The Fast And The Furiously Deafening

It was deafening. It was heart pounding. It went past me like a blizzard. It was funtastically exciting!

The past 2 nights of watching the F1 night street races have left me anticipating for more action tonight - the race day! There has not been any tremendous accidents, but the qualifying action last night really was an experience.

I've always watched the qualifying stage on tv, and cheering on my favorite Renault team silently on my own. But watching it live.. you can hear the cheers, the whistles, the jeers, the disappointments. I was mostly disappointed with my Renault team but hey, the rest of the action made up for it.

People of different countries are there. I saw a Finnish guy walking around with a huge Finland flag (until another guy shouted "Hey! I'm Finnished with you!"). They really are passionate about the sport.

The cars zoomed past loudly and quickly. Fauzi who was at Cathay told me he could hear the roar of the F1 engines. Heh, he should have been at Marina.

My camera couldn't catch a proper picture of the cars. So I waited for the post-race track invasion and took pictures of the surrounding scenery and the track itself using my Sony Ericsson K810i camera.

Enjoy!

The Esplanade

The Fullerton Hotel

Esplanade Bridge

The Corner Leading To Esplanade Bridge

Corner From Anderson Bridge

Busy Weekend Ahead!

The busy weekend is here! A combo of festive preparations and 3 nights at the tracks. Good thing I applied leave from tomorrow to festive eve.

Yes! Yes! I'm going to the races this weekend, starting from tonight. It's one way of rewarding myself for the work I've put in my Internet Marketing biz. Yes, the money came from the biz, not from my day job.

I bought the cheapest walkabout tickets ($168 though) for this year. Maybe I'll be better off next year. Maybe watch it from the grandstand or hotel. Maybe.

I'll be posting pictures from the races using my crappy camera (a better one will come my way soon). But for now, bear with me.

As for the festivities, I'll be keeping it mellow. No outlandish decorations, no splurging on clothes, no soul food cooking. That's my Hari Raya for 2008. It's not been such a healthy year for the family, so we'll just keep it simple at that.

And oh yeah, my dad is back from hospital after spending more than a month there. At least that's some consolation :)

Take care guys!

Resignation Plans

It's very clear that I hate my job - more so my company. And I'm making my plans to resign. Not so soon, but I have set the date as the last day of June 2009.

If I hate the job so much, why do I have to delay my resignation? Well.. I don't plan on looking for another job. I can jump over to another company right now, but that is not what I want. So you can say that my planned resignation next year is somewhat a semi-retirement for me.

I'm looking forward to leaving next year. And I'm putting aside any other commitments for now, and putting my focus on building my business. You can say that I'm slowly leading an anti-social life these days.

Right now, all I'm working towards are:

1) Working on my business from home;
2) Taking care of my dear parents;
3) Building my wealth and realizing my dream lifestyle.

I know if I pray and work hard enough, and prepare to receive the rewards, I will win.

I'll Walk In Sunshine Again

Is that the best that you can do?
Do you think that I won't make it through?
You don't know where I come from
You don't know what I'm made of

And you won't haunt me anymore
I stand proud and I stand tall
And there will come a day my friend
I'll walk in sunshine...again

So come on bring on all your rain
It's only water it won't stain
You turn to ashes on the ground
My sun burns through your black cloud

And you won't haunt me anymore
I stand proud and I stand tall
And there will come a day my friend
I'll walk in sunshine again

Look What He's Done Again

And so my boss played his funny game on me again. And it isn't a pleasant one. Here's the story:

My company is planning a restructuring which puts me into a 9-6 lifekilling job. I hate that. Not eversince I started working on shifts that gave me ample time and freedom during weekdays.

So the deal is this: move up to the 9-6 job, get more responsibilities and headaches with no additional pay. OR.. stick with my shift job and take a $150 cut from my pay. (link)

A few months back when I was still working on shift hours, the office persuaded me to work on office hours instead. I didn't want to. I wanted the extra off days so I could do whatever I want, including minding my business. But the boss came up with all sorts of reasons WHY I should be doing office hours instead.

He told me, if I remain in shift work, I will lose my $150 transport allowance. And I specifically asked him "does that mean if I work office hours I will get $150 for working on Saturdays AND still get my transport allowance?" He said YES. Fine, I did some thinking and decided I needed the $150 each month to survive.

To date he hasn't paid my Saturday allowance. So I voiced out, and guess what he said. He will backpay the Saturday allowance that he owes me, but I shouldn't be getting the $150 transport allowance since I do not use the car for work. What? Let me get this straight.

Does he mean I could have stayed doing shift work and my pay would remain the same? When I told him that he promised me otherwise, he denied it. How convenient.

It's illogical isn't it? Why would I have moved from working shift (which I loved) to office hours if the pay is the same? Someone should throw a shoe at him.. seriously.

What goes around comes around. We'll see what happens next year. I'm just as cunning and witty as he is.

