It is very rare for me to have sleepless nights after my permanent posting. After all, there is unknown repercussion if I do not get ample rest. This is the 2nd time.

The last time I lost sleep was over a set of uniform. This time, it was over a piece of information.

Over and over again, I recalled this quote I read in a book: Always start with trust; distrust must be earned.

This was actually a philosophy I go by when I meet new people. You can call me a hopeless idealist, but life is short, why waste time building a pool of people you can trust, when you can trust everyone and then build a pool of people you can’t trust?

Anyways, ya… I guess I got upset cos certain people I thought I could keep in the circle of trust just kept disappointing me by earning my distrust over and over again. The incident this time round actually stemmed from a distrust in me.

People remember I gossip, but they don’t remember that I kept a lot of secrets that they told me too. So naturally, I got upset when they looked at me in contempt and told me they can’t tell me certain things cos ‘my mouth is too big’. Ya… If my mouth is too big, I would have told other people what you told me the other night, and that morning, and on that bus ride…

You get the drift.

A lot of times, it was not the piece of information that was important. Given my network, would I not know anything if I wanted to? But it was that willingness to share information that I was concerned about. If you distrust me so much as to keep a piece of information from me purposefully, it warranted a reaction from me to up my distrust in you.

I put my complete trust in you right from the start by virtue of our friendship, but you chose to put distrust in me. So please do not blame me if you find me not trusting you in the future. I gave you the chance and you squandered it.

So YOU, anyone of you friends who happened to be reading this, be warned.

Suddenly I have a renewed interest to blog again… Partly to make up for the half-done entry last week. Partly also cos my pen for writing my personal diary is now in the hands of good old friend, so I have no other way to ventilate my thoughts.

Last week, I thought I had no reason why I should be feeling down. But after all the weekend’s hiatus, I guess I can contribute it loosely to the 2 reasons: 1) PMS, as I had always had once in a while (though some may defer) 2) Too many things to handle, although I didn’t really manage to handle them actively, cos my procrastinating nature was hoping that all these would pass in time, when I closed my eyes and counted to 10.

In the weekend that just passed, my 3rd sis got married off. My commitments to her marriage plans were 1) A wedding video 2) wedding emcee 3) event track list. All of the above, I could only do it in the preceding week, cos of the event I had to prepare for in the previous weekend, which was…

Graduation ceremony for this intensive relig…

An unknown big black insect just flew into my room and disappeared… I’m leaving my door open for the night.. For a quick and easy escape just in case..

Anyways, I wanted to edit my last sentence as:

Graduation ceremony for this Christian intensive religious counselling programme, in which I only partook in its drafting of the ops order and perhaps directing to rearrange the chairs, ensuring the food came on time, being there for the sake of being there when there was no other senior officers around.

It was weird, cos I was not the IC for the whole programme, and my OC was the one who was directing me to do all the stuff I was to do. Correct logically, but incorrect logically also. Correct, cos well, he was the OC, he should do all the directing. Incorrect, cos I might be better off being directed by the IC cos I was really shy to ask my OC when I was blur about my duties. I felt so stressed when I had to follow the instructions of someone who had a >15 yr experience gap with me. Not to mention the rank.

And before that… before that… oh… my memory storage did not extend to that period.

Anyways, things happened between these 2 important dates that made me go merry-go-round. And after a PM+Night Round+12-hour Weekend Shift (which involved the ceremony), my knees hurt so much, they are still hurting now, more than 1 week later.

Oh, and perhaps the thought of having my staff appraisal being done, the ‘project’ I was in charge which is due SOON, diarrhea… It seemed that all the stressful stuff converged in those 2 weeks. And I’m glad it’s over.

Now, I only have to worry about THAT PROJECT THAT IS ABOUT TO DUE IN… 2 DAYS lol

Oh well, it’s OK. I have a rough plan to show my boss tomorrow, something I did during my desk-bound public holiday shift to buy me more time (at least a month). I am not good in delivering wow-wow proposals, but I do have patterns to extend my death date.

But I have things to look forward to.

Like my dinner date with giam. My cake buffet with ZPS gang. My newly bought gadgets. My Love Mi trip.

I’m not thinking about how to spend my X’mas, although I am not working on that day. I now have several groups of friends, all of whom I wanted to spend the precious day with and I do not want to disappoint anyone of them. But not asking any of them to while my time away would make my X’mas a very lousy X’mas.

