The time has come for us to part. All the best Nino. We'll miss you.
Take good care of yourself in China and hope to see you back real soon. Gain lots of experience and remember we're just a phone call away..

Apologies for not being able to send you off at the airport and i believe that the girls cried buckets.. We'll always be here when u need us and let things start anew. Dont start doing those stuff that you told us during Cat's bdae. Hope to see a happier you next year. Please rem to give us ur china number in case we need to contact u..

The sleepover last night felt just like any other sleepovers we have had. Nothing really special and it seems that all it matters for us is to enjoy each other's company for the very last time at the 'old' house. I'm glad we took time for steamboat, ktv, sleepover, shopping, dinner and our very first da-ing session with the 4 of us present.

Hope you like the gift as much as we did selecting it. before i forget, thanks pal, for everything.. together with the 2 of them, you all are the reason why I never regret not quiting SJAB in Sec 2.

Once again, all the best. Let us know when you've settled down and see if we can make plans to meet u in Dec.. hopefully *pray hard...

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Been fighting sleep for days on end but realized that the human will is incredible at times..

Came back from night cycling on Monday and totally forgotten about bidding deadline on Tues.. Missed everything for round 1A. Had a training session with barely enough sleep followed by the sleepover gathering at THE 'hougang house'. dozed off and managed to sleep for an hour before waking up and saying my goodbyes.. i took a long slow walk home and went back to bed for another hour's of sleep before the ODIN peeps came to pick me up to school. I dozed off at every possible freetime. No wonder they say that if we have a competition to see who can sleep the longest, i'll be the winner.

O week officially starts tomorrow. From tml onwards, i'll be stuck in school till my next holiday. Say cheers to a new school term.

zombie with failed eye-makeup

Thanks to all my friends who didn't tell me that i look like a walking zombie with horrible gothic eye makeup that smudged. I appreciate your kind intentions.

Life has been beautiful recently and I hope it stays this way.

I didn't know I can be dead tired yet happy, contented and grateful at the same time.
It never occurred to me that I can be the person I always wanted to be. Let's just say I'm pretty much amazed at myself, by myself and with myself.

Been acting like a workaholic desperately clocking OTs when i actually don't really need them. Making myself tired, but contented. It's as if I am making progress doing what i can with all i have. I mean, everyone loves to see a little more of Yusof Ishak.. Who doesn't? Even if it means sacrificing some beauty sleep and suffering from the effects of dark circles and eyebags..

WQ's interpretation is right. and the number 8 is the sign of infinity.

Met up with Jo and Tina today at our fav makan place. I like the kind of feeling of seeing each other and knowing that we're still the same persons, but better. Sharing the going-ons and knowing that we're all good and happy, albeit tired. Finally gotten the Taipei picture book. Love the fact that we share a common experience and that no matter how long time passes, we can bring up the same thing and recap the experiences once again.

The only issue i have now is that i've been missing the weekly gatherings for two consecutive weeks.. Haven been spending enough time with my family. Can't remember the last time i ate dinner at home with my mom and sis. Think May. So please just imagine how much i am looking forward to a good home cooked meal served piping hot straight from the pan. That is sheer indulgence in comparison to cafeteria food. Her cooking beats that of a 5* hotel's fare. Really. To me.

I'm so looking forward to work tomorrow.

The sunnier Sunday is, the better Monday will be.

Just one of the rare family gatherings which we talk about whom we'll never forget.

No issues about who they were, but rather what they liked, how we felt and the going ons then..

Reminisces... Been so fast yeah.. almost a year.. since i sat alone in SW2104 lecture listening to the crap about growing old and dying when someone close really did passed on..

My maternal Grandpa knew what happened two week ago.. the incident blew out of proportion and he apologised. that was an unforgettable episode and credits go to my Grandma..

He seems to enjoy the ride home everytime i drive.. saying good good good~
I enjoy it too.. knowing that things can happen anytime.. tonight he was saying that he got just a couple of years more to live.. and that 80 is enough for him.. saying that he has no wish to live to 90 at all.. i dont like it when the old speculate just how long more they WANT to live; it's like predetermining your will to go on.. everyone, especially him.

