bashed x-mas bash

it's 8.30am wednesday morning but cubicles around me are still empty.

and i thought i am the one who always come late.

the rain finally stopped this morning. it has been raining continuously since sunday i almost forgot how it feels like to be dry outside the building.

it's about time too. my throat has started to feel weird and itchy from all these wet and cold weather.

god forbid but if i were to get sick, i hope it will be this friday.

because that's when we'll have our annual departmental x-mas bash, and for the first time, i don't feel like going.

previous years, i looked forward to this particular day. in fact, this year i did too, until the management committee decided to add in theme wear.

we are being put in different groups following our bosses, and each are required to come with a group theme wear. i heard other groups have decided for hawaiian (so fun!!), cowboy (a bit outta place, but still cool) and school uniform (sexy:).

our group? sports.

sports wear! i mean, who'd go to an xmas bash wearing sports attire? have u seen ppl with full soccer jersey with shorts and everything in a pub? it's like wearing a sarong and dine in the equinox. so not appropriate.

plus, it's not just a pub, it's a pub at the chijmes. it's almost illegal.

enough that we'll looked silly in those, we are expected to do a little presentation (or 'strutt our stuff' as they put it) too. and that's of course on top of whatever stupid game stuff the mc will force us do.

not to mention it's a 3pm event, so it's not like we're gonna have a full set of gourmet christmas buffet anyway. i'm sure most of the food budget has been allocated to cater for that free flow of beer, which i don't drink.

i am so not going.

so perhaps i can join my other friends to shop around instead that friday night. it will be christmas shopping round 2 for me, having done the 1st one in junction 8 last weekend.

when singapore says it's having sale, it really having sale. i bought myself a pair of jeans for just 39 bucks. plus a few t-shirts and get this, a piece of white gold men necklace for 150 bucks.

the manager of junction-8 lee hwa jewellery, and i must mention his name, ken lim, was very nice. he's the kind that make the customers feel well appreciated. such a rare breed nowadays.

you know i called him few days after that to ask if i could change my necklace to a longer type, and he said normally they couldn't but he could do something about it? such a simple gesture felt like an early christmas for me.

he even gave us tips on on-going lucky draws around the department store which we would be eligible after the purchase. so we went ahead later for this 1 dollar lucky draw instant dip, from which i won a can of new moon abalone! i don't really appreciate abalone and i don't understand why it's such a delicacy here, but who cares, it's expensive!

it's christmas season. we're allowed to go a little off the hook this time of the year.

with appropriate clothes of course.


...ed

lost

if there's a month for you to slack around, choose december. if there's a day to slack, it's friday, and if there's a time to slack, it's when your boss is on vacation and your project lead on military service.

add those up and it became last friday.

we were not in the mood to crack our brains up as usual anyway. if you must know, our department is in the middle of inter-departmental sport games to promote team building, and it happened last friday that the other 3 departments tried to take a point off our team.

it was stupid really. we had this rule that if the whole team wear the pre-assigned team colour t-shirt, a bonus point would be given. now they accused one of our table tennis player wore not white, which is our team colour, but beige during the game last wednesday.

beige! as if a group of engineers couldn't differentiate between white and beige.

that now-suddenly-become-famous t-shirt is the kind being worn over long period of time, so it looked kinda, well, worn-out. but still it's white! when they found out they lost the ground to fight, they said that it was not the colour that mattered, but because that player of ours did not wear our team t-shirt.

which is ridiculuous. yes we made the team t-shirt after the first 2 games completed, but surely they cannot change the rule in the middle of the tournament, right? try do that at doha asian games and your country will have to submit application to join the EU instead.

it amazed me how far ppl would go just for one point. one tiny little point! it's not as if the winner will get a free car or anything. we don't even get any time off, so is it worth to jeoperdize our working relationships?

well this is what happened when you are being forced over the years to just swallow everything the government did to us. you'd have to direct your fighting instict somewhere else, however stupid the cause might be.

but if you think about it, it was not totally a lost act, because ppl bond stronger when they have common enemy. looking at how the other 3 teams got together and framed us, they might have achieved superb team bulding affect among them. nevermind that we ended up being a pariah department in the process.

