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Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Memoirs of a Whirlwind Trip

Happy New Year all..

The CNY festivities have not ended. Unfortunately, Thais do not remember CNY as a festival worth awarding public holidays, so I had no choice but to do a whirlwind 4-night trip to 2 countries, first my native Kuching, then where my wife cum gf cum fiancee is, Singapore.

This is the first time I will be narrating using pictures, and the words ended up a little small, just remember that most pictures below contain words to describe them!!! Do take note, because some of these words contain precious hints of some interesting news (i dunno whether u care, but i'll remind u to read more carefully anyway..)


KUCHING


SINGAPORE








Last but not least, I managed to spend a few hours in the mall with Li Li. She'll be coming to Bangkok for longer periods of time soon, Whoopee!



Saturday, February 13, 2010

Diversity: Gucci vs Chanel?

Before I begin, I would like to wish all of my friends, no matter where you are, a Happy and Prosperous Year of the Tiger. For me, it's been a couple of days of mixed news, but since it's supposed to be a happy occasion, let me just think of the positives... I am becoming an uncle soon!!!!!!!!
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When I was leaving for Malaysia from the Suvarnabumi airport, I stumbled across some deities doing a tug of war using a poor 3-headed snake:



The purple deity looks as if he was coordinating the event. So naturally I had to look left and right to observe the 2 teams competing.
To my astonishment, the team on my left was representing Gucci. It has the help of the 3-headed snake as well. So I couldnt resist but to turn to my right. Hoho...... not bad.... the Right team is representing Chanel!!
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Who wins then? I'm not sure, they seem evenly matched. I think they are just trying to summarize Thailand's diversity in a nutshell.

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Gong Xi Fa Cai! And this is the last year I can say 红包拿来!!




Monday, February 8, 2010

TRAGEDY......... close............

UPDATE: After post mortem from our staff in Singapore. The PSA crane driver dropped our container from 5 storeys high, 20 tonnes of goods, free fall to the ground, creating holes in the ground in the process.
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I got this picture from my manager in Singapore this morning on my email, followed by the msn messages:
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"bad news"
"container fell down, dropped by PSA, emailed you to see the damage"
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My heart dropped, stopped.
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I had been very proud that after 6 months of utter hard work, I have managed my first full container import. I shared my joy with many people as it was a milestone complete earlier than I could have expected, but this? Of my 5 years of work experience, importing and exporting containers in the process, I have not seen anything worse. For this to happen at PSA is really disappointing.
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BUT.
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The manager in Singapore was so stunned himself that he forgot to tell me that it wasn't my container. It was a container sent on the same day as mine to the port, but going to Africa.
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THANK GOD.
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It's peak season here in Thailand. This is my only container for this month because of the CNY break. Losing this container would be losing my business for my best month of the year (like Orchard losing December), and for a small startup like mine, it would equate to possibly a unprofitable year.
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It is still a tragedy, and PSA should not be forgiven because my company (not my branch) is still immensely affected by this disaster, but for me, my life goes on, and it's a reminder that I should not take anything for granted, because shit happens when u least expect it. PHEW!

Friday, February 5, 2010

A Rare Sentimental Moment

Hi guys....

Been keeping quite quiet on the blog front. My company is going through the phase where we are setting new sales records every month and I can happily say that we have just ordered a full container load of goods! The only problem is that my "warehouse" per say, seems smaller than the container itself.... but we'll take care of it.

I spent the whole of last night living in the past. I had a dream, of taking 4 straight JC exam papers in 4 consecutive days. Mr Sandman did not let me off. He made me sit through the preparations, and one paper after another, until finally I woke up, just in time to not be late for work. What a relief! But then, for the whole day, I remember vividly every detail of the dream, and it's been some sort of a deja vu...

It made me think of the past, and to sort of also miss the times when I was younger, not that I am very old now, but to relive college days again gave me a very special feeling.

In the past 2 weeks, I met up with a friend thrice. She was in Bangkok for 2.5 months for research. We were neighbours for I think 20 years. There were other coincidental indirect linkages between us but I shall not delve too deep into history. The fact is that we were almost physically next to each other for 20 yrs, but we only ever bothered meeting up to catch up now, when we are both married, both not based in Singapore. To be honest, now that she has left Bangkok, I do not know when we will meet again since she'll be completing her PhD in London.

I think in life, countless people pass us by, and sometimes we really do not try hard enough to see who's who, and miss out on many people who might just become our good friends. Or maybe, being humans, we are just too engrossed in our own lives, that we only treasure things that are either rare, or things that we know we are going to lose soon.

Perhaps we just take too many things for granted, and procrastinate, and regret when we do not have enough time in the end.

As I am in a rare sentimental moment, I shall share with all of you this song on my blog by the Beegees. I heard it when I watched Beegees' One Night Only concert DVD, where they sang this song with their late baby brother (the late brother sang in a video that was played concurrently) and it really touched me at that moment.

Sorry, no pictures in this post, can't really find any picture fitting to my blog post today. Thanks for reading on!