Tomorrow is Youth Day. as if it makes any difference to me. i have to work. oh crap. and i'm a youth who's not entitled to youth day. and cheers, to MORE OT tomorrow. yeah right.

This is turning into a dumping ground for crap. serious.

I'm making improvement. Work is getting worse at a slower rate.

Some guest named K C made my day today, with a one-liner in his email correspondence..
Something to do with GEM.. I feel so proud of myself.. *yaya.. buay paiseh ar***

Wanted to ask the almighty Lee whether i can wear jeans to work since i am allowed (by left) to wear casual attire - skirts. By right i was supposed to don office attire for all 6 days. but dressing up and looking like a 25-yo aint really what i look forward to.. but i know his answer anyway. He likes his female subordinates looking like OLs.. with knee length skirt, court shoes, nice blouse, blazer and makeup. damn.

Meeting with the Odin peeps always makes me feel youthful again. Wasnt in the right capacity to learn and play new games. My mind is fried and everything is playing on slow-mo beside me. Work has been this dreary monotonous series of actions that i perform for the sake of the payslip at the end of the month. and now that it's the start of the month again, i shall wait for the end of the month to come.

Was in a crazy mood the other day so i ended up with a bagful of Crabtree & Evelyn stuff AND a big hole in my pockets.. Thanks Tina, for the trouble of meeting me and passing me the mailing thing..

The emails are getting on my nerves lately.. when you're a few emails away from 700 and spent most of your waking hours trapped in the office facing the com and corresponding with people you'd rather not be in contact for the rest of your life, you'll feel like doing something out of the ordinary. something outrageous. serious. my mngr was saying we should just tug at the plug so the com wont work.. my colleague was saying we should just spend 5 minutes with our index finger on the 'Delete' key. i think we should just pack up and go home for a good rest.

i go to work daily bright and sunny and return home long after the sun sets. it's crazy, but i felt as if i've sold my soul for cash.

The funniest thing is, i received a super belated Xmas gift. i was sort of given the gift 6 months back but it came recently.. i guess that IS my birthday prezzie too.. whatever it is, i'm grateful, for being given the trust and freedom.. thanks Dad! you're the best!

I've forgotten how fun it is to say what i want, do what i like, be who i am.

Thanks to everyone in ODIN. I'm grateful for the chance to relive what i've missed out as a freshie last year..

Back from Kukup. It's a lovely backward place.. totally what i imagined the 1960s to be.. Exactly how i think my parents lived when they were young..

They have a population of approx 1000 and you cant see any young women there.. we were joking that my cousin, my sis and i were the oldest single women in the entire kukup.

houses above water.. the place is without a spec of dust. serious. i walked about the entire day and find my feet still clean.. and i still cant get past using the toilet where everything goes straight into the mud below. i prefer modern facilities where i dont see where those stuff go.. lolx..

the seafood there is fresh. superb.

ate sea mantis.. for goodness sake, i didnt even know it exists.. and it tastes much like crab meat..

i made a new friend there.. a cute little boy we called didi and ltr on xiao jun.. lolx..

the kids!







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i am a mahjong idiot.. i know nuts about the rules.. but i guess it's beginner's luck.. i won 5 times in a row.. that's when my little cousin, another super noobz came and break my luck.. and for that round, the first few tiles we discarded were all 'super tiles'..

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that's a harry potter lightning shot.
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reliving the childhood experiences.. blowing bubbles, running about the place, playing together..

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beautiful lilies with the dirty mud and unwanted fishing nets behind..

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failed magic.. lolx..

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this is how the entire village looks like at 9,10 pm.. the night is still young but the pple are all sound asleep.. they have to wake up at 4 to fish..

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money eating chips.. cool~ u shld see them read the papers.. lolx.. like some pro..

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toilet left to rot...

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ahem~ i can ride u know..

