Moving house

Last month my wife and I moved from the apartment I’ve been living in since moving to Singapore and into an HDB flat just a couple blocks away.

After 10 years of living in a place, lots of memories are embedded within the walls and furniture.

We were moving to a smaller place, and I wanted to be ruthless when it came to throwing out old things. I had read one of those “life hacks” that suggested to take pictures of mementos and discard the actual object.

It was a long process. Finding letters, pictures, and trinkets that reminded me of different times and places. “Click” went my camera as it digitized memories and sent them to my computer.

It was nice to have these old feelings come out for a while.

A little pause would be nice

Well here we are at the end of the world.  Scratch that, just the end of the year.  How’d that happen so fast?  I have a feeling that 2012 will go down as one of the most intense years of my life.

- Opened (franchised) a restaurant into Jakarta, Indonesia

- Left my Microsoft job after 14 years, the first and only job I’ve had since graduating from university

- Opened a new cocktail bar and restaurant (Tanuki)

- Got married

- Bought a house (and soon will renovate said house)

That’s kind of a lot of change in a pretty short time span.  Makes me want to catch my breath a bit.  Get organized.

Will try in 2013.

A Cat and Sushi

Another night of insomnia.  Maybe it was the sugar in the whisky or the oil in the chicken rice, who knows what but I haven’t slept.  The sun is past rising and I am beyond tired.

I pimped out my cat recently.

He looks to be in blissful sleep.  I am envious.

2 opinion pieces for new graduates

During my usual forays around the internet, I stumbled onto two pieces I felt offered great realistic advice for new graduates.

10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You

“8. Don’t model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don’t let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts. If you leave a work task undone in order to meet a friend for dinner, then you are "shirking" your work. But it’s also true that if you cancel dinner to finish your work, then you are shirking your friendship. That’s just not how we usually think of it.”

Letters to a Young Engineer: How to Decide Where to Work (written by a friend of mine, who is eminently qualified so these words have weight!)

“This is the first branch in the decision tree. If the answer is that you’re not happy about going into work, you need to scratch that company off the list. It’s a non-starter. I don’t care if the company is super-popular or has 10 Nobel Prize winners that you revere. If you’re not excited, you’re not going to do your best work. Then those 10 Nobel Prize winners will see you as a non-phenomenal colleague, and that’s the reputation which will spread about you.”

13 Things You Can Do on LinkedIn

I’ve noticed an increase in the usage of LinkedIn by people I know.  Is there a term for a LinkedIn user?  Is there a term for a Facebook user?  I think “Facebooker” sounds okay.  Not sure about LinkedIn-er.

Anyway, Business Insider has a handy guide to thirteen things you can do on LinkedIn.

Now go impress each other with your profiles!

Cats

It feels like I haven’t slept in decades.  Most recently this has been because of a new addition: a kitten which is named Frank Sinatra.

That brings the total to 3 cats in the apartment.

Sumo, Frank, and Terror

Let’s go exploring!

You can take the guy out of the Mcdonalds…

But you can’t take the Mcdonalds out of the guy.

The annual festival of fast food has begun!

Kickstarted it yesterday with not one but two meals provided by Mcdelivery.  What a stupendous world-changing moment it must have been when the first person came up with the idea of food delivery.  “I want food… but I don’t want to make it… and I don’t want to go out into the wild to get it…”

Admittedly I wake up today feeling like my blood has turned into something synthetic and the leftover apple pie tasting rubbery (breakfast!) but that’s part of the full Mcdonalds experience.

Soon it will be time for house-visiting and gorging on things that are unhealthier than fast food. Bak kwa and pineapple tarts!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Chinese New Year!

They say that what you do on the first day of the new year is reflective of how the rest of the year will go.

So I will sleep in, read a book, eat good food, and spend time with the people I like.

Pretty simple!

Here’s to a happy start to the Dragon year!

Christmas Eve 2011

For the first time in a long time, I got some deep sleep.  The secret formula to knock me out was red wine, pizza, and luncheon meat (known as Spam, for you Americans).  Pretty much everything the doctor recommends to stay away from.

I miss that waking feeling after a deep rest.  The dreams speckling away, the brain feeling like it was washed over.

2011 has been a tiring year, but I think all this effort has set up new opportunities for 2012.  Guess I’ll find out.