Mid this week, I was asked by CDD to do a write-up on my scholarship experience for a scholarship guide... and include a photo of myself. Write-up aside, the easiest thing was of course to find a decent picture... So that night, I ransacked my entire Berkeley photo collection, trying to find some decent picture of me alone not looking prematurely young or like fat. But quite sad, aside from my freshman year, pictures of myself in the 2nd/3rd year were all not too satisfactory (can tell put on weight)... Also noticed trend of more and more human-less, "self-less" pictures as time went on... Cannot help but feel worried... how come my pictures all no human touch these days... Have I grown more and more gu1 pi4 or what... Ok, the most recent ppl pictures I have that are also decent were those taken in Krabi.. but errr.... not exactly appropriate leh :)

Also started thinking about what I wanted to pen down. Started reminiscing about days in Berkeley... hai, it was one of the happiest periods of my life, really! Thinking about it made me miss it dearly. Then I reflected on my past one and a half year and my increasing complaints about little things here and there... To be fair, I have learnt a lot since I started work and I've been given more opportunities than normal new recruits by my bosses... Why do I seem to only notice the less pleasant things? Perhaps I need to change my mindset; no doubt everyone gets frustrated with irky things that crop up at work, but if you see things so negatively all the time, at the end of the day all you remb is how frustrated you were, cleanly forgetting about the useful things you too picked up along the way. Talking to ppl keeping afloat in worse situations also reminds me that tricky situations I face are but peanuts-- and at least I dun have to write huge stack of documents detailing exact procedures for a single exercise... like ppl do in the SAF :P

The refreshment glitch

Ah, alas! Something had to go wrong... But I suppose thankfully it wasn't a huge glitch and I learnt a valuable lesson from it. So I have been busy helping boss organise this inter-agency meeting the past few weeks and today was it! Then... the refreshments did not come on time. Ok, called ppl to check and they casually told me, oh it's on the way. So wait... Then, like hmm something is wrong why past time still nobody come. Call again. Then, to my horror, these NEXUS ppl too blur and forgot my order... When they finally found the order I put in, tried to make amendments and prepared my order immediately. But unfortunately meeting still started b4 my refreshments arrived (meant to be on table nicely served on little plates to all the VIP attendees prior to meeting) and so ph2 and i waited outside for the food.... then spent the next half hour or so in pantry putting everything tog nicely in plates for ppl.... then fret about how to go and interrupt meeting to serve food... haha at one point i felt so bai2 chi1... Guess have to do it then have to do it lor. And we did :) Lesson learnt: Dun assume ppl can deliver... sometimes it pays to be paranoid lah. Perhaps the really good thing that came out of this was that there was so much leftovers in the end then my colleagues got all the free food (which was actually quite tasty) :P Also escaped from taking minutes the first 1/3 of the meeting hehe..... But maybe boss is now thinking... this girl ah, ask her do this small thing also can screw up........

Upset-ness has more or less subsided over weekend... Am trying to practise self-psychoing. Though you dread doing certain things, sometimes still have to do what, else dun do everything snowball even worse? Just have to grit my teeth and cut down all the irritating thorns standing btwn me and my travel-holiday sometime early next year...! Though can get hurt, get pricked... if I dun even attempt to cut then i'll never reach my reward right... sit in front of huge thorn forest to cry is not going to help (I suppose can allow myself to weep a bit, but weep finish must do work). Wait for valiant knight to cut down all my thorns also dunno must wait how long..... One must always learn to be self-reliant :) Besides, I have all the kind "aunties" in my unit always ready to lend me a hand... I need to be stronger! Ganbatte! (to myself :P)