*..Give Thanks..*

Back in PL days, I used to have a favourite song amongst many.

I used to hum it on my way back home, before I sleep, whenever I'm feeling afraid and despondent from the pressures of life...

I used to vent my worries by playing the tune on the piano when I'm alone at home, and singing to it...

Somehow, the song never fails to soothe my emotions.

I realize I haven't been doing (all of) the above in a long while, but today I received the answer to my prayers for the longest time. =)

My heart fluttered and I was almost delirious. It was a dream come true, I wanted to shout for joy.

I guess it's true, about how patience is virtue.

About how when we don't get one thing we most desire, it is not "never" but "not yet". About how His plans for us get revealed in perfect timing.


"God will make a way,
When there seems to be no way;
He works in ways we cannot see,
He will make a way for us.

He will be my guide,
Hold me closely to his side;
With love and strength for each new day,
He will make a way;
He will make a way."


Everything in His time, indeed.
With this, life would be perfect soon enough. =)

So I guess, I'm about to fulfill one of my 2012 resolutions! The year looks promising and exciting enough already =)

*..Nobody's perfect, but there's always someone perfect for you..*

Saw this on a friend's facebook status update some days back, thought it made alot of sense. Thought I'd share. =)

So subtle, yet so much truth to it.


“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can.

Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there.

Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”

― Bob Marley

*..When fun intersects work..*

The people I've been seeing alot since graduation. The people at the Joo Chiat office I so frequent. Oh the point is...XQ TOOK THIS PHOTO! HAHAHA!!

Kinda sad that freelancers belong, yet don't really belong anywhere. Strong bonds formed with a bunch of them, but when it comes to company photo, I don't really belong in it.

My favourite office by far, after CR. Really fun working with people from similar age group, who can "clique" with you. It's when work intersects with fun. You feel stressed, yet you don't - cos you're in it together. Even when you're given shitty work, a part of you don't really mind that much - cos you give and take. Might not be a good thing for myself, but whatever works.

Been considering if I should go full-time at some company, but I'm kinda enjoying my freelancing days and the freedom that comes along with it on non-work days. There's more motivation to work harder, because the faster you close a project, the sooner your break arrives.

I honestly don't mind full-timing here, if the pay is reasonable enough. After all, it's the people around you who makes work bearable.

Oh well, let's see how things go in a couple of months' time. =)

*..Fingers Crossed..*

Today's a truly blessed day, give thanks =)

Got 2 consecutive calls from 2 friends who managed to get a freelance project contact on hand and asked me to work with them if the deals get made. So I did 2 quotations ...very worriedly... It's just too hard to strike the balance, maybe I will get better at the game with practice and with some mistakes and rejections. The balance of how much is too much, how much is too little, how much is mutually beneficial to both the client and us? All boils down to NEGOTIATION- the magic word we always learn at Chapman but I haven't been able to fully master yet.

Got to know this new friend at work, he's uncle kx's buddy and we call him se bei bei. He shall be my role model! For whatever amount he quotes the client, he can somehow magically get them to agree even if the final sum is outrightly outrageous. Woo, role model uncle!

So fingers-crossed, for a busy and fulfilling August.

But apart from that, August seems exciting enough already.


5th August: Crowbars 2011 results will be out. Fingers crossed.

6th August: There's a really interesting pilot shoot with the uncles on Saturday, and they gave me the chance to be a videographer! HAHAHA XQ A VIDEOGRAPHER?!?! 10 videographer crew and I got to choose some of the other crew, so woo! A fun shoot with all the people I know.

9th August: HAPPY NATIONAL DAY! I wanna see fireworks again this year. I totally loveee fireworks to an obsession.

10th August: Happy 2nd Anniversary to the Piggers! Marveling at how time flies. =)

12th August: Pea pea's birthday party! Reunion with the FSV people.


There are 2 more public holidays. One for Hari Raya and one for Presidential Elections TBC.

What else in August? Oh I'm about to close the most annoying project of all times- my 2nd project since graduation and I can never seem to close it cos the client keeps adding new wants! Zzzzzz OMG 2 months of editing the same BORING project, it's FINALLY coming to an end! =)

And August, yet another month to explore a new array of possibilities at work and meeting new friends. These 2 months, I made an impressive number of friends with all that job-hopping on projects. Really an eye-opener and I truly cherish all the time spent with every one of them - whether or not the friendship continues after the project ends, or we just don't keep in touch after the project closes.

