New toy!

Quarterlife Crisis?

If you don’t know it already (and you really should!), I turn quarter-of-a-century old at the end of this month.

I came across an email that Li Wen sent me 4 years ago (4 years!!!):

They call it the “Quarter-life Crisis.” It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn’t know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don’t recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren’t really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job… and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn’t. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren’t a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself… and while winning the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

Send this to your twenty something friends…. maybe it will help someone feel like they aren’t alone in their state of confusion…..

Old friends

After several very delayed emails, Wenqi and I finally met up to go to church last weekend! It was really, really great meeting her, and she’s still the same giggly self after so many years!

She came by to pick us up in her cool little car, along with her boyfriend Marvin. It was a whole slosh of catching up in the car, and then later at church, she introduced us to so many more people! They were all really nice, and it was pretty neat to meet a whole bunch of happy friendly Singaporeans!
 

Belated National Day Celebrations

So we decided to do the patriotic thing and signed up for the National Day dinner organised by the Temasek Club, which cost us quite a fair bit :/ On top of that, it was held at the AIRPORT HOTEL, which was another $20 cab-ride each way. Sigh.

Red and white all around

We went with the hope of meeting more Singaporeans, or perhaps to see a familiar face or two, but nah, didn’t really happen. The food was great though, and we managed to satisfy some of our cravings! Nyum nyum…

Char Kway Teow!! Satay!! Nasi lemak!!

An unfortunately dismal laksa

We missed the table trivia quiz prizes by 1 point! Ugh!

Some questions that got us scratching our heads:

1) What’s the theme of this year’s national day parade? (He googled on his BB and found the answer! )

2) What did Li Jia Wei do during the Olympics opening ceremony, that caused a controversy? (Was not reported on any papers we have been reading! Not even on CNA website! We thought she sang the Chinese national anthem or something)

3) What is the name of the Singapore basketball team that recently exited the Australian NBL? (HUH?!? There’s a Singapore basketball team in Australia?!  Anyway, the answer is “Singapore Slingers”.)

4) What was Australia’s position in the entrance of the Olympics opening ceremony? (204 out of 205, before the China contingent.)

Most of the questions were Olympics related, and we got several of the Australia-related questions wrong. Like who was their flagbearer, who are the 2 Olympians who have won gold at 3 consecutive Olympics etc. Ah well.

The biggest bummer of the night was that our table was not called up for a single raffle ticket prize!! Did the other tables buy booklets or something??  A few people even won two prizes! I’m still pretty adamant that they dropped our envelop of raffle tickets somewhere. I was however, the 1 in 4 left standing for the grand prize – a return SIA ticket home! – but needless to say, I didn’t win in it. Boo.

Us

So did I join FB or not?

 

You and I, We are All the Same

If you have not already seen this, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Remember to turn up the volume!

To Facebook, or not to Facebook?

I’m not sure why I’m so resistant to getting onto Facebook.  I was on Friendster years before, but eventually deleted my account.  If that’s going to happen eventually with Facebook, why do I want to join it right from the start?

Now that I’m overseas again, getting onto a network like Facebook makes it so much easier to keep up with everyone back home, and to connect with new people here.  Am I just lazy to type emails to friends?  Is typing an email address and subject heading a lot harder than sending someone a short message on Facebook?  Then again, it does get tough trying to send the same twenty-five 1.3Mb pictures of my new pad to 15 different friends.  So much easier posting on Facebook isn’t it?  But then you open up the interiors of your home to ten times the number of people you originally intended to in the first place.  Is that creepy?  To have contacts you have ironically not contacted for the past 10 years finding out how you’re living?  Or is that the whole point of Facebook – to have you connect with an old contact (friend?) at such a personal and intimate level again?  Did I just say personal and intimate?  Is posting pictures of my personal life for someone to voyeur considered personal and intimate?  Maybe it’s because I have something dark and creepy and embarrassing to hide?  Perhaps we adopt different personas with different groups of people, and suddenly with the arrival of Facebook, all these different worlds collide and your past (and present) comes back to haunt you.  But if you’ve come a long way and done real good, you can’t wait to share with the rest of the world, personal or not, what you have achieved.  Hello World!  Look at me!  Don’t you wanna be my friend now?!  And what happens when you don’t want to?  Do you obligingly accede to a ‘friend request’ anyway?  The virtual social etiquette becomes just as perilous, if not more, than in real-life because all your ‘actions’ are being observed by your ‘network’.

And maybe with my resistance to Facebook – by denying the one thing that 200 million others have done – I’m differentiating myself from the other Facebook lemmings (sorry guys).  Seriously, you should see the eye-popping that occurs when people presumingly go “add me on your Facebook!” and I reply with a deadpan face (is that even possible on me?) that I have refused to succumb.  And then I start thinking, am I missing out on a whole bunch of networking opportunities and sense of belonging by my somewhat silly and futile resistance.

Maybe I’m overthinking all these eh?  What do you think?

The Marching Bands

A couple of weekends ago, we were just walking down the streets and heard the sounds of marching bands and we’re like “Cool! Parade!!”

Uhh... who are they?

 But as they approached, we realised it was closer to being a protest, than a parade ….

Can you read it?

 Ah. Okay. Well for those of you who can’t read it, it says: Support 40 million Who Quit CCP in China. Welcome a New World Without Communist Tyranny. WELL.

Human placards!

 Loosely translated: End persecution! Dislocate from the Central Government!

Another home

Wanna catch a glimpse of our new home?

The flesh is weak?

Ugh, maybe I should seriously get on Facebook.

AH! The temptation!