My work day was spent being a dictator over lesser beings, chucking aside work that I could not do properly, and daydreaming about what to buy with my salary during a meeting.

Dang, I'm getting better at this employment-shit.

Here I am, thinking I should have done *some* work and I'm struggling to stay awake while waiting for some files to be backed up. -_-!!! Waiting for something to happen can be just as boring as having nothing happen at all!

Came home today feeling tired, the kind of tired where you feel depleted of physical energy. Also intending to do some kind of work, but procrastinated and pushed it to tomorrow. -_-!! Please to god 1) this lethargy lasts only until today 2) it's not a sign of the hini.... although if I get it, it'll probably be due to power of suggestion from last week...

Ok, too sloth to continue this post.... another time!

Would that the day would never end...

Due to privacy issues, and threats of death if I ever published photos without the consent of the subject, I can only offer a short photo diary of my 2 day weekend:

This was a more lazy weekend, one more for lazing at the park rather than any kind of frenzied activity. The weather was hot in the morning, but eased off towards the afternoon.

This was not a day for frenzied urban activity. This was a day for staying in, and reading a good book.

If the photos seem lonely, that's kind of the mood I was in during that short Saturday afternoon. Lonely not because of want of company, lonely because of a much-needed solitude after the hassles of the week before. A restful period of quiet meditation.

If only all days could be like that. Would that the day would never end...

and no, those weren't the only photos I took, but as I said, there are certain parties that would hunt me down to death if I ever published some of the photos that I took of her, so be it. :p

No need for holidays... for now

I was remarking to several friends about how the weekends have taken on the tone of a 3 day 2 night holiday.

Day 1, Friday night

- Leave airport, arrive in new country, and party the night away, reveling in newfound freedom.

instead

- Leave workplace, arrive at dinner or drinking destination, and eat, drink and make merry the whole night, reveling in newfound freedom.

Day 2, Saturday

- Eat good breakfast. Spend the day walking around, seeing the attractions, and doing some shopping.

instead

- Eat good breakfast. Spend the day walking around, seeing some friends, and doing some shopping.

Day 3, Sunday

- Pack everything to get ready to go back to home country. Shop at a few last stops before going to airport and mentally preparing one's self to get back to work.

instead

- Mentally pack everything to get ready to go back to work. Shop at a few last shops before going home and mentally preparing one's self to go back to work the next day.

See? No more need for short trips to KL, Bangkok or anywhere else. Every weekend is a staycation. ;)

I never thought I'd say this, but after 4 days of isolation, I'm missing my own little munchkins... sigh...

I'm also missing my cubicle, my laptop, and the various other books, knick-knacks and geegaws I have on my table. I miss my hugeass bag taking up half my space on my chair. I miss my chair.

And the weirdest thing is that after all this, I suspect I may be actually getting sick, but not full-blown sick. I just hope it's not the hini, but if I get 7 extra days off work, I won't be that upset. :)

Sigh..... at least on the work front, the worst of my self-inflicted crisis is over and the market is bottoming out, so to speak. I'm trying to pick myself up, and get motivated to go to work again, but it's been a bit harder this week, with the inflicted isolation and all. ( plus, my work laptop could have just crashed, but at least the data was saved )

So I have to tell myself:
Complete as many of the little things as you can, so that they don't overswarm your desk.
Take time each day to complete some of the bigger things, so that I have time to do other things, and still get things done.
Never procrastinate. Complete whatever can be done in that day.

3 years on and I still struggle in Productivity 101.... :S

Here is another conversation between Yenn and I on Wednesday. Decide for yourselves who said what. ;)

( A gesture in front of the other )

"What are you doing?"

"Sorry, accident."

"I thought you were going to touch my breasts."

"Oh yea, I'm just checking that they're still there. ( waves ) Yup, they are."

Hai, I was wrong about one thing... Working away from work doesn't make it necessarily easier. In fact in some ways, it makes it harder, because of the thousand distractions around.

I thought of doing this during June, because I was so sianz of being at work. The idea is for me to periodically take work out of the workplace and do it in a more comfy environment, so that I won't get so stressed out.

Apparently it works best for activities involving red pens. -__-!!! That was easy for me to settle outside. It does NOT work when I am desperately trying to think of some astounding new activity that will simulate their growth, their learning, their socialization skills and amaze my superior at my superior intellect.

OMG I gotta find some way to write this up and NOTHING is coming to mind................

