2015: A new chapter

Once again, it is the time of the year when I sit down and reflect on whatever that has happened in the past one year. A year is 365 days long, sometimes 366, and there are days when you feel like you are on top of the roller coaster and others when you are down. After living for 28 years, I guess I have more or less gotten accustomed to what to expect in life.

So, this is the year that I told myself that I would steer myself in a completely direction, to leave my comfort zone and plunge into the unknown. Two years ago, I took up the CFA examinations hoping to constantly pick up new knowledge and hopefully it can help me open up more career opportunities. I am at the last level of the examinations this year and honestly, the journey has not been as smooth sailing as I expected. Nonetheless, I do not regret making the decision to take up the challenge.

There is a saying that goes, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Although I agree that planning is important, I am a stronger believer of "It is execution that matters". After all, you can never disregard Murphy's Law. Back in 2013, I made solid plans for graduate school and my career transition but nothing materialised in the end. I ended up deciding to give myself a break in 2014 after I left my job.

For me, being in unemployment presents more emotional stress than financial stress. In my memory, ever since I was old enough to make decisions for myself, I have never been idle for a single day. This is not taking into account school holidays when I get paid despite not working. I have been constantly working on my academics or career or finances. As a student, I spent my holidays working to support myself. As an adult, holidays are the time for me to relax at home, spend time with my family and friends and rejuvenate my body and mind. So life has always have a definite purpose. For the past five months, I wake up in the morning not knowing what to do or what I have to complete. Anxiety started to catch on me because I started questioning my own decisions to leave my job when I could not go to graduate school. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night asking myself what have I done to my life and whether I will be able to find another job with my teaching experiences. I am not moving backwards but I am definitely not moving forward either. I guess I finally understood what it means to plunge into uncertainty. Despite being an Economics trained person whereby ambiguity and uncertainty are part and parcel of our theories, I still found it overwhelming when facing it.

Nevertheless, I would not say that I am unhappy with my life. I have more free time to myself after leaving my job so I could sort out my thoughts and think about what I want to achieve moving forward. Some of my friends commented that they were envious of my current status as an unemployed but everything has its pros and cons. What they see is only the fact that I no longer have to deal with the stresses and grouses of work. My conclusion is that the grass on the opposite pasture is always greener.

Besides my own personal life, 2014 has also been a terrible year for aviation, an industry that has always held an important place in my heart. I love aeroplanes and IMO, an aeroplane is the best invention in the world. If not for an aeroplane, I would not have discovered so much about the world, the various cultures, etc. I had previously wrote about how we should pray for the families of those on the two Malaysian Airlines flights who met with mishap. In total, there are five fatal flights in 2014 with the last one being AA in the last few days of the year. I hope people do not lose faith in the industry because I still believe that aviation is one of the safest industries in the world. Let us all hope for a better 2015. :)

My 2015 New Year resolution is to make dreams a reality.

I have wanted to pick up French for the longest time possible but I give up too easily. No one converses with me and the pronunciation is the hardest thing. In addition, I have wanted to learn Japanese because I have quite a few Japanese friends and I often meet them while on my travels. There is always a communication barrier and I told myself I must overcome this. However, I do not find the motivation to persevere in my pursuits because I do not get to practise the language and I am a person who loses knowledge that are not in use. So, I am still stuck with the reality of only knowing two languages - English and Chinese.

After all these reflections, I have decided to pick up Spanish instead. [LOL!] I realise that my motivation behind learning French and Japanese are passion and friends respectively. However, these are not strong motivations. When I am in Singapore, I never have to use any of these languages. I do not keep in frequent contact with my Japanese friends either for there to exist a compelling reason for me to learn the language. I want to learn Spanish because I intend to visit South America in the near future and without Spanish, I probably am going to have problems navigating and interacting with the locals. Hopefully, this will better motivate me to learn the language well!

