Lost In Transition

I feel sick to my stomach.

My head is bursting from the pressure to my skull.

It's been going on for the past 3 weeks and for the life of me, I can't figure out why.

Until now.....

It's cos I haven't been blogging all this time! ;-p

-------------

Seriously tho'...i REALLY feel out of depth these days.

As if I'm in an alien place I'm not supposed to be at....a stranger in a strange land.

Why you ask ?

Maybe it's cos I recently got confirmed as a permanent staff at the investment bank I've worked at for the past one year.

After a year of being a nomad, moving from department to department, experiencing delights (hot accounting chicks) and horrors (late nights); I am FINALLY tied down to ONE place, NEVER able to move on again.

Hmmmmm....maybe THIS is what marriage feels like, non ? ;-p

Neways, I put this 'out-of-place' feeling down to just growing pains or getting used to my new surroundings. Once I have 'assimilated' the routine/style/pace of this department, I would be like a fish to water and enjoying my time here.

But that's just IT!

The thought that I would be stuck in this dept forever IS the main reason for my current sad state of affairs.

Suddenly I'm not a Management Trainee anymore...I'm a permanent staff, an executive, with responsibilities to fulfil and tasks to do....it's the thought of having to actually be accountable for my work that scares me...and the fact that I'm not 'special' anymore (MTs get to move around depts maa....and feel what its like to work in diff environs every few months).

So in the end..that's just it.....I have the FEAR.

I'm afraid of not being able to meet HR's expectations, produce the results expected of me, bring my A-game to the table, stand up and pitch a home-run.

And this FEAR will be my failing.

i HAVE to get over it....it's better to TRY then lose, than not to try at all.

Here's to hoping I at least attempt to make an effort at making myself a useful part of the Research team, eh ?

Sometimes, the hardest thing to do is to take that first step in any endeavour.


:-(

Flooding throughout California, along Ohio river

MORE freak climate stories, this time from US.

What is the world coming to ?

Monday, January 10, 2005 Posted: 0022 GMT (0822 HKT)

RENO, Nevada (AP) -- Areas of the Sierra Nevada, famous for paralyzing amounts of snowfall, have been hit with a dumping like they haven't seen in generations, with steep drifts stranding an Amtrak train, knocking out the Reno airport and shutting down major highways across the mountains.

The string of moisture-laden storms has dropped up to 19 feet of snow at elevations above 7,000 feet since December 28 and 6 1/2 feet at lower elevations in the Reno area. Meteorologists said it was the most snow the Reno-Lake Tahoe area has seen since 1916.

"I've lived here for almost 40 years and I've never seen anything like it," Peter Wolenta, 69, said Sunday from his home in Stateline, on the southern end of Lake Tahoe. "This baby just seems to be stretching on forever. Right now I'm looking out the window and it's dumping."

Storms also have caused flooding in Southern California and Arizona, deadly avalanches in Utah and ice damage and flooding in the Ohio Valley.

The weather was blamed for at least seven weekend deaths in Southern California, including a homeless man killed Sunday by a landslide. Along the storms' eastward track, avalanches killed two people Saturday in Utah, authorities said.

A lull in the storm allowed the reopening Sunday of Interstate 80 over Donner Summit and U.S. 50 over Echo Summit after the highways were closed off and on for more than a day. The highways connect Sacramento, California, to Reno.

"The snowbanks along Interstate 80 are about 8 to 10 feet high. It's like you're going through a maze," said Jane Dulaney, spokeswoman for the Rainbow Lodge west of Donner Summit.

More than 220 Amtrak passengers were back in Sacramento on Sunday after spending the night stuck in their train in deep snow west of Donner Summit, spokesman Marc Magliari said.

One car of the California Zephyr, eastbound from Oakland, California, to Chicago, derailed in the snow Saturday evening. No one was hurt. Amtrak officials moved the passengers to other cars and the train reversed course and returned to Sacramento about 6 a.m.

Because of the derailment, a westbound Zephyr had to stop in Reno and its roughly 140 passengers completed their trip to California by bus.

