千九百十七： Turned 28

Just turned 28.

Feeling a teensy bit blue.

I don't know if it's work blues or birthday blues or just the general blues about getting older or just the feeling of the blueness that a birthday has passed.

I just keep having the feeling that something is lacking. Not sure what is it, but i hope i find it soon. The feeling is almost driving me nuts.

I don't know why I just keep having this weird feeling in the pit of my tummy, like the world is going to collapse around me any moment soon.

I think I must learn to not get sentimental or attached to anything or anyone because it all becomes old when people find such attachment too close for comfort after alot of "I miss u"s when you are not around. Only when you are gone will people start to appreciate how much you mean to them but it's too late. How many chances do you give for people to find out how much they need you? It may be too late for anything to change. Or we are just trying to change things to be the way we wanted them to be but it's just not the same with all the extra hurt and spaces we forced in between over the years. Events that have happened don't just get erased from memory, how do we really forget anything or avoid living in the shadows of other people's past? Maybe we are all just too jaded and tired to face the truth for now.

千九百十六： Tiny Achievements

never wake a sleeping dog..

Almost 28 years old. I don't feel any birthday excitement this year though. Maybe because I'm so entrenched in work for the past month. and will be as well for the next 2 months. Woke up this morning and my mom was in the room and I thought that she was in to wake me for work. I had no idea what day it was, that it was a Saturday, and had to confirm with her before conking out in bed again.

Watched Legend of the Fist last night, remake of a Bruce Lee movie with Donnie Yen (Ip Man) as lead. I thought it would have been better if there was less gore, more kungfu fights, and less Bruce Lee imitation. If it's a remake, is it necessary to imitate Bruce Lee's signature screeches?? the last fight scene was a disappointment, just the lead punching the hell out of the face of the JP general and that's it. -.-

Been trying to improve on animal photos I guess. maybe scenery shots too? humans are so hard to shoot. Thinking if I should get myself a wide-angle lens as a reward for working so hard. :D speaking of achievements, I managed to finally run my personal best longest distance in my life w/o stopping. yay! not a big deal to many i suppose, but 7.5km is definitely very far for me. Going to aim for 10km in a week or 2 hopefully! :)

千九百十五： Karma

Been thinking alot about Karma lately.

the usual stuff about more tolerance towards others, be less critical, be more selfless, be more self-reflecting, put others before yourself etc.

I'm wondering if that's a mistake, because no one cares, no matter how often you put people before yourself, they will only remember the few times when u might have put yourself first (because it gets tiring and sometimes you have needs too??). Despite the times when I might have felt slight irritation at others but suppressed saying anything because it was really minor and just put it out of mind after a moment's thought instead of saying it because it really doesn't matter in the big picture and you just think about nice things the person has done for u and no one is perfect anyway? or just went along and hope that the next time I might get to do what I want, but usually I don't but there's always next time right? But if I get unhappy about people, it's bad karma for myself and all I do is ask for feedback so that I can better myself.

OK. enough rambling perhaps.
Been feeling very tired mentally and quite down in the dumps and just want time to be with myself and really think things through very very clearly and just hope I can do the right thing as I go along.

In SG now, but kinda wished I wasn't back. Miss the peace I had in my own place in JP. Miss doing things at my own pace, and kinda miss the little shops that I always jog pass because they let me know how far i've jogged.

I guess i have to adapt back to here and start training for my runs in SG too..

saw a deer who is blind in one eye when we went to Nara.. it's kind of sad :(

千九百十四： Prickles

Been feeling very poorly for the past week.
stomach flu plus normal flu, fever and sore throat.
tummy still hurting on and off.
I think I have to return to the doc's soon because i suspect it might be more than stomach flu given the symptoms. Just checked my life line on my palm and it seems to be still ok long so I shouldn't need to worry?

saw a cat that looked like a rabbit:


Not looking forward to work next week. not feeling very well :(

千九百十三： Tenacity

a Daddy Long Legs was hanging on to the car mirror for dear life when we drove to the hair salon.



