papernote

hey, you do realise that omission brings chaos.

fact is

fact is when the lights go off, when all else fades from sight but tables left where they were, everything in their place. I've got a terrible feeling of being a victim of a horrific robbery.

The one suspect I got in my list;

the ageing mind



it's true sometimes in darkness, we find ourselves.

Life is Tough, My friend

Weehooo!

I think times are getting more interesting. Which is why I'm still awake given the load of work that lies ahead the week. Well, there'll be a lot less smoke for sure.

Take life with a grain of salt.

Time to get a drunk! 

Now im tired.

nites nites

Losing Touch

I feel that people lack understanding the reason why they go college for. Don't get me wrong, I'm just stating a fragment of them. There are dedicated souls learning the craft of the trade. Dedicated to start out from where all starts from, going to college and getting a degree. The simpliest prerequisite requirement to any professional career.

Professional line aside, I set myself thinking whether is school the only best way preparing one to his industry. One thing about colleges nowadays, they want us to think that only way to be 'successful' or to make it in life is to study with them, pay them shit load of money and at the end of the day, they'll give a golden ticket for a day pass to Disneyland, literally. What a whole load of bull.

What upsets me the most is not this because no one gives a wind what those instituition's mantras are but the whole expection coming from society. I think society today is a real snob. People judge people from where they come from, their backgrounds. They ask that few things about you and take that to assume who you are. But that's how it is, people who hold higher grounds points their way around.

I think what I'm going through now is to be known as a career crisis (had this happen 20 years on). I hold a normal job and I'm not well qualified. It's sad really. It's totally draining talking to people and having people ask you the same question.

What I dread most is to look into people's eyes and passes the prejudgement 'Aiyoh moment'. Why..

What I think makes these people are the ideas set out by their parents and they are only evangelist of what seems right, without really knowing it.

The Human Spirit

Looking back at the string of events that took place from preparing to finishing the marathon, I seriously had no idea, no clue what I was getting myself into. How far is 21.1km? Really? All I had in mind was to complete a marathon this year and to me, the full marathon(42km) was like a 500 pounds gorilla in his boxing pants waiting to pin me down. Okay, so I went for the 250 pounds gorilla. And I thought he was little. 113.39kg. Come on. How wrong can I get.

Very wrong. 21.1km to a under-trained runner is like putting a little boy in an obstacle course with guns and massive explosions and a footballer.

Here's a walk through for the day.

Collected my race pack the day before. Didn't sleep too well that night.

6.10am.
I didn't had breakfast. Error 1
I didn't bring my bottle to rehydrate in the morning. Error 2.
Had to stay focused.

I ran 12km straight. Once I hit the 12km mark. My chest was heavy, I was very very cold. I felt as though I was having a terrible fever and I'm out of juice. It was so horrible I had to slap myself to keep up. Finally slowed down to catch my breath.

Look who's boss for the day.

Morning sun.

Massive elevation. Stamina killer.

By this time, my legs felt like they were from a different entity and not the body. I knew very well I've over worked my legs and the pain was crazy when I tried to run a little bit faster. I could feel 6 blisters on my toes rubbing off my skin. Every step got heavier. My heart was beating hard. On the bright side, the chill went away.

Met my secondary school history teacher. Mr Cha.

I come to really witness the human spirit that was evident on everyone's faces. The uncles, aunties and the people who pushed through. When I was at the finishing line looking pass the full marathon runners, boy was it inspiring. The pain and the joy in split seconds, the fulfillment, the endurance and the pride knowing that the battle is won. I had conquered my race and it was real tough. These people fought twice my battle and beat the 500 pounds gorilla.

It was that moment I finally understand what the human spirit is all about. How humans are able to stretch their capacity and finish the race. Their drive, their belief, their never say die spirit stated on their eyes. It made my eyes wet witnessing such an extraordinary feat.

This was the day I saw true optimism, true hope and despair. I felt truly alive.


As for me, I only had few things in mind when I was running.

1. Never look back.
2. Never stop.
3. Just keep going.
4. This is a race between me and myself.
5. Finish what was started.
6. There's a finishing line and it's sweet.

Lessons learnt
1. Girls can run.
2. Old uncles can REALLY run.
3. Old aunties can run.
4. Give support. We don't get much support needed here.
5. You want to taste the best Whooper? Go run 21.1km and head to Burger King :]

But one of the biggest lesson learnt is this. It's okay to be unproven and untested. If I would have known how far 21.1km was, I might have opted for a shorter route like the 5 or 10 km. The experts would have suggested me the 10km because it would suit me perfectly given my training track record. What came really sweet was after I've completed the 21.1km. I really finished it. I'm proud of myself for finishing what that was seem impossible a few years back. It is proven now that hey! it is possible.

