Guess its time for an update again, the last time being more than two months back when I caught that big toman..

Anyway, even though I am still actively fishing every week, I haven't had much luck recently, just a small soon hock caught on dead prawn, which was so skinny I had to put it back.

But well, I'm not going to bore anyone here today with my so far unsuccessful fishing exploits. Instead, I'm going to bore you with something else. Exams.

If I recall correctly, the last written academic exam I took was more than 3 years ago, and as many know, I am studying again after some years, and today, I just took my first exam, which is consumer behaviour. Even though I have done this before in year 2 during poly times, this time round, its much more chim...I don't recall how the exam was structured back then, but I can confirm now at degree level, its much harder..even though the concepts and theory are similar to some extent..its just much harder to score.

Today's was quite bad..I didn't manage to finish writing my 2 hr paper, even though I had prepared sufficiently and knew all my stuff rock solid. Got to put it down to bad time management I guess; spent 1 hr 35 min on the first question alone and had to make a mad rush to write the 2nd question in the remaining 25 min, of which I only managed to answer about slightly more than one thirds. To top it off, I ran out of paper at the 1 hr 57 min mark but decided not to ask for more to write my remaining stuff since it would probably take about 2 min for the invigilator to travel across the huge exam hall and pass me another booklet, after which, I would only have less than a minute to do anything, which wouldn't really count for a damn. shit....

And hence, I handed in my paper resignedly and waited to go off. My coursemate sitting in front of me had to turn around all giggly and stuff, and looking at my defeated face, utter "Ooooh! I like that look on your face!", to which I only muttered, "Say that again, I'll punch your face in." and she immediately shut up. Whew..at least that didn't go any worse.

DAMN! This is maybe the first time I have such a shit feeling taking exams, and this paper was supposed to be my most confident one. Feeling shittier than ever now that I think about the next two, which are way harder. NB...

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As most of you might not have known, I actually am quite into fishing, or angling, as some might call it. However, even though I have a circle of friends who fish too, none of them so far have been willing to spare some time to spend on teaching me the basic techniques.

Until abt a month ago, before which, huan and myself had been going to the rocks at our nearby reservoir to catch lobsters, and mostly our technique and equipment were so down pat that we never failed to come back with at least 20 or so of the critters after a couple hrs work. Mostly, we released them back afterwards, only twice, we each took back the night's catch to eat..and anyway, they didn't taste that good after all, being freshwater variety.

But enough abt that, getting back to my main topic..after we got sick of catching lobsters, huan suggested that we go fishing instead, as our local reservoir/ jetty area is actually teeming with lots of freshwater species, the most common being the giant snakehead, or toman as some call it, but mostly just known as siam rui among locals.

Since I only knew peanuts abt fishing, huan agreed to teach me the basic stuff, together with another kaki of ours, alvin, who is also quite experienced in the sport, but not so much as huan.

And so, I started learning the art of angling tomans, and after 3 weekends of empty-handed expeditions, I finally caught my first toman ytd evening at ard 7pm at the local reservoir. Not only that, it was quite a monster of a fish, weighing in at 7 plus kilograms.

Damn, was I happy, my first fish, and its such a huge one. Really sibei song, the feeling of successfully hooking and landing it. Bugger put up one hell of a fight, but I persisted, holding on to my rod as though my life were on it, and in the end, of course I won, haha.

However, for all its notoriety that I heard about from friends who fish, I dont feel that the toman is really tt great a fighter. strong yes, but it gave up quite fast actually, less than 10 mins after it snapped on my popper and started pulling away, with me on the other end fighting to reel it in, and it was landed. Yet its so strong that, at times, my rod was almost a full 'C' shape when it dived in deep into the aqua vegetation, heng the rod never snap.

Would not have landed it so smoothly though, without the help of the 2 thai guys and their big ass net. These 2 guys were there at our secret spot even earlier than us, and had a temporary shelter up and five rods stationed there, using a mixture of raw liver and live catfish (favourite food of toman), and they had also landed two monstrous tomans ard 6 kgs each before I got mine. Since we readily helped them hold down the fish while they removed the hook, my guess is they were more than happy to help me with the monster that I landed.

Guess what, we even took photos of both their catch and my own also, but won't post them here la, too much hassle of uploading and linking and all tt nonsense.. Those of you who want to see can just go to my facebook acc.

Anyway, huge as the fish that were caught ytd, they were definitely not the biggest, as toman are known to be able to grow up to 30kgs, able to snap up a mid-sized dog or even a small child in one swoop. But ttz the stuff of urban legends la, I've never seen such a huge toman before, and dont think I ever will, unless I'm damn lucky. And even if I do see it some day, I also won't venture to catch it, cos its definitely too damn big for me or anyone I know to handle.