天下无不散之宴席, partings are but part and parcel of life.
Indeed I feel a sense of loss each time a friendship blossoms, but dies off soon after because of circumstances. But well, if you're meant to be life-long friends, you will reunite somehow. =) If you don't, at least it was a happy few days-few weeks or months spent!

And everyone who comes in and out of our lives, they leave invisible footprints that remain with us for the rest of our lives, whether they are physically there or not.

Hmmmm WHY AM I SO RETROSPECTIVE ALL OF A SUDDEN?

Must be the hour of the night.

May the month of August pose new challenges for me and be a bountiful experience that I can carry with me for the rest of my journey ahead =)

MEOW!

OH MY 4TH GMARKET PARCEL HAS ARRIVED! but it's at the post office cos no one was home to accept the parcel today. WOOO CAN GO POST OFFICE COLLECT TMR! TOTALLY THRILLED! I reckon it's the skirt and rompers I bought last week!

Oh and month of August, alot of catching up to do with old friends that I haven't met in a loong time. Alexandria aka "xq", Joanne-Marie my laopopo, Cherylene my kindergarten friend, my JC clique, my JC supper gang and of course my PL Gang =) Like mole the pervert, fionna, shimin, xiaobai and weijing the hot babe!

OH AND I THINK I'M GONNA BUY MY IPHONE 4 AND FINALLY UPGRADE TO AN IPHONE PLAN THIS AUGUST!! *hyperventilates* YOU DON'T KNOW HOW LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS DAY TO COME!!

I think I can never end this post at the rate I'm going. So goodnight world!!

*..Life's Turmoils..*

An old friend's dad has been hogging the headlines a week ago, but I didn't get down to reading the reports.  Just remembered to google them awhile ago and it doesn't seem to be very positive news. An understatement, for if the articles turn out to be true, this would have a devastating impact on my friend's family.  And their relationship with their dad.

Just went to read his blog and browsed his fb to see how he's taking things, and everything seems so bleak.

It really sucks when you rise up the rungs and get everything in the world, only to see your world crumbling before you due to some ugly gossips or ugly truths.

Just hope that everything will go well for this friend, and that his family would emerge stronger than ever, amidst the entire saga.

Most of all, may it all be but a false scandal.  If it's real, it's really too much for a grown child to take.  And the repercussions it's going to have on public opinion, with this man in subject being such a high profile public figure.

OH WELL. *sigh* feeling abit disheartened just by reading the articles.

*..Came across this on someone's blog..*

All you need is love, right? Wrong! It takes a whole lot more to make a relationship work 

By Sally Brampton

If there is one area in our lives where most of us struggle, it’s relationships. That’s the bad news. The good news is that they can be improved. It takes hard work, but anybody who says, “If you have to work at it, it’s not worth it”, is probably in denial or an unreconstructed romantic in search of Miss or Mr Right — who, guess what, they never succeed in finding.

With two failed marriages behind me (I’m now, happily, on my third), I take an intense personal interest. We learn how to have relationships from our parents, and some of us are taught rather better than others. My early lessons were not good and, eventually, I was in such despair that I took myself off to therapy to learn how to undo some of my more destructive habits and responses. I am still learning and I still get things wrong (old habits die hard), but one thing I do know is that negative behaviours aren’t written in stone.

Recently, I was having dinner with a girlfriend who has the best marriage I’ve ever seen. She and her husband like each other and laugh a lot, but it can’t simply be put down to good luck, right man, right woman. Perhaps that’s why I study them with more than forensic interest. At dinner, she was telling a story about her mother: “I was so angry when I put down the phone, I had to call a friend and unload before he came home so I didn’t dump it all over him.”

Unloading high emotion or anger before my husband walks through the door had simply never occurred to me (as I say, a rubbish early education), so it struck like an epiphany that it’s not so much what those friends do, as what they don’t, that makes their marriage work. Call it reverse psychology. It’s all very well to be told to be gentler, kinder or more tolerant, but such well-intentioned instructions are so wildly abstract that they are close to meaningless. Understanding what we shouldn’t do, rather than what we should, might provide a better and more useful insight. In that spirit, I made my own list of 10 relationship no-no’s.


