Friday, December 31, 2021
2021 turns out to be worse than 2020
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Journey to the moon
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Another COVID Christmas
Lucky I have the Santa hat hahaha... |
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Christmas in the air
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Catholic200SG
I actually received 2 shirts and 2 masks since my first two duties were on consecutive days |
The progress of things when I left on Wednesday |
The handout to prepare for the confession |
At the entrance which is shaped like the Bible |
This is only 2/3 of the exhibit as there was not enough space to distance myself from the exhibit to take the whole length |
Wednesday, December 1, 2021
Omicron
Sunday, November 14, 2021
Games and Gym
Saturday, November 13, 2021
Bag hunt
Saturday, November 6, 2021
1-hr confession
Thursday, November 4, 2021
Weak!
The sugar and salt withdrawal is making me very moody. So far I have managed to restraint from getting the bottled drinks in the supermarket but I succumbed to less than $2 potato chips. The last few I bought were beer-flavoured Lays. I promised no more after the two packs I bought today. Since today is a public holiday, I decided to relax and ordered food delivery for dinner. Haiz.. At least I made use of the $1 delivery fee and hopefully this will remove all thoughts for food delivery for the rest of the month.
I ordered from Nummun Thai Kitchen because I was tempted with pork sausage. It is quite pricy ($9 for 10 pcs) but it is not something available from the other Thai food places I usually order so I did not mind. Afraid that I would not be full, I added tom yum fried rice ($9) which I regretted. I don't eat prawn and the only topping with the fried rice is 2 medium-sized prawn that required peeling. So for me it was $9 just to eat the rice. I think of it as paying for curiosity and I will not be tempted to order from here again. Anyway I have a nearer Thai restaurant which is cheaper and can be even cheaper when I use Grab self-pick up codes.
Food-aside, I am also feeling so busted with my Genshin Impact. I saved for 1.5 months and went broke on Tuesday for a Qiqi and Staff of Homa. It took me 120 pulls to get one Elegy for the End and Staff of Homa which I should be grateful of since it could have been worse. Surprisingly, I only got one Sacrificial Sword. I am not too upset with C1 Qiqi since I am more of a husbando than a waifu collector. Thus I am not really into Hu Tao and I do not mind a guaranteed pity for Itto on next patch. Of course I would be happier if I got Diluc. It has been more than a year and I still do not have him. I am quite lucky to get C3 and now I have to suppress my aim to get C4 as that may break my pity. Somehow I am always one short of the good constellation as I am also at C3 Yanfei and I restrained myself in the last banner. I am still having fun with the game. It is just a heartache seeing all my savings went to zero.
I doubt I will ever 'save' until this much again as the next few patches will have characters I am interested in |
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Halloween
Thursday, October 28, 2021
Nearly 2 decades
Sunday, October 10, 2021
Man cave cleaning
Monday, October 4, 2021
Da...zzz...ed
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Things will get better
Looking back at this post from last year, the pattern is clearer now. Storm will always come during the period when I have to prepare my faith story. In the past two weeks, I felt that all the low points in my life which made me upset at God in the past resurfaced again. I am fed up with my family quarreling over household things like food and cleaning house while I am homeless here. I am also sick with helping my landlady every time she falls down. For goodness sake, I am not her personal caregiver. She falls down more frequently and yet does not do anything differently to avoid falling. Some colleagues were irritating last week and I had to keep telling myself not to get too emotional as it was just a heat of the moment. I stopped my regular bottled coffee/tea/mocha for a few months and it makes my body very sensitive to caffeine. Last week I bought 2 bottles for fun and on the two different days when I drank them, I had difficulty sleeping. The improper sleep contributed to my constantly irritated self as well.
The peak was yesterday. I deliberately logged in earlier just in case my office laptop would update something and lag. Everything was fine until when praise and worship began and the laptop decided to update. I had to install and use Zoom using my phone again like last year. Luckily the laptop managed to settle down and I did the faith story using the laptop. Fiuh.. with this over now, these disruptions should stop. That is why only today that I feel calmer and more willing to blog something. I also just completed praying the Rosary and the Chaplet of Saint Michael. Today is the feast day of Sts Michael, Gabriel and Raphael the Archangels which is the reason for me to pray the Chaplet on top of the Rosary today. When I just bought the chaplet last year, I intended on praying both daily but obviously I am not driven enough to do that. So thank God for allowing me to have a good state of mind to pray both prayers tonight.
With the month coming to an end, my money woes ends too. I am unnecessarily stressed trying to hit $500 spending without going 'overbudget' for my meals as I am worried about my weight and without spending on unnecessary things too. I am glad for September, I am comfortably under $200 for meals. Sadly, it is difficult to go under 60kg. I was so happy last week to hit 60kg again but I am at 61kg again today. Bleah... I guess that is a motivation for me to decide on extending my gym membership so that is $3060 down the drain. No thanks to all this vaccination discrimination, it stops me from going to gym and makes me lazy to do home exercises to.
Friday, September 10, 2021
Emotional
I usually blog after donating blood as reminder in case I forget when I am due for the next donation. That means I was supposed to write on last Saturday but I have been lazy and spending too much time with Genshin Impact. I arrived slightly before 10am and I was already the 8th person in the queue. Wew... Lucky for me that there were some first timers among those who arrived before me so they took more time with their forms and I managed to 'cut' queue. I went to Donki to get lunch and decided to skip the usual sushi to try their chashu don. I would say it is cheaper and more worth than the usual tray of salmon sushi. Hehe..