anyway, we will have to return to company tomorrow and work as usual. despite whatever sour feelings we might have inside. despite our unhappiness that our suggestion to make that controversial t-shirt as our department's official flag might be shot to ground. hey, we are all professional, aren't we? and being asian, it's not that hard to smile and curse at the same time too. hypocrism flows in our blood.

moreover, my boss is already on leave since friday noon, all the way until after christmas, which is so good to our morale. if i don't know any better, i'd say he needed time to supervise the elves leading towards the 25th, and returned after he distributed all the presents and store back the sleigh for next year.

in that case, i'd know i've done a good work if my stocking isn't empty that morning, and with a little luck, i can expect a promotion next year too.

which is why i don't intend to slack around on monday tomorrow. seriously.


...ed

i write sins not tragedies

my mum got dengue fever and was admitted to hospital in kl. well that makes 3 of us, having previously me and my dad got the virus too. that was almost 10 years ago though, but still at the same place. now we are like, the dengue family. i expect the hospital could justify giving free treatments to my mum, because you know, after previous 2 admittances from our family, they could probably allow the third one for free.

you'd think after all these years, and so many ppl infected by the virus, they would do something to the environment there, but i guess we would sooner have our body system evolves naturally to produce antibody against the virus before seeing any improvement. so in the meantime, i'm gonna have to settle to the fact that it becomes a matter of life and death everytime i visit my parents.

which risk i have to take as early as tonight. i'm going back to kl after work today because my parents planned this special gathering on saturday night. my dad even enganged some catering company to take care of the food. i heard a lot of relatives will come too, so the least i can do is to show my face there.

i just hope that i still have the chance to catch the currently on-going doha asian games when i am there. not that i'm at all pessimistic. my family might not do sports as much as they should, but they do watch a lot of them on tv. much better than my colleagues here that don't know anything happening outside the office compound, their houses, and the routes in between.

malaysia is still stucked with only 2 gold medals as of this moment. both from bowling. malaysians are just good at this sport. it's in our blood. i mean, let's not look far, i have here on my office desk 2 bowling trophies which none of my nearby singaporean, or chinese cubicle-mates have. not that i'm boasting or anything.

i might be living and working in singapore now, and i might have spent half of my teenage life in japan, but i'm still routing for malaysia in games like this. or even in any other aspects. i'm still proud everytime they achieve something no matter how much i despise malaysia's current governments and local systems. i guess, deep in my heart i still look at this country as a place where i came from, and there's this invisible connection that binds us together no matter where i go.

that's why i found it ridiculous why singapore government decided to seggregate benefits and costs of living between local citizens and permanent residents like me. do they think this move will prompt foreigners to abandon their original citizenship and embrace singapore's instead? let's face it, even if the foreigners do agree to change the passport they are holding for a better life here, will they stand for singapore or even support if there occurs (however unlikely) war or confrontation with their original country?

anyway, not that we have a say in this matter. we are just a powerless bunch of citizen that accepts everything the government does. no matter how disagree we are with the recent decision to increase GST from 5% to 7%. 5% to 7%! that's 40% increase in everything we purchase. god knows how long our salary will see a 40% hike like that.

that's possibly why when starbuck offered free beverages yesterday as their annual christmas celebration, i saw many ppl queing for a free drink in the vivo city branch, and i expect the same from every other branches on the island. i guess everybody can make use of a small stunt like this to have something without making a hole in their pocket, however small it may be. we develop an extra heavy likings for free things because everything else is becoming more and more expensive nowadays.

plus, it's fun too joining the crowd towards a common goal, which in this case, getting a free coffee. together we sticked the small starbuck sticker which we got after donating to swiss army charity lady (who made us feel we were obliged to contribute in order to get the free drink) to our shirts.

what's not so fun? joining others to get dengue.

just ask my mum...


