A quick quarterly review of your personal workplan has sounded the alarm bells; nothing has been achieved. While you have followed the plan religiously initially, the mental exhaustion from the heavy work load has negated the discipline built up has waned. These are in fact excuses, one emanating from a lack of discipline and fortitude in following through your plan.

At the rate you are going, you wonder how you are going to complete the 14 Airline Transport Pilot Exams by June. Despite the constant self-reminders that it's going to be a temporary solution until your finances are built up sufficiently, you cannot help but feel that time is ticking away as you reach the magical cut-off age of 35. You have not flown for more than 6 months and both your instrument flying currency and Class 1 medical (which allows you to fly commercial airliners) has lapsed. You can feel the flying proficiency which has been painstakingly built up ebbing away like blood flowing out of your veins.  As it's once said, a pilot who doesn't fly at all isn't a pilot at all. 

For all the sacrifices made, you wonder if it has been a mistake from the start. These are the moments when your conscience strikes you like a super typhoon. Are you fated to turn the strong cyclonic winds of adversity into strength and soar high above these storms of life like an eagle or seek the safety of a harbour, one which can be your home-port, providing the stability at the expense of your dream?

How far are you willing to go in the pursuit of the elusive flying dream? Is it time to make the painful decision of grounding yourself for the sake of yourself?

  

It has been an emotional week as everyone came together to mourn the loss of Ah Gong. Tears were shed and all differences put aside as the entire nation did their best to pay tribute to the founding father. His legacy could be seen in the overwhelming tributes received from the grateful nation and from overseas, who came from all walks of life, helping one another, regardless of race, language or religion, united as Singaporeans.

His fortitude, tenacity, spirit of life-long learning, discipline and meticulous attention to detail is something that you hope you can emulate from him. Not withstanding these character traits, his compassionate and softer side such his beautiful love story has inspired you to treat your other half just like him.

While other people (like J) are working behind the scenes to ensure that everything runs smoothly, you feel the need to play your part, to honor Ah Gong. Besides paying your respects and penning your condolences, you have volunteered your services to be an usher or vigil guard. Contrary to combat operations where you never wanted to be activated (and got activated), this is the only time that you hope fervently that you will be activated.  Even you don't get activated, you will still do your part and don your uniform, line the road to pay your last respects.  

  

每一个人，都在等一个人，等待一个能够看到你与众不同的人。你要相信这个世界上总有一个人会发现你的无与伦比。虽然我很希望是你，但可惜你却走得那么快。宝贝，如果你也在乎我们之间的记忆，就别走得那么快，应该相信我会去找你。

你称说过有些愧疚， 但爱情，不谈愧疚。所以别说对不起。因为我知道有些事，一开始就已经决定好了，努力是没有用的。古人说得好；本来无一物，何以为情伤？至少你称收下我的心意， 那已经是最好的报答了。我就向那杯咖啡一样，你先放着。等你需要的时候，在打开喝吧。而我，等你最需要我的时侯，我一定会在你身边。

我们的爱情使我们忘记时间，但愿时间也会使我们忘记我们这美丽的爱情。。。

As you drink a shot of whisky to honour the Old Man while looking at news broadcasts and posts paying tribute to him. While there have been detractors criticising his authoritarian ways, one cannot help but wonder how far the country has progressed without him. If it wasn't for him, the country would still be of fishing villages and swamp lands.

Like what Sir Winston Churchill mentioned in his tribute for the airmen of Battle of Britain, and one which you think it's pretty apt, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." In the conflict for self-survival, where the threats surrounding us can't wait to annihilate the tiny red dot, it's only through the grit of the founding fathers that the country was transformed from the Third world to the First in a span of 40 years.

Even though the entire country is mourning over the loss of the Old Man, the one who many of them can identify with as they are growing up, they should celebrate his life, his tireless strive for the welfare of his countrymen and his passion. So, learn from his fighting spirit, his meticulous eye for details, his passion for the betterment of his fellow countrymen.  