Reno-Tahoe International Airport was closed for 12 hours overnight for the second time in a week, and only the third time in 40 years, because plows could not keep up with the heavy snowfall, spokeswoman Trish Tucker said.

"It's nice to know that there are places with more snow than the Dakotas," Wendy Wollmuth said while waiting for a flight to her home in Moffit, North Dakota. "We're a bit spooked about being here with all this snow."

Church services and weekend high school sporting events in the Reno area were canceled. Reservations at the Arch of Reno wedding chapel were down 50 percent from a normal weekend, spokeswoman Kathy Allen said.

When the latest storm hit, the Reno region had still been digging out from a December 30 storm that dumped as much as 4 feet of snow on the city.

"You'd have to go back to 1916 to top this sequence of storms," National Weather Service forecaster Tom Cylke said Sunday of the snow accumulation in Reno.

Flash flood warnings were posted throughout Southern California. Residents of a mobile home park in Santa Clarita, northwest of Los Angeles, were evacuated Sunday after 5 feet of water spilled in from a creek.

"An eight-foot masonry wall that was protecting the structures gave way and water is rushing into all the houses," said Inspector John Mancha. Authorities weren't immediately sure how many people were evacuated.

A two-story home collapsed in the Studio City area above the San Fernando Valley. A man and his two children were pulled from the rubble with minor injuries.

Elsewhere, flooding along the Ohio River had chased hundreds of Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky residents from their homes. Meteorologists predicted the river would reach its highest level in eight years at Louisville, Kentucky, this week at about 5 feet above flood stage. Cincinnati was already more than 2 feet above its 52-foot flood stage Sunday, with forecasters expecting a crest at 57.5 feet.

The storm that fed the flooding also knocked out power last week in parts of western and northern Ohio. Utilities said Sunday that about 66,000 customers remained without electricity, down from a peak of 250,000. In Pennsylvania, PPL Corp. said more than 37,000 of its customers were still blacked out Sunday.

At least 14 killed as Storms batter Northern Europe

First the Asian Tsunamis on 26th December, now this.

The predictions made by the earth conservation groups 10 yrs ago are finally coming to reality.

Earth is experiencing MASSIVE climate changes (greenhouse effect, polar ice caps melting, El Nino, etc.) which would trigger more and more freakish weather as we have seen in Asia and now Europe.

Be prepared ppl, for the worst is YET to come!

CARLISLE, England (AFP) - At least 14 people died, more than 1,000 homes were flooded and many more left without power after violent storms battered northern Europe over the weekend, bringing hurricane force winds and heavy rain.

Denmark, Sweden and the British Isles were worst affected, with 100 people forced to spend the night on a ferry after it ran aground Saturday in southwest Scotland, while the crew of a Dutch freighter had to be rescued after they issued a mayday call off the Danish coast.

In Britain three people were found dead in the flood-ravaged area around the city of Carlisle in northwest England, where one of the worst storms for decades brought flooding and high winds, police said. At least 11 people were reported dead in Denmark and Sweden after the storms, which left 405,000 households without power, disrupted road and rail traffic and caused heavy damage.

In Carlisle, some people had to be rescued by helicopter from the roof of their houses surrounded by floodwater and cars were seen floating down streets.

The bodies of two elderly women were found in homes in Carlisle, while a 63-year-old man was killed when a barn blew down in an area towards the Scottish border. Fifteen families had to be airlifted to safety while thousands of other people left their homes on their own initiative, police said.

One resident, Alan Hargraves, 45, told of how he had to throw his front door keys to a man in a rescue boat so they could open the door and get him out. "Water started seeping up through the carpets and coming in through the air vents," he said. At one point the water rose to about four feet (1.2 metres) high. "Things were just floating round the house.

The fridge had toppled over and bags of vegetables were floating round the kitchen." Emergency services were still looking for two people carried away by floodwater, one by the river Aire at Apperley Bridge near Bradford and another near Forres in Scotland. In southern Sweden, four motorists were killed when uprooted trees fell on their cars. A fifth was killed by a passing car when he tried to remove a fallen tree from a road, and another man sustained fatal injuries on his farm when bales of hay came crashing down on him during the storm.

