Emma my new love

 Found my old love in Emma. Its weird that I needed another girl to make my heart skip a bit every time I see her smile, when she wriggle her tootsies,  when she skips and jumps around. She was the embodiment of youth. My old love make me sweaty and breathless, makes me move my hips with vigour. So much to give, and so much to take in. I spend endless hours with this old love, even my wife eyes me with suspicion.

Too saucy and adulterous sounding? I'm talking about Emma my girl and my old love the game of tennis. Just few hours ago, Emma Raducanu my girl's namesake; won the Women US Open champion 2021. She is just two months shy of her 19th birthday, coincidentally also 2 days later than my Emma's birthday. My Emma is still very young though, but I do hope she can achieve greater things in future (even though everything she does now is great things for us). 

I realise from this episode that my Emma is always near, and I must see her in new light. She always makes us laugh, and at the same time makes us fume. All the same she's very dear to us and we love her a lot. Unfortunately her temperament needs more work, hopefully by the time she's 18, she will be the champion I wish she is. She toilet trained herself early, she is sociable and daring; helps her older sister who is too timid to ask for things from strangers. The other day she just pulled out her first bab
y tooth (in exchange for $10 which I promised her), all small things but nevertheless will shape her championship in the future.

But for now, my old love of tennis will remain with me. For as much as I want to one day play a proper game with my Emma, for now I will have to be contented with watching the namesake Emma on TV and internet, imagining her hitting my balls. Tennis balls!

Kids Bike

I gave up trying to look for a decent bicycle for my little gal turning 4 in a week's time. It has been eye opener and frustrating at the same time. I spent few of my free days doing just that. Cycling from bike shop to bike shop and after that browsing from web page to web page.
Surprising you say? Or is it just me? I cycle a bit for leisure and exercise. Therefore I do know a little bit about bicycle although not on the extreme case. The bicycles that I saw was either, too expensive for the quality that I see; or too heavy (imagine a 4 year old cycling a 25kg bicycle) which I wouldn't even cycle myself; or too extremely expensive (for the quality that I am looking at, ok, the quality should be good for this case); or just plain too shabby for that matter.
Case 1 - a kids bicycle with funky looking design, with speedometer, coaster brakes etc etc. This was a shocker to me because this is the first bike that I was looking at. It shocked me because I didn't expect to pay between the range of $170-250 for a kids bicycle. Before I surveyed around, I had a mindset that bicycles should not cost more than $50-100 range for a kid that might just use it for one year or so. I was so wrong. Anyways, the colour is off beat so we walked out of the shop (and not forgetting the speedometer!)
Case 2 - Cycled around and asked around in local shops. It seems like the neighbourhood shops carries a more reasonably priced bikes. But at the back of my head, I keep having this image of a rusted bicycle at the end of 3 months. Plus, they only have the girl's and the boy's bicycle. Let me give you an example. A girl's bike is pink, with ribbons, a pink basket for the teddy bear and so on. A boy's bicycle would have the police theme on it, to chase the big bad boy or girl in the playground in case they are naughty. What happened to the neutral colours? I am just dumbfounded. I'm not very keen on getting a gender based bicycle simply for practicality. What if my daughter has a little brother later on? Oh, right.. get another bicycle. How come I never thought about it?
Case 3 - Went online and searched for a reputable bike brand and from the dealer. When I saw something I like online I gave them a call. Here's the transcript although I swear to you it was very difficult for the Myanmar lady on the other end to understand what I was saying and vice versa:
Me: Hello, do you carry the kids bicycle xxx model?
She: Hello, you wait ah.
Me : ...
She: We have
Me: How much is it and what colour do you have?
She: $360 and only green colour.
Me: GULP! Ok, thank you!
Case 4 - Potential future scenario if I get bikes from hypermarkets. They only carry a particular brand, which filled the cabinets from wall to wall. So you think, well, this can't go wrong since after browsing the same brand over and over (at the same hypermarket), the brand somehow seems to you to be reputable right? WRONG! I got feedback that these bikes rust as badly as '20 something Indian gal' (no pun intended on this.. it was a joke from one of my friend which talked to an elderly Indian man, which commented that rust is coming out from her unmarried 20ish something daughter) and the quality of the part are just pathetic.

And so therefore the conquest continues... will I pay through my nose for quality or settle for something less?

Time and space and friends!

Been in London few times for work and each time I spend couple day there. The surprising thing was that I haven't really explore the most English city in the world as compared to the other cities we work to.

One simple explanation is that I always seem to be meeting up with a group of friend there. They are by no means any friend. I have this sentimental feelings for the friends I have known since primary school or even kindergarten (coming from small town this is very likely).

This time around there's no exception. It was snowing by the time I reached the hotel and I was honestly quite excited seeing fleeting snow with my own eyes for the very first time. There's the danger of transport system shutting down etc but brave the snow I did. I must say I would rather go out walking in the snow compared to the rain though. You dont get wey and you can always brush off the snow.

Well in all I'm just saying at times like this when I manage to catch a breath in between doing spring cleaning for CNY, I wish I had a friend to sit down and chat over cup of tea. I hope to do that in the following week amidst my pack schedule (for a small town that's pretty packed I think!). Gonna be missing those whose not going back.

Gong Xi Fa Cai to everyone celebrating Lunar new year out there!

Memorial

Surprisingly its almost always that you never visit the attractions near where you stay. In Kuching I've never been to Jong's crocodile farm or climbed Mount Santubong. Or within the state I'd give visiting caves of Niah or Mulu at the outskirt of Miri a miss. Perth I skipped the chance to visit surroundings which are within driving distance such as the wave rock or the friendly dolphins at Monkey Mia or see the giant trees in Albany.

