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....

Blogging my heart out

Went on a car rally last thursday. Got a terrible henna tattoo, ran all over a coloseum (is that how it's spelt?), went to Singapore Discovery Centre for the first time. All in good fun.

That was followed by a late-night session at G's, full of mahjong and beer, with a group of good friends. Oats and G and L found out probably far too much about sex from me (which is perhaps why L was hiding in the corner), but another night of good fun. We'll make it through more than one round of Mahjong next time!

Hung out with E on Sat, which was fun, even if i couldn't contribute any worthwhile opinions about bathroom fixtures :P

So all in all, a good week where i caught up with friends.

H said something interesting the other day when i was lamenting about not really having any work friends - "that's cos u have work friends, not friends at work. close friends are hard to come by". And that's so true.

Last long run this coming Wednesday. Gotta do it! 35km baby! then it's off to see H, and spend some time with Trimalchio, who gives new meaning to the term, the O in Ohio ;)

All right, that's enough crap out of me today.

Ajantis is crapping away....

Tomorrow is yet another day

More random thoughts.

Going to tell my team tomorrow that i'm leaving. Not sure what the reaction will be. Yet another step in the process of handing over and tossing aside the mental baggage.

Had some good chats recently with some classmates, as well as some good conversations with overseas friends. Helps me feel a lot better about the whole social situation. Thanks gals!

Did i mention that H and I will be going to Vietnam? I've always wanted to visit, but since we'll only have a week, it's a choice between Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. What would you recommend? I am also definitely getting some suits tailored...

On the car front, we have it narrowed down to the following choices. Suzuki Swift, Honda Jazz, Nissan March and Kia Rio. Now i just have to test drive all four of them.

Finally, i realised that one of the things i treasure about our relationship is that H also has an immense curiosity about stuff going on in the world. So we might end up talking about Zingermans' business model, or about Starbucks, or about how Walmart really is the evil empire, or about Chinese automakers. Now if we could only just arrange to be on the same side of the world at the same time ....

Ajantis is wandering....

My brain is a potpourri

Run log this week :
- Mon : 10km
- Wed : 19.2km (due to aborted long run)
- Sun : 34.3km

I finally feel ready for the marathon.

Today's run was particularly interesting. When you're running such long distances, any change in scenery is a good thing. So you end up people-watching. The couples who canoodle on the benches (and probably think that i'm crazy as they see me run past them for the umpteenth time), the lady who appears to be picking up cans or trash from the grass and has two full bags of cans/trash by the time i finish running, the other late-night runners.

And you also realise that your body begins to fall into a routine. Around the 12th kilometre, my stomach ALWAYS begins to growl, no matter how much i've carbo-loaded (and yes, this is despite the 5 mango puddings for those were at dim sum yesterday). Around the 15th to 16th kilometer, my knees and ankles begin to complain. Today had a new variation though. Bloated stomach around the 25th kilometre. Once again, i blame it on those mango puddings (my bane!). Or maybe the oodles of evaporated milk that i poured on them...

I also realised why i liked running so much. To me, running is a matter of mental willpower. And everything in running, to me, is within your control. It's a simple step of putting one foot in front of the other. As Fish said, i'm a planner!

So anyway, long story short, it looks like everything will be in place for the marathon in December. And dear friends, i was wondering if some of you might be cool with coming in to see me at the finish line, and to go for brunch/lunch after that :) I will be dropping some of you messages in the coming days.

Ajantis sends his love and hugs while icing sore knees....

Ideas ideas ideas

E made an interesting comment over MSN last night.

"You like to talk about ideas"

And that's quite true. I like learning new stuff. Why Venture Capital companies require new start-ups to be within 20 minutes of their office, why Starbucks was promoting Akeelah and the Bee, what the Democrats are thinking as they prepare for the 7 Nov elections in the US, why Chinese car manufacturers can't quite export their cars to the world market yet, how Steve Wynn ripped a hole in his 100 mil plus Picasso, how the CEO of the Disney Channel is managing to score all these big successes, like the High School Musical, how parents cope with children who have mental disorders, the tribulations of homeless people in the US, how Dr. Yunus set up Grameen Bank and pioneered micro-financing.

All of these are interesting and endlessly fascinating to me, these broader vistas of the human condition representing facets of the world around us.

Reminds me of what my JC teacher wrote on my testimonial : "A is so intent on self-improvement". Haha. I need to take myself less seriously sometimes, i guess.

Ajantis is still learning...