say your prayers quick cause the world is coming to an end.

“…you know…red, and loud…aand sumthin, you know, BOOMS!”

“i love sefari, i LUV leperd preens, and you noe zip bra, ya dat sot of things”

“.. wear a piece of bigini and jins and i trot down orchard road”

She was a bit slow in her self-introduction.. because, well, she had to think long since she’s”… majoring in health science and hospitality and travel tourism and right now (she’s) studying still.”

awesome TV yo.

4 am musings.

i finally got to see myself on CNA thanks to Col. wonders of youtube.

And i got to see mum being feature on Suria. she’s such a pretty thing on cam.

People are asking me why im not smiling and why i sound so serious in the clip.

Try filming for an entire day and having to redo your shots more than 10 times atop a hill with the sun setting. let me know if you’re still smiling then. i think i cursed more during the filming then the whole of 2008.

Baby Natasha comes to office.

what a nice little surprise in the afternoon today. Babies who don’t cry and purr gently in one’s arms make my day.

congrats mummy jessie for such a pretty little baby girl!

Thoughts

Been asked to pen down 5 things about work stuff. was given 5 days. Luck has it, my mind is not functioning and this is due in approx. 5 hours.

Angsty cab tales

1) “uncle, Telok Ayer”

“Chinatown there ah?” (indian fellow)

“Chinatown? no no. err, Amoy Hawker Centre? you know?”

“*Blank*” (in my head, how can a cab driver not know where amoy is?)

“errr, chinese temple? there got 2 temples, near ann siang hill?”

“Chinese temple ah! ya lah! you never hear what i say ah?! i say chinatown lah, you dont understand dey? the whole area is called chinatown dah”

SIMI.

“if you insist.”

“which way? north bridge road?”

“up to you. since you’re telling me telok ayer is in chinatown. why dont u show me the way.”

in the end, the silly bugger brought me to freaking Kreta Ayer.

“uncle, there’s a difference between Telok Ayer and Kreta Ayer you know.”

“you want to go Telok Blangah is it?”

omg.

“Telok Blangah?? uncle, forget it, this was supposed to be a 10 mins ride MAX, we’ve been on the road for almost 20 mins. ill direct you.”

he became so sheepish after. really pissed me off. what do u mean i dont understand where chinatown is? omg.

asking for it.

2) the driver dozing off several times with me having to wake him up because he nearly swerved into the curb. He was driving with his eyes closed, travelling at 40km/h on the pie.

3)Destination point

“Receipt?”

“Uncle, paying by nets”

“why you pay by nets? why u never tell me earlier? Just now you never tell me. If you tell me at the start you want to pay by nets, i wont take you. next time you have to tell if you want to pay via nets.”

WOAH. EXCUSE ME. WHAT.

“i dont have cash. so if u dont want me to pay the 28 bucks fare by nets, then you can take my last 4 bucks. you decide.”

“why u never tell me in the first place.”

“i am not aware there’s this new ruling in place that i ought to inform the driver at the start how i choose to pay the cab fares. Uncle, you seriously barking up the wrong tree.”

so i made a complaint. see, this is not the first time i had to waste 10 mins of my life listening to cab drivers preach on the disadvantages of using nets.

When i made the complaint, it wasn’t against these drivers, it’s against the concept of Nets payment.

To drivers, paying by nets means delayed salary. To consumers, with cab fares now reaching 38 bucks easily, NETS is used frequently especially so in a cashless society.

so shouldnt the said company be doing something about this to ensure drivers get their salary quickly when payments are made by nets?

why should consumers be punished for a system that was implemented to benefit them in the first place? FYI, we have to pay 30 cents more when using nets.

makes me wonder, why are we paying shit loads for lost, angsty & sleepy cab drivers?

For what it’s worth, i hope this snippet of my taxi portion comes up again on blog.tv ala 2 years ago. it needs to be highlighted.

passengers paying expensive fares to feel unsafe and abused.

