Hey this is cool

I just downloaded an app on my iPhone to allow me to blog on the go (not tt I blog all the time).

But this is cool

Happy Valentine's :)

I got a present for V day! Even though it was agreed that we wouldn't celebrate Valentine's Day. This is mainly because there are way too many festivities in a year. I remember shortlisting a few of them: Christmas, Valentines, Anniversary, Birthday (his), Birthday (hers). And i think of them all, i value anniversary and birthdays most.

But this is such a nice surprise! The lao gong gave me a Hello Kitty iphone cover. funny part was when he said "look, got flower for you". best part is he wrote a card.

God, I thank You for Your grace and peace

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. - 2 Peter 1:2

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord (KJV)

If you would like to walk in a greater measure of God's favour, 2 Peter 1:2 says that grace, which is the undeserved favour of God, and peace, can be multiplied to you. Peace is the word "shalom" in Hebrew. Its definition includes wholeness, health and prosperity. So when you walk in divine favour and peace, you walk in blessings in every area of your life!

But how does the undeserved favour and shalom of God increase in your life? It is not by your labouring or toiling to earn it. The Bible says that it comes as your knowledge of Jesus and His finished work increases. It comes as you learn more about and believe that through Jesus' one sacrifice at the cross, God removed all your sins, gave you His righteousness as a gift and put you in Christ to enjoy everything that Jesus has. God's favour is multiplied in your life when you simply believe that the favour of God that is on Christ is also on you because of what Jesus' work at the cross has accomplished.

Today, you don't have to struggle for favour. Speak forth God's Word in faith. On your way to work, remind yourself, "God's favour surrounds me as with a shield." (Psalm 5:12) As you continue to speak we are reminded of God's favour over our lives through the revelation of Jesus' finished work. When we remind ourselves more, I believe we will "see" it more.

New beginnings

Wow. I didn't get to post on the blog on 1 Jan 2011 because we were simply too busy and tired. But i'm proud to say that this blog is 6 years old!

I know that i haven't been posting much other than random pictures of the things i'd like to throw. heh.

We got married on 1 Jan 2011 and we started living together since then. It started off weird (and sweet at the same time). We had never even spent the night at one another's place before marriage so you can imagine the weird (for lack of a better word) feeling of having another in your bed. In fact, this morning he told me that i move too much in bed. hmmm...

Having your own space also means that you keep cleaning. Yesterday a centipede was sighted. We didn't know wat to do, other than go out to the nearest petrol kiosk to buy a bottle of Baygone. We never saw Mr Centipede again though. Didn't get a chance to squash him. haha.

Since right after the honeymoon, I either have class or tuition or i have to work late. But because working continues into the night, it's nice to have a companion who is also reading. I thought that once we start to live together, I would lose the experience of being walked home. But it turns out that that's not true, because sometimes he would still go to the MRT station to "pick" me then walk back together.

I just hope work gets a little less hectic next week, then i might have time to pack my things. Living out of unlabelled boxes is a little tough. :)

Our wedding :)

it's been too long

it's been too long since i've signed in. because i forgot my password. i took a look at my blog and briefly clicked through all the friends' blogs i've linked may be considered defunct. the last update being dunnowhen.

Anyways, i think facebook killed blogs. haha. seriously. i watched The Social Network last weekend and loved it. Made me feel like there's some awesome wealth out there to be made if you have a good idea and the ability to make it take off (as with most things i guess).

Keepsakes

Some time back, I cleared my room and decided to throw some things which i've kept for a long time, which i couldn't bear to part with. Here's a little walk down memory lane.

One of the medals we won with the SMU team :)

Another one.

this looks like a repeat. I tried to rotate the picture. But somehow, when it's loaded onto the blog, it tilts back.

This flower is from my sis during my first musical Sing to the Dawn. She got a friend to run to the stage to present to me during the curtain call. She meant to make me feel like a star!! :)

One of those pins. I played the trumpet in sec school.

old RJC badge. not mine. my sister's.

NJC touch rocks. we were the best girls. :)

Waddle, my house in RGS.

the gift wrap

another one.

i'm yellow name tag batch in RGS.

My primary school. i think this was the leaving gift.

My sis gave this to me cos she thought it was hilarious.

And for thanking me for being a terrific "shit squad" i.e. the person to call when the niece shits.

The RGS band badge. below is the modern one. change took place while i was there :)

The niece

Let us exalt His name together, forever

At all times I will bless Him; His praise will be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord.
The humble man will hear of Him; The afflicted will be glad,
And join with me to magnify the Lord.

*Let us exalt His name together forever,
I sought the Lord;He heard me and delivered me from my fears.
Let us exalt His name together, forever,
Oh sing His praises, magnify the Lord.

