my artistic side

i've always liked drawing stuff.

in fact, i like it almost as much as most people think i suck at it.

Let d be the difference between my (lack of) artistic talent and my love for it

the saying "a picture paints a thousand words", i am a firm believer in that.

and the thing is this, there is this perception that for a drawing to be perfect, it has to resemble the real thing as much as possible.

like this drawing of 2 weird hands drawing each other.

but to me, drawings are about expression and communication of certain ideas or thoughts to people who are looking at the drawings.


recently, this app called "Draw Something" started getting very popular.

it is basically "win, lose or draw", where someone would draw something, and the other person would try to guess what he was trying to draw.

and i'm usually excellent at such games, cos despite my critics' endless mockings abt the ridiculous-ness of my final products, most of the time people can always figure out what i was trying to draw.

some examples,

who can't tell that this is a ghost?

how many tries do you need before you figure out this is a chicken?


the below re-enactment is my favourite, and the person managed to guess it, let's see if you can too. =)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ (7 letter word)

to be fair to everyone, in the app, the person guessing can actually see the sequence in which the drawings were drawn, so the blue highlights were only done AFTER i completed the whole art piece.

and i actually managed to do that drawing you see above on an iphone screen. =D
now, who dares to say i am not artistic?!

me

i can understanad why some people don't like me.

that day a few of us were chatting, and the topic of cars came up.
so i casually mentioned that my dream of changing a car this year went up in smoke with the spike in COE, which is almost $80,000 now btw.

a friend then asked a very fair question, what car was i thinking of changing to,
and my reply, (which i regret to this moment)

"i'm not sure yet, i'm just sick of driving BM."



to be very fair to me, i didn't mean it the way 1 of them heard it.

first world problems

and to be even more fair to me, the way he said it REALLY made it sound so much worse.

her first time

on my way to work, heard a segment on the radio that made me go urrggh~~~

they actually interviewed a girl..

who 12 years ago..

on the 29th of February..



*wait for it*



had her first period..

疯掉....

responsibility vs control

i am having a really bad week at work. even though it's only tuesday.

(IT'S ONLY FREAKING TUESDAY?!?!?!)

colleagues wanting to ask my father about this and that, and coming to ask me instead cos i insist on them not bothering them about it.
the thing is, i actually have no idea what to tell them to do, and so i have to ask around, which got me thinking:
WHY THE HELL CAN'T THEY BE FINDING THE SOLUTIONS FOR THEMSELVES?
I AM NOT SMARTER THAN THEM, I AM NOT MORE EXPERIENCED THAN THEM!

how did all these issues become "my baby", as my colleague likes to call them.
my baby is my responsibility.
but my baby is not under my control.
it has a life of its own, a mind of its own, and like it or not, it'll do what it wants, when it wants.

any sembence of control is but an illusion.
in actual fact, we are all the baby's slaves.
(man, i am reading too many mommy blogs)

short fused and red faced

i am getting very short tempered recently, and am tempted to blame it on the stress of the job.

people are coming up to ask me for answers, decisions and i cannot appear clueless or helpless, even if most of the time i really am.
it's the pressure of constantly having to think on my feet, and then the stress of second guessing myself and wondering if the right decision had been made.

juggling a few balls at the same time, when more balls are being thrown in.
then my GM suddenly found out about 1 of the balls, and sent an email to everyone, effectively telling everyone to start panicking.
that got another person's attention and he replied the email, asking what the hell is going on, why isn't anyone aware of such a big issue.

i just wanted to reply to everyone in caps.

CAN EVERYONE FREAKING CALM DOWN?!?! I'VE BEEN ON THIS SINCE DAY ONE!! SO STOP JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS WHEN NO ONE KNOWS SHIT ABOUT IT!!!!!

but of cos i didn't.
i had to answer 1 ridiculous question at a time.

"no, we can't change the supplier because we've already used up all of the materials they have supplied us."
"yes. i know that it is not a good thing to fail tests. but thanks for the reminder."


while i was writing the email, someone i was supposed to meet with at 2pm came in and totally forgot about the meeting when i asked him about it,
i got very frustrated and raised my voice.


until i realised i was the person who made a mistake and mixed up all my dates.
and sheepishly had to apologise.

i remember reading somewhere once that the trick to a good juggling act is in the throw, not in the catch.
we only have 2 hands and can only catch 2 balls at one time,
but if we throw it up in the air and let the process move along, we can handle other items before throwing those up too, and catch the earlier balls that are coming back to us.

learning.. still learning.
meanwhile, please bear with me.

