To sum up 2017

It's the penultimate day of the year and a lot has happened in 2017, especially in the past two months. I'm not sure if this is a characteristic of aging, but time has been flying past really really fast lately. And every day in my last working week felt like a week in itself with insufficient time to complete what I had planned for the day.

Priceless 9: Victory

Priceless is...

... that moment when my colleague passed her phone to each one of us team members notifying we had won third place in the treasure hunt, during our VC's speech. All we could display were sheepish smiles and raised eyebrows!

Priceless 6: Numbers

Priceless is...


... when the first time I glance at something and the numbers jumps out at me! Today's was 888 views! I'm not superstitious but I love finding patterns in series of numbers, in other words finding meaning in numbers. This is why car plate number watching is fun when I'm stuck in a jam or on a long drive!

Priceless 5: Kind Gestures

Priceless is...


... when a director brings cookies and sweets especially for us all the way from Singapore and Macau.

Priceless 4: Relief

Priceless is...

... that feeling of relief when something that has been troubling my mind is resolved.

Priceless 3: Discovery

Priceless is...

... that moment when I discovered a scammer, thanks to Google image search.

Priceless 2: Jazz

Priceless is... that smile which comes from my heart when old school jazz is playing in my ears. Piano, snare brush and trumpet with double bass is enough to calm, sooth, raise the spirit and will my mind to study on.

I am listening to Roy Hargrove's Ruby My Dear.

Priceless 1: Warm bath

In light of some recent social media diarrhoea and hypocrisy, I shall neutralise the experience, forgive and forget, rise above the lowness and create positive vibes. So here's starting another slew of thematic posts to be thankful for the little things in life, that anyone can enjoy.

It is priceless...

Annual post and Happy Lunar New Year!

I'm always touched when those who matter remember me on my birthday. This year there were a few surprises as well. Came into office to a chorus of Happy Birthday! And continuous feasting for the whole week straight.

Anyway, this year I didn't manage to make CNY cards to send around the world. But I made an e-card instead.

Blessed Lunar New Year everyone!

The week that was

Today this blog is 12. And it's just another 5 days till the Lunar New Year. And another 3 days for my annual obligatory post. Time really is chasing me. The weekend is gone and I still feel like I haven't had my weekend!

But first, to recap the week that was.

Work in progress: Lunar New Year 2017 card

My timing is worse every year. It doesn't help that the lunar new year is getting earlier as well. This year, I won't have enough time to produce hardcopy cards as I've done in previous years. So it'll have to be e-cards this year!

Inspiration seeking started on Sunday mid-afternoon, and it's quite obvious that the chicken year is much easier than last year's monkey! I'd planned to make a hardcopy chicken and scan it, like last year, but I got lazy and only made part of the design in hardcopy.

A little peek at what it's going to be like. Quite bad quality camera phone photo, but this is the exact shot that I'll be using in the final copy.

HP Envy Touchscreen TrueVision HD webcam undetected [Solved]

I realised that my laptop's webcam (HP Envy Touchscreen TrueVision HD webcam) wasn't working after I had fixed my BSD issue last year. Whether or not it was working fine before that, I am not sure as I rarely use my webcam. The only annoying thing was when I wanted to join a video conference call and everyone else was on video except me, although I had a webcam - a non-working one.

One from the sick

Posting from my sick bed. It's time to reflect.

On the last working day of 2016, my Healthcare colleagues were pushing (ok, more appropriate verb - "encouraging") us to take up the influenza vaccination jab as it was part of our staff benefit and also, they wanted to finish their stock by year end before the accounts were closed. I was told, "I'll book one for you, you come after lunch ok?" With my fear of needles (trypanophobia), obviously I didn't go to our clinic after lunch!

Christmas and New Year 2017

It has been feasting and more feasting for the past two weeks! Family, friends, colleagues - I think I've not had so much year-end celebrations before. I'd planned to use my Christmas leave for spring cleaning and 'healthy' living but in the end I only managed to clock in 1 session for both. Not really productive in the sense of goal-hitting.

Well, another session is coming up this week and I've prepared small goodies as belated Christmas gifts. Just an idea for gift-wrapping - I love Christmas colours!

Christmas goodie bags with the last of my ribbons

Sprouts

I am happy to report that after a week, my little planting experiments have yielded the first sprouts!

First sprouts (l-r): curry plant cutting, desert rose seedlings, bird's eye chili seedling

Here's hoping they will survive and I'll do my part of watering and speaking to them daily! Looks like a butter chicken dish is in the making (maybe in a year's time! haha)

Marveling at God's gift of nature and the starting of life.

I found my 30th firsts for 2016

Picking up from my previous post, I found my 30th firsts experience for this year - being called into impromptu discussions with the President and ED and for the past few days having to join/present at meetings of HODs and senior management. This is what happens when your boss goes on long leave and somehow suddenly so many issues come up on top of all the service agreements due for renewal by year end. A classic case of Murphy's Law.

More Firsts for 2016

Just another half month to the new year and a couple more entries to add to my 2016 stocktake list!

22. First time to Taiwan and smelling chou tofu (smelly tofu)
23. First time flying on business class (this was a pleasant accident during check-in)
24. First time using Uber
25. First time in Taipei 101 and seeing the damper in real life (not as impressive as I remembered it in a documentary)
26. First time in a trampoline park and trying all the stuffs which I wouldn't try on my own choosing
27. First time wall climbing - I made it halfway up
28. Which resulted in my first time wrist injury - immobilized for the whole weekend but thankfully improved by Monday and I didn't need to see the chiropractor (dreaded)
29. First time building a nano block Pokemon!

Pokemon Gengar!

Unfortunately I couldn't think of #30 - another 15 days or so to achieve it!

Desert Rose - Dead and Alive

Every year we have charity sales in the office around September. I got a little desert rose plantling, which I was supposed to love and nurture as advised by my colleague. But by October, my poor desert rose plant lost all its leaves. I didn't dare tell my colleague this, because it was "hard work growing them from the seeds!". I was worried that I was indeed a plant killer!

Desert Rose plant - alive (left); seemingly dead (right)

Reading and Reflecting

Recently I've somewhat got back into reading - perhaps with the realisation that pretty soon I may not have the luxury of reading for pleasure anymore. Although what I read are from the fiction genre, with every book there is a certain realness when I'm immersed in it and it is inevitable that the mind starts drawing parallels with real life.

Health & Wellness week

I knew it was not a good idea to have a toffee nut latte after dinner and this is the consequence - a wee hour post.

The good thing about smaller organisations is that corporate initiatives can be done in a more intimate setting. We had our Health & Wellness week a couple of weeks back. I for one, was quite excited to see how the plans would pan out after hearing the first mention of this in management meetings and then seeing the proposal papers come through. The objective was for us as an organisation to walk the talk as well as to reduce our medical claims.