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the place is comfortable.. it felt like a visit to my grandparent's place.. sleep well, eat well and slack well. what more can i ask for?
love walking about the place under the sun amazed at stuff that the locals cant even be bothered about. things like the monkeys, rats, mudskippers, crabs, ongoing renovations, TOILETS, bicycles, rubbish etc... yes, even rubbish!

we were shocked, when the lady threw the entire POT of steamboat soup over the foyer latch onto the mud below, it doesnt matter coz the tide is coming in.. we stopped doing what we were doing at that point in time, until my cousin commented that the poor mudskipper living just below where the lady emptied the soup is pronounced dead.

and my lovely cuzzies.. the things they say... made my trip a memorable one. and i left that place with a different kind of mood than i expected.. woke up at 0630 this morning and sat outside the house with a cup of milo, enjoying the rain and wind, looking at the pple getting about their daily activities. no worries, no stress.

life really should be like that.

That's from Jo's photobook of our trip to Taipei. yup. that was exactly how we felt that night..

life should be like that.

i missed the trip. i missed OTOT R&R activities.. i missed chatting with friends about the insignificant and/or the important things in life..


was chatting with another temp staff and she was telling me about her not able to understand why her friend suffers from bruises on her left arm after joining archery.. i was thinking.. oh my god.. that sounds familiar lor.. and i missed shooting.. serious. camp is coming.. but before that i'll be back from kukup.. just one last day to a break from the 600 emails i face daily.

Wedding aftermath

First wedding invitation to a friend's wedding in my near-21 years of youth.
Congratulations to Candy and MF.. and many thanks for inviting..

The dinner was held at ACT 1, the ballroom i like the most in the whole of Mandarin.
It was a cheery but quiet affair. There wasn't much yum-senging and no yelling crying kids running about the place. Their friends were surprisingly well-mannered- for a wedding. No one had glasses after glasses of alcohol, maybe except my table. Suz was a drinker. serious. i lost count of the number of glasses of beer AND red wine she drank.

I love weddings.. this happy occasion where people get together with well-wishes for the couple who has already vow to stay together for good and for bad..

Had a little too much to drink.. went home on a high, only to find that my queen-sized bed has shrunk. reduced to this pathetic single bed. my room is roomier now, if that's what you want to hear. and under the effects of alcohol, my sleep wasn't disturbed lest some back ache and neck ache this morning. I've gotten used to sleeping on big bed for years.. now that i am reverting to a single bed, i wonder just how long it will take me to get used to the limited space again. Seems like we are always resistant to change, especially if everything has been fine and smooth all along..

and that little boy was so cute last night.. he came over to me before he left to give me a hug.. and they were saying he will grow up to be someone females must be wary of.. lolx.. maybe. but as of now, he's cute.

my dad came to fetch me last night.. and my mom asked if i want to drive.. i felt like, but you'll never know what will happen IF i did that.. i felt fine, but my reaction time was slow. so slow reflex on a wols person like me is exactly what a to-be-accident lacks..

Meeting up with the poly peeps tonight.. will definitely have a good time. to ensure my work and social life is balanced.

half the day to myself

spent half the day in the office and the rest of the day away from the com, endless phone calls, yelling irritating corporate clients, boss, and the organization.
not racing against time, but rather flowing with it.. haven had such luxury time since i started work.. and the fact that i'm contented with this short break makes me wonder if i am really pushing myself too hard..

for an 'ultimate slacker' like me, as quoted from jess; this amount of work is ideal to change my over-indulgence lifestyle.. and this change brings about vitamin M, which is exactly what everyone needs..

made some new friends at work, which makes me very happy.. being able to get along with people whom you face 6 days a week, 8 hours a day, is extremely important to my well-being.. coz i see them more often than i do my family.. and dont we all love the feeling of working together towards a common goal??

the same hate hate relationships we have with:
1) our boss, the almighty Lee
2) the other departments which are obsessed with the new art of Taichi
3) those bugger agents
4) the i-am-your-corporate-client-you-owe-me-a-living kinda pple
5) i-dunno-anything-can-your-department-help OTHER department pple
6) one of the 3 out of the 10 who is yet to be diagnosed to be suffering from mental illness according to statistics
7) the canteen auntie/ new cook/ new-and-old dishes

and before i forget,
8) the aircon which is forever PMS-ing.. even after a repair..

