I will be alright tonight.

23/12/09

Absolution

Haha.

09/09/09

I Feel My Pain

Rotting away.

Where the road ends.

No light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm back. Another aimless day. In between playing my FX trading game I try to decide if I should sit on my sofa for the rest of the day watching CNBC or if I should sit in front of my laptop to waste the hours away while waiting for the next headhunter to call (they haven't called in weeks).

I am a ball of bitter boredom.

28/08/09

Silent Screaming

I'm losing my cool.

There's only so much of idlehood I can suffer. I need to get something constructive going on in my life before I fucking implode from boredom and defeatism.

Did I say defeatism? Oh yeah I'll say it again - Defeatism - I feel like throwing myself off the building for not doing more than I already have to get back into the game. But really, what more can I do? How long more can I hold out till the next trading job comes knocking?

Whatever it takes, I'm trying to get back on the path to success - fast.

Two good years is too few for me. I want more. Greed begets greed. It really is a bad thing to have tasted wealth but for a brief moment. It's not that I can't be happy with less anymore, but I can't help feeling that the regular Singaporean lifestyle is now a compromise. NOW wait a minute before you copy-paste this on to the ISA on grounds of sedition - do allow me to elaborate. I still love my bar chor mee with extra vinegar, but I definitely can appreciate a well-seared foie gras every once in a while. And I see no shame in wearing my fake football jersey and flip-flops to the market, although a nicely-cut pair of APC berms wouldn't look out of place either. And I do miss the sense of detached belonging that I feel when I return to my HDB flat, but I also pander for the urbanite dream of jetsetting around the world every so often for an escape from this sterile utopia. In short I'm a heartlander who doesn't want to be content with his lot. Damn, I just might be the kinda role model citizen the government wants to groom haha.

But if I never get back into the game, that may be all I'm gonna get. I struggle to think of other jobs which can reward as well in the short term - and I come up with nothing. Trading or bust, it seems.

Is this already the end of the lifestyle that I never dreamt I would be living.

20/07/09

The Lost Riots

Idlehood is bittersweet. I can't remember the last time I've felt this carefree. Not even when I was on block leave. But the aimless life was never meant for me.

In between painting my new GTR scale model and perfecting my pancake flipping, I'm looking for jobs, trying to defer the massive financial burden that is my 5-digit income tax statement, and working to turn my flaccid retail business venture around from the deficit that it is running. I'm having the time of my life, as you can guess.

Instability comes with the territory that I entered, I suppose. Being paid to take risks at work inevitably tainted my judgement in all other areas of life. I plonked down almost all of my first trading bonus - a hefty six-digit sum - into my first business venture, and just one year later I am feeling the pain of having that good deal of money stuck in a ditch. With my second trading bonus I dumped it all into the downpayment for a place of my own (and a nice one at that), only to lose my job just one month after taking hold of the keys. My life makes a rollercoaster look like a couple of speed bumps.

My friends who have treaded the slow and steady path to financial freedom are doing well - one just paid for a new car in cash, another put money down for a decent-sized condo not long ago, and another is cash-rich and happy to stay that way. Do I look back and wonder if I would be happier if I had taken that path? I think not.

I like to believe that lessons should be learnt the hard way, and indeed, I have chosen the hardest way. All or nothing has been my mantra until now, and it was that hunger for financial success that made me stick my neck out to multiply my assets in a very aggressive manner. That stance is obviously now tinged with a lot more restraint as I struggle to dig myself out of this financial quagmire. That said, I don't regret the investment decisions I have made so far - they have brought me great satisfaction and fulfilled many of the goals that I have always sought to achieve. But I now consider foolish my previous flagrant spending habits, and I bemoan the fact that I hardly saved much despite the very generous salary I was drawing. Lesson learnt.

If a lesson in financial prudence is the only silver lining to this setback in my life, then so be it.

Keep your friends close
Your enemies won't matter in the end.

"Enemies/ Friends" - Hope of the States

30/06/09

Checking in

The first post from Telok Blangah.

Rainbows don't appear without the rain. And in the same way I guess good things don't come without the bad. The excitement of moving into my very own place has been tempered by my very untimely departure from the bank. And so I suddenly find myself having to grapple with my own impending financial crisis.

