Life just seems to be passing too fast for me to actually sit down and write anything. Swamped by work from all directions frankly, and its really tough to keep calm and do the thigns I need to do.
The good thing is that every day seems different and unique in its own way. Dats the way I like it actually, always something to look forward to at the end of the day, always something to chase, something to get done. It can be pretty overhwleming at times, but I am pulling through I guess, just gotta stay calm under pressure.
The good thing is that among the things that change, there are things which stay constant. Things that are simple, beautiful and ever present.
Things that are can sometimes be the worst, but often are the best parts of any day.
Life's just passing too fast for me to consolidate and talk about it. I don't like it but what can I do about it, life's like dat.
I spend most of these past few days in a stupor, doing what I have to do but not really feeling much engagement in it, maybe because I am tired most of the time from staying up and watching soccer.
How time flies, can't believe its been like 11 days since I last wrote, but I figured out better update now. Lots of things happened, the most important of which was dat I actually found out that I won in the coaching category of the POSB champs award. And, yeah made the decision to fly back early, so will be back in 9 days time! I figured that it would be a once in a lifetime kinda opportunity, so managed to move my exams earlier to be able to fly back. Honestly though I never expected to win or anything, I kinda shoved it under the carpet when I found out i was nominated and after sending the supporting documents as well.
Other than dat just been busy packing and studying of cos, next week is gonna be a tough week, exams on tuesday, friday and the monday will be rough, gotta take an exam at 5 and be on the plane by 935 the same night, arriving in the country the next morning. Which reminds me I have to print out my e-ticket!
I think I'll stop here for now, Colby s in Sydney right now, so the house is quiet, just the way I like it, realli hope to have my own place soon soon, cos I like the quietness that being alone brings, although having someone to share it with wouldn't be too bad as well.
The weather is cold now btw! But yeah I am looking forward to going for my second last training tomorrow, but going to school first to study.
Time for a quick post, things are really speeding up in school, before I know it, I only have about 1.5 weeks left in school, and only lessons for like 4 of these remaining days, so yeah really gott akeep up. I have a major submission of a research project this Friday, but other than that, everything seems pretty much in order for the remaining part of this semester.
My IT band is still giving me trouble and discomfort when I run, but at the same time, I am just trying to run a bit everyday, to keep up my fitness, even though my leg starts to hurt whenever I go past 55minutes of running, not somehting good when I have to run about 2.5 hours on June 12.
Oh well, I just gotta try and and stay patient and give myelf adequate rest, hope my leg gets better soon, I guess that is the one major part that is constantly on my mind in these closing weeks in Perth.
It's really sad what is happening in Thailand, I read today about the ppl. using children as human shields in the stand off. Its sad really, but somehow though I disagree with the loss of life, I somewhat agree on the government's stand to not budge. Not necessarily because they're right, but really because if they give in, and the reds take control, the yellow shirts are gonna come in next. So somewhere, something has to stand firm to stop this shit from happening, it has been going on for too long, and we had to go to HK (stupidly) because we couldnt go to Thailand the other time. HK is a nice place, but in erms of providing us the experience needed for a sports team, it fell short.
That's all for now, its 845am over here, and gonna get some work done from home in the mean time.
Sorry I haven't had time to write, just been really busy, lots of things coming in at the same time, but I am trying to be as disciplined as possible, so let me update everybody in point form, cos I gotta rush off in a while.
1. Very proud of our latest batch of VJSG girls, bringing the team to their 5th straight final, and hopefully 4th championship and the first treble in girls football and in A division football as a whole.
2. I got an LCL strain on the outside of my left knee, doesn't hurt that much when i run, but can get very unbearable when I stop running. So I had to scale down my running for this week which is a bit of a disappointment.
3. Work is piling up mid term 2 coming up for data analysis, plus term papers due.
Thats all for now I guess, will update more soon I hope.
Tomorrow is the last match of the EPL. How i wish i could be at a coffeeshop with both screens on and watching!
Just thought that I'd write a short entry on the futsal game i had on Wednesday, before its lost from my memory, what with all the other things going on around me. That day our game was against the Raiderz, who were like 4th, so we knew we were up for a tough opponent and an important game.
But yeah it was a game to remember for me cos I scored two goals, one with my left foot, and the other with a bicycle kick. Haha yeah, seriously, I couldnt believe it, that I managed to do it again. I think some of you reading may remember that I had actually done one in the UWA season last semester, and I remember saying that I don't think I will ever do it again in my life.
