To Do List

#Now Playing - Candy Store by Faber Drive

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel uncomfortable and awkward.

I've been wondering what the hell am I doing for the past 21(soon to be) years in my life. Not much productivity, so I have decided to change all that and have a better lifestyle. Normally I would just procrastinate and just move on with life, but not anymore. I don't want to be someone who is all talk and dwell in the past just because of various setbacks. I want a change, for a better me, and people around me. So what do I want to change in my life?

'The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step' Lao Tzu

- Learn to Swim (Doing this daily now)

- Get Fitter (Doing this whenever I can now)

- Get Braces (Due in December)

- Be more Vocal and Outgoing (getting used to)

Currently, these 4 are the stuff I need to do the most, 2 on physique, 1 on appearance and 1 on personality. Not much I know, but it's a start. Surely Rome wasn't built in a day, nor will I change that quickly. However, slowly but surely, I will eventually turn into a much better person, I hope. 

2 more days to my birthday, wow time flies really. 3 more days and I'll be going to Melaka with my family for a short getaway. It's long overdued due to not having a car, but things are different now. Gonna buy a camera soon so self taken photos will definitely be introduced into this page, a fresh start definitely.

Anyway, I've always wondered what is wrong for this whole year. Almost everything I reckon., which is why I want to have a change. Sometimes things are just too complicated and maybe we need to find the right moment to get it right, although you may have the risk of losing it during the period of idle. It's a gamble really. Perhaps when I've completed these 4 task, perhaps. Another list maybe? I shall refer back to this post in 3 month's time and see what I have achieved.

Food Hunt

Food Hunt

It's been quite awhile since I've met up with Sing Gee and Ding Ping to hunt for food, mostly due to NS and personal commitments. We finally managed to free up last Sunday for a meetup session and food hunt. 

This time round is quite a unique one, Sing Gee had actually found a Korean Vegetarian Stall. It's called  涵義 Hanyi Vegetarian and it's located opposite of Tai Seng MRT Station, Sakae Building. Odd choice for a location, since it's sort of a industrial park and chances are not many people will get to know this place at all. I've heard they are moving out by the end of this month though to a new location at Serangoon. Hope they will last long because they do sell very unique vegetarian dishes that you don't get to see it everyday. For us, getting there is a breeze because of my own car and it's near our house too. (East Side). It's located inside a food court and I really do hope they can expand their business into opening a stall of their own.

It is a ulu place but worth the trip and effort to go there and try if you are a Korean Fanatic. Their menu is a tad small, but still enough for you get interested for a whole week. Besides Korean dishes, they do have western dishes too such as Spaghetti and Baked Rice. This is a selection of their dishes.

I ordered the Korean Army Stew Noodle, Ding Ping ordered the Bibimbap with Gochujang as the flavour and Sing Gee ordered Al Fungi for our dinner. Their dishes are quite cheap too, only $4.50 for most and it is another reason why you should come here. Ding Ping ordered the Bibimbap with Gochujang. At first, we were laughing at the weird dish name "Bibimbap" as we don't know what it was until I googled and found out it was just Korean Mixed Rice. Pretty interesting, even though the name itself literally makes my tongue twist when saying it. The flavour "Gochujang" is some sort of hot pepper chili which doesn't tastes like chili at all. It taste abit like durian chendol which makes the Bibimbap a little weird but still nice to eat. 



I ordered Korean Army Stew Noodle, which is basically Korean style Maggie Mee I think, since the noodles looks like Maggie Mee(curly curly). However, the soup taste good, something like Kimichi mixed with cheese and it has a very unique smell. 

Sing Gee ordered the Al Fungi. It was quite salty according to him, but I do like salty stuff so I don't find it bad. So, if you guys are not into salty food, steer clear of the Al Fungi.Overall, their dishes are very good and unique since I think this is one of the few if not the only Korean Vegetarian seller in Singapore. The food there literally made my nose drip because it's too shiok to slurp on the soup. Damn nice lah. I think we should find this type of unique Vegetarian stall more often. There is  also a Japanese Vegetarian Restaurant at Lucky Plaza, very unique too. I shall bring them there on our next trip.
After which, we had a great chat about all sorts of things at Tampines Mall Delifrance like we used to do before we enlist. Should ask them out more often, miss those days. Oh well, everyone is so busy now as time goes by. Shall sleep early tonight, gonna be a long day tomorrow. Shall dedicate this song to everyone before I go, stuck in my head for quite some time after I've watched 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2' with Huitong, damn awesome tone. Maybe I like humming songs alot lol.

External Course

True but tough initiation.

For the past 2 days, I had went to the Central Manpower Base for an external course "Working With Difficult People". Working in my company, we employees will have many opportunities to attend such development courses without paying anything. I feel that we are quite fortunate to have such opportunities because there are very little companies out there who are willing to send employees for self development courses.

