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Showing posts from November, 2009

A debate on bridge

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Crossing the Cavanagh , originally uploaded by williamnyk . Earlier this morning, I woke up feeling better than the past 2 days. At least the fever was gone. Sorethroat subsided. The only irritating thing was my blocked nose and I was running out of spare medication. So I decided to drop by the clinic of my regular doctor before going to work but as the time passed by, I felt worse. The sickly tiredness came back (apparently my feet would feel very tired when I'm sick) and I was getting headache from the blocked nose. After seeing the doctor (who said I was infected by yet another viral flu) and collecting medicine and MC, my mind was still debating whether I should at go to work or not for the remaining hours of the morning. I was standing in the middle of the pedestrian overhead bridge with my mind debating whether to cross over to take bus to work or turn back to take bus back home. JJ work: Should go to work lah. At least clear e-mails and discuss with colleagues on wha

Flowers in spring

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I was hoping to bring my dad and my sis to visit Floriade when we were in Canberra earlier this month. It is, theoretically, just before mid-spring. Unfortunately, and surprisingly, Floriade was already over in October. That's early. Hence, I managed to take only photos of flowers I saw around the suburb: I love spring!

Quick update

Been busy since I came back from Australia. First 3 days, I retook the exam I failed and the questions were the same! I just hope that the additional stuff I put in will help. Then it was 2 days of catching up with work after 2.5 weeks away from office. It made me realise how bad things really are and I was thinking of quitting. Weekend was spent mainly with Ban, who is ever so caring and sweet :) And naughty too. Haha. Met up with some friends for lunch on Saturday, bought an office belt (after having rather heated discussion with William about it hehe) and then Ban and I attended Ban's friend's wedding dinner in Melaka. We were back in KL after 1am. We were supposed to meet NotHamsap for lunch but it was postponed to New Year. So we had lunch nearby. Satisfy my craving for char kuay teow, which was yummy. Finished the Heroes 5 game (we may start new one later hehe), dinner at airport and off I flew back to Singapore, reaching home before 11pm. Cheryl and Apollo were a

Help me budget

As a result of this , I am now preparing for a backup plan that is quite risky and hence all the more important to get a hand of certain figures as much as possible. I would like to find out the monthly/yearly budget for the following items in Malaysia (can just assume KL): (1) Food (2) Mobile phone (3) Car maintenance (4) Car petrol (5) Motor insurance (6) Broadband Anything else I should be thinking off? There's no need to consider paying car loan, house loan, house rent or tax. I would appreciate any valuable input here. Thanks! 19 Nov 09 9.38pm update: Added broadband

Food for thought

I was in Canberra for 14 days and 14 nights. It was only on the 14th night I needed to take antacid (due to particularly spicy curry vegetables and ice cream that night). Otherwise, I neither ingested antacid nor omeprazole. This is despite having a slice of toasted bread with 100% natural peanute butter every night for 12 of those nights, with half glass of full cream milk, about 1-2 hours before sleep. This is in direct contradiction of the specialist's advice. Yet, I felt so much better than I had been in recent months. No sorethroat from acid reflux either. What does this tell me? I could only think of 2 things: either it was due to lack of stress from work (a very likely reason) or due to generally healthier main meals in Canberra (my sis is trying to inculcate healthy eating habits for her sons) or both. This really got me thinking about alternatives to current job and I thought a lot about while waiting to board my plane back home. I may need help from you all to tell

Quirky signs?

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Be careful of raining man? Errr into the sea? 40m-long taxi can be found on the right side.

Green thumb

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My sis has some plants in her garden but not due to her own doing - they were planted by her in-laws. Apparently my sister (in her own words) is "hopeless" in looking after a garden (Me: Huh? But she planted vegetables!). Hence, they planted hardy plants and only asked her to occassionally water them. The result is pretty good. Perhaps I should get some and see whether it can grow in the tough environment of my condo hehe.

Hunger

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Love in Nature , originally uploaded by williamnyk . There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. - Anonymous (please let me know if you know who said this)

Journey to OZ: The Good

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Apart from the bad stuff , there were some good ones although the spoilt zip tips the balance towards bad stuff and especially since some of the good ones turned out to be bad in the end. Oh well. Anyway, some of the good things that happened are: (1) I managed to leave office at about 4.15pm, collected my bags at home, checked in at Changi Airport and have time to eat Subway's Vege Delite (which I bought earlier near my office) and to have a short foot massage using OSIM's U-Squeeze (not as good as I thought but it was good enough). (2) As usual I asked for aisle seat on the Singapore-KL flight at the check-in counter and was pleasantly surprised that they could also get me aisle seat on the KL-Melbourne flight (but turned out to be the seat beside the aisle seat, as blogged previously). (3) The back of the seat on the MAS plane was a little puffed up and so provided better support to my back (but unfortunately still had sore tail-bone). (4) The beef stew with potato

Journey to OZ: The Bad

I was on a 15-hour journey, including transit time, on the route Singapore-KL-Melbourne-Canberra. I was on MAS for the route Singapore-KL-Melbourne and on Qantas on the route Melbourne-Canberra. With 2 transit, a few things could go wrong. They did and they were: (1) Although I asked and was supposedly given the aisle seat on the KL-Melbourne flight, it turned out to be the seat next to the aisle seat. I couldn't get up as often as I like to stretch which I usually do. (2) My tail-bone was sore throughout the KL-Melbourne route and I couldn't get much relief due to (1) above. My sister attributed this to us being small people. Discriminatory seats. Bah. (3) I slept a total of 2 hours during this entire 15-hour journey, mainly due to (2) above. (4) The queue at the Melbourne airport immigration checkpoint was very long. I believed it took at least half an hour just to clear that. (5) Although I indicated on the form I have nothing to declare, I was asked to join the