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and my manager FINALLY notices how much some other pet is slacking.. for the same amount of time, i am doing stuff 5 times faster, or more. and why is that so, coz i dont listen to mp3 while working, i dont go on endless smoking and toilet breaks, i dont turn up at work late and stretch my lunch hour.. i am sure every penny i earn is well deserved. i dont want others to label me like they do my other course mates.. so i am standing by my beliefs, doing what i know best.

and that's more than enough, for me.

I've sold my soul to the organisation, if you haven realize it.

I'm trying hard to clock in OTs so that i can clear my poly tuition fees by the end of this vacation. This means emptying my savings and not splurging on stuff this season. If i can repay whatever i owe by this year, i know that I'll have time-buffer for my uni tuition fees and the next couple of years will be smoother and easier.

Colleagues are starting to question why I'm working when i should be outside partying and having the time of my life. They say that office job and OTs are for people with no life, for boring people. yeap. i do agree. and i belong to that group. seriously, i cant take all the put-things-off-wait-till-tomorrow attitude when stuff concerns money. I cant seem to understand why people can buy on credit, then let the interests roll.. I am the old age Asian. I am uncomfortable with debts.


Overhead the DJ discussing on the family topic on the morning show.

When is the last time you had a meal with your family or relatives?

I'm glad my answer is at least weekly.. and i'm kinda surprised some pple never communicate with their parents or siblings. i mean, if you dont talk and trust your family totally, who should you turn to? i find it comfortable chatting with my mom at home over dinner, or when she is getting about the household chores. she knows what i'm doing outside and i know exactly how she feels about what i think or do. it's a 2-way thing. and i like this feeling if bonding.. and when there is trust and absolute faith, i get lots of freedom, and i really mean it.

the strength of a chain is at its weakest link and we work hard to increase the tenacity of each link.

Have half a day to myself tomorrow. will make the best of it.

Ashamed at my ignorance and quick-to-judge personality.

Have always thought that she is this havoc, crazy but independent mom who brings up her two sons single-handedly; assuming that she filed for divorce with her husband long ago. Over lunch today, i listened to her conversation in awed. Her husband is in Changi serving time and due out only in 2010. She feels that it's unfair for her kids not to have a Dad when they're at this critical age of 3 and 5 when your friends from school boast about 'papa and mama'.. she wonders what her kids will do when the teacher asks them to draw a family tree. She doesn't want them to grow up deprived of fatherly love. Quietly, i took in all these and the accounts of what happened back then.. Seriously, it didn't occur to me that those police police crime watch shows on TV can happen to someone so close to me. someone i know. someone whom i assume is taking life a little too easy. and that someone is only a couple of years my senior.

'I have to be strong. Life has to go on.' was what she said. Before i can digest all that info and brace myself up to say some encouraging words, she has already smiled and moved on.. Getting by the to-dos in work and life.. It's as good like that, what i wanted to say means nothing anyway. it's those weightless redundant stuff that pple say for the sake of saying..

Hidden behind this facade for all to see and unknowingly turning into what you weren't in the first place..

Find myself more matured when I'm working... school somehow brings me back to a youthful and rebellious stage when I am the center of my world. work life makes me see the big-ger picture..

Work life has been surprisingly smooth for me lest for some minor glitches and the fact that I'm working in the same place, doing the same things but under a different department that still liaise closely with the old department with a new management heading the team.. and my new boss isn't exactly what you call pleasant or friendly.. he got this temper that is worse than mine, serious biasness, unreasonable, childish and yes.. childish nature. very. no wonder i find his actions so familiar. he reminds me of a dozen sec school girls put together..

fatigue

Finally gotten into the rhythm of having deep sleep for ultimate rest and relaxation at night. I stumble into dreamland the moment my head hit the pillow and the only thing i look forward to each day is to snuggle into bed after a shower to recharge before the next day's to-dos..

