omg! i hate waking up to the sound of construction noise. a neighbour of mine, about 2 doors down is doing renovation. and someone else in the neighbourhood too. now the neighbour’s renovation sucks more because that house is damn close to mine AND, i just realised, i live next door to the lift lobby so those workers are doing something there, prep work or something, so i’m hemmed in on both sides with drilling, hammering and shouting. not sure what’s worse – drilling or hammering.

and a motorcycle’s downstairs revving his engine. quit revving and just go.

when’s santa going to bring me a soundproof room?

Ok, since the last update such a long time ago… really REALLY long post.

1. carolling with church
didn’t join them at ttsh after all on the 19th. pity. was looking forward to that. but the day before, i caught a chill and was sneezing like heck so i figured it wasn’t too good for me to go down and be around germs and all that in a hospital so i had to give it a miss. looking at the pics though, it looked pretty good. quite pro.

20th was the marathon carolling thing. sang at geylang east home for the aged, after getting lost and almost not locating the place – apparently there were 2 homes that had that same name. as always when we carol at an old folks’ home, they’ll be there sitting and staring at us. should have sung jingle bells. everyone knows jingle bells and can appreciate and sing along. after that session, had time to kill so some people were cam whoring outside the home or hanging out at macdonalds gossiping about taylor lautner’s (?) impossible abs and how some scrawny guys in the choir want to work out and look like that.

by the way, not sure if I’ve already mentioned it but i watched New Moon on tudou the other day. yes, the picture quality sucked (what else would I expect?) but the film was marginally better than Twilight. i enjoyed the werewolves bit a lot. bella and jacob acted together very well, unlike she and a certain sparkly vampire. like the bro says, which self-respecting vampire *sparkles*??

no, wait, hang on. the geylang east home for aged thing was the week before, on the 13th. dang. i’m mixing up my dates. on the 20th, we started out from church then to a GRC christmas party at joo seng. yup, that’s what happened. we went there and sang one session at the beginning of the ‘party’. then there was a break in which me, the bro, daryl and marion went looking unsuccessfully for a void deck to sit and catch some snooze before our next session after lunch. we ended up sitting at a random bench along the covered walkway watching traffic. attempts to snooze were unsuccessful due to gossiping and talking. anyway, dr fatimah lateef was there. she’s the mp? i think. someone important in parliarment anyway.

there was a dude doing a magic act before we sang our second session. pretty interesting. did some tricks i hadn’t seen before. ok, he had to resort to using that song ‘witchdoctor’ in his finale act but i think, given a few years, he’d make quite a decent party magician. of course, it was the super hyper girls of the choir that were clapping and participating the most. those kids were just crazy. the smallest thing would set them off. really. teenage girls these days. i don’t recall being that rowdy ever when i was a teenage girl. then again, i wasn’t as hyper as them.

after the party we headed over to queenstown for another ‘party’ thing by beyond social services. this one was kids. we were all like, omg kids. these kids were the type that couldn’t sit still and it was kind of evident when we entered the function hall. pretty chaotic. anyway, i’m grateful to tessa for being good with the kids. we had to dress up the guys in christmas themed costumes – santa, snowman, christmas tree. my group, daryl, had to do santa but i think because it was mostly girls in the group, they started doing a fairy santa with that funny tail thing on the hat and wings. poor daryl was covered in masking tape and had a toilet paper ‘beard’ stuck onto his face and heavy newspaper wings taped to his tshirt that would have fallen of if he made any sudden movement. predictably, we didn’t win.

having survived the kids, it was quite quiet in the bus cos even the girls were worn out i think. marine parade was the last carolling stop. wasn’t too bad, as usual. the wind kept blowing my hair all over the place. ernie was there dressed as santarina and george managed to get santa to come down and take photos with the kids. i pity the poor ang moh dude dressed up as santa. he must’ve been boiling hot in that suit.

last stop of the day was dawn’s house for our annual christmas party. it was uneventful except for the zac and aloy twist to the ‘button you must wander’ game. my gag reflex really kicked in when they used chicken skin instead of a coin or button. talk about disgusting. i had to leave the game after one round or risk seeing my dinner again. yuck. things like this are why i don’t like orientation-type games. did the gift exchange thing. chelsea was my secret santa. aloy was being dumb, standing in for those who weren’t here. it was especially funny when he stood in for my bro cos my bro is the tallest guy in choir but aloy is the shortest.

2. carolling with mj

so that was the last carolling weekend with the church. meanwhile, rachel had contacted me to ask if i wanted to sing for the mj alumni’s carolling session on the 22nd. i initially said no, cos i couldn’t attend the practices but then she asked again a few days later and said they needed altos and the songs were all nus choir songs anyway. so i was like, ok, should be fun. i miss carolling with the choir anyway. so i went. i was the freaking oldest there – the only one from the 03/04 batch. not that it was a problem. people like harris, gerald, rachel and the nus folks were there so i knew people. sang at an office building at the expo area. there was a child care centre there and they brought the kids out to watch us sing. no surprise that jingle bells was a huge hit with the kids. they started dozing and fidgetting once we started the slow songs. gerald hit an earth shattering high note while attempting to sing the descant part in a song. well, he didn’t exactly hit it; more like screamed it out. i think he even shocked himself. but it was fun singing with them.

rachel asked all of us to say a few words at the debriefing after the performance. i introduced myself as being there when the choir and mj first began and was very amused to hear quite a few ‘omg, really?’ from the kids. yup, old enough to call them kids now. lol! but, it’s true what i said – that the mj choir is like my baby that’s all grown up now and i’m really proud of them. they’ve come a damn long way since i was in the choir. back then, we were happy winning silver at the genting competition. now they’re getting gold with honours and going for competition in europe. europe was just a dream for us back then. we didn’t even go into syf back then. haha! so that was a good feeling, carolling with them.

