Friday the 13th

Seriously, you really know something is wrong when instead of saying the home button you say tracker when you're on the internet at home.

Sigh.

It's been a while. And i think its high time i updated this place for me sake. Like Marco said, it would be really cool to be able to look back a couple years from now and read what i've actually put into words. It would really be a fantastic read to see how far things have or have not changed.

Exams are over which finally gives me the time to actually kick back, relax and actually spend some quality time resting without a stressed out mind.

The past semester has been hectic and somewhat chaotic to a certain extent although the experience has been nothing short of beautiful. But really, after hearing what Sean had to say about me after meeting me up for lunch really did jolt me in my tracks somewhat.

So, am i really prepared for this mundane 9-5 life which vaguely resembles one? Oh wait, hang on.. i jumped into it without thinking! Maybe thats it! I didn't even give it a thought for 2 ticks before jumping into a job after so long of trying that i never realised how much of a student/ youth life i'm going to miss.

I guess, when you've been trying hard and just looking forward to it you kinda lose certain perspectives. I won't say i made a wrong decision, i'd just say i could have done better. Not the job of course, i actually do love it. The guys a great and well.. it certainly looks a hell lot better on my CV now that i've got a foot in.

But something's just lacking.

Oh well, for now its just about making it through. Can't wait to graduate at the end of the year for some reason which adds to my contradiction.

Anyways, I'm off to Melbourne next week! thats should be fun. The week after is End of Financial Year Ball! But closer to that..

Next week will be my first time out on the field with a valuer!! hahaha.. can't wait. Should be able to take my first step towards my license pretty soon. ahhhhhhhhhh.. joy.

Have a Great Day!

Joe

splity

For some obscure reason, i find myself sitting here at ungodly hours such as this in front of my laptop surfing the internet and...


(I bet you'd say porn and this juncture...)


staring at Facebook or blogs.


I'l just flick throught peoples profile /blog pages and read about other people's much more interesting life and their accomplishments.

And to be as honest i could, i'd have to say a tinge.. alright a huge dose of envy fills me everytime and i think why don't i lead such an interesting life or maybe why am i not a rockstar? Okay, the last point should be burnt.

But really, i don't know why.

I really shouldn't think that way, after all it is I who choose.

Sometimes i think i'm pushing myself too far too fast then i realise that i've actually accomplished next to nothing as compared to so many other people around my age.

So then, i ask myself if i should cut back and loosen up. But that too brings me to another predicament of not being able to be much of the life of a party. Some people just have an ability to attract people to them just as well... as... flies to people in summer.













The grass is always greener on the other side.

..But what happens if you're almost on the fence?

Work Work..

Greetings!

Valentines day came and went.

So, how was valentines day for me? As every other day. We rented some dvd's and sat around pigging out on chocolates and what not. We just decided it wasn't worth it the go out and rush with others and pay higher then usual prices for food. Its just a novelty, it doesn't reall symbolize anything.

Besides shouldn't everyday be valentines day?

sounds familiar? Yea.. Tim told me that.

On another note,

It was my FIRST DAY OF WORK!

And it was awesome.

The office is full of really funny friendly people who made my first day pretty enjoyable.

It really started with a box of welcoming chocolates which i'm supposed to share around considering coveteous looks i'm getting from my colleagues. But i was warned by the manager that the office can be dangerous place when chocolates are around.

Hmmm.. i guess, i should offer em round next week.

So, i was handed a thick file of information to read and fill out which was pretty overwhelming to start off. Thats when i went "what am i doing here? i'm too young!".

Then i was brought to my desk, and there on my keyphone was my name and tht sorta perked me up abit. Okay, fine.. I was thrilled when i saw my name there. I don't know why but it just gave me a sense of belonging alright? I do enjoy the little perks in life regardless how small.

I was pretty much guided through my job description and by the end of the day, i'm actually feeling real excited about getting back to work next week.

Part of the office newbie's job is serve drinks to the entire office. So i was told to basically told to load up a box and wheel it round the office offering everyone a drink. Beer, champagne, wine and chips are provided by the company on friday's see... So basically someone rings those bells you see from an ice cream vendor at about 4 ish and thats when everyone in the office lets their hair down and starts drinking on the job.

You'll get a crew sitting at the back of the office having a ball of time. I was told they were the motley crue of the office so yea... It's just a really fin environment.

Best part, because this job is everything i'm studying to be i'm getting exempted from 1 unit this year=) That means i pay less fees next semester as well.
Yay!

Shu-Wen picked me up after work (Well someone has to wear the pants around here...) and we went to Arirang down in Subiaco which was really really good. Not the most authentic korean bbq you'd fine but it was certainly good eating.

Oh well, its been a long day.

Time to hit the sack, Sean and Marco arrives later today.

Have A Nice Day people.

Adding 2 Cents to 2

So..





I missed the fireworks.







Eugene and I decided to freak ourselves and feel absolutely sick by watching Hostel 2 while Ben and Cody capped of another round of (i'm starting to see the joy of..) DoTA. So we finally got our butts out of the house at 9:30. Got the first sign that we we're too late for the show when we saw streams of people walking back from Mill Point.



Anyways, we headed into the city anyways, parked, and walked around for abit. Met a drunk guy named Ethan who was really just high and he kept repeating himself and basically not making sense. But it was funny nonetheless. We eventually walked half way across the city (which isn't very far to begin with..) to (same ol' same ol') Northbridge, and into our usual dining spot. How exciting.



Thats my Australia Day experience.

*******************************

A while back i wrote about us not being liberated enough in our thinking which subsequently meant we could only view each other through our narrow parochial mindsets.

To that, Ying, you did give a very thought provoking response and i couldn't help but agreed with you.

