10 June 2007.

Just within this weekend, I had attended parties for 2 friends that are leaving Shanghai for Singapore...

What can I say? Shanghai is truly a transitional city. People come and people go. Maybe that also makes it easier for everyone (especially the non locals) to mix around and get to know people. These two friends, I have only known them for like less than 3 months...but still I consider them friends because we have had lunches, dinners, parties etc together.

I'm going to switch to a new job very soon. After an agonizing week of deliberation, I decided that it is time for a change. Will I succeed? I have no idea. But I decided to take on even more risk now and see where that road will lead me to. Perhaps at the 5 year reunion for my INSEAD class, I will declare myself to be bankrupt...:)

Wolfowitz is guilty.

To be honest, I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this.

He works for the World Bank and am sure of the laws. So what could have led such things to happen?

1) he really thinks that he is ABOVE the law and could break the laws/rules and not be punished.
2) he is very dumb and didn't bother to cover his tracks. I'm sure we have watched so many cop-thief shows to know that we have to cover our tracks. I mean, even the lowest person in the government knows the importance of covering our tracks.
3) he really think that he did no wrong...Well, I applaud his bravery and wonder where his warped sense of right/wrong comes from. If you have read my post before about Paris Hilton, you will understand that I'm very concerned over this right/wrong thing that pervades our society this days. What I would say as "relativity"...we are all wrong and right, all depends on which perspective we are looking from.
4) and of coz, just for fairness sake, he did not commit any wrongdoing (but the World Bank seemed to refute this suggestion).

Well, for one, I'm glad that such people are caught and punished.
But I'm not glad about the fact that there are such people in such institutions.

Okay, I can understand if there are corrupted people in private institutions and how they conduct insider trading. Let's face it, anyone that works in the financial institutions is well aware that insider trading happens all the time. It is just so hard to prove insider trading. If someone were to investigate all the suspicious activity, I doubt a year will be enough...

We are talking about the World Bank here, supposedly a non-profit organization...surely you would expect people of integrity to be present in the higher levels of the company. Then again, if you can have corrupted people working in some of country's government, then perhaps I should never be surprised...

There's this time about China and its well known great firewall. If you readers believe the bullshit about the non-existence of a firewall, think again.

I have not been able to access the homepage of my friends at blogware or xanga for like ages...

And guess what, time do pass you by...

My good friend Amy is engaged...woohoo!!! Her boyfriend finally proposed. See, how time do passes you by. Congratulations Amy!!!

Somebody need to do something about this firewall of China. Sure, I figured out ways to get around it and most people know that...but sometimes I feel so cut off from the world, without the readily access to all information. That's just China...

Anyway, this blog is dedicated to Amy. A lovely lady who always seemed to end up with the wrong guys...well, this time, she ended up with the right one. And I could still remember her telling that she was hesitant about dating the guy, some female instinct thing, I told her..."you have been trusting your instincts all this while and look where you end up...time to ignore your instincts this time"...

and this advice also goes to all you girls who always seemed to end up with the wrong guys, when the right guy comes along, do not trust your first instinct to reject the guy...give the guy a shot. :)

Paris Hilton...

Have been meaning to write about the recent Paris Hilton being sentenced to jail incident.
If people are reading and are going to be offended, then stop reading this and go somewhere else. This is purely my opinion.

My initial reaction upon reading about her being sentenced to jail was..."Good!!!".
But then I had to take a step back and try to rationalize my feelings and understand where they were coming from and whether they were justified.

So after much deliberation and thought, my reaction was still "Good!!! and more importantly, this is the right thing to do!".

And here are my reasons.

Though I'm very impressed with the recent support for her to be freed from her jailtime commitments, I find her reaction to her jail sentence very disturbing...

"What? But I told the truth.......", er, excuse me, regardless of whether you are telling the truth or not, you have to face up to the consequences of your actions.

In fact, I find it very disturbing that in this day and age, a lot of people do not face up to the consequences of their actions. Perhaps because they like to ignore it, because they believe that they can get away with it... I mean, if very obviously guilty criminals can get away with everything, what does it say for normal human beings that committed a small crime???

So, lets go into a hypothetical world now...supposed that Paris Hilton continued driving, without being caught and hit a person and killed that person. What's going to happen? Who's going to be responsible? How does one deal with that? The rationale for punishment is so as to prevent future worse crimes from happening, or even deter such behavior in the future...If going to jail for 45 days will teach her to NEVER drink while intoxicated, then I think that 45 days is justified. That's not to say that the whole ordeal has not drummed that into Paris' head.

Anyway, was just so disgusted with her reaction, implying that because she told the truth, she should be let off. Telling the truth is the right thing to do...unless in this world and age, nobody cares about the truth....................................

It has been a long while since the last post. For that matter, I'm seriously considering retiring this blog like what my other friends are doing. Maybe I'll just keep it and update it from time to time when I feel like it.