BUT!
Well it all fell into place, we seemed quite relaxed that day, although I wasn't sure if it was cos we were confident, or it was because we were taking things too easy. We conceeded a goal in like the first 30 seconds, a deflection off steve took ashley the wrong way, and we were down in a matter of seconds. Not a good start.
My first goal was a tap in, after Soren shot fiercely from the right flank, I remember telling myself to stand closely in hope of sticking my foot in, but the keeper got a hand to it. Luckily though, I didn't switch off, and managed to use my left foot to sidefoot it home from close range. I am really happy with how much less scared I am of using my left foot these days. I must admit its still pretty shit, but at least I am not scared of using it anymore, and I know if I continue trying, I will get better at it.
The second goal came, as the defence pushed up and I sneaked behind them. Of cos in futsal there is no offside, so it was basically me and the keeper. My back was facing the keeper cos I wanted to see where the ball was, and Soren chipped the ball high into the D. As the ball was in the air, I knew that the only thing I could do was to bicycle kick it, cos if I turned and volleyed it I would probably end up hitting the keeper, who would be out to claim it. This time round though it was harder cos the ball was coming from a height. Last semester I chested the ball up, so I somehow had some control over the ball prior to the kick, but this time round I had to try and get it in the air.
So i tried, and it caught the tip of my toe, i collapsed in a heap of cos, turned around and saw the ball in the net, the keeper had been going one way, and I had managed to send him the other way. Was really really happy, and JT went all the way to my side just to give me a high-five.
Don't get me wrong I am not trying to blow my own horn but I just wanna keep these memories in my blog, so that when I read it a few years from now, I can feel happy and look back on these fond memories. Isn't that the purpose of a blog anyways? Like a diary to look back upon and cherish?
I really am enjoying playing at Lords and with the guys. Its funny cos they are so much bigger than I am, and all European, and the opponents are all caucasians as well, yet at the same time, I feel good cos I am improving. I've never been really good at futsal, or small-sided games, but I think joining the team and playing in the comp has been good exposure for me. More importantly the physical nature of the game has made me a stronger player, and I have been able to apply it to trainings on Sunday.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself, to be able to play soccer so often, and pursue a high level of education, it feels nice.
Its been one hell of a past week, and I have had a million things to do, but thank God I managed to pull thru, so let me run thru with you the things that I had to do this week.
1) Lessons It was back to school again after a week's break over Easter, so it needed a bit of readjusting, although the Easter week was pretty much packed, and lessons started again, so had to get used to the usual lecturing and listening thing going on. I am realli happy I am left with just 6-7 weeks more of lectures an sitting down, and listening. Basically one-way input. Profs always say they want a proactive and interactive atmosphere, but at the end of the day its just a token question or two, and you spend most of it listening, so here's to a life of meetings, research and independent study. Realli looking forward to it. 60 more days!
2) Exams Had two exams, Advanced Psych of sport, and Reserch Methods, and I came away from the paper feeling ok enough. Not supremely confident, but yeah at least I knew that I understood my stuff and did my best in answering, so overall it was ok. I struggle a bit in studying for advanced psych though cos of the limited time I had, I realise its tough when you have two papers, and you can't realli study hard for the later one cos you have your mind fixed on settling the first one. But yeah, a 4 hour sleep did the trick, and I hope I come away with decent results. I realise I have set myself high expectations, but I don't doubt they are achievable if I put in my best.
3) Running This week's training saw about 61km worth of running, which I am fairly happy with, managed to do a negative split on most runs, and that's always an important thing to me. The 20km run on thursday was especially sweet as I broke under the 30min mark to reach the top of kings' park so that was good, although I think it was partly due to the fact that I realli whacked from the start. But yeah running is good, and it was a good ending to my pre-season part 1, so this week is gonna be a bit more relaxing before I go on pre-season part 2. By Sunday though as I was doing my recovery run, I could really feel myself struggle as the mileage for the week had taken its tool on me. That being said though, I am still a long way off from being able to run 2hour plus runs comfortably. But I will get there.
4) Soccer At first I realli din want to play on Wednesday, cos of the exam on thursday, but when one of the players had to pull out, i really felt obliged to turn up for the team, especially since we have been getting stronger and found some form in the comp. Plus the fact that my Danish friend Soren could give me a lift there and back meant that I would have needed 1 hour of my time tops. It was a good decision and we won 6-2, which puts us nicely in the upper half of the table. Training on Sunday was also fun, cos all the regulars were around, and despite being quite exhausted from the whole week, I had a good training, and enjoyed myself. I am quite sad to be leaving the team in like 6-7 weeks time, especially since I may not come during the finals exam period.
