i thought i could escape from the bad weather in Singapore, only to land in even worse weather! it was cool but sunny in Kunming yesterday when i first arrived, but it's extremely cold and rainy today... terrible weather for travelling. am now sitting in a cold unheated 'bar' with slow internet... and blogger interface is interestingly in Japanese! haha oh well. but shouldn't be complaining, since it's free :) there seems to be more street food hawkers here than on the east coast, with ppl baking sweet potatoes, frying omelettes and bbqing skewers of meat at seemingly random spots on the streets! felt very tempted to take pictures; but cos i wasn't buying felt a little bad to exploit them as photo ops. have taken my meals mostly in restaurants, but have to admit that the food here is somewhat too oily and foreign for my liking :P everything has gone fine though, cept for cold unheated hotel rooms and phenomenon of 'unpowerful' flushes in toilets; which has indirectly led me to cut down on number of times i go to the loo each day... the cold is still tolerable though, but will get increasingly worse as i move inland... pray hard that the next two hotels i booked have heated rooms/bathrooms!

flying off to Kunming tmr morning for a week long holiday. also planning to go to cities like Dali and Lijiang on the same trip... shall hope hard for a smooth enjoyable journey. barely half-packed now and am attempting to squeeze all my barang barang into pretty small duffel bag and backpack to remain mobile. let's hope that i wun freeze when i get there... though it's only about 5C in Kunming; it's been a while since i've been in that kinda weather! so a 20C drop in temperature might take a while for me to get used to and comfortable in :) it'll also probably get colder as i get to Lijiang. in any case; will try to blog once or twice when travelling... if not, I wish everyone who faithfully reads my ramblings a very Happy 2007! :)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate Christmas! have to admit that it really is just another public holiday for me... I am perhaps the most unhappening person; cos just spent Christmas eve sorting out some pictures on laptop while watching Love Actually on Channel 5. Though this is my 3rd time watching it, some of these stories touch me again and again... too bad no nice atmosphere to watch show. also visited IKEA earlier in the afternoon to look for wardrobe and bedsheets... it's crazy cos though weather was rainy it was crowded all the same. and mum commented that it resembled a 'marketplace'... with children running around and ppl sitting on display two-seater sofas at the entrance! look forward to a Christmas lunch at Jacqui's place tmr afternoon :) goodness; hardly accomplished anything and my long weekend is going to be over :(

It's my first time celebrating Christmas in office and was pleasantly surprised that colleagues were pretty 'on' about giving gifts etc. Also had an intra-unit gift exchange and received a cute little bracelet from fellow colleague. yay! Christmas has never really been a very big day for me; since my family never celebrated it and I am really not big on buying gifts for ppl; nor receiving them, for that matter. However, felt an urge to reciprocate colleagues' kindness and thus went last min shopping earlier this evening. shops were totally CROWDED with ppl and didnt feel like getting anything in the end. doesn't help that I am a rather fussy shopper and can spend hours walking around without finding anything that really catches my fancy. oh well. boss is flying off tmr morning to US to spend Christmas with fiance.... then rest of us gathering at colleague's new place to meet up with old boss, who flew back for winter break. time flies! have worked for 5 months without really realizing.

The Garden Festival at Suntec was somewhat disappointing, but the orchids at the 4th level still managed to save the show a little. but alas, most of my attempted close-ups turned out rather blur. perhaps my hands are really too shaky. in any case; i'll need to practise taking pictures a lot more frequently if i want to improve! the last time i laid my hands on this camera was in mid Oct, when i wanted to take some pics for a certain competition... anyway; thought the yellow ones above still turned out somewhat decent, albeit not as clear as they should have been!

Colbar
was brought to a "refurbished" eating house tucked away in the heart of Wessex Estate yesterday... and i immediately fell in love with the very 'rustic' feel of the whole place! i mean though it's reconstructed and a little artificial, but still think it's cool. apparently they serve good cheap food too, though i didn't have a chance to sample any of the items on its menu. it has also been featured on the Uniquely Singapore website. unfortunately it's rather inaccessible and thus inconvenient to go on any whim and fancy. but will definitely keep this place in mind, esp when i finally learn how to drive here :P

for the very first time i got a sore throat from talking too much. and so i was really surprised when i woke up on Tues morning with a very painful throat... the result of my first SERS exhibition counter duty at Ghim Moh on Monday... perhaps i was so tensed up during my first exhibition duty that i forgot to drink enough water :P anyway i think it's quite fun to do frontline stuff like this... and interacting with the public makes you discover that there are like 1001 scenarios that you would never think up while sitting in the office trying to write policy papers... yeah. and it trains you to think on your feet! however, besides being inexperienced, i am additionally disadvantaged in the sense that i don't look very credible (nor wise enough haha)... more than once ppl either ask me "are you a student" or "are you part-timing"... one old lady even said something like... you're too young lah.. when i bought this flat you weren't even born how you know what policies existed then?? when we tried to tell her about a certain current policy... i mean she's not wrong.. some ppl have been living in their existing flats for 30 over years...

Mini makeover

i'll finally be getting my own room! and because we just got someone to give the walls in our rooms a fresh coat of paint; i can finally buy bedsheets i like when i move into the room maybe a month later. although the rooms are very chapalang now cos everyone wants his/her own color... but whatever lah. i can't stop rest of family from painting their room walls a color they want but i dun fancy very much... and then i can visit the new IKEA at Tampines and go furniture shopping for my own room! yay! dunno what prompted my parents to embark on a tiny house makeover... but i'm not complaining. house is currently very junky. everyone's junk is everywhere. many of my college books and coats are still tucked away in my suitcases cos there's no storage space in the wardrobes etc... hope to get a bookshelf and a new wardrobe... but i suppose furniture-buying will always burn big holes in the pocket... so i will have to spread this out and live within my means. but having your own room's a good start :)

Muslims and Alcohol

I get to interact a little more with our admin assistants (there are 3 of them, of which 2 are Malay) whenever officers are roped in to help with logistical/labor-intensive stuff from time to time. and so yest while sitting at the big work table with a few other officers and our 2 very chirpy malay colleagues, we somehow managed to talk about alcohol... and for the first time i discovered that muslims are not allowed to ingest alcohol! i'm so chi dun! i suppose if i were more observant, i would have noticed... but alas this has never crossed my mind. once again felt ashamed of my ignorance. i tried to recall instances of muslims drinking alcoholic drinks, but i couldn't really remb any... found it hard to believe cos alcohol's such a 'social' drink... and so if Muslims dun drink, or try not to... how does it affect say their social dealings with clients? so they cannot 'drown their sorrows'? so i asked with a look of disbelief, (very ironically, coming from a non-alcoholic like me) so... during festive seasons there's no alcohol? to which my colleague replied, no, they just drink soft drinks... she also added that they cannot even have rum in the cake! so she cannot eat tiramisu! etc etc. maybe this is a super bad reason to be relieved, but i'm quite thankful i have no religion-imposed diet restrictions... else i cannot eat tiramisu.. cannot eat my Dublin mudslide ice-cream... okok, but that's all besides the point.

dots are in!

The polka dot 'craze' is ongoing and I've also gradually built up over the past few months a tiny collection of tops with various designs of polka dots... from tiny dots to big bolder ones... i've also been drawn into this retro fever! and amusingly, this morning 3 other colleagues came decked in tops with dots in various colors/sizes... but i think i should stop acquiring dots-themed pieces of clothing soon... else i might run the risk of ending up with a wardrobe of retro-ish clothing i might not wear again when these go out of fashion... but then again, i'm no fashionista.. and regardless of whether dots are 'in' or 'out'... they can be very cute and timeless when worn tastefully :)

on the other hand, there seems to be a few decent films opening this week! Am also happy that film fests seem to be quite plentiful here... though many of them are at the distant and overspilling-with-ppl Vivocity. Here are a few things i might want to watch: Flags of our Fathers; 3 needles (which opened today) and Sunflower. But alas! Dec will be a busy busy month for me... hope i get to watch at least one of these this weekend :)

work 'cubicles' at work are just high enough to block an average person's view... and while it ensures your privacy it's sometimes not very conducive for talking to your colleagues... esp when you're like me and sitting at your table and do not really like raising your voice very much. plus i like to see the person i'm actually talking to if possible. SO... i've developed a rather ungraceful habit of climbing onto my table... haha. esp when i want to talk to the colleague who sits 'behind' me... and i've gotten so used to climbing onto my table and popping my head over the ledge that i almost never bother to walk to the end of the row and then to her row of workstations.... i guess it's a little difficult for ppl to picture this if you're never seen our workstation configuration :P and i've been doing this so frequently that i've gotten 'negative feedback' from the colleague who sits diagonally behind.. that it's scary for her to sometimes see this head pop out of nowhere.... haha. but hey.. sometimes when you're 'up there' you get a bird's eye view of what's going on in the vicinity... of course i have to be subtle and ensure that my head isn't blatantly obvious from afar when ppl walk around :)

