I pulled myself out of the bed at 1:30am.
Walked around the stupid hostel, trying to find a spot to skype with my parents.
To greet them happy chinese new year.
Only to find that the only place i can skype is along the stairways.
Glad to see them on screen.
Every single one of them.
Miss them dearly.
Belgium is -2 degrees.
Snowing like nobody’s business.
Good to be walking in snow instead of rain.
But anyways,
Happy Chinese New Year! and
Happy Valentine’s Day!
To you you you.
Especially you. (:
First time ever to be away from family during CNY (my FAV festive season through the year).
Kind of sad to be missing out from the celebration.
That was the main reason why i wanted to go Brussels, Belgium during the weekends.
Don’t want to be sulking and moping around in my room in cold boring Dublin,
thinking how it will be like to be back home.
I don’t like how it feels when im being left alone for too long.
Probably because im used to be around company, having to grow up in such a big family.
I love noise, i miss the noises, i miss having people to talk to, having people to talk to me (even if i always ignore them).
I love hearing noise, even if im not the one making noises.
Weird huh?
But anyway, we had a make-do reunion dinner! (:
Went to do groceries shopping, but in the end we went to have japanese meal for lunch.
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| From Desktop |
Yamamori.
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| From Desktop |
Menu
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| From Desktop |
Bento lunch set.
It’s so-so.
Not as nice as what u can get back in singapore.
It’s a meal to cheat the ‘guai loh’ (ang moh).
But still, a pretty full meal, with a really large portion.
I’m gonna get really fattttt if i continue to pig out this way.
Went to buy groceries for the steamboat dinner.
Then returned for a jog.
My sis think im crazy to go jogging when i have a swollen foot.
It’s much better now, doesn’t hurt that much when i walk.
But i need the jog to keep myself sane.
It rids of my misery and whatever negative emotions i have/building up inside me.
I’m always a happier person after the jog.
And you’ll feel like u can go on forever when u jog here.
It’s cold, yes. But you don’t sweat when u’re jogging.
But sadly, you don’t burn more calories in the cold.
Cos you eat more when u’re cold, cos u get hungry more often.
So it just balance out somehow.
Cos u need more calories to generate warmth. ):
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ROSE!
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| From CNY |
Pretty packaging.
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I have a weakness for fresh flowers.
Sunflowers and roses especially.
Anyways, to show you guys the really super duper full dinner i had.
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Dory Fish
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Beef slices (Don’t know why it turned out like this)
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fish balls and meat ball
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Dumplings.
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Prawns.
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Mushrooms
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Tung oh!
How can we have steamboat without this! haha.
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Unglam shot of me preparing the food.
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Rolling the minced beef into meatballs.
Disgusting….
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Abalone!
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Beef Meatballs.
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Sambal Chilli is the bestttttt.
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All the food.
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Yes, i agree that the rice cooker is a good helper.
Can not only cook rice.
But it can also do this…..
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| From CNY |
STEAMBOAT!
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Dig in!
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Guess what is this?
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| From CNY |
Tiramisu?
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| From CNY |
No, it’s Crunchimisu.
Cos no rum were added, and it’s crunchy.
Taste really nice and sinful.
Most importantly, the guys made it. HA!
All i have to do is to eat it.
I would say i had a really good meal.
After the meal, i just felt that the jog went down the drainnnnnnn. ):
Oh, and this is how i dry my stuff.
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| From CNY |
My nike pants on top of the heater.
Dries pretty fast. (:
Nap nap before heading to the airport to brussels!
The chocolate-waffle-fries-mussels country. (:
I.M.Y.
“Let’s go to the PAD
I wanna kiss you underneath the stars
Maybe we’ll go too far, we just don’t care
We just don’t care, we just don’t care” – John Legend, P.D.A We Just Don’t Care.
When life gets too easy, people tend to take everything for granted.
I get what i want, but sometimes i forget how difficult it might be for others in order to give me what i want.
I’m a spoilt brat, i am.
And i’m blessed to have people who want to spoil me.
