What I had for lunch on an emo day

Cold turkey

I've decided to go cold turkey on Facebook. It means no more status update, no more photos from me for 2 weeks. Yes, it's just one of those strange episodes I get. Maybe it's triggered by the recent case of the new head who went to search for the new girl on Facebook and added her. The thought is too scary.

Luckily for me, I don't use my dialect name, I've also decided some time back to not use my photo on profile which also saves me from being found. Anyway I also want to find out if people care that I don't update myself. I wonder what happened to good ol' phone. No one seems to use it anymore.

I will never understand my colleagues - 2

This morning at 9+am, the new girl SMS me to tell me that she's going to be super late because she forgot her EZ link card and she went back to get it. I was thinking: "duh, why can't you just pay cash and come to work instead of going back home???" Anyway it turns out that she wasn't any much later than she always is. So I guess it doesn't makes a difference.

Bottom-line is: Everyone has a choice. It's just what you choose.

Tired

Working and not working really makes a difference. I used to enjoy my afternoons grocery shopping, ironing, watching tv, napping etc. Now I spend my afternoons preparing spreadsheets, answer stupid enquiries, putting up with irritating people etc.

So much for going to work early when the rest come in late. Today was worse, I'm the only one around come 9am so my boss and mini boss pulled me in to attend a company departmental meeting.

These few weeks coming down the months have left me very tired especially when I have to deal with a few insensitive people today, one of them being a friend that is unhappy that I forgot about our date tomorrow and arranged to meet my cousin and nephew for cookies making instead. But then again in the first place she never re-confirmed our date so of course I went ahead and make plans. Plus I've been owing my nephew his long awaited butter cookies for the longest of time. Oh well, we can never satisfy every single person in our lifetime. We just do what we feel is right and live with the consequences.

And at work this week, I had to battle with 2 bosses who are asking me to defect to their sides. Either side I join, I'll feel bad for the other. Tough decisions.

I'm burnt out. I can't wait for my break but I'm thoroughly disappointed that I wasn't able to make it to my dream destination. I need good friends to go have pork cheek ramen with me more regularly to make up for it.

Random thought

Many times, we give definition to things in order for them to make sense. If we don't define them, will they still mean anything?

Conditioning of the mind

My cousin just complained that she suspected my nephew is colour blind. However it is my belief that we can be conditioned to colour identifying but of course when it comes to those colour blind test, if you can't see it, you can't it.

But for normal everyday items like trees for example, since young, parents will tell you that the trunk colour is called brown and the leaves are called green. Everyday you see the tree, you will tell yourself that the trunk is brown and the leaves are green and you repeat this for the rest of your life and that's the colour that's stuck with you. However, it still but remains as a naming convention to the colour that you see. There is no way to ascertain that the same green that you and I see, is the same green that reflects in our brain. If I don't call the "colour" that I see the leaves as green and decides to call it black, and if everyone around also calls that "colour" - black, then that "colour" will then be associated with this name called "black". Therefore, it's just a matter of naming it.

The brain is indeed a formidable processing unit, I still remember my cognitive professor's lecture on how the brain identifies things. It's like when we see the alphabet "A", whether it's in red, blue, green, yellow, tall, fat, short, capital or small letters, font 12, font 22, arial, times new roman etc, we all know that it's the alphabet "A". We will not call it a different alphabet.

Ahhhh.... brings me back to my psychology lessons! Maybe I should go back and study again.

I will never understand my colleagues - 1

I asked for the address of the place but she just sends me the website and ask me go there and check. *duh* You're already in the website, then why can't you just copy and paste the address for me??? So inefficient!!

When you grow older, you don't lose friends. You just know who are your real friends

I love the title and I actually shamelessly copied it from a friend. It was really apt and friends featured heavily throughout my life.
It all started in lower primary where I joined this group that keeps 'friending' and 'un-friending' me because of certain things I do or don't do. So that taught me about group norms long before I took psychology classes.
Then came secondary school where I met a girl that was standing in the class queue with me. We were supposedly best friends in sec 1 but when we changed class in sec 2, she became Miss Popular and she stopped hanging around with me to hang around with some other hipper crowd. By the way, we're still friends now and she still regards me as her best friend but ironically, she was also the one that taught me the lesson that there's no such things as best friend.
JC taught me the real world. I was in a scary class where there's no truly one sincere person. Those were the darkest years, I left that horrid 2 years behind with no friends made and I learnt that I can be solitary if I wanted to.
University days were exciting. Even though I was in a course where I have no fixed classmates but after the solitary years, I decided that's not me, I had that inert need to socialize afterall. I opted to be active and made and met many different people through my clubs/societies. And from here onwards, I start to appreciate the meaning of real friends.
When I start to work, they say it's hard to find real friends in the big bad world out there. Whoever said that has never been more wrong. For me, that's when I truly start making more real friends. I guess when work puts people together in shitty situations, it bonds people better and when years pass by, along with several job changes and you're still friends, that's when real friendships kick in.
So cheers to real friends! :)

Happy New Year starts later in 2011

This is the 3rd day of 2011 and the day where I receive a small piece of good news. At least the online florist called me back because of the failed attempt to pay for the purchase. She was nice to take down my credit card details and processed the transaction for me.
Anyway I started my New Year's eve with a bad breakout of small pimples all over my face when I came home that night. Until now I still don't know what caused it.
Then it was followed by the discovery of the beginning of a serious leak from the kitchen waste water pipe :S
So much for Happy New Year eh?

