When trade offs happen

Do you value money, time, freedom, or kinship more?

I think inherently, humans are selfish. It's a matter of whether you want to display that selfish side, or not. 

And I also think it's especially likely for the selfish side to show in a marriage. Before marrying, you may think of the consequences and tread more carefully (esp the guys who needs to propose!) After marriage, certainly one starts to be more lax about everything, after all, the deal's done, right?

These are exactly the vibes that I'm getting lately. 

Everyone has their priorities in life, yes. And not everyone's priority may be the same, sure. But when your partner and your priorities are totally different, there lies the troublesome part. Should you give in to his/her priorities or should you insist on your own principles? 

When you are there: - 

1) making demands for your partner to stay at home and spend time with you (but you face the computer and ignore the human being and go for a nap thereafter), 

2) interrogating your partner for spending money on cabs (when you convinced your partner that cabbing each weekend is less costly than owning a car),

3) complaining that your partner's activities do not involve you (but refused to come out when plans are made), and

4) unreasonably flipping sides about plans,

remember a superb lesson that I learnt today from Marry Me: 儅你在挑剔別人時，別人也在挑剔你。

Don't take everything for granted. 

忙裏偷閒的第七個二月二十九

In the midst of a lifestyle change now. 

I have no idea what prompted me to wake up at 6am everyday to go for a short run / gym @ the office before work. It was just a "I miss running" thought and that thought went viral in my little head and the thought then materialised. It was purely because I knew I will never have the resolve to run after dinner (talk about bad habits!). Thus, I have been waking up at 6am everyday for the past few weeks and feeling damn proud of it! I'm glad I have managed to do it so far because I also noticed a significant reduction in my sleepiness during work hours. Highly suspect a strong correlation between the two - would anyone like to do a study on that? =P

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I also talked to my insurance agent on Monday, and apart from the panic caused by the parents' non-existent medical insurance, one topic we talked about struck a chord. He had noticed a trend in the differing leisure hobbies that "good school students" have and "neighbourhood school students". And so according to him, neighbourhood school students tend to play ball, sing karaoke, chat at the kopitiam, etc etc while good school students have more atas hobbies like reading. Though I maintained that I also do the activities that he does, it got me thinking on whether there really is such a segregation. I'm sure I read because I like to read, and it's a habit cultivated from young. Or is that the correlation with being in a "good" school? Confused much. This line between the two seemed to be demonstrated on a regular basis, the latest being my cousin maintaining that we (i.e. rest of cousins, uncles who went to fairly famous schools) do not understand him because he was an ITE student. Albeit now being an NUS undergrad, this was the sentiment that he had. Though we all refuted that as a possibility, none of us can really prove it, can we. 

So is this divide for real?

Reminiscences

I think none of you knew that I used to write SMS-es into notebooks to prevent losing them. 

Childish? Yes, I think so. Crazy? Not that mental, of course. Only SMS-es I felt were important to me. Over the course of 2 JC years, I think I only had a handful. Thus it wasn't like I spent half of my life copying those SMS-es. 

Silly as it might be, when I chanced upon them today, it really brought back tons of memories, and I could remember exactly when each SMS came, for which event, whatever I was feeling at that time.

The feeling of reminiscences is good. 

For life made you into what you are today, ain't it? :)

Complaints - the nature of Singaporeans

When someone complains to me, I watch my behaviour and try my best not to interrupt with my own (perhaps similar) matters, because I think all the complaining party wants is a listening ear. Being very mindful of this, I will purposely stop myself when I catch myself subconsciously doing it. I'm but Singaporean after all.

When you are the listening ear, do you do that or do you not care about the complaining party and go on to vent your frustrations on the person who was hoping to get some relief by talking to you?

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The mystery of the tangling and untangling.

As a kid, I've always thought about why things get tangled up. To a kid, it's a very simple logic of if you tangle it in this way, why shouldn't the reverse process be as easy and straightforward?

As an adult, I finally realised (and I think statistics helped) that while there are so many thousand different possibilities and ways of tangling something, there can only be one way of untangling it - by going the exact reverse process.

And that is why things get tangled up so easily, but untangling it becomes so hard. 

To think in my teens I was proud of unveiling such a simple piece of logic!