The angel of the Lord encamps, Round those who fear His name
To save them and deliver them from harm.
Though lions roar with hunger, We lack for no good thing.
No wonder, then, we praise Him with our song.

Come, children, now and hear me if you would see long life.
Just keep your lips from wickedness and lies.
Do good and turn from evil; seek peace instead of strife.
Love righteousness and God will hear your cry.

family

the ties that bind

how not to cheat

http://xiaxue.blogspot.com/2010/07/how-to-not-cheat.html

one of her posts :)

Related party transactions

1. Facts i.e. numbers, significance (relative to total revenue, expenses)
2. Representation
3. Our rules
4. In summary/conclusion "in absence of..., unable to comment if..."

Dear Jesus,

Help me not lose heart. Be my encourager, my yardstick, my passion, my love.

the niece

I called my sis in LA today. She and the niece were in the park. It was 4plus in the afternoon though i was just waking up for work. She carried the niece and tells me that she was playing with the string of her hoodie and laughing to herself. Her latest interests include strings, zips and the mobile phone (i think this one is pretty generic for most babies/kids).

She laughed when she found the other string. And it made my big blue Monday feel a lot less blue. why must LA be so far away from Singapore?

The Great (unreachable?) S’pore Dream

As part of his ‘What is your dream?’ project, freelance photographer Charles Lim approached strangers and got them to write down their dreams on a chalkboard. Responses ranged from the idealistic (above) to the pragmatic (second picture). — PHOTOS: CHARLES LIM

IF YOU are compiling a handbook on how to succeed in Singapore, you might be tempted to just cut and paste Mr Scott Huang’s story into it. He studied hard in school, received a prestigious scholarship, attended an American Ivy League university, earned a master’s in electrical engineering, and went on to a mid-level job in a large maritime company.

What is supposed to happen next – so goes the Singapore Dream – is that he gets married, owns a car, moves into a condominium, joins a golf club, and settles into a comfortable middle-class life happily ever after. Yet, as the 30-year-old will testify readily, this age-old formula isn’t working like he thought it would.

He intends to marry his fiancee, who works in the media industry, by the end of the year, but that’s just about where the wheels start to come off the wagon. Spiralling prices mean the choice piece of private property he hankers for hangs in the balance. Driving a car of his own has been relegated far down the priority list. He has now drafted a B-dream just in case the A-dream turns out to be beyond his reach. ‘I now have what I call a minimum goal and an ideal goal,’ he says. ‘The minimum goal is an HDB flat; the ideal goal is a condominium apartment and a car.’ Achieving his ideal goal – which includes an overseas education for his future children – is beginning to sound like an impossible dream. ‘It will require major changes in lifestyle. I cannot go out so much and cannot have holidays every year. But I’m trying to stay hopeful,’ he says.

Mr Huang’s tale of the struggle to achieve the Singapore Dream is one familiar to many young Singaporeans of his cohort: in their mid-20s to mid-30s, tertiary-educated, about to settle down or newly married, on the cusp of life. An increasingly competitive environment and news of rising car and home prices have led to a feeling that the good life they aspire to is slowly slipping out of reach.

But is that really the case?

After all, the country has encountered such bumps several times in its history and every time, young Singaporeans seem to have emerged with their dreams more or less intact. In 1996, an impassioned debate took place in Parliament over concerns that the Singapore Dream was dying. Eventually, a basket of measures was uncovered to keep the dream alive, including building executive condominiums to provide affordable condo-style living. The question now is whether another round of initiatives may be forthcoming to keep the young from losing hope. Or is the current situation just a fleeting feeling of helplessness, a phase, a product of economic cycles? More pertinently, do the young Singaporeans of today dream the same dream as their parents and grandparents? Or have they scaled the hierarchy of needs and gone beyond such dreams? Or, given a matured economy with slower growth, should Mr Huang and company scale down their expectations instead?

What is the dream?

ONE early articulation of the Singapore Dream in a 1981 Sunday Times article defined it as: ‘A salary of a few thousand dollars a month; enough extra cash to decorate the home with the latest equipment and branded fabrics and furniture; holidays abroad; two children and a promise for the future.’ Sometime in the 1990s, this definition was refined to specify the five Cs – a car, condominium, credit cards, cash, and a country club membership. Are these dreams still relevant, considering that the country has undergone a complete transformation in the past three decades? Insight posed this question to a dozen young Singaporeans like Mr Huang, and the answer has largely been, ‘Yes’.

Although many responded initially with answers like ‘happiness’ or ‘a good life’, the achievement of these goals is predicated on the acquisition of material goods. Only two stress that the happiness they seek has nothing to do with money.

