ahdumb's Xanga

Monday, July 09, 2007

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:01:05 GMT

Man - XANGA... I haven't used this for ages...

Last time I attempted to write an entry was... hm... don't remember... and now I'm basically doing this for the sake of it.. haha

New job for about 3 months... interesting stuff... ppl are nice... its a lot more intense during the day but the better hours and FREE weekends are AMAZING... definitely a good move.

Lots of good buddies are either back or will be back... Paul and Gio are here for good... maybe Andrew... Angie's back (I can't believe we were out till 4am... I'm so old now.. haha)

Even tho I was on 2 months of gardening leave before I started... I think I'm ready for more vacation - if approved... I'm going to ask right after they pay me :)

Anyways - life is good... trying to do all the things I've been missing out... job is on track now, so will probably try to get in touch with old buddies... it's just really sad that ppl grow up and go separate ways. I wish I were still a little kid...

Doesn't seem like my buddies use xanga that often anymore... is it worth trying to keep this up? haha

Friday, March 23, 2007

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:07:06 GMT

Back in Hong Kong... Had so much fun...

Ok - I think I need a nap maybe I'll do this entry later... haha

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 22:12:31 GMT

Hey guys - Probably going to be New York this weekend and London early next week... Drop me a note if you are free to meet up!!

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 22:14:12 GMT

I HAVE AN ANNOUCEMENT TO MAKE:

I RESIGNED FROM MERRILL ON FRIDAY... !!!

Yes - I quit. It happened so quickly I find it hard to believe myself. From my first interview last last thursday till the day I left ML only took 8 days...No more super crazy hours, no more work-packed weekends, no more bullshit... we'll I'm hoping this is true... haha...

It was a tough decision - Merrill is a great place - the people are amazing (well - most of them... haha). But I thought it was time to try something else. Investment Banking was fun and glamaorous... but I never saw myself doing it as my long-term career. And I wanted to make this bold move while still being a young and junior commodity... haha. Hope I'll survive... haha... Add oil to all my comrades still battling the world of IB.

Diana/Sandra/Yun Yun/Jennifer/Vivian... Time to welcome me to the GS family :P

I've been asked to serve a full 3 month gardening... so even buying out the notice... I still have two months to sit on my bum :) Two months paid leave baby!! Will try to get a round-world ticket and visit all my buddies... thinking of doing Australia, Tokyo, London and maybe New York... haha... so let me know if you are willing to see me if I do swing by! Unless that changes and GS negotiates successfully with Merrill or they decide to have me start in NY or London for a month...

So what's next? A week in Phuket to unwind first... then I'll decide... Heading to the amazing Aleenta resort (www.aleenta.com). Check it out man!

What our luxurious Ocean View Loft should look like:

Di - I'm sure we will have a smashing time!

I've been a terrible friend in the past 1.5 years - so I'm going to try to make up for that :)

Had a smashing party at my place on Saturday night - champagne, white wine, red wine, cocktails... The EAS and Haeso are a fun bunch to hang out with. I just realized we didn't take any pictures though... Thanks for celebrating with me guys.

Ms. Ho - congrats on the property! House warming party!!

Renee - great to see you again :) Come visit more often.

Sanja and Delik - you guys rock... let's think seriously about this double d vacation. Delik I need a private tutoring lesson from you... haha

Nini, Patricia and Masa - great catching up with you folks!

Eric, Pat and Victor - Fun stuff... what an HONOR to have Pat's presence...

Bro - Congrats on the offer man. That is a big achievement - don't forget that! As for the incident - stay strong... I'm always around to listen ok?

Alright - enuf said for now.

Monday, February 05, 2007

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 10:38:08 GMT

This is the fifth time I've tried to update xanga... the previous four attempts, I opened the new entry screen - froze and throught for a sec - then closed it...

Not that there hasn't been any updates in life - there has been quite a bit going on... but don't know where to start...

I'm tired man... this job is becoming more and more unbearable at times - haha - no surprise. Morale in the office in general ain't that great... and I did just lose my team! Maybe I just need a break - which I will be gratefully getting at the end of this week - 2 weeks off baby!

