Gym me

I haven't stopped even though my dearest appears to be making up excuses to skip her sessions of late. I'm still making the three times a week... ok sometimes two times a week sessions but I'm feeling better. Running longer and generally feeling stronger. I'm still puffing like a chimney but I drink less, though I have taken to much stronger booze when I do drink with friends, but I don't binge anymore and that'll be a liversaver.

Any hoots, I don't appear to have lost any weight, but the pants feel less snug and I don't feel like I'm approaching seventy when I have to climb a flight of stairs or walk a distance. On the diet front, I'm still mad about Japanese food and I find myself eating more Japanese food than ever, but that's probably also because we have found a lovely little restaurant that serves great food and also provides friendly service... particularly since we've been back so often. Best of all, they also serve great beef and should I ever get a craving for some red meat, I don't have to worry :)

But it ain't all good news. Our friends whom we normally workout with may be moving on from their current job and we won't be able to use their private gym for much longer. :( I loathe having to join a gym here. First it's silly stupid prices that has to be paid every month and second there are just too many weirdos checking you or themselves out all the time. Makes my skin crawl when I see these weirdos checking out everyone in the gym but workout. Yucky. Well I have the condo gym but the machines are old and those rubberised grips on the bike and elliptical smell so damn foul! Some people really don't clean themselves very well if they leave their foul stench behind everywhere.

So I may yet have to join a gym... puke. Maybe I can clear a room back at my in-laws and turn it into a home gym. :) Yes that would be the best solution. A one time payment for a top spec private gym that I can use all year round. I'll have to save some money and not spend it on holidays if I want to do this... but it'll be well worth it. Clean equipment just for me the wife whenever. It doesn't get any better than that... Oh but before I leave let me tell you about my friends' gym in New Jersey. When I was there visiting them in March, I had the opportunity to use their gym there and I was in gym heaven. The equipment was brand new and there was nobody there besides my friend and I. The elliptical, treadmills and bikes had LCD monitors and all I needed was a pair of headphones. I gotta get me some of those LCD monitors on my new machines WOOHOO!

Been absent for awhile but I'm still kicking.

My trips abroad of late have been really quite maddeningly swift. I can't remember a vacation which has been rather leisurely for the longest time but then again I haven't much time to actually go on vacation besides merging it with working trips mostly.

So a quick update for friends who haven't heard from me in ages. I ain't dead, just dead busy is all.

In my absence I've actually been zooming... been to Cambridge and London in a lightning flash trip late last year which was work and leisure combined. Did a beautiful super luxurious spa resort in Thailand in Dec (Sila Evason Hideaway) which ended much too soon but it is simply a must return to resort because it spoilt me rotten and yes it was all leisure but I was still busy smsing work colleagues because there was so much work! Did a quick hit and run trip to New York and visited friends in New Jersey and walked through the lovely Princeton University in March which was again mostly work and a little leisure but again I was mostly smsing because... you got it - work. Got terribly ill on my return trip because I ate something really nasty on that SQ flight back and was laid up in bed for 4 days! Wasted two precious days of my annual leave and a weekend limp from their dirty food... bloody lousy SQ catering in USA POO POO. Made several super short weekend work/leisure trips to Indonesia (Jakarta and Medan) and will probably try to make another two trips to Indonesia (Solo and Surabaya or maybe even Jakarta again). I found myself really liking Indonesia the people are so friendly.. beats Singapore mostly. So I'll be off to Bintan (for the Gaazillonth time) for a much needed quick spa and tanning fix this June... this one is all leisure. I know I'm sooo terribly bad because we'll be doing two resorts one after another while we're there. Why you ask? Because it's too good to pass up. Imagine soaking up the opportunity of enjoyng two lovely deals one after the other when normally you only choose one. We just had to do both :P

The following weekend I'll find myself back in Bintan AGAIN but this time for part work and leisure. Then it'll be back to work and hell until August. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a very decadent long weekend in August in another Thai boutique resort just to de-stress before the year-end madness overcomes the best of us at work, the bonuses will be burned for this trip if it happens. Yes I'm talking about personal bulter service, private pool villa heaven again. We haven't decided yet if we're going be naughty and stay at Sila Evason Hideaway again or try another small luxury spa resort but I know whichever one we settle on... it will be Ooh-so-sinful... sinfully expensive but what is work for if you can't spend your money. And finally I've decided to make another more leisurely trip back to BC Canada at the end of the year to recce the place further with an eye to drive up to the snow this time and maybe indulge in some ski therapy before the new year of madness begins all over again.

I know it's so wrong but I can't relax much here. It's work, it just keeps hounding me. It's at the back of my mind and so long as the computer is closeby and the office stays open for us 24/7 there is just no way to getaway and shut out work. So quick fixes like these short trips just has to do to keep me sanity. If nothing else at least it means I can't drive into work and I don't have internet access so readily. So here's to quick getaways and friends to meet all over the place to keep that smile on me face.

Cheers all and have a super weekend ahead... I'm dreaming of spas, private pools and fruity drinks with sunsets on the horizon just another week or so to go before paradise beckons. *smiles*

Nar Dah

Work has been hectic of late. Actually not really just hectic, it's been complete madness... in fact I dare say hellish.