3. nus carolling

didn’t carol with NUS this year cos of work and the church choir’s carolling. but i promised i would go down to watch them. so on the 22nd, after singing with mj, i went home to slack for an afternoon then headed down to wisma atria to watch the carolling session. Daryl joined me. it was not bad although they had to compete with the mall music. was a bit annoyed by their ‘chreeestmas’ pronunciation but i shall not say too much about it. For all i know, i also do that.

went to watch them again at conrad on christmas day. that one was miles better. it was a small group, mostly juniors but they sounded fantastic. seriously. brought the family to go watch too and they thought it sounded like a cd, which i told gabriel. then again, the atmosphere at conrad was brilliant and the acoustics wonderful. the lobby was reverberating with sound. very very nice. i miss carolling with them. pity working nights makes that impossible. :p

4. EL gathering

Anyway, back to the 22nd again. after wisma atria, i rushed over to holland village to meet up with the EL folks. By the way, you can probably tell, like what i was complaining on twitter the other day, that my off days are much busier than my work days. it’s ridiculous. can’t wait for the holiday period to be over so I can have my off days to myself again and not have to rush all over the place to meet up with friends, to carol, to meet appointments etc. not that it wasn’t nice meeting up and all, it was just so rushed. Anyway, back to the point, met up with them for steamboat at the holland v branch of crystal jade. it wasn’t bad. not many of us were there but it was a loud noisy affair as usual. met vanessa on the bus on the way. well, rather, she met me cos i didn’t really see her on the bus. honest! i really did not see her, although she saw me and was wondering how long it would be until i noticed her. but to my defence, a) she had drastically changed her hairstyle, b) there was a family with 2 little kids sitting directly opposite me attracting my attention, c) i was too busy looking out to check where to alight cos I had never taken that bus before. so, she met me after we both alighted at the stop. apparently she’s working at the same company as me but in a different location. oh well.

dinner was not too bad. loved the xiao long bao. wish could have more but it’s such a sinful indulgence. it’s so sad that things that are so enjoyable are bad for you. like eating.

after dinner, went off to a pub for a drink. well, they did. i just sat around. was my first time in a place like that and it was an interesting experience. not much to say about it. just, you know, the usual after dinner, gathering talk cock session. took a cab back with wanni after.

5. midnight mass

and then came christmas eve. had to work on that day. told to report early. they had a little lunch thing going on in the office so that was nice. but had to work nevertheless. the stories about santa and all were pretty good to get me into the christmas mood. loved subbing that story about the AVA animals. the picture of that dog was just so adorable. Speaking of adorable, i came across this picture the other day on yahoo: enough said, I think. anyway, yeah. released early on christmas eve. there was quite a bit left over after lunch. my colleague S was pretty funny when she was clearing up. she sent round a message that went to the effect of: emergency! opened 2 boxes and found SATAY! yeah. basically, we did not realise there was satay until we were clearing up. and then later, she sent round another message to the effect of: you all come and ta pow what you want before i come round and force you. lol! so yeah, i went and packed some bee hoon and satay for dinner. wasn’t too bad.

on the way home, there was an incident at upper aljunied road that halted traffic for a damn long time. basically, upp aljunied rd is a very small 4 lane road that gets damn congested during peak hour. when i was there, i think a taxi did an illegal u-turn and knocked into a motorcycle. no one was injured, there wasn’t even broken windows or anything. but the problem was, the two drivers were busy taking pictures (for insurance proof i suppose) and together, the 2 vehicles were staddling across almost 3 lanes. can you imagine???! so i was in the bus and the bus was stalled there for damn long because the gap in the lane was big enough for cars but not big enough for a bus to go through. basically, there was only ONE effectively working lane at 6.30pm on the eve of a public holiday. damn angry. in the end the bus driver had to back off and go around through that one lane and that lane was oncoming traffic that consisted people who were rushing to get home for christmas and none too keen on being nice and giving way. :p

midnight mass was normal i guess. had carolling before mass. the three guys – josh, aloy and cliff – sang a freaking cool rendition of O Holy Night. it was LOVELY. pity they had to share one soloist mic between the three of them though. never mind. there’s always next year when we can bring in more mics. i did the narration bit for When A Child Is Born. that was funny cos during rehearsal, i screwed up the timing and couldn’t finish the last sentence on time. Think it went alright during the actual thing. first time doing that narration bit but it’s a really nice bit. mentally thanking cba for involving me in that audio play thing cos it made me think about how i was saying it, rather than just reciting monotonously like i probably would have done last year. oh, and we got away with singing Ding Dong Merrily On High during the pre-mass carolling session. khoo was funny when he was commenting at the announcements about us not singing ‘profane’ songs. wtf! name me a profane christmas carol. ‘jingle bells, batman smells, robin laid an egg…’ as if we would sing something like that. he would have gone better with saying ’secular’ songs. profane. LOL!!!!

gloria was killing, as usual. don’t know why. i haven’t yet sung a gloria that wasn’t killing. announced the communion hymn wrong. :p wonder what happened to those notebooks that i introduced and was using for the past year. can’t be that just because i’ve been gone for a month that everything has gone missing right??

6. nus choir gathering

moving on. not really keen to recap what happened on christmas day itself. went shopping, bought a bag, came home. mum had a family party. the kids were misbehaving. food was alright. a kulai cousin came over with his girlfriend and i was wearing that silly looking santa hat. :p haha! oh well.

26th, went shopping at the metro expo sale. bought a lot of crocs shoes cos they were relatively cheaper than at the crocs shop. almost 50% i reckon. finally got hold of those high-heeled crocs i’d been eyeing for such a long time. should’ve bought the black pair though. i need a pair of black heels. but as it is, i got a brown pair which adds up to a total of about (what?) 4 brown heels i have in my shoe rack at the moment. gosh.

rushed back to go to for the st stephen’s feast day mass. paul and val were doing the choir. been such a long time since i last sang with them. they got down a huge bunch of people from st theresa’s to sing with us too so it was a lovely big choir for once. archbishop must’ve been pleased. know khoo was. rushed off after mass to go to plaza singapura to meet up with jun and some other nus choir people (boyu, norma, xinrong, jiatian, chalala). it was great meeting them! haven’t seen them for such a long long time. my voice must really be going because i had only spoken one sentence and xinrong asked if i had a sore throat. which i didn’t really but i said i did anyway. easiest answer. he said my voice shouldn’t sound like that. :p damn.

we went to watch Alvin And The Chipmunks 2. wasn’t bad. quite worth it if you’re looking for mindless good quality entertainment. wasn’t too impressed with the Chipettes because i’ve heard that kind of singing before – on High School Musical. seriously. those HSM girls sing like chipmunks, i only just realised. theodore’s so cuuuuute! really wanted to squeeze him. poor fella, especially when he saw his brothers fighting and when he thought the eagle’s gonna come and eat them. adorable.

adjourned to TCC after the movie cos we bought a cake for Lala cos it’s her birthday the next day. unfortunately we couldn’t consume outside food on the premises so we sang her the birthday song. it was amusing cos a while before, we were being loud and boistrous, but suddenly when we were singing the birthday song, we were all at a p. almost whispering. funny! lala pretended to cut the cake then we put it back into the box for her to bring home. as usual, was the first to rush off home because i was the only one living in the east and couldn’t afford to take taxi again. ended up changing bus at happy gardens and catching the last bus home. first time i did something like that. was pretty cool experience. haha!

