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Slow down and don’t langgah (bang) pedestrians. A public service announcement on #safecycling from me.

As many of you know, OCBCCycleSG is going to happen again real soon, end of this month actually! For adults they have the 27km, 40km and 59km challenges which flags off start at the wee hours of 30 March. If you want to find out more or sign up for it, go to ocbc.cyclesingapore.com.sg.

I’ve always wanted to go for it but its either I have to travel, I’m unwell or I need to be somewhere… THIS YEAR i’m finally going for it with my brother and I have 2 EXTRA TICKETS TO GIVE AWAY! Woot!

All you need to do is go to ocbc.cyclesingapore.com.sg, see which one you want to do (27km or 40km) and let me know here in the comments and if you heng heng super lucky, I will GIVE YOU the 2 tickets. No promocode, voucher or anything, just absolutely free tickets. :)

Also just FYI, @OCBCCycleSG is also running an Instagram #safecycle contest and all you need to do is post a photo on Instagram about safe cycling with #safecycling then you stand a chance to win something. You can see the entries here. The picture above is mine, such good advise right. :)

Many people tell me I’m very lucky to have Pearl as my wife. She cooks super well and hosts some of the best home parties. She is so proactive that she have already fixed situations even before I know there was an issue. She manages the home finances well and simplifies complex bills for me. She looks amazing even after having three kids, have such a positive attitude and is constantly joyful. Her sixth sense is super powerful as she can read people very accurately, great ability to have in the team. The list goes on and some things she will be embarrassed for me to share :P

So is there a way to find such a good wife my friends always ask. I don’t really know how to answer this in a simple way, as to me it’s divine intervention. I explain this to my friends all the time and tell the same story, so I’ll write it down here and hope it benefits others in some way.

It all happened back in Sec 2 one day when I’m playing Romance of Threee Kingdoms 2 or RTK2 on my PC. You see, at the start of the game you can create your own character. I keep trying to create the perfect character and no matter what, I’m always not perfectly satisfied. Then during the game, I’ll save the game and only to reload the game from previous saved games if I’m not happy with how the game played out.

Then It dawned upon me. In the future when I’m choosing my wife, i’ll have similar issues, the only thing is that there is no save and load, also changing to a better one when a better one comes along is definitely not the way to go too.

How will I ever be satisfied with my choice. How will I ever be happy with my selection.

At that time, my elder sister also got her heart broken a few times and to the 13 year old me, it seems this whole BGR thing is super difficult. How will I ever figure it out.

So I decided to pray. I decided to entrust the whole wife selection process to the almighty. It was an ernest prayer and it would have been the most ernestest of ernest prayer at that point in my life.

There was peace. I knew I will not need to make this difficult decision of finding a wife, I knew deep in my heart that when my future wife showed up, I’ll know. How? I’m not sure, but i’m very sure I’ll know.

At the back of my mind, I imagine her to be a colleague at work. She would be smart, she will know what needs to be done and we will be enjoying each other’s company at work. There will be lunches, there will be laughs, there will be flirting and we will eventually get married and have kids. The 13 year old me back then thought this could be how it would happen, so no rush.

Just after the O-Levels I hung out with Leo from my secondary school a lot. The main reason was because we went Ice-Skating together, we went like every other day. Then during one of our skating sessions, he told me he will be meeting a friend after and was happy for me to join and I did.

I stretched my neck towards the frosted glass from inside the ice-skating rink to get a better look and saw her. She too bent forward a little from the outside to get a better view. She had short curly hair, happy cheek bones, youthful pimply face and a joyful smile. I thought nothing much about her as Leo always had good looking female friends and this girl looked average. This was the first time I met Pearl.

The 3 of us took the MRT from Dhoby Ghaut station to Bishan to have something to eat I think. I can’t really remember any details more than that. But what I remember clearly was that I said “Bye 姐姐 (elder sister in mandarin)” at the end and that felt weird. She was older then me, but I do have an elder sister and calling Pearl 姐姐 just felt super weird.

The next few days, I kept thinking about her, I can’t explain it, I just wanted to see her again.

I managed to get her number from Leo and asked her out to ice skate with us and she thought since Leo is a good guy, his friends should be ok too so agreed to come out. I held her hand while she learned how to ice skate and that was really nice.

