YoungWolf2k: The Origin
Colin is from the Gaelic
word Cailean which means Young Wolf. The nick was
first used in the year
2000 and hence the
addition of suffix [2k] =)
The Dedication
This site is dedicated to all
my friends, those who
cared and kept me in their
constant thoughts and
prayers when I couldn't
see the light at the end
of the tunnel.
The Sponsors
Special thanks to my twin
bro, Gavin @ Cedric and
best bud Kevin @ Vaslav
for upgrading me to
Premium Member previously!
Special thanks to my cousin,
Allen for keeping my blog
alive for the whole of 2006!
Thanks for believing in me!
The Inspiration
And to those readers, for
which this blog is maintained
for, keep those comments
and inspiration rolling in.
And to another special
someone, whose smile
makes and brightens
up my day but doesn't
quite know it, thanks for
your warmth, thoughfulness,
listening ear, and thanks
for being there! You never
know how much your sms on
one fine morning brighten
up my whole day!
2008 has been a most eventful and great year for me, with so MANY great things that took place in the year, most often filled with so many parties (more parties that any other year before!), and when I look back at it, and all the great times we had and shared, the tough times we went through together, I don't really know how and where to start. And the best part of it, I had my friends along with me for the whole time, and I don't know what I'd do without them.
2008 has been a continued year of fun, I tried several more new things this year like wall climbing, white water rafting, 10km marathon and many, many more! And also it was a year of great travelling! From Bali to Langkawi, Genting to Muar, Singapore to Penang again (I went to Penang three times in the span of one year!), we rake up more pics than I can imagine. I already have close to 2400 tagged pics of myself on Facebook!
Career
I started the brand new year with a brand new job at Siemens Malaysia as the Sales Support Engineer under Security Solutions, Building Technologies. My role was basically quite similar to my previous job, and was mostly involved in the preparation of paperwork and documentation (for our internal processes), as well as both commercial and technical submissions for tenders and projects as well.
It has been a "learning" curve here for me here, but I guess I'm handling ok. Sometimes it gets really challenging with the highly "pressurized" environment here, but so far, managed to overcome it despite at times it was freaking impossible to do so, single handedly. Oh well, what doesn't break you will only make you stronger!
My department didn't do well during the last financial year, so, am hoping that with the seeds we sow last year, some fruits will start to bear soon... We have secured one job (verbally), while we stand a good chance in another project as well, currently in negotiation stage. Wish me luck, hopefully with that, we are able to sustain profitability with a large bonus end the end of this year. Yay!
Family
Things are great at home to begin with. I've been able to spend a little more time at home lately (especially on Sundays), taking them out for dinner, and going out when my bro is back for the weekend. Mum is ok, but Dad is suffering from a bout of nasty pain caused by the degradation of the neck vertebrae, which is infringing on his nerves, causing muscle spasms of the shoulder.
He complains that he can't sleep at night, but lately, he seems to be ok, and I guess I have to thank my visiting relatives from Canada and Singapore for this slight improvement.
Maybe I'm gonna plan for a long vacation with them this year, perhaps to somewhere overseas, so let's see how things goes when Dad gets better.
Bro is doing good too, and I've been seeing him at least once every 3-4 weeks. He's always back for some meeting or conference, or for the long weekend. I enjoy hanging out with him, or juz lazing at home watching the telly or just hanging out at his hotel room. Haha.
Also, hoping to see more of my Sg cousins this coming year too! We are supposed to plan our Family Vacation together! :D
And also, I wanna improve my communication with my parents as well.
Physical
I'm happy to say that there are some overall improvements in my physical appearance this year (Colin v2.1!), well thanks in whole to the BodyPump class that I've been doing lately during the last of 2008. I try to attend at least one Pump class a week, and if I can, two - one on Tuesday and the other on Friday. But due to the year end festivities, I've been missing out on my Friday Pump for weeks already!
My greatest challenge this year was to maintain the weight that I lost during the weeks leading up the Miracle 2008 Finale (read more bout it later), and boy, it was really challenging. At my "fittest" I was 70kg (YAY!), and weeks after that I'm around 73kg, and now, at last weight last night I'm still at 73kgs. I aim to lose a couple more kgs, while trying to be more toned and defined. Ooops. Too ambitious ka? :P
Food wise, have been keeping to simple light dinners at night (but the year end parties are NOT helping!) so hopefully, with the right regime and diet, I'll be able to reach my target by my Bangkok trip (in mid Feb) or by my Phuket trip (in mid July). Haha.