so, that’s it for bringing everyone up to date with what i’ve been up to. now for some miscellanous stuff:

7. others

subbed a story the other day that i seriously have to share. i was reading it and shaking my head over the way parents think these days. it’s a typical case of what my friend had for his msn nick a while back: nowadays, kids are dyslexic, ADHD, ADD etc. in our time, they were just stupid. so true. basically, that article was talking about how things like messy illegible handwriting could point to deeper problems like dyslexia, how low social skills could mean autism, talking about how kids get stressed out and need help to take care of their mental wellbeing etc. the most ridiculous thing i think was this (paraphrased): having a short attention span, especially to things that don’t interest them may be a sign of ADD. major WTF moment there for me. if i wasn’t in the office, i would’ve been shouting, ‘WHAT??!?!!!’ isn’t that a basic tenet of all kids? to not pay attention to things that don’t interest them? anyway, judging by that article, i was analysing myself and my bro. we’re both supposed to be have ADD. i’m supposed to be autistic and my bro’s supposed to be dyslexic. messy handwriting. lol. mum said my bro used to be able to write mirror writing, just like leonardo da vinci. he did it for quite a while in school until the teacher actually complained to my uncle to came to pick him one day. clearly dyslexic. haha!

kids got it easy these days. teachers are no longer allowed to touch the kid. i remember in my time the teacher hauled me to the front of the classroom by the collar, literally. oh the many times our books got flung out the door into the corridor outside, or the stand in the corner and pull your ears. not allowed to go to recess cos you don’t know your four times table. messy handwriting was merely a sign of sloppiness and it meant writing out ‘i must not have bad handwriting’ a thousand times or something. i know i got punished loads of times for bad handwriting and had to copy out pages and pages from the textbook as ‘handwriting practice’. if a teacher did this today, the parent’ll probably complain to MOE, the school, the principal, the newspapers and spark off a huge debate about teacher ethics in schools. when i was in school, they didn’t care about student well-being. you finish the damn homework or else. anyway, let’s not get worked up about this. i’ve done my time in the schools and i have expressed my outrage at that certain article. i suppose the reporter should be blamed for framing it in that angle.

started reading this book Violin by Anne Rice. it’s… different. there really isn’t a plot and it’s like the ramblings of a mad bereaved woman who’s probably on the brink of a mental breakdown. but it’s written very well, in typical Anne Rice style. very dark and poetic and elegaic, i think. it’s like poetry in prose. i just realised that Anne Rice’s writings are all so sad. there’s no element of real happiness or love or romance stuff in it. it’s very dark and sombre and sad. sometimes there are action sequences and all but in the end, it’s a lot about loss and regret. very different from the Christ the Lord series, i just realised. that one wasn’t sad. it was just… a story. i suppose there isn’t really anything much to twist in the retelling of such a famous tale already. but then again, it wasn’t all sunbeams and daisies either. there was an element of fear and uncertainty. is this why i like Anne Rice’s novels so much these days? that’s a bit worrisome i suppose, if i’m a therapist analysing for mental wellbeing.

ok, i think that’ll do for now before i ramble on into other random things i’ve seen/read/heard.

Previous Post

Reckon it’s time for a quick update. Not in the mood for anything really long but if I let it pile up, it’ll just pile up and never get told.

Anyway, since I last saw y’all in a proper update, I went carolling with the church. That went as normal. Not too bad, considering how long it’s been since I did any singing. Then after sunday’s carolling, rushed down to orchard with daryl to watch NTU choir’s carolling session. Again, wasn’t as bad as I expected. They didn’t sound bad, considering they were singing outdoors on a crowded street with only 2 solo mics.

Then on my next off day, which I can’t really remember when, overspent a little cos did some christmas shopping. Got the mother a bag. Quite pretty. Visited Sans bookstore and found David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible! Best find ever! I literally gasped in surprise when I saw it sitting there on the shelf. Got it immediately. For $13, it was a real find.

Read The Island of Doctor Moreau one night in between subbing articles. It was damn cool. Didn’t expect it, cos HG Wells and all. I thought it’d be boring but, lucky that night was a slow one for articles cos I couldn’t put it down. I just had to keep reading to find out what happened. Highly recommended novellette.

Been reading a lot on my iTouch these days. Stanza is my favourite app at the moment. Which is why I’m now seriously considering an ebook reader. I’ve got quite a few books on my iTouch now but no idea when I’ll get round to reading them. Haha! Same goes for physical books. Too many books, too little time.

Yesterday the bro’s birthday. We went shopping again. Wandered into a video store and saw Josh Groban’s Awake Live DVD selling at $9.90. OMG! So cheap! So, I got it immediately. Been wanting to watch it for a long time now. Watched it last night. Loved it. Wish I could’ve been there though. There wasn’t much banter but once it got into the groove of things, it was very enjoyable. I found myself wanting to applaud after each song, except I couldn’t cos the parents were hanging around.

Ok, that’s all, I suppose, without going into the extreme Scrooge-ness that I feel today. I always get this way around festivals and birthdays and other ’special’ days. What is the damn point other than to create inconvenience and annoyance for all around? You know there’s this urban legend that casualties go up in a hospital over the festive periods from (a) people who are lonely and depressed; and (b) people who get too much of family exposure. I think I fall into category (b). Don’t be surprised if one day I snap and (metaphorically) start shooting someone.

Whatever. Work later. At least I can get out of the house for a few hours.

While I’m in a materialistic mood, let me post my wishlist:

1. books

- Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim – by Anne Rice

- The Graveyard Book – by Neil Gaiman

- Torchwood: The Twilight Steets – by Gary Russell

- Lord of the Rings trilogy – by JRR Tolkein (3 in 1 paperback)

2. cds

- A New Journey – Celtic Woman

- Rent: Motion Picture Soundtrack

- Hairspray: Motion Picture Soundtrack

- Any cd by Libera

3. gadgets

- 32GB (or higher) iPhone

- eBook reader (must look good and able to read pdf)

- 1TB external hard drive

4. apparel/others

- simple but practical tshirts

- comfortable shoes with heels

- a bag that’s pretty and big enough to keep a jacket, lunchbox, 500ml water bottle & a novel

- hillcrest (?) memory foam pillow: last seen at John Little, Jurong Point.

