Fleeting thoughts

Little thoughts zipping here and there.
Touch and go. Touch and go.
I can almost see them.
Like little water boatmen.
Skittering across the surface of a small lake.
Leaving silvery tendrils in their wake.
I’ve caught some.
But most have seeped through my fingers.
What I have I share.
In the little snippets that follow.

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I am not trying to be racist or anything. But I’ve noticed that most Indians, especially those who have studied overseas, are good conversationalists.

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I am a simple girl with simple needs. I don’t ask for much. Or at least in my opinion I don’t demand for much. So why do I sometimes feel like I’m missing out on something, somewhere somehow.

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I won’t get to speak to K today. Not until tomorrow morning. It’s been a week. I didn’t realize it. Times does fly past when you occupy yourself with things.

He’s been surviving on bread and pasta and oranges. But he just bought some chicken fillet and chopped bacon. I hope he’s getting enough nutrients.

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I think I’ve grown more assertive over the years. But it is not enough. And I still feel uncomfortable in being assertive in anyway.

Chloe feels this too.

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Sometimes, I miss my straight hair. Haha.

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Kel told me he saw me running yesterday night. Haha. He was in a friend’s car and was going past me. It must have been an unglam sight because I wasn’t doing too good yesterday. Running with a slight diarrhea was definitely not a good idea. I had to stop several times as I felt quite breathless.

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I want to go home on time today. Granny’s in hospital again. I need to go CGH after work and then see where I can grab some dinner first before going home. Was thinking of hiding in a corner of a café, armed with a plate of steaming hot pasta and my book.

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It’s a rather cold day. I am wrapped up in a jacket. With the sleeves of another woolen cardigan covering my forearms, and a blanket over my legs. My fingers still feel stiff though.

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In the little snippets up above.
What I have I’ve shared.
So it’s back to the work and daily grind.
And I do hope functionality engages my mind
For if it is not to be the case
Then I will find myself back in the first space.
Like little water boatmen.
I can almost see them.
Touch and go. Touch and go.
Little thoughts zipping here and there.

It's been 3 days

A shell provides an excellent home for hermit crabs, snails, clams, oysters, abalones, cockles….you get the drift.

I’m retreating into my shell for awhile. K left for Nice 3 days ago and I find myself missing him terribly and wondering if he’s taking good care of himself over there. And…I find myself suddenly with some spare time also.

Spending some time alone for the coming two to three weeks (or maybe even longer) seems like a nice way to take things slow, especially with work being on a ramp-up and possibly being hectic in the next 2-3 months.

Let’s see…..I can…

Read my books. Spend some time wandering in malls with a little bit of shopping thrown in. Run. Skype with K. Sit in a corner of a café reading or observing the world going by. Blog. Do some research for my year-end trip. Visit Kinokuniya and Borders. Take some time to breathe a little slower. Get up to speed on French again. Go for my facial and massage. Take care of my terrariums. Do some art and craft.

Ok, seems like a lot to do already haha. :)

And then after that...I'll probably throw in some meet-ups with close friends. :D Some long overdue dates....haha..

Of Weddings and Funerals

I attended a wedding on Sunday morning and then a wake during the evening.
In less than 3 months, this is the second time it has happened. The first time round I went to both a wedding and a wake on the same day was back in end of May.

Too much going-ons for a single day.

Boredom Breeds Awesomeness

Chloe was bored. So I gave her a task.
I gave her 5 random words. She was to create something out of it. Could be a sentence, could be a ditty, could be a poem.

These were the 5 words: snowman, flower, plastic, ass, tissue

And this was what lovely Chloe came up with.

AWESOME LAH!!!!!

I’m a cute little snowman
Made out of snow
My creator abandoned me
And left me out in the cold
Here I am sneezing away
With a tissue in my hand
Nothing to look forward to
I wish I was someone’s Christmas plan
Where did my creator go?
I am so alone
Asleep I fell as the days came and went
In my dreams, I saw my vengeful self
Chasing my creator to his house
And sticking a stalk of plastic flower up his ass.

Sept 3 - Scrabble Competition

I'm excited.

The last time I played Scrabble competitively was 2 years ago.
I used to play it competitively back in uni and led the Boogle team as well.

3rd September.

There's an inter-house Scrabble competition happening within the organisation. I signed up for it. Yay!

