Doubts galore.

I’m riding on the inspiration I’m deriving from the song A Thousand Years by Christian Perri, the song for the movie Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, a well-sung song, to blog.
Of course, you should listen to it. It’s a very very nice song.

Okay I apparently got quite annoyed that the rest of the original post was erased after that point. I was literally fuming because the original post was really quite good.
But never mind, I will try my best.

Anyway I recalled as the title suggests, that I have many doubts. I’ve been feeling troubled as of late. Yesterday was no different; I found myself close to breaking down at times. I have plenty of things which I have doubts over.
The one main thing I am certain though was my initial and still lingering doubt whether I still want to go ahead and fight for the sole Olympic spot in 2016.

I think lately this thought had been lingering because of my apparent unfitness and a worry that I will not be able to reproduce the form when I was in my prime back in the year 2010. That form was definitely the best form so far in my sailing career, a medal winning one, and a form I need in order to progress to the next level, of arming myself with a war chest of tactical tricks and then applying it to the main stage on my way to conquering that dream. That form is also what I will need to learn how to beat, at least for the moment, the Russians, Alexandre Nikolaev (2005 Masters Champion in the Radial including a number of top 3 positions in numerous Master Worlds)  and his son Maxim, a future star in the making. To demonstrate what I meant, I must train like they do, in which they train almost everyday. I mean it literally; without fail, I would find the Nikolaevs rigging up and then going out on the water, training. Despite the occasional self-questioning of how Maxim can sustain such a routine with studying, it nevertheless serves as a timely reminder that practice is of essence, and I must train almost everyday, for a few hours, to make up lost ground.

Right now it’s 4 days left to the year’s end. 4 days I need to decide whether I want to go all out in conquering the dream I had harboured all these years. Because I don’t want any doubts to hold me back as I go on the pursuit; when I go all out, I’m going to put all my energies, whatever I can spare at least till NS first towards the marathon to glory. Come the new year of 2012, without any doubts left, I will buy my boat and practise hard. Without hesitation I will start planning for my March training-cum-racing trip to Oman, working hard at Constant Wind to save up and train hard and also buying the air tickets to Oman no doubt, despite a concern over the release of my A Level results. That wont matter though, I can always circumvent that problem.
So this 4 days, I will think long and hard about it.

Another concern I’m having is over the relationships I’m having with my friends, but that one is still something I’m thinking about. Yup.

I’ve a headache, and I think I wanna go rest it. It’s pretty annoying that had the original post not have majority of its content deleted, I wouldn’t have to type a replacement which is not as impressive. Never mind that now.
Time to rest my headache. Good night all, I will blog again soon.

Heavy burdens that follow.

I know this is perhaps a day or two late, but still it’s better late than never.

My assistant manager Daryl’s on leave, hence I’m stepping in to help him sort out some of his matters while he’s on vacation in Penang, although I must say with two calls in two consecutive days he might not be really able to enjoy his holiday. Hmmm there’s nothing much I can do.
But doing some of his matters is not easy I must say, making it a better understanding of how busy he is. And it also serves to stress the point of how one must be really responsible and on the ball at all times in a business kind of thing. It’s these kind of things that give you the experience and makes work so challenging, tiring as well as unpredictable.

Anyway away from that, I find myself at a dilemma
I find that each time I come home from work, I find myself using the computer into the late hours of the night and then going to sleep. It’s a routine that I can’t live without, but it’s also a routine I find necessary because of the work that I need to do sometimes. It can be amazing for someone like me I can have plenty of work to do on the computer. Let me show you just one example: My work. I do daily records of how long I work, from what time to what time, how long is my break, no. of hours and how much I’m paid. This is to facilitate my keeping track of my salary although I’m not sure how it’s counted by the accounts manager Karen. Sometimes, I bring home work to do from the office so that the next day would be an easier day and also there’s the occasional update to my Olympic campaign database. See what I mean? I’m a busy man, and for now remain a busy man.

That workload’s gonna increase soon since I’m in charge of a certain Year-End Sale which has yet to start so yeah. Also, this reminds me that with 10 days left to the start of the New Year, I better do proper planning of my training schedule so that everything will go on smoothly for the year 2012. In addition I think from next year on I’m going to like come down super early to train in the morning everyday before I work.
Which suddenly reminds me of something important:

I have yet,

TO GET A BOAT.

