Paul the octopus residing in Oberhausen, Germany has done it again – apparently predicting that Spain would win over Germany in the semi-finals of the World Cup! Okay, not that great because I’m actually in Germany right now.

Anyway, I’m neutral, I’m only rooting for Netherlands to win because I’m an Oranje-supporter! (And Jeroen is taking care of my mini friend)

A little out of sync here but I always like photos in my post, so here is the growth and growth of mini b.

When I first got him he was a sweet, sweet friend…

A week later he was still sweet but he bit Jon, so I guess he was already ferocious inside.

For some reason, it seemed that he couldn’t stop eating, this is only one week later.

And this is one week after that, at the rate he’s going he’s going to kind of explode or something.

But he’s so cute!

Otherwise, I have made Amsterdam my new base station and I’ve changed my function (we’re encouraged to move within every couple of years to understand the entire business – I’m still in the same company – this company is a good one – especially when yours truly will now play a part in its future strategy). Funny enough, if there was one question I can remember during the interviews, it was the: What do you want to do in 5 years? I said: No idea. Later I was on the phone with my dad and I was like, maybe I’m like the only candidate who said, no idea, and everyone else said that they wanted to be a business leader, VP or something ambitious and I sort of like screwed up. I got offered the job anyway.

BTW, my new job is super cool, and the team is super smart and hardworking, even the CEO called us “bright MBAs”.

PS: I think you can’t have too much of a plan in life. Whatever comes, comes you know. You just find couple of things you love, couple of things you are fantastically great at, and then, stay happy and healthy, and well, party harder.

Everyone seems to want to see piggy…

Isn’t he the sweetest!

That plug was by Tony Hsieh and he owns Zappos.. so..

This is a shameless plug for a friend who has written an excellent eBook called “Winning Tournament Poker” which teaches people how to win in tournament poker in just under five hours, and his site is here and his eBook is sold here.

Why Poker?

Well, I like poker for a variety of reasons, not just the extra cash and some people do agree with me, just read Zappo’s Tony Hsieh’s “Everything I know about business I learnt from Poker” and his thoughts about it.

Lately I’ve been incredibly busy, there are many changes in life which I might (or might not) blog about. To cut a long story short, life is short (as you know from my Christmas post), so… I am now the proud owner of a little pig. Piggy is one of the new additions in my life which I must introduce to all of you, and he looks like a sweet cartoon character.

I went to little Holland in Den Haag few weeks ago, I thought it was so cool – because I was there more than twenty years ago!

Look how much I have grown since:

Over the last week, my brother came over – to help me set up my new house. Firstly, its crazy about how much putting things in the new house cost – not to mention all the shifting, fixing in the lights, etc. I’ve not even painted the place nor thought of what exactly to put in the rooms yet. And of course, my furniture is still not here, so I’m going to resolve to just buy IKEA furniture for the rest of my house.

I did however, managed to catch Alice in Wonderland 3D! I don’t like to spend too much at the cinemas, but since I’m on a Alice mode and even bought one really pretty time bunny Swarovski necklace I figured I must see the movie on the IMAX 3D theater. I thought it was awesome, even though the White Queen was kind of interesting – she kept making everything look so light and happy and it was deliberate.

And we went Amsterdam on the days I wasn’t working. I think he was happy walking around in Amsterdam and wondering why the red light district had women from “big mama house”, we also went through some of the usual Dutch foodies which I’ve encountered: Pancakes, Fries.. and pasta from Rick Steve’s guidebook.

Today, my pelt went to see its maker. I first bought my chinchilla more than eight years ago at Park Chinchilla. I remember that day pretty well, it was Chinese New Year and my dad agreed to buy me a chinchilla. Thats when I saw you.

You was standard gray but your fur was a graduation of gray, really pretty. I was going to choose between you and the bigger girl but I thought I would take the small thing, you were only 300g and stayed that way for a while. We used up all the money in our pockets and paid a grand total of 520 dollars for you and the cage. I thought that was alot of money. We took you home in a cardboard box and I tried to touch you all the time whilst you were lying in the box and you ended up crying. We tried to do so again whilst you were in the cage and all you did was cry all day.

