neit.

untitled

Christmas Schedule.....past..

I have decided to list down all the events we had during Christmas 09 so I wont forget where and when we went.

19th Dec Dinner Laws House
23rd Dec Dinner Auds House
24th Dec Brunch SIG-Werners Oven
24th Dec Dinner Ems House
25th Dec Breakfast My House
25th Dec Dinner Bens House
26th Dec Dinner Dima's House AND Rogers House
27th Dec Dinner Ems House
28th Dec Glens House
29th Dec Home
30th Dec Moo and Doo's house AND Sherwins house
31st Dec My House
1st Jan Home
2nd Jan My House

:)

It really has been a great Christmas season, probably the best since well since my bil left us. Downside of course was my mum and baba being away but they came back just in time for Christmas celebrations at my house. Its been a long time since i had such a long break, OK so it was broken here and there with a couple of days of work but all in all Dec 2009 has been kind, with a couple of days of reservist and a couple of days in pain after the tooth extraction it all has worked out fine.

I loved being home. I love my house, i love my dog, i love my kid and i love my wife( i love my hamsters and fish as well). She has been as supportive as any wife can be and as we enter our 7Th year of marriage I am happier then i have ever been. Who thought it was possible. We have had our ups and downs like all couples do but on balance we have had more ups then downs. We have found strength and comfort in each other and love and support from each other. Sometimes we rant and rave, curse and ignore but we both know whats important is each other. Heavily pregnant she still insist on doing the daily rituals (chicken slaughter and chanting) of bathing Caitlin even though we have a helper to do stuff like that. The two of them in conversation is an example of 2 type A personalities both playing the same game and both thinking they are the Captain. I giggle silently daily as i eavesdrop on them. This Christmas really felt like it should, and us spending Christmas day at home to me was special. We have never done that before, we just relaxed and enjoyed our home and each other.

. Next year we will have another little female bundle in our midst, we will be stressed and tired I am sure from work and everything else but having tloml around makes it all much better. This year the lesson has been, Love really is a many splendid( splendored)thing.

Christmas at our house :)

Another year is over another Christmas passed and we held our annual party yet again. I really enjoyed myself and i hope everyone else did too. The last guest left at 5am this morning, there were a couple of casualties...due to some light drinking but all in all a great time. Special thanks to all those people who helped so much, the boys, Doo, Moo who gave up a night out to babysit, the Indonesian and Philippino contingent and to tlomy. i will write more later.
all pictures were taken by tlomy. there are more and i will post them soon!

Christmas Morning.

:)

Christmas morning, she came out of her room and saw her present from us.

lol its ridiculously big but i don't care.

chey

So i had a bit of free time. these are some of the products of my endless doodling. I photoshoped then after i sketched them out.

above and below are self portraits. well pseudo self anyhow, above if i were a bird and below if i were a real angsty troll.

Above the sketch, below the photoshopped edition.

bah

well it kept me out of trouble.

Its been a heck of a christmas, havent had dinner at home since the 22nd of Dec, and still got a week of activities to go! Lots to write but not tonight. For now just a repost of pics i messed with.

edited.ubin

How all great trapeze artist get their start.

Past and Present.

Above, maybe 15years ago? Below the same place last month.

:)

Upon picking up the Scythe, Leroy unwittingly became the Angel of Death.

Another day another rant.

Ok I am back again with another rant.

I extracted this from a Time.com article its written by Robin Wright.

""Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri was known as Iran's defiant cleric, first in challenging the autocratic rule of the Shah, and then later in confronting the very revolution he had helped foment. Now, the big question in Tehran is whether his sudden death of will catalyze a broader showdown between the regime and the opposition Green Movement.""

