Spread the Love – March 2015

Yaozhong introduced me an assignment at NUS, which I actually regretted taking up after I realised the schedule was ridiculous. The first shoot was in the early morning and the last shoot was in the late afternoon. The three consecutive days of such two-hour assignments almost tore me apart. Other than having to wake up in the early morning, I was super unproductive in between. Since I had promised the team, it was difficult for me to back out. Of course, both Yaozhong and Daniel hosted me well. Throughout the shoots, Yaozhong accompanied me to help out and also entertained me during the long idling hours. I was very glad to be able to work with my polytechnic day’s best buddy.
Mandy and Sharon organised a photoshoot and roped me in. The Yeo sisters were as nice as previously when we worked with Lynn. Mandy insisted to give me a treat and I failed to reject her during supper.

Spread the Love – October 2013

I had an appointment at ITE College West during October to meet up with my ex-colleague (a great chef), Edwin Phua, for some photography projects. I went slightly earlier to visit other colleagues. It was near 6.30pm and most of my ex colleagues had left. However, as I had expected, my ex boss, Lim Wee Lian, was still around. It was around an hour after the official working hour had ended and he was one of the few hardworking civil servants who were still slogging hard.
I started chatting with him inside his office. During the half an hour’s catch-up, the topics were mainly resolving around my current well being. Wee Lian was busy thinking of ways that I could work on to generate some income. At the same point of time as I was amazed by his creativeness, I felt so guilty that I was actually delaying him from finishing his work, such that he would have to leave for home even later.
It would at least take half a day’s time to list out the great things he has done for me. I would just sum up that he is someone I would sacrifice my time for. That was the reason I had stayed on for three more months by his request before I left; moreover, he had forgotten about my new degree paper that would fetch me at least a thousand bucks more in total. Three months, no, I doubt I would do that for anyone else.

The Sweet Things Yesterday May Not Be Sweet Today

Long ago, I heard encouragements to the persistence of doing my own business. Flexibility of time and working location were great buy. I could do my work at any time of the day at anywhere with my laptop, which meant that I could merry around during normal people’s working hours. Apart from the extra hard effort required and income instability, everything was supposed to be sweet.

I, however, am never a cut to become someone who can really enjoy myself. There are many things I wish to do but have given up. There are also many things I hesitate or hate to do but I’m doing them for the sake of accommodating my loved ones and friends. I’m definitely living a bitter life for now.

I have free tickets and accommodation for overseas trips, but I cannot and do not have the mood to leave Singapore for more than a day.

I also have job temptations from numerous kind friends. I know I should not give up halfway.

I have done my best to struggle alone on various required job roles. I see myself as a researcher, content writer, designer, programmer, tester, blogger, website administration, administrator, marketer, IT support and probably others. The numerous tasks waiting for me to accomplish everyday have killed my creativity since long ago. It is a hectic life for me.

I never have understanding from people surrounding me and not even those whom I get to see numerous times per week. Most friends do not know what I’m working as and those who know do not know what I have been doing. Overall, most people have impression that I’m an idler, although they are very kind to persuade me to get a job.

While most people know about my flexibility of time, they are neglecting the fact that there are huge amount of work for me to finish. So often that I’m neglecting my family for work, especially when we are so bonded together, and I’m always feeling the guilt of turning them down.

I have to deal with changing climates monthly. Even the loudest voice to support my business venture has turned against the flexibilities while I’m being sandwiched by people. I should be feeling great that many kind people are trying to help me but I cannot stop feeling being torn into pieces. I’m still far from meeting their expectations.

Back to Volleyball after More Than a Year

I finally made my first step into Choa Chu Kang ITE’s sports hall on Thursday. Both Jingkun and Tze Khit asked me down coincidentally for volleyball. Frankly speaking, I was itching for it since long ago.

The hall was fantastic. It was gigantic and could hold up to twelve badminton or four volleyball games at a time. It was the first week of the ITE holidays and thus I had less chance to see my ex colleagues and students. I managed to meet Ah Lei who was currently working in the CCK’s gym.

I was glad that I was not totally wasted after missing the game for more than a year. At least, my services were perfect and could somehow pose some threats to the opponents at the same time. I probably played calmer than usual and that covered up my lost skill. I knew I could do so much better in other areas while stamina posed a major issue as well.

If it was not for Tze Khit, travelling would be a major problem for me. We met up at the Tanjong Pagar market for dinner before we went down in his gym’s van. Along the way, he persuaded me to work for him permanently for his new web venture. He trusted me in my professional in web building. He also highlighted to me on my own business.

To me, it was useless to work for others and earning peanuts when I was a workaholic who would sink in totally. I would rather continue to push my tuition agency to a greater height while enjoying the freedom. Even though my business was not doing well at the moment, it had great room for improvement – I was very down-lucked in my online marketing progress. When Tze Khit pointed out that the time I had spent was too long, I could only sigh that I was handling too many things alone that I could not focus. If I had the time to treat my business as a sideline so that I could find a job, I would rather work on some blogs to earn through AdSense.

That night, thoughts went through my mind. For all I knew, I needed to expedite on the progress of the web development.

Gone with the Good Deal

[Wednesday, 8 September, 2010]

It was a simple day blogging in the morning and sleeping at 6am. I woke up after 2pm.

