' country having such disaster. It never occurred to me how being Japanese or living in Japan, you have to face the terror of thinking that earthquakes or tremors of the earth is an everyday affair. As the days go by, more and more news of the disasters, be it natural like the earthquake and its aftershocks, the tsunami, or even the man-made one like the nuclear reactors exploding, showed the entire world how the japanese are currently exhibiting the highest sense of social responsibility. Can Singaporeans do the same thing? Like how they could queue up orderly to buy food, aware that there are currently food shortages, when Singaporeans queue impatiently, to buy a $1 Burger King burger?
Somehow, with all the hardselling of Civics and Moral Education, as well as National Education to our citizens, we are still as uncivilised as 3rd world countries. Japan has shown the world, what being a 1st-world country really should exhibit. Let us all hope that Japan survive this crisis.

Singapore has jams not because we have too many cars, but because we have foreign workers directing traffic

My dad just fetched me home from work, and we were exiting KJC at the Woodlands road exit. I have to admit that the initial design of the junction was not fantastic. You have cars coming from the left and going towards the right, and the cars from the right, going towards the left, making the cars frequently criss-crossing. (People who use that portion will know what I'm talking about.) Then today, the turning to the left was jammed at 6pm. My father commented that it must be due to the Upper Bukit Timah Road construction where they are building the MRT Downtown line, and many big construction trucks frequently park alongside, reducing the number of lanes available for the busy traffic. He said that recently there were a lot of foreign workers holding the "Stop/Go" signs and directing traffic because of that. 

And true enough, when we went round the corner, there was a huge truck and a foreign worker directing traffic. Many Singaporeans would have been used to this sight in recent years, but my father asked one question: "Are these foreign workers actually trained to direct traffic?" Many Primary school children go to Road Safety courses conducted by the Singapore Traffic Police to learn about road safety. Do employers of these foreign workers actually send these foreign workers for training? Because the way I see it, their directing the traffic if they are not trained, will cause a traffic hazard not only to the traffic, but to themselves. Some stand in the middle of the road thinking that their lives are like that of a cat's, and that they will not be knocked down at all. 

Election is coming. I wonder if someone will ask this question to PAP. Hmmm...

Monday again...

It's Monday again, so it's back to work. This week is super stressed to me, as my schedule is super packed. Next week should be better... (actually, I don't think so, but am just saying that to make myself feel better.)

Work starting in 5 minutes. Sigh...

JJ Lin's Concert 2011 in Singapore

I was gonna blog about the concert, but was too tired after my super long post about sacking my tuition kid.

YES, it is currently THE concert that has been the best for quite a while. People says that Jay Chou's concerts were good (tix to those concerts are sold within minutes of start of sales), but I think JJ's concert is better. He's a local star, and most importantly, his concert comes with sincerity, I think mainly because, he's Home. His parents are watching, his relatives and teachers are watching...

It starts out with his famous hits for his albums, and I love the lighting effects. Kudos to his lighting designer, for making use of lights on a piece of cloth to make it seem as if there were dancers. The arranging of all the songs were good, left us hungering for more, and fans were just waiting for that final song of 一千年以后.

My friends and I were kiasu, so when halfway through his 一千年以后, we made our way to the exit, and towards the MRT station. We got into the station when the people started streaming through the exits, and got on a train towards Dhoby Ghaut (one friend went towards Bishan). We got off at Bras Basah and went to the 24h Kopitiam to eat supper, and Starbucks at the Cathay after that. We left at 2am and took cabs home.

So... It was fantastic. I woke up and bought the tix to Wakin's May concert. Hope it is good too, but normally Wakin's concert has no dancing... His concert is for the good singing.

Was exploring youtube for new songs, and stumbled across this amazing singer. You may wanna try. His name is Sam Tsui, and his singing is posted in this http://www.youtube.com/user/KurtHugoSchneider


Nite...

为什么你要跟钱过不去？ People wanna give U money you don't want?

I fired my tuition student today. I couldn't take the 'torture' for every Saturday morning any longer. I sent his mother a super long sms to quit(names have been removed to safeguard privacy): "Mrs ***, I didn't want to talk to you just now because I was really too angry with your son. He almost never finishes his homework, and even if it was 6 short questions he will only do 3(today). He will do things like sharpen his pencil after every other question and go to toilet so often(as many as 3 times for 5 min each for some tuition sessions). He stares at his hand and everywhere but not the book or paper when I'm teaching him, even after repeated calling his name and pointing at the paper. Most of the time, a lot of time and effort is spent not on teaching him, because he is actually quite a bright boy, but on disciplining him, which should not be the job of the tuition teacher. I'm sorry for being demanding, but all I expect from him, is at least the respect that your daughter (note to u all: I taught the elder sis for 4 years till the end of her O levels) has given me the past 4 years, and not the disrespect that I have been tolerating from your son for the past year. I do not want to just take money from you every month and in the end, due to your son's lack of concern for his own future, end up disappointing you. I take professional pride, even in my tuition jobs, and at this moment, I feel that I'm incapable to be a good tuition teacher to your son. Maybe you would like to look for another tuition teacher for your son." So yes, I've sacked him!!! Finally. It was emotion-draining to go tuition for this boy who is totally not interested, throw tantrums at people, get sick often, do not tell me that he has a test coming, can't even answer questions on what the school teacher has taught or is teaching. How am I to help him then? All I can do now is to hope that he finds someone who is willing to stand his nonsense and help him.
HAPPY!!!

After 2 years!

You know, I never thought that I'll come back to this page and actually try updating it... I actually wanna delete everything, but looking at my traffic (people are actually coming here... although like once a month). So ... I'll pen my thoughts here.

What happened in these 2 yrs? Well, I bought a new phone. A blackberry Bold 9700. SO when I'm on the move, I can also read things online and check emails. My job stays the same. My house stays the same. I'm buying things online more than ever, since online shopping has become so popular via gmarket and ebay. I even buy my shampoo online now from Korea. My cousin gave birth to a son who comes to visit my house everyday (since my cousin lives in the same block as me). My parents are now officially retired. I brought them to HK last yr, on my expense, as a retirement gift. I was at first quite wary of the trip, but it turned out fine... lots of nice food.

I sort of gave up on all the financial stuff i posted abt 2 yrs ago... too much work for too little money. I rather spend my time just relaxing nowadays so that my quality of life goes up.

I'm still me...