- violin (instrument for beginners)

5. non-buy-able things

- a life

- a less annoying family

- more time to sleep and slack

- money

- a holiday

- a boyfriend

Alrighty. Think that’s all I have in mind at the moment. I have no idea what to get people for christmas and it’s only a week away. Sigh. I tell my mum to just pick what she things all the relatives would like and I’ll pay. But not so easy in the case of friends and all. Hate shopping. Seriously. I observed that the summer vacations are much more leisurely and free than christmas ones. I won’t go so far as to say Christmas sucks, but… bah, humbug!

Ok, do you ever have this problem that you’re bursting with things to say but when you get the chance to say it, suddenly you find there’s nothing to say? or you forget what you meant to? Yeah, well, that’s it with me now. The last few days I’ve been wanting to talk about my days but now that I’m actually getting round to doing it, I kinda forget. Hopefully it’ll come back to me as I go along.

Work’s been coming along fine. It’ll be one month on the 16th. WOW!!! So FAST!! I think I’m doing alright. Yesterday sucked cos I was sooooo sleepy I kept letting a lot of silly careless mistakes slip through. Worse still, I was putting in new mistakes of my own into the story. Bad me. Bad me. Yeah, well, yesterday and the day before were sucky work days cos I had to handle some paperwork from my training programme and I didn’t quite know how, so I was running up and down from the desk to HR dept cos I kept submitting the form then they kept calling to say I did it wrong. Added to a lot of my kancheong-ness on the previous day. Felt very unsettled when I decided to screw it and keep the paperwork till next day. But my night was made when I took the night transport back and saw that guy who reminded me of Urs from Il Divo. It’s just the hair. I only had a quick glance at his face. But he was on the same bus as me that night. Noticed him when he alighted. Omg! First time I saw someone in real life and thought “such a hot dude!” So that really made my night. Eye candy. Hehe! No eye candy in the office though. Sigh. This guy isn’t in my dept.

Anyway, then the next day, submitted my paperwork again and they didn’t get back to me so I assume it’s ok. I wanted to apply for leave cos everyone is saying I need to do it before the end of December. Don’t know why. But then I couldn’t get into the system!!! Dammit. Anyway, checked with our dept admin person today (cos she was off yesterday) and she said she’d talk to HR for me. Hope it gets resolved soon. Well, like I said, yesterday I was so darn sleepy (result of having slept at 4am the previous night doing god knows what), so many mistakes slipped through. Felt bad. Lucky the checker was my mentor and not one of the other fiercer people. I mean, I let really simple mistakes through, like ITE=Institute of Technical Education, I let through Institutes. made me feel a little bit better when I discovered that the guy checking that story also let it slip and it took at 3rd person to notice. Hehe!

Apparently there was supposed to be a new guy coming in a week after me. But until now, he still hasn’t shown up. One of the guys in the dept came over and asked me if I ‘did him in’ or something like that. You know what I mean? So I said, well, not that I know. Maybe he got scared away or something. Wouldn’t be surprised. The other day, one of my other colleagues, one I’m friendlier with and had talked about my contract with, came over and informed me, with an abjectly horrified tone and expression, that I’m being exploited. I get paid peanuts, no bonus, terrible consequences should I choose to break contract. I told her, yeah I know. Oh well, I don’t really mind. I mean, yeah, I’d love to get paid more but I kind of like this job. I like the work that I can do and handle and I really really really love that once the day’s work is done, I can go home and not think about work until reporting the next day.

So yeah, today was a much better day. I decided that I was going to cut down on mistakes and I did. Not 100% no mistakes of course, but at least not so many silly mistakes. I did mix up ‘masseuse’ and ‘masseur’ and I put the apostrophe in Speakers’ Corner wrong. But overall, I’m satisfied with my work today. I think I earned my salary today.

Moving on to other news. Tech stuff. Google Chrome is in beta for Mac and I’m using it now. Seems alright. Not so laggy as Firefox is for me. I like firefox, I really do but maybe it’s my comp or something but it keeps hanging, especially when I try to play videos. Even youtube videos. It’ll just freeze for a couple of seconds or more. Annoying. And then, I think I’ll cave and get myself an iPhone. Of course, I’m very open to being talked out of it right now. Hehe! Starhub and M1 are selling the phones now so Singtel’s monopoly is broken. VERY good news for consumers cos now Singtel is offering a much nicer plan now, I think. Probably for Christmas. The parents still owe me a birthday present, which I’m sure they will remind me of. So. I think I know what I want for Christmas. The question then will be – what to do with my iTouch? I love my iTouch. I’m not about to abandon it after only half a year of use. Bit sad for my bro if he has to take over it. He keeps inheriting my cast off tech stuff. Poor guy.

Saw Sumi off the other day. She’s off to India for her Service Learning Project thing. I enjoy going to the airport. It always brings good memories and feelings. Reminds me of holidays. Even that day when it wasn’t me that’s going off, I still felt that delicious feeling of anticipation, like I’m gonna board a plane and fly off somewhere. Been planning a holiday for next year. Of course, in the end the parents dropped by some travel agencies and picked up a bunch of brochures and we picked one trip from there, wasting the hours I spent in thinking about a trip of our own. But, excited about it! Now to save money and hopefully I can take leave and then we’ll fly! Just realised that for the last 4 years, every time I’ve gone on ‘holiday’, a competition was involved. Yup. All my trips in the last 4 years revolved around the choir. Not complaining. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have ever had that wonderful experience 2 years ago in Europe. Despite the one down side, that was definitely the bestest trip I had ever gone on. And yes, I want to go back to St Petersburg one day.

Was talking to the bro the other day cos we were talking about whether we wanted to detour into Paris on our trip. Was saying that although I kind of like London, Paris has a certain charm to it. A bit of a wild side. I’ve said so before, the two cities are similar. But, to expand a metaphor I’ve used before, Paris is like London that’s been shaken up and then put down. There’s something vibrant and exciting about Paris that stuffy, staid London doesn’t seem to have. This is all in my humble opinion, of course. All those things they say about Paris and all the glamour, thrills. I realise that it’s kind of true. London is tame. Paris is wild. I miss those two cities very much.