5) Work from home I had some stuff to settle from home, I actully have been working on a contract basis with projects from home since I have been here, and had some fine-tuning to do with this project which is especially tedious cos its government related, so yeah really had a lot of things to settle. Also had to settle some recommendation letters but it was all good. Recc. letters are easy to right because most of the time you write them for the people you genuninely like and respect so the words just flow.
All in all it was a heck of a week, and I really tried my best to chill out and lay back a little during the weekend. Right now back in school its back to the hard work but I am taking it in my stride. I think it really makes a difference to be able to do something one loves, cos it builds up a certain amount of resilience in yourself. I ask myself, would I want to be studying anything else? The answer is no.
I just managed to catch a show on Aussie TV on SBS. SBS is a cool channel its something like national geog, history channel, discovery channel all rolled into one, and its free! So there are the shows I like such as mythbusters and Man vs Wild, as well as "boutique" shows ( i call them boutique cos they are like rare, and don't have much commercial appeal) like hitler's bodyguard, a show on the assassination attempts on Hitler, a show about toys around the world, forgot the title, and one i just saw about an attempt to form a team of disabled peopleto take part in the Sydney to Hobart Ocean race.
It was realli inspiring to see these ppl try and do something that a lot of us more abled people probably may not dare to.
Which brings me to the point of this post. There are times in the day and in my life where i absolutely despise the way i am. Don't get me wrong, self-loathing is never good thing, but there are times when I hate myself. Let me explain.
Sometimes things don't go my way, and those of you who know me and my life well enough, will know that the odds are sometimes against me, and I do have the right to complain.
But when I do see people who are truly struck with misfortunes that were never their fault, and not complaining about it, I just and i honestly do, start scolding myself for being a very ungrateful person. Some people are born blind, some born without limbs, yet they don't complain. And i feel horrible really when I think about the times that I feel my life is not good, or good enough.
The truth is people, there will always be others who are better off than you. But the point of this, is to remember that there are a lot of people worse off than you as well. And this is something, at 26 years of age, I still need to remind myself everyday.
And in a way it has motivated me to look at certain things when I get back home. I realli feel I haven't contributed enough to the community at large. I love what has happened at VJSG, and I'd like to think that I had a small part in it, but yeah I think its also time to move on to affecting larger people.
At the same time, I need to constantly remind myself of how lucky I am, and I hope you do too, whoever you are.
I saw a wheelchair bound guy today, who got rejected from being on the crew, and he said, "I think about this and of course I'm disappointed. But I look at myself, and I remember how lucky I am. There are so many people worse off than me, and 99 percent of disabled people aren't as lucky as me." - this coming from a man paralysed waist down.
I was just humming to myself this song by RHCP, seroiusly one of the finer bands around, AND one of the few bands I've actually managed to watch live. I realli like watching things live, but due to my cheapskateness, I dont actually get around to watching them unless I find it really worth it.
The song is called "Don't forget me" from their "By the way" album.
I love how the song switches from a low energy laid-back vibe, to a realli high octane performance, and of course with John Frusciante's screaming, moaning solo ( super sad that he has left the band), wat more do you want. And of course the signature strum of muted strings on Flea's bass guitar. I also love the dark imagery they use to describe his relationship to the girl, its kinda dark, yet in a morbid way actually longing and romantic in nature. Realli cool.
This is the live version from their show from Slane Castle. I love how they always always improvise when they play. I remember them playing at Singapore Indoor Stadium, and how they just seamlessly switched from song to song, without stoppping at all. Musicianship at its best. It realli made me realise that all the skill and talent cannot make up for this inate chemistry and musicianship that a lot of the bands who have been around for a long while have managed to attain.
Brilliant song.