For now, I'll just be content with my first catch, and I foresee that I will be making many more trips ard places to fish for not just toman but all other types of fishes as I get more and more experienced. Haha, guess I'm just sorta hooked on fishing liao.

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This is fucking ridiculous! After all the preparations I made for so long just for today, this had to happen. Time now is 0730 hrs on Sunday morning, 24 August 08, and rightfully speaking, I shld be somewhere along the marina bay area, or east coast parkway, halfway thru my 21km. but instead i'm sitting at home, blogging. ALL BECAUSE I FUCKING OVERSLEPT!!

seriously, i have no idea how i could have even overslpt. because after my 15km passion run in june, in which i only slpt 1 hr and end up running a crappy timing, i realised the importance of slping enough the night before.

thus, for today's ahm, i actually went and conditioned myself by sleeping early the last few days, and waking up early, just so i could go to slp early on saturday nite and wake up on time to make it to the run fresh and energised.

end up i still overslpt! wtf sia... there's no one to blame really, except maybe myself, but even so, i still have no idea why i could overslp at all! i mean i went to slp at 9pm on saturday nite, but couldn't get any slp in, and so i tossed and turned ard until i finally slpt at ard 12 mn, woke up shortly after 3am, went back to bed, deciding to wake up as per the alarm i set at 430am, but when i actually woke up, it was ald 630am, when my race category had just flagged off..

really, i am sibei tulan now, but dunno who to tulan at also, since there's really no one at fault here. i guess the only thing to do now is to wait for standard chartered marathon at the end of the year, of which i will only take part for the 21km cat and not the full marathon. cos there's no way i can do a full marathon without even first doing a half. fucking sian...

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looks like i've been neglecting this space again. and for quite a while i guess. but doesnt matter la, since i doubt anyone is really interested in my boring life anyway. but still, here's an update, just in case there are the kindred few out there wondering whether i've vanished off the face of the earth or anything.

first things first..after nearly 3 and a half years, i'm finally in school again! yep. i've recently just started my part time degree at MDIS dhoby ghaut campus, doing a overseas program from Bradford University of the UK. And I'm doing marketing once again, even tho i've got zero creative juice inside me to really make it as a marketeer or creative director or anything of tt sort.

nvm, its the shortest path to a degree for me, since the school actually waived me for the first year based on my diploma, thus making my course only 2 years instead of the usual 3. and best of all, my company is sponsoring my course fees! but tt also means i've got to work extra hard to make sure i score good grades, cos if i fail, my company won't pay for any extra fees incurred in repeat terms or sup papers.

now, not to say tt i want to make things sound bad, but either its i too long nv touch any academic stuff and somehow lost track, or tt im really slower compared to the rest of the class who advanced from year 1...cos somehow, its only been two weeks since i started, and i've ald begun to feel lost. not so much for the first module, consumer behaviour, as i ald touched on the stuff in back in poly, and its more or less the same, albeit a little more chim at the degree level only..but very much so for my second module, organizational design/ theory..which i totally liat bo kiu, or rather "catch no ball" as some singaporeans will say.

now, i actually made it a point to revise my lecture material every weekend so that i wont have to last min cheong everything during exam time.. but so far, i've only managed to do it for the first week, after which, im either too occupied with other stuff, or im just plain lazy and keep making excuses for myself. shit.

to top it all off, the lecturer for my OD module seems to think tt i'll be able to do very well for the module, being from poly and all..as he got this thinking tt students with poly dips are of way better std than those get from private institutions one. problem being, he has no idea i scored like crap for my GPA, which to date, i haven't seriously gone and calculated at all, just roughly estimated it to be at the 1.5 range or sthing worse. lol..

alrite, nuff said abt sch, think the more i gripe, the shittier im going to make myself feel, better go and review my lecture stuff now instead of wasting any more time..

till the next time den.

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ytd, for the first time ever i ran in a distance running event ~ the 100plus saucony passion run. and it was quite an experience i got to say.

although it was only 15km, and i clocked a disappointingly lousy timing of 1hr 39 mins for such a short distance, the feeling of finally finishing was still quite great. well, at least i finally ran in some sort of running event. hah.

anyway, to start off, we got there late. cos of fatass la..tell him to meet 0615 to take cab there since our wave flag off at 7am sharp..he fucking wake up at 0615 and take his own sweet time showering and changing, coming down only at 635. heng wei jian's father drove us there. if not we would not even be able to reach by the time our wave flag off. worse thing is, fatass still thinks he did nothing wrong. wtf..

