How to get ahead of yourself - More things to do in the days to come

Today while reading Eat Pray Love at work i came across the most beautiful concept in the world - something i've appreciated and mastered for a long long long time now.
In Italian it is Bel Far Niente or The Beauty of doing Nothing.
While this concept has been successfully mastered, i think it is time to add to the wishlist.

The original wishlist is posted here
So here goes - Complete wishlist along with the additions:


Original list:

1. Watch a football game live (EPL, definitely an Arsenal game)
2. Learn to play the guitar (that’s been lying at home for the past 8 years)
3. Learn to play the drums.
4. Learn Golf (I’m gonna get rich some day and it is the rich man’s game)
5. Learn to swim (so i don't drown)
6. Figure what the stock market game is all about, and make some moolah off it
7. Learn to skate.
8. Learn to drive a bike (and be good at it)
9. Learn to drive a car (and be good at it as well)
10. Own my own car
11. Go cross country travelling round India (Only been to Pune, Goa and Jamshedpur so far)
12. Visit my top 20 cities in the world (Been to Barcelona, Amsterdam & Copenhagen)
13. Write a letter to / write for a newspaper or magazine (as in get it published)
14. Be interviewed by a news channel (I like when people ask my opinions)
15. Be an extra on a television soap opera/ movie.
16. Get Married (this one needs to be here on this list... i have friends already telling me i might die a spinster considering my complicated love life)
17. Write my will (and have something to bequeath in it)
18. Travel to 6 continents. Am excluding Antarctica here. (Europe and Asia so far)
19. There are 194 counties in the world. Visit as many as I can (So far Netherlands, Denmark, U.A.E., Austria, Sweden, Spain, Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand , Indonesia, & Malaysia)
20. Take a year off just to do nothing
21. Go skinny-dipping (after learning to swim)
22. Learn to sail. (also after I learn to swim)
23. Not owe anyone any money. Be Debt free. (done. I'm Debt Freeeee 5.10.2008)
24. Fly a kite.
25. Own my own house
26. Have a graffiti wall of my own
27. Learn to carry a proper note for more than 10 seconds (which would be the toughest thing on this list considering my singing abilities)
28. Watch a play (yeah, never have till now)
29. Latin American dances
30. Bungee jumping
31. Skydive.
32. Go for a Pearl Jam concert
33. Go for a Green Day concert
Additions
34. Learn a Language: I'm opting for either Italian or Spanish
35. Learn a skill that should be completely useless to me. As in taking proper classes to learn, and it should probably be something like making furniture or baking cakes or learning to make chocolates - which I won't need to know.
36. Self teaching myself a will-not-use-again skill. What differentiates this from number 35 is the teacher. Moi. To make this even more interesting, the self taught skill should help in making/saving money i would otherwise spend to buy a product. So it would have to be something like learning to stitch or Sewing or whatever it's called, and can't be teaching myself to climb the stairs two at a time.
37. This should be the toughest one and least likely to happen: For a whole week to go to the gym. And exercise.
38. Learn Pilates or Yoga or some other form of meditation. I'm not sure why but i did buy myself a book on pilates.
39. To read a 100 books in 2009. See my 100+ reading challenge here. This is the only one with a deadline so far
40. In keeping with the over ambitious and cheekiness of this stupid delirious day, i'm thinking what the hell.. lets just add on to this now and make a nice 40 things. So, number 40 is to have atleast 3 months of my present salary saved in my bank account by end 2009. Well, one can always dream

When Technology bites you in the arse...read to it

What a crappy weeks its been so far. Or should I say crappy two days.

I had to carry the world's heaviest pc from home to the office yesterday. Yes, they don’t give out laptops for home use where I work, they give you a desktop, and if you're nitpicky like me and want one that actually works, then you need to bring it in to get it replaced. I realise now that I'm not strong like superman, cause my hands and, well, all of me has been aching like hell after that. I had to hold the cig with two hands yesterday so it could make it all the way to my lips - that’s how bad it was.

And then, if that Monday morning fun wasn’t enough, my pc at work crashed in the afternoon- meaning I have to wait for the worlds best IT team to now take the one week they require to retrieve all my data while I work on the 1960's model they've provided me for now.