today after i stepped into my classroom a fellow classmate offered me some sweets... but they were not ordinary sweets! If you've watched Grave of the Fireflies, you might be able to understand my surprise and excitement... remember the little sister had this can of fruit sweets she kept with her throughout? which she kept shaking to see if there was any left? So this classmate of mine actually handed me a 'duplicate' of that! apparently his colleague went to Tokyo's Ueno market and bought that, among other things, for 1000 yen. :)

i also attended my first Malay wedding earlier this afternoon. a Malay colleague whom i don't even know personally invited me to her wedding ceremony and since i was free, i just showed up. I was told that her wedding was actually a more 'posh' Malay wedding, because the decorations and tables were more lavishly done up... i didn't really stay for long, but somehow i can't help but feel a little ashamed that despite having lived in a so-called multiracial multicultural society for a good part of my life, i had little understanding of Malay marriage customs... and among the guests invited, 90% of them were Malay... with little or no intermingling among the Malay and Chinese/Indian guests... i mean i suppose we do 'co-exist' peacefully, but somehow most of us have yet to really step out of our comfort zones to better understand the other races?

going on house visits also gives me the opportunity to work with 'collectors of land revenue' from our operational unit, who are often older male officers in their 50s (i think) so in a sense it's also like a totally different 'crowd'; these officers have been at this for so long that they are really proficient in explaining things in dialect and malay to residents! and so thanks to them i am sometimes saved from situations whereby my limited capabilities in hokkien fail me :P also, though i don't know them very well personally and may never get the chance to given our very infrequent contact; it is not difficult to tell that they are good decent folks. today i finished early and so could go home... then it was raining.. and dark.. and i wasn't too sure where i can take a taxi from... then Mr XX (though it was drizzling) somewhat insisted on walking me to the road where i could hail a taxi home... the only thing that prevented him from doing that was perhaps this elevated platform from which i had to jump down from... which if he followed suit he would have been unable to get back to the void deck where all the others were.... yeah anyway, was quite touched by this little fatherly act of kindness... :)

i like the occasional ''frontline" aspect of my job. which puts me in contact with our customers, ie. HDB flat owners... i've come to realize that most of the SERS flat owners we deal with are really not very well off... thus work unwittingly gives me a rare opportunity to interact with the less privileged members of society. i'm still too new to be able to answer ppl's queries effectively or very accurately, but i'm trying to get better. sometimes officers have to bear the brunt of these ppl's complaints/gripes; and it can be rather demoralising to have ppl blame you for policies that you had no part in drawing up; but nonetheless it's just interesting in my opinion to listen to such feedback. well... i suppose i'm still new and the novelty of such frontline duties has yet to wear off... but i hope that i wun become jaded with time, but instead become more familiar with policies i need to know well, so as to be as helpful as possible to members of public in need of info they really ought to be aware of. feel that policies have gotten so complicated and I have the responsibility to make things as understandable as possible to everyone; and esp the illiterate and elderly. alas, i don't even hav everything at my fingertips yet. so need to first work on that!

of cats in costumes, p-sch kids and newborn babies

work this week has been pretty gruelling and rather demoralising, but that aside, snippets of my friends' lives have made this a palatable week nonetheless. first... the guest star appearance of Nick in his Frankensteinish Halloween costume! haha... this was the cat that would disappear the instant he sensed my presence.. remember blogging about him last Thanksgiving (it's been a year...!) and regretting how i didn't maange to capture any shots of Nick. poor Nick here looks rather tortured in his costume... no offence, Courtney :)
also attended my ex-primary sch muscial at the National Library Drama Centre last night... had a brief meeting with my ex-teacher; and saw quite a few ex-teachers :P but instead of going up to them, i was silently eyeing many of them haha... cos most wouldn't remember me anyways...most of them look quite the same as they did some 11 years ago! and some of the performing kids... they are really quite little! really felt old in comparison.
last but not least, i received the joyful news of the birth of a newborn baby. My ex-landlady Tonya gave birth to a baby girl last week. would have been exciting if i were still there to witness this... i'm thinking of buying some baby accessories/bedding/clothing as a token gift... briefly looked at Pottery Barn (which has the SWEETEST baby things) and Baby Gap... haven't decided on what to get though. ideas on both online/local shops specialising in babywear are most welcome! and for now... it's off to a 2-930pm workday for me in a couple of hours' time.

attended a one-day course at the Civil Service College today for the first time and met a very chatty fellow attendee.... we were just discussing some things and it somehow led to her commenting that oftentimes, it's not that we don't really dare to do certain things. rather, we have no courage to deal with the consequences.... and the fear of facing the undesirable consequences makes us think twice about acting in the first place... not that i don't know this at the back of my mind, but no one has put it so explicitly before. it's so true.

also discovered this cool bookstore/antique/furniture store at Chip Bee Gardens, right opposite Holland Village.. It's called Cho Lon, which means marketplace in Vietnamese... has a very interesting collection of books! and it also sells unusual items with the Urban Outfitters feel... good spot for Christmas gift shopping! though quite pricey :(

even though i usually dun get to sleep in on Sunday mornings, i always look forward to the one hour before my Japanese class... cos i'll usually get to sit peacefully at the McCafe outside Isetan Scotts before the rest of Singapore flocks to Orchard :P I've also fallen in love with this frappe drink that I can only find at McCafe outlets-- something called the Himalayan Tea Latte... it's a little like Chai but not that 'spicy'... i dunno. not sure what they put in it but i'm quite addicted to it :P perhaps it's good that McCafe's not quite as ubiquitous as normal McDonald's outlets; else i would have burnt a big hole in pocket, since it only comes in one size (large). on the other hand, if i get to drink it everyday i'll probably grow sick of it sooner than expected. so yeah, though i'm usually rushing Jap HW while sipping my tea.... the relaxing music in the background + the rare tranquility in Orchard actually makes sitting outdoors at a cafe in Sg still somewhat pleasant. this would be perfect if we were blessed with non-freakish Berkeley spring weather all year round :)

i think i still can't really get over the fact that work often entails doing things that you don't exactly enjoy doing... i'm told that that's quite common, and that i ought take them as challenges... but also fear the arrival of the day i stop feeling this kinda unpleasantness and resistance... i've also been fretting over this small policy paper i'm supposed to draft... cos policies are a lot more complicated and messy than what i expected; and also find it hard to convince myself to argue for a certain stand when i have yet to witness how the policies translate/ have translated at the ground level... AND... when discussing certain ideas with nice colleagues, realized that it's so easy to propose this and that... and yet i wouldn't even be able to imagine the indirect inconveniences caused at the operational level.... i really have a long way to go! nonetheless discovered amidst my anxiety that my 'buddy' at work's actually a very very sweet person... and am really thankful to have her as my 'mentor' :)

I sense that i appear to be rather 'mysterious' to some ppl... because oftentimes i look like i'm pensive, then in the end i don't even utter a word. then usually ppl get a lil bit concerned and will instead ask.... so are you ok? and usually ppl would in turn be at a loss as to what to say to me... and some ppl are seemingly baffled. i wonder if my boss is one of them... cos i'm not chatty like some colleagues and so during chance meetings after lunch on way back to office etc sometimes work is still discussed for lack of better conversation topics. hmm in fact, work issues almost always manage to find their way into lunch conversation generally... but guess that's not very unusual at all

i was the sorry victim of my dept d and d's activities last night. there were many saboed victims, but thought mine was especially traumatic. and rather inappropriate for a dept annual dinner... SO... towards the end of the dinner, when i was about to leave, i was called on stage as a substitute for my colleague (who left shortly beforehand) for some 'beauty pageant' whereby contestants were supposed to replicate on stage somewhat suggestive moves initiated by the emcee... and the female 'contestants' had to end off with "Am I hot?"... so poor me was standing on stage, almost wanting to puke/faint watching the emcee demonstrating all this... and the worse thing was... every contestant's lil performance was captured on video.... of course i couldn't bear to do most of the things we were told to, but had to entertain a little just to be sporting... but thought it was a most inconsiderate item for a d and d dinner... if it's prom night or something i can stomach it, but d and d??? unless i'm just being particularly sore having been victimized... i think if anyone who knows me well were present, he/she would have totally cracked up. and of course, sympathized loads with my plight.