Passing by the war memorial had become a daily routine. Almost felt just like one of the traffic ganty along the road. By chance though today I attempted cycling on the northwestern side of the island. Then there it is, the site on top of the hill, beckoning people to remember, remember the price of peace.

Its visible from the main Woodlands Road, and so I turned in. It was a very clean and simple, almost pure memorial and cemetery. People from all faith are buried there fighting for one cause, for the nation which is not even their homeland. Would we do the same when the time comes for us to uphold this trust.

The memorial may not be as solemn for me or you who were never involved in war. Or whose dad, husband, brother or grandfather who did carry arms and perhaps fallen while protecting the country. It does strike me though that this is a peaceful place to be..

Necessity vs luxury

Having all the time in the world may not be a good thing. It gives you time to think, normally useless thoughts. Only with certain goal in mind and a bit of dateline this time becomes useful.


For me, this time gave birth to thoughts of what the world could do with and without. Lets start with...

1. Razor - we need to shave. Good old shaver is good enough to complete the job. What we do not need is the electronic shaver. It consumes electricity, we can only use it when you have stubs and its heavy to carry when you travel. Solution: Back to basics - very sharp blades on a stick.


2. Bicycle - Look at the future of mankind: China (in terms of population). There will come a time public transport can do so much. But in order for this to work, there's a wider infrastructure revamp as well as superbly strong policital will that is needed for this to be implemented. Moving near where you work has a strong impact on what mode of transport you will take. This brings us to the 3rd necessity:

3. Housing- housing prices should be regulated as such its viable for people to move nearer to where they work. What I don't get is Bukit Timah area. All the 'best' schools are relocated there as such the price of houses there skyrocketed. I agree there should be 'private' segments of houses for people who could afford it, but public housing skyrocketing? That's not very public anymore is it?

4. Ok, topic getting too heavy. I'm getting back to the little things in life. School - I have never and will never comprehend the fact that there's not enough place for kids to study. What the heck? Forget building mega structures, longest bridges, underground tunnels, tallest buildings etc - just build me schools and the supporting infrastructures and develop manpower for it (they're called teachers that actually teach).

5. Abolish NS or make it optional - How about that? I sense some people are unhappy about having to serve NS while the others do not. To me, I think either is fine. Reason being those who served get slightly higher pay in most companies (lets call it hardship allowance) for the rest of their life after serving 2 years of NS. So if he has 30 years of productive life in the workforce and his hardship allowance is $200, he'd be earning extra $72,000. But if you still think its unfair, then just abolish it.. (can someone enlighten me why this is not possible?).

6. Make Singapore attractive for foreigners but don't ruin it by drawing so much line between the citizens and non-PRs. I personally think Singapore is wonderful place to stay. However I can't say the same in future. People are pushing so that citizens get more privilages. And I totally agree they should. But things like depriving the PRs from high quality of education just doesn't make sense. The recent enrolment restrictions into primary 1 is just the beginning. What happens to the 2nd generation PRs? They will be deprived of choice of school and then still have to serve NS. The inequality between the citizens and PRs was never such a big issue until recently. Few years ago, the influx of foreign workers increased due to bullish economy. At the same time, housing prices went up. This was attributed to the influx of PRs. I doubt that PRs which reportedly are less than 10% of HDB buyers could push the HDB price up by so much?! Come to think of it, if 10% could control the market price, then something must be wrong with the price monitoring system. Using this as one of the factors, ministers start putting in place measures to differenciate citizens and PRs which in my opinion is totally unrelated (school fee hikes, medical fee hikes, and next up housing restrictions?). My general opinion is this - Singapore wants to increase its population and thus the measures mentioned above. Those measures hopefully would encourage PRs to convert to citizenship. What about free will? I think some might convert but what would be the repercussions? Would outsider still consider Singapore as a wonderful place or would it create a new dissent generation of foreign talent?


It started off with a shaving exercise in the morning. I guess I still enjoy the basic things in life.

Timeline

On special request by my missus, I'll try to write my mind here as often possible. Consider this a theraphy or memo for myself in future (if I ever go senile), information portal or pure entertainment for the rest of the world; take it anyway you want it since everyone is unique in their own thinking.

Everyone have their milestone in life. But I'm not sure if dates are remembered as vividly as mine. My path ahead and behind me are always marked by dates more so now than ever. I can't even remember the date I finish my secondary school, when I entered Uni, date of my 1st job etc. It wasn't that significant back then. But this job, this is one different job altogether. I can't remember for life of me how it all happened but the dates are always somehow indicated somewhere to mark my progression in this profession (wow.. it rhymes!). This is just pure work so bear with me! To make things fun, what were you doing during those dates? Do you remember?

Joined the company 19 Jan 2007
ATPL date 24 July 2007 (imagine SPM or O-levels crash course in 3 months)
Left for Jandakot 17 Aug 2007
Left for Maroochydore 17 Nov 2008
Ground school 4-29 May 2009 and repeat 10-26 Mar 2010 (mind you, doing the exam twice doesn't mean you're twice as clever)
1st Wide body Take off and Landing 28 Aug 2010 a.k.a. SO appointment
1st Flight (to Johannesburg) 23rd Sept 2010
Completion of training 10th June 2011.

Feels just like yesterday

This is home, surely

HDB prices going up or going down? Harder to buy and sell new apartment? Noisy roadside traffic and constructions? Noisy maid banging on the pastel and mortar? Who cares? This is my lair, my den and I'm proud of it! Gonna start missing this view when I'm away flying..