It's a Boy!!!!

The moment of truth is out. Junior is a boy. No more he/she in my subsequent post.

Interestingly, there are people in some camp feeling disappointed that he is a boy. Reason being that a boy is so boring as he only wears t-shirts and pants. On the other hand, they can "decorate" the girl. When has the baby become a christmas tree?

男或女都可以，只要健康就好。

Below are the latest scan pictures, with the 2nd picture showing the true gender.

Stereotype

Humans have this tendency to group things that are possibly similar or alike together. This is otherwise known as stereotyping.

One typical stereotype that is not to my liking is the assumption for civil service takes things slowly and is over-staffed, i.e. inefficient.

I guess in any organization, there are different types of people. Be it good or bad, strong or weak, they usually co-exist. The existence of one is necessary to make the other more obvious. 请别用一竹竿打翻全船人。

Anyway, just take it a practice for better things ahead. In the meantime, just need to persevere and continue whacking. :)

Ice-breaker that went wrong?

This was what happened at an interview.

Interviewer (A): (Looking at the datasheet) Oh, you stayed at Sembawang. Very far from our office huh...

Interviewee (B): It's ok. I took the MRT here.

A: Oh, there is a train station near your place? Which station is that?

B: Yes, there is. It's Sembawang (Feeling weird).

A: Is it near your place?

B: It's about 1km away, or 3 bus-stop away.

Well, B thought that its pretty weird to start the interview in this manner, only to know that worse is to come.

Anyway, A told B that they are actually looking for a Jack-of-all-trade due to the nature of the work. From here, A gave the impression that he thinks that B is too specialised and may not be able to cope with the type of work.

If only A had tried a little bit harder, A will probably find out that B is actually more of a Jack-of-all-trade than Master of One.

Oh well, this is the reality of life and how much you can find out from a short 20 mins chat with the interviewee.

忐忑不安的心情

一月七日，雨。

今天显然有点紧张，无法入眠，害怕会误了时间。
这次的准备稍微充足一些，但还是赶不走那忐忑不安的心情。
有人对我说过，尽力就好，不要太在乎后果。
或许他是对的，那就全力以赴，向前迈进吧。

是与否

你是否试过想要靠近又不敢靠近？ 害怕靠近以后的后果？

压抑的感觉是不好受的，可是有些事是没有办法的。

人终究必须做应该做的事而不是想要做的事。这或许就是责任吧。

你能体会吗？

肮脏吃，肮脏大

I spent 8hrs and 59mins in IMM today. An amazing feat considering I am not a shopper by occupation nor is shopping one of my hobby. Anyway, that is history since I managed to strike off 3 items of my "Need-to-Get" list for my house renovation.

During our break at Kopitiam (a food court chain), I saw 2 interesting things.

First - I was sharing a table with another family of 5. The mother was busy feeding her kid porridge bought from one of the store. The kid is probably less than 6 months old. From my experience (seeing how my nephews and nieces grow up), they did not take outside food until they were more than 1 years old due to the flavouring and MSG.

Before the mother feeds the child, she puts the food in her mouth to check the temperature is suitable for the child to consume. This is done repeatedly until the desired temperature is attained. This is not done by swallowing but achieved by tasting the food and letting the food out of the mouth. This is very "old-school" in our opinion whereby few people do such things already. Even if practised, I was expecting the old generation to do it and not someone in their 30s.

肮脏吃，肮脏大。Is this correct? Nowadays, parents tend to be extra careful in their preparation of baby items, ranging from food to clothing. Is this the correct approach? I am not sure. I am more for allowing the kid to build up their anti-bodies naturally. However, timing is important so as not to over-introduce the germs in case the baby cannot take it. Sounds difficult? I think so. Not sure how I am going to manage it but i will try.

Second - At the next table, there was this lady who had a bowl of kang-kong (presumingly from yong tau foo store). The kang-kong are raw and there are probably 6-10 bunches of them. Later, the lady took one bunch and removed the leaves before dipping the stems into some sauce she brought. This went through for a while. The auntie sitting next to her was looking at her. The sight of this reminded me of "Gotcha" or "Just for Laugh - Gags". What shocked me later was that she tried to feed her baby (about 6 months old) with the raw kang-kong too. How is the baby going to digest it? I never understand how some parents think actually.

Year 2009 in Review

It has been a roller-coaster year, both personally and professionally. It has been a tremendous learning experience (steep learning curve too) for me to learn how to manage all this. I guess you grow from such experiences.

It is also a year where new friendship was forged and I truly appreciate the company and advice that comes with it. With these, you gain new perspective of things. It does not matter if this person is much younger than you as different experiences bring about different point of view.

In the coming year, I will be expecting a new member to my family which poses a challenging time as well. With all the support I can garner from my close ones, I am sure I will be able to pull through with flying colours.

Lastly, thanks all for reading this blog faithfully (I know that at least 2 out of the 6 billion world population reads this). I will continue to use this to pen my thoughts, with more interesting posts hopefully.

Have a great 2010 ahead.