Now that he is finally free from his responsibilities, he can truly enjoy his time at the other side with his wife and the rest of the old guard. On behalf of a grateful nation, thank you for your service and sacrifice to the country.

Just had to delete the text message which you wanted to send to J out of impulse. It won't serve any purpose other than making things complicated for her. No..she cannot know how much you miss her on nights like this, how you wish you could hold her in your arms and spend the night away, by the seaside chatting away while waiting for the sun to break over the eastern horizon. A simple breakfast of coffee with toast and soft-boiled eggs before heading back to your respective home for a shower and sleep the weekend away would conclude the tiring work week.

If both of you were married to each other, then it would be your own cozy abode, your own hotel-grade multi-thread sheets with fluffy pillows where you hug each other to sleep. Sometimes it's dreams of fantasy like this that keeps you alive. But both of you know. Only you are allowed to harbour thoughts of her, the "what-ifs" and the "why-nots". She cannot afford to have the luxury of doing all these for it's not right.

Oh well, such are the realities of life. Sorry J, but I really miss you.

As you make the commute home after a long day of work, the mind began contemplating between a choice of beer, gin tonic and a glass of red wine. These days, it seems like drinking has become one of the avenues to destress, besides running, that is. If it has been a long day, a drink is definitely on the cards to relax.

Granted that the troubled mind has been hard-wired by J to automatically kick-start an internal calorie count process loop when the urge to drink a beer for the road comes. Guess J would had been very happy if she knew that you have cut down 90% of the beer intake. Sometimes it's funny how someone can change your outlook on beer with just a few words.While it has always been a known fact that the one who can tame your drinking is the ONE, it does not seem to be the case for you.

In life, dreams can never match up with the realities and practicalities. Despite an aching desire to share your life and dreams with J, you have to tear yourself away. It has reached the stage that you are just a familiar stranger, so near yet so distant. Perhaps it's meant to stay this way all along; just as what J has previously quipped regarding both of you growing up in the same neighbourhood for most of your life and yet not knowing each other's existence.

You know that she won't feel the way she used to feel about you anymore for you are the past tense and one has to look towards the present and future tense. Hence that's why you hope that in the next life, you can find her sooner so you can love her longer.

For record, you ended up drinking a glass of red wine from your collection.

The age old adage concerning the amount of sleep diminishing as the number grows bigger can be very true, according to someone. As you pen these thoughts at 0400H, your mind is swirling with many issues; about life, about work, about family and about J. Your sleep cycle is such that you are hitting the bed before 2300H, mentally exhausted by the work and up before your multiple alarm clocks jolts you awake. If this is the induction program for your life's new chapter, you rather fail the orientation.

It's interesting to note that you are slowly transforming yourself; placing yourself on a self-imposed exile on a heavily fortified island fortress. Before the fortress was built, the island was once a beautiful oasis, filled with lush greenery, teeming with life where crystal clear water empties itself into a deep, safe harbour. It was a place where thoughts flourished freely and where everyone cared and helped each other without any agenda. But as times go by, the lush greenery has been replaced by the treacherous concrete jungle and the waters are heavily polluted with lies, deceit and gossips. These days, you keep your thoughts to yourself for there's many unexploded ordnance waiting to maim or kill you. 

Hence, you have built up your fortress (again) to protect and defend yourself from the treacherous world out there. The fortress is selective towards any visitors and only the ones worthy of your trust are allowed to enter. While you may be all smiles and reassuring on the outside, you are too old to play anymore games, to be talking to anyone, to not know what's going on and to be entertaining people who are just interested in using you for their own personal interest. You are interested in consistency, stability, respect, love and you want them to prove to you that they mean it before you even let them into this vulnerable world of yours.

Love and appreciate yours truly and you will be allowed into the realm of the beautiful oasis. Take yours truly as a stepping stone to the higher echelons or a life buoy fulfilling a missing need/s, you are sorry to say that you will be accorded less than warm reception. 