But judging from the wrist pain I have now, I still have some techniques in Pump to improve... Hehe.
Personal
Oh wow. This will be a rather lengthy section. I'm not sure how to divide it, but let's see how this entry flows.
First of all, the year was a bang! I think I've attended more parties this year than any year before! One after another... The numerous birthday parties, gatherings and festivities (CNY/Chap Goh Mei, Mooncake, Raya, Christmas!)... I think there are simply to many to recall or mention! Even my orange-themed Birthday party was fantastic! I will NEVER forget the shape of the cake for as long as I live! :P
Ok, I'll talk about the more significant events that took place this year...
Early this year, as mentioned previously, I went wall climbing with a couple of my friends. During our climb, as we progressed towards more challenging slopes, there was a particular difficult wall to climb (read the link above for more details with accompanying graphics) but with "someone's" encouragement I managed to do it. Sadly, when I visited this particular shopping mall a couple of months back, the wall climbing gym is already closed. Oh well. I looked at the wall I manage to scale, or rather how high it was, I'm quite surprised at myself. IT WAS HIGH!
It would be misleading if I didn't write bout this, as this was one of my more defining moments of 2008. It took me great courage to do what I did, to express my feelings (thanks guys for your encouragements) in a 6 pages handwritten letter. In the end I got the answer that I was seeking, although it wasn't in my favour.
That fueled me to be a better person, as I strive to improve myself although I believed that I somewhat changed a bit, some part negatively more than before, so in the next coming year, I'll strive to remedy that. I realise that my patience is wearing thin nowadays, so gotta be more patient. Haha. GA has pointed this out to me, so yeah, that is something I wanna improve on this coming year.
(But for the record, I still have no patience for ignorant peeps :P)
I think this year have not only been a tough year for me, but also for some friends around me as well. But I guess with the support from one another, we managed to weather through the storm. It wasn't easy, tears flowed, hearts were broken, but I guess we're a bunch of supportive friends and that's the greatest gift anyone can ever have. Really. This is the highlight of my year!
The support of our closest friends proved invaluable when Jason, KK, Simon, Nat and myself a.k.a. The RATTs decided to join the Fitness First Miracle 2008 event this year to raise funds in aid of the China Earthquake Relief Efforts under Mercy Malaysia and Kirtarsh Home. Although we didn't emerge as overall winners of the competition, I guess all of us took much more from it - spiritually, and while having fun, we raised over RM 20,000! That's the WHOLE amount from the previous year! Special thanks to all of our dearest friends who took time out to help us out - together we made a difference! And look at all the new friendships we've gained!
Summary
There are many more things that happened in 2008, too many to recall in such a short time span, to mention about in this entry. Overall, if 2007 was a great year for me, 2008 was a by far a FANTASTIC year for me. Pictures alone speaks a thousand words, and the the thousands of pics alone paints a beautiful and fun-filled year that was 2008.
I'm not too sure what 2009 has in store for us, but I hope it will be one fantastic year for all of you, in the way that 2008 has been for me.
I'd like to take this opportunity to wish and greet all of my fellow friends and readers, a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2009!!!
May you have a safe and fun-filled festive season, with lots to drink and eat, with laughter, giggle and non-stop joy, the whole year round.
I'm actually kinda looking forward to this Christmas week, as I have several activities lined up till next week. To start things off there's the Christmas eve reunion with my relatives tonight, followed by Christmas lunch tomorrow in Puchong (with my relatives too) and a Christmas party at night (2nd one this year!). On Friday, we'll be having a Birthday cum Christmas celebration for our dear friend in the evening and all of us are really looking forward to it!
On Saturday, my cousin is getting married and all of us (my family and my cousins) will be involved in the wedding, so yeah, it would be a whole day of merry and fun. My cousins from Singapore and Canada are in town as well, so I'm quite sure it will be a blast!
On Sunday, nothing is planned yet, but I guess I'll be spending time with my cousins from Singapore... So we'll probably head out to catch a movie, or play bowling or something. Do something interesting. Haha.
Monday is also a holiday in KL, and I think I'll be resting from the 5 days of merry-making...
