When I left my place for my 1st appointment of the year, I thought the only way to describe the sun was that it was gorgeous. The rays were not overly blinding and the heat was just about there. Plus, traffic seemed smooth sailing all the way. It was a great feeling.
And I guess bringing that thought with me to the appointment really brought good things from the universe.
Fuck, I like it
My client was really happy with the website mockup done and hearing “fuck, I like it” as a compliment couldn’t have made it sound more real. So much so he even vouched to fight for this mockup to be approved by the management later. Gotta love clients like these.
Ask and you shall receive
Plus, I think the universe may have answered me because though it was some news which may not be good for business, to me, I felt it was a sign of a good thing taking its own place in my business.
Oh, I do hope tomorrow’s sun will be another gorgeous one.
When I think back of 2013, I only achieved 2 of my goals I set out to do. Well, maybe 3 if you count my business goal. Firstly, I told myself I wanted to go to Japan, so money’s all saved up and flight ticket has also been booked. Secondly, I was thinking of picking up Japanese so now, watashiwa nihongo ga sukoshi wakarimasu (I understand some Japanese).
Forward to the future
Twenty fourteen now. Here are some goals I have set myself to achieve this year.
Lose some fat and build back some abs
Back in the day
Towards the end of last year I didn’t set time to exercise. I became so lost in my passion, it started becoming work. On top of that, it was eating, working, sleeping and repeat. So much so I realize flab started building up. Nooooo…
Less coffee and wine, more water
Glug glug glug
And since I’m aiming for a healthier lifestyle this year. I’m going to drink less coffee and wine because some say it can help with dryness of the mouth. So I’m cutting down on the 2 and drinking more water this year.
Build myself a new workstation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO_rNhDIIyA
My current rig is probably 5 years old (or more) now. Running on an Intel quad-core Q6600 (small upgrade after changing from a duo-core E6300) and a Gigabyte 965P-DS3. I’ve maxed out my RAM support for Windows XP. In lesser words, it’s time is due.
Convert my current desk to a standing desk
Illustration from: AGBeat.com
One of the habits having a passion which ties you to a desk is sitting. And I can’t run away from this. So this year, I’m changing up my desk panels to make it into a standing desk. Thank goodness it’s modularly built.
Blog more often
Websites Made Simple / I am Danny Foo
Of course, I’ve been telling myself time and time again to do this. And I want to accomplish it this year. Even if it’s not blogging for money over at Websites Made Simple, at least I’m going to jot some personal notes here more often. Bring back some of that personal side of blogging missing nowadays.
Create a stencil
Credit: Manifesta Journal
This is a mini project I want to do for the purpose of something out of the box. Unfortunately, it may be safer for me not to say, just in case. What I can say is I want to do this for the good of a community.
Own 2-3 more suits
Joseph Gordon-Levitt
And if the year is kind to me, I’d like to purchase more suits and attend more formal events (so I can where them at least!) You could say this guy has probably become my motivation for smart dressing. 😛
Pick-up a programming language
Though this won’t be my strongest point, I’m going to do my best to make it an effort this year. Most likely, I’ll be going with PHP. The next part of the plan is to allocate a time slot for Code.org every day.
Well, I’m not going to push myself right now to think of more goals. That may defeat the purpose of setting it up and probably put me in a higher position to fail.
So, best of luck to you if you’ve set your goals for 2014. 🙂
Happy new years! We headed down to Singapore this year for Christmas to celebrate it with the rest of the family. In summary, I truly love Singapore’s transportation infrastructure; its safety and its breezes. Oh, how nice it was walking in the night in your shorts, when a whiff of breeze just blows across cooling your every being. Syok.
Double layer wha?!
After reaching Vivo City and wanting to rid ourselves of the hunger pangs, we couldn’t find the initial restaurant we wanted (looks like we’re far off from being called Masters of Malls) so we headed to some pizza place at the food court. And this blew my mind.
Double layer pizza
It’s a sandwich, but a pizza. Wha?! Anyway, taste wise was nothing to scream about.
Might fine fish noodles
The next time I come down to Singapore and I see a crazy queue at an eatery, I will put 80% of my trust in the Singaporean’s choice to tell me that the food must be good. Because damn, this fish noodle was super good to me.
In the queue
Slurp
Not far away from this stall, there was an even longer queue for Lor Mee but I’m not such a big fan of it.
Lor Mee queue
However, I did catch a glimpse of the bowls ordered to the nearby tables. They must have ordered the large bowl because it was BIG! And I could see the gooey dark brown sauce; it looked tasty.
Esmereldaaaaa
In 2013, me and the wifey travelled to Singapore in order to catch The Lion King (which was awesome) and Wicked (which was awesome too). And since we were in Singapore, we decided to catch Notre Dame de Paris.
I’ve only watched the Disney version so I was kind of confused with the storyline this time.
