Wednesday, November 21, 2007 x 3:34 PM

Have to wake up at 10am today!!!

Dragging myself out of bed on a sunday morning. Not because i need to catch the sunny morning at the pool, but need to reach Paulaner Bräuhaus at 1130am for Adrian's BD.

Yup, someone is now officially 26.

Actually this is the first time I'm having brunch. I thought it's more of a common event with the foreigners. The pricing is 30+++ (non-beer) & 40+++ (beer) for the buffet & free flow. I do not have the habit of drinking beer in the morning & feels weird bout it as well ( if u wish to maximise your eating capacity,your drink should be non-gaseous, haha )

The party includes our BD boy adrian, danny, shane, yudan, yvonne, thomas, terence & lastly me. Ah boo & Rz should be here as well but someone forgotten bout this 2 jokers. As i said brunch is more common with foreigners & it's proven by the crowd there. 3/4 of the people in the restaurant were foreigners & with a big capacity for beer too. Glasses after glasses the beer keep pouring in for them & even the ladies sould win us flat down with their appetite for beer.

Rowdy bunch of foreigners but it's suppose to be like this as i can really see them enjoying their meal and company of their friends. We too have a lot of fun as most of us rarely have time to meet up and it's a good thing to get together once a while. For those who had not tried before, maybe it's time to blend in with the foreigners and experience their culture for once.

Now who says brunch is only their cup of tea??

Sunday, November 18, 2007 x 3:54 PM

Boring day.

Didn't do much today, now my weekdays will start to revolve around M6 book till the exam is over. Make my way to Toa Payoh swimming pool around 12pm in order to catch the sun. Not bad when i was leaving the house, it's very bright and sunny. Should expect a very good tan for bout an hr.

Board the bus & suddenly it's like the sun has a mind of it's own & wan to "tekan" me. As the bus was reaching the pool nearer by the minute, the sunny slowly changed to cloudy. Damn it, it seems like the sun pull the clouds over it's head like a blanket.

There goes the tanning i said to myself. Made my way inside the pool & as soon as i was ready to jump into the pool, the sky has a big spread of grey clouds. Siao liao, later cannot even swim if the lifeguard ask me to get out of the pool due to lightning. Bo chap, swim first then say. Manage to clear around 20 laps before it started to rain. I should say drizzling & the lifeguard let us continue which i presume there's no lightning. A very different experience to swim while it's raining. It's very calm while u are under the water & chaotic once you surface up ( wonder tat's what the fishes feel as well )

Decided to get out of the pool before the rain gets heavier. Not because i'm afraid my getting struck by lightning but more concern of how to get back home laterb because of the rain.

Burger king for lunch ( l love their ice lemon tea!! ) & M6 book to accompany me till dinner. Read the newspaper for a while & there's an article on the incident about the trishaw uncle + 3 ang mohs.

It said that the 3 ang mohs had apologized to the uncle ( which should be done long ago )
I should say they got wat they deserved for jeering & making sarcastic remarks on the uncle.
I'm sure if people recognise them somewhere let's say orchard, they will not be able to get out alive judging from all the comments and swearing on their actions.
The uncle is very old but i give him thumbs up for earning his own meals. To all those abled, younger & stronger but choose to beg instead, pls see the uncle as a role model for yourselves.

Ang Mohs bully old trishaw rider at Clarke Quay
Interview with Singapore Trishaw Uncle (Part 1)
Interview with Singapore Trishaw Uncle (Part 2)

Saturday, November 17, 2007 x 3:03 PM

yups, i'm sure you guys & ladies know wat TGIF means.

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!

Weekend is already coming right in your face together with all the programs lining up one by one. Hopefully tomo is a sunny day for my swim.

Just started to flip the first page of the CMFAS M6 book 3 days ago. I realised the period i estimated to complete the book is not so long after all. Lots of information in the book, with all the financial analysis & formulas. I guess i'll be spending most of the time during weekends at the lib digesting this book.

Did a weird assessment test called Occupational Personality Questionnaire. Basically it gives a rough idea to the person wat is your preferences towards work. Funny thing is after doing it i also do not understand wat's my preferences on my working career. Not much of a direction at this point in time except going to work as usual and finishing work on time.

The questions ask you to choose on 4 options & list them with either most suitable for you or least suitable for you. 108 questions took me 1 hr to complete, so i guess u have a rough idea of where i'm heading already.

I wonder whether does this situation applies to most of my peers who are already in the work force for quite some time or it's just me feeling this way. The mundane routine of going to work and ending work just to kill some time and earn money as the daily basic objective. Although there are very supportive and great colleagues with me, somehow there's something missing in the picture. The passion in my work i suppose.

PASSION

How many people out there can honestly say they are very passionate in their work? Up till now i only know people who are not passionate, so the figures are quite clear. Money seems to be the only driving force for this case as survival plays a part in it. Financial freedom will be a far away land if you think you can achieve it by working your ass off for other people.

Oh, i remembered saying i'll be listing some of the extreme customers.

