Guilt-ridden

Retail therapy binge is over.

I had a chat with a student yesterday who had to stop studying due to financial problems. His family can't support him and he has 3 younger siblings. In their interest, he needs to work to be able to send money home so the family can eat and the kids can go to school.

With a huge chunk of earnings sent home, he can barely afford essential costs not to mention food. Dinner is forgone on most days, breakfast is bread and lunch is usually a packet of Maggi.

Times like this, I feel blessed, thankful and ever so guilty for having so many things taken for granted.

Needless to say, I no longer feel like shopping.

Retail therapy

It's good to be back after being away for a week in Langkawi and Penang. The island cities are such shopping havens that I've burnt my wallet and had a good time (outside of work that is!).

Back in KL the momentum didn't stop though. The megasale is back and as usual, I find myself in a shopping binge and frenzy! Someone needs to take away my credit cards everytime the sale starts...

These time, in less than 2 weeks I've bought:

- 10 pairs of underwear
- 6 pairs of socks
- 5 t-shirts
- 2 polo t's
- 2 shirts
- loads of chocolates
- a 3-piece luggage set
- a pair of shoes

I am a happy (but broke) boy. Meng and Chun, you need to rein me in when we're at Bangkok otherwise I'll buy everything.

Wanderlust...

Everyone who knows me knows I'm a homebody... I enjoy staying at home and an ideal day off is a day in front of the tv eating mangoes... Work however dictates otherwise. Come June and July, I will be off and away to quite a few places. So if my blog starts attracting cobwebs, you'll know why :)

So I'm packing bags and about ready to go to...

- Langkawi
- Penang
- Kota Kinabalu
- Kuching
- Singapore
- JB
- Ottawa
- Toronto
- New York
- Houston

and will be briefly transitting in Taipei, LA, Chicago and Denver, all in less than 2 months. Woohoo?

World... here I come!

Grr...

I love my life. It's not perfect but I really have little cause to complain. There are gripes however, and as petty as they may seem, it annoys me to heck! As work is a big part of my life, a lot of the things that rub me the wrong way are things that happen daily. So here's my top 10 list of things that makes Dan grumpy!

#10: The LRT stops at KLCC for a good amount of time as a lot of commuters stop here SO those at the back, you really don't need to push and shove your way out. Just move with the crowd otherwise I will step on your toes!

#9: Go take the free Sun paper but don't read it and walk. Having a barricade of slow-walking readers who can't move in a straight line tempts me to start pushing people. Don't tempt me.

#8: Mobile phones come in a silent mode. Use it. The only one who enjoys those annoying 3-minute long text alerts are you. Seriously.

#7: When parking cars, just go head in, especially when there are a line of cars behind you. I have better things to do then to spend 5 minutes watching you move in and out trying to straighten your car into the space backfirst.

#6: Gym equipments are not chairs. If you need to sit and rest, go home.

#5: Music in the office may soothe your soul but it aggravates mine. Use headphones.

#4: Don't smile at me and say hi when you are a backstabbing, incompetent ****. Colleagues with misplaced sense of purpose and authority should be torched, skewered and fed to ravenous birds.

#3: If you want something, just say so. I am not a mind reader.

#2: Where are all my pens!!!

#1: I don't care why the server is down. Get it up and working!

Let the good times roll...

I'm feeling very elated yet somewhat down both at the same time. It's confusing, brain-bending and it's culturing previously non-existent insomniac tendencies.

I've had a great (and final) housewarming makan with family last Saturday. Other than my immediate family, aunts, uncles, cousins and even my grandmother came for a really good time together. I am definitely thankful to be able to call these people my family (and thank goodness for that as you can't really choose your family!) and it was the easiest housewarming ever as everyone chipped in to do just about everything. I wished I could post some photos but I left my camera in my dad's car which is now in Melaka. Groan...

Anyways, when it's all over and done and everyone's gone home, it's utterly depressing to be alone in your house and missing the warmth and company of people you care about. I guess I'm still not quite used to living alone as I've always had people at home with me. Perhaps it was the rain that sparked the melancholy.

It's Monday now and I'm at work facing a deluge of things-to-do, courtesy of my five day weekend last week. Maybe jumping right into work will get me out of my doldrums... or maybe it's just a Monday thing.

Have a good week ahead!