Mr Colin Lim, who works in the finance industry, feels that it is completely natural for people who have grown up watching their parents get rich to want the same things. Says the 29-year-old: ‘I think any society that is going through a period of economic development would end up dreaming the same things and aspiring to the same material things.’ Indeed, no matter how you attempt to classify it, the Singapore Dream is invariably shoved into a money-lined pigeon hole.
National University of Singapore sociologist Tan Ern Ser is someone who knows a thing or two about the Singapore Dream, having set out to study it in the early 1980s when he did his master’s thesis.

He concludes that the Singapore Dream is in many ways similar to its American equivalent in the sense that both have to do with social mobility. ‘Essentially, it involves crossing a symbolic public-private divide,’ he says, referring to things like housing and transport.
He adds that the Singapore version has not changed much over the years because the Singapore project has not changed either. ‘Apart from the project of building a nation populated by people with a strong sense of national identity, the Singapore project aims to create a middle-class society. These two components are best seen as works-in-progress, and likely to remain so for a long time to come,’ he says.

Political observer Eugene Tan, a law lecturer at the Singapore Management University, links it to the Government’s emphasis on the economy. ‘The five Cs are still very much regarded as the benchmark of success, and government policy entrenches the mindset that expanding economic opportunity is critical to the nation, the family and the individual’s well-being.’ He adds: ‘Societal conditioning and political socialisation mean that the Dream has a powerful effect on Singaporeans’ value systems, attitudes, aspirations, and ambitions.’ Many also point to the sort of role models society and the media tend to present here.

Singaporeans invited to schools to give talks tend to be financially successful people in the mainstream, not a stay-at-home mum or an avant-garde artist living in a Little India walk-up.
Of course, it cannot be generalised that young Singaporeans care only about things related to money. Probe further and many list more intangible things, like raising good children or having a good work-life balance, as close seconds on the dream hierarchy.

Says Ms Jamie Lim, 27, who works as a consultant in an accounting firm: ‘Raising good children is definitely part of the big picture, but of course, when people think of children, they also have to think of money.’ Then there are some who dance to a different drum beat. Like Miss Li Hanyi, 28, an art director in an advertising agency, who says simply that the thought of being tied to a house, kids and money is ‘everything I don’t want in life’. She dreams of a more open society: ‘I want the vibrancy of New York but with all the things I like about Singapore.’

Mr Eugene Tan thinks that such dreams will creep slowly into the Singaporean’s consciousness but that it will be some time before materialism is usurped: ‘The Dream has evolved but the innate vulnerability of our society continues to persist and that heightens the drive towards continuous striving as a hedge against being irrelevant. Being poor carries a heavy social stigma.’
IT MAY not be the most unbiased view, but nearly every young Singaporean interviewed is convinced he is facing a harder struggle and a steeper climb than the preceding generation.
Teacher Ross Nasir, 24, is certainly feeling the strain. She is hopeful that she will one day match the executive maisonette her businessman father bought when he was in his 40s, but it just seems very bleak to her right now. ‘Everything seems to be getting inaccessible. It’s like striking Toto,’ she sighed.

This exaggerated sense of hopelessness is common, even if not completely valid as each generation has to slog to achieve its dreams. It is true to say, however, that earlier generations generally enjoyed greater social mobility than later ones.

Professor Tan Ern Ser calls the late 1970s and early 1980s the ‘golden age of the Singapore Dream’. Since then, he says, the playing field has become more crowded, with more higher-educated middle-class families all jostling to get ahead in the ‘mobility game’.
Mr Eugene Tan puts it this way: ‘A degree earned a generation or two ago was a passport to a good life but a degree today is no guarantee.’ Indeed, the sort of asset appreciation the older ‘lucky generation’ enjoyed is mind-boggling to the young professionals of today.

In 1965, half the labour force earned less than $150 per month. By 1985, this had shot up to between $600 and $1,500, an increase by up to 10 times. An average young professional starting a job today with a $2,000 salary would not dare dream that it will turn into $20,000, no matter how long he works. The same goes for property. Those who bought HDB flats in the 1960s and 1970s for $10,000 or less would have been able to cash out today at up to $500,000.
Much of this perceived luck can be attributed to the rapid growth Singapore went through in that period. With a mature economy comes slower, productivity-related growth.

For today’s young, that simply means good wage increases and asset appreciation cannot be taken for granted. Says Prof Tan: ‘The journey is perceived as becoming somewhat more hazardous, competitive, insecure, and uncertain, brought about by globalisation and economic competition and fluctuations. ‘Moreover, even as Singaporeans seek to enhance their assets, those in the sandwiched generation may find themselves having to handle various big-ticket items, such as parents’ health-care costs and children’s education costs, notwithstanding government subsidies for these items.’

But older Singaporeans point out that this hopelessness is just another phase of life. Everyone, baby boomers included, started out fretting that they would never be able to reach their dreams. Parents of twenty-somethings speak of how their early days were spent in modest rented flats, slowly saving up to bigger and better things.