Living a simpler, modest lifestyle is not difficult for me, I was not raised with a silver spoon up my ass. But my worry is that I am now saddled with debt which I may or may not be able to finance over a prolonged period of time, and I fear that I will have to make decisions which I will regret in the not-too-distant future. The thought of having to forsake so soon this hard-fought symbol of my independence makes me wince.

While I await the final verdict from the powers that be, my days are spent cleaning, packing and moving into my new house; interspersed with hard mountain biking, footy, and weekends chilling at home chugging cans of local lager with Z while watching movies on my lavish home theatre system - the latter a glowing reminder of the days I could splurge on the things I've always wanted to indulge in.

The days of frivolous spending are over with my last luxury - my Verde Luxe.

14/04/09

I'm excited.

So this is it. Possibly my last post from Choa Chu Kang Ave 3.

I suppose it hasn't really sunk in yet. That I'm about to kick start my adulthood for real, after 28 years of living under my parents' roof, should make me feel a little more than just excited, right? Well, that's just a simple way of putting it I guess.

On one hand, I'm absolutely psyched about setting up my HD home theatre system, having my own little jamming studio, and installing a DIY wooden deck and artificial turf on my balcony for late nights of smoke-filled alcohol appreciation. On the other hand, a few things on my mind have been keeping my brow constantly furrowed - such as the cash crunch I'm about to write myself into (I'm really stretching myself to afford a place of this size), and the much higher stakes I have inadvertently placed upon my keeping my job; so busy with these worries am I that I'm only just starting to wonder if I'll miss living with my folks.

Which brings me to that - what will living on my own be like? Will I miss having my family around? One half of me screams "No f*king way dude! I'm so glad I won't have my mom poking her head into my cubby hole every half an hour!", while the 28 yr-old half thinks "Hmm... no more the background noise of irrelevant chatter between my mom and sis, and gone the familiar sight of my dad flipping the papers in his armchair; I wonder what they're doing now?"

I have long ago dropped the fantasies of living in a bachelor pad. I don't think living alone is gonna be all that it's made out to be. I'll be replacing wrist-numbing web-surfing time with some hand-twisting hard-wringing laundry action, swapping that slim 60's Gibson Les Paul neck in my hand for a high-powered steam-spitting Karcher vacuum hose, and picking up a 1 litre steam iron instead of the 10.5kg dumbell. And there it is - real life in a bachelor pad.

But don't get me wrong, I don't regret this giant leap I'm taking into the real world of paralysing debt and eternal mortgage. It's about time to grow up anyway. I'm just pre-reminiscing the life I'm about to leave behind.

Maybe that new astrology mumbo-jumbo is right after all. "A certain air of resigned melancholy pervades the portrait of Capricorn born in Monkey..."

As freezing persons recollect the snow
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

"Pain" - Emily Dickinson

05/10/08

Gravity

grav'i-te

1. The natural force of attraction exerted by a celestial body, such as Earth, upon objects at or near its surface, tending to draw them toward the center of the body.

2. Grave consequence; seriousness or importance

3. Solemnity or dignity of manner

Somewhere along the way, my life took an abrupt detour, and as much as I have been enjoying the adventure, I am still very much lost. This much I know. It remains beyond imagination where I would be if I had gone the other way a few years ago. A little too young back then to make the right decisions; a little too old now to be making the choices that I have been making. Did you really believe that guys ever grow up?

I've got frontrow seats to this spectacle of an event that will be one day be known as the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008. But as I watch the web of greed untangle in front of my screens everyday, I find myself more preoccupied with researching, reviewing, and compiling a list of components for this new freeride mountain bike that I'm gonna build from the frame up. In stark contrast to my friend who is penny-pinching to meet mortgage payments on his new place which he will soon share with his wife-to-be, it is a glaring reminder that I really should move on in life.

Maybe it's the frivolous and self-serving nature of peers in my industry that has made me this way, or maybe it's the friends who are equally blase and feckless when it comes to managing their lives who make me feel that I'm doing just fine drifting along in selfish misadventure. But fingerpointing is not going to help me here. A catalyst is what I need to get out of this comfortable state of juvenile adulthood. Or maybe a kick in the ass. I'm freaking 28, for chrissakes.

"C'mon Ewen, why are you still living with your folks?? Is it the free laundry, the free rent, and maybe the whole comfort in knowing that you don't really have to grow up yet since you're still staying with your parents? You earn well enough to move out by now!" As long as I continue to enjoy not paying rent/mortage, not washing up after myself and not taking care of my own place, I have the feeling I may never step up to the next stage in life. And that's a secretly welcoming thought, actually.

