Business wise, March was a dry month. Quarter 1 was not really good for me aside from a relatively healthy infusion of lump sum savings, mostly from my existing clientele. <3 my auntie clients and their willingness to put a HDB’s worth of monies with me. Still waiting for my mega-deal to land, and if this nice lawyer meant what she said that sincerity is most important, then I think there’d be little problem for her becoming my client.

What really got me down though was a recent termination of a plan which affected my persistency negatively. Persistency is quite important – it must be maintained at a high level for bonuses and promotions, and symbolically I feel it represents the overall quality of business a consultant has. Negative impact on my job aside, I find it a professional failing on my part that I was unable to convince this client to not to lapse his policy, because I know that he needs it.

If only I could have conveyed this knowledge better, although of late I have really become quite lazy to do so because I feel that my effort is better spent on more appreciative and understanding people… Something I should correct since part of my job is to educate and persuade.

Okay, enough about work… Because I have work later.

Nothing queerer than people and no one queerer than queers, since it seems to me empty flattery and agenda-laced praises are more popular with people. I guess I haven’t been making myself entirely likable because this whole mess could have been avoided if I just emulated a fraction of UF’s 做作 ways, but at least I’m not pretentious like that.

So meaningless, this type of distaste, and I never wanted things to become so ugly. Just making myself look bad when I haven’t really done anything wrong initially, so short of an apology which I’m reserving for R and I think you should have one too, I am retracting my previous few angry, mean tirades.

Life’s too short and homophobes too many for wasteful anger like that.

Nevertheless I suppose blogging about things like how I find it amusingly cute that my “employee” gave me mandarin oranges for New Year can be done more often so I don’t forget what happened in my life with this poor memory of mine.

Sleaziest sentence in the whole wide world: “抓到你了！”

When I was 21 years old, I -

• ORDed from the army
• Took a job that paid less than $4 an hour
• Got rejected from all three local universities
• Took a job that paid $8 an hour
• Came out to my parents
• Got contracted as a financial planner and became officially self-employed
• Bought my own life insurance
• Fell in love with Thai because of The Love of Siam
• Got my first, own non-Apple computer
• Got my first 5-figure pay cheque
• Won a company award
• Became “boss” of 3 part-timers

And now, 22 is the age life really begins!

Anyway, here’s what I have so far!

$189!

That works out to $50 per month since I still have about more than a week to a full 4-month period. Fifty bucks just on coins alone – not too shabby.

I’m going to embark on something different soon.

I guess it is quite pleasant to be able to annotate this milestone by closing the biggest deal I’ve had since joining this industry. Very satisfying indeed, and I do hope I can maintain this to end the year beautifully and start the next one with momentum.

Through the ups and downs of working life, I guess it is really important to have colleagues who push each other on, and I’m lucky to have such great colleagues as friends.

Here’s to another great six months and beyond!

Vista’s not that bad, I guess.. Just not that good.

Might be a market too niche for Apple to get into, but tablet PCs have their uses and they are especially useful in my work. Also, it’s strangely addictive to just scribble nonsense on the screen.

A worthy purchase I made two days ago. Besides, it has pretty much earned back its cost!

Mew: Fine. Playing my music is fun.

Tong: But you are alone. Aren’t you lonely?

Mew: Frighteningly lonely.

Tong: What do you mean? “Frighteningly lonely”?

Mew: It’s like when we were younger, we were so lonely because we didn’t have alot of friends. And now that we are grown up, loneliness seems, just so much worse.

Tong: Why is it so bad for you?

Mew: I don’t know how to explain it. It started during the summer when I was in 8th Grade. Papa took grandma somewhere for several days. And the day when she came back…

It’s not easy at all, because the longer my grandma is gone the more I miss her.

So I have one question:
If we can love someone so much, how will we be able to handle it the one day when we are separated? And, if being separated is a part of life, and you know about separation well, is it possible Tong, that we can love someone and never be afraid of losing them? At the same time, I was also wondering. Is it possible that, we can live our entire life without loving anyone at all?

That’s my loneliness. I have lived with it now for 5 years, I know just how bad loneliness feels. I fear it will continue to get worse.

Tong: Mew… (reaches out arm towards Mew)

Mew: (leans towards Tong)

Kids who waited generally did better in life.

We’re faced with the marshmallow test everyday, except the marshmallow for us is money – another M-word that brings about its own set of conundrums and temptations. Having trouble delaying gratification is a problem not exclusive to children, but some kids can do it, while some adults can’t.

Simple and straight to the point.