Is this enlightenment for me?

It will be a short entry for me today.

Some time back, i went to a religious class and got some enlightenment through the process. The speaker of the night was actually asking the audience if there is always instances where we always find that our life is always not as gd as people or we always comment that 为什么我们的命会这么苦? The reason why we feel that it is bad is because we, as humans, like to compare with others and not willing to 放下. The more we compare with others, the more we will think that our life is bad or not gd as others. Like he say why humans are known as 凡人 is because 凡人就是又烦恼的人 and a lot of times all these 烦恼 are created by ourselves. How true is that? Since actually the cause of all my problems is that i like to compare with others? How come they can do this and i can't? How come they can afford this and I can't? Majority of the times, we will only compare things that we are not good at or can't achieve. We wouldn't compare with people that are worst than us. Actually there are a lot of people who are worst than me and they don't actually feel that they are worst of... Hence, the point is to let go and learn to be contented. Only if you are contented, you will be able to get rid of a lot of redundant 烦恼 that you have created for yourself.

I guess i have not reach that stage to let everything go. If one day, i am able to reach that stage to let go and look back at a lot things, things will definetly be better and I will really be a happier person. Not that i am not a happy person nw. Learning to let go and be contented will not be something that i can easily achieve but at least i will try to work towards that.

Finally, i will like to share a meaningful line from the drama serial, 7th Heaven, that i was watching this morning as my ending for this post.

"God will not give us challenges that we cannot handle. Everything will be worked out fine eventually."

Recently, i am also addicted to this song from the movie - 881 so i have attached the music video here to share with all. hehe quite surprise that i can easily attached the MV here. so you can look out for more MV in my future entry.

Romance Fannatic Part II

Early this year when i started blogging, i did an entry on picking up a new hobby, that is reading. As of now, i am pleased to announce that i completed all the words of Julie Garwood, who is pretty good with romance in old English settings as well as modern world. In her storyline, there will be main plot that get the leading guy and girl to fall in love. The way that discover their love for each other and how they resolve the mystery will get you glued to her works. Hence, if you are a romance fanatics like me, you can start reading her books.

Above that, i also completed another romance Korean show: My Girl this week.

I guess i am really a die-heart with all these romance shows. Though the plots usually involve Girl A falling in love secretly with Boy A who is also in love in Girl B. There is also a guardian angel for Girl A who will suffer at the side, trying so hard to get Girl A to notice him and protecting her from any pain. Through the process, the Boy A start to fall in love with Girl A. However, there is these obstacles that stop them from declaring their love for each other such as the evil plot by Girl B who can't believe she will lose Boy A to Girl A. At this time, i will be sharing a few buckets of tears for the couple. Since i just stand the sight of 2 madly in love people and can't seem to be together. Lastly, another key uniqueness is Girl A is not the prettiest or cleverest but she will still get the love of Boy A. Hence, it is good that is always a happy ending for all. That is why i never seem to enjoy those initial Korean show that got everyone hooked to TV as it is usually a bad ending with the guy or girl either dead or never together.

With all these happy endings that i have seen, will i ever have a happy ending for my life story? Will I ever meet that Boy A of my life?

My dreams continues......

Painful Week

Some of you might not be aware, due to my decision that i will quit my job by next Feb hence i have decided to pack my lunch to work daily as part of my savings programme or cost savings measure. Furthermore, my mum cooks everyday so it is actually not a difficult thing for her to cook more the previous day and i bring the leftovers to work for lunch the next day. Lastly, assuming our daily lunch cost ard min. of $5 and i work for 4 days a week, hence, i can save ard $80 per month. Though it is not a big amount but at least it can help me save a little more and maybe contribute to my monthly retail theraphy.

However, with the no. of people leaving my department, i have to attend their farewell lunch. I will normally attend such functions only for those who actually make my life in my sucky job slightly better. Hence, i am okie to spend slightly more for lunch for their sake. Since it is our practise that everyone treat the person who is leaving and normally we will go to a slightly better place for lunch.

This week alone i attended the farewell of 3 different people, of which one of them is my department director. Hence, the farewell was left to 2 of my colleagues to organise and hence when they send out the notice for the farewell dinner, i gladly accepted it since i can't be that anti-social. The day came and i was told that we were going for a dinner at Holiday Inn Hotel, Tandoor Restaurant - Indian Restaurant. First thing that came to my mind is India Food! OMG! Hopefully it is not those india vegetarian restaurant with all those yoghurt and stuff. So my colleagues and i went for the sake of attending. The good thing when we arrived is that it is not those vegetarian restaurant and i saw on the menu that we have chicken and fish. Phew! Then i was pretty impressed with the set ups and service since after every course we have fresh new cultery and the waiter are so fussy with the placement of the cultery. However, the serving is very small starting with an appetitizer consisting a drumstick, small fish fillet and small portion of mutton which i didn't touch. Then followed by the main course of Nann with small sauce bowl of chicken, prawn, chicken, mutton, cauliflower and peas. Lastly, the dinner was completed with a india ice cream for desert. However the taste is nt to my liking as it is a sour and super creamy. Thus i only took a bit. Though the serving are that small, i actually went home feeling damm full and bloated. That's realli surprising.