But that is not how I shall lead my life. I have to kick myself ouf of this cocoon in Choa Chu Kang that I have built myself into. My resolution for 2009 shall be to move out*.

*Disclaimer - that is if I still have my job in 2009. And make that a big IF.

From the top you can see so far into the distance
Look, it's downhill all the way from here

"Downhill racer" - Everything But The Girl

28/09/08

You know that I know that you know

"Mission Control, we have lost contact..."

28/08/08

small talk

Don't think we're okay, just because I'm here
"Warwick Avenue" - Duffy

Update #489

1. Yes I'm still bald

2. Yes I still work in the same bank

3. Yes I still smoke

4. Yes I have put on some weight

5. No I am not married yet

6. No, I do not want to buy any investment-linked insurance policy, nor do I want to join your health product marketing scheme.

7. Yes I am still the same self-serving cynical asshole you knew from god-knows-when

8. No I'm not on facebook

9. Yes I still live in that god-forsaken village in Choa Chu Kang

10. Yes I still hang out with the same 7 friends from 2007

11. Yes you heard right, I started a guitar shop with my friend.

12. No I'm not rich.

13. Yes I'm gonna stay bald for good.

24/05/08

Decorum

Maybe I think maybe I don't maybe I won't. Maybe I won't find my way this time..

Like meeting an old friend from years ago, there seems to be so much to say yet I don't know where to start. Where do I begin?

Little has changed since February, yet so much is not really the same. I like to speak in riddles but more so when I'm half-wasted on whiskey, stout and redbull. Ah the evils of alcohol.

I've not been anywhere near being high on drink for the longest time, not since I started driving about a year ago. Never imagined I'd be driving a rex before I even turned 28, never imagined I'd be gambing with millions daily, but I always knew that I'd be the same person I was when I first started blogging. Goddamn the day I change.

Buddies in eternal limbo make me feel like I'm not alone. Aimless wandering and myopic living - will we ever grow up? I hope not - I don't want to be staid and boring. Youth is recklessness and recklessness is thrilling. Even when I'm 38, I want to be able to make impulsive decisions and be able to throw caution to the wind every so often. I don't want to be the sort who constructs a cost-benefit analysis matrix in order to decide if I should fly to Tokyo tomorrow night for a shopping retreat. I want to live like tomorrow is not a given.

Mellowing friends - sometimes I imagine myself in the shoes of friends who are settling down. But understand this - I'm not envious of old classmates who are tying the knot or expecting their second child. I envy those who know what they want. Maybe the day is coming soon when we all finally break out of our restlessness and find a deeper meaning to life. I'm not proud of the fact that I don't give a rat's ass about quake casualties or cyclone survivors, but somewhere inside I really wish I did. I wanna know that I'm not just another selfish human being. But the truth always hurts.

This is too much thinking for a Friday night. What I need now is some peace and quiet. And some hot soup. And maybe some sleep would be good.

05/02/08

The Disconnect

I'm gonna die in a place that don't know my name.

Travelling, I've come to relish the feeling that I'm somewhere where no one recognises me, where no one knows anything about me, and where I can throw caution to the wind and ignore the consequences of my actions (well almost).

Freedom from identity is a hard thing to come by these days when everyone is so connected. Yet, even if one could really be faceless for a day, I'm not sure many others would find it comforting. But I think I like it every so often. Just to disconnect from what you know to be your life for a while.

Man, this world really gets to you sometimes.

Maybe that's why I like the feeling of being lost in a foreign land. Not knowing where to go or how to get there really isn't such a bad thing at all. It frees you from the rigid and burdening responsibility of always having to be at some place at some set time that has come to be a part of city life. We've got no more time to think about where we're going next or how we want to get there. It's all laid out for us, appointments planned days in advance, routes all marked out in our heads, journeys whittled down to minutes by super-efficient transport networks that get us from A-Z in the quickest fashion possible. What use all the flowers planted along our roads when no one's got the time to sniff them?

We have to stop and think, people. Where the fuck am I going? And perhaps more importantly, how do I wanna get there?

I'm not quite sure I know where I'm headed yet. Not sure how I'm gonna get there either, obviously. But right now I like the feeling of being a little lost in a place I think I call home.

I'm gonna die in a space that don't hold my fame.