It was amazing, managed to hang on for about 1 km before dropping off somewhere.

Got a hair cut on Saturday, ate thai food for dinner, and realised I had stomach flu when for the 3rd time that week my stomach was hit with sharp pains during dinner and had to run to the loo. Luckily in all instances, the loos were pretty clean and I made it to the loo in time despite the urgency of the situations. (T.T) Woke up super early with bad stomachaches the whole week as well.

I haven't been sleeping well partly due to the weather - 36 degrees celsius on the avg daily. Plus our stupid fan stops every 6 hours automatically. DUH!! it might be to save power, but who wakes up every 6 hours to on the fan in the night! sighz. i guess it's our own fault for buying a fan with this stupid feature, but i realised most fans have this auto off feature. RAWR!!!

千九百十二： Visitors

Whole family gathered in Japan the past weekend (mom and sis came 2 weeks earlier), and 2nd sister remains here with Calvin this week.

It was half good half bad.

Good - Mom was around to take of us, she cleaned up the whole house and there was meals mom prepared and I didn't have time to cook my own meals as I was trying to finish up AQR and the wedding stuff as well. Had a lot of fun with my sister(s) around, was able to draw great maps for her to move around in. They finally saw for themselves what my life was like - (alone for almost 80% of the time) and luckily they were around, even if just for meals, or playing DDR or guitar hero, cos the previous 2 weeks i would have been alone in the house like the whole time.

Bad - i was too busy with work to really bring the family around the 1st 2 weeks, Mom was unhappy about almost everything - she really isn't a very good traveller since she doesn't eat majority of the meats and JP isnt a vegetarian friendly country, and kept showing mood swings and the horrifically hot and humid weather (37 degrees celsius max) didn't help things much.

But, managed to take take my sisters to watch baseball (luckily there is high sch baseball tournaments ongoing) which we enjoyed immensely since we totally understand the concept of school pride, took lots of paparazzi type pictures of each other and cute guys we saw on the streets, went to some temples before my mom said *another temple again!?* -.-, did stupid stuff like poke at deer, avoid deer shit, watched fireworks, tried ESP with each other (and succeeded) and did some daily stuff together like jogging / supermarket groceries buying and just strolling around the neighbourhood.

Some stuff we saw

ponyo sticking out of the Ghibli store signboard

at the baseball game - before a hit

Some shots my sis took of me:

me looking like a lost tourist when waiting for the toilet go-ers

resting my tired feet in 丸山公園　after a day in kyoto

and the wedding finished up w/o much problems except alot of complaints about the wedding coordinator and the photographer.

the cocktail dress from La Belle

warning - > 600 pics in full set of pics taken by my sisters & Calvin here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexxis/sets/72157624700716412/

千九百十一： Singapore again!

the sky so blue

Went to Singapore for the past 2 weeks, had a great time eating mainly, not so good time with work. As you can see, Kelly has gone mad from the work.

work drove (some of) us crazy

Very short trip this time, only 11 days, and most of the days at work. I feel kinda more stressed after the trip, but at least I will be looking forward to the next one soon!

千九百十： World Cup

Watching the world cup the past few weeks hence the lack of posts. Supreme lack of sleep, plus been busy with work.. its UAT again. and running.

Am very proud of myself that I have managed to go running almost every sunny day in June, and managed to get my target below 30 minutes for 5km, (around 29min at 5km, 31:37 at 5.45km. Can see my activities here - http://runkeeper.com/user/booboogal/ but I've set the maps to be private to avoid getting any stalkers behind me since I usually run around my house area. I'm not really sure what I'm running for, partly was to lose fats, partly was to improve my stamina, partly was to have some sort of goal and to have the discipline to achieve what I had set for myself. It's kinda working out well for other parts of my daily routine as well, because i'm forced to have breakfast so that i can run in the afternoon, or just have more regular / earlier meals. I've gotten more familiar with the buildings/ shops along the run routes, and discovered a few other shops that I want to go to if I have time.

