Oh dear...it's been too long since I last wrote in here.

Work has been bountiful thus making life HELLish!!!!!

Some of my recent sentiments, thoughts and encounters include:
- wondering how some people got past comprehension answering questions the way they do, giving you the 'how' when you want to know 'what'
- 這份工真的不是人做的。原來人情味和人（仁）道是兩回事。原來真有些人無法區分‘人’跟‘神’的差異。
- 那一天，我忽然覺得被剝削得好極端。覺得超級無敵overworked and underpaid. I should be paid 4 times MORE for shouldering so many people's work...HMPH! If thoughts along this line have ever crossed my mind, they have never come this deep nor made me so crossed my heart, soul, mind and body taste the pain of cruxification.
- enjoyed watching colleague appear so very lost and panicky
- disses her shameless reliance on an outsider, totally!!!
- am glad that for once I'm not obliged to help
- hopes that after this morning's experience, colleague realises her inadequacy, how dependant she is upon me, the extent to which she takes me and all my fugging assistance for granted, still thinking she's the world.
- harbours very little hope that things will change, judging from her nonchalance and unwillingness to learn it for herself
- plotting to play her out and leave her in the lurch one of these days just so she would cry and I would laugh
- absolutely can't stand it: DAMN!!!
- things will revert to how they used to be i.e. nothing's gonna change.
- last Sunday, breakfast was an issue. This Sunday, it won't be. It's not that anybody has learnt anything from last week's experience and the many others before that. There's just gonna be a break in routine. Come next week (Sunday of 19 July), I prophesise a repeat of last week's incident. To the heart and brain that cease to function, this is the broken heart and brain (which will continue to function till cessation of life/existence) speaking.
- the 2-liner below:
B: PIE got Balestier exit meh?
A: I'm THE GPS.

the power of total mobility is such that we go from orchard to changi just so we can surf the internet.Only people who can shit at home but not in public toilets can understand this.

When you are away, I fend for myself.

When you are here, I still fend for myself.

Denial is futile.

Some of us are doomed from start to lack spatial recognition skills till our time ends.

2 pairs of shoes.

2 italian films down, 2-3 more to go.

2 hungry people walked into Ryoichi and came out angry.

In French and Italian.

It probably was understandable that the French continued to speak his native tongue even when conversing with Italians on foreign grounds. We know how French feel about their language. So, conversations containing considerable amount of French as well as Italian went on with the Italians actually replying - to whatever the French guy said in French - in Italian. Different languages yet both parties are able to communicate.

Sometimes, even as we speak the same stylish Singlish, messages do not quite get across, response goes wayward and interaction breaks down.

As the movie puts it: language is evidence of harmonious living despite differences. Initially, at least.

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Soft launch @ Caramel

by naleuygowhere

located steps from The Cathay and a tad pricey. Affiliated to 1twentysix. No web presence.
This other place seems better.

Quel?

If I could just decide...

昨天，开心及至。
今早，心情平稳。
今晚，悲愤沮丧。

taboo
noun
1. If there is a taboo on a subject or activity, it is a social custom to avoid doing that activity or talking about that subject, because people find them embarrassing or offensive.

2. An inhibition resulting from social custom or emotional aversion.

3. Independent of relations, duration of acquaintance, openness and intimacy between people.

4. Its eschewal absolutely transferrable, regardless of occasion and interaction mode.

5. Any intended lack of abstinence from which is coarse; to do so with malicious and demeaning purport is vulgar and should be treated with distaste. Ties deserve to be ruptured.

禁忌是不分交情的。

Just These

Remitted money for maid for the first time.

Grandma stopped by my thoughts this evening, while I rested during facial. Suddenly, I recall: just passed the 2-year mark since her passing.

All it takes are meticulous planning and a True Fitness all-clubs access membership to not let social meet-ups get in the way of one's gym fix. Heh.

Thought I would have time to do laundry and nails tonight. Next thing I know, I was holding tabao food in one hand and work in the other.

Tsk, tsk.

Sometimes, the day just ends.

Sometimes there are no words, no clever quotes to neatly sum up what's
happened that day. Sometimes, you do everything right - everything exactly right
- and still you feel like you failed.
...lives forever altered...thought monsters didn't exist until they learnt
that they spent their lives with one. Did it need to end that way? Could
something have been done to prevent the tragedy in the first place? How
many more times will we be able to look into the abyss? How many more
times before we won't ever recover pieces of ourselves?