"Lonely Soul" - U.N.K.L.E. feat. Richard Ashcroft - Psyence Fiction

08-09/12/07

The Rainy December

In case you haven't yet noticed, it's already December. THAT special time of the year, special not just because it means my birthday is around the corner, but also because it's time to tie up some loose ends.

Speaking of getting tied up, I think the string of events that I got myself into this year have made my life one big Chinese knot. Twists and turns aplenty in this rags-to-riches boy's story - my friends probably know it better than me; these days I feel I'm losing track of where one chapter ends and the next one begins, and I must admit this is sloppy writing.

One year on from where I started this trek up the mountain of financial success, I'm barely past base camp. Struggling to breathe aside, avalanches that hit me once every few days have left me beaten, bruised, and my spirit almost broken. I don't know if I'll make it to the next campsite yet, but I'd rather die trying than to walk back to the foothills in shame. Considering all the setbacks I've been through, and the number of times I've told my friends "this is the end, I'm gonna get fired very soon", it truly surprises me that I am still at this job.

A few months back, a trader in a foreign bank here suffered a heart attack and passed away at her desk. She was getting on her years, which of course increases the risk of such an incident happening, but it reminds me that this line of work really could be killing me. I seriously believe this job has taken a few years off my lifespan already, but I'm not complaining much, I've never been the kind to wish to live to 80 anyway.

This rags-to-riches story of mine, it's barely begun but now I feel it's almost over.

A quiet Saturday here as a couple of my buddies are attending their friend's wedding, so they'll be getting smashed without me tonight; which is quite fine by me, I'm happy to spare my liver the extra torture until 28 Dec. Anyway, back to the wedding thing. Makes me realise that there are a helluva lot of people around my social circles getting hitched. In the past, this would have raised a few question marks in my head - "when will I get married?", "how will I propose" or "who will I marry?". But nowadays, I just think to myself, will I marry at all?

More on this later.

I need a cigarette. BRB.

------------- | -------------

2am on a Sunday morning, back from dinner and drinks with some dealers and brokers from KL, and tired as I should be, I am still inspired to add another few paragraphs to this longest entry in 7 months (actually, my first entry in 7 months, and only the third entry this whole fucking year!). I wonder why I haven't written in so long. What once was a therapeutic release became a guilty conscience as a fear grew that the things I write here would be read by the wrong eyes.

Well. I am free from scrutiny now. Because no one checks for updates anymore. Yay.

I've noticed that I come across as a few different personas to a few groups of people. To most other junior traders and brokers, I am the young, brash, stylish and unbelievably good-looking dealer who drives a Japanese performance car. To dealers and brokers whom I am closer to, they can tell I'm the struggling upstart with some potential but with huge expectations to live up to, and they see someone who is sometimes crippled by his own insecurities. To friends, I am the lucky bugger who landed, by chance, into a job that everyone seems to want, is earning more than he should, and yet is constantly griping about every aspect of his life, perhaps even for the sake of griping itself. To admirers and ex-girlfriends, well, to be honest I'm not really sure what they see in me.

Looking at myself plucking at my guitar in the wee hours of the morning and blogging about the oddest year in my life, I see a very lost soul.

-------------- | --------------

In the dying minutes of Sunday the 9th of December, I tap out a few more lines to complete this rant. Feels like I'm supposed to summarise the year in these last sentences, but the words just don't come to mind naturally. I can't say it's been a bad year, but I find it hard to say it's been a good one either. One thing I've learnt is that time flies. So much has happened that changed my life this year, but I'm really glad some things still remain the same. For instance, the friends I got drunk with last year will be the same ones I'm getting drunk with this Christmas. Thank God for that, life would be a real bitch without these guys around.

I used to be such a burning example
I used to be so original
I used to care, I was being cared for
Made sure I showed it to those that I love

"Millstone" - Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me

If you need a little optimism in your music, look elsewhere. God and the devil are raging inside Brand New, and the good money is on the devil. Death drapes over the album like a heavy fog, without a speck of sunshine... Everything feels just right throughout the effort. Lacey's vocals flicker between laid-back brooding melodic tones and intense passion and fire, flipping the switch back and forth frequently on the same track. His bi-polar vocals are perhaps best displayed on atmospheric opener "Sowing Season", tranquil and pensive one moment, then eruptive and roaring the next.... The manic rolling beat and dramatic vocals give "The Archers Bows Have Broken" a claustrophobic feel, as though the song is closing in to implode on itself... (read full review by IGN here)

7/05/07

My utter downfall is my gift to you

3 months. An eternity to some, a bat of an eye to others. If no one even checks this site for updates anymore, it's a relief. What was once my channel for publicly anonymous whining may once again be so.

