Heaven, how far is it and how to get there?

2 days back watched this abc documentary with the above name, you have evangelists, tibetian buddhists, athesists, scientists all rolled in one. I was hoping that they'll put everyone together and have a slugfest instead of seperate interviews and also thought they should have included scientologists to make it a little more fun. There were also interviews with folks who had near death experiences and believed that they were at the gates of heaven and all that bullcrap, well how do you know it's heaven couldn't it be that you were at the gates of hell and that the rosy picture you see outside is actually the biggest practical joke anyone ever played on you. One step in and you will see the sign "Welcome to Hell". :P There was also this geneticist caliming that he had found some 'god' gene, basically if that gene is activated one is supposed to be more spiritual. Anyways, I dunno why so many ppl so we eng wanna figure out all this crap, why can't folks just take "I dunno" for an answer and stop all the religions or atheist thing. One idea that came out of this is that I'll be the founder of something called 'Complementology' (name was inspired by a friend) that essentially encompasses and those that don't have a religion and not atheists cos that's the last group of folks whose money hasn't been milked!! Can almost feel my first million coming in liao. Woot!

My last words to those who wanna know whether is there heaven.... ke si (go and die) lor.

The Pleasure of Pain

It's 4 more days before I head for the next trip, basically my whole team is gone except for me! The only other guy not on vacation is working from home today so that leaves the whole office to me myself only. I had a big struggle this morning about coming to work but I guess I had to come for the sake of doing further research and printing of stuffs for the trip so here I am.

My back problems came back suddenly last week and made me sorta ease off on my gymming sessions. Somehow the few day's break made me feel kinda recharged and I was able to really up the intensity of my recent sessions. It's a strange thing but somehow one can get obsessed with training once you realise you can control/ignore the pain to a certain extent. Some folks call this a 'runner's high' and I think it doesn't just apply to running, it could be climbing, cycling, etc... I remember an article about this female triathlete who commented that you've got to enjoy pain to do triathlons and I think somehow being able to control these feelings of pain and fatigue makes one feel formidable, or at least that's how I feel. It does help that the hours here are shorter and I have lots of time on my hands to do some training for the better half of a week.

The majority of folks who exercise obviously do not intend to put themselves in an ultra stressful enviroment but it's amazing how much punishment the human body can take but that is only if one wants to take it. Each time you try to push yourself harder I think you consciously or subconsciously discover something about yourself and your mind, but I think you'd need a little time to understand what I'd call "the pleasure of pain", try it and it'd make you feel more alive than you've ever did....

Finally have some breathing room, been busy the last few days working on a study but it's finally done!! Just before my boss left last week, kenna arrowed to work on a study, she asked if I think "I'm up to it" of course lan lan gotta say yes right? Anyway, tried working on it over the weekend (not much though) and when I came back on Monday, I asked my colleague when it was due and he said TUESDAY! I nearly freaked out, anyways I managed to get everything wrapped up with a little help from my coach and I'm glad everything turned out just fine. *big sigh of relief*

Backtrack a little to last friday, we went to our first party in indy. It was for the entire stats group and there were about a hundred folks there. Turns out we were a little late and missed out on some of the good stuff. Oh well, early birds catches the worm so just too bad I guess. The good thing that came out of it was that I got a chance to mingle with some of the directors and know quite a few more folks. Turns out that the da lao da is a big guy (6 foot 9 inches!) and damn gao siao but his jokes are super guai lan. We had a couple of drinks there and I had my first taste of egg nog. It tastes really harmless at first and takes a while for the effect to kick in because it's a sort of dairy product based liqueur.... It was ok for networking purposes but think I definitely need to go to some parties for singles. :P

The highlight of last weekend is probably Miss Saigon, finally managed to catch it after all these years. Was seated a little far though and couldn't catch the facial expressions... Regardless of the distance, I quite liked the songs and since I like sad endings as well I must say the moolah was well spent. Looking forward to nuaing over the upcoming weekend and of course to plan for my upcoming Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas trip!

Slumber Party

Had a most bizarre dream last night, had me jumping up from bed but on hindsight it was freaking funny.... I think to a large extent I can attribute it to south park season 9 episode 9 when there was a part about the gals having a slumber party, the story is told as is without any exagerration or modifications by yous truly. Here's how it goes, john and I were having a slumber party at (drum rolls....) Michael Jackson's place!! I can't recall why but somehow john was on the bed with mj while i slept on the floor.. Well, I fell asleep and awoke in the middle of the night and saw johno still sleeping and mj with his pants off and a woody!! Goddammit, I tio chuar and jumped out of my dream, who knows wat would have happened to john if i had continued dreaming. haha. Anyways, bizarre as it is I thought it was bloody funny.

Today we saw some heavy snowfall in indy, the weatherman reported an expected 5-7 inches of snow. The whole morning things were peaceful and quite but snow started falling at about 2 plus. By 1430 my team members started claering out of the office and john told me a colleague was going to send us back at 1530. I was thinking that we should leave sooner cos the weather looked really bad and it was quite tricky to drive. Anyways, my colleague's hubby got stuck in traffic and was like 40 minutes late. Whe we got to the car, it took us like another half an hour to get to our apartment when it was only a 5 min drive away normally. Some shots we took while walking into our block and from the balcony plus my snowballs made in the balcony!! Keke

Walking into our block!


Stupid john trying to sneak a snowball at me when i was taking the picture.


View from the balcony, cf with pics taken during fall...







Bo liao making snowballs in balcony, notice that I'm in shorts only.

Don't let it snow, don't let it snow, don't let it snow...

Back from my vacation and it has been a tiring 3 days. Somehow I've been feeling pretty lethargic after coming back to indy from new york. I guess I can attribute that to the incredible amount of walking we do. Though most of the time we took the subway, we did clock quite a lot of distance of foot. Mind you it was freezing those few days we were there and I thought I was underdressed. Anyways, i decided to post the pics and basically talk about what we did there perhaps sometime over the weekend. It was a tight and hectic schedule and there must be still tons of things to do in the big apple we unfortunately couldn't cover. All in all, it was a memorable trip and I hope to be back again sometime.... Oh, one thing I must mention is that while in boston we witness one of the most hiong things I ever saw with my own eyes. While walking back to the hotel, we walked past this gentlemen's club called centerfolds and there were this 2 folks across the street and the gal(or guy not sure) about to go down some mexican guy! All this right in public and that street definitely wasn't a back alley. I was like wtf, should have taken a picture man, they saw us and simply bo chap... These angmohs damn hiong siah.

Was snowing this morning on the way to work, last time watch teebee see snow like damn nice right? Basket when you have to live with it, it's quite PITA. When the wind's strong and you have all those snowflakes smacking into your face it can get on one's nerves. Now the shitty part was that I didn't have my gloves on today and after getting some groceries after work, couldn't put my hands in the jacket cos carrying some bags. Basically all the blood chiong to my hands and they look quite swollen (and were numb). Bottomline, don't leave home without your gloves and don't snow so much!! Gotta bear with winter until next april... arrgghhhh!!