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...