Cycle of life

I remember during primary school we have science lessons that talked about the cycle of life, where young animals/larvaes become big animals/insects. I think someone told me about the documentary he/she saw that shows the lives of an insect (forgot which one) which only live for a brief moment and the sole purpose of being an adult is to mate and then die and then the whole cycle starts again.

Recent months have not been too good with bad news of friends and relatives or people who someone else knew, being sick and I mean really sick. Some to the extent died. I have never imagined at my age, people around me are struck with cancer or unknown disease. Isn't life expectancy suppose to be longer nowadays? Or are we doing something really wrong and we have hit the tip of the bell curve and now it starts coming down? I have never felt that life is so fragile than at this moment in time.

I remember back in those days when autograph books are in trend, I used to sign off with stay happy or be happy. Today, I truly appreciate what I wrote. Life is too short to be unhappy. A friend questioned me, what is happy? She was divorced and recently had a child with her boyfriend. I think I told her I hope you are happy now and she asked me that question. That sets me thinking. Nowadays, it doesn't mean: you have a boyfriend, you will be happy; you have a husband, you will be happy; you have a kid, you will be happy; you have lots of money, you will be happy. Your boyfriend can leave you, your husband can divorce you, your kid can be sick and give you lots of trouble, money can be gone in a twinkle if you made a bad investment. All these, according to Buddhism, are transient things. We chase after them but we don't necessarily will be happy.

We may not be happy all the time but if someone were to tell you that they have the ability to return you to a time when you were happy and when you think about it, there are many moments you wished you could have froze because that was the happiest moment in life - then I think you would have lead a happy life because those happy moments stay in your memory. I think, we may not be happy all the time, but we can be at peace with ourselves. Then again, if we only choose one moment in time to freeze it then how would we know that we would not be happier later? So happiness is actually created by ourselves. We shouldn't let people or circumstances control us, we should control them. If there were no darkness, we would not appreciate the light.

So in contrast with all the dreary news, a lot of friends seemed to be giving birh recently or are going to give birth soon. And so the cycle of life begins with a fragile being. Just as life as ended for one, another has just begun. Buddhism says that we are reincarnated over and over again till we attain nirvana. Maybe being born to this life is a form of suffering and maybe death is not too bad because we may be one step nearer to nirvana.

End of a hiatus

My six months hiatus is coming to an end. Although this hiatus stretched longer than expected but luckily it was still within my buffer. Thank goodness a job came along before I have to officially declare myself broke. Nonetheless, it is a good hiatus. Like my ex-colleague said, I'm going to look back and say that this is the best times of my life. Here's a recount of the things I've done in this break.

I went for four holidays to Taipei, Phuket, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney. Taipei was to visit my pregnant friend, the beautiful Taroko Gorge and wonderful shopping. Phuket was to relax, stay in a beautiful hotel room, island hop, snorkel with the fishes and have a great time with my other half. KL was to chill with my classmates, visit my ex-colleague from KL, stock up on shoes and I'm glad my classmates make great traveling partners. Sydney was to end my hiatus with a bang, visit a dear friend to provide her with a distraction so she won't worry about her condition, binge on great food and stock up on food stuff.

In my hiatus, I also cooked. Some were yummy, some were not. I went to learn how to make chiffon cake from an ex-colleague's mum. Made many fruit tarts. Learnt to fry bee hoon on my own. Made yummy bread and butter pudding. Hosted friends for meals at home. It's a wonderful cooking journey.

I did housework. Was initially very thorough but gotten tardy over time. Greatest achievement is finish ironing the mountain of clothes. But with work starting, I think I'll be back to all my backlog. I also watched a lot more tv towards the later part of my hiatus. I was never a tv person but watching shows like Cake Boss, Taiwan serials and Japanese anime took up some idle time. At least I made good use of the cable subscription.

But time is never enough. I still have many things undone, such as getting started on my craft stuff, unpacking the spare room, do a bit of simple sewing (which was why the Hubs got me a portable sewing stapler) and tidy my study table.

It has been a great time. I doubt I would ever have it this good anymore in time to come. I'm enjoying my last days as I walk back into the rat race.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

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Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
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I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

Go with the flow

There are two school of thoughts. One says only settle for the best, the other one says just go with the flow. I'm a subscriber of the latter thought.

Hence I took up the first job that came along. Not that I had any other choices and I needed the cash to supplement my dwindling bank account.

I went to sign the letter of appointment yesterday. In my mind, a thousand thoughts fleet through. Is this the job for me? Or is it just another job? How's my manager gonna be? How's my co-workers gonna be? How's the job culture?

The first day of work seemed like such a distant thing to me. I no longer remember how the first day was. I only hope that when I begin my first day of work on Monday, everything will goes well.