Photo of the day - a preview of the dessert course - I can't really remember the name of each piece, so will have to make do with calling them thingeys. I liked the citrus thingey better.

chocolate thingey, and a citrus thingey.

Everything is in quite a mess now. EVERYTHING. I wish someone can come and rescue me.

千九百零九： Slideshows

Discovered an amazing slideshow creating site - animoto.com

Actually more of Yong How, the photographer from my wedding last year recommended it to me. The free service lets you create 30 second videos, and I'm considering paying for the $30/year service to make the wedding slideshow..

This is one of the test videos I created.. can't even tell that its a amateur video right? hehe

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The most difficult part of creating any slideshow is choosing the music.. and this is kinda driving me nuts..

千九百零八： Greed

It's time to do the 2nd wedding.

picking out which tiara I should borrow (in my mind thinking i probably won't borrow anything)

I'm wondering why I am putting myself through the torture of doing this again. and I am so mad at the stupid hotel.
1. They charge money for everything and this is like the worst - to change the table cloth of the main table to a coloured one, they want to charge 3000yen per piece for 4 pieces. - almost S$200 to RENT table clothes? how about i bring my own?! renting the accessories cost S$1.5k for the tiara / necklace / earrings - I am so going to just bring/borrow my own from SG. Per tiny bag of sweets as doorgifts is $15?! Do they think wedding couples are carrot heads?? and if that bag is $15 worth of candy, I won't complain, but the picture showed 2 tiny 10 cent coin type candies in a tiny bag. WTF?! Hand bouquet - $500 . They must think we are very stupid or all wedding couples are extremely rich???

2. For such a big hotel - they are telling they have no easel stand for the wedding portrait/ welcome sign. ???? they asked me to put the portrait on a chair. ???? - I am so going to buy my own easel stand as well.

I guess this comes down to the point that the hotels are too greedy. If they charge less they can earn some but this only leads to couples who don't want to spend so much money looking for alternatives instead.

千九百零七： Run

I'm quite proud of myself for having been able to run daily for the past week (besides wkend). Not very long runs, but at least kept the discipline to go down and run a little more than the day before. I hope I can run 5km continuously w/o stopping by the end of the week!

The activities are here - maps are locked for security purposes (don't want stalkers to see the maps and start following me)
http://runkeeper.com/user/booboogal

Love this runkeeper app by the way, cos it only uses GPS and not data, so basically I can still use this even though I switched off all GPRS data settings.

Trying to revise my french but not really getting anywhere. Am quite tempted to spend alot of money shopping online :(

千九百零六： Salut!

I was feeling quite silly one evening and decided to use my camera to take my own pic when I was working with the self timer:



and so this is what i look like when I'm semi-busy and staring at the PC screen. A little fierce, like I might shout at the next person who talks to me. hahaha!

This week was all business at the last minute, ie, end of day work. Which was not that great, because I wanted to go quite a few places this week.

Monday - Monday evening was a blank though, i totally can't recall what I did in the night.
Ok after much thinking I finally realised I went to the dentist. and extracted my baby tooth stump.

Tuesday - went to take a look at the interpreter sch, they said even though my english was ok, Jpnese maybe need to study more. all because of they made a take a test by reading a newspaper article out loud. Who does that in real life?! even if you don't know the pronunciation doesn't mean you don't know the meaning anyway. The lady said something like ... maybe your polite form isn't good enough in Japanese , then I was thinking, how many of your students started out with strong polite form in English?? But ok.. just abit pissed off at their snobby attitude, am glad I don't have to spend money there anymore.

Wednesday - watched Shaolin soccer on tv, was hilarious as before and nolstagic of the days in uni when we watched it in the LT and couldn't stop laughing when the fat guy ate the raw eggs.