I'm an ocean in your bedroom Make you feel warm Make you want to re-assume Now we know it all for sure
I'm a dance hall dirty breakbeat Make the snow fall Up from underneath your feet Not alone, I'll be there Tell me when you want to go
I'm a meth lab first rehab Take it all off And step inside the running cab There's a love that knows the way
I'm the rainbow in your jail cell All the memories of Everything you've ever smelled Not alone, I'll be there Tell me when you want to go
Sideways falling More will be revealed my friend Don't forget me I can't hide it Come again make me excited
I'm an inbred and a pothead Two legs that you spread Inside the tool shed Now we know it all for sure
I could show you To the free field Overcome and more Will always be revealed Not alone, I'll be there Tell me when you want to go
Sideways falling More will be revealed my friend Don't forget meI can't hide it Come again get me excited
I'm the bloodstain On your shirt sleeve Coming down and more are coming to believe Now we know it all for sure
Make the hair stand Up on your arm Teach you how to dance Inside the funny farm Not alone, I'll be there Tell me when you want to go
I actually have sometime on my hands rite now, just letting the dinner go down a bit, so I decided to write a blog entry about the websites I usually visit when I am online. I think all of us have a general list of webbies we go thru when we have time on the net. I dunno, I'm not the sort of person to surf randomly or go to random blogs. So here we go!
(in no particular order)
www.redcafe.net
This is a popular manchester united forum, and its realli reall active, so there are always new things to read, some really good articles put up by fans as well.
My Mail!
www.hotmail.com
www.yahoo.com
my.uwa.edu.au
My two normal emails, as well as the UWA mail, but yeah I guess I should list them down even though its pretty obvious.
www.soccernet.com
This is a must go, cos yeah its got some pretty good articles, beyond just the match reports, the columns by the writers are a must read. Thus far, gotta be the best soccer website there is around. The gamecast feature is pretty useful as well, its pretty comprehensive and gives you almost instant updates of the matches, so I usually tune in to gamecast before moving to watch the last 15 min on streaming.
www.singaporedaily.net
I used to go to different websites which were concerned with singapore politics and matters at home. Then i went to this webbie, and realised they did a good job in actually collating all the different pieces of news about home, as well as pieces from different blog sites. Sometimes the pieces are realli quite extreme, but yeah i always believe that there is no smoke without a fire, so there would be some truth somewhere, just a matter of how you interpret it.
www.stomp.com.sg
Ha, pls dont judge me on this, but realli when you have nothing much to do, you tend to wanna look at the voyeuristic side of Singaporeans. But yeah its a crap side so strictly just to pass time.
www.wikipedia.org
I go to this site almost all the time, trying to look at cool facts behind movies, and its always kinda cool that you will find something else to click on, and it just goes on and on. I dunno how true the stuff on wiki is, but yeah its always nice to read.
www.redsports.sg
I used to look at this site a lot, but then there haven't been much coverage on sports in vj so far, so I go less these days.
www.bolasepako.com
A site that I go to to catch up on local football news, the guy is realli committed to the blog, and its realli heartening to see his efforts on it.
www.tmz.com
www.pinkisthenewblog.com
Hollywood gossip anyone? Yeah I head here to read about stuff happening in tinsel town, which is pretty interesting at times. TMZ especially has like updates by the minute, live streams and stuff like that. Pretty cool, and of cos always good entertainment.
Hmmm, i will leave it at this for now, cos i need to go and do work. Hope you take some time to look at these sites, if you're ever bored.
I love this song, it reminds me of so many things but yeah just thought that I'll put it on here, cos the words are apt.
Regina spektor is awesome.
You are my sweetest downfall I loved you first, I loved you first Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth I have to go, I have to go Your hair was long when we first met
Samson went back to bed Not much hair left on his head He ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed And history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us The bible didn't mention us, not even once
You are my sweetest downfall I loved you first , I loved you first Beneath the stars came falling on our heads But there just soft light, there just soft light Your hair was long when we first met
Samson came to my bed Told me that my hair was red He told me i was beautiful and came into my bed Oh I cut his hair myself one night A pair of dull scissors and the yellow light And he told me that I'd done alright and kissed me till the morning light, the morning light and he kissed me till the morning light
Samson came back to bed not much hair left on his head Ate a slice of wonderbread and went right back to bed Oh, we couldn't bring the columns down Yeah we couldn't destroy a single one And history books forgot about us And the bible didn't mention us, not even once
I hate trying to sleep after a man u loss. And I am officially not going to Burswood to watch anymore soccer, my record there has been abysmal, so I am just gonna stream stuff or go to Alex's place for cable if worse come to worse.
Honestly though, we din deserve anything out of that match, maybe even a draw would have been too kind for us. I dunno, I am just trying to be realistic. But its pretty much true.
There used to be a time when I saw man u lose, and I consoled myself by telling myself that at least it wasn't VJSG who was losing, and it worked realli well. But now that that part of life is gone, its much harder to deal with it in dat sense. Although I would say I don't really take it as hard. Perhaps I guess at least in reference to yesterday, there were other more pressing issues that were making me more upset.