Got round to watching “Le Pharmacien de Garde”. Omg, I have to say it again: Vincent Perez rocks! Of course, he ended up dead AGAIN. The movie was pretty interesting. A pharmacist Yan Lazarrec (Vincent Perez) goes on an ecological crusade, killing off people whom he thinks are harming the world. For eg, he kills the CEO (?) of a cigarette making company by force ’smoking’ him dozens of cigarettes fitted into a mask. And he killed some oil magnate by drowning him after his company caused an oil spill that killed dozens of animals. The scary one was when he killed the owner of a cosmetics company who used animals to test. *shudder* Hard to describe how he did it. But let’s say retribution and karma caught up with these people. Anyway, so that’s the ‘bad guy’. On the other side is the good cop Francois who’s also an ecologist but not so radical. He finds himself on the case of this psycho killer but unknowingly, he meets Yan at an ecology seminar and becomes friends. You know. Eventually he discovers his friend is behind all these. Don’t know what he thinks. It’s kind of ambiguous. I think Francois gets what Yan’s doing – trying to save the world and all – but I think he’s struggling against his police training and his innate belief that murder is wrong, even if for the ‘right’ reasons. It’s he who kills Yan in the end but it’s more of a mercy killing. Such a poignant scene when Yan begs Francois to protect him and not let them capture him and strap him up to machines to analyse him. It’s one of those movies when you feel sorry for the murderer, even though you know he’s done vicious and terrible things and that he doesn’t repent of it at all. Pretty well made film.

Talking about well made, let’s go to the other side of the spectrum. Well, not quite the other side. I found this mini-series called “Tin Man” while I was channel surfing the other day. Found the full series online and watched it. It’s basically an alternate Wizard of Oz thingy. So much so that I began cringing and was a more than a bit turned off. It’s a fantasy adventure thing set in the O.Z. (Outer Zone) with the evil Queen somebody (can’t remember her name) and nice innocent protagonist D.G. (they don’t explicitly say it in the show but don’t think we don’t know who they mean). Anyway, DG ends up in the OZ when she meets Glitch (guy with his brain removed), Wyatt Cain (aka Tin Man), and Raw (fur covered creature). Doesn’t all those characters ring a bell?? And the first episode I watched, they go on a mission to the Central City by going along the Old Road to go and see the Mystic Man who lives in the city. Ringing any more bells? Talk about the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Omg. This show’s like the Wizard of Oz meets…. I don’t know, The Crow or Mirrormask. It’s a darker and more dangerous Oz with no singing little munchkins. The little midgets catch you, interrogate you and suspend you in cages high above the ground. The ‘good witch’ is the mother of the current evil sorceress and gets imprisoned in a really cool looking prison. A little world of its own under a bronze dome. Not sure if I’m going to continue watching it. I much prefer the original movie. And I think the Tin Man fella… well, I can’t help comparing him to Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn. Now that’s one mysterious tortured soul who’s acting like a real guide. This Tin Man portrayal, well, he’s Han Solo without his endearing cynicism and sarcasm. This dude’s just cranky. Don’t like him. There’ll probably be a huge reveal in the end that’s uber cheesy. His family’s not been killed or something and he’ll break down in tears and confess that he’s DG’s secret father or something. One of those potential “Luke, I am your father” twist moments. Not with him and DG, but you get my meaning. It’s coming. I can sense it.

Yup. Ok, I think that’s all I have to talk about at the moment. Tomorrow is late offstone but it means a late report to work which means I can sleep a while longer. Yay!

By the way, changed blog skin cos I activated the snowing feature. Easier to see snow on a dark background than on a white one.

Forgot to mention some stuff in yesterday’s blog.

Was reading Anne of the Island and there was a real ‘kid’s say the darnest things’ moment in it. This seven year old kid Davy was complaining about Marilla’s ’stinginess’ (Anne says economical) way with jam. Then he says he can’t wait to get to heaven because there’s lots of jam in heaven. Anne asks where he heard that from. Davy says he heard it in church because “God makes preserves and redeems us”. LOL!!!!!! Reminds me of the Toy Ota example Maddelena gave us.

Review for New Moon came out in the paper today. The reviewer gave it 1.5 stars out of 5. The review sounds terrible. Apparently Bella’s still a terrible actor. They’re really glad Edward doesn’t have much time in it and they think the whole characterisation was wrong. The characters were supposedly far too unrealistic. Bella doesn’t sit around moping for months. Not even in the books. She tries to act normal. They were saying, any normal parent would yell at her to pull herself together, quit moping and go do her homework. I really have doubts about whether I want to pay $8 to go watch it. Probably won’t. I’ll wait for Eclipse. I might watch it as a guilty pleasure like how I have Twilight for those mindless moments. I don’t know. There’s just something about this Twilight series that’s been disastrous since the first movie. I think it’s just poor casting and then bad script writing and too much attempt to sex-ify it. Know what I mean?

I counted the number of articles I subbed that appeared in the papers. 6. I always worry I’m doing too little. Oh well.

Looking forward to the weekend. Well, Sunday. I get 3 days off! Yay!! There’ll be friends and NUS choir! Happy happy. And I can catch up on sleep! Haha! And there’s the Copenhagen climate change conference. Looking forward to see what’s going to be happening with that. Pity I’m not going to be in the newsroom when that happens but I can read about it online and in the papers.

Blogging this time cos if I tweet it’ll probably flood Twitter.

So, yesterday, I was tweeting and saying that I hoped something interesting would happen at work. Then I forgot I said that and went to work. And it happened. They call it Chardonnay Night. As my colleague Raul says: it’s a night for bad wine and free food. They announced the X of the month awards. Then one of the reporters was retiring so they had a little video presentation for him and gifts. And food. Haha! I thought we’d all be super busy cos we were all pulled away from our desks for quite a while for this thing but then, 12.30am came round and I was told to go home. So, as suspicious as I was, I’m not going to turn down a go home early instruction. Hee! So that’s the interesting things that happened at work.

Did my first few times of contacting the reporter/front desk to check up on stuff. You know me, I freak out when I have to talk on the phone. Messaging is the best invention ever. Anyway, I did it once. Messaged the next few times but it felt really cool. I felt like I earned my salary, kind of. I didn’t let the mistakes slip through. Of course, I did let a bunch of other mistakes slip through, like one article I feel horrible about cos the spelling of Maguindanao was all over the place and I didn’t notice several times. Lucky the checker spotted it and pointed it out to me. I still overreact a little when my mistakes get pointed out but I felt not too bad today after one of the checkers said that my copies are all relatively clean. My biggest problem now, I think are headlines and captions. Hate writing those. They suck. Especially headlines for financial stories. :p

Finally got round to buying a new pair of shoes for work. They’re open toe and sandal-ly but heeled. The heels are SO not high but mum was asking why I wearing so high for. I was like, please lah, you can see my other shoes that are way higher. Anyway, I’m convinced by now that there is the possibility that my shoes were wrongly labelled for size. As in, my left shoe feels tighter than my right shoe. Don’t tell me my feet are different sizes. But anyway, the shoes are not too bad. They were cutting my toes quite a bit yesterday but it got better today. Still cut but cut less. Feels a bit funny when I walk cos the straps are elastic and they stretch when my feet move. At least they don’t give me heel blisters.

