not directed at anyone, not even a shared sentiment. just plain amusing! "stolen" from yanni.  

when you take on a committed relationship, your intention is to share your life with that someone hopefully for the rest of your life.

i’ve broached the subject with many past lovers. some have bought me diamond rings, some have picked out tentative dates for a wedding. (in fact, if one of them had worked out, i should have been married by september this year!)

but they never did. they never came close.

and now, the other half and i have begun making savings plans to fund our big day. we’ve decided on a date (!!!), a budget, and even agreed on the type of reception we’d like to have. we’ve discussed which event company to hire, which photographer to hire and even decided on the catering.

i’ve been casually proposed to numerous times before but neither party really went to any lengths in planning a wedding proper. that’s because there was always something wrong with the relationship that needed our attention. 

my relationship today is strong, stable and constantly takes a lot of work and communication. we get it now, we get what makes it work. we’re emotionally ready but there are other aspects of our lives that we need to work on now and that really means it’s going to take some time. (partly because i’m anal when it comes to planning and i like to do everything waaay in advance.)

everyone has varying definitions of being engaged. i haven’t even really clarified my own. i just know i’ve never been here before, and neither has he. we’ve reached a new height in the relationship that both of us are completely new to. it’s something i haven’t found a suitable noun to attach to it. and the term ‘engagement’ may not be appropriate. 

anyway, it seems that i have acquired overnight a new significant event in my 5 year plan. it’s going to throw us many challenges, big and small, but i can promise you it’s going to be beautiful.

"will you marry me in 3 years’ time?"

haha, it’s a question i need not even answer. 

look out, 2012!

 

no, i did not read the book. and the trailer didn’t really reach out to me either. in fact, my decision to watch My Sister’s Keeper stemmed mostly from a girlfriend and i not wanting to sit through a megan fox movie. thankfully, the Jennifer’s Body wasn’t even showing that night!

anyway, i’m really glad for the sequence of events that resulted in my watching this movie because i enjoyed the heart of it. i connected and i cried. i didn’t care if it was a brilliantly produced movie or not, i felt for it. and that to me made it a good movie. it’s a great movie because it simply moves you.

similarly after i’d watched Seven Pounds, which i felt had more depth as a movie, my post-film thoughts wandered to the topic of organ donation.

a friend of mine shared with me recently that she’d opted out of HOTA (human organ transplant act) because she would like to be buried whole. it is an extremely personal choice and i respected her decision to do so. i hadn’t thought about being an organ donor at that point so when she asked if i was going to remain in the programme, i didn’t have an answer for her.

i guess if the person who needed a transplant was a close relation to you, most would not decline to help. especially if blood, bone marrow or even a kidney were required. of course, even bone marrow and kidney harvesting surgeries have their risks but technically you could still function with one kidney. but what if the patient were a distant acquaintance, or even a total stranger?

would you stand up and say "use me, let me help"? would you offer your body and it’s parts to help save a life of someone you’ve never spoken to before, or never even seen before?

i think that explains will smith’s character’s desperation in making a decent connection with the seven people, to validate his extreme donation.

Pierre Png donated a small part of his liver to his then girlfriend Andrea D’Cruz before they were married.

i’ve had a few days to think about it and my answer is yes. if i were given the choice to save someone’s life, be it a relative, friend, enemy or complete stranger, i will. the quality of my life may be restricted, i may never be able to do the things i love, but if it extends someone else’s life, i would be more than willing. i can’t say if that necessarily makes me a good and selfless person but i would think that it is consistent with these words i live by:

so you’ve seen the world but has the world seen you?

some choose to make a small difference and others choose the bigger the better. financial securities, like almost every other decision you make in life, poses problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. but they’re still needed to make the bigger picture work.

and this movie helped in a tiny way to make my decision.

to find out more about organ donation in singapore, visit www.liveon.sg 

okay some of you may know me as the future crazy cat lady. but i do love (almost) all animals. so when i read this blog article you can imagine how i went absolutely ballistic.

i’ve been able to take a lot of animal slaughter videos, i’ve been to a farm where we (humanely) slaughtered a sheep for food, i’ve been able to read about depressing animal abuse stories, all without feeling the need to grab a knife and stab somebody. repeatedly.

it could’ve been all bottled up inside or perhaps the visuals and the words were too heartbreaking that i’m really fuming mad right about now. and a lot of what i’m about to say will consist of foul language and isn’t going to make grammatical sense but believe me when i say that i don’t give a flying fuck about that right now. and before i begin, please note that i am not biased against any particular race, and when i say "they", i’m really referring to the chinese people in the video and not the race in general. okay, here we go.

are the motherfuckers stupid or are they just out to be fucking cruel? would it have mattered to the buyer that the fur they’re paying for is "freshly" harvested?! is there a real need to strip off the fur when the animal is still alive?! or are they under some ridiculous assumption that the animal still has a possibility of living after that? you can never know with these dumbfuck monsters. i can understand killing an animal for food, i can even understand reasonable animal testing for a cure for illness! but is torture really fucking necessary!?

i’m so extremely disturbed by unimaginable suffering that these poor animals were being put through. more than anything, i want to believe that there is a hell that will await these savages when they die, if they’re not already paying for their barbarity.

i could skin them alive. really i could. it might even make me feel better and less powerless than i’m feeling at the moment. because nothing can make me feel better about this until i can take any form of action. not necessarily in search of retribution, i need to do something. anything. so i’ve just signed up to be a part of the PETA Action Team and if you feel as strongly as i did after reading the article and watching the video, please consider joining along with me. and together i hope we can spread the awareness of just how wrong animal cruelty.

let’s take action, let’s take a stand instead of sitting around watching abuse videos all day. even five minutes of action may make a difference.

(click on the photo to watch video!)