3 beer

Best combi!
Buddies, chilled beer, crispy yakitori, cold weather, overseas, talk cock sing song, holiday!



As luck would have it

So we balloted for Sale of Balance Flats (May 2013) and my chances were 1 in 20. As rare as the mathematical odds were placed before us, we largely anticipated not to stand any reasonable chance at all. Finally, the result arrived via email:


Unfortunately, as your balloted queue position has far exceeded the flat supply, we regret to inform that your application has not been successful.
 
You may like to know that the bulk of our flat supply is sold through the Build-To-Order (BTO) exercises. Hence, we would welcome you to participate in the next BTO exercise in Jul 2013. You may visit our HDB InfoWEB at www.hdb.gov.sg for the details. We wish you all the best in your journey in buying a home.


THANK YOU VERY MUCH, HDB!

Better luck next time. (Question is: how many times?)

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Anyway, I've always wondered why some people are just born 'luckier' than others? For example, you may have heard of people who always tio 4D/Toto, or enjoy unbelievable streaks of luck at poker or mahjong? How is luck bestowed upon us? How are we blessed with any amount of luck? Is our luck factor determined at birth or can be granted upon? Interesting...

P/S: I bidded for SPH Reit IPO and wasn't allocated any. Pffffft.

PP/S: I never win any lucky draw.

Get my name right

Call me anal or overly particular; to me, pronouncing another person's name correctly is the most basic respect any educated man must give.

If you, as a superior, is not able to even spell it correctly (and consistently for umpteen times), sorry, you've lost my respect for you.

Apathetic involvement

Ever feel why some people just do not bother to read or reply emails at work?

  Being unresponsive in an email thread (with lots of other colleagues in the loop) and later stupidly ask, "Sorry I don't know what's going on" is akin to being one of the members in a whatsapp group chat and be apathetic about any discussions.

Almost my pet peeve.

Just saying.


And leaving someone's souvenir from overseas on another table and untouched for 3 months, is quite disrespectful.

Queenstown

Miss the quaint, serene beauty of Queenstown.

With a bunch of spontaneous, fun-loving  friends.
With hot chocolate drink in hand.

2 weeks ago, I had set up a small test for my staff. If the event they did not pass the test, the would-be consequences are not detrimental, it would just be a small test to observe their level of understanding, whether they would follow/overlook simple instructions.

Usually, before any event, I would send a gentle reminder a few days before. However, I intentionally stayed silent this time round.

Today, 30 mins after the event was scheduled to start, I received a call mentioning no one had turned up.

I'm utterly disappointed.

Don't understand why some people can't comprehend simple instructions or questions. And I promise, I don't use flowery language and my messages are concise and succinct.

This is just one of out many examples.

Do I have to spoon feed them every time? Why do I have to chase after them for every single simple thing I ask for? Wish they'd take more ownership of their areas and not irresponsibly conveniently forget.

I'm starting to get increasing comments along the line of "you look more matured than your age", and I wonder why.

365 days ago

Art & Craft

Painting seems to be the up and coming pastime for youths. Think Artestique, My Art Space... seeing my friends post their masterpieces on fb, I wondered how come everyone seems to know how to draw so brilliantly!

At those weekly Art & Craft lessons in primary and secondary school, they aren't my favourite lessons nor have I been the brightest student. However, I've always wanted to try my hands at painting too, curious to know how far my limited creativity and artistic talent will bring me. 

So one day, Celeste got a pair of Groupon deals for Kepler Art studio for a 3-hour painting session (with teacher). 3 months after we purchased the tickets, we finally found ourselves in a small classroom with a blank white canvas in front of us, several brushes and bottles of paint.

The teacher was a young lady, maybe in her mid 20s? We were to choose a picture from an album and that would be what we would be drawing for the next 3 hours!

I chose what caught my eye in the first instance - nature, greenery, sakura flowers, blue sky:

HAHAHA, looking at the myriad and layers of colours, I think it was gonna be really tough!

Being my first time, I really was clueless of what I should start with. I thought the first 15 mins could have been spent on a short intro on painting - you know, the material, basics of mixing colours, background foreground, highlighting etc etc? Anyway, 'cher told me to start sketching with a pencil.

The most I could sketch was the hillscape, the fence and the tree branch. Then, cher told me to start filling in the sky. She mixed a nice light blue colour and I did the filling up of the huge white space. I learnt that I could correct the colours by applying a second, third, layer. For example, if the blue sky was too dark, all I needed was to dip the brush into white paint and apply over the blue.

After the blue sky was done, the yellowish/orangy/red tint sky was the next challenge. Apply technique 1 as mentioned above.

My status now:

Still looking barren, with yet half the work done!

So light yellowish green would be the filler for the base for the foreground, the hill and grass. "Start with the lightest colours first," says cher.

Using a different type of brush and stroke, cher taught how to create the vertical strokes to mimic the tall grass. As you can see from the first picture (top), there would be many layers to the grass, tall grass, flowers, shadows, grains etc, and cher helped me mix the colours and showed the strokes to create the impression -and I was left to myself to do the rest.

The sakura leaves were the most interesting. When cher demonstrated, her every simple dap of the brush seem to grow a pretty pink leave on the branches. When I took over, every dap of my brush looked deliberate and rough, almost like a smear, a drag. Fortunately, the purposely strokes were to be concealed by the next layers of red, pink and white.

After 3-hours, our final product!

Cher complimented that my drawing didn't seem like I was a first-timer, haha, thanks cher, but it was all credit to your help!

Another KPI for the year, cleared! :D