Monday, July 22, 2013

invisalign, be gone

just 1 more week until i see the dentist again!!! currently on refinement aligner 8 of 8, yay :) teeth are not perfect, but probably as good as they would be... then follows the removal of those horrible attachments (which actually makes invisalign NOT invisible), and then the free teeth whitening treatment! of course the retainers will come, but wearing them to sleep is a piece of cake after wearing mouth guard equivalents day in and day out! in any case it's probably a good protection against night time teeth grinding, which i allegedly (used to) do. 

when everything is done and dusted, i will have to write a full review of the experience and results, if only to make my money's worth. 

gone also, will be my no snacking in the day rule, because it was simply too troublesome to eat more then 3 meals a day. this is not bode well for my general diet, health or size, but there is always the option of healthy snacking, maybe? 

the countdown begins, and the end is nigh, 3 cheers! 

Monday, July 15, 2013

four years and counting

took me a while to figure out the actual date i stepped off the boat. turned out that it was july 13, 2009, which makes it 4 years and 2 days. now long past my initial 2-3 year horizon, i'm kinda in no man's land - not quite a newbie in this vast city anymore, but also not quite a proper resident (that comes after 5 years, as all immigrants know). 

i must have mentioned this before, but a little over 4 years ago, as I was lingering around the family home, i thought to myself that i might never return to this same home the same way again. and how true that turned out to be. now married, fat(ter) and on my second job, i have inevitably moved on. in fact, i will never be the same person i was again. of course, everyone grows up and is shaped by the circumstances around. people learn different things in different ways.

for some reason, i have always deliberately chosen to learn things the hard way. i wouldn't dare go as far as to say that my life has been a difficult one. nay, far from it, and i must not take for granted the multitude of privileges i have enjoyed. yet, for some reason, it's almost as if i love putting myself in complicated situations. case in point is this recent job move - it seemed as if all the signs were pointing to the fact that i should not take it, but in my heart of hearts, i knew that it would be more of a life choice than a career choice. now safely on the other side (not even safe because i haven't even received my first pay cheque!), i still cannot decide if it was the best thing to do. But the wonderful thing about these situations is that I know that i would have fallen into a trap at some point if not for the fact that there is One who covers these dangers and makes the path straight (in a rather crooked way, if you know what i mean).

anyway, so event after event, year after year, people come and people go, family grow up and older and home, all your friends get married and have kids, and I am well and truly disconnected. whatsapp is only good to a small extent and facetime, forget it there is no appropriate time difference. but these are all excuses, underneath it all the judge of all these relationships is effort. and i have fallen terribly short in that department. perhaps i'm now paying the price, or perhaps it will also be a measure of how deep friendships run (they say the best kind of friendships are the kind where you can pick up right where you left off, anytime.... but i might be pushing the "anytime" factor a bit here).     

right now, i quite miss home, and i can't wait to be back in september, after a whole 21 months. i need to brace myself for some shocks and changes (well all my colleagues have been to singapore more recently than i have and i have no idea what they are talking about with all the new developments). but somewhere somehow, i know that london has now become such an integral part of me, something i'm not sure i can give up easily. but one more important thing i've learnt, is something that i've always known from the cross-stitch that hung at home in singapore - that home, is where the heart is. can the heart be in more than one place at a time? i believe so, and i think the 4 years have made me feel at home in london where my life and immediate family are, whilst my upbringing will always make me feel at home in singapore where my roots, family, friends and affections lie. 

what confused thoughts...