Dilemma.

I should sleep through it. And perhaps do a little of ironing of my uniform. Maybe pack room (VERY unlikely). Whatever.

I am restarting the hang of writing. All thanks to that conducive moment I had in the hotel room last night after my sis’s wedding. Sad to say, I was starting a new mini-project to give myself a chance to recharge my writing from ZZGY. You know, taking a break from a project and taking a break from a project to work on another project has different advantages.

Lastly, I have been so eager to swipe my credit card to earn points, that I was offering to swipe it for a lot of purchases done either by my friends or my family. I was so over-hyped in doing it, that before I swiped the card this afternoon at SITEX, I was doing a quick calculation to see if I had reached the monthly limit.

Although I know that I would be able to pay off the debt (cos those people will return me the money), the thought of chalking up such high debts was nerve-wrecking.

I will not do that in the future. The feeling is too harrowing.

我要再次冲刺！

运动。。。

认真做工。。。

饮食均衡。。。

爱我身边的人。。。

写作。。。

延迟买超过 $100 的单品至明年 1 月过后。。。

I’ve been feeling so down lately, I don’t know why. My diarrhea for the week took a bad turn today and I was desk bound at work. Fever halfway. So sianz..

oh… No mood for writing. Maybe I’ll continue later..

Out on 10 Dec 2009.

I’ve already made my order online, so would receive it by 20th ba. Unless SG will also release the album concurrently, then I’ll buy it 1st..

There is something about giving myself a gift. It stemmed from the very young days when each birthday wish was to hope to have a birthday gift given by someone, just like other kids, on my next birthday. There was once in Pri 4 or 5, when after I left school, I was surprised to find my 3rd aunt waiting at the BLK 140 void deck with my father. She then asked me to choose an ice-cream from that mama shop and told me it was my birthday gift.

It was the 1st birthday gift I ever received, as far as my memory goes (because according to verbal anecdotes and photos, I did have birthday celebrations when I was a few years old).

So please pardon the birthday-gift deprived me for buying myself 2 birthday gifts, if not including a shopping spree for new clothes lol Although, yes, yes, I do buy myself big-ticket items every now and then now that I am financially capable, but it’s the tradition, you know. Tradition…

The 1st gift that I bought for myself about a week before the big day was the red Ink bag (although some argued that it was orange). I was in between the Hep B booster jab and insurance body check up when I decided to pop by Hougang Mall to while my time away and taking a look at a bag that I eyed a few weeks back.

I looked around and around and saw another one that caught my eyes literally (too bright to be concealed) and found this bag that had a lot of compartments. ya… That was the main reason why I bought it, and it made me overlook the fact that it was not designed for me to put my fresh uniform in without crumpling them.

So I ended up having to bring my uniform in a separate shoe bag. So I decided to buy myself another bag this coming X’mas.

My next purchase was an even ‘longer’ purchase. In between June and July, the squad were always shuttling between malls while waiting for our medical check ups for the Nepal trip, as well as meeting up even on weekends cos we just had no lives then.

One of our favourite pastimes was to go look at watches. OK, I was influenced by MM who was looking to buy a new expensive watch, so we were looking through watch galleries every time we passed by one. I remembered one morning when we spent our time at this big watch gallery in IMM and I saw this watch that caught my eye (finally, after endless mindless browsing through dozens of shops). It had a flaw, and I told MM straight away about that.

‘Too bad there was this date, or else the clock face looked simple and cool.”

Alas! The image of the watch stuck in my head so long after that, that I knew it was THE ONE watch I had to buy. After seeing it again at The Heeren again, I told myself I would get it as a birthday gift this year. After all, who knows I might see another that I fancied?

2 months later, I am still thinking of this watch, and so, on the day of my birthday, I happened to knock off early, and I was loitering in White Sands (I didn’t want to spend my birthday just at work and at home) and I decided to drop by the watch gallery there. Lo and behold! The hard-to-find watch was in that small space!

I had to choose between the black face and white face, of which, I immediately chose the black one the moment I put it on my wrist and looked at myself in the mirror. I was so mesmerized that I was even willing to wait for half an hour just to wait for a new one to come from the warehouse.

