• Ramblings

    I Looked Back and Wonder

    A few days ago I was checking my emails from an email account which I hardly used. It was only then I realised that the husband of the woman who unfortunately passed away in the Mumbai attacks, attended the same secondary school in the same year that I was in.

    Decided to check out some of the respective groups in Facebook. The people that I remembered seems to be doing very well, there was one who moved to UK and published two books on the gay community in Singapore, another one was a corporate lawyer who was actively involved in the local poetry scene and environment conservation. A few were overseas, holding high positions in big corporate companies.

    And then I looked at myself and I wonder.

    While not doing too badly, it seems like I also have not been achieving much either. Too many wrong choices, too many wrong roads taken, and the times when I was on the right road, it seems something always happened to sway me to the wrong one.

    Regrets. I have so many of them that if I stacked them together, it will reach all the way to the moon. And back.

    I wished I had studied more. I wished I had focus. I wished I did not screwed up that much. I wished. I wished.

    Of course, with more than half of my lifespan gone, I could just be going through a midlife crisis. Whatever it is, I do want to make the most of my other half of my lifespan, and achieve more. The problem is now asking myself, what I want to achieve. And I suspect the answer to that question requires me to look back and wonder.

  • Ramblings

    And The Wind Blew

    The wind blew.

    He stops momentarily, the wind temporarily transporting him to a place where the beach seems to run forever. The waves of the ocean rushes onto the beach, again and again. The saltish breeze sweeps through his hair.

    A dog was running eagerly between his legs, barking happily at the waves. And there was someone else standing there on the beach with him.

    He sighs. It has been windy lately. And the wind brings back bittersweet memories.

  • Ramblings

    Black and White

    Was showing on TV where an old monk was trying to teach a young monk about morals.

    They saw a scene where a husband and wife was in the same room. The husband’s face was all blackened with soot, while the wife’s face was without. The wife saw the husband’s face and started cleaning her face, while the husband just laughed at her. The old monk asked the young monk if he understood what was happening. The young monk replied eagerly that the wife, after looking at the husband’s blackened face, thought that her face was blackened too, and started to clean hers. The husband saw the wife’s clean face and thought that his face was cleaned, and thus did not clean his. The old monk nodded his head and asked if the young monk knows what was the moral behind this scene. The young monk shook his head.

    The old monk replied in his sagely voice and said that we are too often influenced by others that we failed to tell the difference between what is good, and what is bad, and that we should not let others influence what we believe is right, and what is wrong.

    And I thought to myself, if only it is so easy to differentiate between what is right, and what is wrong. Sometimes, there is no clear defined line.

  • Ramblings

    Today

    Because today is a special day for me, and because I do not remember what I did on this day last year since I did not keep any records, I decided to put down the things that I did today.

    1. Not on leave so had to work.

    2. Had a meeting which lasted for 2 1/2 hours. Had to attend this meeting because I am taking over this account.

    3. Had a nice dinner of chilli crabs in Dragon Phoenix restaurant with family.

    4. Spent the night looking at random photos on Friendster, thinking how nice it is to be young, to be carefree, to do crazy things, to have the energy to do it.

    I think I will keep a record of how this day goes every year from now on.

  • Ramblings

    It Has Started

    The signs were there. The big boss cancelled his quarterly message. The next day he sent out an email to everyone confirming that retrenchments are going to happen during this festival season.

    The day after that, I went back to office to submit my claims. I was then informed that people were being asked to go to into the HR office, and retrenched. Most of them worked in the company between 10 to 20+ years, and most of them thought they were safe. As such, there were a lot of emotions involved.

    The worst part is, nobody knows if that is going to continue.