When God doled out the genes from the sheep and the goats and those who do morning jogs, I know which camp I am in.

I woke up early this morning to get HIM a Macdonald’s breakfast before driving HIM out to his job interview, imagine me happily swinging (not too swingingly) the Macdonald’s Big Breakfast Duluxe, I nearly bumped into two morning joggers.

The look on their faces and something about their aura tells me that this is probably not the first time they are doing their morning outdoors jogs. But there are morning jogs and then there is THIS morning jogs.

Morning jogs in a mountain resort with temperatures as high and low at the early twenty degrees Celsius and PSI index well below the cancer causing range  – yes, I can understand that.

But in Singapore? At the heart of Novena? At Singapore’s temperature that is well over 30 degrees Celsius on any given day? Well excuse me if it is just a little pompous. Or just showing off!

And seriously, I never can get the morning jogs bit. There is just something extremely unnatural about waking up early on a day I don’t have to already. When Linda Evangelista once said that she won’t leave her bed for less than 20 grand, I kind of resonate with that – though I am not quite paid exactly that (yet). Waking up to pee is another thing altogether – so is waking up and then lazing around in bed with a magazine and then going back to sleep. But then, getting up, hopping out of bed, putting on my jogging gear and hitting the track is like asking a tiger to eat raw cabbages and dried hay– for its entire 9 lives.

Seriously, these morning joggers are to me are a separate race indeed.

Even if I have psychomatic fungue (a new word  I learnt today from Drop Dead Diva just this afternoon) one day, I can never forget the look I saw this morning. Picture this: a bunch of too thin men in tight black singlets and too loose shorts (ugly obviously) jogging and looking at me defiantly with my big bag of Macdonald’s takeaway like I am some hideous troll under the bridge in three billy goats gruff – and slightly tempting too in a Macdonald’s kinda way.
 

(Above: Troll and the macdonald's Breakfast takeaway)

Maybe because I was born in October and Chrysanthemums are the well-known autumn

blooms – that’s why I love them so much.

My fascination with Chrysanthemums started when I was eating in Marmalade Pantry

(Palais Renaissance) and over their sticky date tart and saw this flower.

In fact, any given day, you can find chrysanthemums on my table, unfurling itself, it’s yellow petals in an upward embrace to the sky, from the 11^th floor of park mall.

Have a great day everyone!
 

Was into a little more than ¾ into my Chilean Merlot last night while watching CNA’s Life after man. The world’s indeed beautiful without human beings to pollute it after all. Like what some people say, we need the planet more than the planet needs us.

Another choice quote from the documentary: man’s hold on mother nature, is at best, only tenuous. [the screen was showing how when humans are gone, it takes only 2-3 years for forests to reclaim the land]

Sunday evening, drinking alone at home while watching documentary about the earth spinning on its own orbit as humans die out from a sudden and quick ultra-pandemic … a absolute priceless experience. I think I appreciate time alone, time left alone.

Flipping calendars always set me thinking. As I switch from July to August, I realized I’ve been in my current company for close to a year. And I must say that I am easing into my current job much better than I was in my ad agency as a copywriter – oddly. On days, I actually felt that I am so suited to my job that I actually felt that I’ve found *the one*.

One of the main things being that aside from just writing the ad copy, I get to plan the projects from start to the end; dabbling in media planning and creatives with as much autonomy as possible. And most of all, I get to meet many people and plan marketing communications across the exciting plethora of mediums. Branding is a concept that is interesting and just perfect for someone like me who likes to sit back and micro-analyse – like analyzing a piece of Tennnyson’s poem. Very right brain but also left as well. So compared to my previous job, yes, I love my current job now.

So it is such a coincidence, in the middle of my musings, that I was approached by an ex-colleague’s colleague (she signed on with teaching when I had left). Not wanting to disclose too much, I wondered what kind of advice I can give to myself were I still in Mayflower in 2007 (contemplating the frightening prospects of leaving teaching).

For one thing, I believe I was lucky with a rather progressive principal who supported a lot of things for the English Department. She had been an understanding principal and knew exactly what a young teacher like me felt when faced with the barrage of work and admin.

Most of all, she saw that I could be a very good teacher who can teach. However, some colleagues happened to be serious pains – and somehow or other, I’m always working with them. Cordially is the only way I can express it.

Oddly also, I find myself in the middle of the day in school looking at the sky and tell myself, okay, I’m in Ang Mo Kio now. Do I really want to be in Ang Mo Kio forever?

And while encouraging my students to always do what they want and follow what their passions are, I find myself not living up to those standards. Also, when I think about it, in the world of education, somehow I am always the odd-ball in a pool of conformists (not that it is a bad thing to be a conformist).

And lastly, I do look at my HOD sometimes (with whom i share more similiarities than dis-similiarities despite the fact that we hate each other's guts) and ask myself, do I want to be like that in ten years’ time? *enough said*

Well, looking back at my life for the years after I left teaching, I can only say that it has been a mixed blessing.

The thing is, if I were somebody who don’t question a lot, goes by the book, has a wife and 2.5 kids, I’d probably be very happy in Ang Mo Kio, behind the white fences that keeps the children – and also me in.

But I guess i'm not. I guess i'm the kind that pushes the boundaries in my own subtle ways where-ever i am.
 

Yet at the same time, having left teaching, I haven’t seen a single bonus at all for as long as I've worked. So financially I have taken a huge step backwards. I didn’t meet as many friends as I would have liked because I was quite financially strapped. It was odd to step into the media industry as an executive at my age when my contemporaries are already managers and above. On certain months, it was a serious struggle to pay even my basic bills.

Looking at the upside, I make it a point to go gym more often because it was about the only place you can go in Singapore without spending too much – once you have paid up the initial extortionate fee. And I have seen a lot more and learnt a lot more that made me wiser and more grounded in many things in life that truly mattered – while exploring a whole different set of skills that had laid dormant in teaching. Most of all, I feel really happy to go to work and am truly happy & fulfilled when I see the littlest results like sales rising exponentially despite the economic downturn. And need i say that what I've learnt now is transferrable across industries and sectors -- giving me an  almost limitless popssiblities to life -- an all new liberating experience. ;)

Lastly, I’m finally out of the white picket fences. And it’s all that matters for me.

[“When Humans die, their pets must get out. Their homes have got absolutely nothing for them – literally a death trap. They have to get out or die.”] (another golden quote from Life after man).

 
If I am looking for a safe and comfortable life, stay.

If I am looking for a life of possibilities, increased personal and professional growth, a deepening of the understanding of human nature and human interactions and ultimately, a more interesting life -- go.

Guess that's the answer I can give to myself in 2007 when I was contemplating leaving.

While going to gym today, all that was playing my mobile phone-cum-mp3 player was gentle bossa-nova jazz … and all I felt was an odd form of heaven.

Later that afternoon, the paster in Wesley church was talking about finding the kingdom of heaven in ourselves. I somehow oddly realize that the happiness I’ve been looking for is exactly that – with bossa nova jazz and oddly, not much else but my pleasant state of mind.