Ugh

I get irked when people who don't know better correct my written English.

For the record and contrary to what many people mistakenly believe, the phrase is written as "with regard to".

THERE IS NO "S" FOR THE WORD "REGARD".

So stop correcting my English!! Stop adding "s" to my "regard"!!

老娘is very annoyed!!

Woot Woot!

It's that time of the year again. Just before I left office, my boss handed me the letter which contained information on our corporate bonus, individual performance bonus, market adjustment and performance rating.

Suffice to say, I'm a happy woman. :D

Sleep? Not Yet...

It's 12:15am.

The mum's sleeping soundly in the next room. The dad's watching the FA Cup final between Liverpool and Chelsea. No points for guessing which team we are rooting for. You'll Never Walk Alone. I say "we" because by association, I am a Liverpool supporter as well.

Just finished some chores and an impromptu spot of gardening. Because the pot of basil needed some urgent topping up of soil and the pot of Bowle's Mint needed urgent support from a second stick. It's growing up beautifully and is about 80cm tall already. Hence the need for a second stick to support its height. I had a mini battle with some ants as well.

I should be sleeping but I think I'll try to settle some more things first before hitting the sack. My room needs some tidying up. I need to clear some of the clutter else it starts cluttering my mind as well.

Deliriously Happy?

Lol, I popped by Ally's place this afternoon again. Happy was out of her enclosed area and was running around in the living room. She was so hyper and went ballistic when I arrived at the door. She started barking and jumping on me and also grabbed a ball in her mouth to try to get me to play with her haha. I happened to be in shorts today.....Look at the scratches she gave me!!

Fingers crossed

The event project really doesn't seem to be doing well at this point in time. From getting "played out" by a venue provider who screwed up our initial plans....to getting negative feedback from some of the overseas folks overseeing the organisation of the event....to the high costs of holding the event in Singapore.....to a fellow goverment agency not seeming to be forthcoming with its funding scheme which we are applying for........

I hope I can stay strong for this project for the next 10months. And my event manager (whom I hired specially for this project) had better not throw any "stunt" on me......

I hope everything works out okay.......

FYP mate!

Eddie's back in town for a week. Had dinner with him earlier this evening and had a good time catching up with him. I hope things pan out well for him in Chengdu. Am proud of him for taking the plunge into this make-or-break venture. All the best dear pal!

On a separate note, I hope he can make it for the July dinner. As it is, quite a number of people won't be attending already....

Rest in Peace Lok Gu Dai

Just attended the wake of a relative earlier tonight. She passed on at the grand age of 91. I still remember the last time I saw her was during Chinese New Year in January. She was wobbling around, taking miniscule steps and being generally happy with the festivities.

In the last couple of years, I've attended a few such wakes of old relatives. I'd thought that I'd be used to it by now. But it seems otherwise. The melancholy I feel after attending each wake is still there.

In fact, it seems to have increased. Probably because it has dawned on me that my own parents are getting on in years. My dad is 70 this year and my mum's 62.

And my grandmother's 96.

Sigh. The years pass by so quickly. Everyone's growing older so quickly.

Granny

I love my granny. And I love this picture of her and me taken when I was 5months old. Although it's an oblique angle of her, you can still subtly sense her joy at that moment in time.

Slowly but surely

The rooms are taking shape. Piece by piece. Bit by bit. Week after week. A new coat of paint a few weeks ago. New waterproofing. New varnish for the parquet. Wardrobes and bedframe last week. New lights soon. New mattress soon. TV console soon...Settee, shelves and desks soon too....

Voila, bientot, notre petite d'espace sera prêt. :)

May our pockets stay strong enough and hang in there! Lol...

Battleship

I'm glad we made that impromptu, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment decision to catch a movie after dinner. I'd had a bad night yesterday (was in self-bashing mode) and woke this morning with swollen lids and a headache. The movie was a welcome respite.

I'd initially thought Battleship was a lame fighting type of show, typical guy-stuff. Well, it still was a run-of-the-mill humans vs aliens type of show with a predictable ending. But it turned out that I actually enjoyed the movie alot and was surprised by some of the comic dialogue and scenes peppering the movie. Eye candy, patriotism, romance, comedy, excitement, sadness, scary parts, lame parts....the movie had it all. :)

Nice show. Surprisingly.

Ohm.....

I guess I do not like taking instructions from people whom I do not report to. Especially when I think it is not even necessary to issue that instruction. And especially when it is coming from The Coll.

I know I am supposed to do certain things. When I see it coming in, I KNOW it is my responsibility to handle it. So you do not need to tell me to do it.

I guess I need to learn even more patience. For my blood pressure rises when I get into such a situation. Ya, I guess I need to be more cool and patient, lest more wrinkles appear.

Cool cool, calm calm, zen zen.

In the words of Ally……“Ohm Ohm Ohm”

vro...vro....vrooo....vr...vroom?

Engine does not seem to be working well today. I am slow, groggy and distracted. All I seem to think of is K and whether he’s doing ok (he’s sick), how I need to go home for a run after work, and how I need to cook dinner for myself thereafter (parents are overseas).
I have not gotten much done since morning and I didn’t even have any appetite for lunch till around 1pm. Went to dabao mee hoon kuey eventually.

May the drone of the afternoon NOT lull me to sleep. May work beckon a little too otherwise I’d feel like a useless sack of potatoes sitting here.

want. to. go. somewhere.

