Happy Birthday to Me

By the way, I have updated all the previous posts, so the reflections on my Japan trip are all completed already. Do take a look if you haven't. 

Hey what's up guys. Today (or rather yesterday coz it's past 12) is my birthday! My birthdays are a relatively quiet affair, as usual. Normally I just celebrate with my family coz I don't really have anyone else to throw a party with. Just have dinner at some place that we normally don't eat at, and then get a cake.

This year, I in fact didn't even get a cake. Reason being that we are all too full and bloated to eat anything else. Just now, we went down to Downtown East to eat the Sakura International Buffet. And just like any typical Singaporean would, we gorged ourselves and continued ingesting as much food as we could. LOL. Ok lah, my review of the place is pretty good. For that type of style, I'd still prefer Buffet Town though. Wider variety. In the afternoon, I went down to McDonald's to grab the limited edition LINE plushies as well. I THINK they should be saleable within a few days. Not much intention to keep and collect dust, but I believe someone will wanna buy for Valentine's. Crap, I mentioned the evil word.

What was different this year though, is that even all my colleagues celebrated with me! I may look totally emotionless on the outside, but frankly it's this sort of things that make me feel really happy on the inside. So the story is, my department was having a retreat event for sort of like a cohesion and also discussions on personal and company development. We got one lady who is quite sporting for this kind of events, and actually bought a cake to celebrate for me. And they all sang a birthday song for me! AWESOME! I'll be real honest here. In all my twenty odd years of my life, I have NEVER had so many people celebrating my birthday with me before! I know it's kinda sad, but I swear it's true. Not even on my 21st birthday...

But who knew, this time round got 20+ people to help me sing birthday song. I may not show it, but I'm totally touched. Here are some pictures from the event:

It was a great celebration. So thanks a lot to my colleague Jasmine! Cake was very delicious. But besides the birthday celebration, we did do some other activities. There was a part about direction setting for our department, which I'd say is rather boring. Rehashing the same problems with still no solutions, no point talking about it. What's more interesting, is that we all had homework to do! We were supposed to write something about the Strengths and something about the Areas of Improvement for each and everyone of the people in our department. Then we will submit it anonymously like so:

It is a rather interesting activity. I mean, if everyone does take it seriously, we are supposed to get very personal and helpful feedback from this. The anonymity of it helps everyone be as honest as possible. I spent a fair bit of time thinking and writing one for everybody. Even those I didn't know too well, I went by first impressions. What I'd received in return was however rather mixed. While some of them seem very genuine, I'm not sure how all of this will help me in general. You see, the thing is I know all my flaws already. I constantly think about it. Not sure if it's the result of inferiority complex, but I honestly do know where I should improve on. The only reason I haven't is simple because I wasn't able to overcome the mental barrier to make the changes necessary. I'm kinda weak in that regard...

Nevertheless, I will try! If any of you would like to help give me a nudge along the way, that will be good too! For now, I shall be setting some small goals for this week, just like I talked about in a previous post. Here goes:

1) Start Japanese Lessons (already registered)
2) Look for a Gym to sign up (still researching)
3) Write up first draft for Philson 2020 (not started)

Let's see by Sunday how many of these I can do. And yes, I have recently signed up for a Japanese course. Just the first elementary level. I registered for the language school in Koven at the recommendation of a friend. Will be a long stretch of 5 months though. I hope I can pick up the language well! After that, my possibility of living and working in Japan will become ever more so probable. I may not end up doing it, but at least going there on holiday will be easier if I can speak and read Japanese.

Well, that's all I got for today. It's getting close to 1am and I have work tomorrow. Gotta go sleep pretty soon. In the meantime, I shall leave you with this nice song I heard on the radio.

But you don't want to...