Though, I must commend the male voices for being clear when sang. And surprisingly, I found it really challenging making up the words when Esmerelda sang – maybe English wasn’t her strongest language. *shrug*
Father-Son Time at golf
Nowadays, I rarely have the chance to golf, let alone play with my brothers and Dad. So we took the opportunity to head Johor for a round at Kukup Golf Resort.
Full quorum
The course had wide fairways and a good range of Par 3s to Par5s for us to play. On the other hand, what was stopping this golf course to me for being good was the maintenance of the grass length. Roughs were long enough to lose balls even after tee off, despite sure efforts identifying the ball definitely landed nearby.
And the midway rest area toilets were, well, to put it nicely…bad.
Johor-Tuas traffic congestion madness
Never in my life had I been stuck in a congestion lasting almost 3 hours or more. Thank goodness my bladder didn’t burst while in the car! And I do pray never to get stuck in it, ever again.
Now back in Malaysia, I miss the cleaner Singapore air, freedom from worries walking in the night and the cool breeze which moves. Sigh.
I was fortunate to receive shopping vouchers from Zalora recently and this gave me a good enough reason to try out their online shopping experience. “Who wouldn’t shop for free, right?” 😛
Plus, this came about the right time when my old pair of Adidas shoes decided to develop a weird hole at the bottom of it. *jump for joy*
Facepalm moment
Honestly, I got mixed up between Zalora and Lazada. Yes, I make such mistakes as well because besides a pair of shoes, I’ve been looking around for a pair of new headset.
What’s the difference? Zalora is an online store for apparel, shoes and accessories to go with your fashion outlook. Lazada is an online store for buying computers, hardware and gadgets. So yeah, facepalm moment.
Mah new goods from Zalora
I really love my new shoes! Because the blue is really striking and it’s not easy to come by a pair like this. In addition, material isn’t suede so I wouldn’t have to worry too much about water stains.
Color is awesome, right? Right?
It was pretty easy shopping at their website and it’s my very first time buying shoes and apparel online. I’ve always been skeptical when it came to buying this stuff online because you can’t try them before you buy it.
Thankfully, my shoes fitted nicely – even with socks. On the other hand, I had to exchange the shirt I bought – a little tight.
M-size was a little tight for me
Thankfully, Zalora was prepared for this. It took me a little while to confirm if they did because the information on the website only spoke about returns, not exchanges. Â Even after I did find a mentioned word about exchanges, I used their online chat support to confirm and verify the exchange process.
Instead of a 1-to-1 exchange programme, they require customers to return the goods via courier with tags attached in its original packaging including the Zalora box – mine was big due to the shoes. Good thing though is they’ve already included a return PosLaju slip for you, so you bear no cost for returns. However, while I was at the post office, I was still asked to fill up another pink slip. *shrug*
Then, once they acknowledge receival of the returned goods, they’ll refund you back in store credits so you can use it to purchase the same product again with a different size or even, a different product.
So far it’s been a good experience, besides the bump when you have to do a size exchange. But I guess the only way to not feel it as much is you either luck out with the right size or make the returns less troublesome for customers – which is what Zalora did.
Now, if only I could do more “free shopping”. LOL!
It was 8.00 AM and together with my family, we went for breakfast. Let me say this earlier, we have not had breakfast together like this in awhile. And I’m thankful for it because of this general election. In addition, I witnessed many other families eating together. One man with his grandfather looked so happy and proud – a sight rarely seen.
After a good breakfast, we left for the polling station and parked our car not far off to walk there. As we walked toward the entrance, we stopped at the SPR counter to check our room.
SPR clerk verification counter
After the verification, I was given a paper with the room number.
Room number 8
And as usual, my Dad jokingly was talking about 4D when he saw I was room number 8. *facepalm*
So once we knew our rooms, we walked in and join the right queue. There were several lines formed and a paper stuck on the wall roughly indicated the location of the rooms.
My queue was stupendously long from 1 corner of the block, across the bridge connecting to the next block, up the stairs and all the way further.
I kid you not.
The elderly and senior citizens had it easier because their rooms were on the ground floor. Some of the rooms there even had chairs outside for the voters to sit.
Sit and wait
Back in my queue, some voters were requested to proceed to their rooms ahead because the lines were short. However, mine was a long way to go.
My room was at the end of the line
When I reached the floor of my room, I was wondering that it would’ve been more systematic if they used the middle stairs you see in the photo for my queue. Because this would make it less confusing of which queue voters should follow. All the voters from Room 5 to 8 were in my queue, then formed more queues when they were on the top floor as you can see.
Anyway, when it came to my turn to enter the room, I was hoping to get the middle clerk to paint the indelible ink for me because I noticed he was neater. Whereas I got the first clerk and… -_-
Rather messy if you ask me
Once we walked out of the polling station, I felt really proud to do my share this round and I was strongly hoping for a change. As much as I know it wouldn’t really happen, I was still hoping in this round we’d give them a run for their money and they’d be sweating buckets to know we’re the generation to deal with from now on.
