LiveJournal of Anthemis

been addicted to this song by coldplay after watching the iPod advert. been twiddling with my ipod too...it's very fun to play with all the apps from the itunes store too, downloaded loads of games (the free apps of course hah). that's what i've been practically doing the entire weekend, playing with my ipod like it's some new toy. other than taking out all my bedlinen to iron. they look really nice and i decided to stop being lazy and iron them. watch 9 episodes of Jericho as well...not as interesting as Dr Who and Torchwood, but still good material to watch while i do my ironing. made the bed this morning...surprise....the last time i made my bed was like many months ago. i figured that since i was going to sleep in it again at night why bother? so i've decided to start with the weekends. i'll make the bed on saturdays and sundays. somehow got inspired by Bree from desperate housewives hence the "i shall try to make the bed" on weekends. i'm damm lazy. tell me about it. yeah Bree makes the bed everyday.

i shall not whine since it's only been a few days. alfie and jem see each other only once a few months so i shouldn't be complaining. yeah but it'll be over soon *excited p*. now i think the 18 days in ICT next year will seem longer -_-

the ipod touch 2.0 update is very cool...extremely cool! thanks to alfie of course for helping me along the way. the the apps are amazing....especially Remote where i can use the ipod touch to control itunes on my imac. then there's Bloomberg that has the summary of news, world markets and other stocks that you can add..and loads of other free games that can keep me busy on the train.

nobody to whine to...since md is having fun in HK. went to the gym again today, followed by dinner at kopitiam. enjoy eating there cause i manage to bluff the auntie into renewing my institutional card with my alumni pass. she obviously doesn't know the meaning of alumni. who cares...i get my 20% discount. yeah i'm cheapskate *giggles*

finally...received the notification for ICT. kind of looking forward to it, depending on where it's going to be held. it had better be somewhere decent otherwise i'll probably find some excuse to be excused. hahaha

met my sister for dinner and he wait about 10 mins for me. told him that i was busy posting journals for the month and he probably wanted to slap me for making him wait whilst i updated my blog. but no i was not posting in livejournal but in the ledger. hahahaa maybe that's why i hardly post stuff here cause the idea of posting journals isn't really the same anymore. okie that was a lame statement that on hindsight does seem rather boring.

boring...that's what work does to me. nothing much to post, which isn't exactly a bad thing cause it probably means that i've things keeping me happy in real life. ideals have changed and sometimes it might be better to just lead an ordinary but happy existence:)

mum and her sibilings are flying off to penang tomorrow cause their aunt passed away. she was probably probably part of their childhood that they all reminisce. not that i know who she is (or was) exactly, except that i remember going to some relative's place in penang when i was very young and got chased by a goose. hate goose. ahahah

time to sleep:)

Mail so far hasn't been disappointing. quite good actually and looks much more friendly than entourage. i guess the only drawback is the compatibility with other people using microsoft mail apps. then again it's only for use a home and to organize my life, so it works great!

felt like tearing up all the books and notes in the library today cause all my answers for the practice questions were wrong. damm sucky and i know that foreign exchange is my worst topic ahahaha i freaking hate fx!! yeah but still gotta do it and let cognitive dissonance do its job so that i'll like it...like AFA oops...did i just indirectly say that i hated AFA? no...i love it. yeah i do. it may be torturous but i guess i did enjoy (torturing) myself while doing all those questions and worksheets. thankfully i did cause it's helping me tremendously in lots of the things that i do.

yeah so that's about how boring my life is now....hopefully it'll be better than i'll start gyming and maybe swimming all the time. can't swim in the day or i'll just have to coat myself with sunscreen otherwise i'll burn.

think i shall read more before going to sleep. fx again!

woke up early to the alarm this morning. decided not to gym since i've been gyming for the past two days. as usual, the studying isn't going as well as expected, but hopefully it improves over the week, fast.

shall get going to school now.

just siting in front of my imac tweaking some stuff. upon consultation from alfie, i decided to switch to Mail. imported all the stuff from entourage into mail and i'll use it for a few days (some sort like a testing platform) before deleting the database in entourage. so far so good though.

had dinner with the family and as usual, got to know some stuff that makes my otherwise really carefree life not that carefree haha, nothing big, but listening to all those stories from mum is like reminding me that i'm not without a typical family free from all those family drama and stuff. i guess it's harder to escape from it since they came back. i guess those 4 years i spent in uni and staying by myself is kind of over since mum and dad do come by every other day. oh well...need to focus. lazy.

the darn library doesn't open till 1pm, not that I wasn't aware of it, but it's just sickening to wait outside. Certainly making full use of the time reading my notes and blogging haha...