Everything is just flying and that's not a good thing when you haven't enough time to handle everything as well as you'd like to. Days are taken up with meetings after meetings, when you have an available moment, the phone invariably rings and ruins your day because you find yourself having to manage that urgent situation when there are 10 other urgent cases like deadlines and projects waiting in the wing in your ever growing in-tray. If it's not the phone, then it's the email. The messages keep coming, I do so fantasize of the day that Y2K actually did wreak havoc on our modern technology. It'll be snail mail...

*fantasy dream Scene* cue music - cue hazy vision - BEGIN!* ...By sea or air please the staff asks? Make it slow, we are all cutting costs so by sea please, I'd purr. If it was urgent... I mean really urgent, then a telegram please or if it was cheap enough then a direct phone call. Now stop bothering me, I have work to do... *CUT! - Lights! - *fantasy dream Scene ends*

Damn I reckon I could be doing research, writing papers and presenting at conferences regularly with all that time to work, think, reflect and act on matters, without emails and phone calls constantly pulling me away from other work. What a dream that would be...

But back to reality, everyone is depending on you to make it the best that it can be but I'm wondering with all this work I complete as best I can under the circumstances and slip into my 'out' tray... I just know it's one of those things where there is always a high probability that it'll just come back to haunt me later. Why you ask? Because no matter how much I say I've done it to the best of my ability, the fact that I have so many things in the air now and I'm really freaking out. I know I could have done an even better job if I just had more time to think about it, consider it that little bit longer, had just that little bit more time to craft it before sending it out for clearance. So it goes that because I'm now bogged down with so many things that I can't seem to see straight much less think straight, these out tray items will most likely come back and hit me where it hurts. It'll require another round... a round which I feel sick thinking of because it'll mean it being in my in-tray joining an ever growing heap of 'things-to-do' and everyone of those items are marked urgent.

Now you might say, if only I'd done them right then it won't come back for another round. True I totally agree, but I know that the work is as good as its going to get at that moment in time.

It's even more maddening when I think I've really done a great job on something and sent it on it's way only for the work to be torn in to and re-edited to such ends that one wonders whether I needed to provide any sort of input whatsoever. So I work. I'm a working stiff, we tell ourselves that we are making a difference but I think otherwise. I say I'm like a mice on a wheel, I do a lot of work running all day long but where have I gotten. I end where I started. I feel like this these days and these days suck! I have had too many of these days already this year, it's not healthy. I want to move forward, I want to see farther, do more and feel more. I want out of the office, I want to real contact with people, enough with phones and emails. I need fresh air and time away from the office, from deadlines and urgent matters, from replying to complaints or strange feedback from 'customers' who know better but just want you to experience a bad day like them. I want out of the cage or this rat race...

I wish I was a kid again, on my bike in the neighbourhood, riding from home to home of dear friends to get them out to play without a thought for the time or what game we were going to play. I want to play, experience and learn all over again. I'm tired of people expecting me to know it all. I want to say, I know nothing... leave me be. I am nothing, let me be.

I want a do over... I want to go back to school.

black beast vs little terror

It's been ages since my last babble. While many things have happened everyday but nothing so significant to rave about.

Oh except possibly the fact that I've got a new little baby. Yes I've done and turned my back on my black beast of a 4x4 and traded it in for a little red chilli padi. I've bought myself a new car!! For those of you know me well, this is quite a surprise because I was really quite attached to that black beast, the five hour wash and wax jobs I lavished on that monster every other weekend was sweet sickness. But the beast was cursed since day one. The day I drove down to her pick up from bloody C&C I was already pained to see that lousy C&C didn't do a very nice wash job, they left millions of swirl marks all over the black paint work to a new car. Then within the week some dickless wonder coined the beast for no apparent reason besides the fact that it was new, shiny and very much a beauty on the road. Then within the year of our partnership, some fool of a black RX300 rear-ended the beast on the CTE and a long legal case ensued before the beast and I were vindicated and aptly rewarded by the fools who obviously can't drive to save their lives. I mean seriously, when there is a jam and everyone is stopped dead on the road surely that means that you shouldn't be slamming down on your accelerator. Morons!! Any way after that long legal tussle, the beast and I haven't shared the same bond since. It all came to naught when I laid my eyes on the new swift sport. Such a sweet little package of unadulterated fun. I couldn't help but test drive the little beauty, even if I felt like I was cheating on the beast. But I was sold, the little terror was so sweet, full of verve and ohh so loud, she screams all the way to redline heaven!

So I washed and waxed the beast for the last time in Nov 06 and we said our goodbyes. It was tough to see the beast go, we struggled with Singapore's conjested roads for too long and just as the beast was getting tired and worn, we took a much needed road trip up to Kuantan and she made me smile again. Steady power and such stamina, it was smooth sailing all the way for that road trip. But it was time to call it a day, two years was a very short time but it was filled with memories, some good and some bad. So now I'm hooning in a little red hatch which I have fondly called paddy or LT (little terror). I can't tell you how much fun I've been having, except that on some occasions, I have missed the beast. The Jan weather when the skies opened up and dumped what must have been more water than we have seen in a decade or two, well little paddy had to be careful where we tread. But I couldn't help thinking about the black beast, she would have ploughed through it all flooded roads, muddy tracks or gravel and unpaved tracks... to the beast, I do miss you so. Roll on...