Confessions At 27

(This post was actually written on Wednesday, 11th August, just to get the dates and time into perspective as you’re reading this. What began in the wee hours of the morning, reaches conclusion tonight, as I’m listening to Eminem’s Love The Way You Lie. I’m just saying.)

I should probably be asleep right now but i just can’t help but think of the stuffs that I talked of earlier with a very special friend, of topics, which most people would touch on at least once in their life but then come to forget all about it.

Here’s to hoping that the talks don’t go that way – forgotten.

Right or wrong is subjective, and it all depends on one’s perception and knowledge, but most importantly the motive and needs of whoever you’re talking and discussing with.

Who am I to say which is which and what paths you need to take, and who am I to judge on behalf of your judgements?

Now all I can do is to express opinions, my own judgements, concerns and motives, of which you did fairly asked, what my motives were early on.

Indeed, motive is a very important issue that needs to be tackled and tackled well by any parties that plan to get involve within anything.

Without motive, one is merely a passenger riding along, enjoying the scenery while others pull the bus along.

Without motive, one wakes up in wonderment and tired, and tends to drift away distracted.

Motive is the vitamin that keeps thing going — but wait, there’s a better drug than motive, which kickstarts things, brings up new events and most important of all, challenging you to tackle, and head on if you have to, any daunting obstacles.

I said that there’s a better drug than the vitamin, motive.

Motive is temporary, but this drug is permanent.

This is a drug that defines the good, the bad and the ugly.

It’s the drug that sets how you set out your lifepath.

But no, it’s not sold over the counters nor prescribed by doctors.

This drug is… inspiration.

Inspiration is the drug that defines you as a person and sets the characteristics that makes you up.

I think my friend was inspired in one way or another to dive deeper after barely scratching the surface of the design industry.

She’s conceptually talented, able to think outside the box, tackle on broad ideas, and in short, she’s driven.

That’s what inspiration does, it drives you forward, shifts up your gear and brings you to new places and experiences.

Motivation gets you worked up for the day, and maybe the week, but inspiration gets you worked up for the rest of your life.

Inspiration, it brings about a new meaning to life itself, and creates something out of nothing as you chase something, something intangible, something out of the ordinary, something that’s perceived as useless or wasted by most.

Well that’s just because they aren’t as inspired right?

Inspiration is the drug that wakes you up in the morning, in full anticipation for tomorrow, even though yesterday bore no fruitions. Yet.

Inspiration is the catalyst that makes the negative turn positive, the pessimists into optimists, and keeps you moving when everything else stalls.

Inspiration makes you realise that some things are near impossible, but that it’s never too much being wasted on which you’re going after.

I’m thankful that I’ve been inspired when I was younger but even more fortunate that I continually get inspired with every passing day.

Thankfully too I’m sane enough to know that I’m still nowhere near reaching my goals and my dreams, but I’m inspired enough to also know that that’s no reason to stop whatever it is that I’m doing.

Because I know for sure how I’m not going to achieve whatever it is that I’m trying to achieve.

And that’s to do nothing meaningful.

So.. are you going to do something soon?

It’s been a hell of a week, maybe a month, maybe a few months, and I’m still picking myself apart and asking questions as usual, but none that I’ve regret coming to of course.

For nothing would I trade those experiences ever, but ever since a month ago, I secretly wondered if I should think for what’s best in my self interest, and that is to not play second fiddle, to stop searching for sunken treasure, to just stop hurting myself basically.

Hurt myself? Woah, that’s gotta be something right? Indeed man, indeed.

Getting kicked out of a quarterfinal in a primary school soccer tournament and cried at that? That was pre-puberty disappointment, like a mountain falling on top of you.

Would you have cried if you had pinned extremely high hopes and expected so much and dreamed so much only to falter along the way?

And then there was Gunung Ledang when I was 15, which was basically torture and plenty of mozzie attacks to accompany te aching limbs. That’s peanuts.

NS’ stress tests, such as the canoeing around Singapore, even when I’m sea-sick as hell, and all those mind games? Well that turned out to be a fond memory.

Sure those times I was breaking the limit but this, this now, this relationship, this whatever this is, it’s brought me to depths I’ve never seen before and aches I’ve never felt before.

Questions whose answers are never really about right or wrong and it’s these questions that you chew on slowly, only to find them getting stickier and stickier the longer the gum gets pummeled.