So i slept at about 1130pm, and woke up today at about 10 plus. Not bad lar, almost 12 hours. Today theres gonna be a soccer friendly later and then I am gonna spend most of today doing work I guess, nothing much else there is to it.
I guess on a bright side of things, running this week has been better, I hope it will get better, but it was good this week, getting a rhythm, and covering about 54km throughout the week. I guess the key will be to just hold this so that by the end of the month I would be have covered 60-65 in one week, which would be a good base to build upon for the race.
Hmmm, lastly on a personal-life side of things:
1) I think that I can never do things the simple way, or rather my life has never been bout doing things simply, somehow I always have to complicate things, or there will always be extraneous factors complicating things, so its never clear-cut, I dunno what I would do for a simple clear-cut, no frills, straight-forward kinda r'ship. Not that I feel I am being owed one, but sometimes i realli feel that the chips just refuse to fall the right way
2) Sometimes the things I want are unattainable, and most of it is thru my un-doing. When I come to think of it, I am realy quite a complicated person and that has had an impact on who I am close to, or who I can get close to, whom I can develop close relationships with and who I can't. I realise that the moment ppl know me and the inner workings of me, they don't really like it so much and it pisses them off. Thus, most of my good r'ships going on now, are usually a result of me not being "fake" per se, but rather just withholding the nature of my complicated psyche.
But dont get me wrong people, its all good in the land of me. I am not depressed or whatsoever, having perused psychological literature for the past 5 years has taught me to use such terms for when they are really valid. I think all of us have things on our chest that we wish to get off, and well this is just one way, and these days my only way of doing it. I guess its not very appropriate when I figure that ppl may stumble on it, but you make what you want out of it. It's cool.
I've listened to this song since I was like 18 I am not wrong, and only today as I was listening to it for the umpteenth time while waiting for the bus, did I really concentrate and listen to the words, and realise the true meaning of the song. And yeah I realise the little nuances in the song which I never realised before.
I din realise before this that he actually was with another girl, and that he was actually not fond of her, but yeah now its like so clear. Ha, its amazing sometimes, just a few minutes of clarity can help you understand something u never bothered with for close to 8 years.
I just remembered, that time at the market snuck up behind me and jumped on my shopping cart And rode down, aisle 5 you looked behind you to smile back at me crashed into a rack full of magazines they asked us if we could leave.
Can't remember, what went wrong last September Though I'm sure that you'd remind me, if you had to
Our love was, comfortable and so broken in
I sleep with this new girl i'm still getting used to my friends all approve, say she's gonna be good for you they throw me, high fives
She says the bible is all that she reads and prefers that I not use profanity your mouth was, so dirty
Life of the party and she swears that she's artsy but you could distinguishMiles from Coltrane
Our love was, comfortable and so broken in she's perfect, so flawless or so they say, say
She thinks I can't see the smile that she's fakin' and poses for pictures that aren't being taken I loved you grey sweat pants, no makeup, so perfect
Our love was, comfortable and so broken in she's perfect, so flawless I'm not impressed, I want you back.
Why do all of them just insist on letting you down? You think at times there is really no point giving your heart away if everytime all you are doing is setting yourself up for failure, for disappointment, for resentment, for despair, helplessness, a myriad of negative emotions that you cannot even to label but only feel and realise that it exists because you wake up each morning feeling like taking your heart out, giving it a nice clean scrub and forgetting it was ever damaged.
Why do they always think that they are the only ones whose heart was hurt, that everything that has, is and will transpire somehow only happened to them and that they didn't deserve it. Then again who does? Surely you don't as well.
Somehow, after 26 years you would have think that meandering through matters like this would make you more hardened, more seasoned and less susceptible at being hurt. But at the end of the day you are still that same vulnerable young boy who gets his heart cut deep. Its always like that.
So now you're faced with 2 choices.
1) You carry on, getting yourself into things that will keep hurting, you don't forget, and you embrace everything that comes your way, you love, you hurt, you laugh and you cry, you live each day not knowing how high or low it might take you 2) You don't think about it,and you decide to leave it all behind, your lonely, you don't have companionship and kinship, someone to share a life with, BUT you know that nobody can hurt but yourself and that will be the best bet at staying happy
The choice is yours, but just remember that everytime you feel happy, you are just a step away from losing it all and coming out of it with nothing.