Yes I have yet to get a boat. In response to that I’m waiting for Daryl to return so that I can go have a look at a prospective boat that I’m gonna do some work on and then take it out as my warhorse. I’m already doing plenty of work to ensure I do not overshot my use of funds. I must and need to save for my trip to Oman next year and also be ready to go on the long journey towards being a number 1 in not just Singapore, but also the world.

I must be ready to face all my competitors, strong ones, comparable ones, as I fight my way for the sole spot to the Olympics. As my new motto for my campaign says, “The air ticket to the Olympics in Rio, 2016 will bear no one’s name but mine.” As such, it would be real important to remember the drive and focus on the goals ahead, outwitting all my competition and going all out to win. To win, to win and to win, is the only goal ever. That’s the purpose of the Olympics: One winner, thirty-plus other losers.

In the end, it’s all about being victorious in the best way possible, like Tom Slingsby in the Laser and Marit Bouwmeester in the Laser Radial..

So hurrah hurrah we get ready, once more a hurrah, we go all out to be a champion.

Guess I have enough for the day! Tomorrow heading out to the place early to do some more clearing of the office. Yup, cant afford to always be up late again then miss the opportunity. Tomorrow will also be an opportuntity to explore Changi City Point, the new mall down at Expo since I have never been there, and also it’s a good chance to see Angeline at work!

Alright then that’s all I have! Till next time!

Short, and sweet!

I’m definitely loving the fact that Marit Bouwmeester is now a World Champion! Congrats Marit!

I deleted my previous blog post because apparently somehow a large chunk of the most important part of my blog post just disappeared. Literally, just like that.
It was mostly about the Extreme Sailing Series and the NeilPryde Racing Series, RS:One Singapore Open that were held in the same venue of the Marina Barrage. Helped a lot, tiring tasks, lot of pictures taken and it’s just an amazing expreience just being out there to witness the spectacle. I remember how same time last year I was  still moaning in disappointment that I couldn’t go to see it because I was studying and also tied up with things on that day. To be able to now have time to witness such a spectacular moment is awesome. It’s ironic though I will still be disappointed at the event becuase I didn’t get to take pictures with Dean Barker, Captain of Emirates Team New Zealand, or Chris Draper, the helm and Captain for the entry Oman Air. Prominent and world class sailors in their own right.

Anyway a point that I realised that was gone with the deleting of the blog post was the fact that my sponsorship proposal failed to get through. It was indeed an ambitious and audacious gamble to actually ask, but I took my chances and it didn’t go through: there were many glaring factors I realised I must rectify in order to start making my way up the ladder towards being a world champion. Nevertheless it was a good try, and I forgot to thank my friend that helped me pave some way into this even though the end result was not the way I wanted it to be.
With the sponsorhip now gone, it calls for Plan B, and yes do I have a Plan B: Hopefully as soon as possible, I’m going to view and inspect a prosepective boat that I’m going to get. Although it’s gonna cost me some money and even more money to get the boat ready in my setup, I’m definitely determined to get hold of a good AND fast boat so that I will have confidence and go all out to practise. I’m only slightly worried tha I might not have enough money in time to go to Oman for a 12-day training and comeptition trip with the Omani team and also have a decent amount of savings. But I will leave that for later on. Right now, I’m gonna think about how to make Plan B a success without ensuring too much money involved.

Hmmm I feel pretty tired after all the scrubbing and washing that I did today at work, that means I added yet another role into the job I call the Flexible Job, but okay tomorrow I’m gonna give myself a break from the computer, wanna give myself something to do, so that means I will blog again in like two days yeah!
See you then!

Job’s going well.

It’s a Sunday! First time in months I’m blogging on a Sunday.

Well it has been quite an eventful week actually! After finishing my A Levels and a day’s break to sort things out such as having a mass clearance of my messy and notably prominent pile of school notes, I jumped straight into my next new venture: Work.
I’m currently working at _____________. Okay this is silly. Anyway I’m currently working at Constant Wind which is a company running a sea sports centre and a shop selling watersports equipment. It’s based out at East Coast, and it’s just right next to my beloved second home the sea. It’s just great: the staff there are great and treated me well, and helped me whenever I needed help learning the ropes of the trade, especially when I have to handle the money matters since it can amount to thousands and there’s so many modes of payment such as VISA, MasterCard or cash. Also, it’s great to have a job working on something I enjoy and am relatively fond of. Yup, it sure is a great job to have.