Thursday - went to register for French lessons at Alliance Francaise Osaka, they asked me to go for the 1st lesson on 3rd July, to see if I was comfortable with the level before I needed to commit. Which was really nice of them! Am so glad I didn't spend money on the interpreter sch, the course of 1 month there would have covered 2 semesters' fees at AF. Was looking at the French Text last night and I think I need some intensive revision before lessons start. Hope I can make some new friends there! :)

Friday - couldn't really wake up today due to the late meetings last night then having to wake up to make breakfast then go back to sleep again. Still feeling super groggy, at least there is the world cup to look forward to tonight. Go Mexico!!

千九百零五： Aftermath

aftermath of the Hanshin earthquake left at the Meriken park in Kobe. everything was tilted strangely.

Today was a rare busy day at work.

Vik reminded me of my 大凶 lot I picked at the beginning of the year from the shrine. He asked me if the year has been bad so far. When I was thinking yesterday i could only think of my 3 year visa, so I couldn't think of the unhappy moments until now. There were unhappy moments, very unhappy moments I guess. but there were some happy moments. I guess with unhappiness you learn to appreciate the happy times and just take it that nothing lasts forever.

Today I thought about why I was still so nice to the people i love, who hurt me despite everything. I guess after Ayaka passed away, I just took it that life is really short and I don't want to have any final memories of me or people of me as being anger and unhappiness or alot of regret which was what i felt and still feel whenever I think about Ayaka. About words I should have said to her but i didn't, about appreciation I should have shown but didn't and About all the things we had decided to do together but she left before we could do them. I don't dare to think about our happy memories together to much because they still bring tears to my eyes. So what if the person did me wrong? what goes around come around.. and i shouldn't ruin my own karma by being mean to anyone. and i do sincerely wish for all the people i love to be happy no matter what. i guess our first instinct upon any hurt to us is to hurt the person back but after some cooling down, i'm just thinking "what am I thinking of... As if the person being unhappy will make me any happier" bearing grudges don't do much for my own health either so what's the point. just move on and everyone is happy. and u learn who are the people who really care for you in your life. Ryo always asked why I said thank u to the taxi drivers even though they are so rude and cranky. Why not? Saying thank u doesn't cost me anything and it might make their dreary day more cheerful if they at least meet 1 nice person in his day.

I watched Othello on Monday at a theater in Kyoto.. a 2 hour train ride there then a 2 hour train ride back. I didn't really know the story before watching it, it was a story of a stupid man who trusted the wrong man too easily and believed all the poison his "trusted" friend poured into his ears about his wife being unfaithful and he believed everything with a few fake evidence planted around, went mad with paranoia and suspicion and killed all the innocent people before realising it was all lies and killed himself.

千九百零四： 赤壁

I watched the Chinese opera version of 赤壁　yesterday performed by a Hunan opera troupe. I had only watched Red Cliff 1 at the movies so I didn't really know the story for this. The acrobatic fighting scenes with a huge amount of somersaults and flips were very cool, but the ending with Guan Yu letting Cao Cao go was quite sucky.

Bought the DDR version of wii, now everything wii is = xxxfit , everything has become some sort of workout which I'm quite a sucker for especially since i'm only paying to go to the gym per use. the main aim of gym is yoga and the treadmill but I think I have to start running outdoors soon because of the stupid 1 hour limit on the machines. how far can I run in an hour? unless it forces me to run a longer distance in a shorter time though. so far have managed to run about 7.5km in an hour, I need to slowly increase that to 10km if possible. anyway, i have the whole of next week to myself to play with the DDR game and to workout i guess. I can try to run before work every morning but it's hard to begin alone. and I'm not familiar with the roads as well. I guess the safest way is to run along the train tracks..

千九百零三： 夕日

Some may have seen this in facebook, this is the better quality photo taken with my digicam. Gives me a very serene feeling looking at this picture.