Another thing is, you know what really scares people away. It's not this. It's those races where no one for sure know where the finshing line is even so, the possibilty of even finishing it. There's no pavement, there are no signs, no crowds, absolute zero certainty. But what you have is yourself, your set of belief and values and that's the true race we're all in.


My bib with the results;

Name:	PANG JUN YONG PHILIP (MAS)
Net Start:	06:13:52	Category:	Half Marathon 21km
Net Time:	02:51:38	Position:	1422
Finish Timing:	02:52:29.16

How it's like to cross the finishing line. Here's the vid;




And you want to know what unproven really means? I told my friend I may only finish the race after 7 hours or more. Traffic will then resume operation and I'll be running with cars. We even delayed our movie (transformers 2 - absolute rubbish) at pavillion to 8.30pm! Just in case I'm still out in roads of KL running like a lost kid. I'm so glad I could clock in before the 3 hour mark. I really am.

What a run !

why it isn't always easy

I've always been a strong believer in cultivating strong emotions in circumstances so much so, I am to make believe that in however horrible situations I'm in, it's not here to stay. Say example work. Doing stuffs from the bottom up may sound like any feel-good, in all inspiring, underdog superhero story.

Fact is, it really is horrible to be put in that position. What if there isn't really a superhero moment and all there is to it, is just an empty sea of nothing. The efforts, the decision to a different path. It drains everything out of me. One day you hold your chin up, knowing that it's for change and progress you're for and yes it could be done, then the next day a damn dragon comes flying your way, blowing fireballs at you.

Now all that you have to do is to wave your silvery sword above your head and point it to the dragon and say;

'Be gone now Dragon for I will have your head served on this golden plate'.

Top Gear Season 13!

awesome, awesome ad.

TopGear back on 21st June.

Ah. Sweet June.

When I Turn 20

it's 3.32a.m right now and I just got my biggest birthday gift.

A domain.

www.philippang.com

Created:	2009-06-18
Expires:	2010-06-18
Updated:	2009-06-18

Alongside with a few names.

Will soon update on the progress.

That's the first thing I got for myself in my twenties.

Cheers!

*UPDATE

www.philippang.com is now official. www.brownbuttons.com will be redirected. So kindly please update if you're following me on bloglist. Thanks.

Of Cocks

Today will be remembered as the biggest screw up of the year. With some great lessons learnt. This morning I met again with a customer who was not satisfied with the samples I showed him yesterday. So today, I brought him a whole new set of samples and what a shit load of crap happened.

This guy, a male in his forties. A typical Chinese businessman with great negotiation skills, very spontaneous with tactics due to his vast experience in the market. This guy can simply walk his way out of any negotiation. He made me agree with whatever he said. I had no say. He is the boss.

To cut it short, he chose the materials and kept bargaining his way to the best deal. There was when I made a huge and silly mistake by under quoting him 35cents per square feet. 35 cents can easily work out to a few thousand dollars but thankfully, it was a smaller area so the difference were in hundreds.

By the time I realised something was wrong. I was already in the lorry and had to report back to office on my offerings. I did some calculations and knew immediately I screwed up big time and I'm sure to get fried both ends. Only which is worse, the customer or the office people. I reluctantly texted back office and immediately received a call upon confirmation. Office people kept their calm and faxed a new quotation with the correct price to the customer.

Customer called me and asked me what the shit is going on. So I apologised and said I made a mistake earlier on and quoted him the 'supply only' price. Although only verbally and with no written contract by both parties, he accepted the offering at that particular price. He replied,

'that's you and your office's problem. Nothing to do with me. I'm only responsible to accept or deny your offer at the earlier price you gave me'.

I can only comply with his terms and said I'll try to arrange things out. He even thanked me for my mistake. I must be a real joke.

Damn. He was well aware of my error and took it as an advantage against me. I can only wait and anticipate for a soundful when I return back to office. Being caught in that situation was really intense. I really had a bad morning. One cock up followed by another.

Office said fine. We must then offer him at that price and faxed him the quotation he was well awaiting for.

I returned back to office, seriously got fucked up. Why wasn't I paying attention to the 101 prices I have to remember. Why didn't I study the invoice book. We don't pay you to be blur. Why did I keep calling back office to confirm the price. Can give customer more confidence in you or not? If I kept calling back, what good am I? if I don't call back, I get the price mixed up and this shit happens. I could only stay quiet and calm. I have simply no one else to blame. Time to own up.