A lady who only like to ask stuff on her credit cards. Things she would request.

a) The card is black in color & seems unlucky to me, can i change to gold color?
b) I do not like the UOB logo printed on it, is there anyway to remove it?
c) Can i have the expire date to be the same as my bd?
d) By the way she also like to spend 1 hr queueing just to deposit $1 and withdraw $0.50.

When she told me this i was like... wat the F***? Am i getting my retribution or something to have such as crazy person standing in front of me & asking having such requests?
If i can i would just give her a tight slap and shouted " WAKE UP YOU STUPID B**CH"
Reality is always not the case though. Therefore i slowly explained to her the mission impossible to satisfying her requests.

This won't be the last time i'll be seeing her as she's a regular ( and a nutcase ).
Her mum told us she had also given up on her daughter. In a certain way i pity her for the behavior and hopefully she will be able to think like a sane person in the future.

Being in this job actually grills me to be a more patience person & also able to put myself in other people's shoes before judging. ( the case mention above is a bit different as it's really a nutcase. I'm talking about sane people right now )
Customer service line is really not an easy job so everytime i queue for food or going into a retail shop, i would try to make things as simple as possible for the salesperson.
After all i'm already in the person's shoes for 1 year and 2 mths.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007 x 4:05 PM

Just heard from boss that one of the colleagues ( Kenny ) is going to relocate to coleman branch. Reason is that due to the high number of new trainees over our branch, the number of staff increases and hence have to reduce to meet the orginal allocated quota.

The worst thing is to train the new comers all over again ( need to spend a lot of time and sometimes may end up having customers complaining as they are still new )
Dun really like this type of arrangement of making the "old birds" leave due to the newcomers.
It's not easy to find a group of colleagues who are like a big family while working together.

Luckily the trainees are keen to learn & i'll make they are trained in all aspects on the procedures as well as how to handle customers.

( side track a bit )
Just taken a look at the DJ & it's a big increase due to wal mart's good 3rd quarter increase as well as dip in the oil prices. Hopefully tomo's Asia market will perform the same.

Tomo's lunch will be sponsor by boss ( pizza ) for the farewell party. .
Let's hope that the new environment is going to be alright for him!

Sunday, November 11, 2007 x 2:20 PM

It's been quite some time since i've started to blog again.

Spend much of my time on the stock market which is now my hobby.

Volatile is the best word to describe the stock market globally due to sub-prime mortages which is the core of the problem. End result is clearly the diving of major stock markets and top banks have to write-off the losses.

Been trying out the stock market for some time & it's really not suitable for the fainted heart.
The prices moving up & down can really cause your heart to move up & down as well.
One of my colleagues lost around 50k due to the CDOs ( Collateral Debt Obligations ) when alot of home defaults from US side starts to kick in, causing the market to plunge.

In the past i always wonder how people can lose such a big amount in stocks and after being inside the picture myself, i can now really understand the situation. For those who want to start investing your money into the stock market, pls be more rational when making decisions.

Too hook up on the martket right now. Basically my home page is SGX website http://www.sgx.com/ with all the prices and bloomberg http://www.bloomberg.com/ is my secondary sites for all the global information

( for Dow Jones index you can refer to this http://finance.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI )

I should be looking forward to weekends but somehow i dun look towards it.
Reason is that the stock markets are not open!!!
( A friend actually told me to seek counseling with this problem..something to do with the gambling social issues which will happen once the singapore casino start to operate.
I think their hotline would not entertain me ...haha )

Hopefully the market will correct itself once & for all and start picking up asap from the start of 2008 and everyone can start to make big money again.

Still stuck at UOB right now, already 1 yr and 2 mths with this operation job in Chinatown ( south bridge branch ) There's a bunch of very fun colleagues to work with & they are all like my god-mums. The only bad thing is the pay ( not high lo, wat else ). So right now i'm trying to switch job into something related to my interest, something to do with the stock market.

Previously i was called for an interview at Lim & Tan Securities for the role of central dealer.But somehow the appointment was called off as there's an applicant who is more suitable than me. The HR told me that he had CMFAS module 1 and 6 taken, so he can immediately start on the new job. Of course in this way the company do not need to spend extra resources on him. Damn piss off lor, i thought i can finally find a job i like but now it's gone.
( basically how do you know u like your job? Here's an example. If you wake up in the morning and do not feel like draggin your ass out of ur bed , most probably answer is you do not like your job. )

In the end i went to take the CMFAS module 1B last week and manage to pass it, lucky.
Right now i've registered for M6 & the exam is this coming january. Hopefully i can pass it with a single try and switch to a trader or dealer job asap.

My current job is actually not too bad, but just tat there are always some weird customers who like to make things difficult for me ( Future entries i will list some examples, very extreme ones) Without them the work is basically very relax. Fixed timing with no OT and you can't bring work home, what more can you ask? ( except for more pay )

Tomo is Monday and i'll be looking forward to it!!! No more weekend blues as the market is starting at 9am sharp, yeah!!!!