The main purpose of this blog at the time of creation, was to have a way of keeping track of my time while I was doing my job search. Now that I have a job, that purpose is gone and though I can use this to keep track of my life during job search, I feel like it is unethical to post details of meetings with random friends.

Weekday activities after work includes the following:
Playing mahjong. If you do not know how to play it, go look it up on the web.
Meeting random people for dinner.
Clubbing on the weekends.
Going for massage.
Exercising.

I have not even gotten around to moving beyond Shanghai, goes to show the extent of my activities with different groups of people.

However, what I have found to be an issue would be having activities with different groups that clashed on schedules. That's understandable as my group of friends expand into different circles. For that matter, just counting the Singaporeans alone, there are like 4 different groups that I'm aware of...There are potentially a dozen more groups that I'm not even aware of. Just those 4 groups can kill me based on activities alone. And it is never ever possible to get everyone together...because someone will hate someone else and would not like to go out with those people etc. Sigh...I would think that we are old and mature enough to put aside these childish feuds.

So I have been in my work for half a year now. What's there to update? My responsibilities have increased, sales, consulting, project management and even bits and pieces of HR. I'm enjoying certain aspects of it, while other parts could be a chore.

Winter was long...Spring was short (like 2 weeks) and now summer is upon me. Let's see what happens in the summer. It is going to be one HOT summer... ;)

Had a conversation with a friend over the weekend...and it just jolted me...

I had always known that I'm one of the more fortunate people in the world, being able to leave my home country of Singapore and head overseas for studies. Being able to experience life in different countries ...but I never truly fully appreciate the extent till I chatted with my friend.

My friend was someone from the countryside of China, one of those people that are poor. Her mum left her when she was young. She was raised by her grandma and not her father (probably busy working to earn some money). She only had secondary school level education. She did however have an older sister. When her grandma died, she left home since her dad didn't really want to take care of her. At that time, she was only 16/17. She had been travelling around, working odd jobs here and there. And that's her life ever since........

I cannot help but realize how fortunate I am...and in this melting pot of Shanghai, I'm guaranteed to meet people like her. What can I do about it? Can I do something about it? Sigh...

Felt compelled to write down something since the last post.
Now that things are almost to a routine, there's nothing much to update except to talk about random stuff that happens to me.

How about negotiation? I have been doing that since I joined this current company. I am in charge of the moving my company to a new location. The location has been picked. What's left was to settle the contract with the landlord and then with the fitting out companies. Man, this is real life experience.

As I am the "buyer", so they are much nicer to me and want to get my business. I have learned so much from talking with my colleagues on the various tactics that they have used in the past. In the end, I grew accustomed to using the good cop bad cop and "it's my boss' demands" to attempt to get my way with various clauses in the contracts. It has not really been smooth, there had been a lot of conversations back and forth without any headway. But in the end, everything was done........

Contracts had been signed. All's left was to make the wire transfer and I could get the new building....WRONG. The wire transfer would have to wait A WHILE. Just when I had promised the landlord and fitting out company that I could deliver on the wire transfer receipts, I had to go back on the promise. I felt very bad...and could only lament to my counterparty representative for the landlord. He felt the same way...at the end of the day, we are just doing our jobs for our bosses.

This whole process taught me a couple of lessons.

The "buyer" has a lot of leeway in getting what he wants.
I should have nailed down all the issues on the contract instead of going back and forth each time with my boss. It was just so hard and time consuming. Negotiation TAKES time. It never ever finishes within a deadline.
There are various tactics to use, learn and use whatever's comfortable for you.

It has been a month since my last update.

My life has gotten into a routine now. Working hours are good so far, wake up around 8.30am and then go to work by 9am. Leave work around 6-7pm.

Lunch, I will try to arrange with friends that are working in the same nearby area, preferably, a different person each time.

Dinner, I will also arrange to have dinner with friends. Also a different person each time. Despite this, there are still a lot of people that I will miss out. Sigh. This maintaining contact thing is a 24 hour job. :)

On friday nights, I will meet up with a bunch of Singaporeans for dinner. After that, I will meet up with another bunch of Singaporeans. That group usually go to clubs, so I will go there too, just so that I can meet up with all of them at one shot.

Saturday, I leave it up to myself to arrange lunch/dinner with other friends.

Sunday, it is church time. Today, I bumped into a few more Singaporeans that are Christians. How nice. Now I can start to have a regular church going crowd. Helps to keep one another accountable too.

Once a week, I will also frequent a massage place. The master is very good and can help to solve some of my back problems. At the same time, he has also become a good chatting companion, teaching me about working in Shanghai in general. So I'm very appreciative of that. As the massage is near my friend's place, I will also visit him either before or after the massage.

This coming weekend, I'll be in california, to deal with some administrative matters and also bring back some of my personal possessions.