Celebrated Ah Ma’s birthday on Sunday cos that’s the only day everyone’s free. It rained like the end of the world when I went to meet the bro at church to go with him to the hotel for the lunch. Seriously. That kind of rain just sucks. And it was flooded. Kind of. It was fine for the bro cos he was wearing jeans, sneakers and had a windbreaker jacket. I was wearing open toe heels and a knee length dress. So guess who got drenched. In the end we hailed a taxi. The lunch wasn’t too bad. Western pasta-ish buffet. Took photos. This is my favourite:
Candid shot. No idea who took the pic. I look fat. But look at the rest of them. It’s all exactly like their characters I think. All the 5 cousins. Caught the little boy in a rare smile. Oh well.

Been reading the Anne of Green Gables series on my iTouch downloaded from Project Gutenberg. Very interesting stories. Wish I could’ve read them when I was younger. Funny too. Just now I was reading in between subbing stories and I couldn’t help smiling. If I was at home or alone, I would’ve laughed. Oh the things they do and say. Haha! I’ll never be able to write so nice and simply. Sigh. Anyway, Wanni tweeted that she’s going to get herself an ebook reader. I’d been thinking about something like that for a while now, ever since I heard of the Kindle. Unfortunately they don’t sell it over here. Anyway, I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve got a perfectly good reader on my iTouch and I don’t need a new one, no matter how useful it is or how sexy it looks. This one is tempting though:
Excuse me while I drool over it. But no. I don’t need an ebook reader. (repeat that 10x to self)

Moving on. I saw THIS ARTICLE on yahoo news today and I just HAD to share it. You know all those things about California banning gay marriages? Their excuse was to protect the sanctity of the traditional (heterosexual) marriage and family unit. Well, this guy, John Marcotte, saw that and thought, hey, let’s take this a step further. If Californians really want to protect the family and the sacredness of marriage, then let’s ban divorce. After all, it’s all in the name of protection traditional family values, isn’t it? The article says that about 50% of marriages in the US end in divorce. How’s that for ‘the sanctity of marriage’? He’s got up a petition and all to get signatures to try to get a Constitutional Amendment to make divorce illegal.

Personally, I think it’s a ridiculous idea in and of itself. But if he’s trying to make a point about the whole gay marriage thing then yes, i think it’s a good idea. Call them out on their hypocrisy in breaking the sacred contract of marriage in divorce but yet turning round and condemning homosexuals who want to commit themselves to their partners. It’ll probably never work – banning divorce. The problem here is that people are too engrained in their old ways of thinking that they can’t see the ridiculousness of it all. Hopefully, this kind of thing can make people relook at how they treat issues and can change their way of thinking. Although, I think most likely, it’ll just be another issue that gets embarrassing for a while then gets swept under the carpet. Personally I hope it’ll open up new discussions about the gay marriage thing. I don’t see anything wrong in that. Weird maybe, but that’s just because I’m not used to it. But I don’t see it as wrong.

Anyway, what do you folks think about the article? I want to know.

 

In desperate need to bitch at the moment. Skip this post if you don’t want to read bitching.

Did not have a very good day. First was discovering that mum’s been assigned to doing the afternoon session at school next year. I’m upset about that because one of the things I like about my job is that the hours clash. If you’ve been following me lately, you’ll know that I really can’t stand being around my parents that long. Especially my mother. I feel stifled. I don’t like that she tries to control everything I do. I’m not three years old anymore. So anyway, I thought that yay, I’m doing night hours, she’s doing morning hours, we see each other on weekends and days off. I can do my own thing during the day, which include waking up at what time I like without her nagging that everyone else wakes up at 8am every day. Oh and extend that point to include going to sleep when I like so she won’t nag about how 1am is so damn late. Then I can eat what I like when I like. She keeps griping about my weight which I frankly HATE. I thought parents are supposed to be supportive or something, not constantly disparaging and putting me down. And, like I said, I can do my own thing, which includes playing the piano (when I play when she’s at home, she tells me to stop making such a racket. But I can’t help making a racket if I don’t practice), using the threadmill (when I do it when she’s at home, she throws in all the snide remarks about fat). By the way, I can’t stand it when she talks about herself being fat. She’s so not fat lor!! What’s the point of belittling me? It’s not like I’m grossly overweight or anything. The more she nags, the more I don’t want to do it so it’s best she leaves me well alone in this regard. Anyway, yeah. Point is, I am upset that now it looks as though I’m stuck under my mum’s control yet again. I know it’s all the ‘parents love you and want the best for you’ shit but I really don’t care less. Just leave me the hell alone. If you want to be overly concerned, be concerned where it matters, like when I fell sick this weekend. Don’t blame me when I fall sick. Everyone falls sick now and then. It’s not my fault. She does that, you know. Everytime I fall sick she’s all: who ask you don’t sleep earlier/eat meat/so fat. And she doesn’t see that it’s hurting my feelings and just scolds when I close up. Whatever. I’m stuck with this for another year now. Probably the rest of my life. You know, she always wonders why I’m like this, so closed up and anti social and lacking confidence/social skills. Basically it’s all her fault. Growing up, I was never let to do anything. Even now. I am not prepared for the future because I’ve never had exposure to things outside of this little circle of society. Overprotectiveness during childhood has screwed up my adult life I’m sure. Whatever.

Anyway, that was the first disappointment of the day. Then I went off to work. Missed the bus when I went down and had to wait for almost 20 minutes for the next one. Now, when I allot 40 minutes for travel, losing 20 minutes to wait for a bus is NOT a good thing. Then anyway the bus finally came and went off. I had to change another bus at a bus stop about 1o minutes so I alighted. Had to wait for another, what, 10 minutes for the next bus? So, if you count the time, by the time I boarded the next bus, 40 minutes had already passed. And I was already late. So anyway, was 15 minutes late when I appeared at the office. No one noticed.

