Monthly Archive

i’m absolutely terrified.

my bro’s in-laws-to-be have arrived from malaysia, and they’re scaring the hell out of me. the entourage includes my bro’s gf’s parents, sister, brother, cousin and a kid (don’t know who the heck is that). they swarmed into the house just as i was taking a leisurely evening snooze in front of the tv.

now my mum’s doing the pr, chatting happily with them. they’re a sociable lot, i think. but…..but….hermits get thrown into confusion when there’s a huge bunch of strangers.

how the heck am i going to survive eating dinner with them?

i have a big idea, to feign sleep and let them go ahead without me.

i’m scared!!!

people around me have always termed me as crazy and abnormal and childish whenever i start talking to my pooh bears. now i know i’m not the only crazy one around.

i bought a small little pooh bear with magnets within its paws and stuck it on my cubicle partition, so that it brightens up my desk a little. so far, everyone who walks by will play with my pooh bear or talk to it. males included. i have a female colleague who asked “pooh pooh” what it wanted for dinner when we were placing orders for overtime dinners.

the downside? the irritating nag kidnapped my bear and stuck it on her cubicle when i was absent from work for a day. though she placed it back on my cubicle before i entered the office the following day, i was still pissed. that cheapskate. get her own toys lah. and she mentioned she wanted to get the similar range of soft toys to line up her cubicle partition. copycat. bah.

and the usually-manly technicians in my office were bowled over by the teddy bear cookies i got from marks and spencer. when offered some, they began walking around the office, nibbling on the cookies and looking at the other guy’s cookie, trying to see if the other guy ate the head or the butt first.

i also had fun laughing at my colleagues’ photos on their identity cards and those on their particular forms. i showed them to the new colleague and the neighbour-in-black, and we had a great friday afternoon laughing at these poor souls.

the new colleague was also very entertained by my “sheeng sheeng sheeng” sound effects when i tried to show her the order of some files. and the mandarin phrases i taught her for self defence against and to bully the technicians with. and the interesting tidbits i gave her on each technician she had to try to get to know.

it’s been a fun week at work.

minus the realisation that my neighbour-in-black’s document circulation requires a damn flowchart to understand. and the extreme bad news is that i am in charge of the smooth operations of the flowchart now. plus a lot of higher-level admin stuff. bah. from low-level admin stuff to high-level admin stuff. it’s equally boring, more bureaucracy and hair-tearing emotions.

i must have been influenced by the msian.

i was looking through the pictures i had on my camera, and all the pictures were of food. i seldom take pictures of food in the first place.

and in between these escapades, there were many others unaccounted for. i must have been eating a lot, happily.

i zaoed work today, because i overslept and because i need a break from the boring life i’ve been leading in the office.

and while i was lazing in bed, i realized that i actually, really, miss school. i miss having lecture notes to doodle on, wearing anything i felt like wearing to school, taking long lunch breaks, ambling from one grey building to another and basically, doing nothing much but to hang out and occasionally, learn something.

working at this office used to be fun cos it was kind of a break from school life. it’s like, my brains would be tired from all the ideas and creativity needed for projects and assignments and i’ll dive into the yawn-worthy stuff of filing and data entry. then just as my brain got sick of those mundane tasks, i was thrown back into school again.

now that this office stint has lasted since may, i’m really, really, getting bored by it all. minus the interaction with the people i like, that is.

it’s been four months in the office, and i really do hope i get thrown back into school life again.

i happened to email the gals before i blogged, and to describe my pathetic life without a mum keeping the house neat, her plants hydrated, laundry done and ironed and hot meals provided, here’s what it sounds like:

“just that i’ve been spending the bulk of my weekend (starting from friday night) being the house maid.to describe my weekend, let me list down the things i did after 6pm on friday:

fri 6pm to 8.45pm: worked overtime till my neighbour-in-black kept nagging at me. she made a sales engineer promise to drive me home even though i can take a company-sponsored cab. the sales engineer was already packing his laptop and asked me how much time i needed, he would wait for me to finish my work. being the nice person i am, i relented and gave up the idea of leaving the office with a spanking clean in-tray.

fri 9pm to 11pm: burned incense paper cos it was the first day of the lunar month. made multiple calls to confirm outing tomorrow. did laundry. brought in dry laundry. watered the millions of plants my mum grows.

fri 11pm to 12am: went for dinner with the bro.

