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?