KNN

Bloody hell I just got off a bus ride with the worst possible seat companion. It wasn't like he was really nice too, he hogged two seats and only moved inside where i looked at him. It's not even like he was dropping off soon because I got off before he did, unfortunately.

He was fat and he was a smoker. How the fuck does someone of that diameter (he took up half of my seat) and clogged up lungs (he smelt like a damn ashtray, must be a chain smoker or something) survive at all? Should've dropped dead from the heart and breathing problems already. I'm not going to curse him to die though, because that is beyond me. I'll just curse him in general for:-
1) Triggering off my asthma;
2) Severely encroaching on my seat till our thighs were touching. If I moved away I fell off the chair;
3) TRIGGERING OFF MY ASTHMA WHEN I'M LEAVING FOR A TRIP IN TWO DAYS;
4) Making me use my steroid asthma inhaler on a public bus, thereby creating a mild scene.

So fat guy, FUCK YOU. And stop smoking.

My Back Hurts Suddenly

985 posts. This means I should ration them a little if I want to have an awesome 1,000th post, something I've vaguely planned to coincide with my May Month celebrations like last year. Well maybe not so much like last year since I'll be in a foreign country with no friends around and strangers, but more specifically the May 5th event. Let's see if I can make it a yearly thing.

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Today I was walking around the office in my cheap ass knockoff havianas that I bought in pinoyland and I kept feeling like my left foot was being pierced by a staple bullet. Despite checking my slipper and the sole of my foot, I could not find the aforementioned stapler bullet and I started to get really annoyed by the sharp pain that happened everytime I stepped down. After a random epiphany I lifted up my entire slipper and turned it around and discovered a stapler bullet embedded on the bottom of the slipper, pointy end stuck into the slipper. No wonder I couldn't see it when I wasn't stepping on it.

I felt like The Princess and the Pea for a moment there.

On another note my time at the office is coming to an end. Finally. Today Mr N- brought us all out for lunch at Grand Copthorne. As expected the usual suspects gorged on fresh oysters and turned really giggly, Mr Tan tried to convince everyone that ice cream was healthy and that he took the bigger bowl of ice cream by accident, and everyone in general ate like pigs. This office really likes eating. I had about 5 rounds myself + desert. If anything else I'll really miss the food plus the people though honestly shredding paper everyday is depressing as hell.

Over my past one month in the office I've gotten a few favourites from Lau Pa Sat. Stuff like Mack's Chicken Inasal (I had it again on Monday and the chicken was cooked just right this time... sarap!), the Lei Cha which tends to make me feel sick afterwards because of the high MSG content, Koh Kee Hakka Yong Tau Foo and the other normal Yong Tau Foo store. There's a cooked zhi char like place there too run entirely by China boys that wasn't too bad too. Then there was Mama Kiki's Lechon or something too, that I have yet to try because the queue is freaking long, but it looks good ):

I am going to miss the food there. Oh the fun I had planning lunch everyday :D

And I guess I'll miss the people too.

And the Vision that was Planted in my Brain

I suddenly feel really bad again about rejecting the University of Warwick... I mean it was the university I didn't want to go to the most because I thought it'd look the ugliest (well versus University of York anyway, it was like a competition between number 4 and 5), yet it was the only one that offered me an unconditional offer. It's like stamping my feet in the face of the only university that appreciated me enough to give me an unconditional offer, I think. And I always feel really bad about turning that the only people who appreciate me, for they are few and far between.

Information About Swine Flu

I remember blogging about this entertaining person on my MSN list a few years ago... well she still has entertaining MSN names. If anything else, this shows how little some people change even with time.

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Today my brother ate my mother's sim card and battery. And by ate I mean he destroyed her handphone, bit her sim card into 2, made one half of the sim card disappear along with the battery. To this my mother reacted by doing the same thing she always did for his entire (close to) 15 years, she started searching for her battery and other half of the sim card, nevermind that her son just destroyed her phone. All is well for her as long as she can get her phone back, nevermind that her son shouldn't be biting shit like phones in the first place.