Forgot to bring my calculator today but thankfully I still have my PowerBook so I'll probably use a spreadsheet. Decided to bring my powerbook cause I forgot to print the exam ticket in the office and I don't have a functioning printer at home. Who needs a printer at home anyway when I can just print everything in the office :)

Went to ms to check out the food and got myself some comfort chocolate chip cookies and also a bar or organic chocolate. Not that I care whether the chocolate is organic or not, but cause it was on sale at 1.90! The original price was 4.90 so that gives me a saving of three dollars. Let's hope it tastes different.

Had diner at hot stones with md last night and it was still as good as I remembered it when dad brought me there many years ago (when I was a very very little P).

Library is opening in a few minutes and I'm probably going to get a drink to go with my cookies. No I don't care if we are not allowed to munch in the library, they can catch me if they can.

today's the start of the week long battle with the books and practice papers. of course every time i'll be asking myself why do i bother to do this but i just know i have to ahahaah. went shopping with md yesterday and i bought more stuff. we had b&j too and while it was extremely sinful, it was really tasty (cause penguins love fish). thankfully none of my colleagues caught me eating b&j cause i've been rejecting their chocolates and ice-creams treats for my diet ahahahahaha

had lunch with the team since it was my official last day in the department. usually don't join them for lunch cause i'm simply anti-social. nothing beats eating by myself at the desk surfing the web.

can't wait for all these to be over and i've lots of things in my mind planned for what happens after. then again i know i won't get down to doing most of the stuff cause i'm just too lazy. maybe i should do like what i do at work and create a to-do list every morning (and add to it) and then strike-through those that i've completed. nice activity to do when i'm sick of studying.

decided not to go gym today, don't want to crumple my shirt (cause i'll have to stuff it in the small locker) cause today's a good day. happy birthday WAP!

guess i should put an occasional entry here so that my blog doesn't appear to be too dormant. well it is dormant and there's nothing much i would want to do about it. just waiting for the paper to be over in 2 weeks and i'll probably start planning my life. then again, i was thinking that it doesn't really matter if people tell me how slack the new role is cause i'm sure i can find some way to make it busier ahahaa. 4 months is a really short time to learn stuff and i don't think it's going to be beneficial to take leave and go on holidays like the others. maybe i'm taking things too seriously but that's how i feel it should be.

had a big plate of watermelon just now followed by the bitter leaf drink that mum made. i've no idea what the botanical name of that plant is, but it's basically loosely translated as bitter leaf from hokkien. it doesn't wonders though but its freaking bitter!!! (duh..bitter leaf?)

shall go sleep soon. didn't manage to hit the gym today for reasons i shan't bother explaining here. had lunch with leonard yesterday and we had a great time catching up. we don't usually hang out together often but we still enjoy the occasional meet up. met my secondary school classmate on monday after gym and we hardly talked in school but somehow had loads to share. he started his own internet marketing firm 6 months ago and it's currently still in a shaky state. it takes time for things to grow and i do hope he grows it well. i'm trying to be nicer to people (though i find it really hard in the mornings on the train) cause you'll never know when that person will be part of your life (or job). i know i have a perpetual scowl on my face when i'm not smiling and seriously, i'm not scowling. it's just how i naturally look. it's going to take quite a bit of effort to appear always smiling and i can just imagine my jaws aching when i go to bed.

yeah sleep.

i'm trying to blog using my powerbook while sitting on the bed. yeah just to show that i can blog from the bed given the lappy and wireless network i've created using my imac.

hasn't been a good time at work since i absolutely detest how certain things are done and run. but the great news is i'll be rotating out to another department and i'll get to try something new again. that's keeping me in the current job in fact, and also the possibility of returning to my first department. thankfully i had a great "first department experience" to stay-on for.