And then this morning, my phone decided it didn’t want to display any information any more. I can take calls, but that’s pretty much it cause I can't see jack of what I'm doing with the blessed thing. If Nokia charge me a bomb to repair it, i'm just gonna get a new phone. Oh, wait. Cannot afford a new phone till the 24th - in the last 21 days, i've spent as much money as i usually spend in 3+ months.

Since they're not giving me any interesting work or a working computer to use, and i can't while away the time making phone calls to people who are similarly useless, I've decided I'm going to do the only thing I can. Read my novels at work.
Right now I'm on page 65 of Eat, Pray, Love and by the end of the week, it should be over. (well, I cant just keep reading all the time, a girls gotta pretend to work as well)

Why BPL mobile is better than Vodafone in India

I found this on the India page at work today:

Vodafone Mobile Users in India
In the recent past various cases of inconvenience caused to Vodafone Corporate users have been highlighted to Finance e.g. recovery agents calling up users directly asking for payment, disconnection of services etc, this in spite of timely payment of mobile bills. While we are taking up the same with Vodafone officials and have been promised better service levels, you have an option of swapping your current Vodafone connection with a BPL connection. Experience has proven that BPL is more efficient & keeps service commitments. Depending upon availability BPL will try and retain the last 5 digits of your current Vodafone number. In case any of the existing Vodafone corporate users would want to opt for BPL, kindly get in touch with the Admin department.

Heehee. So much for Customer Service

Why some men will always be single and why you should consider it a blessing in disguise

Say one day you went for lunch to a place that was bout half an hour from your place of work. And there while having lunch you saw a girl with a bunch of her work colleagues at another table and you were smitten.
And then you said to yourself - "Why!!! this is Love at First Sight". So you came back the next day and the next and well, you've been coming back to the lunch place for almost a year now.
The girl works close by and comes there for lunch occasionally. So you see her once-twice in a week there.

Day 25: You've managed to pile on and meet her friends. Now you know her friend's name but not hers. So you go look up her friend on Facebook, Orkut and other places hoping to find 'your' girl among her list of friends and find out more about her - you know, like her NAME to being with.
Maybe eventually 2 months later you finally know her name. You're completely in love with this girl who probably doesn’t even know you exist (or maybe she considers you the weird guy who sits at her table when she goes to the lunch place sometimes)
Now that you’ve found out her name, you're worried about the fact that she's not of your religion - you know like a pastors son might worry about introducing his atheist girlfriend who he wants to marry to his father - you worry about it something along those lines
Lets mention again, in case you've forgotten, how said girl does not know you at all, but still you're crazy in love with her.

In fact, you're 'so much in love' that you've even found out her place of work (which is very far from where you work, I might add) and you go wait outside her building hoping to catch a glimpse of her as she leave the office

You don’t know if she has a boyfriend or is married or is a lesbian even- mostly cause the most you've spoken to her is probably an occasional very-hard-to-speak-right-now-cause-you're-in-front-of-me-and-I'm-tongue tied "HI"

You ask your friends for tips on how to make conversation with her and tell them how you've fallen head over heels

No, she's not Britney spears.

No, you’re not a 17 yr old Boy in college falling in love for the first time with a girl who you see in the campus either.

You're 28

You think maybe someone should slap some sense into you and tell you to get a life?

How to Stay Away From Work - Sick Leave Reasons you can send your manager before falling back into bed!!!

These are what I call the '8 am fantastic excuses for not coming to work' sms reasons I've received from people who work with me. Its actually quite a big list, but these ones below are the gems from the lot that i've still saved on my phone

• "I stay in bed today. I feel e room spinning. Will come to office day after tomorrow" (How do you know in advance that it will take 2 days for the room to stop spinning. I did wonder, but i didn't ask)
• "Good Morning, Yesterday at midnight I fainted and fell in e toilet. Got 50cents bump on my forehead. Feeling nausea and room spinning at times. Doc said I should rest. So I am resting"
• "My doctor said I have a salt imbalance in my body and I should not go to the office"
• "Last night I went home, and I was walking in my house and I banged my toes against the cupboard. I rest today and come to work tomorrow"

While reading these, it is also nice to note that in Singapore (atleast in my workplace) you need a Medical Certificate for all sick leave that you take. Even if it is for one day. And I've always received a certificate the next day from my sickly bunch

Kenya declares holiday for Obama (Because i can't think of any witty title for this post)

So what with Lewis Hamilton winning the F1 championship and Obama now president, all seems to be well and happy and hopeful in the world and everyone thinking its gotten a little more 'equal' now.

