Haven’t had the chance to write much recently because of everything that’s been going on. Work has been the same but there are tons of things going through my mind for the past few weeks. I think I’ve been feeling a little down lately because I’m almost giving up on my work. Somehow, the work just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

Maybe the problem with me is I’ve always judged my success by my own yardsticks, by the number of milestones that I’ve set for myself. I am not proud of that. It shows a great weakness for vanity and self-conscious. And I am sick of running from that. I work extremely hard, and it’s time I work for what I really want.

Thinking about the last couple of years it amazes me that I’ve pushed so hard for something I wasn’t even sure of. People who knows me tells me that I’ve always been someone who set goals and chase for it. I gave my best and but irony sets in when I thought I knew what I wanted for my work, it turns out that I’m just a lost traveler who lost passion, vision and balance through the journey.

Perhaps the biggest consolation is that through the last 3 years I’ve managed to figure out what I want for myself, and I finally feel like I have more guts than I thought. But before I’m going to say “I tried it, but I don’t like it, and that’s ok”, I’m going to give myself one more chance to make things right at my workplace. Maybe I should stand on the sidelines watching, get the right people in and maybe reconcile how my personality and strength will fit, where my career goals will really be, and how work is going to make my life more meaningful.

Today is our first anniversary of our new chapter. Thank you for doing so much laundry and breakfast for the past one year. Well, more laundry and breakfast in the years ahead! :p

For the true diving enthusiasts, the island needs no introduction. No photographs or videos can capture the extraordinary beauty of this place. The dive could have been perfect if the visibility was better. From the small nudibranches to the large school of humpheads, barracudas and jacks, I would describe the experience as “an underwater visual buffet” for a lack of better phrase. The breathtaking view of two barracuda schoolings merging into one, barracudas racing past us when we are all distracted by our rare guest, octopus, the playful humpheads being as curious as we were, the diving experience was totally awesome.

These years, I’m so glad that I have discovered ocean and its peace. While work becomes increasingly exciting and challenging, I’m glad that I have the luxury of escaping to a place where I’m just a visitor, listen to my own breathing and marvel at the wonders of nature. Beyond the hissing and burbling of my breathing, I discover silence and peace in this weightless world that comes with no stress and responsibilities. And before I take my next breath and plan for my next move, a small kick brings me to view the next wonder of nature.

It just adds a lot more meaning to diving when you have khakis who dive, sleep, eat and shit with you. And I’m so glad that my khakis are aspiring luxury divers. Because that means no more rigging, no more shabby rooms, no more lup sup dives and no more diarrhea!

Maldives next year, anyone?

Photo Album: http://www.terryaki.net/photos/sipadanmabul
Video Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuZ_2oaknZE
Video Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AycKfscSjp4
Video Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlHOXV0a9ro

We hesitated, or maybe it was just me. The next thing I knew, I looked out of the deck’s window and the Tokyo sky was all fogged up, as though the clouds ate up the Tokyo Tower. Ten minutes later, the fog cleared up and the tower stood there, shining hard and bright.

Sometimes, you just never know your luck.

As a newly wed couple, one of the new adjustments that we had to do was to include planning for our combined finances. Baby and I were doing some calculations and we decided to aim for $20,000 by the end of 2009. Over lunch yesterday, we talked about family and financial planning and interestingly, we noticed a trend among Singaporean couples. Generally, there will be three depletions of your savings in your married life. First depletion usually goes to the wedding, the second one on the down-payment/renovation of the house and the third one sets in when you have kids. Unfortunately, there are so many things that we want to do but we are now moving to stage 2. Besides that, we need to save for our backpacking and regular dive trips. With the pressing milestones in place, sometimes I question the feasibility of our plans. Baby hates kids so maybe we should not even have any kids. I suddenly realised that I have planned my life so well such that every stage of my life seems to deliver as planned. Baby said that we should let go this time and slowly unveil the possibilities that are hiding behind the corners. My wife is never a planner. But she may be right this time.

Watching Marley and Me also causes me to reflect on my job and it seems like a reminder to reestablish my priorities in my life at the perfect time. I remembered I entered the workforce as a designer full of excitement and enthusiasm, and I was happy enough to earn a decent paycheck that gives me a whole lot more to provide for a girlfriend after coming out from the army. Then with a twist of fate, I got myself an absolutely dream job that allows me to design and travel but I rejected the offer because money meant more than anything else to me at that time. Shortly after, I was influenced by a few people, decided to take a broad step forward and switched to project management.

What began as an exciting and promising career switch progressively leads to sleep deprivation, worries, fall of adrenalin surges, stress, frustration over work issues, and the negativity eventually wears down my energy, my spirit, my body, and my morale. Because I can’t let go. Because the negativity keeps festering in my mind every day. Because I’m wasting my energy in anger, stress, or worries over things that I can’t change. I chose my career and I think I can also choose to integrate more positiveness into my job that may have been overshadowed by all the negatives. But I realised I am a prisoner of my job and the things that I’m doing are no longer for any reasons. What am I working for?