It seems pretty normal right? well its all good till you get to the part that says "his sudden death"

THE MAN WAS 87years old how sudden could it have been! In a country where the average life ends at 71yrs! he went on and surprised everyone by dying suddenly at 87.
_________________________________________________________________
On the other hand Brittany Murphy has died at age 32, news reports are saying it was due to natural causes and police don't suspect any foul play. Who knows at this point her death is still so fresh...but wait the genius Josh Groban knows here is his latest tweet ""Hollywood loses another bright soul....how many more? A decade of decadence and devastation. Time to wake up."" Yes its because of a decade of decadence and devastation that she is dead. Well done Josh. you know it was because of decadence. It cant be an inherited deceases, it cant be heart failure it cant be cancer nono it must be decadence. my vote for idiot of the week Mr. Josh Gorban.
Late addition it now seems that the poor girl was taking pain killers, and was violently ill just before she died. Josh Groban- still and idiot.

So what

So will he or wont he? Mr. Chiam See Tong, defender of the people of Potong Pasir, Mp for 25 years the man responsible for the victories in the early 90's which lasted till his party imploded. I kinda like the guy, i think he is a legend. In terms of Singapore politics he is the most successful opposition politician we have, is he in the same heavy weight league as LKY i doubt it especially in terms of debate. In fact I don't think we have a politician in Singapore that can take on LKY in terms of debate, the sheer weight of his knowledge and experience is insurmountable. Back to the question will he or wont he? Rumors abound in the press that he is considering going into battle again but on another battlefield this time he wants the PAP heavyweight Wong Kan Seng who is has not been challenged in his GRC ward since its inception . unchallenged=untested? Maybe Mr. Chiam feels Mr. Wong Kan Seng is ripe for the picking in light of the Mas Selemat issue (should a minister resign for that kind of lapse? i don't think so but hey who am i). If Mr. Chiam goes for a grc and takes it, politics in Singapore will take on a totally unchanged view. Yes that is what I think, people will get excited, gossip will flourish there will be heady conversation in coffeshops and taxi's but in reality it will change nothing. The opposition will still be eunuch like in Parliament where they will have enough votes to do anything. Well one difference will be more debate ..,i hope. If he throws it all on this election knowing it is probably his last one and walks away from Potong Pasir, I would vote for him for his willingness to walk away from a sure thing and risk his undefeated legacy in an effort to push politics forward. Maybe there will be no change but it could be the beginnings of change.

Copenhagen, so in the end nothing happened..the leaders of the "free" world had great press in the run up to the event but in the end it was just a lot of people talking about something they all didn't agree about but lets get a statement out anyway. The great changes that the press lead us all to believe in terms of the environment have come to nought. Oh there is a statement, there is an agreement but its all smoke and mirrors yet again. Super President Obama flew in to save the day but alas he met his mini Waterloo in Copenhagen. Spin wise he will say we have reached an historic (he loves that word) agreement where the world has come together to fight climate change but we are a long way off from where we need to be. He will say that or something like that i am sure.

Al Gore says the Arctic or is it the Antarctic will melt within 7 years. I better get my scuba licence soon.

Tiger Woods has had 14 affairs, well to be honest 14 women have come forward about their alleged affairs, he has just said he buggered it up with his wife. So it could be 1 or 400 for all we know. The question people have been asking is How could a guy be so dumb, we thought he was a smart guy. Yeah he doesn't say much in interviews, he dresses nice, plays well decent looking and plays the sport of the elite and we expect him to be a genius instead of a lying cheating man who seems to like waitresses. SEE its all about the packaging isn't it? The people who created Brand Tiger should be proud, of course he is a great golfer in terms of play but to hear people talk about golf its also a mindset, a type of person that typifies great golfers and maybe he isn't that guy? Is he going to get the Bears record? Who knows. What about his wife and kids...how do you untangle this mess.

And on a a final note in my round up of things that wont make a difference in your daily lives this week but will make you stop and think. Someone stole the infamous sign from Auschwitz "Freedom Through Work" People have been speculating its neo nazi's or its extreme right wing nationalist (er neo nazis?). I think its just a bunch of hoodlums who should be sent to live in a nice little jail somewhere like Tel Aviv.

Puppy.

