Tag Archives: Personal

Personal

Stag done

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Amazing stag do. I really do lived a charmed life. Huge thanks gradually going out to everyone. It involved…

LOTSA nice wine
2 races to the sea at night
1 batch of throwing rocks and rocks
2x 5k runs to East Wittering & back (from WW)
1x 13th place ‘Special Award’ in Go-Kart tourney
1x Aston Martin drive
1x Boat drive
1x rubber ring tow behind said boat
1x Morris Minor drive
2x swims in sea (in September, in England)
1x session of dance music in a barn in the middle of nowhere (Thursdays, people)
2x absinthe and some other unspecified alcoholic beverages
12x candles & flame torches welcoming us home at 4am on Saturday
17x superhero t-shirts
LOTSA BACON
Some marmite

And crucially:
18x amazing friends and friend’s parents hosting us.

I may supplement this list as other bits of awesomeness I experienced this weekend resurface in memory…

Gradually getting back to normal today…

Music, Work

The dangers of collaborative playlists

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Had my work stag do on Friday night. It was awesome, needless to say – I work with good people, and my work best men did an exemplary job in organising the venues.

In the hour or so before we left the office, as is our habit on a Friday afternoon, we kicked off a collaborative playlist on Spotify to get people in the mood. Given my impending marriage, you might expect some cheesey / romantic tunes, and indeed, there were one or two of those. However, it seems that there are some cynics in the house (and even more on Twitter as @qwghlm, @krsjn, @flashboy and @jat45 started kicking in their own contributions). Think Charlie Brooker’s moodkill playlist and you’ll have a sense of what’s on there.

If you want to see how the final playlist shaped up, point Spotify here. Be warned; there are some fairly horrible songs in there :-).

Personal, Update

I’m back, baby

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It’s a much noted truth that personal blogs go for months without updates, and when the update comes its usually an apology for not posting. And then months pass…

Truth be told, whilst life has been busy, I have been blogging… just not here. I’m currently writing on another blog, named for my agency’s first office, with a bunch of colleagues on a selection of topics – it is not a work blog as such, more an external thought space for us and good practice for my colleagues and I at diving into the world of social media we spend so much time talking to our clients about.

The subject material (from me, at least) is not vastly dissimilar to what I write about here, so you should find me there, although I’ll probably end up cross posting some of the posts at least over here. Especially now I’ve upgraded to the shiny WordPress 2.8 and installed this luscious new theme for you all (what do you mean, you read me on RSS? Look how pretty it all is!)

Anyway, I’m over on Chivalry House every now and then. Check it out.

Personal

Christmas Holiday Craziness

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Christmas has been amazingly busy so apologies for the lack of posting and hope you all had wonderful seasons and enjoyable new years. Some of the things filling my time:

1) Flights to and from Malaysia

2) Introducing Amanda to about 30 people in my extended family, another 20 in my extended extended family, about 20 additional family friends and a number of randoms and associates. She did amazingly well in overwhelming circumstances and I think mostly had a good time!

3) Visiting Taman Negara in Pahang, where we jungle walked, I spoke Malay to Orang Asli, and we stayed in the delightful Traveller’s Home.

4) Visiting Malacca for a dim-sum fest, travelling on a ferris wheel at the Malacca River Pirate Entertainment Park (consisting of four rides), an interrupted swimming session on the 9th floor of the Ramada Renaissance caused by a brief monsoon shower.

5) Reading: The Reluctant Fundamentalist, finishing the brilliant Bad Science and diving into the Inkheart trilogy, as well as devouring the brilliant ‘Invincible’ Ultimate Collection 1&2 which Arvind bought me for Christmas.

6) Saying “I’m Batman” a few times following Sheila and Dave’s purchase of a full Bat-costume for me for Christmas.

7) Shopping with Amanda for the ‘ring’ and learning from my Aunty Ann about the four Cs of diamond shopping.

8) Three days in the ‘honeymoon’ suite of a less good hotel in Pangkor, including a scenic tour of the Island, some slightly grotty beach, and the most awesome clamshell poolside showers. Flickr will soon have photos. Despite grottiness, was a lovely escape and involved driving down some wonderful plantation road and all the adrenaline that entails (overtaking the lorries involves finding a window and then accelerating into oncoming traffic).

9) A lot of food, including Roti Canai, Dim Sum, Cantonese & hokkien mee, peanut-free Satay, Bhatura, Dhosai, Appom (sp?), and even fish and chips and lamb chops for good measure.

10) Tourist visits to KL Tower, Central Market

11) Shopping visits to 1 Utama, KLCC

12) A lot of jetlag

13) A fantastic Christmas eve featuring the increasingly infamous hat game and the family’s first Secret Santa, a resounding success (I got a Superman Belt Buckle which I failed to work out was from Geets, but she didn’t clock that I’d given her Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker DVD either, so we were even)…

14) New Year’s Eve on Asian Heritage Row in Central KL

…and a great deal more. The first couple of days back have been characterised by jetlag, kitchen construction, a cold, and initial attempts to improve healthiness through swimming and resisting completely unhealthy food. This will be helped by the completion of the kitchen…

Anyway, if you want to know more on any of the above points, let me know and I’ll find some time to write further.

Post holiday email count: 960 in my work inbox, down to 560 after initial pass on Sunday and down to a mere 368 after a second pass early this morning. Fingers crossed for a sane January, but it seems doubtful!

Personal, Update

…we’re engaged!