I was talking to a friend yesterday. She is a business graduate but settled for an Attractions Supervisor position at Universal Studios (Sg) with a measly pay because she loves what she is doing. I think she’s brave. How many people can do that? I do not want to believe that I have no power or control over anything but I think I do not have the courage. I was reading my wedding photographer’s blog and he said this.

“I am a wedding photographer. I take photographs during a wedding. I always feel like I’m part of it, part of the celebrations. It feels really nice there and then. I liken it to drinking alcohol. Don’t you just love that feeling of being high and carefree? That’s exactly the same kind of feeling I get everything I’m on the job. That is perhaps the reason why it’s impossible to stop me from shooting once I start. And that is where I get all drunk in that ’love is all around’ atmosphere.

He is a brilliant award-winning photographer. I’m sure this is not part of his plan and he did not expect this when he gave up his engineer job to be a wedding photographer. I suppose we need to ask ourselves periodically if we love what we are doing and if we have found meaning to our jobs. If you do not have any answers to it, then it’s time to stop and reflect.

The next step for me is to overcome this and find the burning passion back again. And even if I can’t find it within my current situation now, I still need to work hard because it’s my only way out of this current situation. So, I’ll do it the way that I have always done it – plan and do whatever it takes, the strategy that has brought me so far in my journey in life. I will make it. Come on, Terry!

The sky was grey and it was raining outside. The weather was seasonably cold and I laid my head on her laps while she tried to remove my ear wax gently. It had become one of our favourite past time recently and iTunes was playing tracks by Norah Jones in the background.

It suddenly dawned on me that it was a beautiful moment. A perfect moment where love is in it’s strongest yet simplest form.

And so we are married for one month and it’s funny how the whole world seems to be very interested in our married life. Married life isn’t any different from our courtship days except that now on normal days, baby will put 爱心早餐 into my bag so that I would bring it to work every morning. Baby has been wonderful. She has taken the role of a virtuous wife, often making an effort to clean up the room (often at erratic times) and making sure that our soiled clothes are well taken of.

Last evening, we met L&D at Grand Shanghai and we had a really good time laughing about the teething problems as newlyweds. Interestingly, we all wrestled about weird sleeping habits and positions even though this hasn’t been a new thing to us. Blanket snatching seems inevitable. We also laughed about the frequent tiffs we had prior to the wedding and how funny it seems that we all had our fiercest fights in this phase particularly.

Marriage isn’t a walk in the park and we have just begun our life-long journey. At this moment, baby is hugging *Ruffle in her usual semi-comatose sleeping position and I just marvel at how amazing life is despite the little control we have, that God plans everything nicely in place for us.

*Ruffle is a fat giraffe who has been with us for four years. He talks and he loves Macdonald’s breakfast.

April and May passed like a breeze and due to overwhelming workload and social commitments, it has been a while since I really wrote anything. Here’s a long overdue post of my dive trip.

Although we didn’t have the best weather at Malapascua, I thought we had a pretty good break. Since electricity is only available after 6pm and entertainment is almost like miraculously dead, I took the liberty to indulge in at least 10 hours of sleep every day. Awesome! But sadly, the dives were quite crap. Perhaps it was the weather, the whole infrastructure of the island, or the fishes were on strike. We didn’t manage to catch the thresher sharks but there were a few first-times for me. The manta ray, banded sea snake, frog fish, harlequin shrimp and seeing how a juvenile cuttlefish released its ink and camouflaged itself to the different surroundings when provoked. We’ve also finally found out the name of those fish that we first saw at Dayang. I was really expecting some interesting names since they all swim in a synchronized manner with their heads pointing downwards but it actually turned out to be just shrimpfish. Maybe god was fair because we caught the same manta twice in a close distance while waiting for the sharks. Here’s a 6 seconds video footage of the graceful creature.

Filipinos are generally friendly, sensitive and boy, they love to sing. We had the privilege to speak to the owner on some investment opportunities and it was really cool because I never had the thought of investing in a private resort/dive shop for the later years. Imagine how awesome it is to have a private bungalow or cottage on another island. Here are a few shots of our resort overlooking the sea – sunny, sunrise and sunset.

On a less exciting note, I would really like to thank all my friends and family for their birthday wishes and stuff, especially baby for the very expensive gift that she got for me. My brother got me a “Diving the World” book and it’s almost like the Lonely Planet for divers. Damn cool. Actually, this year felt a lot less like a birthday and it’s good because I wouldn’t be reminded of the harsh reality of being quarter of a century old. It feels quite different now from when I just got out of school.

Can’t believe July is around the corner. That also means next coming up will be our wedding photoshoot and food tasting session. Gonna be busy like a bee.

It is through memory that we hold on to those we love.