A 6-month hiatus from flying or having any short trip suddenly seems too long to bear. Wonder if I can squeeze in any 2D1N trip to a nearby place in the next few weeks? Time seems short and tight these days, hope K & I can find some time out from the hustle and bustle of work and stuff!

Orr Kuay

I'll spend some time on another day trying to figure this newly revamped Blogger interface out. For a first impression, I quite like it though. Spiffier, funkier, more up-to-date and the colour scheme is much nicer.

So anyway, back, to the issue at hand.

Um, I had my virgin taste of black chicken today. At K's place. The helper, under instructions from K's mum, cooked black chicken with white fungus as a soup, with no Chinese herbs if you wondering. Their family apparently likes this combination and K's Dad was happily feasting on the chicken.

I, on the other hand, have never ever had black chicken before in my entire 31+ years of existence. Mainly because my family doesn't cook it at home and those found outside are usually prepared with Chinese herbs. Plus, I find the thought of cooked black chicken quite strange.

A big bowl of soup and its accompanying ingredients was given to me during dinner. No choice.

As squeamish as I felt, I managed to take a few bites of the black chicken thigh I was given. I "donated" the rest of the meat to K.

Verdict? It tasted ok I guess. But I still felt squeamish trying it. -_-

Errrr

So I've not logged on to Blogger in 3 days. They now have a whole new format and layout and I am suddenly at a loss...

加油！

I wonder how my boss does it. Maybe that’s why he is the boss.

To need to go through every single item and every single sentence a staff does or writes and make sure everything is correct and accurate is a tedious, cumbersome and challenging thing that I have not mastered fully yet.

I don’t know if this is considered managing at too micro a level but at least some important mistakes have been previously corrected in this manner, through his sharp eyes.

I gave my staff too much trust and did not check through and confirm whether something she wrote was factual and accurate. I should have done so when she has a track record for being careless. When the paper reached my boss, he pointed out the discrepancy/mistake almost straightaway.

My bad. I made a mistake too. I did not check her work thoroughly. :(
Nevermind, learn from this and move on.
下次我会做的更好!

My Monday

Went to guan yin temple today after my morning medical check-up.
Prayed for loved ones, family, closes friends. Hope I didn't miss out anyone. Hmm...

Parked myself at TCC Bugis for the nex 2 hours trying to sort out some personal and also som work stuff before heading home.

And that's a whole Monday gone already. Well almost, there's still 5 more hours to go till bed time. Let's see...what shall I do now?

equilibrium

Life is all about balance is it not?

Where there is good, there is also evil.
For every grain of rice we waste, there is someone elsewhere in the world who would kill to have it. For every tear we shed, there is a smile to counter it.
For every unwanted pregnancy, there is a couple who is trying ways and means to conceive.
For every baby born, there is an old person leaving earth and returning to the heavens.
There is Heaven and there is Hell. There is white and then there is black.
There are dreams fulfilled and there are those which are not.

I don't know where I am heading with all these. Just that life's quite a mystery.

ambitiousness

I’ve been recently digging through my old photos for the purpose of doing up a photo montage for the wedding dinner. Leafing through them definitely brought back memories of my geeky secondary school and JC years and of my fun-filled years in hostel.

I still find it strange though, that my closest friends are from my secondary school and hostel years. None of them are from my JC school years. But anyway, that is not the crux of this post.

While sorting through the photos, I came across a box of my old autograph books. Back in the days of the 1980s and 1990s, it was the trend amongst teenagers, especially girls, to pass around autograph books to their classmates so they could jot down contact details and nice words for the owner of the book.

I leafed through the book I had when I was in Sec 4 and came across an entry I thought was strange and um, sounded very serious. Here’s an extract:

“…I personally feel that you should not be so ambitious. It’s okay for a man to be like that but I shiver in fear when I think of a girl/woman who is so ambitious....you have made me wonder what it would be like if a lady were to be elected as President, what would her husband be called? First Man?

Anyway, you have also taught me about the power of women and that it takes a lot of effort for something between 2 people to work. Ambitious people like you have to sacrifice a lot you know. Maybe when you stop bouncing around more, you would comprehend.….”

Needless to say the above was written by a guy whose initials are CKM. I might have brushed off his entry when I was aged 16, I cannot remember. I cannot even remember if he was from my class or from the next class.

I wonder why he wrote those things about me being ambitious. Maybe at that point in time his young male MCP ego couldn’t take it that a female his age was excelling in all aspects of studies way more than him.

And for the life of me, I also cannot fathom why he wrote those last few sentences…

I was competitive when I was young. I did not want to "lose" out to another girl whom I disliked back then. She sometimes smirked at me when she trumped me in class. So I studied hard and gradually excelled in all my subjects (except Chinese lah ;p).

But I wouldn’t call it ambitious. Reading his comments now somehow makes me feel a little riled up and at the same time a little amused.

Riled up cos he was being an MCP even at that young age of 16.

Amused because most people who know me now probably won’t even say I am an ambitious person.

$&^%*&^@#@!$^&^%*

Xian.

Staff just wrote a strongly-worded email to an international organisation. Chairman of that organisation just replied back in a strongly-worded email as well. And cc-ed the entire world including my boss.

I really don't need this now. Was already feeling down and then now this.

Need to pick up the pieces and answer to the boss. Damage recovery badly needed.

Oh FML.
How to rein-in a staff 12 years my senior and who is emotional and quick to jump the gun?