Torned, and piecing together the parts

That is so right. This month as again, has been more than hectic for me as usual. I don't know why or how, that I'm consistently challenged for time. It sucks, and with less time=less things get done. But then again, now that I look back and review my steps, I seriously don't know where all the time went. GG.

Life's been tough. Really. So many things going on in my head its not even funny. I'm confused. I'm unmotivated. I'm screwed.

So that's my irritated rant. Looking forward:-
1) Leaving my current job
2) Starting my job at Canterbury Card on 1 February 2008
3) Spend more time with Church
4) Spend more time with friends
5) Spend more time with Eunice
6) Activities and more activities
7) Getting into more serious photography and digital art aka Photoshop
8) AIESEC, well....ugh.. we'll see about that
9) Starting Honours
10) Japan conference/trip

Hmm.. that's 10 things that I can currently think of, and I sure did miss out some, but it just doesn't register in my head at the moment.

On a side note, a week or two ago, the Macbook Air was released. That's right fellas. Thinnovation. "The World's Thinnest Notebook" . Dang, I'd seriously love to get one of those. Like, man, that is superb. It clearly does look so pretty just like Toshiba's Portege series. Heck, this is even better. I can see where the design came from, and I think not many care to even bother, but I'd say it anyway. That's right, it has the same design concept of the latest(3rd gen) iPod Nano. One that I have, and silver in colour too. Gorgeously curvy and sexy. OoooooooOOohhhh.

Rewind a couple of days back, and I was back playing World of Warcraft- in a private server. No fees. Nice. But laggy and consistently bugged, it's just not even playable. WoW has become so mundane, boring and repetitive that it isn't fun to play anymore. After a few hours, I felt like vomiting at my seat. Nice try Cheong, but I think I'd pass on your offer to play WoW again.

Fast forward to today, I felt like the for the last couple of weeks, or months to be honest, I had been seriously sleep deprived, possibly suffering from insomnia but that characteristic must've been masked subtly in my conscience, cheating me and my body. It's also quite retarded that pharmacists require prescriptions to purchase sleeping pills, and I doubt doctors here would even allow patients to purchase sleeping pills. Maybe its because it's the most common matter for drug abuse, mostly suicide attempts.
On that same note, look here

excerpt:-
Just months after struggling with insomnia and stress over two demanding film roles Heath Ledger is dead, discovered with prescription drugs, including sleeping pills, nearby.

"Insomnia was limiting him to an average two hours sleep a night.

He had taken a drug, Ambien, to little effect: one pill was ineffective and after he took a second he slept an hour but then woke, his mind racing.

"My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going," he said, while admitting he had "stressed out a little too much" about his role in the Bob Dylan film I'm Not There."

Yup, damn right, sleeping pills. AND insomnia. Couple that together and you have a potential timebomb that is ticking in your body. Sadly enough, what Heath is facing is exactly what I am facing now. Averaging two hours sleep a night. "My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going". "Stressed out a little too much". Yup, that sure sounds like me. Without the drugs (because I can't freaking get it easily here) of course. I have a potential timebomb in me that has begun started ticking already I'm afraid.

And now, time to change that all. Yeap, BE the change. Make it happen before i burnout and die without a cause, alone. So that should be my major concern for the next 2 weeks or so. To make changes happen in my life for the better.

Finally, I'd like to add that last night I was enlightened and inspired with reading a friend's friend blog, who goes by the name of Huei. Not that I really know this person, but only seen her a couple of times during my high school days and once, or twice during my early years in university, she is young, being 18 this year, and boy oh boy her graphic design skill just amazes me with her portfolio and all her graphic work.

Like, with that sort of level of creativity and competency in digital art, AS WELL AS photography, it becomes a deadly combo that is highly required in the digital media world. If she were to start her own design company today, she'd nailed it right on the spot and start making big bucks.

Not only that, she also has the ability to produce amazingly creative and fantastic graphics work in a relatively short time/notice. With just a minimal two hours into work, and she has a brand spanking new poster that is worthy of printing and putting up in the streets. For me, to work on one freaking touch up on a picture, hear me, I said ONE, takes me hours on end to get it right.
So with her level of ability, she is like a role model to me, even at her tender age. Geee, the generation nowadays. Looks like in time I'll be completely out of this technology age, just like my parents and their generation. Ugh, the horror !

To top it off, she has bought an entire darkroom set a year or so a go from a guy in Cashmere selling for only $200 where it would have costed about $5000. And so, she has a darkroom in her house. Fantastic.

Her photography. Damn fine I'd say. She uses a fully-manual film Yashica camera that is like what?, 30 years old? F***, if a young girl can use a fully-manual film camera in this day, her talent is equivalent to a professional photographer. I even have difficulties adjusting exposures on my easy-to-use Canon 400D DSLR. Huei is a person that I'd look up to, just because of this. Fully-manual film camera, darkroom processing (think chemicals,skill and time), and digital art and post-processing. This level of talent in a young girl is certainly hard to come by. Man, I'd seriously would like to date a girl which has these talents so that we can spend more time with one another sharing something that we're passionate about together.