Miraculously I managed to hit 60kg for the first time this week. Ironically, this week happened to be my junkiest week. I finished 6 bags of Kettle potato chips this week. Last week I saw ongoing buy 2 get 1 free promotion (i.e. $9.90 for 3 bags) and I bought one on both Saturday and Sunday. I promise that I will no longer buy potato chips for the rest of the month and I am able to keep up with my promise so far. At least today I was not tempted to buy despite seeing the promotion is still ongoing.
I also lost my cool with work today. When shit happens, my boss will often ask me to settle the shit as I try to be helpful. I know usually others will lose cool and complain to my boss and although sometimes the reason is unreasonable, my boss just wants to help the complainer and asks me to look into the stuff. Hence I come the rubbish bin. I am tired and sick of it and I am not going to be a good guy like last year to just settle all the shit.
Today I snapped because someone who is resigning also mentions that she is overworking herself. The main reason for her to leave is basically the pay and this 'overworking' is not really the matter. The worst part is that she is overworking herself and it is not a problem with the workload to begin with. That's why I refused when being asked about the task distribution. I am already very lenient with my deadlines to the point that I have to adjust my own work to accommodate others and I know that we are not overworking the team. That is why I refuse to even look at the weekly task distribution because the issue is not with the task but with the person. She is not asked to overwork and the deadline of the tasks is not urgent or demanding so it is her own decision and problem that she overworks. Do not make that into my problem!
Anyway this matter was already discussed since last week so I am already really pissed over it over the week. But it was going to pile on me if I did not defend myself today and that was why I lost my cool. Anyway I was not only defending myself but indirectly also my boss and the team lead. I want them to realise that this is not a problem caused by us/management. Our expectations are reasonable and does not require overtime or what. We also do not expect people to overwork. The problem is the person so we should address the person. Do not try to tweak the work as if the problem is with the work/management.
Perhaps the blessing in disguise from this is that I decided not to be a facilitator for the upcoming Landings run. I was asked last week and I had a hard time thinking about it. On one side, I felt that this was one way that God called me to contribute: there are few returnees in the younger age and I am one of the youngest so perhaps I can connect better if I am the facilitator. On the other side, I felt that I did not have anymore mental and emotional capacity to 'take care' of others anymore. I am already tired taking care of others at work. Thus as much as I wanted to help facilitating, I might end up doing disservice if I lose my cool subsequently. In the end, I decided to say no since I know my short-fused self very well.
My vaccine woe is finally ending and I just had my first Sinopharm dose this afternoon. I think my left will be sore tomorrow but at least I am 50% immune from discrimination now hehe.. The clinic I went to is located at Tanjong Pagar Plaza. Despite the name, I was surprised that this is actually an old shopping centre like in the 90s. I was expecting it to be some atas shopping mall since it is located in quite atas area.
The main drive for me to write this tonight is the overwhelming emotion from losing an aunt who is staying in New Zealand. I was still whatsapp-ing with her until last Thursday. I stopped because I ran out of topic. She was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer few months ago and recently she had been in hospital due to side effects from her first cycle of chemotherapy. Through my communication with her, I thought it was just normal GI side effects from the chemo and it would get better in time. It was really a shock when this Tuesday she was already transferred to a hospice. She just passed away a few hours ago.
I cried quite badly on Tuesday when I received the news as when I saw the photo, I knew it was just a matter of time. She is technically an outside relative as she is married to my uncle who is my mum's brother. Yet she is the most caring aunt because she notes down everyone's birthday: all my uncles and aunts and their spouses, my cousins and even their kids. When she came to Jakarta, she always brought everyone an individual gift. That really shows her love and care for all of us. Before the era of whatsapp, she wished me birthday through email and I still have those emails. She would even be asking about my sister who was not really using email then. Last year during my dad's passing, she was always eager to ask me for the livestream link of the all the masses.
As always, there is nothing I can do except to pray. I hope she is no longer in pain and is now in a better place with God in Heaven. If my dad can hear me, I hope he will also pray for her now to return the favour of her praying for him last year. I am also thankful to God that I still managed to message her last week and the week before that. Earlier this year, I decided to cut off all contacts and I did not even reply her birthday wish. Out of the blue my uncle messaged me two weeks ago. I was initially tempted to ignore since I did not know if my mum asked me to check on me. However, I heard about my aunt's cancer previously and hence I decided to reply my uncle. Surprisingly, my aunt messaged me the following day after hearing about me from my uncle. Today I just heard from my aunt who lives in the Netherlands that few weeks ago she was asked my aunt who passed away if she was able to contact me. T_T
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Gundam (Wing) fever
In another email today, there are new batch of Gundam Wing goods. Previously I bought the Tricolor set. Unlike previously when I was so eager to buy the moment I saw the merchandises, this time I was hesitant because of the monochrome white theme which I find boring.
Gundam Wing Night Oct 2019 |
Gundam Wing Gundam Cafe Tokyo Dinner Show Jan 2020 |
Gundam Wing Christmas 2020 |
Heero and Relena for New Year 2021 |
Gundam Wing Halloween 2021 |