This time I just started laughing when she went around searching. Like what my dad does all the time, even when my brother destroyed my ipod leading to the infamous glass door kicking. After 15 years with my brother (and seeing my imminent departure) and being the sole disciplinarian, I have given up trying to teach him anymore. Nothing I do can have any lasting effect on my brother's behaviour anymore since he's already 15 and effectively feral. Fail.

And speaking of fail, I found out they messed up my airline booking. They didn't change the date of my flight, effectively booking me on the same flight again -____________- sigh, yet another call to make tomorrow.

Where the World Unwinds

I just got off the phone with the most pleasant travel experience to date. Initially when I made the call and heard the "for XXX, dial 1" I prepared myself to take lots of meds. Though I didn't get put on hold for 10 minutes like with zuji.com, the guy who picked up who said his name was "Alan" sounded suspiciously like the guy who took my zuji.com call - India Indian.

Anyway the call was pleasant enough without any of the typical security check singsong rubbish (thank goodness because I didn't book the ticket myself and didn't know things like the e-mail address used for the booking), he allowed me to use my birthdate as verification. And most importantly, there were seats on the flight I wanted to change to :D

So, I am coming back on the 6th of June at 8:15PM Singapore time, on flight MI 411.

Portrait of the [insert word here] as a young woman

Recently I've found myself irrationally angry at my travel plans to Nepal and USA. I was angry at how difficult it was to change the tickets, how there might be an extra charge incurred, how I even HAD to change the tickets at all. Then I got angry at the fact that I made the plans in the first place, how little time it left me in Singapore - gosh what was I thinking in the first place? I've even gotten angry at my parents/relatives for the fuss they made over the fact that I wanted to change my plans, how they too got annoyed with the fact I wanted to change the original plans. Then I also got angry (to myself) at Dexter for even appearing in my life for the first place and messing up my original plans.

All this while I knew my anger was completely irrational, it's really no one's fault that things happened they way they have happened, yet I couldn't get rid of it. Today I finally realised it was a pent up resentment against time itself that made me react this way, resentment that time was moving forward and that I had no way to stop it, that I was completely helpless, the worst feeling there is in the world. Now that I realised the source of this anger, I suppose I can finally learn to suck it up and move on. (Boo. I wish I had a time machine.)

The Sailor That Fell From Grace With The Sea

This image is slightly related to the below post. It is a picture of a dead squished frog. It had flies on it. This reminds me the time when I was in Cambodia (the Angkor Wat specifically) with Jit Wei and Arjun and Jit spotted a dead sparrow and pointed it out. Arjun groaned and went "Oh no don't tell her!" because he knew I'd go take a picture of it. I did, but the picture was out of focus on the Diana, so it never saw the light of day.

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I have not actually finished reading the captioned book by Yukio Mishima yet. This is because for a novella of 181 pages, it's contents are disturbingly hard to stomach. Plus I feel such revulsion towards the main character, 13 year old Noboru who is a wannabe sociopath that believes he's always right and that everything is a lie that I need to surpress my want to strangle the kid to death and throttle him.

Initially I couldn't stop laughing at him (I laughed at Ryuji and his romantic idealism of himself and the sea too), it seemed such a mockery that he believed he was the most mature person by discovering the greatest teenage angsty 'truth' ever: everything is a lie (I might like The Arcade Fire's Rebellion (Lies) but this is a bit too much for me). Now I'm just throughly disgusted at this character with absolutely no redeeming qualities. He spies on his mother having sex with another man and enjoys it, then he describes in vivid detail how he killed a baby kitten to become a 'man' and then he acts like he's the greatest know-it-all every. If there ever was someone who should be strung out on lithium and placed in a straight jacket, it's this kid.

And to top it off, I have no idea what Yukio Mishima's ideas were to include his character as a foil to Ryuji. Everything is written so seriously without the slightest hint of mockery (for any mockery detected could be my own reaction to the characterisation of the characters) or inclination of intent that I am torn between declaring Mishima the most disgusting and deluded fool ever or deciding that he gives an insightful view to the human character. AND, I haven't even finished the book yet. Gosh.

