My New Watch....

Nice?

A Trip of Many Firsts....

I was in KL over the recently past weekend (again) and the usual things such as meeting up with Irene and her fabulous bunch of friends, visiting Lookout Point, doing BC, etc happened. However, there exist one major difference...my significant other joined me on this trip!

This is a trip of many firsts, why so? Read on and let me know if its full of firsts or not :

• Our very FIRST holiday
• Watched our FIRST movie
• Did our FIRST good deed together 'fostering' an orphan from KL during a charity event

This trip also happens to coincide with Irene's FIRST attempt at obtaining the Body Combat Instructorship which would allow her to begin instructing BC in FF Malaysia. A whole bunch of us dropped by to give her our moral, physical and vocal support, including Garion, who specially flew in via Singapore Airlines and arriving at the gym only barely 30mins before the class! I've not seen a class filled with more energy, noise and encouragement than this! I've never shouted this much and this hard before in my years of BCing until this class. My voice was already coarse by Track 3.... No doubt there were mistakes here and there, I personally felt that Irene did a great job and thought she might be able to scrap through. However, I guessed the assessor had other ideas....

Another significant activity which we partake in was this charity event whereby we bought tickets to the movie, How To Train A Dragon for 30RM a piece. The amount we paid actually goes towards 'sponsoring' a movie outing for a group of orphans from the local orphanage in KL. This event runs in the manner whereby each Girl-Guy pair of us becomes the 'foster parents' of an assigned orphan for the duration of the movie. Our child is named Paul and imagine my amusement when the tallest boy in the group responded to my calls for his name! He is 16, speaks pretty good English, knows where is Singapore and is even taller than me & SO!!

I've never given much thought about orphans until this event where I came up close and 'personal' with one. For the first time in my life, I really appreciate knowing who my parents are and having them with me. OK, well, at least my dad for now....

This is really a meaningful and rewarding trip for me and SO for its not everyday that we get to do something sooooo meaningful for charity. Living together with her for 3days, I'm already starting to feel closer to her emotionally and mentally. Of course, Irene had a big part to play in making this a GREAT TRIP in the way she introduces us to her awesome bunch of friends... Rachel, Jonathan, Doreen (correct me if I'm wrong).

My next trip there should tentatively be for the Sept Quarterlies.... :)

Housekeeping.....

There had been a recent influx of "followers" to my blog. Not too sure if this is due to a genuine increase in interest level of my blog or a result of spammers going around, adding blog sites to their spam listings...... At the same rate, the number of comments received on my postings had also increased.

So... here are some changes with immediate effect :

1. All comments shall be moderated by yours truly prior to publication in this blog.

2. Comments relating to advertising of products, sites or any other similarly-natured comment will be dropped.

3. Anonymous folks will no longer be allowed to post comments.

Not to worry, I will not filter out those comments which are negative. :)

A Kick Up the Fat-Green-Pipe's Ass - Update

Remember my post, "A Kick Up the Fat-Green-Pipe's Ass"? Well, my only demand to them is to make good an amount of S$299 for a lapse in porting my mobile number over from a rival telco.

Imagine my elation when the person-in-charge of my case rang me up and said : "Sir, regarding the reimbursement of S$299, FGP will credit the amount into your account and your monthly bills will be debited from the pool. In addition, we will also waive one month's subscription. Is there anything else that we can help you with?"

With a resolution like that, what else can I ask for?

WoooHoooooooo!!!!

2 Tables for Family Dinner

No, there is no family dispute whatsoever which resulted in the family having to occupy 2 tables. It's due to a simple reason that 1 table is unable to fit in 16 pax, inclusive of 5 kids.

The occasion today is to celebrate Hero's 75th Birthday and we had a family dinner in some traditional Chinese Restaurant in town which my sister recommended. Having squeezed in the past during such dinners to much discomfort, she decided that this time around, we'd separate into 2 tables with the siblings and Hero in 1 table, the kids and 3 maids in the other table. This arrangement made perfect sense because the kids are grown-ed up and its really impossible to squeeze in at the 'main' tables anymore. Food wise, we ordered identical fare for both tables.

So as you can derived, we do not practice double-standards in our family. :)

A Kick Up the Fat-Green-Pipe's Ass

Wrote a strong-worded complaint to the Fat-Green-Pipe (FGP) Telco in Singapore few days back and I got a response from them within 24hrs.... goes to show if things do not get moving on the ground level, you MUST escalate it YOURSELF to the HIGHEST LEVEL POSSIBLE...

ICT Day 1.....

Today's the first day of my 2weeks ICT, aka In-Camp Training. For operational and security reasons, I'm unable to disclose too much of what we do in there and other related information. However, I can share that it's pretty much about waiting for instructions to be passed down. :s

This is my 6th out of 10 cycles for ICT and they actually gave me a Good Service Medal for completing 5yrs of ICT! Here's how the medal looks like :

I'd rather they give me some kind of monetary rewards instead.....

Anyone wanna buy my medal? Name your price.....