Going to watch a 京劇 tomorrow, it's 「赤壁の戦い」 Red Cliff actually. which reminds me, i should watch Red Cliff 2 today to finish the story before I go tomorrow. Am debating internally if it's worth it to get the macro lens now, with the 5% off within this month. After calculationg it's actually cheaper to get it this month.. but should I? have already kinda overspent this month :(hmm but that's because of my sg ticket. hmmmm i have another 3 days to think about it. Finally settled all the tickets for the family for their JP trip as well.

Work is slow this week, because of the environment problems. I want to ask for more work but I'm afraid that when the wedding looms nearer it might be very difficult to handle.

In the midst of Season 3 of Criminal Minds, and next friday there is going to be CSI NY marathon on AXN. woohoo!

千九百零二： Le Pain

I baked bread!

It's nothing spectacular, plain bread in the shape of buns, but quite an achievement considering I haven't touched an oven in years. Ryo saw the effort needed to knead the dough and he was saying if I really want to bake more bread we should get a bread machine instead of tiring myself out. and he probably thinks that after a few times of intense manual kneading I might lose interest in baking bread hahaha. I thought it was pretty calming when kneading the dough though, although the table did become quite a mess but seeing the bread rise & form into buns in the oven was pretty rewarding in itself. I don't really want to eat the bread, but i guess it saves me the money of 8 buns this week. hahahaha!

千九百零一： 今日の1ショット

I don't really recognise Lin Zhiling, but only realised that she was on the cover of the magazine with Kimura on retrospect. haha. oops. She's acting with Kimura in his latest drama, I've recorded all the episodes so far but haven't started watching it.

Ryo is in Tokyo till Saturday, meaning i'm home alone until then. hmm.

千九百： Alien card

Japan legal procedures are so frustrating! I've to renew my alien card annually which means having to provide 2 new passport-sized photos annually even though the old card was fine and i didn't change so much in my looks over the past year!? and they have to waste materials making a perfectly new holographic card (like the NRIC card material). duh!!!!

I have to go down to the ward office during lunch and I have to go down to renew my spouse visa tomorrow morning as well.. I swear that this is just a prank for them to get more money from me because a yearly visa is more expensive than them giving me a 3 year visa. argh!

Went to the gym yesterday, surprisingly still able to do the Yoga poses. I guess balance is one thing that remains, but flexibility isn't. Couldn't reach my toes when I bent over, however balancing was still a breeze on the tree pose. But. due to lack of exercise, leg muscles have weakened and of course i needed more effort to stand on 1 foot for the same amount of time as before. But it works, 1 kg has gone away from yesterday, I have less than 3 months to train now!

千八百九十九： Tokyo in May

Strawberry parfait at Takano Fruit Parlour

Had a great time at Tokyo meeting up with ex colleagues and current colleagues. At first was quite tired from SG, and a little regretting to have planned the trips so close to each other, but all was forgetten when we met up :)

We had mexican food and drinks on Monday, Tues Okinawa food with M, wednesday was just myself shopping a little / yakiniku Bento, Thurs M-san had 鰻 unagi & strawberry parfait for dessert. Friday was dinner with the MS pple, finally the end of a long work week. We had dinner at a organic vegetable based restaurant Flax, it was good but not filling enough. It made us drink alot to fill our stomachs though. Saturday was SG food day at Sin Tong Kee with Manami & Akane & Ryo. Realised that Ryo hasn't tried most hawker food before (because we always went to town area or ate at home).

back to work at home tomorrow. kinda relieved to be able to do nothing at all the whole day today :)

千八百九十八： Work from Tokyo

It's work from Tokyo week this week.

Last week was a hectic week, a rush to meet up with everyone b4 i leave SG again.

Wednesday was Universal Studios with XH, Thurs there was the JP Morgan Run, where I joined as a volunteer photographer with my new camera :p Learnt quite a bit from James my photography guru, here he is :)

James & me

Reached JP last friday evening. On Saturday, we had buffet at the hotel after meeting the wedding coordinator.
On Sunday, we flew to Tokyo, and watched Kimura on TV the whole day as there were alot of promotional interviews for his new drama. Had Mexican food with the Capcom people last night, it was very good to see them again.