the Grameen Bank guy

today, I had to make a presentation during lecture on Professor Muhammad Yunus, the guy who founded Grameen Bank. for some weird reason, i kept misreading his name as Prophet Muhammad. i think i'm secretly Muslim.

i wasted a mouth-full of Baileys today cos i choked. damn sad.

the reasons

I’m not sure if it’s wrong to justify everything I do. If anything, doesn’t that mean that I believe in what I do – that I have my reasons for doing what I do? Any rational person will do something only if he has reasons to do it. When someone accuses me of doing something, and I justify my doing it, is it reasonable for the accuser to feel exasperated that I have reasons for everything? Would it make the accuser feel any better if I said that I didn’t have any reason - I just did it because I felt like it? I’m guessing that that’ll make him/her even more upset with me – because I didn’t even bother to have a reason to do what I did.

Example: I go kill Mr X. Mrs X asks me why I killed him. Which response would appease her most?

1. Mr X was planning to murder Timbaland, so I killed him.
2. Mr X likes Elton John, so I killed him.
3. Doh… I just felt like killing him. (recall: psychopathic killer from Scream)

Response 1 is obviously more valid than Response 2. But Response 2, no matter how unjustified, still makes a person feel less awful than Response 3, doesn’t it?

So, the next time you get angry when I come up with reasons for whatever I do, wonder what it would be like if I provided no reason at all. Then you’ll have REASON to thank me ☺

the road accidents

today's a sad day. i drove past 2 accidents and got sort of involved in one.

have you seen a trailer overturned on a van, blocking all 4 lanes of the PIE? we had to use the road shoulder cos everywhere else was blocked off by the massive trailer. and some clowns parked on the road shoulder, got out of their vehicles and started snapping pictures, adding to the congestion.

- you can't see the van cos it's crushed -

4 hours later, i saw a pile up involving 2 taxis and a private vehicle. i know i shouldn't have, but i smiled when i saw the taxis. (my dislike is not directed at anyone in particular. pls don't take offense)

1 hour later, i was listening to '4 mins' blasting through the car stereo and couldn't respond in time to the taxi that braked suddenly infront of me. (now u know y i smiled). for such an impact, i'm surprised there were no damages. i'll know for sure on monday.

the Omen

Today, at the credit market crisis talk, I asked the JP Morgan Director guy a question. He responded vaguely and concluded by saying that the question was a difficult one indeed. I'm not sure if he meant that I had asked a good one, or a useless one. I have a bad feeling it's the latter. Why can't people be less tactful? It saves everyone the trouble of guessing.

Today, i ate at a hawker center after a very, very long time. No, I'm not a perpetual patron of restaurants. I think it has more to do with me eating only one meal a day. I wake up too late to have breakfast. And I'm (acting) busy during lunch time. The drink auntie refused us beer cos she thought we were underaged. Hmmmm...

We watched the Omen today. I think I would be really happy if my kid turned out to be the anti-Christ and I had to kill him. I'd feel all-important with the fate of the world lying solely in my hands. The Omen kid's hair is like mine (see below). If he squinted a little more, his eyes would look like mine too.


I think I am not fated to quit alcohol. I received a bottle of Baileys Mint Chocolate from a cuzzin today. Apparently, I had asked him to buy it for me a loooong time ago. Thank you MAN! :P

This term sux. If I don't make it to Dean's List, I'll go down 5 pints of beer at a go. That might make me happy.

the play

Hats off to the ACSian Theatre for the incomparably entertaining production of Pride and Prejudice. I was totally blown away by the acting, dancing, unintentional dirty dancing, almost-kissing scenes, mushy dialogue and fake English accents. Only regret is that they disallowed picture-taking due to copyright issues.

I realised that the Balcony has a jacuzzi in the middle of the bar. not sure how i missed that before. wonder if they allow people in.

my tuition kid wants more lessons. =) woo hoo!

the rich offices

The Bloomberg office is SINFUL. Half the office is the pantry. And everything's so white and minimalist.

The AXA Wealth Management office houses RICH people. The director's target annual commission is $7m. @#%$@%$. We discussed P/E ratios extensively. Something I knew almost zilch about.

Oosh is freakin' awesome, if you have a car.