I could say the job was really a good learning experience as I learned to handle many things to ensure operations go on well in the sea sports centre and the shop since my job is a very flexible one, meaning I can be deployed to whenever I’m needed if there’s no customers to serve. Let’s take today for instance.
Today is Sunday and the last day of racing for this year’s edition of the Starhub Laser Open, a regatta I can’t and wont attend no matter how much I’m asked because I’m definitely way under-prepared. I came at around 9 because the sailors participating from Constant Wind were arriving at about 9 since racing commences on the water at 11, so I was busy helping some Yishun JC sailors prepping their boats because of some mistakes that they committed in their rigging, understandable given that they were not experienced. At the same time I was ensuring that they did their signing on and off which was a vital part of a competition, something like attendance taking and it also helps with tabulating results later on. At all times I was carrying a radio/ walkie-talkie with me to facilitate communications with the coach who was going to escort and then provide on-the water support to some of the sailors later on.

After the sailors have launched I was back at the shop where  my sort of friend cum supervisor Noel was tending to a customer and straight away it’s on to the cash register to start practising the routine of punching in the numbers and some letter and some clicking to deal with the purchases. That’s not adding the faxing of the sign on/off list to SAFYC, the organiser of the Starhub Laser Open and it goes on and on..
In addition to the sales, there was also the task of making reservations since the Belly View Cafe which is located in my workplace apparently has a deal with Groupon and their vouchers are so immensely popular. It’s not just the cafe too; the windsurfing courses that Groupon has vouchers for is also crazily popular. Typically Singaporean huh, discounts.
The list of what I need to do everyday stretches quite far, but I’m quite happy with it because it’s things I can manage and reasonably okay for myself. Also there are times when I finished the current things-to-do, I can have breaks, which is quite good for me too. Today I was working overtime though since it was literally pouring when it was past closing time so Noel and I took our time doing the daily bill report and summary, checking every single cent tallies up nicely. It was afterwards more of waiting in the shop for the heavy rain to ease and for me a chance to look at the stores because I was interested in getting some stuff there and needed to see if they were in stock.

There were three things that arose today, all of them being first experiences:
1) While waiting in the shop for the rain to ease, I heard a rat. Yes, a rat literally. It isn’t surprising that there are rats because with our location just next to the sea it’s where the rats dwell. There are a number of rat traps, cages and sticky traps set in various positions around the shop, but not a single one on the top of all the large shelves and it was one of these large shelves today I heard a rat. I didn’t manage to see it but the sound was unmistakable, and I could hear it running across the ceiling.

2) I am pretty happy about this one because it bodes a good start for my training regime next year. I managed to get not one, not two, but THREE training partners for myself to be able to train with on weekends beginning next year. They are experienced sailors and although their experience on the Laser is not very extensive, their vast experience in other classes such as the Moth or J24 will indeed be helpful. In fact one of them who hails from Australia has undergone Olympic selection trails for the men’s keelboat the Soling class back when it was still an Olympic event. It would be sure good to tap on their experience and knowledge to get higher on my learning curve as I make my way to the top.

3) I just learned of an event, the NeilPryde Racing Series that will be held on the same day or right after the exciting Extreme Sailing Series. It will be an event contesting RS:One Windsurfing Boards, the new board that is undergoing selection to be the new event for the Olympics. What’s interesting is that it will be held at midnight at the fantastic Marina Bay reservoir which would be a real eye-opener since the boards will be equipped with sails that have specially designed LED lights to help the windsurfers surf in the night. It would be a thrilling experience if I can attend both events, whether as a spectator or working there (yes, it’s still possible I will be working there.)

Really hoping this December would be good because one good thing leads to another and then yet another; I hope next year, my wish to go to Muscat, Oman for the Mussanah Sailing Week and to Hyeres for the French leg of the Laser Europa Cup Series will not only come true but go without hitches and hopefully I will medal at these regattas! It’s gonna become a challenge and I like the audacity of the challenge, bring it on. I’m gonna aim to medal at every local regatta I’m going to participate in and finish well in every overseas regatta I take part in, of course medalling should things go well. If Ben Tan can get a 37th in his first ever World Championships, I belive I can do the same or even better it. The main aim in the long run is to also become a World Champion. I definitely want to be one.

It’s close to 1 yet I don’t feel any inch of sleeping although I must be quite tired. I think I am tired but I’m not feeling the effects because I’m still busy typing this blog post. I guess later on when I’m lying down it will only be a matter of time before I doze off into the Lake of Dreams.
And I want to take this opportunity just before I sign off to wish Paul Goodison the very best for the Worlds at Perth! Do your best and hopefully beat Tom Slingsby and his record on his home ground!

I guess I will sign off here already! Got another day of work yet again later today!
Goodnight!