I don't know how to phrase this coz I'm already kind of braindead at the moment... I guess things seem to be going smoothly, almost as good as they can get - I have a decent job, an amazing mom and bro, an awesome gf, lots of cool buddies, a nice car ... (order has nothing to do with priorities) ... must say that I've been very lucky... but... but what? haha... I think I just need a break :) That's all.

[Random 1] Got in touch with a few buddies from Grade 1-3 in Canada through facebook - we have all grown up so much... wish I could join their reunion in Canada. Wonder how life would be if I had stayed in Canada... ?

[Random 2] Very proud of my bro :) Good job - hope you'll get it. Also - keep those ideas flowing - we might end up with a good idea we can work on.

Too much thinking - time to go to bed

[My favorite WTF... haha]

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 11:17:37 GMT

Last week was crazy...

I did 36 hours straight - no sleep at all - from Thursday 8am till Friday 8pm... work just kept pouring in!! And the worst thing is... I slept for around half an hour at 8pm on Friday... then got called back to work for another 2-3 hours... went home and just passed out. For those of you that have done way more than 36 hours - hats off to you - I kinda stopped functioning... haha

Just got off work - freaking technology cut my home remote access so I had to go back to the office like 3-4 times this weekend. Its always feels good to drive home tho - I think the car was one of the best things I've bought myself

Got to see Renee on Sat night!! Went to Volar... and then a super short stop at Hei Hei (to pick up my membership card - I got it free 2 week ago!). However, I must say that clubbing is getting a lot more tiring and is not as fun as it used to be - time to do more chilled events. I bought three nice bottles of wine - so might host wine tasting + poker + wutever next weekend.

Played basketball before that at Southern - have not played with these guys for like 1.5-2 months... was SO tired... esp after the 36-hour ordeal of work... was such a good feeling to exercise tho. I need to start playing again or my bro will kick my sorry ass when he gets back. The dude is back in less than 2 weeks.

Happy Birthday to Carmen, Joan, Eric and Evan!! Hope you all had a smashing weekend - unlike me!

Have pics I want to upload - but as I said tech cut my home remote access to my work computer - so can't paste them now. Which means I will probably forget... haha

Time to get some sleep now.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:39:26 GMT

Growing up SUCKS... I wish I were a kid again...

!#%!^$!!?>

Very good friend and Colleague Yan yan left Merrill yesterday... will miss you in the office late at night... take care!!!!!

Had EAS and UYL reunion over the weekend - brings back all the good memories :P

I read my old xanga entries till my eyes hurt (that was around 4am) last night... really miss the old days!!

Ok...Time to get some sleep... have been in shitty mood and dozing off the entire day today... haha... Will be back in UST tomorrow afternoon for Merrill recruiting event if work allows

(Another successful boring entry... thank you)

Monday, October 30, 2006

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:25:50 GMT

One Crazy Week...
Ok - basically slept at 4am every day from Monday through Saturday night.... and woke up early ~8am every day...

I'll skip the work part - basically it sucked - extra pitches on top of the deals - early mornings, late evenings, meals at the wrong time... yes a very messed up week. Then on Thursday evening it was the Merrill Lynch IBK offsite in Shanghai. Scrambled to get work done Thursday morning, even did some modelling (yes... the "financial" type) on the plane on my way to Shanghai. Was so tired from the lack of sleep... but then stepped up to the partying. After dinner with the M&A team (yes I was adopted) we headed to the lounge on the top floor of the hotel which ML had booked out... drinks... chatted with colleagues and friends I hadn't seen for a LONG time... then we headed to Bar Rogue and had a smashing night (I must have had like 8-10 shots, plus a lot of wine and a lot of cocktails...). Was great to have everybody around!! When I got back to my room, I lay down on my roommate's bed (yes... ML was cheap and gave us lowly analysts roommates) and fell asleep instantly... woke up at 8am, contacts in my eye and late for the morning session.

