Things that have been going on in life

Well, life has been pretty okay, meaning that it's bearable. Exciting enough to warrant waking up every day and look forward to it, not so much.

Anyway, I met up with an old senior of mine, Sony. He was a Sec 4 student when I was just Sec 1. He helped train my house hockey team for inter-house games. That's where I remember him from. After so many years, he's still his same recognizable self, while he barely recognized me, since I changed so much.

He's working at AIA as an investment and insurance agent and he called me out last Thursday to talk. I went to meet up with him and found out that he was specializing in stocks and shares as "offensive" investments. To elaborate, protection is like insurance, defensive investments are more like funds, and offensive are usually the more risky stuff like stocks, to make more money. We talked about what went on with our lives since our secondary school years, and also about investments. I brough this up because it's so coincidental that I wanted to learn more about investing in stocks and shares, and here comes an old friend who's doing it for a job. He's willing to teach and guide me along, so why not? I trust him quite a bit too, which is probably the most important thing in the world. He asked me to go read up stuff and set up a dummy cash account to practice investing in stocks and go to him with any problems. I'm going to do that.

On another note, I got an email from a friend from Stanford about my blog. We weren't very close when I was there, but he happened across my blog and "was hooked". He read it from beginning to end! That's amazing, coz I would never expect anyone to be hooked to my blog. It was the stuff that I wrote when I was about to leave Stanford that he felt most keenly about, especially when he too has to leave Stanford in another year or so. The leaving was painful, and the pain stays even now. But it gets covered up with all the different things that happen here in Singapore, the apparent "comfort" of being in a country like this.

After getting that email, I started reading through my early posts again. And it struck me that I still feel very strongly about wanting to head back. But, at the same time, it gets more and more sticky here, that Singapore is getting, not more attractive, but rather more like a huge comfortable couch. Meaning that once you get in, you don't want to get out of it. I read back on my post that I wanted to keep on fighting, and I realised that I have lost the fighting will a little bit. My aim in many ways have changed to fighting to make the best use of my time in Singapore. To learn and grow, and not waste this time. No, for those US friends, do not despair. This does not mean I'm not going back to the US. I am, in fact, I have plans to return next April to visit everyone for 2 weeks. And I still really want to be back there. It's just that now, I want to live the "hedonistic" life here in Singapore, that I lived in the US. To enjoy everyday I have here, to have a life far more different from the average Singaporean. To live the type of life that an average Singaporean, even someone who has gone overseas, would never be able to grasp.

Well, this kinda also reminds me about what I read in a Christian book about how God works in our lives in such a way that if He is taken out of our lives, our lives make little sense. But I won't go there now.

This is just some random musing that I have after tutoring on a Saturday afternoon. Nothing too coherent, but generally there.

4 more weeks to climbing Mount Kinabalu! Time to get into shape!