Permission Granted

Permission granted. That sounds like a familiar phase. Reminds me of asking permission in secondary school to go to the toilet. Or even applying for an off day back in army.

Somehow, a lot of my friends like to schedule outings/meet-ups on friday night or weekends. This sort of creates complications for me. Friday is my "Dinner at in-laws" night so usually i'm not free. Saturday, also happens to be a "Go out with mom-in-law" day, which again leave me pretty much tied up. Sunday happens to be the day which i can have a bit of free time which i spend with my wife cleaning up our messy home. Occassionally, my folks will drop by and see? I'm not free again.

I know sometimes my friends felt that i'm scared of my wife and doesn't have my own life. Any outing requires ample notice and even sometimes when my wife said to go ahead, she can forget my schedule in an instant.

What I'm trying to say is that truthfully, i really do enjoy spending time with my in-laws. My mother-in-law works part-time and sometimes, listening to her complaint about her horrible workplace does help her release stress. I'm all for that. After all, it didn't feel right to leave 2 lonely old folks at home to eat dinner by themselves. I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

Sigh... If only the weekend would last longer...

Down goes the financial markets... Hey, i'm hit right?

I'm giving myself a pat on my back for my third consecutive day of blogging. It nice to have an avenue to vent my frustration and views so on it shall go.

Today's kao peh topic is $$. There never seems to be enough money for me. For as long as i can remember, i've been in financial troubles ever since the day i started working. Wait... That seems to have began when i was still studying.

I remember well the stock market bull run back in 1999, when we seems to have recovered from a recession. The stock market was easy. Simply just buy any stock and watch it reap a profit. That was my first foray into the stock market (also happened to be my last). My first stock pick was UOB bank, which i brought and sold within a couple of days (Short selling). I earned $420. Heck, i didn't even have a trading account. I got a friend of mine to help me buy and the money just came. Imagine, for a university student who didn't fork out a single cent and made a couple of hundred on his first trade. That's easy money.

The bull went on and i made quite a bit. of course, none of the profit stayed long. Me and my girlfriend spurged it on resturants, movies and such. We had the time of our lives for that 6 months. Until the market started to crash again... We lost almost everything... Well, it was great when it lasted...

Then came gambling... That's even worse than stocks... the money was again good when my luck held. i made thousands, spurge it on anything possible. Of course, of all the gambling lessons, we know that we can never beat the bookie. I came crashing down again. Owe thousands of dollars in debts (bookies and credit cards) and i even had to get my sister to bail me out.

My first pay from my first job was used to pay my sister back for the loan i took from her. This continued for like almost 3 years. Every pay day, my account was cleared out the next day. damn... i can't remember a month where i was debt free...

After a 3 year stop to soccer betting, i fell to it again, accumulating debts again... sigh... that was the last straw for me... hate feeling broke.

I spent my years after that paying for my mistake. Mostly refusing help from family cos i firmly believe that i should pay for my own mistakes. Without the pain, i won't repent.

At last, i can finally say that i'm free from the gambling lure. Perhaps an occassional bet on TOTO or 4D. Or even a single bet on the world cup or euro championship. I am no longer a hardcore punter i was.

Of course, came the wedding, then the house. I've been clean out of all my money, and the suffering returned again... With all the past experience in mind, i look forward to a day where i can finally feel financial freedom...

ps: just got my pay yesterday. paid bills, pay committments, i'm left with $158.42 till the next payday... Life sucks...

Kelvin vs PC

Personal Computer. I always thought that there was a nice ring to it. It is the product that changed the face of the world. Without technological personal computers, we would still be playing paper and pencil RPG games. Hey... maybe that's too superficial to look at it from a gaming point of view. But hell, you get the idea.

I always like PCs, so much so that all i wanted to do when i was in secondary school was to become a programmer. I always wanted to do comscience, for the purpose of advancing the future of mankind. Okay. That's bull shit. :)

Anyway, I alway have a love-hate relationship with PCs.

Back when i was living in Simei, I decided that I needed a new PC. So i brought one from Sim Lim (self assembled), with my brother's help of course. It was weird stuff... The PC has a habit of switching itself on and off. Or even a slight knock on it will result in it refusing to start up for 2 days.

When i shifted to my new place in SengKang, i decided it's time to get rid of the old PC and get a new and more stable one. Splashing out a thousand, i got another one. With my brother's help again from Sim Lim (where else?)

This was supposed to be good. same model which my brother is using, cool look, dual core, window media center and of course running on Vista.

This time, it was worse. After one month, media center refuses to work. and just a week back, the PC will run for an average of 1 minute 30 second and then hang... I'm at my wits end now... To attempt to reformat and lose all my movies? Or simply just junk it and get a Mac...

Time to shout for help!

ps: Somehow, this post is not showing up on my blog despite of me publishing it... weird... let me try to fix that.

RPGs anyone?

Let me get this straight. RPGs are great games. For as long as i can remember, i've always been an RPG fan. Think back to the days of Ultima (yes. I started from Ultima I until 6??), Knights of Legend, Fallout and etc... It's always a great way of stepping into an alternative world.

Recently, Japanese RPGs on xbox360 are really killing me. It's not so much about grinding through endless hoard of monsters to level up to complete the games but more of getting the 1000 achievement points that the game have to offer for xbox. Being an achievement whore, I can't resist the urge but to try. However, those japanese game makers are really insane... To imagine clocking like 200 hours and playing the game through 5 times just to get those achievements? It's killing me...

I think i need to take a different approach. No more gunning for full achievement points. Just play through and enjoy the story.

Oh yeah... Even Viva Pinata (Trouble in Paradise) is crazy...

down goes the walls

This is an interesting turn of events. My company seems to have lifted the ban on blogspot. I suppose this means i'll be blogging much more frequently. I checked the firewall and it's still up so it shouldn't be some kind of system down thingie. Anyway, doesn't really matter cos i don't think anyone actually read my blog. More later. Maybe I'll blog twice a day on weekdays now. :)

Here i go again

Damn... My blogging frequency sucks. I've came to realise that the only time i blog are the times when my company's firewall goes down. Other than that, i can't seems to be bothered to blog...

Anyway, just a bit of what i've been up to recently...

3 interviews to 2 different companies and none wanted to hire me... For 2 of the interviews, i was pretty sure i've nailed it. The age old saying of not counting your eggs before they hatch held so true. I guess i figured how it works... The more you want the job, the less chances of you getting it.

Work sucks... apart from having nothing much to do, there's really nothing much for me to do. I spend countless hours in office thinking of what to do, acting busy doing nothing. Hell... I even felt bother getting paid for not contributing much.

It's a cruel world out there. thousands lost their jobs (with the big companies in financial troubles) and here i am with a job but living life aimlessly.

Perhaps i should not think so much. It's thursday and it's my games day. can't wait to get home and lose myself in the gaming world with my friends. A brief reprive from reality...