KangzKong Mai Hiam.

When I can smile to myself while listening to sweet/happy long songs, I know I will be alright.

My student wrote this in his workbook “Paiseh forgot to put units.”

In return, I feel like writing “Paiseh I have to make you do corrections.”

A Chinese teacher showed me a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet that was done by a particular student lately. The correct answer should be as follows:

他有把柄落在我们手上，我想他也不敢轻举妄动。

Instead, the student gave the following answer:

他有螃蟹落在我们手上，我想他也不敢轻举妄动。

He must really have a phobia for crabs.

2010 seems to be a good year to get married. I just attended a wedding dinner yesterday (an army friend’s), and I have 1 more to go on 6 Feb. Honestly, I am envious of those people who have tied the knot. Needless to say, I am really happy for them as well and hope they can live happily ever after!

Why envious? Nope, not that I can’t wait to get married myself. What I envy is their courage to take the next step as well as the belief that the person they are marrying is the one. How can anyone be so sure?

I’ve met 2 women whom I thought I could spend the rest of my life with. Alas, that’s not going to happen. At a certain point, issues will pop up that make you re-evaluate that possibility of her being the special someone. At the end of the day, those issues can turn the probability from 1 to almost negligible. Life’s a joke like that, I suppose.

Anyway, congratulations to Poon! I sincerely hope you will have a blissful marriage with Ying Jing and stay as happy as you were last night. Have a good honeymoon!

After the darkest of nights, there will always be the brightest of days.

我关上了门
最后一次听你说我们
熟悉变陌生 把我往记忆里扔
我应该习惯你离去的眼神
才能让失去你变得更完整
窗外的街灯 还在努力掩饰着早晨
我的叹息成全了整夜的苦闷
我该努力习惯这样的气氛
才发现 失去了爱不用再等

我知道 我的一切你已不想要
继续在乎只会让你想逃
我不相信这全是种煎熬
原来离去是那么难预料
早已看穿没有我想要的好
我的等待换不到你拥抱
只好让回忆短暂的炫耀
原来任性对彼此都不好

清晨的街灯 翻开了城市中的心门
我的等待成全了整夜的苦闷
RUN AWAY 在你的回忆里狂奔
才了解 失去了爱不用再等

我知道 我的一切你已不想要
继续在乎只会让你想逃
我不相信这全是种煎熬
原来爱你是那么难预料
早已看穿没有我想要的好
我的等待换不到你拥抱
只好让回忆短暂的炫耀
原来任性对彼此都不好

多想再一次紧紧的拥抱
就算给我一秒也好
一秒可以给多少 我都想要

我知道 我的一切你已不想要
继续在乎只会让你想逃
我不相信这全是种煎熬
原来离去是那么难预料
早已看穿没有我想要的好
我的等待换不到你拥抱
只好让回忆短暂的炫耀
原来任性对彼此都不好
让回忆继续反覆炫耀
原来失去对彼此都不好

1. You feel lost inside Zouk, wondering if they have lowered the age limit.

2. Your friends are getting married and it’s not because it’s a shot gun.

3. Your relatives give up asking you ‘When are you getting yourself a bf/gf?’

4. Instead, they ask ‘When are you settling down?’ (‘Settling down’ being the more ambiguous equivalent of ‘getting married’ without the finality)

4. Annoying, your friends are just as interested to know.

5. You begin to keep track of HDB prices and wonder whether it’s more worth it to buy brand new or resale.

6. A Toyota or Mercedes-Benz suddenly seems cool.

7. Your idea of a good holiday is lazing by the beach and doing absolutely nothing.

8. Every kg of food intake seems to trigger a 2kg increase in weight.

9. Stores like Topshop/Topman/Forever21 seem to cater solely to the obnoxious punks.

10. Even a university student is a ’see gee-nah’ (stupid kid)

11. You don’t understand the text message that someone 8 years your junior sent you

12. All your clothes seem to have shrunk (keywords being ’seem to have’)

13. You look at a babe/hunk in the eye and wonder if she/he will make a good wife/husband.

14. You believe trying anything new is tempting fate.

15. You start seeing bald patches on your head instead of hair.

This is the marketing campaign for the yet to be launched Volvo S60. No I didn’t post it here because I like Volvos, but from a marketing major’s point of view this ticks all the right boxes.

Creativity? Checked. Low cost but not low class? Checked. Connects with emotion? Checked. Sets people thinking? Checked. Inspirational? Checked.

Wished I came up with it.

Do you remember I said I wanna drive down the Oresund bridge with ABBA blasting from the speakers from a convertible? No I haven’t done it (yet), but I have the next best thing – driving down Benjamin Shear’s bridge with Mama Mia blasting from  the speakers of my non-convertible.

Yes I finally got myself an ‘ABBA Greatest Hits’ CD. It’s been a long time coming, I know. Honestly most of the ABBA songs just sound so, well, happy! And it perks up my mornings like nothing else on Earth, one can’t help but sing along you know. If anyone has problem waking up in the morning, you should put ‘Does Your Mother Know’ as your alarm; I swear it works.

The travel bug has bitten me again and I am starting to dream about places I wanna go. One good thing about working life is the increased spending power we enjoy, albeit that privilege comes at some cost (of course, there’s no free lunch in the world). With this increased spending power, naturally I started having audacious dreams about exotic destinations. And then I take a look at my pay, only to realise it will probably take years for me to save enough to go on the trip(s) I dream about. Aren’t teachers paid quite highly? No, that’s an absolute fallacy. So if you expect teachers to be able to afford that $3million seafront apartment comfortably, you are sadly mistaken.

Anyway, back to the topic. My no.1 dream destination currently is Maldives. Ooh lala. Well, just one problem – good accommodation costs around USD1800 per night, excluding taxes and what have you. That means if I wanna stay there for 5 nights, it will cost a whopping USD9000, and it will hit 5 figures once you factor in all the +++. Even if we split the costs between 2 people, it’s still a huge sum of money for a week long trip. Nevertheless, I will wanna visit the island republic before it sinks to the bottom of the sea (haha nah it will sink, but not to the bottom of the sea) due to global warming.

Here are the pictures of the W Maldives. Isn’t it gorgeous? I got the pics from Starwood’s website, and I somehow believe it will look as heavenly in reality.

I can imagine myself on that hammock with a coconut beside me. Mmmm. Most of the resorts in Maldives are situated on private islands, which means a seaplane transport from Male (the capital) is necessary. It’s a little like Lost, but the Luxury-and-you-won’t-wanna-leave-the-island edition. Maybe in 10 years I will have saved enough.