It spreads throughout the body, metamorphosing the healthy cells and coursing through the body, spreading it's presence around and slowly draining the life out of you. Treatment is like dancing, one where a delicate balance has to be sought. To fight it, one has to be one step ahead, to kill it before it kills you. If it can be treated with surgery, chemotherapy or radiation or simply "slashing, poisoning or burning", it would had been great.

Unfortunately, this is a form which no medical experts can ever address. The recommended treatments will make it worse and you are better off fighting it by yourself. Psychologically, it takes a lot to fight it. Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. But you know that, no matter what, you have to fight it, to resist the temptation to give up, for the feelings of hopelessness is a disease, one more powerful than the one that takes your life.

But you know that it's a punishment bestowed upon you by the powers to be and to live is to hurt. That's a price you would have to pay.One day, it will leave, but the memories of it's touch and the hope that it doesn't will never.

Welcome to your world.

Which is more important? The journey or the destination?

You started everything with the destination in mind and didn't put much thought into the journey itself. Over the period of time, you have come to realise that it is just like a river. It winds, weaves and snakes around. As the river flows from its headwaters, it changes from the shallow and fast flowing waters to a deep and slow flowing one. Along the way, it will wind, weave and snake around as it heads towards its final destination; the sea. 

In order to transverse the river, you will need to know it's temperament and mood. You can never rush it for it has a soul of its own. Only by trial and error will you slowly appreciate and conquer the great river. But as the river transits to a deep and slow flowing one, the effects of tides starts to make its presence felt. There will be time where the tide is your ally, pulling you towards the destination without too much effort and there will be time where it pushes you back to the starting point.

All along you have only thought about the destination without really focusing on the journey itself. While you have trial'd and error'd through the journey, you have never imagined that you would be crazy enough to try and navigate the treacherous river. As futile as it may be, you will still persist on the journey till your last breath. The destination is no longer important for it's the journey that you seek to find strength and hope.

As you drove along your favourite stretch of road, there's a loneliness residing within which is obvious even if you try to convince yourself otherwise. Unfortunately, this emptiness also constitute the most important one of your life. Even though you are among friends and beyond the smile, you are still lonely; a lonely soul yearning to be loved, appreciated and most important, complete.

Perhaps, this is the solitude of suffering, one where you go through darkness that is lonely, intense and terrible. Words become powerless to express your thoughts and when it do, what others hear is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering. But this is life. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes and it's through periods like this that you will grow stronger and tougher.

Someday, someone who is brave enough will penetrate through the layers of armour to this lonely soul, fill you with love, build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. So you are going to keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling for life's a beautiful thing and there's will always be much to smile about.

Sometimes you wonder whether it's a blessing or curse for your ability to craft policy papers. While your purported paper writing skills makes you big boss's the "go-to" person when there's a need to revamp papers to the board's requirements, it's taking you away from your core functions.

Instead of being hired to alleviate your own department's workload and revamping the system, nothing has changed. Despite feeling honoured by big boss's assignments to such "co-curricular activities" as part of the total learning experience, the fear of creating some green-eyes of jealousy may be coming true. While snide remarks would not have reached your ears, you can feel that there are many people who can't wait to see you fail. Hence, only by strengthening that mask and staying on your toes will your path through these treacherous waters be safe.

It's often times like this that you rather be up in the wild blue yonder flying an aeroplane than flying a desk. Indeed you miss the simple joys of flying and the exhilaration of climbing towards the Heavens. Surfing among the clouds and leaving contrails across the blue skies sets you free from the treachery of office politics, which you try your best to steer clear of like those turbulence-laden CB clouds. Oh well, you just hope that one day you will take to the skies again and relive the joys of flying again. And of course, taking J with you for that long-promised flight.

For now, a walk along the beach and the cooling sea breeze is the best substitute to de-stress. Even though walking by the beach is different now without J, you just have to get use to it. Gone are the days where physical touches like hugs and words of affirmation were what got both you through the stresses of life and work. But such is human nature that you tend to take things for granted when you have them. Only when you have lost them for good will you regret about it.

At least dreaming about it will keep you going. And dreaming is what you will do now. Good night.