Considering my description above, i will have thought that the dinner + price (pre-aligned of $10 per pax) will be only around $ 60 per pax that i will be paying including my director share since there were at 10 of us to split her share. The shocking truth was the dinner was $70 per pax + $10 for present. Hence i have to pay $80. OMG! My whole month of saving + the farewell lunch that i went which is $20+. There realli goes all my effort of saving. Thinking through i guess this is the most expensive meal that i paid for myself in my life till date.

If you think that's it. I receive my phone bill from my trip in GZ and i have another shock.... total of $270 and i can only claim for $70 for work related calls. The rest was spend contacting the team since we were split. Come to think hw come it was only me who was asked to make those call and everyone was calling to my line. :-( There again per call per min is abt @ $1+. Hence, if you are ever in China, try nt to call via HP furthermore nt by pay as your roam service.

There goes all my hard work of saving. Must realli make it back next few mths.

Sorry for my long, dragging and complaining entry but my heart is still very pain.

Department Offsite at Changi Village Hotel

This has been a busy week for me. After returning from Guangzhou, i am off for our yearly department offsite - BCFCPHC (aka. Baby Care, Feminie Care, Personal health Care) at the Changi Village Hotel from thur - Friday. Sorry there wldn't be many pictures since i didn't bring my camera along.

As usual, the event started with the management or we called it as Leadership team updating the whole team on our results and plans for the next year. pure boring....hence, i spend the full 3/4 day drawing on papers and playing sudokou. hehe...Hopefully, the day was saved with the wits of the MC who is none other than my director's husband. But we can tell that my director is super embrassed by her husband since he was poking at everyone and sometimes the joke can get way of hand...you can trust me on that.

After which, everyone changed for dinner, that is F1 theme where they hired 2 babes who carried 2 umbrellas taking pictures with the team. What a waste of $. Then followed by all the newcomers dance performers which is the most entertaining since u can see who are the good dancers and who is stiff one. Lucky for me, i escape my by pretending to be sick. hehe.

Then we have the awards ceremony (both serious and fun award). This year, i was given the special appreciation award for my PADEX Leadership and execution. Unlike last year where i was awarded for one of my project and i got a photo frame which is still sitting in my drawer. This year i have a trophy and $50 takashimaya shopping voucher.

Below is an excerpt of my conversation with my colleague after my award:

M: Congratulations. Still said u dun like your role and then still can get award.
K:I dun like my role and so they hv to give me an award to make me happy. :)

Though, i get recognition from the management but i guess i am still nt satisfied bah.

After all this award ceremony, it is back to the usual partying which as usual i will escape to my room since i realise that these people really can make a fool of themselves by getting real drunk and doing lots of funny things. For instance, this year we have people who get so drunk that they can't even make it back to their room and end up sleeping in the lobby until someone discover him. Or people puke all over the place and lay on the dance floor. I also heard that one guy get so high that they actually harsess some of the girls in the dance floor. Not to say this guy is actually married and with kids.

I realli wonder are they really that stress and so they always get so high each year. Then they become the talk next morning or even the story repeats itself again next year. Realli dun understand them...afterall we are all adults and should know how to control ourselves.

Then the next day, we started with lots of exercise since our new GM is a health freak and i know that my fats level is actually under the obese catergory. But again, there is tis guy who is rather fit but yet both the BMI and fat content is also obese so i guess it is nt a very accurate measure then.

Lastly, we went to Puala Ubin for a half day of team building activities which actually cause me to stay under the hot sun and make me sick with sore thoart and cold. Hopefully, after all my beauty sleep yesterday, i am actually feeling better and it will be back to work tmr again. Haiz

I am back!

I am back from my Guangzhou work trip. It is indeed a fulfilling trip with lots of work and play. We really work and play very hard. With each day starting ard 650am, getting ready for work and workshop that normally end ard 6pm and then followed by dinner till ard 8pm and shopping till 11pm and then work day start again with email clearing till 130am.

What is better than pictures, which can speak a thousand words of my adventure in Guangzhou.

Starting with a glimpse of the place i stayed in: The Garden Hotel:My Room:

As per the name of the hotel suggest, it comes with a beautiful garden:

The shopping streets that we went:

Some food shots:

Pictures with the team:

Dinner with the AAI team at the restaurant: Kai Yue.
Picture taken at 上下九路

Taken at the desert shop at 下九路.

