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..)