Yet another man fell to his death from the roof of his home as tried to secure tiles, media reported.

In Denmark, police said two motorists died when trees tumbled onto their cars. Two other people were killed when they were hit by a roof that blew off a building in nearby Assens. Winds in western Denmark reached speeds of up to 151 kilometers (94 miles) an hour when the storm hit on Saturday, the Danish DMI meteorological service said. Many homes were left without power.

In Sweden alone, some 405,000 households were left without electricity, primarily in the southern and western parts of the country. By late Sunday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the storm hit, some 317,000 were still without power. Due to sustained heavy winds and the risk of falling trees, repair work on the lines was slow to get started and some customers could be without power for up to a week, one power company, Sydkraft, warned.

Another 250,000 homes were without fixed telephone lines, mostly in western and southern Sweden, as base stations lost power and crews were unable to reach emergency generators because of the storm. The storm also lashed northern Germany, where police divers were searching for two boating enthusiasts who went missing after their kayak overturned.

In Russia authorities in Saint Petersburg closed off embankments to traffic and shut six subway stations as high water levels threatened the former imperial capital with flooding.

Several regions of northern Poland were also hit by high winds. Latvia's government declared an electricity crisis after hurricane-strength winds ripped roofs off many homes and left more than half of the country without power.

And more than 100 people were evacuated from coastal towns in western Estonia as the storms hit regions on the Baltic Sea causing flooding. All train traffic in southern Sweden was suspended, and car and train traffic on the Oeresund bridge linking Copenhagen to southern Sweden was also stopped because of the storm. "There are uprooted trees in several places, rooftiles blown onto the tracks near Helsingborg (in southern Sweden)... It's chaos right now," Mattias Hennius, a spokesman for the Swedish rail authority Banverket told the Swedish news agency TT.

Dozens of ferry routes to and from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Britain and Germany were cancelled, while the Swedish coast guard reported that numerous vessels had anchored in the southern Baltic to seek shelter from the storm. Around the British Isles, trucks toppled over, river banks burst, people were evacuated from flooded houses and uprooted trees blocked dozens of roads. About a dozen trucks overturned on a motorway in northwest England, several roads were blocked because of flooding and trees falling.

"It's probably one of the most severe (storms) we've seen since the storm of 1987," said a spokesman for the British Meteorological Office, Andy Bodenham.
© AFP 2004

I'm Confirmed!

05/01/05

That is the date I finally trade in my Management Trainee status and sign my soul to the nondescript corporate organization bent on maximizing shareholder wealth no matter what the cost.

Yes ppl, I am as of today, an official permanent member of a Corporation. I live and die to uphold their core values and my days are eternally in their servitude.

;-p

Gone are my days as a university student, hello adult life fraught with office politics, back-stabbings, ass-kissers and other assorted workplace-archetypes.

Here's to a new chapter in my life, and may it be filled with wonderful adventures and new environs, eh ?

Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest!



NiK!
---finally firmly plugged into the Work/Matrix! Goodbye White Rabbit. :-(

Vanity Fair Cover : Star Wars Ep. I - VI Cast

This is just TOO cool.

I was speechless the first time I saw it.

Can't wait to get my grubby little hands on this issue of Vanity Fair JUST to check out the triple-gatefold cover in real life and catch up on the interviews with the cast of Episode III.

Lucas sure knows how to market this last movie!

By including the Original Trilogy cast in the cover spread, he's bridging the new prequels with the original trilogy, evoking a sense of nostalgia and a promise that Episode III won't be as crap as its predecessors.

I'm not gonna hold my breath, but I sure will keep my fingers crossed !

;-p


Star Wars Cast Ep. 1-6


P.S. This pic is really small so if you want to see it in it's full triple-gatefold cover glory, here it is.

P.P.S. It would have been really, really cool if we could have had the late Sir Alec Guinness in group pic as well. Plus why isn't Boba and Jango Fett in here ?! That annoying Jake Owen kid (lil' Anakin/Vader) is in, why can't they have adult Jango (Temuera Morrison) and teen Boba ?!

