Sitting here staring at my screen

i just planned out my leave for the rest of the year. 18 days of leave to use up.

It effectively means that i'm off from Dec 16. but it also makes me more aware that i'm slowly slipping out of the loop, closing off my projects, marking a new phase in my life.

you know that time when the leaves start falling in late autumn but the first snowflake has yet to fall? that time between seasons when it seems like one breath could tip one season over into the next? that hushed moment you feel just before your life is about to change tremendously? that's what it feels like right now.

it's been a challenge to keep myself motivated, but now that i can see the end in sight, it's clearer what i have to hand over. i need to keep telling myself that i can't finish up everything, that the focus should be to hand over properly so that people can take over. and maybe if i keep telling myself that, i won't feel so guilty.

I know i will have to work far harder than i do right now. The training plan is 18 months long, for goodness sake (and i'll find out what it involves next week). Can i live up to the new job? I don't know. But at least i will have tried.

Ajantis is seizing the day...

Trips galore!

The wedding was beautiful, i got to see my friends, ran 36km, enjoyed the time with H, had one big fight with H, made up, talked about our future plans, ate lots of terribly sinful food. That kind of sums up the trip in a nutshell.

Wedding :
It was my first time at a Catholic wedding, and i ended up contrasting it against my sister-in-law's wedding in July. At this Catholic wedding, a lot of the folks attending were already practicing Catholics, or they had been brought up in a Catholic environment. The emphasis was much more on the rituals and ceremonies. So while i felt kinda excluded, i also understood why. This was quite different from my sister-in-law's wedding, where much of the audience were not Jewish, so the Rabbi took great pains to explain the meaning behind each part of the ceremony.

H sang/cantored the entire wedding. I always enjoy H 's singing.

My friend M was the bride, and she looked radiant. I'm so so happy for her. She's one of my closest friends from college, and she is such a warm, mature and loving person who throughly deserves and is completely deserving of the person that she will now spend the rest of her life with. The fact that she chose to marry someone with just a high school education has also helped me to accept H's decision not to pursue a college degree.

36 Km run :
Had to walk the last 500m, but i pulled it off in 4 hours! The colder weather helped, but running uphill for part of the route was a bitch and a half. Didn't carbo load enough, so i went into mild hypothermic shock after stepping out of the shower. I shivered so badly i got two bad abdominal cramps, and would get cramps if i moved a muscle wrong. Not fun. But still, i think i'm finally ready to take on the marathon...

Time with friends :

Got to see Gimble, which was nice, but i don't think i'll be going back to see them after the 10th anniversary concert next year. Too much time since i was last in the group (6 years!)

Got to hang out with T in Columbus. Had a good time, and got to dance twice. The dance scene in Columbus is quite amazing, and i won't complain about aerials anymore after seeing that 60-something couple do the handstand rollup and 12-midnight! And yes, I must officially say that Columbus is not HICKTOWN, but perhaps it is still.... icktown ;)

H time :
It was good to spend time with H. Every time we reunite, i can feel the tension drifting away. We did get into one huge fight though, but we were able to resolve it, and some issues were surfaced that needed to be surfaced. I think it made me aware once again that a relationship always needs work even if it had an extremely strong foundation. Conclusion? I need to listen more, and we both need to work at finding activities that we both enjoy (cooking - me eating and cleaning, H cooking, card games, taking long walks in parks, movies, eating out, concerts, doing the hokey pokey ;), etc etc).

So that's why we probably won't go to Vietnam but just take a short trip somewhere to Bali or Malaysia, so we can spend a bit more time catching up and hanging out in Singapore.

We also talked a bit more about our plan for the next few years too. Basically, if things work out with my job, H will move here and we will stay here for 3-5 years. Now the trick is how to get H here....

Terribly sinful food. sinful. lotsa meat, potatoes, gravy. and sausages! oh my god, the sausages. and the chai. I think i had about 30 cups of chai in 2 weeks :P

Oh well, that's what holidays are for!

Other random things :

I can't believe GST is going up to 7%!!!! Ack!
Still shopping for a new car. It's now down to the Suzuki Swift, the Nissan March and the Honda Jazz. Also went driving while in the US. I'm not looking forward to cramming my way through crowded Singapore streets.
Marathon in 2.5 weeks!

Ajantis is still jet-lagged....