Twinternship

Came across this today and initial thoughts were: "Wow, that's cool the way they coin such things"; "Gosh..the economy must be really bad.." but beyond these, it's interesting to ponder over the tremendous impact of social networking tools and how businesses can bang on it for affordable and targeted marketing. :p It's good to be alive!

Muses on life & relationships...

Love people and use things; not love things and use people. I am unusually positive/optimistic/ love to see the good in people/ don't get upset easily but I'm starting to see a trend that in the cases where I have felt disappointed, it's always (100% hit rate) got to do with relationships and how I've perceived others to mishandle it.

To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart. I'm a big relationship person. One who would be proud to say that I'm an extremely loyal friend. If the trust is broken, well, that's another story. I've been telling myself to love others unconditionally and not to expect that being kind to others mean they will be kind to me -so I don't set myself up for disappointments. But whatever happened to the golden rule? - Do unto others what you want them to do unto you. I wished more people could get that. I also wished more people didn't take things for granted. -//-

I've been thinking about whether being nice is a sign of weakness. Many would say that in the -real- world where ethical egoism rules, that's for sure. You need to learn to love yourself; to protect yourself; because nobody will do that for you. But in many ways, being nice is a sign of strength - it's easy to put yourself first; it's easy to only consider your own points of view and tread over the needs and emotions of others. I wish to tread lightly on earth and hopefully have some years to give it more than what I've consumed. -//-

Wedding bells (if not relationship jingles) have been ringing lately. Sometimes I question myself if I've missed out on the best years of my life (for dating) by being all alone here in the USA. I think of the opportunities I've passed on and of the "might-have-beens" scenarios and then what? A tinge of regret, but a lot more faith that the divine works of nature will all come together at some point and one need only be patient. And loving. -//-

Your calendar doesn't lie

Big thought: "Show me your schedule, and I'll show you your life". Hours slip into days, days slip into weeks, weeks slip into months, months slip into years and before you know it, you get what we call, Life. Your calendar doesn't lie. So if you say that health is important to you then there ought to be 3-5 times of workout scheduled in your week. In that respect, much of today has been spent planning how the next couple of weeks are going to look, aside to 5 weeks of Golf class that I've scheduled. Current project ends on 18 Sept (still plenty to be done) and I've got a mega presentation on 23 Sept.. >.<'''

I found out about my next rotation, and am grateful that I'm going to be in LA for the next 4 months. I always wanted to leave LA / go back to Asia/ explore other parts of the world but I think it's a recent development that I'm starting to like living/ working here. I think it's in part because I have companionship from people visiting + my new 'family' (landlord) here which always makes living abroad easier. And it's nice to have the stability of life set in - note: stable but not mundane. (It's an interesting acknowledgment for me as I perpetually run on novelty, change and new experiences.)

Came home from golf to find the following video that Sue made me: (very sweet of her, and a funny video too!) Gosh, I gotta get my healthy regime (i.e. gym, dance and fitness) up and going! (esp. now that I'm gg to be here longer!)

SeafOoOoOoOooD!!!

This is dedicated to my lovely family who came to visit me in June, rushed like a comet from Grand Canyon to Las Vegas and still missed the buffet, 2 nights in a row... Especially dedicated to my littlelest sister, aka MGMM (meiguang meimei- long history behind the name so just take it as it is) with the message, COME BACK SOON! ^_^ (Note: You might want to pause the music on the left side of the blog first, where the purple dog is at)

Wisdom: The Cockroach Theory

Every day, I meet with someone that teaches me something about life. That's the good part of working in an organization where you throw a stone and there's a 50% chance that you'll hit someone who has worked at least 15 years in this company. Today, I met with RR (he's retired now) and he shared with me his greatest investment lesson - the Cockroach theory: whenever you see 1 cockroach, there's bound to be more of them. So if there's a negative surprise, don't wait- just sell the stock straightaway before the massive downward price spiral. It's not always right, but it's right 19 out of 20 times, says RR. That's quite quite hard to do in practice. I wonder about its application to relationships - might that hold too?

Rainbow after the rain

Life is queer with its twists and turns. I certainly can vouch for that. So it seems like I'm experiencing some rainbow after the rain (make that thunderstorms!) since the past months that I have lived in Los Angeles. Brief recollection of these catastrophes: a car accident with wrecked my sparkly convertible, bronchitis viral infection, ji-ko-pek landlord, broken-into apartment, credit card fraud, bogus Caribbean cruise scam, bureaucratic paperwork with the administrators, ticket to court... I mean, wow, for a law-abiding, conservative, sheltered Singaporean, these are HUGE!