Fanboys are NEVER grateful are they. ;-p

Comic Pitch 101: Superman Vs. God

This morbidly twisted idea came to me as I was driving to work and I heard on the radio that the death toll for the Asian Tsunami has gone up to 130,000 people.

I started thinking:

"Why doesn't Superman exist ?"

"If he did exist, he would be able to stop all this senseless death wouldn't he ? There wouldn't be much pain and suffering, and there'd be less tragedies in the world"

"Heck, the world would practically be like Heaven on Earth: A perfect Utopia"

But then I realised, all these tragic deaths might seem senseless to us (in 2004 alone there's been countless senseless deaths from innocent people dying in Iraq due to America's Hearts & Minds campaign, to the still starving people in parts of Africa, to the recent death toll due to the Asian Tsunamis); yet they serve a greater purpose in God's scheme of things.

You see, you might not want to admit it but life and death are a cycle put in place by God since time in memorial.

Some deaths occur thru natural causes (old age, cancer, heart attack, etc.), some premature (accidents, freak events, stillborn babies) and some are all-encompassing, worldwide catastrophes that hits everyone's conciousness like a sledgehammer to the head.

That's why in comic books you see superheroes like Batman, Superman, the Phantom, etc. initially tackle petty crime related stuff in the 1920s & 30s (thieves, gangsters, mafia mobs).

Then the 1940s saw superhero types like Captain America and Justic Society of America handling war threats like Nazi super strongmen, Japanese menaces or Hitler's lab creations.

The 1950s saw Marvel introduce heroes like the Hulk, Fantastic Four and X-Men where science was a new frontier and proved to spawn weird advesaries ranging from otherworldly alien threats to genetically enhanced mutants.

The 70s throughout the 90s propogated this non-world based threats and made comic book heroes more far out and otherworldly.

That's why you don't see superheroes like Superman, Batman or X-Men handle normal threats like Tsunamis or Earthquakes...cos they're too normal and wouldn't fit into the crazy 4-colored wondrous world of comic books.

But I digress, the main point I wanted to make was, superheroes CAN"T exist in reality cos they would disrupt the cycle of life and death. (Someone with less brain cells could have figured this out but hey...I'm a comic book lovin-moron.) ;-p

Imagine someone like Superman flying in to save the day everytime there's a tragedy likely to happen and stopping senseless deaths.

Soon, there'd be no more senseless deaths from tragedy, wars would stop, famine problems can be overcome by irrigating fallow earth (I can imagine Superman pummeling through mountain and earth to create lakes and rivers where there previously was cracked, dry deserts).

But when would it stop ?

The Value of Life would become cheap then.

Everytime you try to jump off a building and kill yourself, there'd be some costumed do-gooder saving the day.

Also, trying to live in the Utopia world would be really, really expensive.

Healthcare would get really expensive cos the only way to die is by natural death and the longer you can prolong life the better (non?), overpopulation would occur, prices of food and basic amenities would increase as well cos there's more people alive while the natural resources would dwindle rapidly.

So you see...there's a REASON for everything.

If you think about it....130,000 people died in the Asian Tsunami tragedy recently.

Yet have you thought about how many people has been BORN in Asia in 2004 alone ?

Asia has some of the most populous nations in the world (eg: India, China, Indonesia) and I betcha there was MORE than 130,000 ppl born in Asia, in 2004 alone.

So in closing, my point is YES the death from the Asian Tsunamis were senseless and it's a big tragedy, but people should realise that DEATH is just a part of the eternal cycle as in LIFE.

If you want to stop death from occurring...that's just tampering with what has been going on for eons.

The sooner people realise that, the better.

Things happen in this world for a REASON.

Happy New Year 2005!

Heyheyhey!
Hey peeps,

Just wanted to drop a line and wish everyone Happy New Year 2005!

May the new year bring you joy, happiness and prosperity.

Enjoy the new challenges, new experiences and new friendships.


;-p