My whole day was turned upside down. I told them to dock my pay for a lesson. They said it's okay since I'm gaining experience. That's one consolation.

Didn't know what I was doing the whole day. My mind was in a great mess. I can't even talk to the office people like I used to. Picked up the invoice book to learn how to fucking write.

6pm. I made my way to Sultan Garden, stayed there till i was chased.

Lesson learned
Tomorrow will be better.

My Legs got Butterflies

Earlier this year, I made it a point to set out time to run. Which often clocks in after work at 6.40pm when on some days, I could hardly even drag myself to my running shoe given the type of work I do. On better days, a good run is usually comforting. It helps my mind stay clear and builds momentum that kicks in when I keep up a good running streak.

So to keep me away from undue excuses and to keep my resolutions real, I am running the Standard Chartered KL Marathon 2009 that will take place in 17 days time. Though it's not the full 42km, maybe next time. I'll be running half the marathon (21km). Last week I had to stay in bed due to lower back pain which subsequently dragged to this week. If I ever over exert my body again, I'm in deep trouble.

Come to think about it, I doubt it's going to be easy. I was never an athlete and hadn't got a single clue with the pace I'm comfortable with for long distance.

But all that matters this time round is to finish the race, cross the line and get that damn medal! No matter what it takes.

When Real World Meets the Intarnet'

OMG

*


architecture genius.

Losing It

Over the past few months. I went through quite a few losses that is both heart breaking and detrimental. However, thankfully it is not the subject of life and death we are on. That would have different effects. Not too sure about you, but I think we always learn a great deal of lessons through losing something. People always advise us never to repeat our mistakes and often say we could have prevented that if we've planned an escape strategy/plan B.

Sad to say, I haven't been learning the secret to that. Here's why.

Story A
Constantly losing hard disks to grasshoppers.


I'm a person who is too well attached to my personal computer, when you things in it away from me. It leaves me with a very bad feeling of being stabbed by robbers in result of being really dumb, by saving a phone for all it takes. Thus the stabs. Okay, maybe not exactly but sometimes when I come to think of it, a kind of sourish real awful, rotten fish feeling would land in.

What happened was, I got my laptop late last year which means it's fairly new and by pure luck, you expect it to be a proper healthy running machine. I held high expectations given its parent company is HP.

But turns out, after 7 months with due care and love. I had a faulty hard disk with plenty of bad sectors. Partly, Vista might be culprit for corrupting it. Seriously, Vista is such a pain up the arse. I've been running Windows 7 RC as my main OS for a while now, and boy it works like a charm. Amazing step up from the guys at Microsoft. It's set to be out by the end of this year, so watch for it.


So anyway, this current loss is accountable for my 3rd hard disk death in 4-5 years. Now the question now is, were the files saved.

1st Hard disk (40gb) - Lost everything cuz I waz a pc newbz.

2nd Hard disk (80gb) - Managed to save some but lost most of it. Including my secondary school memories which till today, still hurts deep inside when I think about it.

3rd Hard disk (250gb) [recent] - I had 2 partitions. One is saved (all documents and media files) but the primary partition was corrupted. Which means all my softwares, bookmarks, random thoughts, scribbles, tweaks, etc were all gone.

It wasn't as bad as before if compare it by order. But I'm sadden by the fact that my random typeout, my bookmarks (then I discovered Xmarks) were gone. There goes half my collection and productivity booster. It wasn't until after it was all gone I realise the true value it holds. The minute datas were truly the lifeblood.

One thing, I think there could never be factors too similar to a mistake compared with previous mistakes. On the surface and as the old saying goes, it really seems like we never learn. We make the same mistakes and it's nothing but a cause of something that could be prevented. And that is why it makes perfect sense. Afterall, we've learned a lot more ways to go about it. If there are efforts in doing it right, I can only see it in a possitive light.

And guess what, I drive a 16 year old car now with similar characteristic to any lada cars. Pride of old Russia. This car has had hiccups and shows nothing but trouble.

Did I mention that my phone died as well?

Wait, why every single thing I own have similar expiry dates izzits ?

Pluuezz manufacturers cross industries stop the conglomorate canz.

pluuuezzzzzz. dun liddat.

A day at work

Sometimes, I just think that I work with a bunch of hard working, dedicated, cracky people.

Early Workforce Entry

For about the whole half of this year, I have been mostly away from the online blogging community. Perhaps timeout came naturally 'Peet-Peet, and you're out'.