Anyway for the grand total of one person left reading this, here's an interesting review I read while reading up on the book on Friday that might have shaped my idea of Mishima and the book.

Fired Up

After 3 full days of random/tiring/tedious/power typing (stenography) in High Court and wanting to strangle both Plaintiff and Defendant, in addition to a particular solicitor on the Defendant's side, the case which I have long been preparing for is finally over and settled. This also marks the drawing to an end of my time in the mysterious M/s M-. From the early drafting of List of Documents, sorting through and quadruple checking of documents to endless photocopying of bundles, I AM DONE. I have seen this case through from (almost) start to rather disappointing finish (settled for 29% instead of 35% of 1.5 million we were asking for). It's now time for me to move on.

In preparation for today's preparation, I also caught the cold of one of the pupils from the Defendant's team. This means I was able to take MC today rather convincingly because I was sneezing a storm in the office yesterday even though I feel much better today and can actually work :p

Today was one endless list of preparations for the future. First I went to set up a bank account in UOB with my father (or maybe it was OUB... it's the one with the 3 perpendicular lines for a logo), then we went to buy a trekking bag for Nepal/any other student trips I might take in Europe from Queensway. I had trouble deciding between a Y'pak and a Outgear bag which were the same price. In the end I went with the Outgear one because the red colour reminded me of the Firebats from Starcraft. I can now pretend to set people that piss me off on fire now more convincingly. Finally we went to the Nepal counsulate in Singapore (highly dodgy place) to apply for Visas.

I don't really know what to make of the fact that May is coming. On one hand I'm excited to be going to Nepal and experience something new, on the other it's a painful reminder how time is marching forward and how September is drawing near, plus the fact that I'll be seperated from you for more than a month. It's also a reminder how this is just the beginning of the battle between both sides of my heart.

Si Ka Zhua

Here is a picture of a monitor lizard found along the canal outside Great World City. I should have used zoom -___-

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I realised I haven't posted anything about buying books in a long time. This is probably because I have not bought books in a long time. Anyway over the past few days + the Bali trip, I bought books :D

Joseph Conrad - The Heart of Darkness (just 55,000 rupiah! Which is about S$8 from the airport in Bali)
George Orwell -1984 (yes finally)
Yukio Mishima - The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
Yoko Ogawa - The Housekeeper and the Professor (Kino was sold out of it yesterday but I found it in Harris today. Yay)
Jhumpa Laihiri - The Namesake
Ha Jin - War Trash
A. J. Jacobs - Year of Living Biblically
Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

Just as well that I have lots of time to fill up now.

My Brother Is Wearing Some Sort of Stange Ironic Hipster Tee, Which Is More Ironic Because He Can't Read

I lol-ed greatly when I read Gen's entry today. It reminded me of something that happened on Thursday night that completely slipped my mind. At like 12:10 on Friday morning I received a call from Cao because I had left my phone switched on in hopes of getting a call that night. At the time I was also jotting down something in my notebook that had came to mind. After the initial disppointment at seeing the caller, I picked up the phone and got asked what covariances was. Shit.

The next 20 mins or so was spent frantically running around my room pulling out my old Math Studies stuff and trying to figure out what the hell covariance was exactly so he could teach his sister who was having exams the next day. Fail. I remember using it before too for my Math Studies project too. I also giggled at how it was symbollically represented as Sxy which looks like Sexy. In the end a vague bit of memory hit me and I came up with how it was used in determining correlation coefficient and how it was determined by standard deviation of x and y.

At the end of the phone call I was struck by how quickly I had forgotten what I had studied so hard for (I got a 7 too!) but after looking around my room I was more struck by the mess I had created in my frantic search for my math things.