...ed

wake me up when december ends

i had just wasted a whole 2 hours queuing at john little mega sale at singapore expo.

urghh it was the worst way to spend sunday afternoon. i was alone too, so not that i could chat to kill time. the couple in front of me looked playful but i was nowhere in the mood to join in for a threesome, while the indian man behind me kept hitting my legs with his shopping cart so i expect if i had opened my mouth, it would not be all pleasant words anyway.

i don't know what they could have done to improve the situation. the check-out counters were a lot, the cashiers were fast but still the queues extended till the other side of the hall, and you know how enourmous expo halls are. i guess, it was because everybody was shopping like nobody's business. by the rate the ppl put things into their cart, you'd think those items were all free.

but at least, i got the blender that i wanted. it was a good one, mexus brand (i never heard of it to be frank), solid and the blades design seemed like it could do better jobs than common blenders. all those in courts and isetan looked like they would break down after couple of spins.

gosh after reading above paragraph, now it sounds silly to me. 2 hrs for a blender? duh!

anyway, all that's important is that i saved some money buying it on sale. especially after i just bought myself a 26' panasonic lcd hd-ready tv from the nextdoor sitex fair yesterday.

so much for not going ga-ga over end of the year pay. my aim going to the fair was just to buy blank cd-r and maybe checking the latest offers too while strictly avoiding unnecessary stuff. i was doing good actually, resisting all those fliers and pamplets thrown at me from every angle, and you know that's hard to do in a fair like this.

even when this beautiful big-eyed girl showed me a viewsonic 22' inch pc monitor at only $599, and thinking about my 17' bulky ancient monitor that fills half the room at home, i was never seriously tempted. until i saw that panasonic tv.

it was a nice piece of art. slim and everything. plus, it's hd-ready, although i don't even know how to get a hd signal (do we need to apply or something?). the promoter said the 26' is suitable for bedroom because it's not too big. plus, i intended to connect this to my pc as a monitor. imagine how much effort it takes to move the cursor from one end to another with too-big-a screen? (ok that was a joke. i'm not a total technical durr-brain).

moreover, it came with 350 dollars worth of vouchers, so in all, i only paid like $940 for it. for a hd-tv cum pc monitor. it's value for money, right?

so anyway, that's all water under the bridge now. not worth fretting about.

god i wish the sale season is over...


...ed

that time of the year

tomorrow we'll get the annual bonus together with the monthly pay. that is to say, 3 months salary at one go. 3 months salary!! that'll effectively sums up to make an extra digit out of the normal month.

cool right? i wish i could get this more than once a month. every quarter at least would be great. god knows i deserve it.

or do i? i worked very hard today at work to modify this perl script program. i was getting it ready for this newly coming device due next week. hit into error in the process and it took me half a day to find out that i accidentally replaced '$' with '@' sign.

urghh... i feel so stupid. i blame the keyboard maker for putting these two buttons near each other. They definitely do not deserve any bulk 3 months pay.

after work just now i went to for a dinner treat at olive tree grand continental hotel in bugis. remember the wedding that i became the videographer last month? our friend, the bride, gave us the treat as a thank you gesture.

it was a mediterranean buffet dinner. i've never considered this place for dining before because it's so expensive. i heard it's $50++ per head! and it's for mediterranean. i don't even know what kind of food they serve. is pasta mediterranean?

anyway, it's lucky that she got a friend working there, so she had like a 50% discount off the bill. which is really lucky because my verdict says, it's not worth dining there. unless you're, well, someone from the mediterranean and been eating this from inside the womb.

one thing that showed us we didn't belong there, was that they never labelled their food. so we kinda been left guessing the whole night, whether that piece of white dry squarish thingy was chicken, or fish, or even a very very pale piece of beef.

seriously.

so tell me if i'm gonna be upbeat to go for another dining event tomorrow at lunch. it's the annual lunch treat we throw to the engineering assistants who help us through-out the year doing all those crappy too-much-hassle work stuff we think not worth doing ourselves.

because it's gonna be italian. sigh. frankly i'd rather go to pizza hut but what say do i have in this matter? we might as well come to work the next day with the word 'cheapskate' printed on our forehead.

no matter how nice a combination it would be with the dollar sign in the middle of my iris after seeing my bank account total tomorrow.



...ed