It feels fresh to be back. I think getting to clear up the purpose behind one thing, makes a hell lot of other things easier. Blogging should be really simple. No hassle on what comes or not. It isn't like you're sucking up to Wall Street Journal's ass for a tiny part of your life back. I find it extremely infuriating and time consuming to filter out a blog entry. It's demoralises the soul to click and hold on the backspace key. It's like thrashing your brain multiple times on the same spot.

Besides that uninteresting, useless explanation. Here's a bit more on the events, changes that took place this first, second quarter of this year.

I'm currently employed as an employee at my dad's carpet/blinds factory. Truth be told, you may be right. My a levels sucked so badly, no companies in Singapore (except Starbucks) would hire any unqualified worker like myself. In fact, they didn't even want to talk anyone with a levels. In response to those seeking advise on which degree to pursue for an easy path, go for a technical degree. That is only if you believe in such a thing, I don't.

Everything took place around September last year in a career fair in Suntec Singapore. I remember getting only one reply out of the 100+ resumes I sent. I went for my first formal interview with a medium sized corporation and it went pretty okay. I googled myself to all possible questions and picked up a thing or two on how things work.

The outcome? They replied, 'I'm sorry, our quota for foreigners is full'. Don't blame us, blame gahmen keep cap small. I remember when I was there, a dude in old polo tees and jeans came walking in for the interview as well. I shook his hand and couldn't imagine how stupid I looked there. I was all dressed up with a proper tie, heading for a great fall.

I went off. I remember when I was in the MRT, holding on to my briefcase with only 3 sheets of paper in it, I felt exactly the same as those uncle who just got retrenched from those Channel8 drama series. Only different is, I didn't even get the job. Surprisingly, I wasn't upset at all. I took it a very, very early experience in entering the workforce. It was a handful of experience really.

My eyes hurt now. I'll continue on the next entry. I know I wrote first, two quarter of this year. That's coming next.

World War II wasn't .. too far back

Best read for the day.
Click to enlarge it


Win.

Parenting.. What!

Portrait.

Think parenting, Well, if you are my age, you most probably wouldn't. Unless you find yourself waking up as Baby-faced boy Alfie Patten. Which can be pretty daunting to picture out.


For the past few months, I found myself quite engaged with the nature of parenting. No, It's not that I am in search of a new hobby and thought parenting to be, really hip and fun. Nope, not that. It's nothing near that. It doesn't even have anything to do me initially. But it has something to do with my brother and a damn horny cat.

It started off when my brother brought back a kitten, roughly 5 months back. It was only slightly bigger than the size of my palm back then. We named it after our own creative deficiency, Meow Meow (always go for the sound the animal makes, it's easy) and the rest was history. It is now family.


Picture a cat now being part of the family. It's like having a little moving object that is always running around, scratching stuffs. Hopping around with a ball.


As time passes by, it started to get all horny. It ran away from home for sex but was chased back by my dog, released a certain kind of discharge, called for love, got into position all the time. Which is better? to protect and deprive it from its instincts or to leave it free as it is.


For once, I had the same concern as most parents with young daughters would. Of course, the reason varies and both the subject matter cannot be compared from an objective point of view, but I sort of get it why some parents are usually more protective when it comes to a young, teenage girl.

At the end, we gave our cat to our neighbour. It's certainly not due to the reason mentioned above. We gave it away because in time to come, nobody will be free to take care of it (and its offspring) and it's never good to lock the cat up in a room. It should be as free as other cats. That neighbour of mine has a male cat. Let's see what happens.

Night ride.

bbrpp.

Heck, we'll still go in the room calling Meow Meow, like we used to.

Don't ask.

.

The Year of Dreams and Solitude

2008 was a painful year. By all means I'm to ensure a repetition like this would never exist in my lifetime. The only upside to it, would be that I've lived through such a life and put an end to it. (period)

To sum up 2008. It was a year of self - searching. To find out how oblivious and out of touch I am with my damn self. I was a walking dead man, perfectly soulless. The numbness was dreadful. However, 2008 did teach me a lot. Through out this year, I've slowly, gradually drawn myself closer to discover what my life is all about and what I want to make out of it.

Turning from 19 to my early twenties now, this year flips open a whole new chapter and a prime one. It's time to bid goodbye to teenage life and usher in adulthood and whatever that comes along. It's time to restructure, to explore and unravel, find new purporses, expect stories to unfold and some how, inspire. A greater understanding of the things that matters most and distinguish the battles worth fighting for.

I hope 2009 would be a year of progress.

Have a good year ahead.