Sherwin, Mark and I stumbled on this little puppy sometime back and well I just never took the time to post the pictures. There were actually 2 of them, a sibling that was a lovely black and tan colour with more tan then black. There were living in a caretakers shack so i suppose they will be turned out into the world someday...:(

clouds illusions i recall

My post on tradition, and i guess the fact that its Christmas have sort of put me in a hmm I'd say melancholic mood but that would just be overly dramatic, its not a black dog day either so maybe i will just say a shadow has passed over me just for the time being. We have been cleaning up the study for our new desks (yes we bought 2) and Caitlin found some old pictures. Some from my time in school, my parents wedding my family my days as an altar boy of pets long gone and family now departed. That would put anyone in under a cloud i reckon (Carly Simon belting away with coming around again is NOT helping)

Most days i miss them, my father, my Bil, my godfather and Uncle Mark. Today its Uncle Mark. I was thinking about how little i knew of him his past his life his loves his family. All i knew was the man, a good man who did so much for others to the point of giving all of himself. Why did he do it? was he just a nice guy, was he seeking redemption for some sin in the past I don't know i never thought to ask. When he died, we his family his boys rallied around and gave him a send off fitting a great guy. I collected his body, i told his children i sat by his coffin. I know we were all there, his boys but I had to do these things and these are the things that stick by me he was my first friend to die. I remember how when we travelled we would talk for hours on anything under the sun. His answer to every problem was the same whats for lunch, and it always ended the same with him saying "standard dropped" with regards to a shop where the food has tasted the same for 30yrs or so!

I know he would have spoilt Caitlin rotten, he would have been sad for the friendships that have died, happy for those that have formed and he would tell me when the worst happens, there is nothing to do but have lunch.

I almost lost a friend today or rather almost lost a friendship that is important to me so I want to say a word on friendship. Sometimes you fight you disagree and things come to pass and its easier to be silent with your anger or pain. Nothing good comes from this, cause one day you will write an email to tell your friend what a rotten person he is and how horrid he has been to you, and its hard to walk back from that. Sometimes you just loose sight of each other in the medley that is daily life and you find you are both singing different songs after time apart. Its not the end, friendships endure, love is stronger then we think. So if this Christmas, you find yourself out on a ledge somewhere and you think you have no one to pull you back in, think again somewhere in your past is someone who will come find you, all you have to do is call.

We don't have to be friends we should want to be.

well maybe that pesky cloud is shifting, have a nice night. :)

Traditions

As Christmas comes closer, I have started to think about the traditions that have become part and parcel of of my life. ALL THINGS CHANGE. I don't like it but they do, when I was a kid Christmas was a whirlwind of peoples houses, playing and parties. Laughter, dancing, drinking all common place in my house. When my siblings got married and started to leave Singapore things changed I guess as they had to. My folks stopped going for mid night mass, people got older the parties more sedate. When my father died it seemed most of the traditions went with him, so we started our own.
(for years I would meet Iggy for dinner on Christmas eve but alas that too has changed) Midnight in Church with friends who come back to my home for something warm to eat and something cold to drink. I have a friend who I see only on Christmas Eve after mass at my house, this year he wont be there and he took the effort to tell me and i have to say it surprised me how it affected me.

On the family front it was brunch at my sisters place and even when my bil left us we carried on with that. This year will be different my nephew and mum will be with my Australian family so brunch will be in my house. At first i was annoyed, you know its tradition we have to go there and we have to eat the special omelet and the bacon and stuff, then it dawned on me what I really didn't like was having my nephew and mum away for Christmas and as it turns out that's not traditional that's LIFE.

These events, they stand like markers through our lives. Christmas, Birthdays and everything else but we begin to tie ourselves so tightly to the traditions that the reason for having these markers is quickly forgotten. While we may not be religious and tend to forget the reason for Christmas, lets not forget the reason for us gathering together. Its so that family and friends can BE together to BE with each other, it matters not if I don't have lights on the tree or my open house is in Jan instead of Dec, what matters is that we are open to the idea that there will be change and it doesn't matter as long as we are together. This year I who am tied to more traditions than most have decided that the my New Years resolution shall be, Cut the strings of traditions and just enjoy each other. (at least i will try)

Random

Buloh-from the files.