Yes, it is true that our culture is extremely important and forgetting our heritage clearly a step towards disowning who we are. I guess i took a very hardline extremist approach when i said that we should stop refering to ourselves by ethnic race but by nationality.

Recognition of cultures and traditions are important as it defines who we are, but you would have to agree with me that because of this inclination to belong we naturally gravitate back to our own cultures this creates something of a clique.

I guess you can call this a clique factor over a cultural/ ethnicity factor.

But again it leads us back to where i started this.

That we identify with people of our own kind and despite our attempts will realise when push comes to shove, if you had to and could only save one out of two complete strangers who would you pick?

I don't have statistical evidence to back up whatever i say so this could be total bullshit but what do you think?

Happy Australia Day

Enjoy the fireworks.

Cause thats as much passion and excitement it'll generate for me.

I wonder how we're going to get into the city late with all the road closures. Hmmm..

oh well.

Have a good Australia Day!


Joe

How's it going Hot Stuff?

It's dreadfully hot.

Again.

37 degrees!


It's not helped by the fact my room faces the evening sun and.. has wooden walls! I'd understand the walls in winter or if i was in melbourne for example but in WA? We only get 3-4 months of cold (which isn't very cold to begin with) and the rest of the year is blazing insanely hot. It's not helped that all the furniture in my room is wood, i can actually feel the heat from my table.

So not good.

On the bright side (how ironic), the days are coming along just fine. I'm actually enjoying myself this year. Not that i haven't been the previous year but i guess cause it'll be my final year if studies thats really kicking it in. Can't believe i'll turn 21 this year.

I'll be joining the ranks of the overworked and underpaid pretty soon. Wierd as it sounds i'm actually really excited but at the same time i just wanna really enjoy this year.

I haven't been working since i got back which isn't very good either which means daddy has to foot my meals. sigh. Terrible i know.

But it could've been worst then just footing the meals. I almost got my car compunded or impounded (somethin like tht) by the cops and then needing to pay a visit to the courts to get a summon and receive a $750 summon on top of that.

All for driving 40++++++ km/h above the speed limit.

I was considered a dangerous and reckless driver. But, the cops decided to be kind and let me off the hook cause they weren't traffic police so it wasnt really their main concern but still.. these cops wore black vest, sorta like those movies sorta scenes. Not your average cop sorta thing.

oh well, lesson learnt.

Gonna head into the city now for a bit. It feels good to be so close to the city and the river. You get a somewhat exclusive feel to things=) hahaha




Have a nice day

We are not liberated because..

(I'm writting this cause i feel the need to rant about something that irked me today. So bare with me. But at the end of this maybe somebody might agree with me?)

Greetings!

Christmas is coming. HoHOHoho.. do you feel the excitement?

Not really. Over time the novelty of the idea has died. Commercialism may have done just enough to blow the whole idea of christmas out the window. No more celebration of its true meaning but of that fat guy in a red suit who laughs allot. Oh.. and buying more stuff for the 'loved ones'. Hmmm..

But,

That wasn't what really struck me today.

I was in Starhill plaza today looking to get myself a nice new bag which daddy agreed to fund for being the poor student that i am. So we trot on happily into the store found a person who wasn't attending to anyone. Great, flipped the catalog, found the bag, all fine and dandy while my family trotted off to find some other stuff.

So here i stood at the counter waiting for Dad to come back the all important final 'okay' before i ask the guy to pack it up for me. So i decided to strike a conversation with the guy attending to me. So i struck up the usual first few questions like "does it get really busy around this time" and stuff like that.

I then asked, so do you guys have to meet like some sort of quota here implying if they had any sales targets to meet. But what he answered got me somewhat taken aback.

He answered "No we don't really have a quota.. But we do strive to have an equal balance of chinese and malays..."

At this point i stopped him and said "no no, i don't mean that.. as in like sales quota."

From then on he answered the question and the conversation continued along those lines.

But heres the thing, I used the word quota and the first response was in that direction. You could say he didn't really hear me and so there shouldn't be anything in there but point is i wasn't thinking about tht one bit yet his first reaction to the word was that.

Since when has the number of staff in a retail outlet become a ratial thing? Well, it isn't as bad as you think. It probably is nothing. But, do we really even have to think of it?

A few days back Tim and Sean asked me if they thought Malaysia was truly liberated as part of a joke about someone. But really if you were to ask me that question seriously, I'd answer you 'No we are not liberated but we are independant'.

Why?

In my oppinion to be fully liberated, is to completely loose your root or cultural identity and adopt a new unified identity. I don't mean by loose your roots as completely discarding culture, all i'm saying is that you practice and respect your culture as best you can but to be able to live in a diversed society somethings would need to be set aside.

What again are we setting aside? For starters, changing our mindset. Y'know how the term dying to self is being played around pretty popularly nowadays not just in a christian context? Precisely that, dying to the old mentality of thinking primarily about oneself or in this case your own race and begin to think of everyone as similar coherently working towards a common goal of making our country a better place?

How do i know we're not there yet?

When we introduced ourself to foreigners, we agree tht we're malaysians but we also indicate rather clearly when asked that we're malay, chinese, indian, etc. That fact of the matter is we are still holding on to our own kind that we lose track of the fact that we are primarily and more importantly Malaysians being born and bred here. Thats what it says on passports and IC's! We don't write 'malaysian (insert race here)' on our custom forms do we? No we dont. See the point?

So, are we independant? Yes we are. Are we liberated? Until we can only refer to ourselves as malaysians and not primarily our ethnicity we will continue not to be.

It isn't hard to make a difference. It just starts with love. Loving your neighbour just as yourself would be more like it.

I love this country.

Don't you?