Taken during our ride in Metro (aka. MRT) to the tea market where we spend 3 hrs tasting different tea. Though we spend such a long time in the tea house and lose a day in shopping but it was indeed worth it since we realli learn a lot through the process.

Taken at the Guangzhou office with Global folk: Jay Cramer and NEA team: Takashi-san and Kino-san and lastly, GC representative: Sicy.

Parting shot at The Garden

Finally, to show you my purchases for this trip:

To end this entry, i shall give u all a must-go shopping areas if you drop by Guangzhou:
1。 北京路
2。上下九路
3。站西路 - 白马服装市场 - close at 6pm
4。人民南路 -状元坊 - close at 6pm
5。恒宝广场 - 长寿路

Heard that the below places have gd buys as well but i didn't make it due to time:

1。天河城广场
2。海珠购物中心
3。沙河福广场

If you like to buy materials for clothes, you can try 海印布市场 but note that it close ard 6pm. Hence, you need to go there early.

For tea, Guangzhou has the biggest tea market in China with 6000 distrbutor located at 广州芳村大道中。

Okie that's all for now. If u enjoy shopping, Guangzhou might be the place for u + it is only few hours train ride from HKG so it can also be a gd stopover for u.

Updates

Hv you been wondering why i am missing in actions? Maybe not since i don't have much hits on my blog as well. But just to update i have actually being pretty busy for the past week embarking on a new project......ie. to arrange all the photos that we took during our Shanghai trip into a nice book. Actually this idea came from one of my friend where she will lay all the photos into the form of storybook and send it for printing and binding it into a book. Though it doesn't have the best quality of images but i find the idea very interesting and it help capture all the beautiful memories. Furthermore, it let us test out our creative juices in terms of how we want to lay the pictures and the little notes that we like to include.

Now that i have finally complete all 500+ pictures, the next step is actually sending for print. Hopefully, it will be as nice as my friend.

Another note: I will be leaving for a work trip in Guangzhou the whole of next week. Hence, i can only update on my adventure when i am back....but i doubt there will be a very interesting adventure since it is more for work. We shall see when i am back.

Reflections

Sitting in front of my laptop every sunday...surfing for jobs, reading blogs and also updating my blog has now become a sunday routine for me. However, today i am actually lack of blogging ideas and wonder what should my entry be????

This has again been a usual week for me with either being at home or at work. Apart from that, many will know that yesterday there were 777 couples who actually held their big day or exchange their wedding vows and my cousin is one of the lucky pair who decide to tie their knots. Since i rarely catch up with my relatives so it was quite a shock to see that my cousin's kids are so big already and really show that I am indeed old already... Since it has been such a long time since i last saw them and on such a joyous occasion, my poor sis and I became the main target of enquiry...when will it be our turn? Haha I bet they will have to wait for a long long long while. Luckily for us, there is still one elder cousin who is nt married yet so we just push everything to him. Wonder what will happen when he also tie the knot and we will have no one to push anymore.....

Since i guessed that this will be short entry, i also started to read thru my past enteries and started some reflections. I realli can't imagine i have actually been blogging regularly for the past 7 mths and we are already have pass the half way mark for 2007. Looking back to what i have set to achieve at the start of yr, i am really glad i am pretty much on track.....i brought my parents for a short trip, i have also been reading constantly (i have now completed the full range of Julie Garwoods books except for 2 more books), i have also contributed to the society.... Hence, i hope i can achieve the balance of the goals by the end of yr and end the yr with a "Bang".

Romance Fannatic

Have u realise that i have not blogging for a while? Is it because i am still trapped in the dark pitch hole that i dug myself? Answer: No, actually after deciding, i have been more relaxed than usual....I am preparing for the worst scenario that can happen to me, ie. getting in a worst job / life w/o pay...Thanks for those who left me tips or try to change my decision.... i totally appreciate your concern for me.

So what exactly i have been busy with? Apart from my usual life that doesn't require my effort to blog.... i am also busy watching Korean drama...yah, i am a TV addict and worst a total failure with romance story...the little girl in me will start to fantasize to be the leading actress in the show...*blushing* ...hoping one day that the story will apply in my life. heehee..

This has all started because of the first korean romance drama that i watch last yr:

我爱金三顺

After which, the once famous and popular show....Princess Hours that really got me addicted. Though, i know the storyline is totally unrealistic but it still got me hock and addicted. Also maybe becos the radio DJs from 93.3 was also actively promoting the show back then...