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Is the excited email/phone call we’ve been making (on my part, in a haphazard and therefore probably ineffectual manner) as we share the good news of our betrothal. Am happy beyond sense, and will probably stop grinning at some point, but I wouldn’t bet on it happening soon.

Everyone’s been asking how it happened. Here’s the story:

In the lead-up to our second anniversary, having long decided that Amanda was the girl for me, I went ring shopping. When my spirit was crushed by my own utter cluelessness, the crowds and then the price-tags on New Bond Street, I asked Sarah to help me shop and, with her help, the following Saturday I managed to track down the appropriate token (the ‘rock’, as it were, is yet to be purchased and I knew in advance that Amanda wanted to be involved).

On the evening of our anniversary, I asked Amanda to get home early as she could and to dress up warm. We dashed out and I got us a cab to an undisclosed location. (Well, obviously I disclosed it to the cabbie or it would have been an expensive and frustrating taxi ride!)… which was Primrose Hill, the location of our first ever date. We strolled up the hill, shivering with cold and delight at the amazing view of the city the summit affords, thankful for clear skies and dry weather.

“I think my feet are getting a little wet,” I said, romantically, knowing that at some point I would be dropping to one knee. Amanda threw some appropriately dismissive insult in my direction but nonetheless we moved to the tarmac-clad viewing point. There, after some further moments admiring the view, each others’ eyes (awww…) and fumbling in my pocket for the Georg Jensen ring case, I reminisced about the fact that two years previously I’d lacked the courage to ask her for a kiss, but this time I had a more important question…

And the rest, as they say, is history. Oh, she said yes, obviously (after a pause for shock – I’ve finally managed to catch the girl who identifies her birthday present by the folds in the wrapping paper by surprise!). I’m looking forward to keep trying to surprise her for the rest of our lives together.

For the curious; I didn’t ask her family for permission — I’d thought to but had guessed (correctly) that Amanda would want to be the one to relay the news.

Personal

Birthday

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It was fantastic. Still in moderate disbelief that Damian flew from New York for the celebrations — and successfully managed to keep it a secret, which is not a skill you’d expect him to have.

I’ve a large pile of DVDs, graphic novels, sci-fi tomes, even Orson Scott Card’s ‘How to write Sci-Fi & Fantasy” to get through in the next few weeks, thanks to the generosity and insight of friends and family, so between that and the work towards my British driving license imagine I will be reasonably absent. Still, I’ll look for gaps where I can write and hope to entertain y’all soon…

Personal

Dreaming of Derek

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So I’ve woken up ridiculously early today (how silly; it’s my birthday, not Christmas, and I have a full day at work ahead… but still…)

I had a fun dream. One of those slightly odd ones in that its difficult to work out what inspired it. Elements of it make sense, others less so.

A few friends and I had decided on a media stunt. It was to be magnificent — even the people working with us were to think we were seriously undertaking a business endeavour, but the whole thing was going to to be, essentially, a clever joke. So we created a street fashion label – ‘Structive Destructivo’, designed some clothes, set up a press conference and then drove the model (me! – well, I said it was a dream) down there in complete secrecy so we would have maximum impact walking through the door. The last time I was on a catwalk in real life, I was 10 years old and someone at my primary school had asked me to do it as I was the only kid they knew who owned a blazer (in Malaysia!)… but I was reasonably swaggering and confident in this dream press conference (which was hosted in something that bore a staggering resemblence to a school hall, albeit one on a beach in Miami somewhere…), spun up the length of the hall, turned, and as I sat down I stylishly spun the orange baseball cap I was wearing around so it was on backwards. And then it didn’t fit. A strange level of detail for a dream, you might think? It gets weirder…

“Structive destructivo is not just about streetwear,” my voice says. “It is about a philosophy of life. It’s about not having to answer to the man. It’s about living real. It is about being able to kick the shit out of something if you need to — not someone, dude, that’s just wrong. It’s about being free to do what you need to do to make the world a better place!” Cheers greet my dream self, improbable as that may seem after a contrived and non-sensical intro. Then the first question:

“What wine would go with structive destructivo?” says a reporter I recognise as a housemate from secondary school I didn’t really get on with. I hear myself launch into a description of an Italian red wine I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist, from a part of Italy which may or may not…

…and then I woke up, vaguely proud at having had such a vivid dream that seemed so original, and great, and as I failed to go back to sleep, I realised that if I’d shot a ‘blue steel’ across the auditorium, I’d have been dreaming an alternate version of Zoolander…

Notes to self: the hybrid worlds of Zoolander, Eli Stone, Saturday Morning Kitchen and my youth is a very weird place indeed. And all the clothes are orange.

Personal

Parents

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At some point, growing up, you turn against your parents in a small way. Or at least, I did — it felt occasionally a duty rather than a pleasure to see and hang out with them and a distraction from the every day business of going out with friends and generally tearing up the world.

Maybe I’ve matured, or its the stabilising influence and general inspiration of going out with Amanda, but over the last few weeks with my folks visiting, it’s just been amazing to hang out with them. My folks are talented, funny, interesting and brilliant (what else, I guess, would you expect when their progeny includes, well, me), and I’m pleased to have reached a point where I can enjoy and appreciate them as people, not just as their son. Of course, they’re not without their limitations but everyone is, and there genuinely feels to have been a change in me that I am more able to accept them (and others) as they are.

My Dad used to talk a lot about shifting your perspective when I was younger. Speccifically in the context of wasted food much of the time, or in addressing complaints that I was ‘starving’ (“Think of the children in Africa… are you really starving?”) — but something seems to have shifted recently. And it feels good.