flying for a living

i think it'd be interesting to fly the friendly skies. i met an air stewardess yesterday, who has been flying for 7 years already!!! she started when she was only 18...just after her 'o' levels. she told me that at first, she wasn't really used to having all the weird hours and flying around all the different places, but after a while, she got used to it. she's been to almost every part of the world (excluding south america cuz SIA doesn't fly there), experienced many different cultures and food...so much so that now she just stays in the hotel rooms and watches tv. what a pity. i guess she's been there and done that, but if i were her, everytime i go to a city, i'd really wanna find out more about it...like even if i go to bangkok or kl a million times a year, i'd wanna find out where the locals go...the non-touristy places.

there's this time i went to chiangmai to visit a friend (singaporean guy) who was studying there, and we happened to go out with these two thai girls (local chiangmai girls) that we met there. they brought us (on our motorbikes) to this place that was on the outskirts of chiangmai. it was an outdoor bamboo shelter kinda place, where you sit on the ground kinda concept (think japan style), and it was on the banks of a lake. on the other side of the lake was a horse farm, where they rear race horses. so as we were sitting there talking (my friend acting as the translator), the horses were being led into the lake to be bathed. wow! we ordered sea clams with THAILAND chili (fucking hot shit), tom yum soup and beer. superb. =) we sat there for quite some time, just absorbing the scenery, learning each other's lauguages, being bathed in the serenity of thai nature. it was a big change from the tourist-ridden elephant camps and night markets, which are always full of stupid angmohs and their lousy bargaining skills.

so anyway, if you ever read this post, sam (the SIA girl's name), remember that you have the privilege of travelling for a living. make full use of it!

wine and dine

i had this huge craving for steak last night...so i called a few friends to go to phin's steakhouse at cineleisure. the last time i went there, i had the hugest steak which filled me up good. the good part about this place is that you can actually choose the size of your meat: ladies cut (for the unadventurous), gentlemen's cut (for the wannabes), and humungous cut (for the real steak lovers). i ordered my steak to be cooked medium rare, but after waiting for my steak sauce to come, it had already become cooked. well done. kinda pissed me off after all that anticipation.

after dinner, we met up with blinkymummy at wine company at dempsey. haven't been there in all of two weeks, so...err...anyway, we ordered two bottles of chardonnay and one cabernet sauvignon for the 5 of us. blinkymummy was very happy...

highlight of the evening: there was this damn chio girl who walked past our table to go to the restroom. anyway, it’s easier to describe if i use dialogue mde:

moby to BM: fwah…damn chio girl. her dress fits her very nicely. very elegant hor?
BM to moby: take picture! take picture!
moby to BM (loud whisper): don’t want lah! so paiseh! don’t like that ah…
BM to damn chio girl: hi, can we take a picture of you?
damn chio girl: err…
BM to damn chio girl: ok, ok…nevermind, you go toilet first.

*damn chio girl walks away…*

moby to BM: sheesh.

*damn chio girl comes back…*
BM to damn chio girl: hi, what’s your name?
damn chio girl to BM: serene…
BM to damn chio girl: ok, come over here…i wanna take a picture of you.
*BM pulls damn chio girl next to moby…*
moby to moby: WTF??!!! What’s she doing??? oh my God she’s hot…what should I do?? what should i say??? oh man, i can’t open my mouth…
BM to moby and damn chio girl: smile!
*BM takes picture*
moby to damn chio girl: sorry about that…thanks!
*damn chio girl walks inside*
moby to BM: thanks.
moby to moby: why you never say something more intelligent??? sheesh. chicken.

*30 mins later…damn chio girl walks out with a guy…gasp!*

BM to damn chio girl (very loudly): is that your boyfriend???
moby to moby: oh my God…WTF is BM doing???? i wanna bury my head somewhere…
damn chio girl to almost-everyone-at-wine-company (quite loudly): NO!

*damn chio girl and disappointed guy walks back to audi TT*

moby to BM: you never cease to amaze me.
BM to moby: see? still got hope!
moby to BM: their car’s not moving. i think you just caused an argument. Haha. Well done.
disappointed guy to damn chio girl (in the car): i thought you said that i was your boyfriend???
damn chio girl to disappointed guy: yeah, but i secretly took a picture with another guy when i went to the toilet just now. i have to break up with you already. sorry for the inconvenience caused.