Well I try to base my decisions without being judgemental on any preconditions and I’d like to get things done so that the next move can be made. It’s like a game of Chess, once you’ve made your move, someone else have to make their move or the game stagnates.

But gum, like chess, are minor issues, if ever they were problems.

This stagnation, this stickiness, this thingy, it’s not quite a problem, and not quite a solution either.

I love helping people, the more that they need my help, the more that I go out of my way to render it.

But do you continue with the aid when you’ll get hurt along the way, like how the Internation Aid Mission guys whom were slain recently while relaying eye care duties in Afghan?

Their virtuous deeds just got legendary status, thanks to a few extreme men with extreme ‘incepted’ thoughts, but I’m no politician so I’ll politically say that it was a great sadness to see the medical team’s journey ended this way.

Wait, they knew the risks yet they ploughed on selflessly.

What should I do?

I wish I could just lay out everything, and stand inside a wall of glass, before shattering them all to pieces — but I don’t want the shards to cut anyone, me least of all, even though I do know that sooner or later, pieces of glass will graze you, no matter how hard you try to evade them.

Now, if only I can see where that wall of glass is, maybe my exhaustion blurs my vision.

Sure, work and side projects have at the very least shown me where I need to go to keep on moving, but I can’t help but feel that slight tinge of helplessness.

Maybe I’m lost?

EZ-Link Card Stickers are all the rage these days aren’t they?

You go into Mini Toons, Comics Mart or GIfts Shop and you’ll find them littered all over the shop.

There are celebrity images, cartoon images and even common pet images, but what if you wanted your own pictures?

Well if you sometime wish that you could print your own family photos, facourite images or basically something that’s different and cannot be found in stores, thankfully there is…. *drum-rolls*…

StickerDojo: Stickers For Awesomeness.

I heard the stickers look great too. Aha! = )

Spread the customization. Spread the love.

Been rather occupied tying down a few websites at the moment, so pardon the lack of constant posts here these days. I’m just glad that StickerDojo is nearing its completion. There’s still chinks in there, but nothing’s perfect right? I’d love to hear feedbacks, good or bad, and ways to improve. Let me know ya!

Farid was asking me just the other day where he could get himself a copy of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, and I told him to head down to Funan Centre because I recalled printing a few murals of it’s launch over there recently.

So what’s so good about Starcraft II anyway, and why the massive hype surrounding this just-another-alien-versus-humans game?

After the epic success of the initial Starcraft game, and when a sequel was planned 7 years ago, you’d have forgiven if you had a hunch that the game was going to mimic the doomed, pun intended, failures in the ways of Doom Forever.

You see, Doom was THE game of its time back then and when a sequel was announced, every gamer who’s ever played it soiled themselves and anxiously waited for its sequel, Doom Forever.

Heh, what a name right, because the game is indeed doomed forever when the plug was pulled on its development last year, as the creators simply couldn’t decide on how to produce the game.

THANKFULLY, Blizzard’s arcane sense of games prevailed and Starcraft II has finally reached our shores after 7 bloody years of waiting, a sequel to THE RTS GAME of it’s time.

Some say it’s the balance nature of the game, some say it’s the action and thrils but whatever you think of it, it’s a game that deserved a sequel, if only to put in some extra $$$ into the pockets of the development team.

I’m not sure if the game itself have been sold out here after shipping 11 MILLION copies on its first week of release, but if you can’t wait to get a confirmation on your copy, you know where to click right?

(Yup that image you see here is an affilliate link and if you click there and buy your game from Amazon, I’m going to be able to afford myself half a cup of Starbucks finally. Or you can always type www.amazon.com and search for it yourself. Bah.)

*nudge-nudge*.

Hmmm, so Farid, are you sure you can’t find yourself a copy in stores?

Do you feel like you could use some extra time playing DOTA or the recently launched Starcraft II spending time with your children or loved ones and still be able to get your errands done on time, everytime?

Well did you knew that TaskRabbit could make your life easier by running errands for you — the best part being that you get to decide how much you’re willing to pay for a Rabbit someone to hop around for your errands?

Service networking they label themselves as.

I know I could use one anytime now to run errands on my behalf because the minute that I have the time to run my own errands, the shops are already closed — and this is why you shouldn’t join an advertising/exhibition/printing company if you’re a strictly 9-6 kind of person.