Instead of the usual 8am work time, I get to sleep 1 more hour because the course starts at 9am. The venue is at Depot Road, which is near the town area. Taking the ECP/AYE path passing by MBS and then Keppel Road, I was exorbitantly charged. It cost me $7 just to pass through 2 goddamn operating ERP. I was pissed but what to do? Gotta suck thumb and move on, I will avoid travelling through the town area during peak hours though. This will just be the start of the horror though. Parking wasn't so friendly either, I have to put more than 10 coupons to last through the day, totaling to a grand amount of $10. Wow seriously, I had spent $34 for the past 2 days just for ERP and parking. However, the course was quite motivating and I found the it to be worth the money spent. Thank god my camp is not situated near the city area, I will go bankrupt very quickly.

1 day worth of coupons, tiring to tear all these crap.

One of my friend is serving his NS at CMPB and I managed to contact him and have lunch with him (and another colleague of mine) for the past 2 days. He is a vegetarian like me and we used to travel around Singapore with one of our mutual friend to find good stuff to eat. We had been to quite a few far away places such as Clementi, Bukit Gombak etc to eat, hardcore if you ask me. Somehow the city area are places we left out during our search. Not sure why, but it seems like nobody was quite familiar with the town area.

On the first day, we went to a coffee shop just opposite of CMPB. The stall was only selling mixed rice and bee hoon, nothing quite fanciful. To be honest, I don't really like vegetarian bee hoon as they tend to put alot of mock meat which are made of flour and stuff like that. I prefer natural foods instead of processed ones and hence I will avoid vegetarian bee hoon if possible. Hence, on the second day, we went a little further for our lunch. We went to the ABC Market in hopes of finding nicer food to eat because I heard from my friend that there's a Vegetarian Stall there which is quite nice. Somehow we only found 1 stall in the hawker centre and they only sell vegetarian bee hoon and mixed rice. Tough luck, another day of mock meat feast. It wasn't until when we were leaving the place when we saw another Vegetarian stall called 'Nature Vegetarian Catering Pte Ltd'. Damn, if only we had seen it earlier. The menu looks good though. Oh well, looks like I'll have to try it only when I pass by next time. 

Working With Difficult People Course

During these 2 days, I had learnt how to cope with difficult people, be it at work or if it's just your friends. I feel that this course is worth the $34 I spent LOL, but seriously it's true. It makes me rethink on how to solve a problem with different approach. Normally, the problems are not difficult to overcome if you can blend with that difficult person you are facing. There are actually 10 types of difficult people, they can either be aggressive or passive. (Yes, passive people can be difficult people too)

The Tank

Pushy, Pointed and Angry, Confrontational

The Know it All

Seldom in Doubt, Low Tolerance for Correction, Blame others Quickly

The Think They Know it All

Attention Seeker, Loves to Exaggerate, Prima Donnas

The Complainer

Helpless, Blames the World, Complains about Everything

The Sniper

Prone to Gossip, Backstab King, Tries to make you look bad

The Grenade

Unpredictable, Emotional, Easily Provoked

The No Person

Wet Blanket, Says No to Everything, Cynical

The Yes Person

Tries to Please Everyone, Pleasant Outside Resentful Inside

The Maybe Person

Procrastinates Alot, Avoid making Decisions, Fence Sitter

The Nothing Person

Passive, Introverted, No Feedback

These are the 10 types of difficult people you will face in your life. So far, I have not identify anyone that are in the list in my workplace due to my experience. I will take a look out for them though, as chances are I will have to solve the problem before it gets too big for me to handle. I wish to continue writing, but it may get too long and I think it will bore anyone who is reading but chances are there aren't any readers. Perhaps I shall continue tomorrow, oh well. 

Lies

Everyone lies before. Do you?

Lying isn't taught in our moral and ethics lessons and is usually deemed a wrong act, yet everyone does it every now and then. Why do people lie? To cover up something disgraceful they had done? To not let someone get hurt? To hide something they don't want anyone else to know? To gain something beneficial to them? I'm sure everyone in this world have their own little secrets and have lied before. To be honest, there is more chance of you getting strike by lighting than finding someone who doesn't lie in his life, ever. There are actually different kinds of lie and your lie may fall into either of these categories, depending on situations.

The first type are Beneficial lies. Beneficial lies are usually mean to help. They are told out of kindness and people benefit from them. They help avoid hurt, sorrow, insult, and impersonality. You lie to a long term smoking friend that the cigarettes were sold out ; parents lie to the children that their beloved grandpa is living happily in heaven. These do cheat the listeners, but the liars ought to be praised instead of being criticized. These are sometimes called  'White Lies'.