Till the next entry, enjoy your Christmas folks! And have a great 2009 ahead!
The fun times of December are starting, this weekend with a roadtrip with my close buddies up North to the Pearl of the Orient, Penang!
We're all heading down to attend a wedding of one of our gym friends, and we all have to be dressed in SUITS. Haha. Kinda looking forward to it, as it's not often that you get to see us dressed up for the occasion! :P
It's my 2nd trip to Penang this year, the earlier one back in August, where we stopped by in Penang for a night after spending two nights on the island of Langkawi.
After that, its back to work, and then two parties to look forward to... Hehe. Me and the decoy boys have been busy (oh ok, maybe the decoy boys) with the decoys preparation and we're already giggling non-stop now. Haha. I can safely say that it's the most "creative" one we've ever done before, and will let the pics do the talking when they are posted up.... Haha.
Can't wait for the clock to tick tick tick, but I'm swamped at work with last minute errants... I can manage that... Hehe.
Okies, that's all for this entry I guess. Catch up with ya fine folks when I get back.
So far it's been quite a busy month, with things starting to pick up at work and outside the office as well.
Have been sending dad regularly to his physio appointments twice weekly, and also to his 2nd physio appointment at a local public hospital too. Been spending some nights at home during the weekdays, enjoying mum's cooking while watching the tv.
Some readers have remarked that I've been through some tough times, yeah, its true I have, but I'm now back on my feet again. Thanks for your concern fellas. It was something that I needed to go through, I know I had to go through it a long time ago but have been delaying it till the end of last month. My greatest fear is that I would change, and I hope that if I did, it won't be a change for the bad or something more negative. Thanks for the advice too, peeps. You guys know who you are :)
Ok, enuff bout that.
Now back to more happening things. December would be a great month, so far, with lotsa activities being planned for the next 4 weekends... A outstation trip to attend a wedding, three birthday parties (of which I'm organising one which should be lots of fun) and my cousin's wedding two days after Christmas, with my relatives from Canada and Singapore down for the joyous occasion.
I'm kinda excited bout it, as will be busy during Xmas Eve, Xmas, Boxing Day is Simon's birthday party and on the 27th is the much anticipated wedding. I hope that my cousins from Sg are down a little longer this time around, so we can actually go out a little bit more... Ha ha.
Attended my company's Annual Dinner and Dance last weekend, and guess what... I won a RM 50 shopping voucher from Parkson! :P Not sure what I'm gonna do with it, maybe buy a couple of undies or something (haha) for CNY which is coming a month after Christmas... Oh yeah!
Dec is a month of public holidays, after not having much within the past couple of months. We have a total of 4 PH's this month - Hari Raya Qurban, Sultan Selangor's Birthday, Christmas and Awal Muharram. My company have declared 26th Dec aka Boxing Day as a general day off too, and we'll be on leave on the 1st of January too. Oh wow... Haha.
Will take sometime to pen down my thoughts of 2008, which have been quite a great one. I think it will be a long entry, and somehow I feel some of you guys look forward to read it. Some sneaks: Wall climbing, trips, friendships, Miracle 08, family, personal development... Hehe. I don't know even where to begin.
And oh... I've tried BodyJam 47 already.... :P
Particularly loved the 'Electro Latin' and the 2nd half very much.... Haha. But the recovery is hard!!!!!! :P
Alright that's all for this entry... Just had my lunch and enjoying some nice mini Lindt Chocolates...
The past week has been quite a hectic one, both at work and outside the office. Overall, it's been quite a 'different' week, after Monday.
Work aside, I'm getting better at it, and just secured one order on Thursday evening from a client, a-not-too-bad amount with a good margin. Haha. A moral lifter of the week, and have certainly kept me with a wide smile at work.
A little closer to home, dad's condition is improving, although he still complains of neck and shoulder pains that keeps him up all day. Hope dad will be ok soon, have been sending him to the physiotherapist clinic at PJ twice last week, and again tomorrow night.
Things have been looking up last week, and I hope things will continue to be this way in the weeks to come. I'm certainly looking forward to December, and I know it will be a hectic yet fun-filled month, to end the year with a bang! :)
With this entry, I'm closing another meaningful and touching chapter of my life, one that has been filled with so much innocent hope, coy and shy smiles and fond memories....