I often feel like Dilbert

A Log of 17th April 2009:

7:05 AM - Wake up
7:25 AM - Wake up again
7:30 AM - Shower
8:10 AM - Eat breakfast
8:35 AM - Fall asleep on couch
8:42 AM - Get picked up by Mr Tan
9:18 AM - Look for Lotus, cannot find it second day running
9:22 AM - Enter office
9:34 AM - Make Tea
9:41 AM - Realise that I'm drinking Dilmah tea out of a free Lipton cup
9:43 AM - Pretend to do work
9:44 AM - Start shredding paper
9:48 AM - Stop to read and reply to message on phone
10:27 AM - Go out to buy curry puffs and masala tea
10:50 AM - Come back, give tea to guard
10:53 AM - Eat a sardine curry puff
11:07 AM - Add water into Lipton cup, water now looks like urine because of earlier tea remnants
11:08 AM - Shred paper
11:21 AM - Read e-mail, think about calling Zuji Singapore and take meds
12:28 AM - Log into FB
12:58 PM - Phone duty/shredding paper again, eat another sardine puff because I'm hungry
1:45 PM - Hope someone calls so I can put them on hold to the tune of Can't Touch This
2:03 PM - Finish duty, go down to buy food and tea for Saras
2:23 PM - Eat lunch in pantry
2:36 PM - Laugh at advert in classified that says "Christian Removal Service" and "mass wedding event including solemnisation of vows on an MRT train"
3:01 PM - Start reading manga
3:24 PM - Finish reading manga, shred paper
3:30 PM - Talk on phone to someone in India, purportedly representing Zuji Singapore
3:42 PM - End call and take meds
3:48 PM - Start creating new on-the-go playlist
3:50 PM - Start shredding paper again
4:35 PM - Get asked to buy tea
4:40 PM - Head out to buy tea
4:50 PM - Find out tea lady sold me one extra cup of tea
4:59 PM - Give extra tea to guards
5:00 PM - Return back to office, give out tea
5:03 PM - Start shredding
5:12 PM - Called to take over phone duty so phone guy can relieve himself
5:20 PM - Return back to desk, start shredding again
5:23 PM - Feel sick. Think I had too much tea today.
5:27 PM - Remember phone has been charging since 1:20 PM, go and get it
5:30 PM - Cut out wedding ad and place it on absent Nazmi's desk
5:38 PM - Go to wash face
5:49 PM - Shred paper
6:00 PM - Realise there's a tea stain on desk, clean it up
6:05 PM - Mr Tan turns on air conditioning
6:06 PM - Legs and arms start freezing again
6:07 PM - Headache
6:08 PM - Take meds
6:09 PM - Clean up desk, use toilet
6:14 PM - Send this thing to myself
6:17 PM - Leave office for MRT station
6:24 PM - Reach MRT station
6:26 PM - Board train
6:28 PM - Giggle at two gay guys standing in front of me who are pinching each others nipples in jest, then posing like they're gonna start making out
6:36 PM - Meet Jeremy Foo at Orchard MRT station
6:50 PM - Arrive at Tanglin Club for dinner
7:45 PM - Headache again. Take more meds.
7:50 PM - Walk towards Takashimaya
8:00 PM - Bum around Kino
9:05 PM - Leave Jeremy to go to bus stop
9:11 PM - Bus arrives
9:27 PM - Arrive home
9:34 PM - Shower
9:44 PM - Wait for phone call, attempt to call
10:00 PM - Attempt to call again
10:15 PM - Still waiting, and attempt to call again
10:29 PM - Get through, should have not called and waited instead -_________________-
10:36 PM - Recieve phone call
10:55 PM - Phone call ends
10:56 PM - Start mindlessly surfing internet
11:03 PM - Give up logging for the day and post entry

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I did all of the office logs as they happened, not by memory. You can guess how free and pointless today was. Tsk.

I'll Dig A Tunnel From My Window To Yours

Last week I read Taichi Yamada's I Haven't Dreamed of Flying for a While. The storyline reminded me of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, except with the de-aging process compressed within a years time instead making it a serious case of Time Is Running Out (cue the Muse song). I teared everytime Mutsuko grew younger because it reminded her and Taura how they didn't have much time left to spend with each other :x

I also finally read Natsuo Kirino's Out during my Bali trip, which was wonderfully written, yet wasn't as good as Grotesque. I think the main failing was that she tried in include too many characters at the same time, a grand total of 7. This leads to less meaningful characterisations, some which fell prey to the the sin of being cliched and underdeveloped. However the characterisation of Masako and Satake and their subsequent cat and mouse chase was executed so well that it gave me the creeps and I couldn't sleep without reading a bit of The Decameron first when I was by myself at home. The way she managed to blend the meeting of two dark psyches into something morbidly beautiful in it's tragedy and fragility was truly a work of art in my eyes.