Princess Hours was really the one that started the craze since after which friends started introducing different shows to me... so i went on to:

Full House 浪漫满屋

Sweet 18 - 新娘18

Princess Lulu

Not forgetting apart from the funny and unrealistic storyline, the eye candy of each shows is also one reason for my addiction. After Princess Lulu, the fever actually die down a little and i was back to being the realistic person. However, someone pull me to the fantasy land again with the latest series of :

Which Star are you from?

Now, introducing my latest eye candy.... the leading actor of the show:

So if anyone who has friends of similar traits and feel...dun forget ur friend here... *LAUGH*

Hopefully, after this entry, u can know another side of me... *blushing* Now i shall go back to my show of 加油，金顺！

Feelings

It's been a while since my last entry. This is largely due to the fact that over the past few weeks, i have been struggling with myself. Furthermore, i didn't actually want my blog to be filled with unhappiness and saddness. However, after much considerations, i decided to pen this thoughts down since the purpose of the blog is not only to share only the happy things but also my inner thoughts....so please bear with me.

I guess with that intro, you will have guessed i am having a replase abt my job again, right? In the past, the sudden urge to give everything all up or the fustrations about my job will only happen like once a month or so and actually this feelings will just go away within few days or after a round of retail theraphy will help pull me out of that dark pitch hole. However, for the past few weeks, the feelings were realli bad and i seriously just want to escape our of this world. Not sure if it is because now is the peak period for me or just that my patience is just running out of me. But becos of such strong sense of fustrations, it really set me thinking real hard on what should the route that i want to be?

I know many will say that all these feelings are all in me and i should not think too much and everything will be fine. Afterall, P&G is such a gd company and what about the pay check? Remember how hard it was for me to get into such a gd company or this role? bah...bah...

I totally understand all the above and that everyone has the best interest for me. However, i am really feeling miserable abt myself. I was never the kid who can achieve what i want? I don't get to enjoy the best toys that every other kids have because my parents are poor. I am not the most popular kid in school since i am not that likeable or cleverest kid. Neither have i the chance to find that person who can share my joy and saddness in life or that someone who can comfort me during my darkest / lowest point of life. Everything dependable alot on me. I know that i am still fortunate than many others since i dun have to starve myself, i have family and friends who actually care for me and i am still healthy... But all i want is to have a career that i like since i dun get to enjoy a lot of things that others have and i dun....I know that having a career that i like doesn't mean that it will be all happiness and no sadness but the fustrations from working in something you like and fustrations from working in something you dun like....it is a total different ball game in all.

I know if i leave my current role, it might not be definetly better but at least i might be happier for a short period of life since i will no longer drag myself out of bed every morning....i dun have to burst into tears when those fustrations come knocking at my door.....I dun have to feel that miserable whenever it is sunday just becos monday is coming and i have to work.....I dun have to wake up in the morning to suffer a round of panic attack.

Furthermore, if i continue to stay in my current role, the role portfolio is not helping me to get into the job i want and my pay will just keep increasing and i will get into a state that i will be too lazy to get out of that comfort zone since the opportunity cost will just get higher. Since now that i am still nt that old and i have less committment on my end hence shouldn't i just give it a try once last time. Otherwise, if i were to leave at a later stage and i will be like 29 or something, wldnt that be even more difficult in achieving what i want.

After weighing all the above, i decided to give myself another 6 mths and even by then i still cant find a job that i want, i will just leave my current place and pursue something else. It might not make sense for many of you as it is a big risk that i might be taking. But i just want to get away from all this fustrations and anger and be a happier person. Afterall, i actually tolerate and give myself a chance .....a whole 2 yrs....to survive in the environment. Isn't that enough?

So now, i don't need any more advice or support from anyone but just let me have my way one last time. If you really want to do something for me, then pray for me that i could really get a job that i like before Dec / Jan 08. All will turn out gd and all the fears will be redundant.

Sometimes, it realli make me wonder having a clear goal in life is a gd or bad thing? It make me more determined and inflexible in life...I am just not that kind of girl who can survive just on a pay check..A lot say it is because i am still young, not sure how true is that? Maybe i will really change when i am 30+ with no more passion and energy in life....everything remains unknown for now.

Wedding

This shall be an entry with pictures and few words. Below are the few pictures from my camera on my dear friend big day. Enjoy all the pictures with the babe.

Can see the tireness from my eyes, hor? After all i woke up at 430am that morning. Gosh! But it was all for a good and joyous occasion.

Killing time since we have to wait for the relatives to arrive for the tea ceremony. By the way, the ger next to me actually caught the bride's bouquet. She might be the next in line to get married. hehe.

The morning session is finally coming to an end so this is the farewell shot before we head back home for our beauty sleep.

All ready for the wedding dinner! too bad my camera went out of battery so no more pictures to load.