A month later, Pearl was my girlfriend.

It was super strange, super strange to everyone even ourselves. Pearl’s friends did not understand as they knew her well enough that she will never date a dunno who just after a month. Also, being the geeky computer guy who never dared talk to a girl, its quite impossible for me to be able to convince a girl to be my girlfriend.

But somehow, we are a couple. A young couple, but a couple that believed that this relationship is much more than just girlfriend boyfriend. We both felt that if its not for marriage then we are both wasting our time, so we somehow worked toward it.

Till this day, I still can’t explain what happened in those first few months when we started seeing each other. All I can remember was trying to figure out holding hands, sending her home from school everyday and thinking about almost nothing else other then her.

It was love at first sight, but more importantly I believe my prayer have been answered and God sent me my wife.

We got married 5 years later.

A few years into the marriage, we both grew older and wiser, we started to loose the care free young couple in us and we became family building partners. Pearl became a mom three times over, had changing responsibilities at work and liked many different new things along the way which made her who she is today. Also with her in my life, I’ve changed so so much. Used to be a grumpy introvert, but now a lot more cheerful and friendly all thanks to Pearl.

In retrospect, as a teenager back then If I choose my girlfriend based on my own understanding, I would have never been able to predict what we would both be like today. I’m sure both of us will continue to change even after being together for 20 years, but I’m very sure its just going to get better. You see, I did not choose my wife, God sent her to me, so he already know all the things in the future and from his infinite wisdom, Pearl is the one for me.

She is really an angel that was sent from above. It can happen to you too, all you need to do is pray for divine intervention.

Love you many many much Pearl. Happy Valentine’s day in advance.

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This post is part of a Valentine’s Day series, brought to you by Daddy Matters.

Self consciousness. Its crippling. Its true. Everything I do, I can’t help but think what will people think of what I did. I agree with all those be-yourself, don’t-live-your-life-for-others type statements, but its hard to not care what others think. We humans don’t live in isolation my colleague reminded me today.

I consciously want to empathise with the people around me, understand how they feel, understand how what I’m doing around them is affecting them and I also can’t help but notice how what they are doing is affecting them. Its tormenting to have these questions and thoughts swirling in my head, it almost feels like a divide by zero error at times, no answers, no solutions, just plain pain and torment.

So having all these question, unvalidated answers and assumptions in my head, I need to then decide how I should behave around the people around me. What should I do? How should I act? How can I not make a wrong move? The usual answer is then to do nothing, just go with the flow, avoid conflict and try to enjoy the ride.

I’ve been reading sci-fi lately and totally engrossed in the whole Ender’s Game Series. I’m on my 9th book in the series currently and during this entire process, I’ve had new experiences and perspectives thru the eyes of the characters in the books. I started thinking for them, empathising their life, empathising the situations they are in.

They are in space, traveling near light speed having fictional technology and teleporting here and there. In the story, we did not invent the technology to allow us to travel the stars, but instead we studied the artefacts left behind by the visitors.

Now this got me thinking in my regular self conscious way, how then do these visitors see us?

Stepping out of my human shoes, I started seeing a horrible picture.

We think we are beautiful, but we are as beautiful as the most sinister pedophile. Hurting ourselves and disgusting ourselves.

We think we are smart, but we are as smart as our decisions to allocate precious resources and efforts into fighting with ourselves and defending ourselves from ourselves.

We think we are healthy and mortality rate is high, but we are killing ourselves slowly with our lifestyles and killing our only planet thinking its a problem for another generation to solve.

We are disgusting.

We look like a cheap ugly prostitute in the dark alleyway who hates our own life and is unable to orchestrate a change for the better. We lie to ourselves that tomorrow will be better while not making any drastic change in how we behave. Smoking one less cigarette a day is not change.

We hope and pray that a prince charming will come along, sweep us off our feet and bring us to a far away land where life is glamorous and beautiful, where we can truly enjoy life. The life that we want that is out of our reach.

But take a good hard look at ourself.

Nobody wants to know us, they might want to come and take what they want from us, but we are not important, because we are an unattractive bitch.

Credit:
Beautiful Earth and Moon by kichakicha on deviantART