29

i am 29. in a few months i would be 30.

and a few days ago, it suddenly dawned upon me what a wonderful age this is.

i am financially stable enough to buy most of the things i have wanted to buy since forever.
and i am not that old, and balding that i look ridiculous wearing/using them. =)


so what did i buy now??

my very first pair of Predator.

it got me so excited i was so looking forward to soccer since i bought it on wednesday,
to the extent i couldn't sleep properly last night cos i kept thinking how great it's gonna be this morning when i put it on for the first time and start bending it like Beckham.

i've wanted to buy a pair since i was in JC.
but it had always felt stupid. i am no good at soccer, so waste all that money?

until this year.
my thinking changed.

i realised that if i don't buy it now, i might never buy it again, cos who knows what sort of injury could befall on an active sportsman such as myself.

and it was great!
i had so much fun this morning!

screw the 20s.
30s will kick 20s ass. =)
男儿三十当志强!

(just don't ask me how much the boots cost =X)

why me?

every now and then, people ask me,
why asterix? (online pseudonym)
why tristan? (english name)
why myth12? (email address)

why did i choose those names? how do those names define me as a person?
i don't have an easy name to explain, like faith, or patrick.

those are simple, their parents are either:

huge fans of faith hill.

or Patrick Star

but my parents knew better than to name me after someone they liked.
which left me with the freedom to name myself after whoever i liked!


so today, i will answer all those questions once and for all.

1. asterix

big and fat vs. small and agile. not a hard choice

i came up with this nickname in secondary school, when we were using IRC and everyone had to think of a nickname for themselves.

Internet Relay Chat(no idea what the m stands for)

and the comic happened to be lying in front of me.
i would rather be small and agile and witty, rather and big and fat and clumsy. 
so i became asterix.

2. tristan

to sound smart and sophisticated, i often tell people i came across the name while i was reading.
while that is true, i often don't say that i was reading off the credits of a movie "Legends of the Fall"

guess who played tristan in the show?

i watched it after junior college, when it was being shown on TV late at night.
throughout the show, i couldn't figure out what his name was, but it sounded very cool.

how yoou doing~

and he looked oh-so-dreamy =)~
so i waited till the ending credits and copied down his name.

not something i mention as often, but if i remember correctly, he got eaten by a bear at the end of the show.

the name didn't stick in army, cos most of the time people read off the name list.
but when i got into university and went to church, i decided to introduce myself as Tristan, and Tristan I became.

subsequently i got baptised as Tristan as well,
so once i hit 30, i shall add that into my IC.
and it will be a name i chose for myself =)

sometimes people ask me why i call myself that, or what the name means. and i honestly have no idea. it probably means smart and humble and good looking and kind and generous and friendly,
cos that's what i am.

personally, i don't think we become what our names mean.
i think our names become who we are.


3. myth12


also in secondary school, when internet started getting more common place, and i had to choose a username for my geocities account.

not my actual geocities site

(geocities was the equivalent of blogspot 20 years ago. 
and the coolest thing anyone can do is to make snowflakes fall from the screen and have shooting stars follow your mouse cursor.)

i wanted something mysterious, but magic@hotmail.com sounds stupid, and i couldn't spell mysterious.
so myth it was. short and sweet.

why 12?
because 7 is my favourite number.

when i fell in love with David Beckham and soccer at age 14. he had just scored that goal from the half way line. =)

7 was his jersey number.
and i proudly associated myself with him cos i was born on the... *wait for it*.. 7th day of the month!

oh ya, so why 12? -.-"'
at that time i joined a soccer team, except someone else higher up the pecking order had already taken the number 7,
so i took 12 instead.


back then, it was romantic to write stuff like 512 = 我爱你(tho i never figured out why). or even longer ones like 51213143344 for i-am-an-idiot-and-i-think-stuff-like-that-makes-me-look-so-freaking-cool

anyway 12 = 爱你, and i thought it will make me a SNAG or something then girls will all flock to me.
tho that never happened.



yup.
so now u know =)