I think on hindsight it wakes me up from my routine of going to work in the morning, coming back in the evening and watching soap dramas or enjoying a night of Team Fortress 2 or Dungeon Defenders, which i play and enjoy a fair bit. but those nights are rather unproductive. I woke and work and played and slept, eating and whatnot in the usual timings.

I have been getting mundane. Time to crank up the change machine a notch and hasten things up. What a happening year!

Then I will put on my fall gear and take the bus into town, passing by the magic scenery that is fall in montreal. Leaves fall from the trees all around, golden and ruby, like so much glitter. Pretty soon there will be no more leaves left, and winter would set in.

But that is furthest from my mind, and with a happy heart I take pictures here and there, of the trees, the roads with a carpet of leaves, and a wonderful sense of serendipity. Or it could just be me. No matter. I am enjoying myself.

You can learn a new skill like cooking or photography. You can catch up with friends, news and the internet. You can shop for clothes or watch tv. You can do all these things in your life.

Some of these things are harmless fun. Some are taxing, and some even give you things in return. Spending a weekend hacking away at a virtual creature gives you virtual items. Spending the same weekend learning how to cook gives you experience in coking. The same weekend can even be spent sleeping, which relaxes you for the tough workweek ahead.

We only have 24 hours in a day. How can we use them efficiently? What things should you do that will return you lasting benefits?

What do people in Canada wear for the winter? I see parka, fur coats, even a jogger wearing shorts with a tshirt in the dead of night at around 1 degrees. Way to go tough guy. The dress attire here is pretty much across the board. I keep seeing Canada Goose and North Face though.

There are countless knock-offs all across the web, but if life is at stake, I’d want to go with the originals.

Canada Goose is pretty much the standard item for a cold hard winter, or so I heard from my colleagues. But It would not be easy to use back in sunny Singapore, and I don’t plan on going on an arctic trips anytime soon. North Face is kind of sporting and seems trendy too. Maybe I would give North Face a look out these coming weeks.

Oh, and I am still looking for a car. Personal transportation is very essential if a lot of snow is keeping you from your office.

The topics vary, but they all ended the conversation with a sigh. A “Sigh” or the locally favored “Hais”.

A reoccurring theme is :
“The cost of living is really going up. At this rate my girlfriend and I would not be able to afford a new home and have to rent one.”
“Sigh.”

Be careful with your words.

A sigh indicates that there is nothing that can be done about the situation. It implies that nothing the person is doing will help in any way to change the situation. It means that the person is giving up. It is a downward spiral that makes things worse very quickly. No attempt is done to remedy the situation, the situation get’s worse, and the sigh comes back.

I said to be careful with your words because while the words speak your mind they also influence you. It works both ways – your brain hears what you say and believes it to be true. That is how we imagine, perceive and think – and unfortunately this works against us when we sigh. We tell ourselves it is hopeless and gave up before we even fight.

I have a simple solution for that.
Turn the “Sigh” into a “Hmm”.

A “Hmm” means that you are considering the situation. It means that you are actively thinking about it and how to get around it or even use it to your advantage. It is a simple concept and yet would get your mind up and running for creative solutions to the problem. At least it puts the problem in the back of our mind instead of chunking it into the “cannot be solved” bin.

Let’s go back to the scenario:
“The cost of living is really going up. At this rate my girlfriend and I would not be able to afford a new home and have to rent one.”
“Hmm.”

Notice that the gloom implied at the end has disappeared. If we can actively do this,  we can actively turn our situation around and actually attempt to resolve it. And who wouldn’t want a better life?

It is clearly good fortune. A door opened, and I am simply in the right area to pass through it.

But I am not just there. I did my research. I don’t just stumble through the door, I know where it is, I know when it will open, and I am there when it opens, and when it does open I walk through it.

Research makes a difference. Equally important is the effort. Do the due diligence and things wi

I have always been interested in cooking. It adds a layer of independence to the man – shows that he can take care of himself, and if that meal is good and tasty, why not? When I arrived in Montreal I was not thinking about all this. But with restaurant food at a relative premium, I thought I might want to save a bit and learn a little bit of cooking for a change.

Here’s an example of what soft light can do to images. It’s not terribly hard to make – I just have to boil pasta and warm the sauce, and a cheap and presentable dinner is created. It makes me think on how much we spend in the restaurants for these foods which are not too terribly hard to create.

Anyway, I will attempt to upgrade to nicer varieties in the months to come. Hopefully I will get presentable by December when my first guest arrives.

In this short week I learned a great deal about independent living, budgeting and weighing the odds. For example, the cheapest lifestyle might not be the best lifestyle. A bit of extravagance here and there pays off in the long run – as long as you factor in all possible reasonable conditions.

This colleague of mine (lets call him George) immediately went looking for a dealer the moment he touched down here. He got a car the first month that he arrived here. My other colleague says he’s obsessed with the idea of a car. He could not understand why the car is such an important priority. He thinks that George is a motor-head and that he buys the car to satisfy his dream or something like that. I can understand that. The car is expensive and so is parking space, which does not come cheap as we are situated in the downtown area. It is a liability in this sense.

But George thinks otherwise. With a car he can afford to live much further away. He can live at a further radius from office. he can move away from downtown where rent is much more expensive, into a quiet suburb area where space is big and there is plenty of vacancies.

George can move around – enjoy all that the country has to offer in a short weekend. Everywhere is shorter, closer, a car door away. He can bring more around too – furniture, luggage, foodstuffs. That is a bonus in itself – He does not need to depend on others for help. He can get around. If in the middle of night he gets hungry he can choose to have a quick bite halfway across the country at the diner he likes – because he can. His mobility radius just got a lot larger.

And most of all, when the duration of the stay is factored in – about 16 months for us – the cost of owning a car, petrol, etc is reduced to about a few hundred dollars a month. That is completely covered by the reduced rent cost (again, away from town) and if George wants, he can sell the car before we all move back to our country, gaining some money back for his troubles.

I always make it a habit to listen to both sides of the argument, so that I can get the most information and understand why people do the things they do. If we pay attention people around us always have a lesson to teach.

I also intend to travel a bit around the fine country before the cold sets in and renders everything bleak and bitter.

Another thing is the time difference. I felt very tired as the night comes in (about 9pm or so) without the motivation to go do anything else. The change in temperature is pretty hard to beat.. and supposedly it will get worse.

I need to get used to this. Winter is coming and the temperature will certainly get worse.