with an office full of ladies, office chatter can never exclude shopping finds... i mean i'm not surprised when colleagues talk about shopping... but was indeed a little surprised to discover rather expensive taste among quite a few! and quite a few of them are pretty 'obsessed' with LV... colleague sitting opposite me brought her $990 LV bag to work today... and ppl were congregating at her workstation to catch a glimpse of the thousand-dollar bag.... then another colleague just received a $800 LV wallet from her husband, much to the envy of some others... (not so much the wallet, but rather a laogong who teng2 her so much) i'm certainly too poor to afford even the tiniest LV bag as of now... but more importantly, i'd rather splurge on a holiday abroad VS such a luxury good... when i expressed this preference, bag-fanatic colleague replied that it was the opposite for her... she very much prefers bags (that she can keep and admire over and over again) to holidays... hehe.. maybe one day if i ever get super rich i'll start considering these tai tai habits....

the past two days have been crazy for me; worked past 9pm for both days and felt extremely worn out... have been assigned very tedious tasks at work and perhaps inability to work quickly and efficiently has resulted in extremely long hours.... :( also observed that it does pay to be more chatty and thick-skinned at work(or just about anything???); and my character sometimes put me at an disadvantage when it comes to establishing good work relationships with people... one does not need to 'hit it off' instantly when making friends since the process is gradual whereas one sometimes needs to be good at just dealing with ppl if you merely need to get work done... makes me wonder what kinda job would be a good fit for me....?

sometimes i wished i were better at making choices. cos some decisions in life are extremely difficult and distressing to make and you just have to believe you did the right thing and keep going. perhaps it's good that big decisions made are mostly 'irreversible'... which makes you take extra care in making them...yet there will still be this lingering doubt at the back of your mind..... how can some ppl be so sure about what they want?

spent quite a lot of effort today trying to capture pictures suitable for an ongoing mini photocompetition. sadly i didn't manage to get anything very satisfying. nonetheless, enjoyed myself wandering around the colorful Bugis village area, which has many interesting characters. on way back to Bugis MRT, also walked past a tissue "seller" (as i'm writing this, it suddenly struck me that Singapore's perhaps one of the few if not the only country where tissues are a "peddleable" product) anyway, not to digress.... so i happened to look this old man in the eye... and his eyes just lighted up with hope, perhaps thinking that i was going to buy tissues from him... and so i faltered and fished out my wallet... dunno, sometimes i think i have double standards. i usually ignore tissue peddlars who go from table to table, but certain tissue peddlars really look so pitiful i feel bad for not helping at minimal cost to myself... though the right/wise thing these ppl ought to do is to look for work in order to get a steady stream of income. oh well... haha and oops i've totally digressed from what i set out to blog about :P

just caught my first Bollywood movie on Arts Central -- Bride and Prejudice. hehe sounds familiar?? cos it was what Sumei was so addicted to around the time i was temporarily homeless last fall.... so while i was doing various assignments and preparing for midterms, this dear girl was watching the $1 rental dvd on her laptop :P j/k, of course she did other constructive things too :)

Anyway, it's a very interesting movie in my opinion for various reasons...i mean picky ppl can find many flaws with it, but it was enjoyable for me. Plot-wise, it wasn't too exciting, since i knew what was going to happen in the end. Rather, the Bollywoodization of the storyline made it interesting. maybe i just haven't watched Indian movies before, but i was pleasantly surprised how 'Indian' it was... i loved the Indian wedding scene near the beginning with the young Indian couples dancing... it was very refreshing :) and at the end of the movie i concluded that saris can look extremely beautiful (esp on Indian ladies, who also have big lovely eyes and somehow these two go together haha)... it looked real odd on the white girl who played Darcy's popped-out-of-nowhere girlfriend... initially they also tried to challenge stereotypes of India and the US.. but it turned out to be a rather half-hearted attempt... nonetheless still liked this idea of cross-cultural interaction among the characters...

dad has been delegated the official responsibility of managing household in mum's absence... and though i cannot say that he hasn't been trying, performance is a certainly a far cry from mum's usual standards... i really have to give mum credit for managing household so well; and sometimes even though it appears to have been effortless, i'm sure it is and has been tiring... though having to work all day makes me extremely lazy when it comes to household chores, i finally decided to do my part after watching clothes and towels being folded the "wrong way"... haha... i am really not some fastidious neat freak, but seeing clothes and towels folded in an 'unorderly' way made me feel so unbearable and thus i decided to break out of laziness.... and i really can't say that it's a girl thing, cos I have definitely witnessed guys who are super neat/clean... who put me to shame :P but my dad's certainly not one of them. esp not after discovering in one of his clean trousers pockets a crumpled ball of soiled handkerchief.... was very very grossed out.

mum has zipped off to Xiamen on a mini getaway with a friend and though it's just been a day, things feel amiss at home. no warm hand to pull the sleepy me out of bed/shake me awake in the morning; no warm beverage awaiting me on the dining table in the morning; no one to wave me goodbye upon leaving the apartment for work... haha i totally sound like a big baby right and feels strange since i didn't have any of this all these years overseas... i mean perhaps it's when you know you ought be having something that you don't that it feels particularly funny. (ie. since i'm at home in Sg, by right mum should be here too) sometimes you miss things and people more than you think you'll do...

this evening i checked out the latest mall in town, Vivocity, together with maybe 50% of all Singaporeans, who flocked there to cou4 re4 nao4... it actually opened last weekend if i'm not wrong, but the attention-grabbing-of-late stores, like GAP, only opened late yesterday... and though i'm not like a die-hard GAP fan or anything, i did feel like checking that out, too :P sadly, it's rather pricey and selection didn't seem that great. and though being in the shop itself (eg. atmosphere, general deco etc) did give me some kinda deja vu; having to jostle with tonnes of other Singaporeans certainly made the overall experience very 'local'... On the whole, shops at Vivocity did appear to veer towards the more high-end ones... wonder if the crowds would still continue to pour in after the initial hype is gone? but now there's another mall with ZARA :P unfortunately i'm still too poor to afford the expensive but pretty clothes there. hai. and now that i have to 'make my own living'... realize that zhuan4 qian2 bu4 rong2 yi4..... :P

after months of consulting the Unit's street directory for ad hoc tasks, a recent assignment convinced me that it was worthwhile investing in my very own Singapore Street Directory. how else would i be able to figure out what really exists in my town?? Despite having some trouble really familiarising myself with my assigned towns, I think i cannot complain about not having been assigned a 'familiar' town... since whatever town i'm assigned i'd probably not be too familiar with it! esp when viewing it from a "bird's-eye view"!!! sis thought it funny that i bought a street directory even though i don't drive... well.... if i familiarize myself with the streets, it would be a plus if i eventually know how to get (drive) around Singapore right? :P but you know... it's really no use sitting in the office and staring at maps if you really haven't been to the areas yourself. I should really learn how to drive soon and drive myself around to familiarize with places i ought to know well!

alas, my mum finally made the discovery minutes ago despite my relatively successful attempts to hide a huge blue-black on the knee the past few days... so i had to sit through a 5 min lecture on how i don't know how to take care of myself.. as well as a mini interrogation session on how the disfiguring evidence of my clumsiness came to be... paranoid dad has even jumped to conclusions that i might suffer from some form of osteoporosis... i knew this was coming and so have been trying to hide the blue-black by wearing pants to work these past few days... but alas two min of negligence sitting in living room in knee-length nightgown have wasted all my efforts :( aaargh.

If you're wondering what movie to catch this weekend/ next week, I highly recommend Little Miss Sunshine! It's hilarious... and very sweet at the same time... :) and i guess the familiar freeways, road signs and motels did bring back fond memories of road trips too.