Life’s questions

1. why a man would seek comfort in a girl. An adult male teetering on the  line of flirtation with a young student on his relationship woes. what.
2. why someone who blogs tries means and ways to lock their entries away from the prying eyes of the public.  is that the biggest oxymoron or what.
3. when someone goes for a job interview, and the first thing they ask is, “Are you Muslim? Do you drink? Will you drink till you get wasted?” Their premise? They worry their clients would feel uncomfortable if there’s a muslim sitting amongst them at an event. Wow. guess someone is not listening much to speeches by the ministers. talk about racial harmony and discrimination yo.
4. Why i did not visit an ailing relative when i had the chance. It was robbed away from me 2 days ago.

The Mentalist

If you have not gotten yourself acquainted, now’s the time. i am hooked.

awesome show.

i should go get some shut eye.

talk soon. and hopefully by then i get answers to my 4 pointers and can be rid of confusion.

x

spending time with S

Work today was no short of grueling.  So many things to do and i was experiencing the mother of all cramps in the afternoon. eeck.

I ate a papaya, drank beetroot+celery juice and drank hot soup.

I did work at lightning speed, packed everything by 7pm and was out of the office to rush back home to see S and pussy cat.

oh how my heart melted when i saw shelly by the stairs meowing.

we watched the telly, we cuddled, whispered sweet nothings and ended the night slurping hot green bean soup under the night’s sky.

circa 2006.

when i was so much smaller.

x

frustrations in a bag.

this post is dedicated to a week’s worth of frustrations because today i nearly lost it.

you know you’re overworked when you’re resting your tired eyes during a car ride and got jolted by your client’s ad blaring on the radio.

you go “SHIT! OH MY GODDD!”

you frantically take out your phone to scream at someone for booking in the wrong spot on the radio when it hit you like a yellow bus that you mistook it for your other client whose campaign is  time sensitive.

sigh.

My heart aches when i hear my client rant over the phone. i feel so helpless sometimes and wish there’s a little something more that i can provide them so they wont feel so down.

the past 2 weeks, i have been on overdrive. Time at work seems so short along with other commitments outside work that i cannot jeopardize.

my heart also aches a little when someone makes a little joke during family outings and im the only one who doesnt get it caused i missed the previous couple of get-togethers.

i cry a little cause im constantly being murdered by emails and meetings and just need a breather to get back on track. i hide in the washroom and stare blankly into space.

i feel heavy, sluggish and unhealthy.

When i reminded S that i love him and noone can replace that, i got this:

“This is after you couldn’t spare 1 minute to acknowledge that same person.”

i had no idea what was going on and blamed it on his equally punishing schedule.

Until it dawned on me the next day that it stemmed from the other time when he picked me up at 630 (a relatively early time to knock off work for me but i chose to drop everything to spend time with him), got in the car but had clients and owners calling me for bookings which were extremely time sensitive.

i had to entertain 4 phonecalls before i could turn to him to say hi and plant a kiss on his cheek and by then we already reached our destination.

it wasn’t his fault for passing tt comment since he had no clue whatsoever. so who do i blame?

work? clients? owners? incompetent individuals? myself? who? :/

the entire episode’s been in my head for the past few days because it pains me that the closest person to me feels like i am a stranger who has lost her ability to prioritise the important things in her life.

either that or i must really be lousy in what i do because my plate is beyond filled up. i am being murdered by emails, presentation and back-to-back meetings.

i walk to office these days allowing myself to indulge into the dark side for a few minutes. i think about ways to kill selected people with blunt objects. (how can someone in the right frame of mind ignore you when you took time to stand in front of her desk to speak to her? not once. in fact, not twice. thrice!)

i’m sure this is just a dull period and maybe the impending loom of my long paper this Saturday on International Marketing is adding unnecessary pressure.

At the end of the day, this is what i do best. where i work, what i do and servicing my clients whom i honestly love to death. each one of them.

they make me laugh and when they are happy it gives me that incredible satisfaction.

but the process to get there isn’t always painless.

so i hope this dull period goes away quickly because i hate the feeling when i ponder,

career or family?

there should be a balance and unfortunately for me, i am struggling to find that momentum.

x

long week.

Theme Fridays

What started out as an innocent convo between CL and me turned to be a weekly thing!