Ok, this is mainly because I am stuck in a kind of writers' block. Being in a new environment doesn't help, since I'm in the same brainfunk I would have been in if I was at work. The only bright side is that at least if I get totally fed up with this, there's an easy place to get a milkshake............

Update:

Reading through my colleague's superior report, I noticed there were some holes in the way the activity was organized. Did I download the wrong file or something? Because how was it she could have handed this up and gotten it past but when I do something almost like that, I got shot down....?

Well, at least after the 2nd round of doing, if I still get shot, I can say, "Well, I did what you told me and looked at her report and practically copied it from her and if you still don't like it, what the heck do you want from me?"

Bollywood cures all

An explanation for the title will follow...

Today was just one of the days.... everything just started to fall around me.

This is the lesson I learnt from the day: Never clear a bunch of work appraisals, project approvals and other assignments in the same session with your supervisor. The workload that arises, plus the mental workload that arises, is just too much.

Work appraisal was what I roughly expected. The rest of the work was something else.

Project had to be rewritten [as in, totally] due to lack of substantial activity, rubrics for assessment had to be revamped [as in, totally] because of lack of substantiality, lack of organization, other work that had been done and observed could have been better.

In the end, my supervisor looked at me and asked, "Just how interested are you in your job?" or something to that effect, anyway.

Hm. How to tell her that frankly I'd be happier taking a pay cut if I never had to do all this kind of work ever again? That my one burning ambition in life is to go on contract status and leave all the paperwork crap to someone else?

Sometimes, I don't think I like being promoted very much. Others see a rise in status and a rise in pay and material benefits.

Me, I see the game getting harder the longer I play it. It's as if at the moment that I got the hang of the game, and started to figure out the rules and methods of playing, I got bumped to another level and suddenly I'm running around trying to learn everything from scratch again.

It's as if, just as I got the hang of how to do the main part of the job, other things got bumped onto me and now, having settled one part, I'm now dashing forward again, because the finish line was moved forward before I managed to reach even one foot of it.

She asked me how I considered my abilities, and whether I considered myself 'competent'. I said I still don't understand what are the standards for 'competent'. I said I still considered myself 'developing' because although I was better at some things, I couldn't consider myself 'competent' just yet. 'Competent' implies that you are fully equipped with the abilities to tackle your tasks at hand. It does not mean that you somehow get things done while running around trying to hold everything in your hands at once.

Was it my imagination, or did she had a faint "Hm, I thought so" air as she signed the rest of my appraisal form?

Looking at the stuff I had on my to-do list, the stuff that I was supposedly 'competent' to perform by now, but yet could not perform competently yet, I had to wonder if there would ever be a time that I would be 'competent' to do all this. I wondered what was it about me, that seemed to be perpetually making mistakes in places where others less experienced than me were just breezing through. What am I doing wrong, that even after the experiences I had, I still could not do some things right, while others had no problem performing the same task?

Why was it that even after I made some attempts at efficiency, even then I was still behind everyone else in work performance? [well, perchance it's because my attempts at efficiency are too feebly... inefficient.]

And if I'm stuck in this line for now, then what the heck do I do to level myself up, as they say in gamespeak? What do I do to get myself up to everyone else's standards? What should I do to finally rank among the 'competent' instead of....well, you know.

And finally, what can I do to get myself out of the game? I've learned all that I'm interested in. I've learnt all that I want to ever know. I want to play a different game. I want out.

In the end, I knew I could not answer all these questions in one night. I also knew that I was probably one step closer to hypertension if I kept pondering things that I could not easily solve soon.

I could only think of one thing to do to make myself feel a bit better.

Go for Bollywood dance class at Amore.

Jai Ho!

A Manifesto to Glass Trombones

Why does it usually take a narrow and painful brush with death for society to give us the permission slip to pursue our dreams, no matter how unconventional? Why can't we do this for people who are surviving very well physically? Was just reading an article on another cancer survivor in Reader's Digest and thinking if she was not afflicted with cancer, if she had lost all her money, or if she had failed in her venture, her story would have never been printed.

Think about it: How many stories do you see of people who are young, energetic, who forgo a real job, who put all their energies into pursuing crazy passions for, I don't know, glass trombones, and who lose all their money, their girlfriends, and end up living with their parents but yet never regret what they have lived?