Boy oh boy, writing this up already fuels me with the inspiration to get into more serious digital post-processing playing around and learning more and as fast as I can in Photoshop and photography. I need more practice, more time to go out and more pictures definitely! Practice, practice, practice.

p/s: At work at the moment, will post the link to the blog when I'm home.

So that's my long rant catch-up over the past couple of weeks. Ta.

New Year, New Resolutions, Start Blogging.. yeah like for real

So back awhile ago, we bid goodbye to year 2007, and if there was anything that I have to add to that farewell note, I would say it had been a pretty fantastic year. Let me see, in a nutshell;

Got involved with AIESEC
Attended conferences
Made new friendships
Got closer to Eunice Jie Jie
Get 2 x A- in subjects
Became a class rep before i ended my time in undergraduate
Completed my BCom
Got accepted to BA in EU Honours
Bought a DSLR
Got into photography
Went broke even I worked full time

So that's the jist of it pretty much, for 2007. Although there are other smaller things left uncompleted.

For the weeks leading up to Christmas & New Year, some of the better times include;

- Playing bowling with Jie, and boy do I suck big time after not playing for ages, which explains the thrashing Jie handed to me.
- Got involved with Mosaic
- Met cousin, Chia Min, who came from Australia with her fiance. Did a photojournalistic shoot of them at the botanic gardens and what not.
- Brought cousin and fiance to Mosaic

So that's that, now we move on to 2008.

The start was pretty average, with lots of lazing about and not doing much, and also feeling extremely exhausted for whatever reasons. I need to sort myself out, and I think I have just begun my journey in that. Multi-tasking you say, eh? Lots of stuff that needs to be done, lots of planning and lots of performing.

Work is starting to cut down now, from both the full time staff and the sort-of-part timers, as we are spending less time worrying and not worth putting in the extra effort for work as we will be jobless soon.

I have lots to accomplish in this month itself, especially in terms of AIESEC, where members are starting to drop out and/or leave overseas or for whatever reasons, leaving ONLY and hear me, ONLY roughly about 12 active members now, and a good handful of that number has either summer school or full time work over the summer. This leaves me no choice but to plan and execute everything single handedly.

One of the important resolution that I have this year is to blog, OFTEN, and with this mentioned, I will ensure this gets done. Well, somehow.

ahhhhH~~~

Its that time around again, that I've been totally bogged down with a ton load of stuffs to do and things to sort out that I barely even have any time to get down to blog. So... now that I have a couple of minutes to spare.. I think I should recap on what has happened over the past few weeks so I can come back to it at some point in the future.

The week 19/11/07~26/11/07
Melbourne
This week long trip was totally amazing and if I have one word to say about Melbourne, that's definitely gotta be "shopping haven" - ok fine, that's two. But yeah, I think that's a very accurate description of Melbourne, and because of that I've spent soooo much on shopping alone. Oh well~ this shopping spree would last me a year, so that's that. I'm too lazy to write an extensive review of this wonderful trip, as Ing Chia over at ingchia.blogspot.com had wrote a very detailed journal entry about the ins and outs of our week there.

Another thing to take note of, is that many thanks go out to Rhun Kiet who accommodated us for that week long and "sacrificing" his dinner for us to save and eat while we're over there. Deep gratitude to you my friend. It is because of this we managed to save alot.

Another side note, i HATE, HATE the freaking flies buzzing in my face everywhere I go as I walk in the streets of Melbourne. Apparently, this happens every summer, so.. travellers... BEWARE! Maybe bring some insect repellent on your trip to Melbourne.

Other stuff
That aside, everything else is just average. Normal work days 8:30-5 every day and then AIESEC planning and planning which leaves me with so much on my mind, every single second and minute. With a team that's half dedicated and everyone else working, I'm very doubtful that we can achieve our goals as a team, and I'm dead worried about that because my director looks up to me and obviously expects me to achieve those very impossibles.

I've also started to be a church activist and now taking part in their every Sunday evening worship. So today was my very first time "performing" as a guitarist. I've never in 22 years of my life had played the guitar in front of so many others, let alone jam with a team of musicians that includes a drummer, keyboardist, bassist and vocals. I can't really hear what I played live, but I do hoped it went well in other's ears. Being the first time jamming with others, I find it hard to get the timing, strumming and holding the chords correctly on a different guitar, but nevertheless I hoped I fared out well. ~ And of course, not forgetting the remarks that I get from others who had never seen me in such feat before. It's just very uplifting when people comment me on something that they've never seen me done before and amazed that I could do something that never cross their minds before. =) The feeling is just A W E S O M E .

Results
2 days ago, university results are officially released, and wallah, I got an A- for my final subject that I did, which means I am now officially done with an undergraduate degree. I wanted an A+ though, but A- would do well. =). I have to admit though, I prayed hard for an A to appear in the transcript, and more so than always, God answered my very prayer.

As my life progress on, I feel that my walk and journey with God is drawing closer and I more often than ever, see and feel the majestic powers He bestows upon me.