sat 11am to 1pm: tuition #1. taught the kid (in vain) to blow bubble gum which i bought her.

sat 1pm to 2pm: wandered around pioneer mall waiting for tuition #2 to start. tuition #2 was cancelled. bought lunch and terrific ice cream back home for me and the bro who decided to visit me for lunch.

sat 2pm to 3.30pm: had lunch and watched the korean movie “the way home”. if i had a kid or grandkid like that boy i’d kill him and turn him into kentucky fried brat.

sat 4pm to 5.30pm: tuition #3.

sat 6pm to 7.15pm: cooked dinner, swept the front yard, washed the front yard cos it was a little dusty, watered the damned plants. to my neighbours, i must be the most industrious young lady in the neighbourhood, cos a hell lot of them saw me performing these miracles. and my highly critical bro ate up all the broccoli which i forgot to soak in water but made do with a quick rinse. and he ate up most of the other dishes too, without any complaints.

9.20pm to 9.45pm: did more laundry and brought in the un-sunned but dry clothes.

9.45pm to 10.20pm: ironed a week’s worth of work clothes.

now everybody nod and tell me i’m a professional maid. i am so gonna threaten to fire my mum when she gets back. unless she pays me half of her housewife salary for this month.”

…..

“and for the past few days, shortage of potable hot water has driven me to drink microwaved coffee. the person who invented microwaves must be someone who was mum-less and had to have hot water in two minutes.”

but i’ve had a good food week.

“and judging from the pictures and recent body checks i think i really should stop my colleagues from buying me food for teabreaks. it’s really destructive. i feel guilty thinking about the sinful food i’ve had this week: burger king, multiple mac breakfasts, fried carrot cake, breakfast carrot cakes, fried spring rolls, bengawan solo pastries, polar cafe pastries, chocolate fondue, fried chicken wing, chicken rice, and the rum and raisin AND brownie ice cream i was mentioning. sheesh. all these in just one week.”

there you go, description of the week.

ok, i know i’m lazy. but i have no life and no time. so there.

anyone gets the big idea about the security and the preparations behind imf?

while i do agree that security has to be present to fend against possible terrorist and activist attacks, does it have to be to the extent of putting up fierce-looking metal barricades that look like they will bite my legs off if i dare cross the line? with the posters for the four million smiles as a backdrop some more. it’s just doesn’t make sense.

if i were a delegate, i’ll have serious doubts about walking around on the streets. why? because i had previously visited a country plagued with multiple terrorist attacks, and their security features to protect us weren’t even as scary. of course, that might be why terrorists got the chance to attack them and not us. but still, these evil looking barricades and stuff do strike fear in people and wonder unnecessarily, i think.

plus the fake riots and stuff, the extra flowers placed along the city area, etc. etc. it just makes me laugh out loud. it’s like those pretentious people putting in extra, too much, effort, to impress their dates.

does all these remind anyone of certain almost-”previously”-communist country and the way they handle such events?

age is catching up with me. on the outfit-search, we got so dead tired by 8.30pm and headed for home. and we didn’t even buy a single dress or outfit that was meant to be.

shopping used to be a tireless event which could end when the shops close.

but i did realise something from yesterday’s trip. marina square has very reflective floor tiles in the restrooms. so reflective that you can see the shadows in the cubicles next to you. though the actual reflections can’t be seen, you can tell what the people in the next cubicles are doing. i’m sorry i sound like a pervert, but i just happened to notice.

and, there’s this rip-off shop opposite mini toons. they’re selling this red belt for $19.90, when i bought an exact similar one for $8.90.

and, i don’t exactly understand why, but mini toons sells these regular sized stitch soft toys in the right colour tones and at the right prices. alas, these stitches come with tufts of blue hair under their chins, which the malaysian declared to be chest hair. i like kiddy stitches more than grown up stitches.

it’s gonna be a rainy sunday afternoon and i think i want to take a good afternoon nap.

it started out ok and peaceful and i only had to make several excuses (white lies) for today.

till a whole string of things happened and other than feeling like kicking myself, i now have to come up with a whole lot of excuses (more lies) to cover my ass. i can’t believe so many things happened simultaneuously to totally ruin the day. it has the combined probability of say, someone striking 4d, toto, lottery and winning a mini cooper all in the same day.

i will have to learn to make wiser decisions in the mornings.

let’s hope tomorrow will turn out fine.

i feel violated.