Hit Below The Belt, But I'm Still Standing

It's been a while since I wrote, and here's why. My dad was admitted to hospital again for his heart. This time, he had to go under the knife, and has been in hospital for the past few weeks. He's currently recuperating from a heart bypass surgery, and he's doing great so far.

Thanks to all who wished well for me and my family. I wish the same to you.

It appears to me that life has a lot of challenges in store for me. While dealing with the trauma of seeing your loved dad suffering in hospital, my online business got hit too...presumably by some low-life no-future-in-mind cheap hacker.

See, my website got hacked by some mutant. And because I was busy dealing with my family situation, I didn't realize it until today. God knows how long it has been, and how many potential sales I lost. Good job, my mutant friend.

So what did I do? Simple. Just upload a copy of my website. No point brooding over the lost anyway. As for the irresponsible prick? He'll get his share of life's surprises :)

Anyway, I wanted to show you a few pics of my latest earnings. Bear in mind, this all happened before my dad got into hospital, and I was looking forward to repeat or even improve this achievement. Take a look..



That's US$549.52 for half a month of sales. Not bad huh? :) I got excited and decided to reward myself with these...



A 3-day ticket package for the local F1 race to be held later this year. That's the joy of working online.

This may sound like an endorsement or advertisement, but take a look at Wealthy Affiliate. That's where I learned to make all this happen. So if you're interested, come join the "school" :)

Remember to take care of your health guys. Talk to you soon.

Hold Your Head Up High, Herwin

I'm tired physically and mentally. I have been laughed at, scorned, insulted, rejected, disappointed, ignored, scratched, left behind, outcast. But you know what?

I don't care.

I still hold my head up high when I walk. I bear a smile every possible minute. And I won't let a small failure bring me crashing down.

You can call me boastful or full of hot air. But I live by one mantra: To be successful, you must first feel successful.

Envision success, imagine yourself successful. Look at the sky when you do so, and smile quietly. Enjoy that single moment when you feel successful. Then repeat it every minute you are awake.

It's no secret that being positive brings about a powerful aura that attracts all the good things in life. And that includes success.

So hold your head up high, just like me. And your moment in time will naturally come to you.

Have You Given Up?

What I am about to say here does not solely pertain to the Internet Marketing business. But it applies to whatever you are pursuing today. Have you given up in what you are chasing after?

In the past few weeks, my marketing success has seen its share of lull periods. I suffered days and weeks of no sales at all. And I nearly gave up there and then. The funny thing is, this period of no sales resulted from me giving up.

I made the single common mistake that newbie Internet Marketers make - I mixed in emotions with my business. I started to see a few refunds from my customers, and that affected my morale. My emotions swirled and I began to think this does not work. I stopped working on my business - stopped writing articles, stopped testing and tweaking my website, stopped learning how to build my business.

All the above resulted in weeks of no sales. And I grew even more despondent.

It took me a while to gather my courage and picked myself up. I can't say I did that without any help from a few friends, and listening to Brian McKnight's Win. I realised this business means a lot to me. There was too much at stake - my family's life depends on it. My destiny depends on it!

So I fought back my emotions, worked on my articles once more, tweaked and tested my website again and again. And today, I'm back to seeing profits.

And if the current sales pattern continues, I can't wait to share my happYness with you by showing my next pay cheque.

I hope it will be sweet then :)

So don't give up in what you love to do. I added the "love to" part, because if you are trying hard to succeed in what you don't love, you will not win. And even if you do, it won't be as sweet as succeeding in what, or who, you love.

Let's Put It In "D" Gear Once Again

It seems like ages since I updated you on my Affiliate Marketing progress. And I can justify my absence. That's what it was about - absence.

I took myself off Affiliate Marketing somehow, because I was bogged down by many interruptions in life. Work, national service, and other affairs really drained me off energy and determination to pursue my "career".

This is why it's very important to have a friend or a group of friends working together with you on this project. By reading about others progress and success and taking it positively, one can really start to motivate himself again. I did just that, thanks to my Wealthy Affiliate buddy Ronn.

See, even though Ronn and I are marketing in the same niche (that makes us competitors so to speak), we share our knowledge and tips with each other. But most importantly, we drive each other further and faster towards our goals.

As I said early this year, I aim to earn as much as or more than what I earn in my day job. And quit the latter. Probably not end of this year, but mid next year.

It's not a long-shot, now that I've realized the potential earnings from Affiliate Marketing. And learning what it takes to make it work, I just have to double or triple that effort. Plain copy and paste.

I hope to deter myself from being interrupted again. But at some points in our lives, we have to temporarily put matters of the heart to the forefront, as long as we don't let it linger.

Of course it would be a bonus if I succeed in my Pursuit Of HappYness with that someone beside me cheering me on. Sweet.

Beautiful While It Lasts

And just like that, the highlight of my day is over. Just 45 minutes or so.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow morning, I suppose.