I almost dropped some tears over the past several months, but I guess, in the end the tears are not in vain. Thanks for the hope and inspiration, for making me, the best that I can be (although I'm not that good anyway).
Thanks to all my fellow friends, who've been with me throughout this 'up and down' journey of mine. It would have been much more difficult journey without you guys.
For the past couple of days, I've had sometime to reflect upon the things that have happened in the past several months.
And as I looked back, I felt foolish. At times, I felt stupid. I didn't know why I did some of the things I did, and now when I look back, I feel very silly.
Maybe at that time I did it, I did it because I felt that I wanted to, and to do something sincere from my heart, but now, when I look back, I just feel silly. And I felt angry at myself for allowing myself to be stupid. I really did. I felt so down, at times almost tearing.
I felt disappointed with myself until I had a sms-chat with my good friend late Tuesday evening. I was telling him that I felt stupid about what I've done, and he responded with a short, but concise questions.
"Is the person worth it to be loved?"
I was dumbstrucked. The answer, without any hesitation, was a resounding "YES".
Somehow after that, I didn't feel that sad anymore. In fact, for the first time in days, I felt happy.
It's been quite a happening travelling year for me, having been to Bali, Genting & Bkt Tinggi, Langkawi, Penang, Muar and now to Singapore!
Was in Singapore with my fellow gymmates (7 of us went down), and met a couple of other gymmates over there too to watch the adult-themed, puppet musical Avenue Q, held at the Esplanade for the Halloween weekend.
But before watching the play on Saturday afternoon, we all went to the Night Safari on Halloween night! Woo hoo! The best part is that we didn't know that it was a Halloween-themed event at the part, and there were so many 'ghosts' wandering around!
Some of them will jump at you while you queue up for the tram, when you're walking about and when you're sitting in the tram for the tour of the night animals!
HELLLPPPPPP!!!! :P
Had quite a great time at the Night Safari although it was really packed! I've been there 3 times before but it was never this fun! Some of the actors and actress playing the 'ghosts' were so good and spooky! I have to mention this particular Dim Sum Cart stint, where a spooky lady pushes this cart with some dim sum baskets on top. She will invite you over to peek inside the baskets - the smaller baskets had a finger and a nose... :P
Then she invites you closer and closer as she let you peek inside the big basket... Haha. I got so shocked when a head and a hand popped out and tried to grab me! Hahaha!
Special mention to Jeannie/Genie, the host of the Animal Show at the Night Safari too. Great show, great laughs! There might not be any visitors from France or Germany, but you still have visitors from Malaysia! We are your closest neighbour! :P
The next day, we all checked out from our hotel in Tanjung Pagar and checked in at our next hotel near Dhoby Ghaut before heading over to CityLink Mall to walk to the Esplanade for the show.
Avenue Q is a adult-themed puppet-based musical performance, which covers a lot of realities of life such as love, friendship, the Internet and Porn (Yes! Porn! :P), Racism, Purpose in life and sexual orientation.
Look! Our shirt colour matches the puppet above!
It's really funny, and the puppets are so cute! The cast was excellent -Princeton, Rod, Kate Monster and my favourite, porn addict Trekkie Monster were very well played!
In fact till this day, a couple of the songs are still playing in my head... The Internet is for Porn, If You Were G*y and It Sucks To Be Me... Hahahaha....
After that, we went to Chinatown and subsequently to Orchard Road till late night. All of them were going back the next day, while I was going to stay for another night to visit my unimates working in Sg.
So we took some opportunities to snap some pics on the way to the bus stop at Novena Square on Sunday. The Thorns just couldn't resist... Haha.
LOL!
Later at night, I met up my unimates at Vivocity at Harbourfront, it's my first time at this new mall! I think altogether while I was in Sg, I've been to no less than 8 malls? Novena Square, Plaza Singapura, Wheelock Place, Shaw Center, Pacific Center, Citylink Mall, Vivocity, Marina Square... Hahah. Quite a lot eh! A lot of walking and eating too!
Daisy and William @ Starbucks, Vivocity
It's really nice to meet Daisy again in Sg (she was down the previous week in KL) and it was nice to meet William too, who helped me a lot in Sg when I was moving places. Thanks guys!