I’m counting my blessings, every single minute.
I know what i love.
But the thing is, will i do whatever it takes for me to get what i love?
Kaili tagged me in one of the notes she posted on facebook.
A pretty long speech, but nevertheless an inspiring one.
It’s written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988).
He was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony.
This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
“I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee
School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your
convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to
speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation
or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She
is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has
honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by
practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day
telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being
disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That
is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one
who triumphs is always the wife.
And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when
you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.
Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already
be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be
married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be
married many, many times. Good for you.
The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end
of education. You’re done learning.
You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong
process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking
masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know
the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there
is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of
learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to
be repeat customers.
The good news is that they’re wrong.
The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your
entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of
you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that
you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life
expectancy.
I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean
the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about
a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.
You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as
the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind
Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why
people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing
in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little
danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching
us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into
a gentle and restful nap.
Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live
to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than
five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time
they need to spend in the bathroom.
So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another
40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.
Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re
50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their
convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet
their life expectancy.
I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.
After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever
want to expect being average.
Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working,
falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as
graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your
hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.
That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be
an awful waste.
If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living
your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have
nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them.
And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore
to prepare you to be average.
What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not
entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does
not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over
it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment
by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.
Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your
life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as
tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever
be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you
will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from
here. Or up. No one knows.
What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.
Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many
wonderful things that you can do when you are free.
The most important is this: do not work.
Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it
is undesirable.
Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from
overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it
can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day,
bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s
nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.
There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet
people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a
living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their
fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless
and, at worst, harmful.
People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a
certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei”
was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps.
Utter nonsense.
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate
so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in
modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.
Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you
enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it
for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will
have value in itself.
I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy
it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in
some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably
a sports journalist.
So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine
you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will
have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go
further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able
to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know
what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and
feeling superior, you might become a teacher.
Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an
obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you
don’t, you are working.
Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To
those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not
asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is
dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great
capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you
are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even
conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or
equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the
truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to
appreciate the value of silence.
In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That
requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the
mirror.
I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and
that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be
hated.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet
every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been
hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred
is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused,
murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.
One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case
that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s
own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be
accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate
towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your
role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are
not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure
sign that you are doing something wrong.
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one
changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by
anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for
me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without
deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken
a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It
far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise.
Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance.
It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning,
attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call
happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves
in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We
celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important
to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t
happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It
grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It
is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is
less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the
heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not
reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to
inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to
loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your
body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It
consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.
You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.”
What do you love doing?
Do you have the courage to pursue it?
I cannot resist drinks in pretty packaging.
On the mission to find this drink now!
haha.
I actually thought that this song was by the Jonas Brothers.
Boy, am i glad to find out that it is by Jason Castro.
Happy song, makes u want to skip to the song. haha.
“And i wanna fall in love with you again
I don’t have to try, it’s so easy
Who needs to pretend?
And oh, i’ll hold your hand when we drive
And we’ll lose track of all the time”
Who say im having fun and not doing work!?
Because i’ll be flying around quite alot to travel.
I have to start and complete my assignments way beyond the deadline.
(I NEVER EVER finish my assignment any day earlier than the day BEFORE the deadline.)
So im suppose to pick one of the 3 questions and write a 1500 – 1800 essay on the following topic:
1. Explain how and why the profile of women’s employment in Ireland has changed over the past twenty years or so, and suggest how this profile compares with that of women’s employment in other European countries.
2. Outline TWO of the following theoretical approaches to the analysis of gender segregation in employment, and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of each theory.
a) Human Capital
b) Dual/Segmented Labour Market Theories
c) Reserve Army of Labour
d) Radical Feminist
e) Dual Systems Theories
3. Discuss the main measures which it has been suggested could be taken by trade unions in Ireland and/or other European countries in order to improve and promote equality in employment. Identify the main obstacles to the success of such measures.
I must be out of my mind to pick this module!