They don't get it don't they? You're not perfect but neither are they?
But its always your fault, and your burden to carry.
It started off like any normal day, I reached school in the morning for a meeting as well as Advanced Psych class, but my mind was slightly on edge cos of the Data Analysis Mid-term I had later on in the day. The weather was fine, even slightly hot, an it was the last thing on my mind. Also, Monday is my rest day, so I don't really think about the weather cos I know I wasn't gonna go out and run or whatever.
Anyways, the DA exam started at about 4pm, and I went into the comp lab, ok lar relaxing, I saw the questions, was a bit nervous but I knew what I was doing and started the paper pretty smoothly. About 1/4 way through, I heard a thump in the ceiling. Now at this time, I heard the win howling outside, so I figured it must be something like flapping against the ceiling or the wall. Then I hear more and more thumps and in about 10 minutes it turned into a complete riot! It was really noisy but I just kept telling myself that it was probably something knocking against something else cos of the win and nothing else. I mean being in Perth has been eye-opening in terms of how ferocious the wind can be, but other than that it was no surprise.
Then the door to the comp lab opened slightly an the prof was asked to go out. Again I din pay any attention to it, I was really focused on the exam, and then he told us we had to evacuate the building. Now this was the first inkling I had that it was something more major than I thought, but again, I just dismissed it as like a safety precaution. Having been raised in Singapore, we are used to the concept of being Kiasi, so it was nothing to me.
Then as I walked out the door, it struck me. The front of the school courtyard was covered, absolutely covered with branches and leaves. The open field beside the school was white, with hail stones. I was damn shocked, never seen hail stones that big before!
I went back inside school and grabbed my bag to go out and leave, hahaha little did i know this was just the start of the whole thing. I met my friend Ali, who lived close to school, and his car was half buried in water. But he told me to hurry home cos another storm was coming. Rushed to the bus stop outside school and you could really sense things were gonna pick up again. Rained like shit, and I was drenched despite having an umbrella. Couldnt even go use the underpass cos it was flooded knee deep in like cold icy water. Absolutely incongruent this whole thing was, so jay walked and waited for the bus.
My bus trip takes about 11 minutes, but we were stuck inside the bus for 1hour 10 minutes. Everywhere around me, I saw cars on kerbs, trees fallen down, flooded driveways with cars under about a meter of water. Traffic lights all down. It was absolute chaos. Inside the bus, it was different though, cos all the uni students were inside so many of them were talking cock, and I just listened in. But the bus driver was an idiot! First, he didn't turn off the aircon despite ppl shouting at him to, cos I mean we were all wet, so naturally the last thing u need was air con. Secondly, he refused to open the doors until he was right in front of the freaking stop! WTF!!! And I mean when your stuck in traffic, 10m could take 5 minutes.
Crap, anyways I called Colby, and he agreed to fetch me, which was awesome of him, cos when we reached home......
about 1/2 the house was soaked in water, even though we lived on the 3rd floor. Cos we have a skylight in the toilet, and obviously it broke with the pressure of the hail stones. Water also came directly into Colby's room, and his whole room was a mess, soaked in water. The Balcony doors also sustained damaged and water came in. Still I am eternally grateful to Colby for abandoning his salvage efforts so he could take me home from the bus stop, which was about ten min walk from home.
Anyways, all in all, wat a day dat was seriously. Never seen anything like it, and I spoke to a lot of locals about it they havent seen something like dat for like 20 years.Even then what shocked everybody was the freakish nature of it! It just came without warning.
Now about 4 days later, the underpass is still flooded, as the water will probably take about another 2 weeks to completely evaporate on its own. Most ppl's cars look like golf balls with dimples and such, and the UWA winthrop building, the centrepiece of our university's architecture sustained millions of dollars in damage cos the windows were gone. Smashed. The greenhouses all smashed. Arts library flooded. Landslides also caused some houses to be almost buried in mud, and hundreds of thousands of homes were without power, some still don't have power cos of the lightning striking power stations. in Altogether I think they said the damage is in the hundreds of millions. And the insurance claims will only be sorted out completely 2 years from now, that's how long a claims list it is.
Just grateful that things are back to normal, and dat we don't have to fork out any money. The house is still a mess now as Colby's room is still drying out (4 days later). But yeah its ok. Thanks to ah beng, uni, ben leo for asking me how i was. I am just glad im safe, and more importantly there were zero casualties. Here are some photos for you guys.