There was a big problem when taking you out to play. I remember. You were so afraid of everything we initially took a big chair where you could come out and you were shaking all the time. I eventually managed to hold you all the time and you were happy running all over the place as well as balance on my shoulder whilst I walked around with you. I hated life but your furry paws were the one thing which made me happy. Every time you got sick I brought you to the vet. You were always so happy when you had raisins in the morning. You loved licking the benebec which was good for your stomach. You were always all over the place at the vet, pretending not to be sick. But yes I knew you when you had that stomach ache. Or wet eyes.

I love you.

Half-baked Dutch when you are making a reservation at a fancy restaurant

vs.

Half-baked Dutch navigating the legal and financial consequences of buying a new house

I thought to myself about the time required:
Time taken to buy a house: 6 months
Time taken to decide to buy this house: 3 minutes
Time taken to mentally convince my family that I was going to do it: 3 days
Total number of houses looked at: 5
Total number of houses I took a trip for: 3
Order of house which I bought and finally got it: 2nd
Time taken to get a mortgage: 2 months
Time taken to move into my new home: 5 days

Of course since I was still contemplating should I buy a house before I actually even bought a house – which was that 3 minutes in contemplation. I’ve concluded that people who regard me as unable to make decisions just really don’t know me at all. When I know, I do. When I’m being a fluff bunny, you know that I just don’t.

If you live in Singapore, you might be interested to get a Credit Card, because we are *almost* a CC-nation. I call this almost because as much as I’ve been putting my card on the table, at least we don’t get the “you don’t need to sign if its less than 25USD” and stuff like that.

There are two cards which provide the most perks and would probably roll of the lips of locals: Citibank and UOB. Since I’ve done the whole route couple of years ago, I just happen to have a grouse.

When I first qualifying for my first Credit Card, the first card I applied for was a UOB Lady’s Card. And the every single other flashy cute looking thing from DBS, Standard Chartered, Citibank, ABN and what have you. I’ve since canceled them all, and kept the Lady’s Card. Which I’ve kept and used for the past four years.

Lately, for known reasons – my Dutch Credit Card which had a very low limit – bounced in New York because I was traumatized after being almost blown up on Christmas Day and decided to well, shop and shop and shop. I decided to just upgrade to a UOB Lady’s Platinum Card. Kind of like playing on the stronger currency, whether its Singapore dollars or Euros.

UOB has been a pain.

Did I mention that I’ve been a paying customer to them for the past five years? And that I’ve never missed a bill? And have almost always used their Credit Cards?

The sequence of events goes:

(1) I apply for a Lady’s Platinum, I’m far beyond their stated minimum income. I need to settle this before I fly off from Singapore.
(2) I send in three of my latest monthly statements.
(3) After two weeks I have no reply.
(4) I call UOB Call Center and they said they would call me back when they have found my application.
(5) They didn’t call me back.
(6) Few days later I receive a letter stating that they need more documents. I say that I have a werkgeversverklaring in order for us to get a mortgage from the bank. Its in Dutch, but they say its FINE.
(7) I email my werkgeversverklaring to them. They call me the next day saying that it is in order. No news for next few days.
(8) I call them again, and they say its a foreign language and ask if I have something in English.
(9) I don’t have anything in English, and retrieving it takes more time. They already have three months of salary in English! Did I mention that I submitted this application weeks ago to get the card in Singapore and I’m not going to let them fly a Credit Card from Singapore to the Netherlands.
(10) I decided that I’m not wasting all my time talking to the UOB call center. I just tell them settle it or I’m just going to cancel all my cards because this is getting stupid.

I get a call by Zen, who is settling the whole case. He seems to be helpful and he would fix this. He calls me (finally) to say that UOB is couriering me the card. Tonight. Anyway, we’ll see, at least he’s trying, so I’m going to update this possibly tonight I hope.

- As promised, I got the card. Lets see if they managed to link it up to my Internet Banking in time. -