Tales from Earthsea (Gedo Senki)

I want to watch this!! It's Goro Miyazaki's (Hayao Miyazaki's son) first full length animation film and it has a lovely lovely theme song... very calming... and the beautiful sketches have won me over even though i've yet to watch the film haha :) Think it's going to premiere on Nov 9 in Singapore. In the meantime, you can watch Trailer No. 1 here... or Trailer No. 2 here :P

Singapore has turned mooncake island this past week or so. i'm seeing so many mooncakes around it's starting to get a little repulsive.... goodness knows how much lianrong (and other fillings too i guess) an avg Singaporean ingests during this period... and it's amazing how with some extra packaging and creativity hotels/restaurants can turn these low cost traditional desserts into highly profitable products... alas! i too fell victim to this huge commercial ploy-- HDB staff get say 25% discount on mooncakes from major hotels/restaurants and i got myself a box of mini mooncakes with champagne truffle and ganache from Raffles Hotel... colleagues were raving about it, but when i brought it home and let my family try it... my sis just went... taste like champagne, meh? haha. i did wonder how come some colleagues and other HDB staff bought so many boxes of mooncakes of various flavors.... do they really like eating mooncakes?? how much mooncake can you eat before you get sweeted out? and can ppl usually differentiate the quality?? I'm no food connoisseur, but as long as it's not significantly inferior, i doubt i can tell the difference btwn the quality of mooncakes from various hotels/ restaurants... does a Raffles Hotel mooncake really taste way better than the 80 cents mooncake you get from a heartland bakery? i suppose it boils down to the gift-giving part of buying mooncakes... obviously where you buy your mooncake from matters... hee... and when you spend so much money on your mooncake you would want to pyscho yourself to think that this expensive mooncake tastes better.... haha... i suppose this applies for many other things too? :P

sat in a public housing seminar at HDB on Friday; some variation in work routine at last! it was interesting for me, cos i got to learn a lil more about Universal Design, which includes, but is not limited to creating barrier-free access for the disabled; rather, it strives to make facilities/designs as user-friendly as possible to a broad spectrum of users. I also realized how impt it is for planners to take such things into acct, and applaud the move :) i used to admire how disabled-friendly buses and places in the States are; am happy to see progress here in sg too! i want to refrain from making this sound like a sales speech or something, but now HDB flats will come with wider corridors; bigger switches, bigger toilets, ramps instead of steps at appropriate spots etc... it really doesn't seem like it requires too much trouble to make these provisions and it's heartening that changes are slowly being introduced :)

lastly, on a random note.... we were briefly discussing recent news events in Japanese class today... and someone raised the coup in Thailand. so apparently in Japanese, the katakana for coup is not simply coup; rather, it's based on the original French coup d'etate... i guess it makes sense, since French should be as 'foreign' as English for the Japanese... why should i assume that all Katakana words are based on English? (though most of them are..)

Animal subjects

Haven't been to the zoo in YEARS... so it was really pretty refreshing for me :) realized on Sunday that it's a totally different experience trying to take pictures of wildlife... cos... alas... they wun sit still for you...whereas kids, fidgetive and restless as they are, will still listen sometimes.. but how to convey a photo request to an animal? :P

The Singapore Zoo seems to be big on wildlife conservation, for a good cause :) You get to take pictures with one of these parrots, or bigger ones, if you pay $5 towards some wildlife conservation fund. If not, you still get to take pictures... just not with them :)

yawn... go ahead and snap all you want... but be sure to leave me to my afternoon nap after that!

Friend: So... since whites are called angmohs, is Ang Mo Kio where all the angmohs live??

i was very amused. :P

A touristy week for me :P

friend's visit gave me the chance to visit quite a handful of places I prob wouldn't have visited on my own... and discovered a few decent and not overly-touristy/artificial places to visit... Sg does have a its own share of cool places too after all... :)

Visited the National Orchird Garden in the Botanic Gardens for the first time... it's such a pretty garden... no pictures can justify the experience of walking through all those colorful elegant flowers. Very good photo op too! Didn't really get much time to take pics this time round.. but hope to return in future

hehe... where was this pic taken? (read on to find out..) sadly the CBD buildings are somewhat 'clouded out' by the haze... anyway, my FIRST time taking the cable car brought me to the tranquil summit of Mount Faber. have to admit that it was a lil scary to be 'floating' in non-airconditioned cabin way above everything else... as well as above lotsa tropical trees as we neared Mount Faber... but quite cool! :P

have yet to master the art of working both efficiently and competently... still some kinda trade off for me as i tend to spend more time to ensure that quality doesn't suffer... but sometimes realize that certain things you have to race against time... and things just can't be as good as you want them to be... which leads me to another point-- i find it rather disturbing how in an attempt to get things cleared, we sometimes have to compromise on details... one wonders what happens downstream if things aren't well thought-through enough? how do diff organizations make decisions? top management ppl can't always be right also... yet seems like subordinates usually wun question excessively. just do. how can like that. why like that. will i eventually become like that. or am i already like that...

We, flowers, welcome the IMF/World Bank delegates

finally went out with my new camera on another mini photo outing... with the knowledge that town would be more flowery than usual :P well, wasn't disappointed... but at same time rather amused how intentional everything is! even all the shops are giving delgates special discounts.. why they so special! ha.

Isn't this pretty....

So i discovered rows of sunflowers lining the pathway right outside SMU... not sure it they will be permanent. in any case, they're so pretty; made me wonder why we dun ever plant sunflowers along our roads... too high maintenance i suppose.

and so i discovered this strange phenomenon of sunflower-lined roads...

this was closer to suntec... well... it is rather obvious that they have been intentionally planted.. can still see the original bunches and wiring....

this week or two is prob as happening as Sg can get...? everything has been planned to coincide with IMF/WB meeting rather intentionally, so as to showcase the island to the supposed 16,000 or so delegates arriving... sadly i can only hear about the big names in the papers; no chance to attend any public lectures and such... of course i'm happy that there are many things i can do during the weekend, yet at the same time, feel like everything's but a show. it's cool that passers-by get to appreciate Salvador Dali's sculptures in front of Taka... but me wonders if these transplanted sculptures would soon disappear after the buzz is gone? reminds me of friend's documentary... that we dun bother to slowly cultivate and allow things to slowly take root... we only want instant gratification...?

had three 'arty' events lined up back-to-back last weekend... caught Forbidden City on Sat; watched Tony Takitani at The Picturehouse on Sunday; then attended an Asian Film Symposium screening at the Substation yesterday evening... though i was left with little time to take a good rest; they were totally necessary for balancing out the draining forces at work ha. the former two were nice (though Tony Takitani wasn't very easy to figure out i have to say) but the last one was really really cool . I got to watch a documentary titled Singapore Standard Time produced by my very dear friend! and it was extremely good. Sadly, i don't think it's going to be shown anywhere in sg anytime soon, but the producers say that it might be screened on Arts Central come Jan 07... so watch out for it! ;P if only i can produce something half as good one day! ;P hee still haven't totally tossed out my far-fetched dream of making documentaries one day... but knowing me..... hai.

i still cannot really decide whether it's good to keep feeling 'sore' over having to do things you HAVE to do but dont' like to do; or whether it's better to just accept that there will always be things you dun like to do but HAVE to and be 'resigned' to fate... hmm i guess either way you still end up having to do these things you dun like to do haha. so perhaps BEST way is to think... how can i eventually not need to do things i don't like to do?! aiyah maybe i'm just being irrational and childish and spoilt... i suppose there are always things one has to learn/do, but doesn't enjoy learning/doing... and perhaps slowly tipping the scale towards things you like to learn/do is called active management/exercising control over own life? :P

tmr morning's our dept's 'Active Day' and some of us were made to participate in team spirit- boosting games.... i signed up for something called "Wet and Wild", which involves carrying scoop of water over your head over a certain distance.... then team that gets most water in shortest time or something wins. hmmm... hope i dun really end up getting wet. but wonder how effective these will be at team-building? anyway... i suppose it's a nice break from work. though this week saw me OT-ing 2/3 times, still can't help but feel unproductive even while OT-ing since i'm still somewhat "handicapped" at work... and it's funny how after i revealed to a colleague that work hasn't really won me over at all... he replied saying something like, "who likes work??" :P i think i just need to find something that will motivate me and inspire me at work, if i ever do...

Toa Payoh HDB Hub has been more re4 nao4 than usual this past couple of days, due to open auditions of juedui superstar right in front of NTUC... or some sort of pre-audition thingy... having scores of male popstar wannabes waiting for their 'ticket' to fame isn't a regular sight during lunch breaks :P yeah, so colleagues and i made use of leftover lunchbreak time to cou4 re4 nao4... also spotted Quan Yifeng doing some kinda hosting for Channel U... sad to say, i don't think i've heard anyone real good so far... and colleague's comment that some of the participants wear until 'bu san bu si' made me rather amused ;P i suppose it's one way of drawing attention...

sometimes ppl have strange affinities for things without knowing why... i think in my case i have this strange affinity for Japanese. just like at Berkeley, taking Japanese somehow makes me happy :) and... even at Berkeley i thought the teachers were amazing to produce textbooks with such cute pictures etc.... my sensei at Ikoma has the this amazing flair for illustrating cute stick figures cum scenarios on the blackboard within minutes... and uses them effectively to enhance our understanding of the material... though teaching format etc is different, i feel like the classes are really pretty decent too. actually i think i've been placed into a class too advanced for my level... but hehe to save my money, i'm gonna stick with it... i mean at least i still get quite a fair bit of what she says :P
then today on the MRT, seconds after whipping out my copy of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which i have been reading rather sporadically during my commutes to and from work, this middle-aged guy standing behind me initiated a conversation by asking if i've watched the movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis (i didn't even know it was made into a movie)... conversation gradually veered towards career consulting... and HR.. and turns out that he knows my deputy director from the HR dept (who's kinda like scholars' boss) anyway he appeared very well-informed and experienced and has daughter who works for A-Star... haha. somewhat random but coincidental though.... anyway, dunno.. lesson of the day....ERM, read interesting books on the MRT cos you'll never know what interesting conversations they can spark? haha.