Stay away, friends, sometimes you don't need to read the things you already know.

Like how you know that despite my new reckless carefree persona, I'm still probably quite fucked up inside. Despite the half-drunken somersaults off yachts with a pricetag that could match the GDP of a small communist state and basking in the alcohol-fuelled, back-slapping camaraderie of big-talking hip-shooting high rollers, I'm just dying to be alone sometimes.

But I'm at best ambivalent about all this these days. Schizophrenic sometimes.

Do I not want all this? The boozing, the schmoozing, the million dollar wheeling-and-dealing. This is more than I thought I could ask for two years ago as a fresh graduate (ok I'm dramatizing, there are a lot more things I can ask for, starting with that yellow and black Nissan Silvia Spec R on www.sgcarmart.com). Well of course I do want all this, and there are many more things yet on my list of acquisitions/experiences to complete my rags-to-riches story, but not everything that I want has a pricetag on it.

(Editor's note:

and so ends yet another of my "sigh I've got so much going for me yet I'm still so sad" rantings". When will this ever end. When will I write a happy post again? Is there a point in writing a happy post anyway. I don't need the world to know I am happy. Nor do I need you to know I am sad. I just want to know that I am still coherent in my musings at a time when I feel like I might be losing touch with who I used to be. What used to take a couple of hours at most to tap out has taken me 4 days to string together. Not that there is a lot to be said, but the words are constipated these days when everything seems to have been said before. But each time, writing this old tirade feels a little different. There were times I was downright messed up, other times I was defeatist, another time I was in a state of disgust with myself. Today, I am retrospective. These experiences I write of seem ultra-surreal when I imagine myself from 2004 reading the blog of my future self 3 years down the road. Now THAT'S a movie idea for you, chelsea boy)

Was losing all my friends
Was losing them to drinking and to driving
Was losing all my friends and I got them back

I am on the mend
At least now I can say that I am trying
And I hope you will forget the things I still lack

Yeah

"Sowing Season" - Brand New (from the album The Devil and God are raging inside me)

21/02/07

Burn Baby Burn

It couldn't just end like that. It wouldn't have been fair to those who cared.

Nothing's the same anymore, not you, not me, not the polaroids we took so long ago that keep losing a little bit more of their color with each passing day. Soon we all will be no more.

So transient my life seems now, it's getting hard to keep track of how old I am. I live each hour as it comes. I count each day that I don't get fired a good day, regardless of how much humiliation and stress I am put through. But the days are numbered, I can feel it. The future is what? The future is not of any consideration anymore. I no longer think much about the harm that cigarettes and alcohol might do to me, because for now it is all inconsequential.

Indulge in the moment is what I do.

They all said my job would change me. And so it did. But not in the way that everyone expected. I'm hanging on to this coveted position by the thread of my sanity here. My job insecurity has made me stop thinking more than a day or two ahead. I might lose my job in 3 weeks, I've been warned. It won't be the first time that I've had to endure the mindfuck of being told this in front of all the other colleagues, probably won't be the last either. There is everything to be afraid of, but I've let go of the fear like a blind-deaf man who is told he might soon lose his speech as well. Does it matter anymore.

I am the product of a jilted generation.

Once again that quote from the movie Fight Club comes to mind - "It's only when you've lost everything, that you are free to do anything". I'm getting closer to that epiphany.

The stuff my Literature teacher would cringe at

Name: URL or Email: Smilies]:

Guitar Rig:
MIJ Fender 'Keef Richards' Tele
Gibson Les Paul Classic
MIJ Fender '62 Reissue Telecaster (3TS)
MIJ Fender '62 Reissue Telecaster (black)
Ibanez RT650
Yamaha FG720
Vox V847 Wah
Boss TU-12H Tuner
Xotic Effects AC Booster
MI Audio Classic Distortion
Subdecay Flying Tomato
Boss PH-1R Phaser (MIJ)
MIJ Boss DD2 (Analogman mod)
MIJ Boss RV3
Peavey XXL 2x12
Peavey Classic 30 tweed

Bikes:
Verde Luxe (black)
Transition Bottlerocket w/ Marzocchi RC66
Specialized Rockhopper