- i know how to use double-headed financial terminals -

the image consultant

today the image consultant from FT said that ... (ok, brace yourselves)... i have nice big eyes and should showcase them more often (yes, i also had that bewildered look). she also said my hair's a huge improvement from 2 weeks ago. i'm glad all that money didn't go to waste.

today, i paid TEN freakin' bucks on parking alone.

i abit poor now.

the hypocrisy of the church

boring post... skip it if you're not in the mood for serious debate, or if you're not the least bothered with my religion and beliefs:

"Why is it that a community that talks so much about supernatural transformation shows so little of that transformation? We will have to be men and women who embody the message that we are preaching, whose lives are faithful to the claims we are making" - Dr Ravi Zacharias (2000)

Hypocrisy in the church has stymied many from embracing the faith. it has left many former church-goers in disgust and has been the cause for the intense disdain directed at the church. The sooner that we realize that we are a fallen creation, the better. Then, we'll stop pretending that we're better than the rest, that we know it all, that we're oh-so-holy. Because we're not. No one is. And anyone who thinks he is, is pretending that he is. And that person is the building block of hypocrisy in the church.

So how do we react in this light? Simple. We stop judging. Stop judging and start accepting. Spread the love! Don't accept people on our own terms, cos those are subjective. Accept each other on theirs. Distance yourself if you're not too comfortable with anyone's belief system. But don't judge. You never know when you'll be at the receiving end. Embrace a liar, cheat, alcoholic, gambling addict, prostitute (not in that sense) or even a Republican.

We need to understand that it is unfair to impose our restrictions and expectations on people that have considerably different sets of values and experiences than ours. The unfamiliar is not necessarily sin. We must be flexible and relevant enough to think through trends and objectively decide if they are harmless or not. Misquoting and misinterpreting scripture is not the solution. Understanding and empathy are. Our preferences don’t matter here.

And if you can''t do that... you'll find that archaic world of yours slowing drifting into the realms of irrelevance and obsolescence. But that's alright. I accept you.

I challenge you to challenge me.

Moving on...

I love booze parties. Concoctions of gin, vodka, tequila and lime are heavenly. I shall strive to set up my Wii console by the end of the week. The owner of Attica is Indian.

La perra

how do u define a bitch? i used to think a bitch had to be hot. i realise tt's not true. yes, there are some bitches who are undeniably hot. but usually, they're not. their stinking attitudes vaporise what little good they have. appropriate definitions of bitches (they aren't mine, so don't come after me if you get offended):

1. A person who cares nothing for anyone else
2. An annoying and whiney person
3. A person who uses you for your money
4. A person with a bad attitude
5. A person who for one reason or another deserves a good bitch-slap
6. A person who sleeps around
7. A feminist
8. A domineering, spiteful person
9. A miserable person who sucks all joy and happiness out of life, and makes life a little less worth living by his/her consistently shitty attitude.
10. A person who is either narcissistic or borderline narcisisstic
11. A person who is incapable of a long term relationship due to selfishness
12. A very manipulative person who will try to do anything in his/her power to bring down your self esteem and make your life miserable.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

the drunkard

at this rate, i think i'll be able to club everyday, with spare cash for my golf clubs.

Prof Sundaram Janakiramanan actually smiled at me today. he SMILED. he's not too bad I guess. very much like a stern grandfather who seems to know what the whole world is about. like Frank Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond (he's been dead for a year and a half, by the way).

i called the cops on an intoxicated idiot late last night. he was traumatizing the poor guards at 2am: ransacking the whole guardhouse, almost breaking the windows, flinging the dustbin around. he even frightened one guard who ran a whole circle around the guardhouse to escape his clutches.

note to self: strike only when you've gotten the iron red hot!

some thieves are real unlucky. there must be a god... (courtesy of Reuters)

"BERLIN (Reuters) - Three days after stealing a rare collection of coins, a thief in Germany took them to the bank for safe keeping -- and delivered them into the hands of the man he had robbed. "I don't think the thief was expecting that," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Dortmund on Tuesday. Soon after the thief made the deposit, a bank worker handling the coins recognized them as the set worth some 50,000 euros ($80,000) that had been stolen from his house. Police tracked down the 36-year-old suspect and arrested him, securing a haul of other stolen goods in the process."

the spam email and buglary

i received this email yesterday:

"Hello! I am bored this afternoon. I am nice girl that would like to chat with you. Email me at Linnea@vbtut.com only, because I am using my friend's email to write this. I want to show you some pictures."

I receive shit like this all the time. but this time, I decided to read it. And I conclude that anyone who actually believes and responds to the email deserves to get his account hacked into for being so dumb.