Signing off with the quote for 2015:

Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one. ~ Brad Paisley 

After thoughts of my epic 49-day adventure #3

#3: tranquility

I am typing this post of mine on my iPhone so I guess I need to keep it short. Why this title?

I realised, while on my travels, that one of the reasons why I love travelling because it provides me tranquility amidst the bustling crowd. While overseas, I usuaally do not purchase data card to gain access to the Internet. As a result, I only appear on WA, Instagram, FB, and all other social media sites only when I have WIFI access. This feeling of being disconnected to the World Wide Web gives me peace because I no longer have to be bothered about the daily grouses of life. Haha! I can truly enjoy the lone time with Nature, myself or my friends. While amongst the crowd, no one knows me because they do not know my FB account, cannot try to connect to me via Bluetooth or WIFi because I am disconnected and I need not bother about the people around me. However in Singapore, I have to wary about whether I would be "stomped", whether I would bump into someone I know, etc and therefore I feel less free in being myself. That's how technology can deprive us of privacy!

However, the ironic thing is that an iPhone with internet access enables me to travel in comfort. I can take photos with it, use the Google maps for navigation, listen to music, play games to pass time and most importantly Google for help or information. Hence, I still find myself constantly looking out for Free WIFI spots. Why does everything in life has to have tradeoffs?

After thoughts of my epic 49-day adventure #2

#2: The dream world journey

While in Turkey, I met this Japanese girl who travelled for 1 year 3 months around the world. She started from Southeast Asia, then to Africa, Europe, South America, North America then finally back to Japan. You must be thinking, is it like a "around the world in 395 days" thingy? Spot on! Of course she did not visit every single country in the continents that I mentioned above but to be able to cover 42 countries in a year is quite a feat, ain't it? She simply shouted out to her FB friends that she will be travelling around and whoever is able to accommodate her can just leave her a note. She also did some couch surfing to save on costs. In total, she mentioned a budget of around 20,000 USD which is not too much considering that she travelled for more than a year!

Through the stories that she shared and the pictures that I saw on her Facebook, it hit me quite hard once again. I realise that we are both quite similar in a lot of ways. She is born in December and she is in the education field. She went travelling around the world to experience the different education systems and of course, she is a travel addict as well. We have very similar attitudes towards life but she is definitely braver than me! Inevitably, the Japanese community is also a very knitted one and it might be easier for her to find Japanese people all around the world. On top of that, she probably has more friends globally than I do. If you ask me to name a friend in South America, I can give you a number immediately and that is 0. She has indeed accomplish my favourite quote, "To travel around the world, take nothing but photographs, kill nothing but time and leave nothing but footprints."

Travelling around the world for an extended period of time going to different continents is something that I have always wanted to do. However, I lack the courage to do so. Sometimes I cannot stand my own rationality. I feel insecure when I think about the security issues that I may face, especially in countries in the African continent. South America is no better and knowing a little Spanish definitely works wonder. Unfortunately, I do not. In addition, I have concerns about finances. Who will fund my insurance premiums? Who will provide monthly maintenance for my parents? I can easily provide you a list of reasons as to why I cannot travel around the world on my own. One of the most compelling reasons is the fact that I cannot stand loneliness. Whenever I travel, I always have this urge to send postcards back to my sister (if she is not with me), my brother, two of my cousins (BH and Ben) and two of my nieces. They are the people whom I would like to share the best things that I have in life with, the beautiful landscapes, the warm hospitality that I receive, the many new found perspectives, etc. If I were to just travel alone, I have no one to share such thoughts with.

Nevertheless, I see meaning in travelling by myself too. Every now and then, I do trips on my own for a week or so and honestly, I do enjoy these trips. It gives me time to reflect on myself and also learn to be more humble. The fact that you are not constantly interacting with others gives you the time and space to think about things and meet new people and consequently, pick up new perspectives on life. The fact that you are on your own in a foreign place also means that you definitely require others' help and the feeling of being powerless makes you learn to be more humble. So each time I return from travelling by myself, I feel refresh and that I can become a better person in so many different ways.