S$338

That's the price I pay for:

- off-the-grid planning/scheduling on China's side

- my boss' indecision

- my boss' apprehension- boss' insensitivity
- boss' stinginess

- boss' swaying tendency (my suay-ness)

- impatience on my part

- a colleague's 1-day Shanghai city tour (and my consideration for that)

- my lack of interest to tour Shanghai

- boss' desire to reminisce Shanghai and Sun Island

- Sun Island's boredom

- absence of team spirit

- taking up ACTA

- 做坏人

- 做好人

I prefer to call it the price of freedom. Freedom is never free, it's priceless.

Familiarity of this phrase seems to date from that Bali trip 4 months back.

Don't be mistaken (seem to say that a lot lately and still end up being mistaken - what the...), I can totally see all the good that's coming out of this move.

7 days were allocated for what took only 3 days. OMG! We even had 2 full days of dilly-dally discussion to ourselves, which were unplanned for. We tried our best to make them look good. The discussions weren't that constructive really - too many things my boss dared not, could not and did not want to decide.

In fact, a complete waste of time!

Come next week, we'll be spending at least another 2 days having the same discussion and expressing the same concerns back here in Singapore. The only difference being that next time round, decisions will be made and we'd all reach a conclusion.

For now, all I know is how weird/no-life my boss is.

She said if we were to pay S$170 per pax to change the tickets, it'd be best to fly on Thursday so that she could at least be back for ONE FULL DAY of work on Friday and then half day on Saturday.

Flying on Friday was considered 'not so worth it' because then she would only gain half a day's work.

Pursuing the above argument, flying on Saturday was definitely a no-no. ZERO work-time gain is unthinkable; might as well stick to plan and come back on Sunday.

The more she calculated, the more hopeless it sounded to me. She invariably leaves out one constant in her calculations. She keeps looking at work time gained. She ignores that there's no factor to occupy the extra time there. Being so weird, she probably thinks spending 66 hours staring at walls is the worth of S$170.

Luckily, our biggest boss there is sensitive and generous enough. He made the decision for her.

WTF!! It's embarrassing that an organisation's GM would think so much over S$510.

S$338 is the amount I pay out of my own pocket to get out of there, for 2 days to myself.

I don't catch myself blinking or twitching.

I'm not rich. I am desperate.

But then, of course, that's why she's the GM, always putting organisation's welfare before hers or anyone else's.

She totally forgets that we are not like her.

She sign-on one leh. We're just doing our 2 years of NS or 2 weeks of reservist training. We have people beyond this place whom we want to spend time with.

To her coming back on Friday is 'not so worth it'. To us, it's a weekend, even if we have to work on Saturday.

To her, coming back on Saturday has no value or that equal to coming back on Sunday. To us, we would at least have a full Sunday to rest before Monday comes round again.

To her, staying there, relax, do a 1-day city tour is a way of rewarding us. She must wonder why I even reject. She does not understand the place feels like an army camp to me.

Guys might understand this sentiment better. Officer tells you nothing is planned - no exercise, no road march, no test, no exam - these next few days, but you simply cannot book out. And the reason is that he thinks the air in-camp is better than that outside. It's for your own good.

At first you are happy because the past few days have been gruelling. What he doesn't know is that you prefer the air outside for you will be breathing in scents of female and food not available in-camp.

You'd rather do poisonous carbon and nitrogen gases with the people who matter than take elixir to be with lonesome immortals.

Believe me, you would.

Most Joyous Day in Shanghai

Only because it's the last.

Farewell lunch was Italian and inspiring - corn flakes and greens actually make a tasty combination. Yummy!

Yvonne asked boss and colleague if they had any Shanghai sights in mind to visit the next day to which the latter replied,"没有啊，就随便走走。我只是要帮我妈妈买发菜和黑木耳。不过，如果去的地方没有，也没关系。" Boss said nothing. Or maybe she was still thinking, taking unsurprisingly longer than others.

Of course, everybody was just being redundantly polite. A few truths I know are that colleague really wants to get the fa cai and black fungus (it was all she spoke of since we got past immigrations at Changi Airport), boss hasn't anything to buy and both of them have admiringly humble knowledge of what there is to see in Shanghai.

I could have singlehandedly planned the spots to move in on - that is - if I had stayed on. And I would have remained, if I could have been the one planning; but I couldn't, nor would I.

We do see this is a chicken-and-egg situation. I opt to get out of lose-lose scenarios as such.

是开心的咯，也是贵的。

House Season 5 Episode 01

People get what they get, there’s nothing to do with what they deserve.
The world needs flunkies.
We can’t have anything, we can aspire to anything but we don’t get it just because we want it.
I would rather spend my whole life close to the birds than waste it wishing I had wings.
Almost dying changes nothing, dying changes everything.
You spread misery because you can’t feel anything else.
You manipulate people because you can’t handle any kind of real relationship.
Is that the way we work around here? We get cut slack while we deal with personal issues?
You are not the boss. Boss gets to make the rules. Boss gets to ignore.