1 Don’t blame somebody else for the way that we feel

We have to take responsibility for our own emotions, rather than handing them over to our intimate other. And we should not confuse their emotions with our own. Say our other half comes home and yells at us about something inconsequential because they’re stressed at work. Our first response is to take it personally and feel aggrieved. Better to take a step back and look at what’s really bothering them. A little empathy, a simple question — “Are you okay?” — can defuse a potential row in a way that hostility met by hostility never can.

2 Don’t to try to change the other person

In trying to change someone, we’re playing the “if only” game, as in, “if only you were tidier/more sociable/less complaining/more generous, our relationship would be fabulous”. We cannot change other people. All we can change is our own responses and behaviour. That doesn’t make us total wimps, nor does it mean we can’t ask for what we want or need. We can, but as adults, not as children. Adults explain, children complain, which takes us straight to rule No 3.


3 Don’t use the word ‘you’, replace it with the word ‘I’

Take charge of your own feelings, as in, “I feel this when you do that”, rather than, “You did this and made me feel that way”. Say your husband (or wife; bad behaviour is gender-free) never helps out around the house. We can explain that we’d like it if they helped more, or we can complain that they never help, which takes us to rule No 4.

4 Ban the words ‘never’ and ‘always’

They are almost always accusatory, as in, “you never empty the dishwasher” or “you always forget my birthday”. Add a jabbing finger and you have almost definitely moved into blame territory. Along with blame comes criticism and its bitchy close relation, contempt — both are poisonous to a relationship. If there are sticking points that can’t seem to get resolved, appeal to somebody’s good nature — “I wish you’d remember my birthday, it really upsets me when you don’t” is far more likely to result in ribbons and roses than snide comments about selective memory, just as contemptuous remarks about how remarkable it is that dishwashers load themselves are far more likely to mean you end up with a sink full of dirty plates.

5 Don’t be defensive

It’s simply another form of blame, as in “it’s not my fault” (it’s yours). Trying to see another person’s point of view is not stepping down, it’s stepping forward. It is not a sign of weakness but of strength. It takes generosity to put ourselves in another’s shoes, and if relationships thrive on any single gesture, it is to take our personal feelings out of the situation and show generosity.

6 Don’t sulk or stonewall

Men are particularly good at this; usually on the pretext they are “just keeping their head down”. Silence can be a form of punishment (as hostile in its own way as noisy anger) and refusing to engage makes conciliation impossible.

7 Don’t keep a battle going

Learn to accept an apology as well as to apologise, not necessarily for the action (sometimes we are right to be angry), but for the situation: “I’m sorry we had such a silly quarrel”.

8 Don’t make assumptions about other people’s behaviour

How can we learn not to do this? By stopping and asking ourselves a few simple questions: “How do I know if that’s really true? Am I overdramatising this?” We might, for example, assume somebody is late because they don’t care, whereas the truth is that they can be late for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with us. Other forms of mind-reading include expecting other people to fulfil our wants and needs without stating them clearly (“he/she should know”) and are based on yet another assumption: “If he/she loved me, he/she would know.” Nobody, however intimate, is clairvoyant.

9 Don’t be controlling

Your other half might be rubbish at cooking, but constant interference is not going to make them any better. People are imperfect, even the ones we love, and control is a form of game-playing. If you set somebody up, they will almost always fail. One game couples like to play is withholding affection or sex, but the real casualty, often fatally wounded, is the relationship, as both people draw further apart. Another form of game-playing is victim. “I was only trying to help” is a subtle, manipulative form of control.

10 Have good manners

Not in the sense of frigid politeness (which can be as riddled with contempt as outright insults), but as in treating your other half as you would your closest friends: with respect, affection and tolerance. If there’s one thing that has always struck me about those friends with a good marriage, it is that they are unfailingly considerate of each other. If you can do all that, you’re a better creature than I am, but what I can truly say is that I try. Where there’s a will or, to paraphrase, a willingness, there’s almost always a way.