In all, the Sg trip was a very enjoyable and memorable, although somewhat a little short. Hehe. A lot of good memories came back as I walked down the same street, and I remembered the good times I enjoyed sometime back when I was working in Singapore, and the fun times I enjoyed about 5 years ago. Yeah, it's been that long :)
It's been great Sg! And I bought another new Nike sleeveless! :X
===
On another note, headlines were created in the USA, where the citizens have voted Barrack Obama, their first African American President, into the nation's highest office! With a landslide victory, I must add!
I felt so tempted but I just couldn't resist... So here is a poster I took off runecircle's LJ blog....
It's been quite sometime since I last set foot in this little town in Johor. I remembered, the last time I did, it was after my graduation ceremony held at the Dewan Seri Negeri (is this right?) at Ayer Keroh, Malacca.
My close friends and unimates, Cluevert and Phoebe have together purchased a nice double storey house together, and they have invited me and ex-roommate from our Alpha Foundation year in Malacca, David down for the extended weekend for their housewarming party!
At first I was kinda hesitant to stay two nights, but you know what, I enjoyed every single minute I was there with them.
We drove down (ok, technically David drove down) on Saturday afternoon after a nice lunch at Summit USJ, and we reached Muar around late afternoon. Dave took a slow drive and I was basically snoozing for most of the car journey (Sorry Dave!) when I was supposed to keep him company for the ride. Hehe.
We were supposed to meet Cluevy at the Shell petrol station several km's down the road from the Tangkak toll exit, and when we arrived, we couldn't reach him for some funny reason. David tried to test his memory (Clue've shown him his place before) and so we took a chance. Shortly after Clue called and we've overshoot his place... Haha. So we made a U-turn and soon we arrived at his place safely.
Oh wow. I have to say I like the place! It's nice, and it's huge! It's a 4-bedroom house, and the interior was nicely decorated and I just like it!
For the first night, we just lazed at home while chatting and catching up over old stuff, and our gracious hosts prepared a wonderful piping hot steamboat for dinner!
Clue purposely prepared tom yam soup for me (as he said, he knows I like it!) and we had two varieties of soup for the evening. Dinner was fantastic, had lotsa fun and soon we resigned to the sofa at the living room for some King of Fighters action (The current version of KOF now is KOF4 [2004] while we all were playing it like crazy several years back when we are in our uni days! KOF 98, 99 and 2000! Imagine that!
The next day, after some nice lunch at Muar's Wai Sei Kai, we decided to visit the Gunung Ledang National Park... For some fun in the waterfalls! We hiked to the very top of the waterfall (it's quite a journey up, to be honest) and we were just chilling, playing in the cool streams of the waterfall. We ate snacks that we brought along (chips and cheezels) and our cool drinks too.
We ended up the hike upstream with a cup of ice-cold sparking juice... Oh I tell you it's just SO GOOD!
(p/s: Note to future picnics/waterfalls: NASI LEMAK is the perfect food!)
We left about 530pm home, and soon at home we have to prepare for the housewarming dinner! Phoebe's parents, family and relatives came over too, and it was a nice dinner. Loved the curry! :D
We played game well into the night, before calling it a night... Hehe. It was kinda fun to bully opponents with my very cheating Billy Kane... Hahahaha. We also had some of the leftovers from the dinner... Yummy!
The next day, we decided to visit the town for some water activities but sadly, the place is now closed. So we walked along the waterfront, snapping some pics, seeing some monkeys rather up-close (they are so comfortable with human presence that you can even go near and pat them (even their lit' babies!), and they will even come and sit on your car!) before heading over to buy some titbits and returning home to rest before dinner.
Had a great Baba Nyonya dinner with Dave and our hosts at Muar town, before rushing back home, to pack up and to drive back to KL! By the time we were done packing and left, it was already 930pm!
Dave and I were talking all the way back, and I'm glad I went for this trip.
Now we're looking forward to our next outdoor trip... Bkt Cahaya, here we come (again!!!!)
And again, thanks to our gracious hosts Clue and Phoebe for a fun weekend and their super-warm hospitality! And thanks Dave for the ride!
On another note, a couple of us, close friends are kinda disappointed to see some changes in the personality of another dear friend that we hold dear to us.
I don't know exactly what happened, and the way things are going, soon, there will be nothing left of this friendship that the rest of us will hold on to.
We've all been taken for granted at one point in time, for not replying sms's or even invitations - we're not just ANYBODY, we're your close friends. Remember that before it's too late.
Colin @ 