The morning session was alright, standard boring shxt... but the afternoon was AMAZING - Go Karting at the Formula One course. Man - we had a chance to drive both the normal 40-50 km/h cars and the crazy 100 mph cars!! Those freaking things are DANGEROUS - you get so scared coz its so fast and you feel the G force - you actually feel your heart ache and your head split... but man it was so cool (i must have done it like 3-4 times... who cares when mother merrill is paying?)

That night was another crazy night - we went to Babarosa, Attica and finally Guandi till freaking 5:30am. Surprised to run into Tim at Attica. That night I got really drunk, together with Francis... haha... the girls had to take care of us. Thank you Yan Yan, Joyce and Yvonne - haha - so embarrassing! Joe downed a green tea to fool me into drinking my evian which I figured out was water even in my drunked condition

But the funniest thing was - I found out my roommate was a GIRL! The organizers fuxked up!! So when the girls pushed me into my room at 5:30am - they pulled me out 30 seconds later when they saw my roommate... must have been quite scary for a girl to see a drunk guy come into the room in the middle of the night. Sorry Anupama!

Wow - that's a lot of text, better stop here - no pics from Shanghai (Yanyan pls send me)...

Here are some pics from Sunday Night - we went to Volar and Pi for Halloween.

The Crew - Me, Diana, May, Carmen, Raymond (L to R)

We had quite a bit of pre-drinking at my place - I just kept mixing shots... haha... we must have had like 7-8 rounds before leaving...

Yes - that means quite a lot of drunk ppl... haha

Oh - and in case you are wondering - No I did not dress up...

Partied till around 4:00am...I went to work at 9:00am this morning... time for bed!

Monday, October 16, 2006

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:02:57 GMT

My Mom thought I was FIRED

I completely cracked up today... this is how the story goes: I've been working my ass off for like the past few months, and this past weekend was surprisingly quiet. Only did a few calls on Saturday... and on Sunday... I only had 8 emails the entire day and none beyond 2pm (until monday morning). Now, averaging a couple hundred of emails even on weekends, this freaked me out a lil bit (yes... that is sad)... so I was telling my mom "I wonder if I've been fired... and they cut me off the network already"... my mom called me at around lunch time today at my office number and said sth along the lines of "Oh, so they didn't really fire you, did they? I was really worried..." Haha... see how sad this job is? Your mom thinks you've been fired simply because you didn't work hard over the weekend!

Ok - why the sudden update? It was sorta a promise between a few friends... of which we've all stopped updating for quite a while - so we said we would do so over the weekend. Which of course ultimately did not happen. So I'm taking the first step to do so :) Haeso - put your act together!

May - sorry I was late for dinner on Friday! btw - how is our "rumor" spreading? haha

So what have I been up to all this while - other than work, weekends have been ok... been going wakeboarding in Sai Kung a few times - a lot better at it now... Can go in "S" formation, but need to perfect going inside and outside the wake. Good fun though.

Have not gone clubbing as much... Volar, club 9, Hei hei... been hosting more house events, e.g. wine tasting, poker etc. Want to catch up more with friends I haven't seen in a while - UYL, EAS, Soccer team... and SPCC! Sigh... I said I would organize a dinner a week after our 5-year graduation anniversary dinner... but I failed. Hate people who are all talk - but I've become one of them... shit...

Biggest change over the past month or so must be the car... so much more I can do now... but its so fxcking expensive! But I guess its gives me a bit more motivation for my work?

Company offsite to Shanghai end of the month - collides with the closing of my deal - so not sure if I'll be able to attend... damn... I chose go-karting at the shanghai F1 place...

Finally - I cannot believe YouTube is selling for US$1.65bn... it can't be that easy!! I had a good half hour chat with my associates on what you could do with that money...

Anyways - this is a big effort on my behalf... time to go to bed... and those who need to keep their promise - please do.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 06:34:36 GMT

OMG... OMG... OMG... Can't believe I did it!

Mixed feelings... ARGH!

Have not updated for such a long time... many things have happened... but as usual - I am lazy to update or even post pics... ha... really should post more here so at least I have some memories later...

Miss all my buddies... life has been ok...