Hmm.. let me just think of what else that's in the air for this upcoming week; ahhh that's right; Tuesday is D-Day. D-Day in the sense of the announcement of whether the University is going to close Campus Computers down or not. I guess I will wait till then and see how it goes, before I start looking for another permanent part-time job for the year ahead of me. I've been thinking about the position at Ken's Digital Camera Shop... in which case.. I hope I can get staff discount, learn more about photography and tell stories and advice customers in the process, of which is a burning passion of mine.

The Intern and Parties, parties, parties

Man, the week begun on Thursday 15th November. It was just intense. AIESEC Prizegiving Night, which was, quite alright, and for the next few days following...every night we just partied at Andy's house (mainly to give a warm welcome & bonding with our new Brazilian intern, Cristiano) till 4.30 am...Random chats, games and food for the past few days filled up every night and I couldn't even stay home and sort my stuff out- which are piling up now... So finally the parties are over because its a Sunday and now as I type this, it is soon that I'm departing to Melbourne.

As always, I stay the night up just because am afraid that I won't be able to wake up for the flight and so.. its an hour's time and counting down..preparing my ipod, camera, etc and all gadgets and stuff ready for a holiday.

Something that I forgot to mention was that Canterbury Show Day Friday 16th November (a day for farmers to show off their herds and whatnot) was just average. This is going to be my first time and last time attending it. A day to see farm animals and random farm machines- just not my cup of tea. And it costs a flipping hefty $18 dollars. If it wasn't for Cristiano, I wouldn't have turn up. But on the other hand, at least I've gone to one, for the five years that I've been here and have absolutely no clue about this annual festival.

Will blog if I get the chance, otherwise I'll leave it till I get back -_-

Sunday's Testimony

It is indeed done ! Frankly speaking, I felt so unprepared and not knowing what to actually say but I am more prepared in mind than to actually speak through my mouth. Thanks to God, I am able to deliver the message (hopefully) to the others in the gathering. Haha, I sort of needed the reassurance from Jie alot the whole evening before my testimony. But it went well and am really glad at that. More even so that some of the people in church came up to me and thanked me for the testimony, and commented on how good and meaningful the message is. And even Pastor Jack- he himself said that he was surprised, that I am such a good talker. I think this must be due to me being reserved at times- I am more of a listener than a commenter. I have to say-- I feel awesome. My topic? Testimony on my journey of friendships: Eunice, and taking things for granted.

It is indeed that far too often we take too many things for granted until the verge of losing something or nearing the end, we will realise how important and valuable it is to us. Some of my very own personal experiences include;

University: I used to think that oh, 3 years is a long way away and didn't really enjoy university as a student which I should ought to. And upon the completion of my degree, I feel like I want to university- just a little bit longer and experience more, and getting the best out of it.

Work: Being told 3 days ago that Campus Computers in IT dept is closing down, hence losing my job soon and that previously I used to hate work everyday because of my work colleagues' mood swings. I should have treasured this privilege of working in University rather than be whining about human emotions.

Grandmother: I should have spend more time and talk to her more often before she passed away this year- even though she is in good health last year...

Friends: In this case, Jie... which I took for granted our friendship since we met in camp. It was about a year ago and she told me that she will be leaving NZ upon graduation or something.. But I was like.. oh that's still quite away... and time flew by, and now, as the date draws closer, I am sadden by the fact of her about to be- departure. I should have valued the time we had before and ought to spend more time with her.

There goes the saying that people come and go in your life; but I'll say; Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they are meant to be there; they serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or help you figure out who you are.- and that very person is none other than Eunice Ho Sze Hui.

Thank you for the light you have brought in my life and helping me draw closer to God. It had been a significant and impactful journey so far. Amen to that !

The Roxx really Rocks

So on Saturday, me, Mike (new guy met in church) and Benny went rock climbing at the Roxx (www.theroxx.co.nz). It was a flippin' fantastic experience. And also an excuse and opportunity to try out my new climbing shoes bought like ages ago. However, the charge was expensive though without equipment. $20 bucks without harness and without membership. Hmm... will look around to buy a harness if I can find enough dedicated people to go rock climbing with me. But definitely worth every penny for this day though.

Also met some of colleagues-acquaintance at rock climbing too... Hmm seems like alot of people are so into it...

That aside, I spent Friday evening-night and Saturday night at James' and Andy's place for welcoming AIESEC Canterbury's newest intern from Brazil, Cristiano. He's quite a fun guy to be around with and with the company crashing together at Andy's place. It was indeed fun, with all the random chats and Singstar sessions. Fun stuff Fun stuff.

Sigh... Made Redundant =(

So the day has finally dawned upon all of us at Campus Computers. The idea of closing an extension arm of the IT dept has never crossed my mind before, and this was a sudden shock. To all of us at Campus Computers. Sigh. So a proposal was put forth and it looks like its going to get the green light to enforcement... Sigh.. have taken things for granted too easily... So, soon I'm going to be redundant...

SO DISHEARTENED... i guess there's people worse than me in this situation, being my other colleagues.. especially my manager John and the other colleague Yolanda..she's been here for about 10 years, and is quite old liao.... and since everyone was so down today.. 3 of them just went home after the meeting 9.30 am and left me alone and manager to hold up the shop till the end of the day...=/

sigh.. i guess i'll stop sighing and space out....no mood...........