Got told off for a headline. Well, it’s not really telling off, they expect me to make mistakes and all but I personally can’t stand making mistakes. It’s just me. I take mistakes personally. So anyway, it was feedback but I took it as a mistake. So, told off for a headline. Then one of the supes pulled me into the cubicle office and talked about subbing sensitive stories. I wondered which story I did wrong now. (I didn’t do any wrong at that point. It was just feedback/warnings.) Went off to do my work. Only nice point of the day: I was captioning 2 pictures and someone (I didn’t catch the guy’s face! He ran off so fast) came over to my desk and said he printed out the 2 pictures for me so it’ll be easier than referring back and forth between the 2 comp programmes. Oh, before that, there was a meeting for discussing some retreat topic thing. I could contribute nothing because I had no idea what was going on. Still very blur about the organisational structure and workflow procedures here. So was a bit discouraged there.

Joined a couple of them for dinner, which I couldn’t contribute anything much to the conversation either because I really don’t know what to say. But it was an improvement over my solitary dinner yesterday. (By the way, I’m writing this at like 1am but I’m treating it like it’s Thurs, Nov 26 so yesterday refers to Wed, Nov 25.) Heard that a new sub is coming in, someone in the same position as me. They were joking that now I’m gonna have competition for staying in the company after the year contract is up. I was smiling along with them but inside, I’m all oh no!

Then back to work. Subbed a story then sent it out to the checker. The checker came back to me and I got told off/feedbacked again that I made some major errors which she caught because she was purposely going through my copy with a fine toothed comb. Sad. Felt like I’m being scolded. The other checker that came over was a bit nicer. He really did sound like feedback and not telling off. There’s a fine line in this business.

Anyway, then it was almost the end of the night and, as I’ve noticed the past few nights, it started to get busier around the office. But I had no idea what it was they were all doing. And there’s no opportunity to ask because they’re all rushing against the clock deadline. Today’s bustle seemed worse. Not sure what’s going on, if I should have to be doing that or what. Going to ask my mentor tomorrow.

Yeah. Basically… I guess that’s that. Came home and got scolding for not messaging when I was on the way home. Why the hell do I need to do that? I don’t want to have to report my every move. Like I said, I’m not three any more. Other people stay out till all hours. I never have, know why? Because the parents would give me black face for days. Ok, time to stop right there before I make myself upset again. Still upset now but not as bad as when I was writing the 2nd paragraph.

Anyway, this is a very lonely job. It suits me cos I’m a loner but it’s a very lonely job. You’re literally stuck at the desk with you and the story and that’s it. There’s no opportunity to make friends on the job. Everyone’s really busy because we have a deadline to meet every day. Of course, the good thing is that once we’re out of the office we’re totally free and don’t need to think about work at all. Anyway, bad thing is, there’s no chance to get to know people. I know it would be possible for me to spend my one year there and still not know everyone’s name. Well, maybe not that drastic – still not have spoken to everyone beyond hello. It is very very possible. That’s how loner this place is. Like I said, it suits me but it gets weird when we’re outside the office and standing around together. It feels like strangers. Oh well. I’ve only been here a week. Is this kind of thing normal? I don’t know.

Ok. That’s all I need to bitch about. Of course I could bitch about a lot of other things but for tonight, this is all I need to bitch about. Going to go see if I can pull up any Vincent Perez clips from Youtube to soothe my jagged nerves.

Just a quick update this time.

Started work liao. They seem nice. The work seems ok but I’m not sure because I spent most of last week isolated in systems training. Got into the newsroom on Friday which is apparently the worse night of the week cos everyone is so busy. So sat around and watched. There was a shuttle bus after work that took me home so that was really really nice. The driver drive like F1 driver. Zooming around like… well, F1 driver. Haha! Was off for the weekend and yesterday. Lucky me. Starting again later in the afternoon. Got to remember!! Omg. The thing about starting in the afternoon, now in the morning, I feel like I’m still holiday. :p Not yet completely in the work mode. Dammit.

Another good thing about having 3 days off in a row is cos I was feeling kind of sick since Sunday. Well, Saturday I felt a sore throat coming but I ignored it, dosing on the Longjing tea to treat dehydration from not drinking enough water during the week. Sunday my throat completely gave out. Began coughing like crazy once I got home. Dosed on water. Monday it got worse. Dosed on more water. Was running to pee every 15 minutes or so. Felt terrible. Like going to have fever but temperature was fine. :p Couldn’t sleep last night, had a headache coming on. Tossed around in bed from 11pm to 3am before I gave in a took Panadol. After that, out like a light. Today, I feel better though my throat is still sore and I’m coughing up disgusting green stuff. Going to bring in a box of tissues to work later cos I think I’ll need it. My nose is still running a little. Shucks.

Met up with DJ and Andrew on Wednesday for dinner. (Btw, just in case there’s confusion, this Andrew is not my brother Andrew. When I’m referring to my brother, I say ‘the bro’ or something like that.) It was nice even though I was only included cos the two guys didn’t want it to be just 2 guys staring at each other over a meal. They thought it would be strange. Had Pepper Lunch. Wasn’t too bad. Saw Sabrina there. Quite enjoyable hanging out with those 2, even though I’m technically not that close to them. Then Thursday, met up with Poh Lin and the girls. Gosh! How many million years since I’ve seen Poh Lin? Went to Tampines and had Ajisen Ramen and talked, catching up with each other’s lives. Thought I saw Laura on the bus on the way there but I’m not quite sure and I wasn’t in a sociable mood so I didn’t say hello. Anyway, nice to have met up with them. Now that work’s started, no more going out at night for me. :p

Watched ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’ on TV on Sunday. It was the Hollywood version. My verdict: the BBC one is miles better. Well, story-wise anyway. I was bitching about it on Twitter while I watched. The Hollywood version is definitely prettier and more stylised but the essence of the story doesn’t seem to be there. It seemed to be just entertainment purpose and did not capture the charm that is LWW. Tilda Swinton as the White Witch was really great. Aslan… well, I can’t believe I’m saying this but the puppet animatronic Aslan that the BBC made is SO much better than the CGI one Hollywood used. It just seemed to have more presence. It seemed more real, more royal and majestic. Yeah. This outtake from the BBC LWW makes me laugh a lot but you can see how cool the Aslan robot is:

Take a look at this one, 1:49-2:04.

In other news, I have finished my Nanowrimo. Woot! I crawled over the finishing line with 50,096 words. I actually began a new segment of my previous vampire story for this and now it’s all finished. Caput. The End. Now all that remains is to edit. Though I think I’m going to find it very problematic doing editing for myself because when I write, I tend to telescope everything into each other. It’s hard for me to make cuts to my own story. And well, with the actual complete story being at 129,960 words in 163 pages, I feel intimidated just thinking about it. Haha! Best thing I’ve ever written? I don’t know. It would definitely be among one of the top few I think.