having witnessed how some of my lady colleagues couldn't help shedding (more than) a few tears for boss esp towards end of the day, i cannot help but infer that he must have been a really really good boss. and these past few days of group phototaking... farewell last week... decorating his workstation early this morning... individual phototaking... and some resigned sighs of "things will never be the same again"... i suppose all of them must have built up really good working relationships as well as friendships. i have to admit that even as a newbie, i felt a little teary for 3 seconds in the middle of his mini farewell speech. funny thing is, despite having worked in a 90% female environment for some years, i believe boss is still rather clueless as to how to deal with women when they cry... and so when one colleague was hiding in cubicle (cos crying rather badly) boss was really at a loss and stared blankly at some of us... but still attempted to go in... poke poke a little, joke a little... but eventually decided to disappear :P oh well... i'm actually not so sure i can handle ppl crying either haha.but ya, it's certainly hard when you know you're going to miss someone.

my unit LOVES taking pictures. so today was pink day... we're doing all these crazy things cos old boss is leaving tmr and they want to have some things for him to bring away.... and so boss was made to wear pink too. he grudgingly did, claiming that it was the 2nd time wearing the pink shirt since some funny choir performance when everyone had to wear pink. new boss who thought it was a joke came in normal shirt then got penalized and made to pose with huge pink cushion in picture... hmm. dunno what to think haha. but feel like it's nice that everyone's kinda one big 'family'.... tomorrow's white top and jeans day-- but supposedly hawaiian shirt day for the male bosses. hmmph. wonder how bosses will react. aiyah but last chance for them to play joke on boss already... though i don't really know boss very well, i guess i can tell that my colleagues are sad to see him go... but, since he's gonna be bonded for quite a few more years after he returns from his studies, that certainly wun be the last we'll see of him ;P

haven't had much motivation to blog recently; and am trying very hard to ensure that all my entries don't end up talking about work.... so....
anyways, this one will be vaguely related to work lah. i was just thinking how much time i'll want to devote to work eventually. right now, i still have the luxury of going home around 645pm on average, but this certainly isn't the case for bosses... and in my case (ie. ppl i'm under) deputy director of my section works late into the night everyday (i heard) and comes back on weekends too to work... while her work dedication is certainly admirable, it makes me wonder how much i'm willing to give up for work. as it is now, i dun feel like i have much time to myself after work... and this is just the beginning! oh well, perhaps it also really depends on how one manages his/her time... how efficient one is at work... how perfectionist you want to be and many many other factors. in any case, i suppose i can't be too wrong to conclude that there's really a price to pay to be at the top?

it's been a busy week for me, unfortunately the weekend wun be 'spared' either... but i do look forward to two unusual upcoming 'events'... Boss's farewell later this evening and first jap class tmr morning! Boss will be leaving to further his studies soon and so we're having this party for him at a colleague's place. Everyone's supposed to turn up in GREEN... dun ask me why. and one colleague actually went and bought a Giordano polo T just for this occasion... aww. :) New boss and old boss joked that they can turn up in their No. 4s. (have no idea what that is, but from conversation it appears that its the army uniform)... then shall attempt to refamiliarize myself with Jap tmr morning... bleah. no time to do any major preparation or revision at all! hope i wun get too lost and get thrown out of the class that i somewhat smoked through to get a placement in! :P

some ppl at work are really starting to grow on me... while one or two others make me wonder if i should keep them at a distance... but this particular female colleague has been really funny cos for some weird reason she has been trying for some time to matchmake me with someone (whom i know) who used to work in this unit... and today she explicitly asked, so what do you think of XXX? and randomly commented, relationships take time to grow you know.... yeah i suppose. but sometimes things just happen without you even trying. for better or for worse.

though mum has been faithfully and lovingly preparing meals at home (whenever we eat at home) i have more than once insensitively commented on food being too weird or bland, only to realize it too late... sigh, housewife really difficult to be sometimes... esp when the husband deems food too salty (when it isnt!) then daughter thinks food akin to that prepared for sick patients... but somehow realized after coming back that i seem to have taken a liking to food saltier/sweetier than what my family fancies... and today we went out for dinner and ordered cereal prawns (an all-time favorite! :P) i thought cereal prawns were too dry but parents thought not too oily just right... but it really is true that sometimes food that's more healthily prepared doesn't taste as good what... hehe of course i should also bear in mind to cut down on oil intake...and recently, choc intake too... :(

after helping to arrange two meetings for top management, i've decided that being someone else's personal assistant (PA) is probably a job that i'll avoid at all costs. having been culpable for rescheduling meetings several times, i felt guilty even to have to call those PAs up to tell them that meetings been changed again. surely doesn't help that these PAs' bosses are highly busy ppl with packed schedules. i can just imagine how nerve-wrecking it must be getting all these phone calls from diff ppl in the organization all day and having to reshuffle meetings/appointments again and again! bearing that in mind, i guess i can empathise with some of them for being a little hostile at times; or for wanting more commitment to certain dates given... hehe certainly doesn't help that being a small fry in the office i can't make big decisions on the spot! :P

beginning to feel like though colleagues are all very nice ppl, prob wun get to know them very well; but maybe it's still too early to tell. ppl do talk, gossip etc, but feel like there's less of the get-to-know-each-other-better kind of talk... hehe and given my tendency to keep to myself, i guess i ought shoulder some of the blame as well! feel like right now, it's quite impossible to hang out a lot with ppl and to get to know ppl really well, like i did in uni... maybe that's why ppl say after you get out of sch, it's a lot harder to make good friends. aiyah i guess there will be exceptions too. haha maybe when i start getting a lot of OT... and have to go through thick and thin with colleagues, the chance will arise. :P

there were 7 infants and toddlers in total at my colleague's housewarming party yesterday! given my experience living with Kai and family, this isn't exactly an eye-opener, but it's been a while! at one point, i was also 'passed' my colleague's ten-month-old baby... whom i tried very hard to hold properly, while frantically trying to draw on my baby-carrying experiences some 16 years ago with my then extremely little cousins. i was told by a colleague who recently crossed over from the private sector that the phenomenon of young married couples/young married couples with kids is certainly not the norm where she used to work. i guess it might be cos ppl working in private/public sectors have diff priorities? anyway, i was a lil baffled how till today i dun seem to have 'shaken off' my guai1 image... one colleague, when introducing me to her husband, joked that i was the guai1 type who "will stand up just to shake his hands"... i mean i know i'm not pai4 but why is it that wherever i go i seem to project this guai1 image...

these couple of days i've been feeling bad about being not xi4 xin1 enough with my work. the little things i overlooked didn't lead to disastrous consequences... but really felt incompetent :( sigh, no use brooding over them now. have to tell myself to learn from mistakes and then move on! actually i feel extremely guilty because my boss, instead of telling me to make the necessary changes, makes the amendments himself whenever he can, then sends the improved versions back to me and highlights things i need to be aware of.... i hav to admit that his style of doing things is quite efficient and cool. and it REALLY makes me even more motivated to do my work well...

Early National Day Special

ha this blog too has a National Day feature. not that i'm particularly patriotic or anything, but... this is just for fun :) i took the following two pics on the day of my Little India outing, but decided to reserve them for this entry. I've never seen HDB flats in such patriotic colors...

these were apparently old flats that have undergone upgrading. and clearly given a fresh coat of paint...
while near the void deck, i happened to glance up and this was what i saw... hmm apparently old HDB flats can look a lil futuristic too? :P
PS: though my comments may make me appear like a HDB spokesperson, i am really speaking from an objective POV!