busying trying to study these days and while i seriously think i might fail the paper, i'm hoping that it's just me being paranoid. finally got my wallet hahaha, didn't buy it though cause brenna got her sis to get one from the states hhahaa yah i know, i'm being cheapskate as usual. but it's a nice wallet. there were snacks from her too that she brought back from HK. i seriously need to go somewhere. haven't been anywhere since i got back from my training last july and the leave that i've been taking were used to study for the papers. wasn't possible to take much leave in the current place since leave taking was not encouraged. another reason not to go back. hope i'll get to go somewhere during the second half of the year.

going to continue with the readings.

saw a dead python lying on the road yesterday. it was just outside the lane leading into my house. quite large but sadly dead...urm not that i want to be around it when it's slithering around, but the skin was really pretty. at least now i know that amongst the tall wild grass patches, there are snakes of that size. some car must have ran over it...poor snake. snake is upset.

anyway, i've been rather addicted to Pieces by Sum41 and it sure does sound quite familiar but can't recall where i've heard it. probably from one of the tv series like grey's or gogi that piglet has been getting for me. it's a very nice song. the acoustic version is better though, less loud.

the feeling of wanting to change my job has miraculously left. i think i just had to send out my resume to make myself feel better. didn't really have the intention to leave for somewhere else, probably just triggered by the frustration that's all in a day's work. today was a surprisingly inspiring day despite being quite slack. started the day with IFRS training and memories of my AFA classes with prof pearl starting coming back. i'm also starting to appreciate the ability to rotate across departments cause i could understand the training examples from various perspectives. i guess putting the daily mundane work aside, the idea of being able to appreciate the application and practicality of accounting policies on the business as a whole was very urm...inspiring? hahahah it sounds sick but i'm looking forward to part 2 tomorrow. of course i aim to maybe be one of the guys giving the training, being paid to read and interpret the standards as well as engage in various discussion regarding adopting certain policies etc. it sounds quite airy fairy but that dream isn't exactly very far away hahaha.

i just forced brenna to set up a facebook account. the word force describes it very accurately cause i told her tt i'd create one for her and join her school networks and wait for her friends to add her...and load slutty messages on her profile. oh well....she managed to set up one immediately so i can tag the ugly photos of her on facebook. but as usual, i'm quite nice....tagged nice photos of her hahahah.

anyway i just tidied part of my desk by clearing more space for my imac and fitting the rubber skin onto my keyboard. it's harder to type now though since there's this rubber thingy blocking the keys, but i'd get used to it. learnt from my powerbook experience tt a rubber skin is a must, since i've an extremely filthy habit of typing with oily hands hahahah. well, my powerbook still looks very new and the only thing tt's not really perfect is the battery. refuses to buy a replacement since it's SGD 244 and i don't really have a use for a powerbook now. still i love it and it's been with me for more than 4 years.

i'm bored of the songs i have in my itunes and i haven't heard all of them yet...but i'm back to using the itunes radio which i gave up using on my powerbook cause it's so laggy that gets damm irritating to hear the music "pause" every half minute. currently listening to the Acoustic Alternative channel under the category of rock. new and refreshing songs...most importantly it's free and doesn't lag!

i'm glad that the current department i'm in wasn't my first rotation, otherwise i'd have resigned long ago. cause at least i know if the next one sucks as well, there's always one department that i'd still want to go back to :)
i guess the first time, first impression etc counts a lot. i miss my previous team (and job) a lot and my manager as well. for now i can only make sure i do things well enough for them to feel a loss when my time's up. something i can't wait to happen!

i know it's a bit late to have found that mac forums do provide wonderful advice, but yeah they do. sometimes.

anyway, i'm not going to let my powerbook waste away collecting dust cause i love all my macs. the bondi imac sitting downstairs still works but something needs to be done to the system folder. that was my first mac and also the very first imac that apple launched. come to think of it, that was what the imac was like 10 years ago and my current imac hasn't had the chance to look at his older cousin yet *giggles* back to my powerbook, i'm going to clean it up and re-install the stuff so that it runs properly. the hard disk is still pretty new cause apple changed it for me after it crashed 2 weeks before my applecare was up :D

still thinking if i should run windows on my imac so i can access my mail from home. that's what the work-life-balance committee suggested anyway, though jane was extremely cynical about it. how does "being able to access your work from home" sounds anything close to work-life balance?? but it's still a good suggestion, though not now cause the rotations are not giving me any form of certainty. it's still like a pick and choose buffet. sometimes you end up with a dish that isn't too pleasing but you've to finish it anyway cause they charge for wastage. but i'm still positive about everything cause there's always something to be learnt everywhere.