Because these people we regard as failures in our sense of the word. We don't want to read or know about people who dedicate their lives to making the most elaborately sculpted glass trombones, because we don't like glass trombones. We don't want to read or know about people who lose all their money and their girlfriends and their reputations for mental sanity because in our sense of the world, they have failed. They came into their lives and left with nothing in their hands. To us, they have wasted the precious resource that is life and have left with no tangible or intangible [at least to us] gains.

We want to read about people who beat the odds and survived and nyet, flourished in what they loved to do, because that is what we want for ourselves. We like the stories about cancer/leukaemia/heart disease survivors who nearly died and because of that, spent the rest of their lives fighting for other dying people/made loads of money because that ties in so nicely with what we believe our lives should be like. And the world readily fans that by feeding us more stories of the latest person who added 10 more years to his life, because he got diagnosed with a life-threatening syndrome, so he quit his job, and spent the rest of his life cycling around the world.

1. Life is not a zero-sum game. You don't have to always get something out of it.

2. Even to fail at something grand is to achieve something out of life. A grandiose failure or a mediocre life?

3. Stop waiting for the world to give you permission to do what you want to do.

I think I also know that I'm writing this kind of post today because this is something I have to remind myself of every now and then. How easily does life suck you up in its vacuum cleaner! Only when you get stuck in there do you realise that the 'blow' button is almost unreachable. When you get caught up in the everyday scrambling for the bus, for the next paycheck, or worrying about your hospitalisation plan, too easy to forget how, if you were about to die in the next 3 months, none of this would matter anymore to you.

So I have to remind myself, to live life, to pursue lofty ideals, instead of sober realities.

1. Skip work if you have to blog.

2. Even if you have to work, surround yourself with beauty and music.

3. In a matter of time, nothing you do at the office will matter anymore.

4. And if the world laughs at you, laugh back. After a while, they will worry if they are the ones that are the really mad ones. And then you can really laugh.

Photo Diary

Before I forget myself in the drudgery of work, here's some shots of my last 2 weeks of June:



1. Went to an art exhibition where I hardly understood anything that was there. -_-! Though I did think the wall decor stickers were cute... ( 8QSam museum )



2. Laid in a womb of polysthrene furniture and imagined my whole room being like this. ( Verner Panton exhibition at National Museum )



3. Put plastic bags on my feet to prevent spread of H1N1 + Hand Foot Mouth disease.



4. Drank a lot of lychee juice with girlfriends ( with maybe 2 obligatory drops of vodka )



5. Admired some flowers.

Its been a more relaxing holiday, that I have to admit. Managed to read more, blog more, and top at least one facebook game. (Heh) And still managed to go out to some places.

I only wish it could have been longer...... but that would have to go into the bin together with my wish for striking first prize in Toto and losing 10 kg in a month. -_-!!!!!

It sucks but....... we have to grow up eventually and accept the rest of real life.

Here I go then.

There is something very twisted at the heart of the society in which we live.

Firstly, over this June period, we have seen people panic and subsequently calm down over a virus that seemed worse than it actually was. But yet the preventive measures taken have left me scratching my head at times.

For one, temperature taking as a precaution. Why are we still insisting on checking for high fevers, when the WHO has said that a high fever is NOT a symptom of H1N1? What does it matter even if you check for it anyway? The person could be riddled with the virus, and yet have a normal body temperature. By the time he shows symptoms, you would have already let him loose to spread it around.

And this preparation of closedowns of classes, levels, and schools. Is the replication rate of the virus so strong that you have to come down to that? What if your students get infected with the ordinary flu instead? Are you going to do the same?

I suppose I'm piffed at the measures because they seem so typical of the kiasee mentality, to overreact at things. What I don't like about it is the atmosphere of delusional fear that it creates. To talk to some people, you'd think that we were all going to die of the virus if we didn't walk around wearing N95 masks 24/7. And that anyone who so much as coughs in public is a socially irresponsible misfit of the highest order. [Someone should be able to identify with this, heehee]

The kiasee mentality is an offshoot of the kiasu mentality. Which is why MOE has also called for e-learning classes to take place. Never mind that the affected children could be sick with flu, and all its associated symptoms. They cannot fall back in their work! Otherwise they will fail exam at end of year! So even if you are too sick to sit up, as long as your parent can make you hold a pencil or bring the laptop to you, you should still do whatever schoolwork you can! Then go back to school will know what teacher is saying. -_-!!!!!