There's a good player in the Black House who was rather cocky the last time we played together in the group playoffs. I won that game and he wasn't very happy about it.

Hope I don't meet him again during this year's competition haha.

Lame attempt at writing Chinese

我今天早上在Promenade Circle Line地铁站看到了一位女生。哦，她好酷！

头发断得像个男孩， 瘦瘦高高，黑色上衣和深灰色裤子， 手上拿着一个黑色的laptop bag。

她走路“有风”，够有帅气！

好酷！

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There are people who are your friends and remain your true friends even after a long time has passed. There is an initiative to keep in touch and when contact is there, it’s a genuine one with no motive.

Then there are others who remember you only when they need a favour from you. Are these people still considered friends? Or acquaintances? Or once friend but now acquaintance? Or.......oh nvm.

Point is, don’t come to me only when you need something from me.

Active aging, active learning

K’s mother has a big appetite for learning. I think it’s good and I find it an admirable trait.
I don’t know any other person who has had the tenacity to take up a Masters programme at 50-something years of age.

She’s 60-plus now and is still learning everyday. She volunteers at various social organisations, reads a lot, is proficient enough in using the computer, has taught in a school and also took sewing classes last time. She is currently taking art classes and a separate course on writing a biography as well.

Active aging. It’s good.
Much better than sitting at home and watching Korean dramas or Korean MTVs.

august

This morning, I realized my desk calendar was still showing the month of July.

I flipped the page over to August.

And I saw this phrase on the page for August.

“Fear not the future. Weep not for the past.”

How true.

Though at times, it takes courage, strength and determination to achieve this.

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Time has gone by in a jiffy.

I thought I just celebrated Xmas and CNY. And now it's going to be National Day already.

And before you know it, it'll be Xmas time again.

Year after year.

Babe!

I enjoy my MSN conversations with Chloe.

We regale each other with stories, complete with explicit details. We gripe to each other. We listen to each other.

She listens, she understands. :) She dispenses good advice. She is rational and keeps me sane too haha...

And every so often, we have conversations which dissolve us both into maniacal laughter. Virtually that is haha.

I miss you babe!
When was the last we met up? Two years ago?

I will drag you out in time to come.....
In the meantime, till our next conversation....hehe.

My little terrarium

It's almost official.

One of the plants in my terrarium is dying. :(

Checked it this morning and its stem was turning a dull brown-grey. It's being propped up now by a toothpick.

*wails*

Not too sure what went wrong. Either there was too much water, or there was too much direct sunlight??

p/s: Thank you Ally for your very kind offer!! I'm sure your African violets would be happier under your care though haha. Let me figure out what's wrong with my terrarium first before I take on other plants...;p

English Lessons

Yes boss. I will keep it in mind that when I write policy papers...

...I should use the Active Voice and not the Passive Voice.

...and I should put the recommended policy position as the bottomline concluding paragraph.

Lunch Today

I had lunch with a New Zealander today. He could have been my father, given his age of 62 years. In reality, he seems younger and is still very much a go-getter.

We first knew each other in Mexico back in March 2009. Nice guy. No airs. Very easy to talk to. Back then I didn’t even know he was the president of the Internet governing body in New Zealand. He had run out of business cards when I first met him and so it was only very much later that I found out that he was actually holding a high position. We last met in Sydney 2009 at another conference.

This time round he’s here chairing an event and so we decided to catch up. Over a bowl of wanton mee, a plate of chicken rice and two pots of Earl Grey tea haha. He was staying at M Hotel and so I went down to Café 2000, which is located at the hotel itself, to meet him.

Discovered that he’s actually Scottish, holds both a British passport and a New Zealand passport. He speaks Gaelic, a little French, English, Spanish, a little German and has studied Latin before. Gosh, what a linguist. His Dad speaks German, English, Hebrew and Arabic. Wah, another linguist!

All in all, a good catch-up.
My conclusion. Australians and New Zealanders are really quite nice people and are quite easy to get along with. :)

Buy or Sell? Domain Names that is

Some people just trade domain names for a living, some do it on the sidelines.
I didn’t know about all these things before I joined the industry.

But gosh, it can be a lucrative thing. So lucrative they even have brokers to seal the deals. There are also many online auction sites catered for these purposes.