The Sounds of Silence

I was always very bad at saying goodbye.

When I was younger and my Mama had to go to KL for a one day business trip (back on the same night) I'd cry like hell and mope about all day and the night before. If anything bad happened to me that day I'd blame it on my Mama being away. Along the same theme, when my cousin Lauren used to visit every year, she'd bring along her precious stuffed toy (damn I forgot the name) and her Kumon homework (yeah I know, LOL). No matter how much we fought during the trip and how sick I got of her following me around constantly (yeah I was a weird kid) I always hid her stuff on the last day under the mistaken belief that if she didn't have her stuff, she wouldn't be able to go home. Then of course there was the yearly departure of seniors in Guides and I'd get all sniffly even if I didn't know them that well.

So anyway point is I'm very bad at saying goodbye and today I had to say goodbye again. Sniff sniff. Take care, I'll miss you.

God Only Knows

I often find it amusing how people have such high value of themselves. I've had 2 such experiences over the past few days. For instance the other day I was out when I met two ex-schoolmates from my Secondary school at Little India MRT Station. I didn't really want to see them, but since it was inevitable that we walk past each other I decided to be nice and wave at them. Both looked at me with the same I'm-surprised-and-not-in-a-good-way manner, but that's where their similarities ended. One (who was my ex-classmates) waved at me and the other who I used to be fairly close to went "Oh look, there's our friend."

In both instances I'm not sure where the people involved have obtained such a high value of themselves that they deem talking to me to be a favour to my person. Please, I am only trying to be polite to make whatever shit of a life that we all have (cue Plato's "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle") all easier. That doesn't mean you can test my patience repeatedly by acting like you're the greatest thing since Meiji Gummy Chocs (which are awesome) and flat out refusing to take hints that I feel nothing more for you than I would a mildly annoying acquaintance so please: GTFO.

I do not do things without a purpose, so please if I've been taking phenomenally long to reply to you on MSN it's not because I'm a dumbass who doesn't know how to string together words to form a coherent reply but because I'm avoiding you. Please, go take a hike and leave me be. I tire of you.

"Write to your MP"

I encountered a troll while doing research for a client:

ST Online Forums and all their useless whiny complainants for the win. Now only if I didn't have to write a letter for a client to them too...

Meep

Omg I'm so going to die in London. I'm already wearing the ACS sweater and my court blazer over my own clothes and I am still freezing and sneezing away. Wtf.

Fluoxetine

I haven't really been using my brain proper for quite some time, so I hope this line of thought comes out coherently.

It has come to my attention over the past few years that women, as per the stereotype, seem to be more prone to hysterical bouts and astounding leaps of illogical thought. This is based on anecdotal stories from friends whose mothers always seem to be the origin of such things, never the fathers (well maybe just 1 father to 5 mothers). This behaviour manifests itself in a few different forms, from incoherent thought with hysteria to suicide attempts on reunion dinner nights to verbal abuse and even physical abuse. Most of the famous (or semi) autobiographical novels written about depression and such have also been written by women. These are The Bell Jar, Girl, Interrupted and Prozac Nation. This of course beckons the question, why so many women in particular? (Of course I’m not going to be able to answer it here; this isn’t a thesis essay but an observation.)

 

The question about why so women are affected makes me think of Prozac Nation. In the early chapters of the book Elizabeth Wurtzel observed that her depressive episodes started only with the onset of her menstrual period. This also brings to mind how whenever any female is displaying ‘bad’ behaviour, people say she’s PMS-ing. It makes me wonder then if the hormones that cause the menstrual cycle also affect women by affecting whatever part of their brain that processes human behaviour. If so, then medicine targeted at hormone regulation would be better than anti-depressants like Prozac which could then be viewed as affecting only the result of this hormonal imbalance rather than stopping it at its origin.