Of course teacher must also prepare lesson and prepare extra lessons for these kids who may not come back. Otherwise if the kid fails his exam at P1/2/3/4/5/6 his whole future will be ruined, he will be reduced to either sweeping garbage/selling pirated Blu-rays/joining gangs because you didn't put in enough effort by giving him those extra 1 or 2 measly worksheets.

And all this is ok in our society. Because we are a nation where people are so weak a single virus can wipe out our entire population. Because we are so stupid that if we even miss out one day in school we will all because retards by the time we're 50, fully dependent on social security.

*Sigh* I know I'm on the point of really ranting and I don't make a lot of sense, but sometimes I grow so sick of all of this......

Yesterday In A Nutshell

1. Mango sale: Saw a slack top that I regretfully let go last time go on sale at 50% off! Needless to say, said slack top now part of my wardrobe... :p

2. Note to Clubbers: Nobody has Ladies Night on a Thursday, so any website that tells you so is woefully outdated. -_-!!!

3. Conversation with friends will outweigh any diluted drinks the bars serve you.

4. Slept at 1am only to be waken up by some groom horning and declaring his love for his bride..... from the carpark at 7am. -_-!!! Suddenly weddings don't seem so fun.....

5. Briefly considered yelling in Hokkien for him to pipe down for people who want to sleep, but decided against the karma.....

How the truth gets distorted

"How was your trip to Hongkong?"

"Great."

"What did you do?"

"Oh... some shopping, and Jules and I went for the jacuzzi in the hotel one time."

Brain hears: Jules and Yenn shared a jacuzzi.

"Is it?? What did you wear?"

"Swimming costume and he wore trunks lor."

Brain hears: Juls and Yenn shared a jacuzzi half naked!

"How long did you stay in the jacuzzi?"

"Not long. After a while Jules found it too hot and he had to get out, so we went back to our room."

Brain concludes: Juls and Yenn shared a jacuzzi half naked, then Juls got too hot under the collar, couldn't control himself and they quickly went back to their room!!!

"Waaah!!! You two so exciting ah???!!!"

"Huh?"

And that, ladies and gents, is how you distort the truth.

[special *request* by Yenn... or maybe I'm distorting the truth too... hahaha]

Funny thing about this holidays, it's been the most amount of time I've spent at home.

I've been reading, facebooking, and er, playing a lot of online games. -_-!!! which is why for today I have to banish myself to the use of my I-touch so that I don't end up hooked to the games again.

It's something like what I read in a book: you gotta have a job or at least something to keep you getting out of bed every morning, so that you don't become a total slob and spend your entire morning trying to beat your friend's bejewelled scores. -_-!!

The challenge, of course, is finding something worthwhile doing with your time. And then trying to hang on to that something worthwhile when you have to go back to the real world and face all the crap again.

Sigh... At very least lemme try to finish my library books before I go back....

Most Strikingly Obvious Instructions for Eating

My apologies firstly for the disastrous formatting on the Time articles I posted up... I didn't realise they were going to make a mess of the tables on my blog like that... next time will be better....

Anyway, as part of my June Holiday Photo Diary, here is something I saw while out for lunch with Yenn:

MOF hands out little slips of paper together with their food, with instructions on how to maximise your enjoyment while eating them presumably. Now if it was some exotic food like fugu, maybe I can understand the need for explanations, but for salad??

Their unagi salad, and the following are the instructions for eating:

Huh????

What will they put for tempura then? "Dip in sauce and insert in mouth"?

How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live

Powered by    * Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified.       Most fascinating is the way Twitter can be used to update real news events in real time. So it isn't just to update people about what you're eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper after all...... :p             Click the following to access the sent link:       How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live*               *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html

The Internet's Short Attention Span

Powered by    * Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified.       Interesting.... Because the more I surf on the Internet the more I find my attention span shortening. Anybody else think the same too?             Click the following to access the sent link:       The Internet's Short Attention Span*               *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1903951,00.html

Photo Diary

If you've been seeing the strange headlines with no text or pix attached... I've been trying to email/MMS photos from my phone, but suddenly nothing works... :( So here they are:

After one shopping trip with my mother, here are the winning finalists.... ( one of them is my gym bag by the way ) She finally chose the pink one, the one that I was originally eyeing for myself...... -_-!!!

I love Cold Rock. That's the only text I can think of for this picture. :)

After one night of shopping with my moth

The first flash mob I've seen being organized in Singapore... even though it's organized by a business, and not exactly that spontaneous, still worth checking out, no?

http://ping.fm/vCCZI