Why can’t i pick something more fun…..
My little brother sent me an email with a few photos attached.
Telling me the new addition to the family.
It was sweet, even though my sister made him to do it. (:
Today, i can totally felt my sis’ pain.
When i leave my mess around, piling them up in our shared room.
Was unintentional, was an unconscious habit.
I was always thinking, i can always clean them up together later.
But the later never come, or only when even i myself can’t stand the mess.
The other day i woke up to my room smelling like chao tar toast.
SUPER disgusting smell.
I opened the room window to let fresh air in.
Open the kitchen’s window and close the kitchen’s door.
Some idiot left the door open while cooking.
HOW SMART.
Today, I came back to my apartment.
SUPPOSED TO BE A PARADISE!
It turned into nightmare.
Chao tar pan in the sink, with a note asking the person who used it to wash up! (so the next one can use)
Another post-it on the fridge, asking the rest to stop stealing food.
Breadcrumbs all over table, table top.
Unwashed dishes in the sinks.
Dirty tupperware thrown everywhere.
Bubbles all over the sink.
Obviously the person don’t know how to wash dishes.
Greasy cooking hob.
Dirt everywhere.
Rubbish area is piling up.
Was torn between keeping the place clean, and leaving them as it is.
What if i clean it up, and it’s still messed up?
What if someone saw me cleaning it and thought i was the one who messed the kitchen up? (when i was just trying to do everyone a favour by cleaning up the kitchen.)
What if i don’t clean up, the mess will be there perpetually.
I think i shld just clean them up when i need to use the kitchen.
Or when i invite people over for dinner.
To add on to the misery.
I woke up to a painful left foot.
When i examine it, i realised my the big toes bones is swollen.
Probably from walking too much.
Or doing too many jumpshots?
Or mabbie wearing lousy shoes and walking on rocky path?
Saw the red part?
It hurts when i press it down.
Or when i walk, it hurts too.
side view.
This photo showed my getting a little swollen foot.
HOLA!
Had my first presentation in UCD today.
Went pretty well. (:
Knew our grade right after the presentation (which was 25% of the module).
Then went to pick up the photocopied text (illegal stuff), cos we’re poor students. LOL.
Head over to Blackrock library to loan a text (to do illegal stuff again).
Walked and walked and walked.
For ONE hour or more in the cold. (should have just taken a bus)
Then, when we got there.
The book we wanted, was ON LOAN already.
@##%^#$%&^!#$%!
Want to stab myself on the spot.
After walking so long to get to the 鸟不生蛋 place, all for nothing.
CRUSHED.
This is how the blackrock campus look like anyway.
Postgraduate school for business students.
Blackrock is alot more beautiful than UCD.
But it’s a pity, a little too far to get there.
So we decided to take a bus back!
Cos it was getting really cold and windy. brrrrrrr.
Got no change, so we went to buy the MOST delicious yogurt i ever ate.
I always have a thing for food in glass jar.
Really delicious!
Head back to Ulric’s place, cos he invited his spanish and french good friends over for dinner.
Me and kaili got invited as well.
After tonight dinner session, i realised man who can cook, and can cook well is really attractive.
Almost enough to overlook the fact that they smoke. ALMOST.
I had the most delicious spanish omelet also known as the ‘Tortillas’.
Tortillas made by a true blue spanish, Guillermo!
This is how tortillas look like.
Potatoes, onion, garlic, eggs.
It’s so good that you’re still thinking about having more after you’re done with it.
Having cravings for it even though u just finished eating it.
It’s THAT GOOD!
i missed out this photos kaili took at Crown bar.
Tired after the walking, presentation, dinner session.
When it rain and rain and rain and rain.
When it rain and rain and rain and rain.
When it rain and rain and rain and rain.
When it rain and rain and rain and rain.
More than this.
Baby, i hate days like this.
He sung what i really hate bout waking up in dublin to a rainy day.
It snowed briefly yesterday.
But today’s weather is grand and sunny! (:
Hopefully, it’ll be the same tmr.