Little India photo outing

to keep my mind off work and to brush up photo composition skills, i visited an ethnic enclave in search of interesting things to capture. i'm ashamed to say that i never once set foot in Little India ever since a sch visit in Sec 2... though it was a little too hot and uncomfortable to be taking pictures, the bright sun helped a little in making colors more xian1 yan4 ( i think?)

what are these? i dun think i can call them saris cos they are just brightly colored skirts. sari skirt? haha anyway, these bright skirts on sale outside a shop caught my eye and i decided to "abstract" them a little ;P

i liked how i could see both high-rise flats and the 'shophouse' from this angle.

standing across the st, i spotted this 'potato man' working in the hot afternoon sun. tried to be discreet and snapped the pic when he wasn't looking ;P i think the orange sacks hold potatoes and the red ones, onions...

one of many flower stalls selling garlands

have been feeling somewhat down the past few days for no good reason... despite efforts to be positive, i suppose i get a relapse once in a blue moon (maybe a lil more frequently lah). and somehow dun hav appetite for dinner. and little things at work and in life in general get blown up out of proportions when i'm feeling :( however i find that it helps to do brainless numbing things cos when one's upset trying to concentrate just makes things worse.

for some strange reason, i have been addicted to Music to Watch Girls By by Andy Williams ever since i heard it in That CD Shop last weekend... think it was some ad jingle some time back but had no idea what the title was then. wo lao3 le...? but it's a cool song.

work can be quite stifling sometimes... of course there are 'rules' too when you study, but there's a lot more freedom to 'swim' around within the boundaries set for you... whereas for work, feel like it's less so. like you have to use rather strange language to get clearance from boss; everything's kinda interconnected and so one mistake can result in unintended 'turbulence' elsewhere; even when doing up powerpoint slides ppl advise you to do things a certain way (i really appreciate that colleagues are kind, but dislike how individuality somewhat suffers... but i mean i suppose i understand how sometimes standardization is necessary for organization and clarity/consistency) let's hope certain little uncomfortable things dun get to me too much and too soon.

today i finally asked a colleague what the acronym MSCP stands for (keeps reminding me of MCP- male chauvinist pig) and felt extremely silly when she told me... Multi Storey Car Park! but hey... it should be MCP instead since it's more correct to say Multi-storey Car Park... or Multi-storey Carpark (MC).... no? but whatever lah, just being boliao ;P

i just finished Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time this past week :) it was certainly an enjoyable and refreshing read. i also liked how the author managed to weave in the bit about how difficult it can be for parents to take care of an autistic child. how much patience and love it takes... and it did remind me of some of the things the staff used to tell us at CHAI.... i'm newly inspired to read up more on Autism for fun. one thing that bothers me a lot is how autistic people don't really naturally acquire social skills... like they find it extremely hard to interpret social behavior/cues... even perfectly able human beings find it difficult to figure out what others are thinking sometimes, so i can imagine how frustrating it must be for them! :(
nonetheless, some parts are really quite innocently funny. like...

29. I find people confusing.
This is for two main reasons.
The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eye-brow it can mean lots of different things. It can mean "I want to do sex with you" and it can also mean "I think that what you just said was very stupid."

Siobhan also says that if you close your mouth and breathe out loudly through your nose, it can mean that you are relaxed, or that you are bored, or that you are angry, and it all depends on how much air comes out of your nose and how fast and what shape your mouth is when you do it and how you are sitting and what you said just before and hundreds of other things which are too complicated to work out in a few seconds......

anyway, me thinks that it makes for some good light reading for ppl who want to gain some insight into an autistic mind :)

PS: if you want your smile to be among those greeting international delegates arriving in Sept (for the IMF/WB annual meetings), find out more HERE. can win prize some more leh, if you upload by 2nd Aug! ;P

am finally starting to recover from cough, but progress is excrutiatingly slow... and soon i will be unable to resist the temptation of snacks and succumb to cookies and rubbishy stuff... i suppose only consoling thing about not snacking is illusion that abstaining from snacks has a tummy-flattening effect ;P yest took an unprecedented initiative to ask boss if he minded sharing some of his own experiences as a HDB scholar... which led to lunch today and a pretty easy conversation... perhaps it's cos boss is young and not going to be boss in a month's time or so that i feel like i can talk to him just like a friend... he did dispense some good advice, and though i cannot really tell for sure yet, he does feel like someone i can really look up to and emulate... in terms of work attitude and how he treats ppl. in meantime, will try hard to keep positive attitude and not get too worried over other ppl's expectations... i suppose what's most impt at the end of the day is that i put in my very best.

life is fine, except that i'm suffering from the most irritating cough. i've never had terrible coughing fits like the ones i've been having the past few days...something just triggers the cough, then i 'erupt' into this violent coughing fit for 2 or 3 minutes... sometimes finding it even difficult to take in a few deep breaths to bring coughing situation under control.... i have no idea why this is happening to me... and neither the cough medicine nor the a-lozenge-an-hour 'act' seem to be helping... i dun even have a sore throat (the kind usually arising from an infection)... but throat is getting sore from coughing too much. help! what's happening to me! :( am i being punished for taking in too much fried and heaty food some 1.5 weeks ago??

ever since i got back from the US, i have been trying to refrain from getting hooked to any drama serial on TV... cos it would veer me away from this self-improvement drive i believe i ought to be on... ie. do more constructive things like read newspapers/books (haha yeah, am boring and nerdy) but alas!! i have fallen prey to one particular HK drama serial that is currently showing on Channel 8: Xi1 guan1 da4 shao4, 7pm M-F.... the irritating thing is i never get to enjoy the episodes entirely, since the long journey home from work usually means that i end up at home around 7.10pm or so even if i try to leave work punctually at 6pm... i guess i could make my family tape it, but then also means that i'll have to eat into time for other things on weekdays.... so i just watch the show in bits and pieces... wonder if this show was done a long time ago though cos Julian Cheung looks very young... and if i'm not mistaken, he's no longer a young 'chap' in real life?

was struck with a sore throat two days ago and am now suffering from a most irritating and itchy dry cough :( and will soon get a splitting headache if dad doesn't stop nagging at me to go see a doctor :P but prob will hav to tmr.... :(

pace is starting to pick up at work; though i can still pack up and go quite promptly at 6pm everyday... i guess i'm trying to do so while i can... sadly waking up so early in the morning everyday is still quite a pain, and plans to read a book on the MRT haven't been too successful. i can feel the fatigue setting in even though i haven't exactly been working hard at all and it beats me how ppl can work >10 hr days. perhaps the answer is you'll do it when you HAVE to... and perhaps i'll gradually get used to it. there's so much to learn and figure out! i'm excited also because i'm finally going to witness how ppl/organizations really operate... and i wonder when i'll be able to start feeling more useful than troublesome :P

having been surrounded by many peers (esp since sec sch) born with silver spoons in their mouths, it would be a blatant lie if i never once experienced feelings of envy... i suppose it's natural to make superficial comparisons and ask, why XXX can have all these things without working for them while i can't?? backgrounds aside, i believe i've also questioned why XXX is so smart while i am not?? OR... why is XXX so lucky to get this this and that but not me?? and when one is feeling sore about what one doesn't have, he/she neglects everything else that he/she does have. while on bad days i might try to deny that my life is good, in general i have to admit that i am a very fortunate girl with a loving family, great friends, and a beneficiary of a "fortuitous" education at Berkeley... reflecting on experiences in the past year or so; drawing on various recent articles i've read on ppl who have succeeded in accomplishing their goals and learning from the actions pf ppl i know who have inspired me, i'm repeatedly reminded of how impt it is to WORK hard, stragetically, for the things that you want... while 'windfalls' do happen, if you really want something to happen, you have to keep working for/on it... such a simple fact but sometimes really hard to put into action.

today's the second time it struck me that something was 'amiss' in Singapore--when i needed a nice cafe to sit down and do some reading. there is a sore lack of places where you can sit down with a book and have some peace and quiet to yourself to do some afternoon reading... while there are cafes around, it's sometimes even difficult to secure a table... i suppose it being the weekend makes it a lot worse. i miss the Berkeley cafes... like Brewed Awakening... where ppl around you actually inspire you... haha. imagine having loads of ppl reading at 8am at a cafe... and i remb more than one occasion whereby i unintentionally "eavesdropped" on ppl's intellectual and cheem discussions... i suppose the best alternative is to hide at home, but home's ultimately not the best place to be if i want some peace and quiet to myself :P sometimes i really wished i could make half the Singaporean population disappear... hehe being evil.

day 2 of tagging along with colleagues to see how they explain to respective residents compensations they are entitled to etc etc... and got to do a couple under supervision of experienced colleague! i'm RATHER lousy :( have to learn to think on feet, practise bilingual capabilities and perhaps learn to be more proficient in dialect! (though i'll prob be too embarrassed to speak in broken Hokkien) wun be doing such things that frequently though. haha and uttered first sentence in teochew in a very long time. i said something like i am Teochew but i don't really know how to speak teochew (in weirdly-accented teochew), while feeling a little guilty and useless... ha. i hope to become a good 'explainer' in future. seriously, all these calculations, regulations, rules and conditions are so confusing! if i were an old illiterate lady i'll be downright lost... while generally standard of living is rising; technology improving... yet somehow feel like lives are also getting more complicated by the day.

though most of my new colleagues are young mothers/newly-weds and so there is a tiny age gap... for once i feel young! haha. and INEXPERIENCED, of course. but as a former scholar who worked in the unit told me, "the aunties will take care of you".... they are far from aunties, in my opinion! some of them look so young i couldn't believe them when they told me they were married with kids! i on the other hand, despite being a decade younger than some of them, probably didn't look THAT much younger.... :P
it also appears that many of them have been working at HDB for quite some time.... and were happy with their jobs. it's certainly comforting for a newbie to be told that :) of course, i will slowly find out why.

first day of work was expectedly pretty uneventful, but at least everything went smoothly. HDB hardly gets new faces and so i couldn't help but feel extremely new and inexperienced :P tmr however seems to be a day to look forward to-- i start work at around 1 something in the afternoon... and day ends at 930pm! will tag along with colleagues visiting residents eligible for SERS (Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme) and good thing is... i actually get to go out in jeans and sneakers! :P

numbers...