Kay I think I’m typing rubbish now about a subject I only have a layman’s knowledge and interest of. Sometimes though, I wish I could do more scientific research on this topic. Then I remember how much Science and I don’t really get along.

EGM

On normal days my left eye is usually larger than my right eye. This is because of the way my eyelids fold. For the past 2 days however, the area around my left eye has become swollen, making it become the smaller eye. My eye feels dry, sticky and I feel like my vision is partly obscured, yet it's not become red at all. It comes on and off too, because it was fine later in the day yesterday. 

I should have just taken MC today since I hate this job so much -____-

Mabuhay yo!

I'm starting to get really sick of my job. It used to be that I would stress myself out over everything and rush to get it done, then it became Oh-God-I'm-Tired sort of infrequent procrastinating, now it's Hi-I'm-Blogging-From-The-Offic-And-Do-Not-Give-A-Shit procrastinating. Blah.

This morning too was pretty shit. Usually I catch a ride from my boss but today he turned up an hour early at my house because he had a hearing and didn't tell me. This meant that the first thing that greeted me this morning was a nasty surprise, then having to make the 1 hour commute to town from my house. Boo. When I was almost at the office, it started to rain and I had to wait at the pedestrian crossing for the lights to change in my favour. Even more boo.

However I guess today had resulted in satisfactorialy exciting enough to be worth my while (I'm not even going to think about my pay because it's shit). While I was photocopying one of the secretaries was printing something which came out with my stack. Just as I picked it up I need a cursory glance at the document and realised it was a letter addressed to the Big Big bitching about someone else in the office. I wanted to read more but damn, she came over in a bad mood and took it away from me. 

The next hour was spent observing her from my position at the photocopier/binding machine and trying to look for opportunities to search her computer for the letter. Eventurally I saw her exchanging words with the person she mentioned in her letter and I snuck close pretending to be resting/drinking from my cup. I almost wanted to burst out laughing from the sheer absurdity of the thought that I was stalking her unnoticed. What she did mention to the other person was some rubbish about e-mail formatting. I don't see how that warrants a big letter to the boss and her getting so upset, so whatever - the thrill was in the chase. I haven't felt so alive in a long time.

On another note I had Chicken Insasal today :D Mack's is once more open again in Lau Pa Sat. I asked for extra pinoy vinegar (Datu Puti Vinegar [lol it's on Amazon] + Chili Padi + Finely Chopped Onions) and dumped it all over my Garlic Rice and Chicken Inasal. Wonderful.

Walk Out To Winter

I'm starting to really hate the weather. Yesterday when I got home from Bali, I went to my room and just melted. The sun was ever blazing hot and I was pespiring away even after a shower when I was lounging about in a t-shirt and shorts. Then, just as I left the house it started to rain like crazy, the howling pelting needles of superfine rain which slanted it's way even into covered areas because of the wind.

Today it started raining again. Thankfully the damp this time round isn't affecting me too much except that I got a bit wet bringing a client for comissioning in the neighbouring building and I want to go grab some lunch soon without getting wet. Instead the effects of the rain today is to make the office at some mind numbing freezing temperature. I can't take off my sweater without feeling the urge to shiver. I'm also starting to feel a loss of my sense of touch in my fingertips. Boo. What horrifically schizophrenic weather we're having these few days. I hope it ends soon.

FML

My mother walked into my room today and started voicing out plans to remove my stuff from my room once I was gone for Uni and convert my room into a study room. I'm not leaving for another 7 months. FML.

Badgers

I'm finally back from Bali, and not too much tanner at that (thankfully). It was definitely an enjoyable trip despite a few hitches like having to run across Changi Airport, getting baggage lost and rushing about in general due to tight schedules. It was also the first time I flew on SIA, and the first time I ate a piece of duck in 8 years because I didn't want to appear strange. Meep.

But mostly, it was a great trip because Dexter was there. Meep.

Barley

Going to Bali till Monday.

Will wish I had a nice swimsuit like this to wear there:


Bye. I'm running late :/