*audi TT drives off very quickly*

cockanoddin

a funny thing happened the other day when i was driving. there i was, happily speeding home from work on the PIE, when suddenly in the middle of the expressway, i saw a rooster! it must have fallen out of one of those transport vehicles or something...smack in the middle of the extreme right lane, standing upright and proud...as if daring the oncoming cars to hit him. i didn't even have time to honk at the bugger (though i'm sure that wouldn't have done any good), so i had to do a michael schumacher swerve just to avoid getting a feather bath for my car. the surprising thing was that he never moved...i looked in my rear view mirror and saw the many cars behind all swerving around him. but alas, now that i think about it, he was probably just scared stiff, that poor old cock, and couldn't deal with the headlights that were coming his way...sooner or later, he's bound to get banged. haha, now i know why the chicken crossed the road.

photographsky - original

i'm going to resurrect one of my old hobbies. i bought a nikon coolpix 4100 last december...i went on once-a-week photography trips to bukit timah nature reserve, botanical gardens, even the freaking singapore orchid gardens in mandai. there was this once that i wanted to take pictures of traffic going by...you know, the exposure kinda pictures with the streaking lights and all...so anyway, i was standing on top of this overhead bridge at around 7pm...not too dark yet...so i was waiting for all the cars to go screaming past (cuz this was along bukit timah road)...but it didn't happen...in fact, they all started slowing down when they reached the bridge. only later did i realise that i probably looked like one of those mobile speed camera people. in the end, i gave up cuz i couldn't get any good shots...so i decided to take them from the bus that i took back home...this is the best that i got:

(not great, but hey, it was on a BUS)

it's funny how your whole life changes when you lose someone or something that you really care about. i don't deal very well with change. the irony is that i've had change my whole life...from taiwan, then to california, then to new york, then to michigan, then finally singapore. i always put "adaptability can be considered my forte" in my resumes / cover letters to potential employers...the ironies in life.

a few months ago, i bought a book for a special someone. it's called "the missing piece". it's a nicely drawn cartoon-like book by shel silverstein...i've been reading his books since i was in primary school...good stuff...his books make great gifts too...anyway, "the missing piece" is about a shape (a roundish pizza like shape with one pizza missing...). i actually wanted to buy the book for this person cuz i felt as if i could persuade her to think that i was the piece. however, i guess i didn't read into the book deeply enough the first time, cuz it's actually about a shape that was looking for the missing piece in him, but in the end, couldn't enjoy the finer things in life because when he found the missing piece, he was rolling too fast to enjoy them. in the end, he decided to leave the piece to play with the butterflies again. i guess this kinda striked a chord with me. i've always gone into a relationship too intense...maybe blinded...blinkered...suffocating even. i guess i still have a lot to learn. it's back to the drawing boards...and back to the finer things in life...or at least taking pictures of them.

herman who?

a few years ago, i was a nursing a broken heart. i was going out with this girl, m, who was the girl of my dreams, but i managed to fuck it up (literally...but that's another story for another day). so i decided that i would win her heart back by doing something nice.

i learned how to use Macromedia Flash, and made a 4 minute long animated cartoon video with the song "why does my heart feel so bad" by moby in the background. for the uninitiated, making a flash video is damn hard work. i had to draw each character frame by frame...make them move frame by frame...time the music to each scene...it took me 3 freaking weeks to finish (which is why i have always admired cartoon artists / films ever since...speaking of which, go and watch "madagascar"...it's good for singaporeans). anyway, back to the story...by then, m basically didn't want to see me already. so it took another 3 months for me to burn the soppy video out into a cd, call her out and give her the cd...and as fate would have it, she promtly told me that it was nice, but her new boyfriend didn't think much of it.

herman melville was moby's great great great granduncle, which is why he chose the name "moby". herman melville had a very big ego, which is why he wrote the book "moby dick". sky is a very emotional guy who likes to write, which is why he chose "herman mobydicksky melville".

this day

this will be the last post before i go to neverneverland to find solace in my sleep. a very uneventful day this has been. went to work as usual at 11am. took my time cuz i knew that there would be shit for me to clear. that's usually the case when i come back from a one day "urgent leave". got to the office, checked my email...all 42 of them...cleared half the shit in 5 mins...replied the other half nonchalantly. can't be bothered with the red tape that i'm facing half the time. i guess if you can't beat them...join them (i.e.-start pushing responsibility around).

went for lunch with two of my colleagues. one of them, my sales team leader, kept talking to me in hokkien. knn ccb lah, similanjiao, everytime keep talking to me as if i know what he's ranting about. ok, i know i'm from taiwan and all...but firstly, it doesn't mean that i know your freaking singaporean-slang-hokkien, and secondly, it doesn't mean that i know hokkien in the first place! so basically i just kept nodding my head and pretended that i agreed with whatever he was going on about. i've been working with these people for 2.5 years already and they still assume that i "eh-hiao" hokkien. amazing. at least the other guy who came along had the courtesy to speak in english.

after lunch, i went back to the office to do quotations. that's about it. i hate work. it's making me age. the other day i just found three white strands while gelling my hair...maybe they'll grow longer and cover my receding hairline...that's the only silver lining i can think of...

and there was light...

i'm blogging. so this is what life has come to nowadays. instead of wasting time playing yahoo mahjong or yahoo pool, i've come to record my thoughts and the events in my life. let's get this party started.

they say that people say and write stupid things when they're drunk. let's see how true this will be in the coming months...if my liver can keep up with me...

speaking about livers...how about them reds???!!! well done guys...even though i'm also an ac milan fan, i supported liverpool through and through that fateful night, and was so proud that i nearly cried. j came over that night to watch the game at my place...it was so emotional for the two of us...we actually hugged each other after dudek saved the final penalty kick from mr. shevchenko. it was brilliant.