The school field covered in hail stones and some ppl playing with them. The hail stones in my hands, after melting for about 15-20 minutes, imagine how big they actually were.
Streets covered in leaves and fallen branches.
A pile of hail stones near the school walls, it was really like as if God switched on an ice-maker.
My friends car which survived the hail, but not the water.
Its saturday night, and honestly there are some good movies on, but just dat I din wanna watch them cos I've seen them already (the departed for example, seen it twice, and the original infernal affairs as well). So yeah just decided to pen my thoughts on the past week.
1) Fees going up for uni - again. I hope my brother can get a scholarship or something something that will help my parents out, cos its tough man, one of the reasons why I don't really favour having kids. The cost of uni is realli enormous.
2) My ankle getting better, luckily cos of the quick response to the injury, I feel almost as good as new, less than a week later, but I am not going for soccer tomorrow cos I still feel I am one bad tackle away from an even worse injury, so gonna give it the skip
3) Running has been good, doing some research on how to improve my running posture and stuff, and its hard to change it, but I feel it getting easier to make certain changes to fine tune my running and all. I realise that after a while your fitness can only improve so much, and its all about finding the running economy needed, looking forward to the 30click run in June, but in the mean time its all about making all these small changes
4) Facebook statuses - I know i shouldnt complain since I read it, but sometimes I feel that FB statuses of certain ppl are just cries for attention, I dunno I guess to each his own, but honestly I guess it just satisfies that voyeuristic need inside each of us
I will stop at that for now, keep my posts a lot crisper and tighter that way. Got an exam on Monday, the first one of the semester, so been preparing hard for it, on top of getting other stuff done as we get into the middle month of this semester. Its been a month since I've been here, and yeah 3 more to make things count.
Hmmm, I know i know, its been like about 3.5 months since my last blog post, I always wanted to do it, although I told myself that I wasn't gonna blog much when I was back in Singapore. So yeah, I remember Phil requesting that I start again and I will! But I guess I will keep it shorter this time around, cos I need more time to do work. But basically since school started, this is the first patch of space to breathe in, cos its just been such a rush since I've been back here. So let me put in pointform, the things that happened over the past 3.5 months, just for a quick catch up, and I will slowly elaborate on certain points as we go along in the year.
1) I came back for a pre-meditated but surprise visit back to Singapore
2) Didn manage to do the one thing I wanted to do cos of certain complications but spent my time training the boys team instead, which was a gr8 pleasure
3) Had plenty of private free lance work going, including lecturing which took up a lot of my time when I was back
4) plenty of complications, ups and downs on the personal life front
5) Spent a good time totally disillusioned with whether it was the right thing to come back
6) Came back to perthrefreshed and ready for the term
7) Inundated with work from Singapore at the same time, so was quite hard to cope
8) Finally had time to settle my Singapore work so am now focusing on my work here in UWA
Hmmm, I think that is basically it for now, in terms of the significant things that have happened so far. I will try update more I think I will set wednesdays as my update day, will see how.
I just thought that it'd be good to show you guys my work here in Perth. Basically I am employed by the Bank of Queensland Corporate Challenge, and we run competitions for office workers during lunch time in the city.
Its a really cool gig, good pay, great people, and of cos dealing with sport, I mean its perfect. The weather is sometimes a bother as we conduct our actitivites during mid-day but the lack of humidity and the breeze often makes up for it. So here I will leave you with some pictures.
For this season, we are organising volleyball, so yeah the first aprt is setting up the volleyball pitches like so, which includes the nets and the stands.
These are the people whom i work with, the guy in white is Ben, the guy in the white cap is Chris, and the husband (beside the van) and Janice (at the table). So yeah here we finished the nets and courts and doing the rest of the staff.
Aren't our banners the best!
The office workers start streaming in around 12 noon for the first round of matches (we have 3 rounds of 7 concurrent matches).
I love the sight of this, so many ppl taking trouble to come down and play and keep fit during lunch time, something you will never see happening in Singapore.
A superb team in pink, those shirts were actually in commemoration of "cycle to work" day. Superb. This guy didn't even change out of his business wear and started playing.
And finally, this is the same field after we packed everything in, and me walking out.
This post has two things which I wanna highlight about the recent going-ons here in Aussie.
Sending Haiyum Off
First was saying goodbye to my friend Haiyum, who is returning to Singapore for good after 5 years over here in Perth. I only knew him this semester but suffice to say I couldn't have gone thru the semester (so far not too shabbily) without him. There are actually 6 people who are in the postgraduate room, but he is the one who is most frequent in the office, so yeah I would say that he is he closest post-graduate to me, literally and figuratively speaking.
