just your average handsome boy next door

The Much Anticipated Review of 2011

January 6, 2012 at 7:48 pm | Posted in General | 2 Comments

Haha sorry this post took so long… I’ve been really busy the past 2 weeks going out with mostly the old Gold Friends, a sharp contrast to the rest of this holidays. So for the uninitiated, this will be my customary roundup post of 2011 (oops those are the exact same words I used last year). Overall, 2011 has been a decent year for me, not too bad but nothing really spectacular either.

1) ORD

So I happily ORDed in February this year… it’s been helluva journey, though only the first year could be counted as real army experience. Gombak Base treated me very nicely though, it’s sorta like an extended holiday, minimal work and stay-out for 900 bucks a month. Just that I got bored and sick of it after awhile. Just for the record, here‘s my Army Reflections.

2) Work

After ORD I bummed around for awhile, at the same time looking for short-term jobs that paid decent and were not too boring or taxing. Obviously they didn’t really exist. That’s also why I worked for a mere 1.5 days at Pulley Ascent, this telemarketing company before quitting haha. Subsequently Recruit Express recommended a one-month job at the Science Centre where I helped conduct simple science lectures and tours around the exhibits. That was really fun. At both places the company was absolutely fantastic, in spite of the time spent with them being so short.

3) Europe

In late May I headed to Europe with Qinsheng and Yuxuan on a backpacking trip for 3.5 weeks. Still don’t find it worth the sheer amount of money spent ($6.5k or so) but I don’t like to regret things so on hindsight it was a pretty good experience Maybe even of the once-in-a-lifetime variety, because I don’t know if I’d ever spend that much on a holiday again, other than on honeymoon or something. Didn’t really gain a tremendous lot in terms of artistic / cultural / historical / educational value but sometimes when I’m daydreaming I find my thoughts drifting to that feeling of ultimate freedom and having no worries I rarely get in Singapore. Also for the record, my Europe trip experience here

4) SMU

Actually I believe I’ve already summed up the most prominent experiences in the first term in my previous post… so a short note would suffice. Academics wise there’s definitely space for improvement. Outside of studies I’ve taken part in a number of activities, for instance my CCAs Broadcast and Handball. Before school started I also went for a number of camps, of which Sports camp was the most fun by far. Social life is alright, made plenty of new friends and there’s a closer group in the form of the Pinkies (my sports camp group). My FTB camp group isn’t too bad either; we meet now every now and then. Other than that, my most reliable buddy in school is probably old friend Jackson, who’s in more than half my classes.

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5) Friends

Since Uni started time spent with the old Gold Friends have dwindled significantly. But I’m glad to say that we still catch up, especially this holidays. Of course it’s been much more difficult to keep up with the overseas ones… but some of them like Kheexuan, Benpoh and Jijo do strike up a chat every now and then.

Towards December I’ve also started feeling like no one in SMU can ever come close to the Gold Friends… I don’t know if time will change that, because sometimes it still feels like something isn’t right. Anyway, I decided that Jackson is a Silver Plus Plus Plus Friend (S+++), while (most of) the Pinkies are Silver Plus Plus (S++), and some of the better mates in school such as Blue Moon are Silver Plus. However I feel like a lot of them have hit their maximum potential already… like I said, only time can tell.

And true to tradition, the Highly-Intensely-Enormously-Anticipated-With-Bated-Breaths Gold Friend of the Year Award goes to… Junshyang! Even though Woankeng complains that JS disappeared the whole year and was only a nice friend in December and got the award, I believe that’s just a case of sour grapes (because he’s only 3rd this year). But okay point taken, this coming year I’ll take note of the earlier part of the year more. I wanted to announce Good Progress Award but I realised nobody really deserves it so I’m scraping it. I nearly gave it to Bryan Buan. Anyway, Hazel comes in a close second after Junshyang.

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6) Driving Woes

Oh yes. I’m sure 10 or 20 years down the road I will look back at 2011 as a pretty eventful year in terms of my driving experience. Got lost countless times, most epic being the drive around town for more than 2 hours, wasting 1/4 tank petrol and more than 10 bucks in ERP charges. 2 days later I got lost somewhere around town again, and took another 2 hours. I also banged various objects such as walls and other vehicles, for instance less than a week after passing I crashed into a car on PIE. Within the week my dad went to China and I had the car to myself I also succeeded in crashing it like 5 times or so, mostly while parking. At that point I wasn’t very worried because it was an old car after all… but last week I scratched the car again tackling the multi-storey carpark near home. The new 2-day-old car. Felt like shit.

Full stories of driving adventures here Photos here )

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7) New Year Resolutions

To be honest I’m not a very fervent believer in yearly resolutions but I like to put them in words and revisit them the following year. Here are last year’s:

I want to:

- Make many many many new friends at Work and SMU Biz, if i end up there. (I’m trying for NUS and NTU Biz again this year) and continue being Mr. Popular (hahhaahahhahhaha) and Mr. Humble

- At the same time, continue keeping in close contact with all my old friends, especially the Gold Friends.

- At the same time, get a Girlfriend worth keeping for the rest of my life.

- If not, some cute or hot flings will do.

- Get good grades…….. if it doesn’t compromise my social life

- i’m kidding about the above. good grades are imperative. social life is secondary. but necessary all the same. both please?

- More AA opportunities. Emcee, drama, i don’t know, more???

- Be funnier, a better friend, more mature, less emotional, happier, smarter and a more creative person in general.

And that’s when I realised, it’s exactly what I’ve been striving for, and what I still want to continue pushing myself to do. Even though I haven’t been like terribly successful in most of them, I’m glad to say I tried (nearly) my best. Okay, some completely fail (read: get a girlfriend, hahahahahahaahahahahahaha). As well as being a more mature and less emotional person. That’s part of me, really hard to change But I guess the keyword is, self-control.

So, I shall keep this set of resolutions for the year… maybe for the next 3.5 years too. Maybe I’ll add a couple more:

- Fine-tune my career ambitions… now it’s slightly too vague for my liking

- More initiative and decisiveness in taking on non-academic commitments

- Better my presentation skills… I can’t do anything but joke

- Drive (more) safely