Category: Life

I saw a very beautiful juggling act on TV recently & it was mesmerising. The juggler had a few rings to start of with and did the basic juggle, he started picking up the momentum and it started to get real entertaining. The number of variations he did was amazing, the creativity, the usage of his environment, breaking away from the norm… at some point I literally had goose pimples and my eyes were glued to the TV set.

He started adding more rings… he could still juggle… he added more rings… and you could see the variations starting to take a nose dive. At some point… it was really about keeping all the rings in the air… no more variations… it was only about how many more rings can be added till he start dropping the rings.

Immediately that made me think of my situation… the number of projects i had to juggle… am i still doing interesting and creative things? or have i reached the stage of just keeping things in the air and not letting them hit the ground? hmm… such is work… Now throw in wife, kids, parents, my own passion in things, church… etc… something will give soon if i don’t manage it well…

Anyway, enough of the emo talk. Here’s an extreme juggling act to keep you entertained.

I tried registering www.pan.sg in early Jan 2005, but did not manage to get it then. I’ve since been monitoring it and after 2 years, now i own it, i own pan.sg. Yay! so… what shall i do with it? hmm…

I made a short trip to Amsterdam in mid April and it was mainly for business. The amazing thing about this trip is the hotel was in the airport and the office that we are visiting was also in the airport.

These were the wonderful people that we were visiting and its interesting how 1 German, 2 Irish and 2 Singaporeans are having dinner in Amsterdam during sunset which happens to be about 9:30pm in the evening. I somehow can’t remember feeling this way when i was in UK in January ’04 or when i was in Germany in April ’03. I think Italy in October won’t count. Anyway… being Singaporean living near the equator, i have to say it felt quite weird, but the company of 3 ladies, free and easy food, wine and beer made the night enjoyable and relaxing.

Our German friend was kind enough to take us out to the city to have a walk around on the first night to feel the streets of Amsterdam. The city was charming and its amazing how many bicycles were zooming around the streets, we actually had to watch out for them.

Here are some pictures i took on the streets.

Rijks Museum where you can find masterpieces byRembrandt.

Romantic houses that slant and tilt as if they had their own individual character.

A street corner that might be normal to locals, but rich in culture and history to me.

The Dutch Kroket. Apparently this is Dutch food and if you ask “What is Dutch Cuisine?”, most likely this is it. Way cool!

Thinking about it actually Singapore Cuisine is acutally made up of alot of street side food like our Char Kway Teow, Fried Carrot Cake and Rojak. But serving food from vending machine as such is way cool.

A small charming shop (Boekhandel Veenstra)

One of many many many canals.

Another small charming hardware shop (Gleens Hardware Store).

Overall, the trip was nice and I do look forward to visit Amsterdam again… maybe the next time with my wife. Gauw tot ziens Amsterdam…