Meanwhile, Kenya has declared Thursday a public holiday to celebrate the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency.

There was an official memo sent out by our Kenyan office today :
"Please be informed that all XXX Kenya offices will remain closed tomorrow, Thursday the 6th of November 2008 as it has been declared a public holiday following the phenomenal victory by Barack Obama in the US Presidential Elections."
So, all ye shippers, let your cargo rot for another day while they celebrate in Kenya the victory of a coloured man becoming president of a country that is not Kenya.

Does the US have a holiday today as well?

More proof about the Quickly-Dying-Unused-Brain cells

So last night I had a shower, put my glasses back on and went downstairs to watch the rest of the Heroes Season 2 Marathon
Only I couldn’t see as clearly as before.
I kept closing one eye at a time and trying to see if I could read the Star World logo on the TV and it was blurry.
I tried wiping the lens hoping that would solve it but it still wasn’t any better
I kept wondering what on earth could have happened after I had that shower that would made my new spectacles weaker in power. I mean, my number couldn’t have just increased just like that.

Me (to mom and Lil Sis) : You know its funny, suddenly I can't see clearly with these glasses. I could see properly before I had a shower
Lil Sis: Maybe that’s because you're wearing MY glasses

We don't have any SUSU drinks

I almost forgot this story until Mom bought it up just now
She just opened one of the boxes of chocolate that has been lying in the refrigerator for a couple of months, and was reading the label n stuff on the box.
One of the ingredients read as Susu Krim which means Cream Milk or something like that

She stared at it for a lil while
Mom: Erm, so what does Susu mean.
Me: What?
Mom: What does Susu Mean. It is written on the box
Me: Oh. Susu means Milk.
Mom: Oh. Heeheehee (and then all break out into hysterical laughter)

See. where i come from, Susu means Urine. So its one of those cultural differences things that has come up here.

When i moved to Singapore, Mala n me decided to have lunch at a food court we'd not been to yet. It was our first month and we were still in the adventurous and exploratory stage of our new lives here in Sin city.
So we order some food and find a table.
Singapore has a lotta food courts which are a bunch of food stalls bunched together. They're self service and there's some tables and chairs thrown around which you literally have to fight over since they're so many people always eating and you're always searching for a table to begin with the meal
There'll also be a drink stall with some folks who'll walk around and interrupt you every 2 mins till you order something to drink.

So, there we are sitting at our table just about to begin eating, and the Drink Guy (DG) walks over.

DG: You want something to drink? what you want to drink?
Mala: Can i have a diet coke
DG: OK. Can. One diet coke. What for you?
Me: Do you have any watermelon juice?
DG: No No. No watermelon juice
Me: ok. What else do you have?
DG: No juice. You want Susu drink? No Susu drink. Only canned Lah. No Susu.

This was followed by 30 seconds of silence between Mala n me. It's not that we were just stunned and completed blown away by those last lines, we just didn't know how to react.
So apparently they didn't have any fruit juices or milkshakes. Only canned drinks Lah

I ordered a diet coke as well
We never went back to that food court.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Part - II

Not quite Zombie killer, but hey i'm getting there.
Yes, i know.. i seem to be on a roll with the quizzes

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Created by OnePlusYou

May The Force Be With You

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Heehee...Now this is something to think about.

Of Apartment Stories and Bird Droppings

This day a year ago, i moved into this apartment.
Feels like its only been a couple o months.. In fact i think this past week is the first week that i've spent this much of time in the apartment now that Mom and Lil Sis are here. In fact, in the past one week, i have walked up the stairs to the bedroom and down and up and then all over again more than i walked the whole of the last one year.
Went to Jurong Bird park today, these are some of the Birdy pictures....
The more "artful" flowery pics are posted here

Pelican Cove...

I'm not a Parrot person, but...

This one is called Shoe-bill

T'was a red party out there.. (ok, ok, SAD joke)