Btw, how did I find out about TaskRabbit? Because the idea struck me a few days back that I could probably start something like this (over here), and in my research today I found out that it’s already been started and running — and successfully too!

There’s a saying that goes “You’re never late unless you’re being told to do it.”

In my case, I think it’s “You’re just too late buddy!”

It happened a few years back when a thought struck me of an internet service that sends ’surprise packages’ to anyone who wants to keep themselves surprised, and during my research I found SomethingStore who did exactly what I wanted to do AND they did it successfully and earlier than me.

What else have you thought of that could put a smile on someone’s face tomorrow only to find out that you’ve been beaten to it?

In this cut-throat world we all live in, I suppose you need to ship fast or risk being second and, unless second place is good enough for you, forever envy the pioneers of your market.

I guess that to ship, you need to navigate clear waters.

But I’ll be damned for I see an iceberg ahead of me (translation: my dayjob), and sometimes, you need to face the music (the iceberg) before your story becomes the next blockbuster and where, hopefully, lessons are learned and a better ship is made.

Who knows, your story might even inspire an act, or an actor towards an even greater story (*koff* Dicaprio: From Titanic to Inception. Brilliance at work.)

I watched Inception, had to drag sis along cos others simply wasn’t able to watch it, didn’t wanna watch it with me or watched it already.

It wasn’t an easy show but here’s a quick review because I’m just darn sleepy and drowsy at the moment.

It’s solidly good, tight and very well paced, not much loopholes (there are holes, just not much) and has to be the best show of 2010 so far in terms of it’s score, action, visual effects, plot, characters, cinematography, continuity & editing and if I were to summarise it all in 5 words they’d be:

Multi-tasking. Dreamy. Captivating. Purposeful. Sad.

Sad, because the way I interpreted the movie, the dream never ended for Cobb, and that thought struck me midway in the movie, where I realised that the reality wasn’t really reality.

BUT, I shan’t spoil the movie for the uninitiated, and while I torture myself to come up with a decent review for another day, I’ll prod you to go watch it.

AND if you’ve already watched it, go watch it again, and this time try to catch the movie and perceive it to end differently than when you first saw it.

Interestingly, they didn’t tow away the bike even when I failed to pay up the installments after 3 months.

All they did was to call me up and ask me when I can settle the payment, and each time I’d tell them the next day. Funny enough they bought it each time too.

It wasn’t that I wanted to hold their money but rather it was mine — I wanted to hold mine and bike installments is one of those arrears where it’s still not so bad even if you don’t pay up after a month, or three in this case.

So yesterday I coughed up enough to settle the payments for 4 months instead, which includes the next’s, where at the same time, I’m finally debt free of that bike shop.

You know it does feel good to have that debt free feeling, and though I always recommend people to learn to leverage or stretch their dollar, there’s this satisfacton and no-strings attached sentiments when you’re paying off your final installments.

It’s that good.

So one commitment down, but everytime you settle one, more crops up, and that just seem to be the way of the world we live in eh?

It’s as if noone in their right mind would want to see you relaxed and free and everytime you’re sitting there, shaking the legs, someone will inevitably walk up to you and start asking for something from you, or worse, starts telling you the mistakes that you’ve done and expects you to rectify it.

Just typical eh, that nobody wants to see you doing nothing and still enjoying yourselves at it.

Pffft.

Oh btw, the iPhone 4 will be on sale 30th of the month. Hmmmmm…

I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I could turn myself in but I can’t sleep.

5.55am.

The mind wanders, thoughts dissipate and I find myself calculating stuffs that shouldn’t be calculated at 5-6am in the morning, like would it be a good thing if I started an online service where you pay for an item to be sent your way (or another place) and you don’t know what it’s gonna be? These guys beat me to it and I’ve been admiring them since 2 years ago and perhaps this shows that there is a wacky market audience for it?

Well I enjoy drawing, doodling and coloring stuffs and maybe I could do that and plaster them onto EZ-Link stickers for the mass like what I’m currently doing with Stick Anything Lah? (Ahaa, blatant promo here! =P )

Strangely there’s 24hours per day but I just don’t seem to have the luxury of a 2-3 hours stretch that I can spend on exhausting myself creatively, unless I stay awake like today, and that sucks, and I really need to exhaust myself creatively — otherwise all these pent up thoughts and stuffs stays pent up, slowly building itself, gradually turning cancerous. Well, rhetorically speaking of course.