Strange encounter of the shitty kind

The other day, an ex-colleague sms-ed me to tell me that a headhunter called him up for a sales and marketing post. I asked did he go for it? He said he wants to finish up his contract and accumulate enough years of experience so he rejected the offer. And I stupidly replied him that he should at least go for it and find out market sentiments even if he's not interested.

So why did I call myself stupid? Because a few days later, he messaged me on MSN asking me how was my job interview because if I was successful, he may want to consider joining me next time. Well I didn't feel like letting leaches like that on too much details so I said in jest that he has better chances because he got headhunted and yet rejected the offer. That was then he let out that it was an insurance company and he's not interested in an insurance job.

NOW then tell me it's an insurance company, I'm just short of telling him that during our MSN conversation, HSBC called me up asking me whether I would be interested to go interview to be one of their insurance agents AND this is a HUGE reputable INSURANCE company compared to your unknown insurance agency. I got plenty of phone calls during my unemployment with offers to be an insurance agents but I rejected all of them coz I hate insurance agents.

So what was his point of sms-ing me? Trying to mock me that a jobless bum like me had no luck with jobs so far while he got "headhunted"? I feel sorry for people who have to step on others to give themselves an ego boost. I'm so sorry you feel insecure but that's not my damn problem. Now I know who to ignore on smses and MSN.

Not that I'm an egoist, but as long as the right job comes along and ask me down for an interview, I am very sure that the interviewer will like me and I will get the job. In fact, I'm very sure that the two companies that I'm keen on after the interviews will be calling me up soon to offer me the job. It's all just a waiting game now while they decide they don't like the rest of the candidates. I'm glad I don't have insecurity issues.

Fast foods & interviews

There's this strange connection between fast food and interviews. Maybe it's the comfort found in these junk food, somehow I always end up having fast foods after interviews. Today is having fast food before the interview. Maybe I should have just rejected them after getting the call this morning. They postponed the interview time last minute this morning, while I was about to step out. It's a big company but the job they are offering is a lowly one. I think I should have gone with my gut feel.

I'm feeling bored!! Need to work soon :(

I'm feeling bored!! Need to work soon :(

Quote

Sometimes the most beautiful things are the ones that you don't have because in your mind it's perfect. However, in reality, they may not be.

Epitome of getting hitched

You know you've reached the epitome of getting hitched when you change your facebook status from 'single' to 'in a relationship' and you get 32 likes and 37 comments all congratulating you. @___@

Grandma

If having any sort of belief or even to the extent of superstition can give a little hope then why not? Sometimes it's not the circumstances that kills people but the lack of hope that dealt the blow.

My neurons are screwing me up again and it doesn't help that I've been jobless for a longer than expected period and recent news of my granny falling sick again didn't really help as well.

This year is not really good. My grandma is sick again, Dad just brought her to see a doctor on Sunday for heart palpitations and recent two blood tests showed that she had hereditary thyroid illness which suddenly decided to turn up and this was after the episode of her diagnosed as being slightly diabetic. Seemed like diabetes and thyroid malfunction ran in the genes and for so many years never showed up till this year. If this year is to be such a bad year, I will rather that I be the one to take the brunt of all these nonsense.

If I could choose to stop at a particular time in my life, I would choose to stop at the happy times of my childhood staying with grandma. My granny is the one who will sit down with me, copy out and cut out drawings of this mouse that I will colour and give away to my kindergarten friends.

There was another time in the lowest period of my life, I remember I had tuition that day and I went to her place at Tampines for dinner because my tutor stayed somewhere near her. Just her and me, she told me that if I had any problems, I can always tell her or my parents because everyone cared for me. A simple statement but it saved my life. Then there was the time when the ex broke up with me. Granny was the one I ran crying to even though she was staying so far in Yew Tee.

There was a heartbreaking period of time where subsequently she got thrown out of the house by my uncle's nasty wife. The period of time when she and my grandpa are homeless, living from house to house, nobody wanted them, even my mum. Then the children decided to rent somewhere for them to stay and so they went from rented places to rented places untill finally the MP wrote a letter to HDB and got them a place to stay at the one-room flat in Chai Chee. My earliest memory was staying with them in Chai Chee but in a five-room flat and now they are back in the same area, living in a worse off flat and back to living on their own again. But at least granny is happier in the new place because she can led her own life, cook as she want, go out with her friends as she want. I live in regret that I cannot provide them with a proper place to live in back then.

She would be the one to bring me to the guan yin temple to ask for a lot when things are not going well for me. I want to go ask for a lot too for her health but fear what it says. What if it's not good news? I would want to give her a few more years of my life so she can be healthy and happy.

Random thought

It takes two hands to clap. With the right partner, everything you do together feels right; with the wrong partner, everything you do together will be wrong. But will the right person turn wrong? Maybe. And will the wrong person turn right? That's possible too. Life's full of surprises. As a quote I read before says: "nothing is for certain except death and taxes". So don't be too fast to shut someone out of your life but that also applies to don't keep the rubbish around for too long either. It's all a matter of timing.