We were stressed out from work one evening and started talking about what to wear the next day, one thing led to another, we ended up sending out a mass email. We introduced… Themed Fridays!

we had a flower power day and we got a good response! but the best had to be last friday. almost EVERYONE wore red & white!

i feel so happy CL and i managed to inject some fun into office life.

Although people weren’t quite too happy when i donned just a flower hairband on flower power friday. “….how can organiser wear like that only!” :p

but the organiser needs to differentiate herself from the rest right? no?

So i went all out for red & white! and i’ve heard no complains so far.

even my CEO was sporty enough! he actually ran down all the way to bugis to get a red and white top!

awww…

Japan Tonight

Had very good dinner with Mio at Siglap. I forgot how good pasta at Pasta Fresca can get. yum yum.

Yuki and connie joined us at mio’s and we had so much fun dressing each other up.

Boon made us nice roibos tea, there were wine, beer, piano music.

nice company. it was good. and guess who has goodies from japan?

Now i have to find a way to convince the Mio and Yuki that the Yukata can really be worn short!

i tried wearing it long and i was flip flopping the whole place!

short or long for tonight? :/

decisions decisions.

SVPS

Homosexuals are so amusing, they make me laugh so much, it’s crazy.

x.

Studio shot!

Hello! see how fat i am. it’s almost disgusting seeing myself in pictures these days.

but me likey this picture.

Playful Tomcat

i ended up taking half an hour just to drive off from the carpark cause this tomcat decided to take a short nap in the passenger’s seat!

wakeboarding

the weather was so awesome. i really needed the ride out to sea and have sunkissed skin. just ready for S on monday.

managed to do a couple of jumps. i pulled off a 30 mins run and Paul was clearly amused. (my stamina is a notch to zero).

but just out there on my own… that was so good.

Timbre

Had a couple of drinks and fries at timbre the other day. and i want to get the girl to sing at my wedding. confirm. set. chope.

she’s so good, she’ll blow your socks off.

Photography

i know who i want as my wedding photographer and i got the number.

so happy i cant tyyep3wue proepeldlryry. wee~! thanks JLF!

work

im starting to get a hang of it. well. not quite, given that i work late almost every night and the past 3 saturdays. haha.

but im starting to enjoy the work? :/ that IS bad news isnt it? eeck.

control lydia.

One Rochestor

went to One Rochester with CP and JG last night. what a nice place!

CP’s gonna be the official dj on wednesdays. the place looks really good. and i like how i can just chill! Wore a maxi dresss and slippers and i fit right in! twas really good.

i should definitely make a point to go there more often! and it’s just like 10 -15 mins away? where have i been!

dinner with mummy

so consumed with work i only managed to have dinner with mum earlier ystdy. twas so good catching up on things.

dad’s off in bangkok. already miss him.

what.a.long.and.f.r.a.g.m.e.n.t.e.d.post.

ok.

today’s set to be a long day and im honestly looking forward to wearing a yukata!

hope your national day weekend’s going A-awesome!

x

BATNA, WATNA, SMART….

i miss family holidays.

and im going to miss him for a week. (

is it just me or is today’s weather terrible? i’m extremely hot and bothered!

And if you’re wondering what the title of this entry is about, it’s the after effects of stuffing negotiation tools for hours into my poor little head. All these jargons those PR practitioners come up with are mind boggling!

“It’s like climbing a mountain, it’s always hardest when you’re closest.” – S

another great loss.

I found out on Friday afternoon that my high school science teacher passed away. Twas such terrible news. He’s the one who got charlene and i back on track with science. He challenged us to work harder for the subject.

Most importantly he made us laugh. During my teaching stint, it’s so funny having lunch with him as a colleague rather than as a mentor. We joked about the class and everyone else and how charlene and i were always too much for him to handle at times.

After 6 months of battling lung cancer, i hope he’s at a better place right now.

Met a friend for a coffee earlier and i just took awhile to take in the presence of another human being. Sometimes it takes death to remind ourselves of those around us.

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we are still alive – perhaps for some purpose which we ought to re-examine.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

PS: im in the midst of reevaluating the priorities in my life. Work is encroaching so much into my personal space/mind/body that i forget what S was saying 15 minutes ago!

I do love what i do but i love myself and those around me even more.