everyone's on holiday this week...and while people are going off to far-fetched places like hong kong, england, and australia, i've just booked a chalet at pulau ubin. =)
$188 for 4 people inclusive of transportation, two meals, and one night's accommodation...not too bad lah. i've done worse with $47...like 1 x haircut at le salon (i've since switched to the $28 ones at supercuts), 1 x jug of alcohol at zouk (i've since switched to ice cold beers' 3 for $20 beers), 4 x marlboro ultra lights (haven't switched yet)...so i think it's a pretty good deal...
i'm going with my secondary school friends, namely victor, billy and seow (aka eugene)...the same guys i went crabbing with last time. can you believe that in the 13 years that we've been best friends, we have NEVER gone overseas on a holiday before? not even once to jb to eat and shop. we've never seen each other's passports before...well, not that that's gonna change cum this saturday...but at least we'll be taking a ferry somewhere together...it's a start guys...slowly but surely. haha. =)
one of my dad's best friends passed away on friday. he was a former colleague of my dad, and can be considered a family friend as well. his son and daughter grew up together with me and my siblings...while we were in the states at least. we used to go to their house and have barbeques and stuff...we went to the same school...had the same teachers...played in the same orchestra...they even came over to singapore to visit a few years ago.
when my siblings went back to the states for their university education, my dad's friend would drive down to where they stayed (about 4 hours away), just to buy them dinner...on quite a number of occasions. he was a very kind and generous man.
it was during a routine checkup that they found out. six months ago, he was diagnosed with cancer, which basically came as a shock to everyone because he led a very healthy lifestyle...he enjoyed the outdoors and exercised frequently. after they got a few more different opinions from the doctors in the states, he decided to go back to korea and seek a more traditional kind of treatment. even then, he still insisted on skiing and hiking with his kids...making the most out of the time he had left.
after receiving the news, my dad booked the first flight to korea (which wasn't easy, given the start of the holiday season) to attend the funeral. i came home and cooked lunch for my mom, before bringing her out to the botanical gardens to listen to a chinese orchestra performance.
life is short.
my company sent me for this training course called "the 7 habits of highly effective people", which is derived from a book of the same name. i feel that it's a pretty effective course...seriously. it teaches you how to oranise your life. i especially like the part where they teach you how to prioritize things into 4 categories:
1. urgent / important
2. not urgent / important
3. urgent / not important
4. not urgent / not important
they teach us to strive for "quadrant" 2...though inevitably, 1 and 3 will still take up some time...quadrant 4 is to be avoided at all costs...true true...
actually the whole course is pretty common sensensical...but sometimes, i guess you need someone to tell it to you...someone to make it even more obviously apparent...someone who costs $1,600.00 per person per two days. wow. now that's being effective.
i've tried everything. my hard-disk is dead. all attempts to rescue it has failed. i just hope that it's still under warranty. all my photographsky photos...gone...all my poems...gone...all my articles...gone. i can't even play mp3s anymore and bawl over spilt milk cuz even all my songs are...gone.
i'm sending it back to ntu (it's actually my dad's laptop) to see if they can get it fixed. in the meantime, i'm using my office computer...which, unfortunately, does not allow me to surf the net at home. i'm trying to suck up to the ugly IT chick to get her to help me with the settings. call me a slut, but i need my morphine in the form of this blog...