when we finally got to ecp carpark e2, we decided to slow jog over to the start line..and just then.. we heard the counting down followed by the blast of the horn signalling the start of the race. well, kan cheong now as we were, we just cheonged over to the baggage deposit area and dumped our stuff and started running towards the start line..and by then it had ald started for 3 mins liao.

so well, after we settled into our individual comfortable pace, we just started running as per normal, treating it like a normal training run, just with a hell lot more ppl involved. haha. at first, i was running quite briskly, overtaking alot of ppl, until i saw the 3km sign board..i was like, WTF??!! i've been running for quite a while now and its only 3km?!! after which, the signboard for every kilometre seem to come slower and slower, and i got so sian i just slowed down and ran slowly, taking in the sights and sounds rather than concentrating on finishing with my initial aim of 1 hr 20 mins. by the time i hit 10km..i was abt 7 to 8 mins slower than my usual 10km timing... and at this point..i started feeling even more sian for some strange reason..and thus..needless to say..i finished with my lousy timing of 1 hr 39 min in the end.

finished the run, collected the finisher medal and goody bag (more like trash bag!) since it contained nth but stupid flyers and pamphlets from those companies involved in the organization of the race..commercial crap telling u to go buy this product/ service or the other.. a sport visor and no finisher tee.. unlike what was stated on the race kit package and website. and when we enquired abt it the information desk, the bloody woman had the cheek to be quai lan to us by saying, " what u expect for 18 dollars?" certainly not this bag of trash that i got with me right now! i wanted to retort back, but decided not to argue since we were both tired.

fatass wanted to wait and see whether we would tio the lucky draw, but end up we didn't and wasted 2 hrs at the tentage just being bored and tired. i had only slept an hr on saturday night, before i got up for the run on sunday.. and thus it was even more tiring.

by the time they finally got to the first prize and we realized we were not getting any..we got up and started another 1hr route march to the end of ecp, to where the former big splash was..got there even more tired, what else..but it was totally worth it..had carl's junior until we were filled to the brim..finished lunch and finally we got on a cab to home sweet home.

although ytd's run was quite a disappointment..it was still a good experience i think. personally, i realized my lousy performance was due to lack of trg and sufficient rest.. since i hadn't been slping well the entire week and was also lazy to train in the 3 weeks preceding the event. but not anymore.. for the next event, the army half marathon.. im gg to make sure i train sufficiently and slp well the previous night, so that i might achieve my goal of finishing it in under 2hrs.

ttz all for now.

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cant really think of a title for this entry, so i think i'll just stick with an 'update' haha.

anyway, even thou i said earlier on that i would upload pictures of my thailand trip last month, my nua-ness has managed to get the better of me and i just kept putting it off until i finally decided not to do it since there weren't so many pictures to start with anyway.

well, 3 weeks has past since i came back to singapore, and in that time, some changes have occurred at work. firstly, i no longer sit back at the logistics section of my office; i've officially moved up to the front office to a workstation that is right opposite my boss, of all people!

and i now no longer deal solely with logistics/ inventory and the occasional technical issue that may come up..i am starting to learn the ropes of sales and running the local market from my senior colleagues.

this is mainly because while in thailand, my boss fired one of the guys there, and he decided not to hire any more thais to run the local office there as the previous ones in the past few years have all fucked up one way or another. thus, he is now sending my senior who is singaporean but half thai (he was born thai anyway) up to thailand fortnightly to manage the stuff up there. so, whenever he's not ard, i have to start taking charge of his business here in the singapore market/ i.e. liaise with his dealers, make presentations and stuff/ send biz quotations blah blah blah and basically just abt everything on his scope.

and thus, today started my new challenge of manning the fort when he's not ard since he just left for bangkok this morning and won't be back until saturday.

and well, i'll say it was quite challenging but still not that bad la..suddenly, phone calls started coming in directed to me!(seems like he had informed his local dealers to look for me during this week of his absence) and initially i had no grasp of what's happening..i jumped here and there looking for his files on pricelists and specs and what nots and kept referring to my product manuals in order to solve the enquiries coming in.

but hey, in the end, i managed just fine and i can say it was a good start to my baptism by fire, if i may even call it that.

i believe tmr and the days that follow will get even more challenging for me but thats ok cause with greater power, comes greater responsibility and now that im starting to be in the hot seat, it kind of feels right even though i am constantly being bombarded by calls and emails and enquiries and the like. i actually feel that i am doing something fulfilling ever since i joined geberit 1 year ago.

so keep them coming! the challenges i mean, and i will give my best to overcome everything in the way until i can one day be given the responsibility of handling a sales market/ region of my own. lol

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