I guess from now on it will be quite lonely in the office, cos most of the time it will probably be just me. Haiyum is actually 36 this year, and I really respect him for taking the hard step to go out to a foreign country and try and upgrade himself. The only other person whom I know did that was my mom, who finished her bachelors at the age of 43, so I am very priveleged to know such people in my life.
He also told me that he was not going to sell-out, and he was alright with a decent paying job as long as it allowed him to do what he loved. An attitude that I respect, and I wonder myself if I can not sell-out as well, cos yeah selling out is a pretty common thing in Singapore, especially if you're taking a generic degree, but anyway, thats another matter.
So yeah I sent him off on Wednesday night at the airport, and I could see he was quite sad because yeah its been his home for the past 5 years so I would understand too. Well at least he is coming back to his wife. Also, he lives near Jaslyn's place which for those of you who know where I live would know is about 5 min drive from my place. So yeah hope I get to meet up with him.
But of course I wil always remember his work ethic, which I feel was a real inspiration to me, so I hope to be able to work hard or as hard when he is not around in this coming semester.
Half Marathon
The other thing that I have been preparing for is doing my first half-marathon run, I'm not aiming for much because I have never finished that distance in my life before, but I would say that if I can come under the 1:45 barrier, I would be proud of myself. I can't say for sure that I have trained very hard. Its hard to train alone most of the time, cos you can't pace anyone, but I have been working consistently over the past 3 months, making sure my core is strong, and also that I cover the mileage consistently each week. I guess the one stumbling block would be the vicious Perth wind, which can really slow you down. Most of the time the headwind picks up on the way back, so you have to take advantage of the tail wind when you feel it behind you.
I will share more when I get back, leave you with some pics of the running route, taken off the internet, cos obviously I won't take any when I am running.
Most of the run (about 19km of it) will be along the Swan River, and the backdrop will be the cityline.
I will then go across a bridge known as the Causeway (duno why I cannot find the picture on the internet, to cross over from the City side to South Perth side (which is where the photo above was taken from, and will start running southwards to the Narrows bridge, which you see below.
This is the second bridge that I will cross, the Narrows bridge, which goes back over the river, so I will run from the left to right, back onto the UWA side and head back to UWA which is towards the top-right of this picture (can't be seen from this pic).
So yeah, alright I shall go now, pack and head to school for prayers. Here's hoping for a smooth run, and the meeting of targets.
Alright so here's some pictures from my trip to Mandurah. Basically its the southernmost station on the train line, anything more southerly of that will need independent bus charters, such as Albany, where Colby comes from. But anyways here's a look at the place. Enjoy!
This is the first sight that greets you once u get off the shuttle bus in Mandurah, basically, its kind of an enclave, and condos on the other side.
The river was quite dry, and yeah there were gulls and all on the dried parts closer to the shore.
And of cos the odd small boy walking around as well.
This is the inside or rather the lobby area of the performing arts centre in Mandurah. They were having a free arts exhibition, so I decided to come in and take a look.
Inside the exhibition hall. The paintings were oil paintings of this nearby place called Margaret River.
This, to me was the highlight of the whole trip. Went to this new development, which was kinda modelled after a Venice theme. The houses are to the right, and yes, you can just park your boat at the back of your house and walk up, straight into your home. WATTTTT!!!!!!!!!!
Another view of the houses here, I think you must be filthy rich to live here man.
Another view from just outside a house, imagine walking behind your house and seeing this. Realli, WOW.
Something random at the side of the street. A HUGEE chair, and a terracota soldier replica.
Just a cool art piece in the middle of Mandurah.
Of cos can't go anywhere without a trip to the bach. Look at the sand, beautiful absolutely, miles of this type of fine sand.
Sail boats in the distance.
I can never get sick of the view of an empty horizon, just makes you feel that you are so small in the bigger scheme of things.
Another great view of the beach.
Just a random flag pole, you see the Aussie flag at the top, the Aboriginal flag to its right, and the state flag to the left.
I guess if there is a way to describe the vibe I get from Mandurah, would be like if the boat quay area was changed to a residential area. They had lots of stuff along the river and of cos the shore nearby as well. A relaxing place really, and I had a good time looking at everything there. Plus it was just about 45 min from Perth so wasn't that far as well.
Missing all, and sorry about the hair (vicious wind),