3 namecards received at mini Berk gathering on Friday.
4 unexpected sightings of old sec/jc frens at NUS commencement today.
11 hrs or so to first 'official meeting' with sis's bf.
12 hrs to sis's commencement.
1.5 days to starting work! (kinda look forward to it... but sometimes wonder if bumming in bliss is better state to be in? guess i'll find out...)

The good old pavilion

if a tourist only visits the Botanical Gardens while in Singapore, he/she might actually be misleaded into thinking that Singapore had a Caucasian population of around 30-40%... least from what i saw today. i suppose that's also largely due to the location of the gardens... it's been ages since i last visited, but it's really a pretty pleasant place to jog, take nice long walks or walk your dog :P

much as i feel that i am fine with doing everything alone, little sweet gestures and little incidents also remind me that one's experiences also become less memorable and meaningful if one does not have close ones with whom he/she can share both joys and woes.

another rail-related entry... but this time it's the LRT :P

though i risk sounding like a super suaku Singaporean, but today marks my inaugural ride on the LRT! haha, well yeah, it's nothing as spectacular as the railway that has been grabbing headlines everywhere of late, but still a small wonder on its own. least it gave me a very pleasant short ride today... it seems like a very efficient and versatile of transporting ppl 'deeper' into HDB estates. reminded me a little of the MUNI actually, with its upward/downward sloping tracks at certain points. of course, i am totally unaware of possible cost/schedule issues that regular commuters might have been/be concerned about.... :)

and so the world's highest Qinghai-Tibet railway opens today (Sat). i think CCTV has been covering the 'historic event' rather extensively.... this morning while dad was watching special mini documentary of railway... i stopped in front of the TV and casually remarked that i wanted to go, only to be instantly, mildly 'rebuked' for wanting to travel everywhere (it has actually been one of my frivolous fantasy destinations for a while... you know, places you dream about visiting some day but don't know if you ever will) THEN, at night, Dad was watching coverage on the railway again. this time round, he encouraged me to watch the program and told me that "the scenery on TV was breathtaking, even better and clearer than if you were to go on your own".... sigh. a not-so-subtle hint there.... :P actually....a 48-hour train ride (Beijing to Lhasa) doesn't sound that appealing though! but that's if you do a non-stop thing. there's a lot of controversy about the railway in the papers, one fear being that easier access might dilute the unique Tibetan culture... though i have no idea how "culturally intact" Tibet is right now, i certainly hope that it wun be too 'culturally diluted' as feared, in the years to come...

touring is such a dilemma sometimes- i quite dislike over-touristy places; yet sometimes only when a place becomes touristy is it easier for ppl to visit... :( and perhaps i'm being hypocritical -- i too contribute to the touristification of these places...

Clarke Quay at night

managed to capture this while walking along the river yesterday night... too bad hands were still a little shaky :P

resolve to break out of vicious cycle of going to the same eating places all the time brought me to the newly renovated (perhaps by my standards, since the last time i went there was prob few years ago) hawker center at East Coast Park... and a delicious (but oil-drenched) spread of satay, sambal sting ray, roti john, fried hokkien mee etc. (things i haven't had for ages!) left me extremely satisfied with dinner. though couldn't help feeling worried that a single meal probably just wrecked my plans to keep trim and fit :P maybe... and hopefully.... work will stress me out and whet my appetite in 2 weeks' time!

recent events have also made me somehow very aware that change takes time, and serious action. and commitment. it might be a silly and duh thing to say, but i dunno, i feel like i always yearn (sometimes unrealistically) for these desired outcomes/perfect scenarios without devising practical steps to bring myself closer to these lofty goals...

was clearing away another pile of old cards/notes and noticed two most common things that ppl said to me- 1) that i was 'nice' and 2) that i had 'nice' handwriting; and a few even apologized to me for writing messily in the greeting cards! (i was very amused but a little upset). these made me think about what i used to be like-- for one, it was quite true that i had EXTREMELY neat handwriting back then. sometimes when i look back at my secondary sch notes i wonder how i managed to produce those almost evenly-spaced, font-like characters... my handwriting is nowhere near that kinda 'perfect neatness'; but somehow i quite like it the way it is now :) as for the 'niceness' bit... i wonder if a shy, smiley, quiet and agreeable me gave ppl the impression that i was 'nice'... because a lot of these friends i really didn't know that well! and talking about being shy, one letter my primary sch friend wrote me made me a little horrified, but highly inquisitive as to what happened back then. apparently, she wrote something like "i noticed that you were shy and uninterested at my birthday party. i would like an explanation from you" (in my head, i was thinking and laughing to myself... what on earth did i do! :P) regretfully, some of these interesting people you want to contact, you have no idea where/what they are doing right now... on hindsight, (and after reading through some old pieces of lil notes) there are also some individuals you wished you got to know better. clearing old stuff might be REALLY tedious, but it does bring back some good old memories... :) and i hope that maybe ten years from now, when i pull out some old emails (ah... times have changed) to read, i will find that people dun just remember me for being just another quiet girl... for that to happen, i have a long way to go! but a goal worth working for :)

"dessert overload"

shared the above espresso chocolate cake, a delicious brownie with friends at Far East Square; and had a generous free scoop of gelato (milk tea flavor!) at just-opened Japanese Gelato place Haato at Wheelock place, all in one afternoon! help! btw, it appears that gelato places can be found in every other corner in town now. a day out zipping in and out of food courts also alerted me to the tissue-choping phenomenon that i somehow never noticed previously...

shoe-hunting has officially begun for me, though i've had little luck the past few days. things that catch my eye also happen to be highly unsuitable, since they are potentially life-threatening for a sneakers-wearer like me. perhaps will have to wait till i become a more seasoned high-heels 'wearer' before attempting those treacherously high heels... alas! why are prettier designs also more unwearable/uncomfortable?! sigh. perhaps should also pity feet and take into consideration pain and potential damage high heels can do to poor feet.

soft shell crab trivia (you probably didn't want to know)

if you're ignorant like me, you probably thought the soft-shell crab was some special species that happened to have soft shells :P well, now that i think about it... it's kinda illogical if shells were meant to be protective huh... and if such crabs really did exist they prob would have been such easy preys that we wun even see them today? and so after i wikipediaed for soft shell crab 15 min ago after an interesting soft shell crab meal this afternoon, i realized that they are crabs that get cooked in the vulnerable few days after they molt their hard shells and before a new one is rebuilt! was rather dismayed upon discovering that's how they came about... sigh, i have to admit that i really like soft shell crabs... but now i'll feel guilty whenever i feel a craving and order some... i'll always be reminded of the devious tactics we humans can resort to in creating delicacies :( some things you rather you didn't know..... oh, and why i wikipediaed soft shell crabs today was cos being adventurous, i ordered a soft shell crab burger at this cafe in Changi today... and i was literally served a deep-fried-bread-crusted soft shell crab in a burger... (novelty soon disappeared; as soon as i realized that there are things in the main body i can eat, since shell is soft, but which i probably WUN want to) i dunno, i'm so used to seeing a 'disembodied' (i mean without the main body+shell) soft shell crabs in sushi that i forget these are full-bodied creatures, too. same goes for many things we eat, actually.

another 5.30 am entry ;P

rather expectedly, with my moving home after a long 4 years comes some sibling tension...particularly when decision made when you were 10 yrs old to share your personal space continues to dictate the way you're going to live (pretty much) for the next few years, at least... ah. reminds me of my econ 115's path dependency... haha. not that it's a big problem at all, but somehow after having a room to yourself for 3 years makes sharing seem rather deprived :P plus sis is suddenly robbed of having 2 beds and the whole wardrobe to herself... i guess i would feel a little :( if i were her too. and certainly doesn't help that old cupboards/wardrobes and desks are an unfortunate legacy of stupid decisions to hav furniture 'fixated' permanently to the wall! which reduces space management flexibility to nought... but best is still to make do with whatever you have. :)

also rediscovered my 10-yr-old/15-yr-old etc selves when FINALLY clearing out some old stationery/used-to-be-treasures collectibles such as keychains, erasers, bookmarks and such. it was both sad and revealing that i retained little affinity for many things that i used to do! plus all the friendship bands and little funny crafty thingies that i used to make... while on one hand i certainly felt more 'grown-up' but on the other, i wondered if i had turned into this unfeeling creature with little appreciation for cute little pleasures like these... but i figured i perhaps show my appreciation for my friends in different ways now. another sad thing was how i discovered pieces of Chinese creative writing i used to do in RGS... and feeling that my Chinese could never ever return to that kinda level... hai. i guess you gain some and lose some...