The second type are Broken promises. Broken promises are failure to keep one’s spoken commitment or promise. Broken promises can be especially damaging when the person who made the promise had no intentions whatsoever of keeping their word to begin with. Most of these lies does not have a happy ending when being found out.

The third type are Fabrications. Fabrications are meant to gain benefits and hurt someone else's reputation. They may come in the form of Deceits or Rumors. Deceits are mostly made by liars to gain benefits for themselves. Lawyers lie on the court to help his criminal client win the lawsuit; Conman lies to victims to gain their trust and eventually cheat on their valuables. These liars benefit from the lies and gain something in return.
In comparison, Rumors are more vicious. Rumors are made to pull any potential rivals down, or simply just to stir shit up. These happen a lot in the working world, and more between friends.  A politician and his party may make rumors that the rivalry in involved in sexual scandals or corruption; A person may come up with bad rumors of different friends to try and create feud among them.  These lies are very VICIOUS and if you do have 'friends' who does that, please try to stay away from them. They are not your friends at all.

The fourth type are Boastful lies. Boastful lies are lies that enhance a truth by exaggeration in order to impress someone. The person who exaggerates usually mixes truths and untruths to make themselves look impressive to others. An exaggerator can weave truth and lies together causing confusion even to the liar. After awhile the exaggerator begins to believe his or her exaggeration, which I may know a few of these people.

The final type are Neutral lies. Neutral lies are meant nothing and are much simpler. When asked about private matters, people may tend to avoid speaking the truth by telling a lie. People may lie to prevent anyone from entering their heart and feelings too. This does no harm to both sides and is a protection to privacy. Most of us had used this lie before as a method of protecting our own world and thoughts.

I am a human and I have definitely lied before in all of the categories. Most of my lies comes from 1,2, 4 and 5 though. Even so, I am trying to speak the truth most of the time now. It's not a good practice to lie often , be it good or bad.

 People tend to get bad habits easily and lying will be one of the easiest to get stuck with. Eventually, you will be lying at whatever you say, regardless of the severity of the topic, because you have a habit of lying. Some of the lies will get you into serious trouble. In order to solve the problem, you will have to use another lie to cover up the first lie, which led to the chain of lies you will have to tell. There is no way out. So stop lying so much and start saying the truth.

Lately, a chain of events happened around me and I don't even know what is right or wrong now. People changes fast, things happen too quickly, time passes by like a bullet train. No time to observe such bullshit anymore, gonna push forward and plan out my future. 

Pretty much describes my personality. Gonna change on it.

Passion

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.

We have been taught in school English, Maths, Geography, etc. But have we been taught to find our passion? Nope. Different people have different passions, some may want to be a famous vocalist, some may want to be a billionaire and some may just want to be a teacher. For me, my passion is ... Truth to be told, I have not found my passion. I used to think that I have found my passion. I was dead wrong though. Most of us are confused between passion and hobbies, and I am one of them.

Passion are often confused with Hobbies, however there is a critical difference. A Hobby is a "pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation." Passion on the other hand, are not relaxing. Passions don't leave you alone. Passions insert themselves into your life whether you have time for them or not. Passions excites you and drive you crazy at the same time. We think of a passion as something or someone we love, an overwhelming feeling of devotion and obsession. In older English, passion also means suffering.

Can you turn a hobby into passion? You could, but it's not easy. Nothing will be able to stop you from pursuing it, regardless of how high the price you might have to pay for it. You can sacrifice your time, money, sleep and youth for it. You have the determination and perseverance to do it for your entire life. If that's something you can do for something or someone, you have found your passion. 

"A hobbyist photographer will love the click of the shutter and the magic of a great image. A passionate photographer will continue to pursue that magic despite bad days, early mornings, tough clients, expensive equipment, and all other things that would stop a hobbyist in their tracks."

I used to think that my passion is to become a programmer, seems that I was wrong. They are my hobbies though and although it seems geeky, I am putting it into good use in my work. That alone had paid off on hours spent on researching and understanding more on the PC. I'm sure it's better than some other hobbies such as playing the guitar, becoming a overly crazy Kpop fan, sports car fan boy(when most can't even afford them),  solving the rubicks cube and so forth. These are some hobbies people do to be in the trend and when the craze dies down,most of them will not be motivated enough to continue pursuing their 'hobbies'. Regardless, I am still trying to find my passion though, it's not easy, though I still have a lifetime to search for it.

You may have found your hobbies, but have you found your passion?

Speaking of hobbies and passion, I have finally got this 23" monitor for the price of $253 with a earpiece as a free gift, not a bad deal I suppose. My new computer is pretty much ready soon, just another few more parts it seems. Last but not least, one of my favorite songs.