So guys, here is The Watch that I aimed for so long…

我承认，我真的很懒惰上博客发帖。我是有时间的，毕竟就算我做多少的 OT 我还是会下班、上班。只是在这段工作之余的时间，我宁可呆在电脑面前浏览无聊网页（ 因为我体力透支，需要修养），不然就是找个朋友出去荒废时间流连在某个购物中心里（ 因为我精神透支，需要人情充电）。

所以你可以说，我的世界已经从虚拟的世界走入真实了。

忘了从哪里读到，那些喜欢流连在虚拟世界的人，尤其是青少年，都是为了想要逃避真实世界；他们活在的世界有某种因素促使他们宁愿把精神投入在一个虚拟、构造的世界，也不愿面对现实中的窘境。

想想看，我步入青春期的岁月，的确有太多让我不想面对的现实了。有太多的事情，我都无能为力，只有在玩 《SimCity 3000》 的时候，我才能感觉到前所未有的控制权。虽然游戏很简单，却带给我无穷大的力量。

当了兵，又想要逃避现实，于是又沉迷于电脑游戏中。尤其在不想出营后面对家人，也没有那个精力出外走走，所以就躲在游戏空间。

大学，发现比别人落后了许多。努力，换不到成果。争取，只有被退缩。Web 2.0 的演变，能够让我展开我在现实生活中无法进行的寻觅行动。所以我再次沉沦，放弃与真实世界沟通。

现在，虽然我更投入于真实人生的活动，但是这当中难免仍存在着一些讽刺。

我的工作，让我耗费醒着的绝大部分的时间的工作，就是在一个构造出来的虚假环境中。在四面墙的范围里，不同背景的人得凑合起来互动；为了生活，为了生存，为了声誉，谁都会做些出乎自己意料以及能耐的事。斗智斗勇，我们天天活在适者生存的环境内，只是如果今天我被你利用了，没关系，明天再来。反正你是逃不出这个框框的 NPC，我是因为肾上腺素中毒的游戏瘾君子，游戏 REPLAY，明天 level up，就是我的工作准则。

花了那么多时间在升级版的 ‘电脑游戏’ 中，我踏出那四道墙难道还要继续活在虚拟的世界里吗？

我很久以前就发现，墙外的人永远都无法了解我们墙内的人的世界，无论是 ‘蓝衣的’ 或 ‘白衣的’。就连那些经常进出的志愿工作者也以犀利的眼光看待我们这些牺牲掉自由的人，仿佛为社会维持秩序是我们的罪过。我不是说 ‘白衣的’ 全部都是烂苹果，我也没有在说 ‘蓝衣的’ 是乌合之众，只是在这虚造的小型社会中所产生的压力是连我们这些当局者也不会察觉到的陷阱。

当虚幻的世界开始侵蚀我的真实生活，模糊了那道界线，我也不知道我什么时候会无法分清楚真与假，虚与实。到底是分界线太细了，还是那道墙厚到令人看不到另外一边？

不是我不空闲，总要让我找到走出那道墙的路。

I knew I would not be able to publish an entry on what I did on my birth date itself, so I’m doing it in stages. Like in this version, it will focus on what I did every year: Making resolutions.

ha…

Long long time ago, my birthday resolutions and NY resolutions were separate. But as time went by, it became redundant to maintain 2 resolutions, so the birthday resolutions became the main beacon for the next year, while at New Year, I would make a revision of the birthday resolution as well as conclude the previous year’s resolutions.

This year, my resolution is as follows:

As can be seen, I have omitted all those resolutions about being a better person. There is always a ‘room for improvement’ for being a better person, so this goal will be never-ending. As long as I endeavour to upgrade myself and my skills, so that I can contribute to my workplace and organization effectively, it does not matter what skills I aim to gain for the year.

My goals are now more pragmatic. Making holiday plans with my closed ones… I have already settled a period where I can go make merry with them. The matter now is the exact date and venue. Ironically, the only place I have gone to this year was… NEPAL only. Gahmen sponsored some more. Last year, I went to Genting and TW, spending my own money although I was unemployed.

But even after saving from travelling this year, I am still broke.

Not as in pauper broke broke. I still do not have enough disposable income to spare for such things. I barely made up the basic savings for emergency last month. And I have yet started to invest for retirement…

How…?

And I will need $$$ if I were to publish ZZGY. I do hope to find a publisher willing to do it, but I would rather depend on myself, since I knew that the genre is not something that a publisher will deem commercially viable. Sponsors, anyone??