it's a pretty unearthly 7am in Singapore now and i have been up for about 2 hours, having yet to adjust to proper sleeping hours here :) visited favorite family hangout place (Tampines Mall...) to activate cell phone and was greeted by ever-teeming-with-life (and FOOD!) basement... with a record number of food places! maximum utlization of space it seems. hmm.

anyway, before work life starts to lock me into some kinda monotonous/busy 8.30-6.30? work schedule, i have decided in the past 2 hours or so to embark on a number of new 'projects' to make sure that i don't lapse into a boring/un-enriching life here :P so... if i actually get down to doing them, i shall 1) attempt to learn how to drive a manual-right-seat-driver car (haha sorry my English is too pok to come up with the proper term) 2) exercise! found quite a few STEP classes online and shall call to ask about them in the next week or so, hopefully 3) explore more food places/learn more about my own country-- have 2 motivations for this! to make sure that i will be an adequate tour guide when my few but dear American friends do come to visit me... hehe and perhaps break out of a my-life-mainly-revolves-around-the-Eastern-part-of-island cycle that has pretty much characterized past 19-22 years of residence... i am also hoping that my job will bring me to diff HDB estates all over the island... :) so that's 3 relative big plans i have for time being in the year ahead... hope they get done!

Blue Riesling bottles and little baskets hung on the wall (occasionally used for delivering muffins and such) frame the kitchen window of the house i stayed at for 3 nights. i guess there really wasn't THAT much to do in Louisiana, but thanks for my very nice hosts, stay was nonetheless very enjoyable. i guess good company can make all the difference :) maybe it's just me, but the places i visited somehow all had a very country, homely feel to them. perhaps some ppl would call it backward, but there's just something about some of these places that's holding me back from blindly labeling them in this way. also, i guess my weird affinity for the cute antiquey-looking fans common to many of these homes/restaurants plays a small part? haha.

and in less than 14 hours i will probably leave Berkeley 'for good'... this afternoon while waiting to have lunch with Jacqui i strolled around downtown Berkeley trying to 'absorb' the atmosphere and feel for one last time what this quirky place feels like... as i type this blog entry from my bed on the last night in my cosy room in Berkeley, i already know that i will miss this place+school... a place that holds some of my fondest memories, a place that made me mature from innocent little girl to less-innocent-more-independent-more-comfortable-in-own-skin big girl, a place where i made some of my dearest friends, a place that made me much more aware of the importance and the power of good education, a place that made me appreciate diversity... oh well. dun hav that kinda flair to put jumbled thoughts into well-articulated prose, but yeah, today i look back at my uninformed decision to apply to Berkeley and fully appreciate the significance of that fortuitous acceptance into this school...

I have been in the company of some really kind Louisiana residents the past 5 days or so. am currently in a small town north of New Orleans, called Mandeville, at a friend's aunt's house. and the commute to downtown/French Quarter in New Orleans involves driving across a 24-mile bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, easily more than twice the size of Singapore! this causeway apparently held the world record for longest bridge in 1969, but has since been surpassed by others, i think. what's the longest bridge in the world? i have no clue... but ya, not that i am unaware of how small sg is, but when you put things in perspective, it kinda reinforces this point :P anyway, one thing that really struck me when i first arrived in Shreveport was how green/tropical foresty the place was.... i guess cos my only comparison is Berkeley, and to a smaller extent, DC... and the other cities up north, it never really occurred to me how much closer to the tropics certain parts of the US were, too. and it's hot down here, and definitely more humid. hehe preparation for heading home next week, i guess.

flying down to Louisiana tmr for a week.... my last holiday before heading home on the 15th :)

various flowers were blooming in my own backyard and couldn't help taking parting pics of some. these, i fell in love with one year ago and they are all over in the backyard.. as well as along our street... on MLK... on campus... these buds actually come enclosed in a huge green 'bud'/pod... and they burst open to become like that... then bloom into elegant pretty purple flowers...
i've also realized how much effort gardening takes! my landlords just spent the whole of yesterday and half of today tidying up their plants... pulling out the weeds... much as i like flowers, i seriously doubt i'll go to that extent to produce a pretty garden myself :P a lazy bum like me instead leeches off pretty flowers in other ppl's gardens :P
was also treated to a farewell dinner by my landlords and can't help but feel a little sentimental that i will be leaving real soon. it has been a great year, living with them... i couldn't have asked for better housemates, really! and the other day when i looked at Kai, he really wasn't as little as he used to be when i first moved in! after all, it's been a year and a little bit more... time flies...

craigslist has become my most frequented website this past week or so; with so much stuff (often in good condition) i need to get rid of, the best solution is to give them away to ppl who actually want it... and good old craigslist has been extremely handy in helping me do that. and somewhat uncannily, almost every item i post has just one or two interested parties... items for sale were sadly a lot less popular, expectedly though. unfortunately, after half a week or so of massive cleanup, room still isn't as bare as i would want it to be :P sigh, come monday, most of remaining items would have to go to the dump... it's actually pretty interesting to see what use ppl have for things that you dun want-- someone picked up my old twin mattress pad and sheets for a foreign exchange student coming in a week; a mother was surprisingly excited upon discovering my bag of random art materials cos apparently her daughter would be real happy to have them; another volunteer was delighted that the wall map he picked up would be real useful for the refugee family he was working with.... it made me happy too that instead of prematurely contributing to land pollution, these items manage to play small roles in bettering ppl's lives... :) hmmm so... perhaps if you want to superficially feel like a good individual... give something useful (but which you no longer need) away!

was given a half-day tour of SF by former classmate who grew up in SF, whose knowledge of buildings and history of the city was pretty amazing. and i took the MUNI for the 2nd time in my entire 4-year stay here... the very first time i took it it was with tonnes of crazily-dressed folks (myself included haha, though i certainly wasn't as creative nor as outrageous as many strangers i encountered... ) to Castro on my first Halloween night and i totally thought it was like the BART and never really bothered to investigate its routes subsequently.... today we went to the more residential and less touristy places in SF... i was actually rather surprised how 'versatile' the MUNI was... how it emerges from underground tunnels, winds uphill and speeds on freeways alongside cars... well. at least i felt like a pseudo-SF resident for a few hours :P
in meantime, am still desperately trying to clear my room.... why do i have so much junk! also savoring my last 2 weeks or so and giving myself excuses to devour unfortunately highly fattening ice-creams, such as the heavenly Dublin mudslide....

this afternoon i resumed status as pedestrian cum bus-passenger... it was a little sad to see my Honda go, but also have to admit it was a heavy load off my chest! and though i got a cashier's check from the buyer, repeated warnings of fraud and reminder of how easily i get cheated by ppl from dad succeeded in making me somewhat nervous that check might not go through... but it did :) tmr my family leaves for Singapore... aside from the daily petty squabbles and some difficulty in adapting to the environment and food, have to say nothing really terrible happened. just have to mentally prepare myself for restricted freedom and some other compromises when i go home.... but will worry about those in 2 weeks' time. unfortunately, i've had SO SO much rich food the past two weeks (esp the past week!!) that waistline has suffered as a result. sigh. have to go on diet when i get home. though i dun forsee myself being too successful, considering how good food will be cheap and extremely accessible. oh well, perhaps when i find that i dun fit into the usual sizes when shopping for working clothes, vanity will motivate me hehe.

tomorrow afternoon i part with my dear Honda-- we've had the most unusual 'relationship'... i'm neither rich nor skilled, yet i drive a nice Honda Accord EX Coupe with a powerful V6 engine... of course it isn't super luxurious, but luxurious enough for a poor (ex) student like me who would prob never be able to afford something like that for a long long time after i go home :P it's alright; at least i ceng2 jing1 yong1 you3...
took it for a last long drive this afternoon in the brilliant weather... and though i meant to go to the lighthouse at the Marin Headlands, i stumbled across a mini gem of a beach at the Headlands... the water and waves were so beautiful... (the experience would have been more enjoyable without a certain voice nagging at me to put on my sweater haha) winds were kinda chilly, but weather was great. i'll really miss the combination of warm sun, cool winds and blue cloudless skies... and i've decided that i like the Bay Area the best (out of all the places i've been to in California) perhaps it's also cos i've done the most here; have had many happy moments and memories here...