I hate burglars. First, they burgle your house. Then, they leave a mess. Then, they display their voyeuristic tendencies and watch you sleep. how freaky is that. wth. we get so pissed off when someone doesn't move fast enough on the train, or tailgates you when you're driving. Imagine what hatred one would have for a burglar. he intrudes into your privacy, absconds with what is yours, messes up your space. and doesn't apologise for the inconvenience.

burglars deserve the noose, or the chair, or poison. or.. CASTRATION. seriously. nothing less.

the matrimonial site

"In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose --- what we want most to be, we are" - Dr Henry Jekyll

You'd be surprised with the kind of girls they have on Indian matrimonial sites. I was really quite impressed. You get to sieve according to skin tone, religion, education level, occupation etc.

i'm beginning to like fancy sushi now.

the mugging marathon

note to self: do not cover open wound with tissue and accidentally leave to dry.

ok. back to mugging....

the non-existent internship

i'm internshipless. applied to 16 banks/investment banks/asset mgt companies already. and 4 rejections so far. awaiting more rejections.

UBS - rejected
Barclays - rejected
RBS - rejected
GIC - rejected
Citibank
DBS Vickers
Bloomberg LLP
Temasek Holdings
Goldman Sachs
Societe Generale
BNP Paribas
Deutsche
Abacus Capital
AXA
Crosby Capital - applied today
ABN AMRO - applied today

i don't get it. i didn't send in a photo. so my druggie eyes couldn't have scared them away.

38 chapters. 6 days to go.

- i like cute babies that stare -

the interview

i was 3 minutes late for the interview this morning. i woke up at 7am for a 9.55am interview, left the house at 9am (don't ask), and insisted on taking a bus instead of the train even though i knew it would take 20mins longer cos i didn't want to walk to the station in a suit. and so i finally arrived at 9.58am, after running like mad into the building. i emailed the professor to inform him that my lateness was because i was stuck at CCK MRT, where the poor guy fell onto the train track and caused the 1 hr delay. hope the prof buys tt. i hope he doesn't find out that i live in jurong and have no reason to be in CCK on a Monday morning.

My friend was asked the question "what do you read?" during his interview. his single-worded reply was......"textbooks". he said he wanted his answer to stand out. at least he wasn't LATE.

The Delifrance waitress got our orders wrong. gave me spaghetti instead of fusilli. gave my friend chicken lasagna instead of beef bolognese. gave this rude European bitch toasted instead of plain bread. and she didn't know how to read French. but i forgive her cos her name's Dinesha. awesome name.

i ran in the rain just to meet Manora for a single minute so that she could see me in my suit. Colin asked me why I've never done that for him.

i almost went to the gym today.

-some day, one day -

- praveen didn't know that he was pouring chilli paste on an upturned container -

theology of hope

The theology of hope postulates that the future is more important than the past. The present is merely an instrument to realize the future. But doesn't the future become the past as time passes? So where do we place our hope? Are we to expected to constantly re-orientate our hope as and when the future becomes the present? Isn't there something constant we can project our hope towards? I guess from a secular perspective there isn't. We constantly hope for things to work out, for things to get better. Hope isn't tagged to an absolute event. Hope is always in relation to the future. And that's why it's so great! Hope can never go wrong. Because it can never be proven wrong. Because it hasn't happened yet. That's why hope works. That's why we all have hope. That's why hope is able to keep us going.

This concept of infallible hope makes me wonder: does hope have any inherent value, other than the value that we ascribe to it? The American housing bubble right now, the high-tech bubble in 2001. The inflated value couldn't be sustained indefinitely and eventually the bubbles burst. And chaos ensued. What if hope is indeed overrated. And people suddenly stop having hope. And we live in and for the now. Only the now. The implications are quite scary.

Moving on...

I almost bought berms that looked like boxers today. Thank God I tried them on first.

Depot Road has a hawker centre with a wine cellar. And why this had to happen only after I stopped working at DTT B, i don't know.

I have an interview assignment tmr and one of the questions could be to identify my weakness. But I can't think of any. :) :(

- i like clingy babies -

my first public post

er.. ok.. BOO! enjoy your stay.. whoever's stalking me...

I bought a $260 smoke-colored black label stripe suit yesterday. and ironically, tt's made me feel richer.

School's a bitch. Presentation sucked today. Japanese professors can look real scary even when all they're doing is staring at you with those slit-like excuse for eyes. And that can make you forget your whole speech and sound like a douche bag. oh well... Deans List will always be so near and yet so far.

Mrs Gump was right. life's a box of chocolates. you never know what you're gonna get. i love surprises. in more ways than one.

I almost misspelt "succumb" during English tuition. i was the tutor.

and.. Sudha and Lina.. i'll be waiting for you guys and the rest to wreck havoc on Wednesday. i miss my alcohol bad.

i wish i were bald. Ben Bernanke doesn't look too bad.