6.15am.

I wanna sleep, but gee, what can you do to sleep huh? I need rest. I don’t know which one’s worse — that I’m neither wide awake or the fact that I’m half drowsy and half suffering the joyous torture of playing soccer with the boys at 1am in the morning.

And they even had the cheek to extend the session till 3am, where naturally I obliged and played along, as if I could knock myself out and sleep till late afternoon. Well I could but that means I’ll be ’shooting paper aeroplanes’, or ‘bubble bubble’, or ‘NATO-ing’ because…

6.25am.

.. I’ve soccer again in exactly 2 and a half hours later, over at Clementi with the ramshackled bunch of white-and-blue-collared football enthusiasts.

Hmmm.. I’ve no idea what collar I am, cos my work clothes hasn’t a proper collar, but rather a turtle-neck like, zip-collar. Ahh, zip-collared, that’s what I am!

Whatever that means right?

6.30am

I. Need. Sleep Ipad Zip-Collars Love.

I don’t know, but where oh where do I begin?

Will someone tell me that it’s only natural that the brother gets the preferential treatment while I’m being given the ‘please-wait’ treatment?

The printing company has spawned off another printing company (this time non GST registered for all those budget conscious customers) in recent weeks and it just bugs me that I am not in the loop in the planning phase of all these stuffs.

Won’t it bug you too when you’re one of the ’senior fellas’ in the company and you only knew that your company expanded the moment they knocked on your door to tell you that they need your help in shifting a few boxes because the company has expanded?

My new recruit, actually the new designer who’s supposed to take charge of design related stuffs at the new place, asked me this while we were having lunch, a few days back.

“Why are you still here?”

And you know what my first thoughts were?

“Goddammit why am I still here?” and this, ladies and gentlemen, this was my very first thought which was followed by this, “I guess I can’t leave this baby (the company) on its own, until it’s found its feet to stand on its own.”

It sucks that I bear such a responsibility, that the gap I leave behind is too much for them to cover, so it’s really hard for me to avoid sabotaging the business, which I think I would be doing if I choose to leave now.

BUT it sucks more that I’m overstaying myself, when there are opportunities and industries that I’m anxious to dive into.

Talk about diving, did I mention that Farah and Dal wants me to go diving in Tioman this October?

That’s right, the one place that I dread going but dream of being on — the food, the locals, the tranquility.. the everything!

Wait, did you spot the difference of ‘dread going’ and ‘dream of being on’, cos I get seasick easily and the busride+boatride to Tioman is uber nauseating (is this the correct use of the word?) — BUT one that I’ll gladly face and suffer just to feel the white, soft, glowing sands of Salang, Tioman.

So will I be going? Hmmmm.. I’m still undecided.

Gee, where do I begin?

Time has passed by freakishly too fast this year.

It’s not bothered to wait for me, you nor anyone else who’s contemplated and bothered to wallow in self-pittance. It’s that cruel.

I realised that in barely 2 weeks, a year ago I was limbering towards my one month reservist in-camp training, and faced plenty of stumbling blocks back then.

Fortunately there’s no reservist yet, but looking back, oh how quickly time fades as I recall on a few ’supposedly major’ decisions made back then.

I decided to quit within 3 months then.

Of course fortunately I didn’t heed my stupid and rash thoughts so I didn’t and life goes on, but 1 year later, that eeriely similar decision comes back to haunt me.

I’ve been thinking a lot and not really been talking a lot and it’s such a shame that these are two very different things that bring about very different outcome.

If you think a lot, that’s good, but that makes you a dreamer as well, because thinking don’t get things done.

If you talk a lot, that’s good, you get the message across, but you run in danger of being viewed as a NATO person.

Oh, NATO as in, No Action Talk Only.

How much do you weigh in on this?

Me? I don’t know, biasedly biased, I think I’ll judge myself as a 80/20 person, with the 20 represennting the talking — I don’t talk much, and when I do, I guess I talk before I think?

Ahh, don’t we all?

Thankfully there’s blogging, which isn’t quite talking, but you get the drift yah?

When you blog, you get to think before you talk, and it’s sort of a 50/50 thing here, and it’s think then talk.

And when you talk too much, there’s always that delete post/draft button lying somewhere along the page.

I wonder if I’ll live my life wishing for that ‘delete button’ when it’s time for that talk?