說什麽都得先考慮一下

很久沒有口無遮攔的時刻了。

長大了，說什麽事情都會先考慮，三思，分析。考慮看說了會不會有什麽不良的結果，三思，說了以後會不會對別人造成影響，分析這些資料是不是不該讓每個人知道，知道了會有什麽後果。

好累喔。

就連最芝麻綠豆的小事，也不說。最阻攔我的，應該是自私的怕說了之後反而造成自己的不便。對這麽一個時固執，時隨性的人，真得很糟糕。

僞裝的殼，太多層了，應該忘記怎麽掀下它們了吧。反正也太習慣了，帶着也沒怎樣。PS 男看太多了啦。夏和傑的

“毒舌是爲了保護自己；囂張是害怕別人看不起我；自大因爲自卑；花心因爲害怕付出真心遭到拒絕；自戀因爲沒自信；假文藝是害怕被人家發現我平凡普通”

還真夠貼心的。

Having no $$ is really just a priority and perspective thing

I'll admit, I am always saying I'm broke.

But that is really just a matter of relativity, perspective or priority.

I'm broke, compared to xxx;
I'm broke because I spent so much this month; or
I'm broke because I don't care enough to spend this $$ on this thing.

OR the one I'm 90% at:

I'm broke because I want to save more $$.

Seldom are people really, really broke, like 10 cents left in the account. Seldom, not never. At least, never me. It's really a sign of poor $$ management and prioritization when it boils down to just 10 cents.

So when you say you're broke, which is it?

Second fiddles

I did a search for the term "second fiddle" and I couldn't get anything much other than the definition, which I already know, and probably not just in name.

second fiddle
noun
Informal

1. A secondary role.
2. One who plays a secondary role.

- source: yourdictionary.com

And so everyone is a second fiddle to everyone in some kind of the world, simply because it is never because so that everyone takes you as the first priority in life. 

I never got the difference between angry, irritated, or resigned whenever I got second fiddled. Indifference, I can get. It's a very simple explanation for being indifferent; either I don't really care, or I care too much and it's time to hide. Angry because it's one time too many, irritated because no one else seems to care, resigned because that's just that, there's nothing one can do about it?

Shrugs.

And thus I am setting upself up for second fiddling yet again. I suppose it's really 本性難改。Tell myself to 看開一點 and everything will be alright (:

Managing expectations

Something I learnt this morning after having a "unit" meeting. 

Came across this article which I suspect could probably give IPAM a run for their money. And I came to the ever popular story for managing expectations.

" A boy stopped in between 2 stores which sold candy. The stores sold the exact same candy at the exact same prices. The store on the left was manned by a grandpa, who had been in the business for 10 years. He scooped some candy out for the girl who wanted to buy some, then slowly scooped more out and topped it up to the weight she desired. A young man had just opened the store on the right and was also scooping the candy for another girl who went in. He held a big bunch of candy on the scale, and upon realizing that it was over the weight of candy the girl requested, took some and put it back into the jar. 

The boy smiled and went into the shop on the left, for the image of scooping more candy out had been etched in his mind. "

I guess I didn't realize how important managing these expectations were until today, when I actually heard the crux of the comments. Oh well, it could be any factor leading to this, right up to this very moment. But good thing is boss shares the same sentiments, and thus it does not matter as much since it's very much easier to manage boss' expectation rather than the junior staff.

Spent some time poring over the articles.

Managing expectations is about perception - under promise and over deliver.

Of double standards and homo sapiens

Double standards: any code or set of principles containing different provisions for one group of people than for another. - Defined by Dictionary.com.

I believe everyone has double standards. I try not to. But at times I have to admit I may display slight double standards as well. I guess the difference is between whether you want to try to be as uniform as possible, or that you just simply do not care whether you are consciously or subconsciously displaying double standards. For there is always one side who will side with you, isn't it? And most of the time, homo sapiens will care more about the side to whom they display the lower standard. 


And since I try so hard not to display any, I often end up with 兩面不着岸。It should be ok in the end, because I have tried. But the reality is that it is never ok. 因爲兩面都不着岸的結果是溺水。


It's just a random post. Because I have seen too much of double standards that made me reflect on myself. Yes, nearly everyone around me has double standards. Myself included. 

It is a great relief to finally say out what I have been wanting to say for months. And hence thereof I knew that I had also displayed double standards at this moment. But at this point I just don't feel like caring for anyone's feelings, and try to put myself in first place.

"Neither I nor anyone else knows what a standard is. We all recognize a dishonorable act, but have no idea what honor is." - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), Russian author, playwright. Letter, April 9, 1889, to the writer A.N. Pleshcheev. Complete Works and Letters in Thirty Volumes, Letters, vol. 3, p. 186, "Nauka" (1976).