i went to work with my new, short, spiky hair this morning. i stupidly woke up late and had to get to the office myself, making a grand entrance alone. in order to reach my cubicle, i had to walk through a pretty long corridor and walk past everybody. it didn’t help that i reached during the settling-down minutes, when everybody was standing and chatting.

they stared at me, exclaiming their surprise for a full six minutes. suddenly i felt so naked i wanted to hide under my desk. and i was bombarded with questions, raised eyebrows and comments regarding my hair for the entire day.

they don’t really like my new hair and prefer the feminine longish hair, but i do prefer spiky hair, so to the hell with it.

my eyeballs feel violated too, by the way. for the first time in twenty two years my fingers ran along the contours of my eyeballs.

because.

i’ve got my contact lenses.

and i really wonder what the hell made me want to get contact lenses. halfway through the session where the optician guided me through the wearing and removing of contact lenses, i already felt like dying. at least the optician was pretty cute looking.

he sent me home wearing my contact lenses (*not the walk-me-to-the-doorstep kind of “send”, but the way a teacher sends a student home with home work, you know? “sent me home” is a misleading phrase here, i realise belatedly) and when i reached home, i couldn’t get the lenses out from my right eye. because i had practised only the left eye once at the optician’s. i made so many attempts i took a dinner break with the left contact lens removed and the other one still on my eyeball.

and the final removal of the right contact lens was a pure fluke. i got irritated, rubbed my eyes, and there it was.

i wonder if i can remove my right contact lens daily by rubbing my eyes. it’s so much easier.

i’m already trembling with fear at the thought of poking my eyeballs again tomorrow morning.

i so want an afternoon nap.

so that i can bury my face in the pillow to get away from the late afternoon sun shining into my room.

and cover myself with the nice smelly blanket even though the weather isn’t cool.

knowing it’s saturday and i have nothing important to do except to rest myself well.

afternoon naps remind me of my childhood days when i’ll sleep underneath the old-school wooden sofa set, because it was so dark and the floor tiles under the chair was so much cooler.

or the days when i was in school and saturdays were for falling asleep with a book in my hands.

i have less than four half-saturdays left to get an outfit for my brother’s rom. my dad is so gonna kill me if i turn up in jeans or something like that. and he will ban me from the ceremony or something if i turn up in a black outfit.

and i’m broke.

damn, this is so impossible. i need a miracle.

this week has been a particularly bad one at work and at home.

the backstabber has been trying to do me in a couple of times already, blaming me and accusing me of mistakes before things were even straightened out. being a civilised person who wants to keep her job till next year (i’ve decided it’s really difficult if i want to find a temporary job for a couple of months) i didn’t scream at her.

still, i made other mistakes which could be avoided if i had managed to catch some good quality sleep. the mistakes were so dumb i feel like banging against the wall. and the boss happens to know about these mistakes.

the cumulative effects of a bad week at work?

during the lunch-in session today the neighbouur in black took out her kleenex tissues with old-school teddy bears on it and i was commenting how cute they were. then i placed the box on the table, ate my lunch and in between bites, said, “look! the bear is smiling at me! see! this one is waving at me!” in typical yanyan-style.

she just stared at me. later in the afternoon i was helping her with her data entry work and at the end of it, the figure was short of close to two million dollars and it turned out to be different definitions of stuff we had.

during the exploration of definitions the sales manager came over and told her he’s going out to clifford centre. i must have been stoned by lunch, office air, and panadols as i was running a slight temperature. i said “byeeeeeee!” in a very merry tone. even though i was irritated by the interruption. he gave a half-smile-half-weird-look and told me to keep it down, it’s two hours to friday night.

after clearing up the definition-error, i was supposed to re-enter some data. i declared my hatred for all numbers and told me neighbour-in-black i was going for a “walk”. when i came back, there was a brand new box of kleenex tissue with teddy bears on my table. sweet, eh?

this weekend, i’ve got to plow through a lot of information on the course programmes. what’s scary is that my dad is extremely enthusiastic about me joining my brother in sydney. i can tell that if that happens, i have to share a room with my brother. and when was the last time i shared a room with him for more than two days? 13 years.

and we are different. he doesn’t talk. i get grumpy and cranky if i don’t get to blabber. he sleeps in the morning. i sleep at 8pm whenever possible. i am fanatic about keeping the bathroom clean and the bathroom is a personal space for me. we listen to different music.

still, as long as things work out, i’ll be fine.