had dinner with piglet last night at botak jones and the food was quite good. decided to try something different since i had the car this week. drove to holland v after that for coffee. had to guard my parking space from this taxi driver who thought he could take the lot i was eyeing by forcing me to move off. haven't driven for quite a while but i'm not new to this since i've had experience confronting this bunch of girls who tried to drive into my lot at adam road.

going to head down to the campus (note that i didn't use the word "school" cause i don't exactly study there anymore) to get some revision done. again, i wonder why do i always torture myself signing up for these exams. yeah cause i'm sick.

i'm starting to feel like i've been missing out on lots of technology related stuff. ever since equipping myself with a new mac (and a touch) there's lots of things that my old powerbook couldn't or was too slow to accomplish.

while the mac does seem really powerful and certainly many notches above my powerbook, there seem to be nothing much i can do. would love to run spreadsheets on the mac but if there's nothing to do in the first place, why create a spreadsheet?? yeah excel is like my love now, since i get to use it in my daily work. with 30-40 spreadsheets opened at one time, the desktop does look a bit messy. but that's for the PC i use at work.

office 2008 is rather cool though. excel has more than a million rows and that certainly beats the current version i use a work now. who the hell uses more that the 65k plus rows anyway? i do. and when i'm required to work on such nonsensical files, i've to "chop" up the file into bite size pieces in notepad for the dumb old excel to digest before converting it into a spreadsheet. yes in a way such tasks do excite me cause i'm a boring person at work who gets fascinated by spreadsheets.

miss cock (sorry i can't put ur LJ nick here cause safari somehow doesn't allow me to do so, but i'll find out soon) says that office 2008 doesn't allow macros (or something along those lines) and i've yet to try it out. i mean, if there's nothing to work on, why do i need a macro? lets hope something crops up like erm...a whole chunk of data with half a million rows needs to be analyze....then maybe i'll try writing a macro to do something. for now, i'll just stick to my usual stuff.

it's getting quite tiring to study....and work at the same time. after a long day at work, i've absolutely no mood to open the books and read about something even more related to work. whatever, let hope i pull through this.

had a wonderful gathering at ang's place yesterday. it's an annual affair to have our CNY gathering and we realized it's the 9th year since we left secondary school. couldn't make a big one like we wanted too cause we didn't manage to get a sufficiently big venue. anyway one of the seniors (whom none of us have met) is organizing some "rekindling the light" gathering of all past and present marist scouts next month, to be held in school. it'll be fun to see all the various batches coming back.

zhong sent me back on his bike again and this time it was a much longer journey as we had to cross the TPE. it's quite stressful to be on the bike cause it just seems too dangerous to be zipping down the road without a cover. hahaha it was thrilling of course, but i'm always worried that something might happen to him or other rider friends.

just did a check at the UPS tracker on the status of my books and apparently they accidentally shipped it to abu dhabi  then back to sg again. quite fast though cause the  correction was rectified within a day. expecting them at my doorstep tomorrow, hopefully mum and dad are at home to pick it up. 

went to st james last night. literally been a year since apo and i were there cause the last time we were there was also the first day of chinese new year. not too bad, quite fun though it was a bit too crowded. it's better than play or tabs anytime.

reading Wicked now after piglet's influence. the green-edge pages are very cool and even my cousin was quite amazed. they have the non-colored ones in MPH, but what's the point? hahahah. the musical soundtrack is very nice too, managed to get the entire album off somewhere *giggles* but according to various sources, the musical is quite different from the book. i'm absolutely regretting not watching the musical when i was in london last year. absolutely regretting it. oh but at least i can go watch it with piglet sometime in the future *giggles*

being absolutely lazy now...waiting for mum to bring porridge hahaha she cooked it with all the leftovers from the reunion dinner. it might be leftovers but they are still the usual delicacies :)

these two weeks hasn't exactly been a breeze in the office trying to straddle between the two departments. it's like working 2 part time shifts in a day. but it's been quite fun so far, other than putting up with some irritating useless person who can't get her brain to work past 7pm. never rmind about that for the moment, at least i'm still pretty happy the way things are.

 going to head down to the gym later. weekends are all the time i have to exercise for now. the weekday evenings will come soon i hope, after the transition is complete. thinking of signing up for the next exam by the end of next week also. i'll see my weekends spent in the library again.