Been suffering from the effects of the 3 main sources of discomfort- fatigue, exhaustion and tiredness. basically, they're the same thing so the effect is 3 times that of a single syndrome. and the fact that i face the com the entire day gives me dizzy spells with side-effects like blinking lights and colourful world so going home to face the com is a big NO-NO.

i'm so looking forward to the trip. Let's just hope we dont get stuck at the planning stage, which happens ever so often.

outliving them

I did better than expected for ops, acctg and econs; with unsolved problems, unbalanced financial statements and inaccurate graphs.. yet i aint feeling good.

Why is it so difficult to get an A?

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Saw the pics.. Smokers go away..

I dont understand why they always use 'social' or 'can control' as excuses when in fact they shld've NOT smoke since they can 'control' in the first place..

and i cant fathom why they consider puffing a cool act... When it's so ghoulish in the first place.. With those smoke around you and you looking like your soul is detached from your body and your mind in control by some other..

Goodness gracious.. Looks are deceiving.. and the fact that i know these pple makes it even harder for me to accept the fact that they are doing such stuff when in fact if i can live on without those thrills in life, they shld be able to too..

Seriously, if it's like what they say, life is too short to give a miss at stuff; then i guess i just have to accept the fact that i'm going to outlive them..

Dead tired

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was reading this lame book on how to ruin my life.. and it mentioned:

Dont let gratitude even enter your mind. The world hasnt completely bowed down before your perfection yet, and it's very far from being a perfect place, so what's there to be grateful for? If you start feeling gratitude- even in some small way- that means you're weak. so forget it.

so if that phrase holds, then it means that i'm a weak person. or not.

No conversation agenda.

Love it.

Been so long since i last chat on the phone.

Suffering from insomnia- look like a walking zombie, and my speech cant seem to coordinate with my mind.. i'm not saying what i'm thinking.. and this is getting worse..

I'm starting work on Monday so i have to find a way to sleep at 10 and wake up at 8 instead of sleep at 6 and wake up at 3 by tomorrow..

Think the Kukup trip is off unless we managed to find more pple to join.. But at least I have Tioman to look forward to.. Please dont let it be a talk-only plan coz I need to recharge..

TGIF

I just realized why I was that lucky yesterday..

TGIF

I got my license! YEAH!!!

YIPEE!!!! I PASS!!!! After six months of learning, I'm now able to sit behind the steering wheel and go where i like whenever i want! yeap. provided the car is available, which is practically impossible.

Went back to TP today.. coz it's CCN day! walked around biz, engine and design.. The usual booths selling drinks, candy floss, fondue, ice-cream, popcorn, brownies, muffins, manicure services, henna, and what not.. As usual, biz is the most happening place to be. lots of shouting, promoting, all those rah-rah.. lolx.. the good old times. i feel as young or even younger than those pple there today..

spent sometime walking around Engine school but couldnt find the new Saffron.. asked a couple of pple and they dunno either..like duh~

couldnt get my bro too.. so didnt get to see the NEW restaurant.. Saw Royston.. Btw, QY what course is Royston studying in TP???

it's amazing.. the place is still pretty much like what i rmbr it to be.. the same old banners.. posters all over for some voting thingy for union and of course promo ads for CCN.. lively bunch of pple so this trip back makes uni education seem so much more dull in contrast..

Alright.. time to drive tonight.. ^.^v

Page one

I edited the template to fit what i feel.

It's exactly what i think it is.
Everything reduced to a one liner.
Almost everything- since most of the important things in life is inexpressible anyway.

CAPS and exclamation marks becoming the tangibalisation tool!!!!! and paragraphs without full stops simply mean i'm too furious to even pause for a breather so i go on and on and rant and rave so as to deflate this inflated balloon of bad pent up emotions..

seriously, everything loses its impact when it is reduced to a one liner. but who cares?

Right now i need to feel good about myself so that i can perform tomorrow.
Cheers, to a better tomorrow and the best of luck to me.