029.com was recently sold for USD$110,000. Underdog.com was sold for about US$62,000. Cured.com was sold for US$25,000.

But these are just small amounts I think.

I’ve heard of bigger price tags on a single domain name, up to US$350,000. If you put it in perspective, that’s like SG$490,000 which is just about the price of a 5-room HDB resale flat in Singapore.

These people who sold the names probably got them at very cheap prices in the early .com days. Registration fees could have been as cheap as US$30-40 a name for a year during the 90s. Keep the name for maybe 10 years and that only puts your total investment at US$400. In return, you could get back more than 50 times your initial investment. The Return on Investment would be more than 100 or 500 times for really sought-after names.

Keeping names for 10 years is just a conservative estimate. With technology these days, the turnaround time is probably much faster at maybe just 2-3 years for some of the popular names. This in turn, would put ROIs at even greater figures.

That much money for something as simple as a domain name.
If this is not lucrative, I don’t know what is. :)

Go figure.

My Own Terrarium

I did it. :)

After reading about terrariums for a few days and thinking about what I could do, I finally went out with K two weekends ago and got myself some plants and cacti, vase, potting soil, peat moss and pebbles which I needed to start one with.

And I made my first terrarium on Sunday 18 July!
I decided on building an open terrarium because it was easier for a beginner to do so.

In that time till now, I’ve bought more things including some activated charcoal, and two more pots of fittonias (one’s pink veined and the other’s white veined, can’t remember their scientific names though haha). All that’s left now is to find a suitable glass container or vase and then I’ll start making my second terrarium already!

Two days ago, I added some decorative seashells to my first terrarium…:) The way I like things, simple, uncluttered but still aesthetically pleasing.

Hmm, maybe I could make a closed terrarium and bring it to office.
Yay! Decorate my table a little…

p/s: I have not been able to find a universally accepted definition of a terrarium. But suffice to say that it is miniature garden landscape designs encased in a container (usually glass) with no drainage systems. Sometimes, animals are also added to terrariums. If so, then they end up being called aquariums (of which we are very familiar with) or vivariums.

Of beauty

The lengths women go to to make themselves look prettier.

My colleague is 44 this year. Looks rather good for her age and still has a good figure too. Divorced with a 16-yr-old son.

I just discovered she spent more than $25,000 a few years ago on veneers for almost her full set of teeth. It costs $1000 per veneer per tooth.

How did I find out?

Um, the veneer covering one of her two front teeth unfortunately dropped out yesterday while she was having her dinner.

She showed me her original tooth this morning. It was small, long, yellow and looked slightly decayed. A total opposite of the beautiful veneers she had and which I initially thought were her real teeth.

And because the original tooth is small, there are gaps between it and the other two veneer-capped teeth on both sides of it.

Gosh.

Apparently she was given a guarantee that the veneers would last 10 years at least. She called up the dentist to complain and she’s going down later during lunch to get a new veneer if possible.

In the meantime, she’s trying not to laugh or smile to hide the strange gap in front.

Interesting.

The amount of money some people would go to to make themselves look better.

She has spent tens of thousands of dollars on body wraps, facials, treatments, acupuncture, tui na massages, laser treatments, pulse light treatments, manicures, pedicures and a whole host of other treatments and packages.

And she's thinking of going for liposuction next year.

My guess is that she’ll be spending more in the years to come. :)

do i lack folic acid?

I read with amusement Chloe's recent post on her lack of ability fo focus.

Partly because it is so her, partly because she has shared other anecdotes with me.

And partly because I'm like that as well at times.

Forgetful and blur. Distracted and fidgety. Absent-minded.
And this multiplies a few-fold when you add in the factor of tiredness or sleepiness.

I brushed my teeth twice on Friday afternoon.

I brushed after lunch, came back to the office and left my toothbrush and toothpaste on the desk.

Was hard at work for the next 2 hours and then when I saw my toothbrush and toothpaste on my desk, I thought I had not brushed my teeth yet. And so I went. Again.

Oh well.

she.

in darkness sat she
solitary
calm
ruminating
everything
nothing
attempting
reflection
achieving
vacuum
faith
presence
hope
force
know
not
things
in
darkness
sat
she

..............

even a rubber band has an elasticity limit

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I do not enjoy
The uncertainty
I do not know if
My melancholy is justified
But my heart does not feel good
My senses do not bode well