I have started working at Milsons Point now with a longer working hours (9.00 – 18.00). This creates a problem for me in terms of my commitment to regular exercise.

Before I was able to go to the gym early in the morning at about 8.00 and got to the office at 9.30. I was able to do this because I was driving so it takes shorter time to get to work, also the working hours was quite flexible (and shorter too).

There’s no question about the necessity of regular exercise, so I just have to think up some ways to get gym as a part of my routine once again. I can think up of few solutions:

• Go to gym earlier, at about 6.00.
• Go to gym after work.
• Go to gym on weekend only.
• Go to gym closer that’s closer to work.

So far I think the best approach (for me and family) is to go to the gym earlier, it’s certainly harder to wake up that early, but I managed to do that twice in the last week or so. Let’s see whether this will continue to work.

PS: note to self, if I can be motivated enough to wake up that early to go to the gym, why I cannot have the same motivation to wake up and have quiet time. After all physical exercise is of some value but godliness is useful for everything.. hm.

I have been using Live Writer (http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/) for few days now.

I think I quite like the tool for few things:

• I maintain few blogs, it’s nice to have one interface that I can use to post to different blogs.
• It’s also nice to have a centralized place to put my draft posts. I tend to have quite a few draft posts as I usually have a lot of ideas that I want to explore in depth later on and finally turn them into blog posts.
• This happens to me few times and I know it happens to at least someone else who has since stopped blogging (you know who you are :)). Once in a while you’ll find yourselves in the situation of writing a long entry and when you hit enter, nothing happens and your post is gone, you hit the back button and you just find an empty form. ARGH! Of course, you can always write your post first on Notepad and then cut and paste it, but that’s just a bit tedious. Live Writer will solve this problem since (I assume) Live Writer saves your writing in your hard disk and when you are ready to publish, you just hit send button, it will send it to your blog.

It’s nice that M$ puts up a decent and free application. Anyway this is my first post on focuser.net via Live Writer.

I am really glad to be able to take a week + 1 day off during this Holiday season. I have been having a great time with both Lina and Jet.

• Sunday and Monday, I managed to do some household cleaning up. I seriously own too much stuffs (and junks). On Monday night, we went to Christmas’ Service on St. Andrews Cathedral with Chenny. After that we went to have dinner at a Japanese restaurant near QVB, dinner was great, very good value for money.
• Tuesday, we went to Johnson’s place to have a Christmas lunch, had a fantastic time there.
  Wednesday, Lina and Chenny went to the city to watch Golden Compass. Me and Jet were spending time together at home, he was a little bit cranky so I can’t say we had the greatest time together but a good bonding time nonetheless.
• Thursday, we went to Bondi Westfield and then having dinner at a Thai restaurant at Waterloo which was really good.
• Friday, we went to my fforesite’s office, introduced both Lina and Jet to my boss and colleagues. We then went to Eastgarden, I managed to buy a new vacuum cleaner (a great cleaner needs a great tool :)), I also joined NRMA for comprehensive car insurance (cheaper than HBA my current provider and they have offices in Sydney unlike HBA which is based in Melbourne).
• Tomorrow, we are planning to go to Koorong bookstore, hoping to find some good bargains.

Having been to different shopping malls in the last couple days, I am quite proud to myself of being able to withstand the temptation to shop (well.. we haven’t been to Koorong). I guess we already have everything that we need and that alone is a reason to thank God, we are indeed a privileged people.

Mom sent me an SMS today, she reminds me that tomorrow is my dad’s death anniversary. Mom and some relatives are going to go to the sea and throw some flowers on the water. I am not sure on what I would do tomorrow, probably I would do nothing and just treat tomorrow as another day, any attempt of remembering the old days will be just too sad. It’s funny when I think about it, when he was alive, mom always reminded me of his birthday and now she reminds me of his death.

Truth is, I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing that I can do that will affect our relationship now, I can think about him, but what good that will bring? It will be just make me sad. I can just try not to think about him at all which I was doing the first few months, but part of me I am afraid that if I do so, I might forget him. I want to remember how he looks like, how he sounds and how he relates to me.

I am always amazed at how time seems to fly, it felt like it wasn’t that long ago when I talked to him. There were days that I just miss him so much, miss those awkard phone conversations, miss his thick Javanese accent. And at times when I am alone with Jet, I remember him somehow, wondering what did he do with me when I was a baby, did he spend time with me much, did he adore me as I adore my son, did he teach me how to walk. And sometimes I just can’t help imagining if he is still alive, how happy he’d be playing with Jet, he’d be asking me about my work whether my salary is enough to feed the family, he’d be asking about my uni and probably we’d be having conversations about buying a house. I’d probably take him for holidaying somewhere too.

I don’t know when I will be fully come to terms with his departure, I read in a book that it may take years. I do hope one day, when I remember him I would be smiling rather than crying.

I haven’t re-read my blog post on my father’s death. I just don’t want to remember that day when I got the news. By far it was the worst day of my life.

I wonder how mom is coping. She seems to be extremely busy lately, maybe by busying herself she doesn’t have to think about dad too much too. There will be other deaths in my life,.. I hope I can handle them better. Man, death sucks big time.

After months of deliberating, I finally made the first step towards buying a property. I applied for an investment loan with Westpac few days ago. Westpac’s assessment of my borrowing power is pretty much in line with how much I want to borrow, so that’s all good. Once we got a loan pre-approval, then we can start to look around for property. Haven’t really looked around what other banks and lenders are offering, but their products probably don’t differ that much.

We have decided to go down the path of investment property ownership as opposed to the home ownership. This seems to be suited well in our situation, as currently we do have some benefits in staying to rent, like rental assistance from the government and our current unit has quite cheap rental. Of course there is the negative gearing benefit as well coming from investment, although frankly I am more comfortable with positively geared investment.

I closed my NAB credit card. Apparently the lower your credit card limit is, the happier the bank is to lend you money. I never maxed out any of my credit cards anyway, I have a few because of the discounts and rewards they have.

Another thing that I closed this week is my CFD account with IG Markets. I decided that I wasn’t really “investing” in the past few months, but in fact I was gambling. I am more inclined to invest for the long term nowadays rather than “trading”. Trading activity requires lots of time and effort, the two things that I can invest somewhere else for the time being.

This buying property thing might requires me to find another job as my current company’s financial situation is not that great.