Ok, I suppose that’s all I have for now. Thinking of doing some brisk walking exercise in a while. Lazy but I feel like. Of course, if I keel over and die because I’m not completely well, then you know why and I leave all my stuff to my family with the exception of my Clay Aiken materials which I leave to Aurry and Footloose and the WMS board. Hee!

ETA
Ok. I’m back again. Stil alive. Haha! Forgot to add, Sunday I heard a line during one of the readings (forgot which one, think the Second Reading) and it reminded me of this song a lot. Was listening to it over and over and over. Wonderful power song. Think I’ve probably posted it before, but it’s so good, I’m posting it again:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vDR-reWqy00

Ok, let me start with my weekend first then move on to the juicy news. The bro came back midweek last week but he was sick. Pity. Wanted to watch Narnia with him but had to keep away just in case. Friday, Sumi came over and we baked cookies and cake for class gathering (which I will talk about later). Well, sorta baked. Used the pre mix stuff but it was fun. We then had a nice chat about books, mainly the Vampire Chronicles, trying to see if it had literary merit. Something like that. I quite enjoyed it.

Saturday morning, had sectionals with the church choir. 50% of the girls showed up. Unfortunately, it was, imho, the wrong 50%. ie, the ones who really needed the sectionals weren’t there. :p Anyway, worked with Tessa and Marion. It was fun scaring the neighbours with our siren warm up. Haha! Hope it helped though. It’s been a while since I had voice training and I might not have remembered everything I needed. But things went kinda well, I think.

Saturday evening, Claressa had organised 03A101 gathering at her place. I packed up the cake – saw the guest list and decided we didn’t need to bring the cookies. Went up to Yio Chu Kang, walked out of the MRT and was face to face with Naresh. Omg! I was not exactly prepared to just bump into him like that. :p He looked like he had lost weight. He also looked shorter. Strangely. Made cordial chit chat then Cla found us and Wei Hao and Mohan too. Haha! Been such a long time since I had seen Mohan. I don’t even remember ever talking to him back in JC. Anyway, only a small handful of us turned up in the end. But it was fun talking about the JC days, reminiscing about the teachers we terrorised and teachers who terrorised us. Gossip and talk and laughter. We all went into so many different fields, it’s amazing that we had the same roots. The most unlikely people took on the most unlikely things. But it felt good to meet up. Was sad that I had to leave early.

Sunday church as usual. The new girls were around so there was so many more people in the choir than usual. I had to move and sit somewhere else cos there just wasn’t space on the pew. Good thing. The bro didn’t sing with us but he said we all sounded so sleepy and tired. I’m not arguing about that. It’s true. Fr K talked about the movie 2012 in his homily (cos the theme of the gospels that day was ‘end of the world’) but he was so monotonously droning that it was damn hard to keep focus. Eventually began to zone out. One day, I would really like to sit in on his Malayalam mass and see how he does in it – if it’s just the language barrier that stops him from being the wonderful preacher I had the impression he was.

Afternoon, rushed to finish reading “The Historian” cos the library sent me a reminder that it’s due in 3 days. Well, 2, after today. Was a bit of a disappointing end. They should’ve left Dracula alive at the end. Would have heightened the mystique of the thing. Made it a bit more exciting to think that a new generation of historians could one day receive one of those dragon books and continue the epic quest. Instead of having Helen and Master James magically appear where you least expect and shoot Dracula through the heart with a silver bullet. WTF.

And then there’s today. Started work today. Well, not quite work. More like training. I think my unofficial first day at work will be Friday when I actually report to my department. Now’s the training stage. It wasn’t too bad. 3 others besides me but none destined to go where I’m going so technically, I’m really the newbie. The rest were more or less temps. I’m more or less permanent. Kind of. Nothing really exciting happened till the end of the day. The trainer ended class at 4pm, dismissed early. The rest of them went home except me cos I had induction appointments with other people. Said people were not available until like 5pm. So sat around and waited. Went up to the first appointment who told me about the company history and the direction he’s trying to take things towards. That took damn long. I mean, it was probably good information but it was just damn long. The guy reminded me a bit of Jeffrey. Not quite in a good way, sorry. He’s legally blind. I wasn’t sure if he was for real or joking until the end when he held out his hand to shake and there was this really awkward moment when I realised that he really couldn’t see my hand. Bit unnerving. Seems a nice guy though. He was all: “I don’t know you but I have the feeling you’re going to do really well with us cos you’ve got a degree in English Language. Most of them don’t have that kind of training.” I was all, *smile sheepishly*. Made me feel like I should run home and dig up all my syntax notes and mug. But one thing he said that made me feel a bit more relieved is that, even if I don’t catch the mistakes, it’s not my mistake. People miss things. It’s ultimately the fault of whoever wrote that article. Okay.

Next unnerving bit was when I had to do induction with 2 desks in the newsroom. First one was weird. The guy just rattled off a sentence and said that’s it. That’s all I needed to know from him. I was like, okaaay… if you say so. Second one was unnerving. An ang moh guy who took me through the system that he worked with. Not sure how I would need to know but I was supposed to be inducted so… Anyway, that guy was unnerving cos he had this really inscrutable expression. At first I thought he was pissed off or annoyed that I’m disturbing him. So I was about to go then he offered to show me round the newsroom. That gesture of friendliness seriously clashed with my first impression. Yeah, that probably unnerved me the most – not knowing if he’s annoyed or if he’s trying to be friendly or what. You know? Cos you’d take your cue from other people’s expressions. He gave a hint of a smile at the end when I was asking him about the work hours. Cos the whole place seemed pretty empty. Was empty during the day. Was still empty when I was walking around. On hindsight, they might have been at dinner. But yeah, his lips kind of curled upwards in a sort of smile at the end. Weird. On the other hand, the ordinary people (not head of whatever division) seemed quite friendly.

So that was the first day. Expect it’ll be the same tomorrow. Like I said, the real work doesn’t really start til Friday when I report to the desk. Fingers crossed till then.

In the meantime, let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been with me through this job search process, especially DJ, even though he doesn’t read this blog (I think). Thanks to all who have hoped, dreamed, wished, discussed, talked, supported, joked, prayed, bitched with me since May. I am finally, officially, employed. Yay.