The entire day was mainly spent working on my new website in a good progress.

Before the night ended, I received a SMS from Wee Lian that the job offer had to be put on hold as the other departments would interfere if they were to engage a designer without teaching load. I was quite amazed over this.

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Communication – Not with Everyone

[Wednesday, 28 July, 2010]

I had supper and cleared up the leftover food from dinner. Eventually I went to bed at around 4am.

I woke up at around 1pm, feeling puzzled why my mum did not wake me up for half boiled eggs. It was a slacking afternoon until I started clearing my desktop and updating older photos to Facebook.

It was a terrible night. Jieying messaged me in Facebook to offer me a job but she refused to even give a short brief about it, and she insisted me to meet her up next Monday to tell me the details. I tried hard to tease her, in order to force her to reveal it to me, but it did not work. Out of a sudden, her boyfriend used her phone to call me and scolded me.

She was my ex student, and definitely one of the best and closest to me. It had been more than two years that we had been exchanging craps with each other and I usually greeted her loudly by “food poisoning” in front of our friends and even strangers. We joked with each other just like most other friends, calling names and doing all the insults jokingly.

I did not know why her boyfriend would read her Facebook messages in the first place and what had gone wrong in the conversation. I did not know why she did not explain to her boyfriend about it. But it was obviously not me who initiated the talk and it was more obvious that my dear friend was being over-secretive.

I was more than disappointed in her. It was more than an insult and betrayal of trust.

It proved me the fact that I should never stick too closely to some groups of friends due to communication issues that would arouse in the long run. There were too few people in this world who could understand even my humour.

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Virgin Visit to Double O

[Saturday, 24 July, 2010]

I was not in really good mood and started playing game until late hour, sleeping at 6am finally.

I woke up at around 2pm. after dilly-dally for some time, I left my house after 4pm for photoshooting alone. I began with Shenton Way towards Lao Pa Sat, One Fullerton and ended before Esplanade after I caught up with Sharon and her family. We had a little chat before I paced home. She tempted me with a job offer to teach a new web module.

My dinner was delivery – hor fun. It took quite long for the food to arrive, and while waiting, Hirman called me to join him at Double O. I took my dinner too quick that my stomach was bloated soon. I rushed to Bugis and met up Joei at the Iluma bridge. Hirman joined us soon. On the way, I was quite disappointed when Hirman misjudged my passion for teaching.

The three of us went in first. Hirman’s friend, Amy, joined us later. The noise was too loud for my ears. There was a weird guy dancing non-stop, drawing all the attention. I was told that he had been doing it at the old Double O. We had different types and drinks and I did not even know their names, except that I knew it was going to cost a bomb. As the crowd started to swing their bodies and legs, my gang got me involved as well.

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Resuming My Directory Project

[Tuesday, 18 May, 2010]

I was extremely pissed off by myself when I failed to doze off after midnight. I got up near 2am in order not to waste time tossing around, and eventually I resumed my work on the new website – a directory.

I started drafting a new layout for it to enhance the navigation.

In the afternoon, I continued with my work after I got up. I put the new design into HTML and I was quite impressed with the product after spending hours on it.

My mind was clearer than when I first designed the site and I could focus things better. Probably, I owed it to my ex polytechnic buddy, Yaozhong, for making me recap on the importance of it.

Next, I continued with the scripting.

Compared to the past few weeks when I was badly tortured by the thoughts of searching for a job, I was much more productive by setting it aside for a while and started doing what I was best at. It was programming that had killed the loneliness within me when nobody could afford time for me.

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Job Hunting in Websites

[Monday, 17 May, 2010]

My job hunting resumed on Monday. I looked through the job listing sites and list down the more ideal jobs on an Excel sheet. None of the ten over jobs I had entered into my database interested me enough.

I was not very sure what I wanted, but at least I knew I would prefer the company to be near my house since most of the better companies should be located in the business district and I should not go further away for a job, unless it was really interesting enough.

Looking at the Google Maps to find the locations of the companies and searching through Google for their websites were time-consuming.

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The Two Weeks were so Tempting

[Wednesday, 5 May, 2010]

I began the first second of the day at Hirman’s place. We went through the camp’s photos together in his slow running ITE laptop after he finished doing some work.

I had my laptop with me and I spent the time updating my blog while chatting with Caiping over the webcam. My battery died on me finally before 2am, just after I finished two blog entries. I had a hard time sleeping besides the snoring man with the weird Mitsubishi air-conditioner that seemed to work like an old dying man. Hirman woke up a few times as well. It took me some tries to find out how to operate it and then dozing off after 3am.

I woke Hirman up at 6.30am. He washed up and prepared his clothes fast to set off and I was quite stunned by his speed; I usually woke up to laze around on the bed. He sent me to my place before he went to work. At the beginning of the journey, I saw very great scenery of the morning sky opposite the SAF Ferry Terminal.

The first thing I did when I reached home was to set up my laptop. Sharon called me at around 9am to request me to go back to ITE to take over William Tan for two weeks as he was going for reservist. I was quite tempted and was distracted over it for the entire day. It was a very good chance to interrupt with the cute year one students and I could really try to do something to change some of their lives like what Hirman had been doing. I sought advices from many people and the last reason to decline the offer was my initial hesitation.

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