After all these blabbering, I would say that I still do not have the courage to do what the girl did and can only be envious of her accomplishments. However, going to South Africa and all the countries in South America is definitely an item on my bucket list and it is something that I hope to work hard for moving forward. So, step 1, pick up Spanish! :)

Also, JJ Lin has a song that I love because of its lyrics, "那些你很冒险的梦，我陪你去疯”  So many people that I come across ask me the same question, who exactly are you waiting for in life? Why haven't you found the right guy? Times like these make me more certain of what I am waiting for. I am waiting for that one guy who dreams the dreams I dreamt, willingly takes the risks that I dare not and loves me unconditionally. I might be asking a lot but I would rather meet that one right guy than to stumble upon many wrong ones.

After thoughts of my 49-day epic adventure #1

Since I embarked on a 49-day adventure, I promise to write 49 things or thoughts on my journey.

#1: A friend whom I miss

The main trigger of me visiting Europe again is to visit a friend of mine whom I have unknowingly known for 11 years. We got to know each other back in the Polytechnic but we somehow drifted apart until about 4-5 years ago. The trip to Korea kinda reignited our friendship and we started our monthly movie nights. When she decided to move to Switzerland to work, it struck me quite hard, not just because it meant there was no more monthly movie nights but that she was doing something that I long to accomplish. Initially, I had wanted to visit her while being enrolled in graduate school but since my plans had some hiccups, I did otherwise.

She is a stark contrast of who I am as a person. Having spent a month with her made me reflect a lot upon myself as a person, my character, how much I have changed over the years, etc. When she left Singapore, she made me miss movie nights. Now after visiting her, she made me miss her warm hospitality!

While in Turkey, one of the tour guides asked if we are best friends or good friends. Both of us did not answer or rather could not be sure what we should be saying. Somehow, to call someone your best friend, there needs to be reciprocity I guess. We need to both agree that we are each other's best friends then would we unconsciously say "yes" when others ask. I have loads of best friends, though the term "best" is supposed to mean the favourite among all. To say she is my best friend is a little too strong because people like Chris, WenX, Pigsy Ang, etc. are people who fit that title without second thoughts. Likewise for her, I am sure she has other groups of friends who will come to her mind when people mention the term "best friend".

So anyway, after a moment of awkwardness when we both did not give the guide a reply, she said, "We are close friends."

As someone whose friends are predominantly male, I think she can easily emerge as one of my best female friends (bffs). I have no qualms sharing with her some of my deepest thoughts and we do not pass judgments on each other's decisions or actions. Not that she would give me advices or whatsoever but the fact that I can open up to her so easily and vice versa is definitely one of the criteria to tick off when I decide if she is someone I can call a best friend too. Nonetheless, the title is not important. What matters is that I know she is someone whom I feel comfortable hanging around with, willingly share my stuff with, keeping each other updated about lives, etc. and actually keeping to my word about all these things beats giving each other fanciful titles but probably never bother contacting each other.

#visitingbluemosque

Staying connected with my readers (if they exist)

This space of mine has been left empty for way too long. It is unfortunate that I have not kept to my promise of updating my blog with regards to the travel adventures. I have been writing bits every now and then and soon, I am sure I will be able to post all of them. Blogger has a new function whereby they track the page views of my blog on a daily basis. Blogging is kinda outdated these days so I am surprised that I still have a few page views on a daily basis. I know that my family members and friends no longer read my blog so those who visit are definitely strangers.

However, if you are my friend and you still read my blog from time to time, please leave me a comment on this blogpost or write something in the chatterbox. It is always comforting to know who are those that silently stay updated with your life. :)

If you are a stranger who happened to chance upon my blog, do wave HI be it whether you have positive or negative comments about the things that I write. :)