15th December 04 - 20th July 08



My camera was forced to retire early due to my carelessness yesterday at East Coast. Whatever happened to the meticulous me ? Sigh. This is only the second time in my life so far that I lost such an important and personal belonging. The first time was my Nokia 7210 which I misplaced it on the bus on the way to school years ago. I remembered I was so pissed because I called back my number and somebody picked it up but had no balls to say a word. Subsequently , the phone was turned off after I tried calling several times. This time round , I accepted the bad news with surprising equanimity. It is impossible to retrieve my lithium battery because its in the deep waters now. Maybe is a sign that I should change a new camera , which I did , using the same amount of money which I bought my Minolta 3.2 mega-pixels 4 years ago to a new Lumix 10 mega-pixels. However , I will still keep my Minolta. Afterall , this is the first digital camera I bought for myself using part of my Cold Storage salary back then and it has sentimental values. This amount of money was actually intended to buy a PSP Slim to reward myself but I guess this idea has to be aborted. For the next few weeks or so I am going to cut down on extra spendings --- no duck thigh rice , no bubble teas , no western food etc so as to assuage my heartache over my dwindling numbers in bank. However , outings with friends still goes on. I can save on myself but I don't mind spending on stuffs with the company of others , particularly with those whom matters.

Goodbye baby , thank you for all the beautiful memories.

And so arts camp is over. It was quite fun , all the cheers , dances and games with a lot of energizer bunnies around. I admire some who display uninhibited zest and enthusiasm but I ain't no energizer bunny. Fortunately , my voice was not hoarse after the 5-days camp. I still have my students to think about and of course , my money. Voice is my tool in earning money.

It's back to the usual routine of work and tuition. This is going to be my last month at Toshiba after a stint of about 5 months --- my longest temp job to date. I am unashamed to say that I won't miss the place. However , I do learn new stuffs and experiences from this job such as road directions (some places I totally have not heard of before now came to be known) , seeing various types of customers (something not entirely new and shocking) , different types of components and parts in a LCD TV and their home decorations (probably inspire some ideas for my own future home deco). The environment in which one is working in is vital in affecting his/her work productivity. So far the colleagues I met are generally nice except for the technician I am attached to who gave me attitude initially. Fortunately , he has since changed for the better. Anyway , this is probably going to be the last phase of my life that I am doing miscellaneous temp jobs , considering now that I am going to embark on my undergraduate life soon. Adjustments to priorities in life are needed. Besides studies , tuition will still go on. I hope to increase my current number of students to at least 4 and my income will be solely based from tuition. In the past , I thought of probably juggling studies , tuition and work part-time as a server in restaurants or cafes but now I decided against it. Partly because after a forgettable experience from my very first job as a kitchen helper and server in a Hakka cuisine shop years ago , I found that I really dislike serving and cleaning up after customers. Also , I foresee that my time will be dedicated to studies , tuition , activities in school(most probably from CCA , but less demanding type) , outings with friends and possibly some self-enrichment classes to improve myself. However , during my holidays or free-time , I will still do temp jobs , but probably doing events/roadshows or an office job. Out of the various temp jobs I did before , I still love promoting stuffs the best. The best memories were the days in Jelita Cold Storage promoting Christmas products and at SAFRA roadshows , especially the latter. Self-motivation was what encapsulated the whole philosophy of the team in going all out to rope in as many people as possible. The spirit was deafening. It may seem intriguing to people because Andrew is never known to be the most outgoing and chatty person around. The irony fact is that I like to engage and interact with people to find out more about their thoughts and feelings on various issues. Convincing people is also a form of art and a sense of fulfilment is there when customers come up to me and told me that the reason they buy the products is because of my sincerity. Not everything in the world is tagged with a monetary value. Sometimes , what we are lacking of is a human touch ---- a simple and personal gesture that is increasingly found to be sorely lacking in our rapidly advancing world these days.