They say what goes up must come down (except age! and maybe weight..hmmm...) So in faith and hope, what goes down must also go up. Life is on an uptick for me now after having family and friends come visit, an awesome rotation at work, glowing reviews, a super nice, cosy apartment in a safe, artsy neighbourhood (North Hollywood), wonderful landlord + family, Cable TV and internet (I've not watched TV for a year!).

My landlord and his wife, Maria and baby + his mother are really amazing people. Besides inviting me for dinner at their house sometimes (they live right next to me), they celebrated my birthday for me this year with an outdoor alfresco party. Maria cooked Sue and I dinner from scratch, including baking us a wonderful and pretty chocolate cake! (Sue cooked Thai curry too!)

Much of my time after work has been spent playing with their uber cute baby girl! :) She was 7+ months old when I first moved in, and she's 9 months now! And that's Sue and myself doing my life's first face mask (very tragic right!) in a classic case of Birthday indulgence. :)

Many reasons to be happy about so I topped it off with a birthday celebration at Disneyland - "In Everything you do, Celebrate YOU!" (cool, I like that!) It was great that Sue came to visit, and I took the day off for a pure day of FUN! It was a conscious decision/ pledge I made to myself NOT to work on my birthday. I have succeeded in keeping it last year and this year...let's see how future years go. ^_^

We started the day with a series of closed roads, which took us to McDonald's - real interesting given that Sue had wanted McDonald's ice coffee pretty badly. There, I decided to get myself a happy meal - I used to remember how happy my sisters and I would be whenever our parents got us once-in-a-blue-moon Happy meals. Ahhh, the days of Garfield and Odey toys... And out of the 30 Beanie Babies, guess what I received?!?!?! I was initially hoping to get a penguin or a lady bug cos they looked so cute, so when I saw something brown, I was disappointed... only to find that it was a very, very pleasant surprise indeed! - a little brown bear (#30) wishing me HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Sue and I first headed to the California Adventure Park (never been there before) which was pretty cool. I enjoyed the ride "Soaring" which sent us soaring across key Californian attractions- and I realized I've done / visited ALL of them (e.g. Yosemite National Park, snow play at Big Bear/ Mammoth, Lake Tahoe, Theme parks, Hollywood etc.) except the (San Diego) Naval base which I can't enter. LOLx :)

Everything else during the course of the day was so smooth! E.g. we caught the Pixar play parade (up close somemore!) just when we were going to leave for Disneyland.

After about 4 hours in California Adventure Park, we crossed over to Disneyland, which turned out to be truckloads of fun! - not quite what I remembered of it 6 years ago. But I guess I had plenty of reason to be happy, had really low expectations, the admission was free, tonnes of people were greeting me "Happy Birthday" (because of the badge I was wearing) and Oohhhh, there were these 2 magical shows we watched which were simply spectacular!

In what continued as Birthday good luck, we made it in time to catch the final part of Disney's Celebrate! A Street Party. (Note: You might want to pause the music on the left side of the blog first, where the purple dog is at)

The highlight of Disneyland for me (aside to meeting 2 very warm Americans- father and daughter whose uncle turns out to be the CFO of Walt Disney..interesting given how I was initially going to do an investment thesis and valuation of DIS - Disney, NYSE) was possibly the 2 shows: Magical and Fantasmic!

Magical was Disney's new night time spectacular of magical celebrations in the stars - a breathtaking, all-new fireworks spectacular. It was really enchanting to admire bursts of vivid color and brilliant visual effects dance in the sky while beloved Disney songs fill the air. The only thing that brought me to reality was the crowd (unbelievable on a Tuesday!) and the less than ideal spot we squeezed, squirmed and found which was blocked by a tree :( (Note: You might want to pause the music on the left side of the blog first, where the purple dog is at)

Fantasmic! was a musical pyrotechnic spectacular as Mickey battles evil.. with magnificent floating scenes and amazing special effects that included film projected on water, fiber optics and lasers. Somewhat like our Sentosa's "Songs of the Sea" laser show but much, much nicer. :) (Note: You might want to pause the music on the left side of the blog first, where the purple dog is at)

All in all, a fantastic truly magical birthday. I couldn't ask for more. (except for more loved ones - family and friends to be with me...but I guess one can't be too greedy) Takeaway of the day from the Celebrate! street party:

"In all that you do, Celebrate YOU!"

A Life given to me...

Woke up this morning and first thing I did was to go online and get this for someone who loves me unconditionally in this world...

Thank you Mom (ok, let's include Dad too!), for the gift of life, the strength of character, the thirst for knowledge, the essence of integrity and all the good stuff that made me me.