And even if the comparisons with baby boomers are cast aside, it may not be all bad news.
Yes, car and home prices may be high now, but this is not the first time they have hit these heights. Just like the economy, the affordability of the Singapore Dream follows the fluctuations of the market. As Prof Ivan Png, professor of information systems and economics at NUS, puts it: ‘Affordability is cyclical. So, yes, one strategy would be to wait until affordability improves.

The challenge is to predict the cycle.’

Also, if the experience of the elders are anything to go by, there is always hope.

Keeping the dream alive

IF THE Government’s action in 1996 is any guide, it is clearly concerned about keeping the Singapore Dream alive for the young. This is why it is monitoring the public housing market very closely and making sure that prices remain affordable. Explaining why this is very much an important political issue for the Government, Mr Eugene Tan says: ‘Having substantial buy-in of the Singapore Dream is fundamental to the Government’s legitimacy, popularity and power. Being able to mould the Dream gives the Government considerable leverage and influence over the lives of the average Singaporean. ‘If the Dream loses its standing, then the way of life promoted by the Government will lose its efficacy and effectiveness.’

Dr Gillian Koh of the Institute of Policy Studies, in turn, notes that part of the Government’s commitment to help innovation and entrepreneurship flourish is driven by the recognition that those are the only vehicles that can provide the exponential wage increases Singaporeans want.
She says the Government’s approach to the dream problem is to make sure that it provides a certain minimum, such as good, affordable housing and health care for the masses.

‘It has to draw a line in providing some of the basics as its social compact, a line established at where a relatively large portion of the population can benefit, that is fair, and will not bankrupt the system,’ she says.

Ultimately, she stresses, everyone’s destiny lies in his or her own hands: ‘Even if the public makes the Government promise more, I am sure most people do eventually want to go well beyond that and set higher targets for themselves – to do things where their passions lie and let that pay for itself – today the bus, tomorrow a Ferrari?’
jeremyau@sph.com.sg

Just do each task properly. - sis

takings

I made $129 on ebay this week. I'm how proud of myself :)

birthday babe

i had a very pleasant birthday

to begin, my friends surprised me by popping over the night before. i was surprised! i mean, we used to do those things when we were smaller. but nowadays, i don't read so much into this "at the strike of midnight i'm a year older" type of thing. but it was so nice! they stuck a candle in a sara lee chocolate cake. i really liked it. so touched i am. being a working day, they left around 1240am.

the next day, being the morning person i am, i went to Sentosa at 7am in the morning. went to walk on the beach. I figured it was the only time Singapore isn't hot. even then, it wasn't that cool either. Underwater World opens at 9am and we headed there because i happened to have free tickets. It's a really cool place. the fishes look so graceful. I remember a particular fish that swims by flapping its fins up and down (instead of front to back) and as it glides through the water, really looked like it was flying. the dolphins were adorable too! the dolphins were pink and seemed to respond when u wave at them :)

we then headed to Orchard. i haven't seen Somerset 313 before. and Mandarin Gallery. there's this thing about places that are spanking new and clean. everything seems to sparkle. Lunch was at Straits Kitchen. we spent 2 hours slowly picking our food and eating pickily. what a luxury.

With all the activity, we parted for our afternoon naps. and met again to go the Night Safari! If you think it would be empty on a weekday, think again! It was packed! But i loved it. It felt like a trip back to nature, amidst the lush greenery. the night was really cool. It made me wonder if the weather in Singapore is meant to be this cool, only that because we cut the trees and build the buildings, resulting in warmer weather. So all this hotness was brought on by ourselves? i'm not sure. :)

by 10pm, we were out of there, feeling blissfully exhausted. happy birthday to me :)

Dependants' Protection Scheme (DPS)

I couldn't figure the name initially. But i figure the purpose of this is to protect your dependants from any financial trauma upon your permanant incapacitation or death.

An extract from the CPF board's website:

The Dependants’ Protection Scheme (DPS) is an affordable term insurance scheme that provides insured members and their families with some money to get through the first few years should the insured members become permanently incapacitated or pass away.
Currently, DPS is administered by two insurers, Great Eastern Life and NTUC Income. The scheme is extended to CPF members who are Singapore citizens or Permanent Residents, between age 16 and 60, when they make their first CPF contribution.
DPS is an optional term insurance which covers CPF members for a maximum sum assured of $46,000 up to age 60. The coverage is worldwide. The DPS benefit will be paid out if the insured member passes away or becomes permanently incapacitated such that he or she can no longer work.

If you bother looking at your CPF statement and see an annual deduction of $36, then you are insured. This amount is paid out in instalments in the case of incapacitation (certified by a doctor that you won't be able to work anymore), or a lump sum to your nominee upon your death.

Just a nugget of information that i learnt today. cool huh?