Mad Chinatown & Chinese New Year Malady

Ah, Chinese New Year, the one time of the year you can expect three things: a gross overdose of all things red, a gross overdose of all things edible (TTSH reported an increase in outpatient admissions for food poisoning and overeating!), and a general madness that grips all people Chinese. And woe betide those that come between us Chinese and our food during this time.

Did the obligatory trip to Chinatown past couple of weeks. Well, three trips - two with my mother and one with Kelvin. Amazingly, this was the first time I'd actually went down to Chinatown during the festive season as I'd always made it a point to avoid insane crowds, not moosh with them. Still, was an interesting experience...coupled with the fact that I had the chance to go during early hours of weekdays this time. HAA-haa! Main thing I noticed about the bazaar was that whatever was there, there was a LOT of.

I could smell this stall from a distance away, what with all that waxed meat out in the heat. These babies are probably so preserved they could survive a nuclear holocaust.

Snacks, snacks, snacks! These usually taste absolutely heavenly...up till the tenth household you visit that offers you the exact same goodies. Still, I was intrigued by the sight of rows and rows and rows of 'em.
Candy, the other delectable evil that lurks in every house during the season. Most of the candy stalls here (and there were many of them) featured almost the same species of short, heavy-set man with the booming voice hollering the virtues of their unique imported candy ("Taiwan Mua Jee, $1.80 for 100 grammes!!").

The plants sold there were interesting, to say the least. First, there are those 'lucky plants' in really cute arrangements, though I haven't any idea how the blazes they do that. Then there are my favourite pussy willows that have such nice and soft fuzzy blossoms to touch (why, you dirty-minded thing, I know what you're thinking).
Now that's what I call a cross-cultural exchange. CNY wishes across the doorway of Sri Mariamman Hindu temple along (surprise surprise) Temple Street.

Dawg enjoying the balmy weather.

What I found interesting was that these men stood around in absolutely silent curiosity (not to mention the dude wearing shiny dress shoes and high socks with his go-to-market outfit). In the middle of the little huddle was an elderly man squating nonchalently (almost surly) with a cigarette dangling carelessly between his lips, spreading out his wares. When I peeked, I saw that he was selling vintage posters, cards, leaflets and some records with those very nifty 1950s- or 60s-type pictures of ladies in cheongsams - very fashionable these days, if put on the right merchandise. If you're into vintage collectibles, you can try looking him up at the open space next to Blk 335A where the food centre and market are.

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It seems that Chinese New Year is the time of the year when parents collectively find it their duty to embarass their children. Suddenly, Chinese offspring everywhere find their dusty little keep-at-home secrets common knowledge to all relatives. Their latest escapades and humiliations have become the hilarious anecdote for eager ears gathered around cups of tea and the crackling sound of candy wrappers being ripped open in earnest.

And your parents are right if they think that by doing that, they are vindicating every single one of their comments that you have disagreed with over the year, because relatives will always agree with your folks, unless they are long-suffering cousins just like you. Thinking of working overseas? Suddenly your mother finds a band of support in other family members who all tell you at the same time what a stupid idea it is. Caught one flu during the latest outbreak? Suddenly the frequency and consistency of your poor health has become a topic for deep analysis and loads of well-meaning healthcare advice. Have a major exam coming this year? Suddenly everyone wants to tell you how important education is (like you hadn't heard that before), how you should mix with the right friends, why you should make it to the right schools, and the overall deterioration of today's generation of youths. And parents suddenly become overly affectionate to their kids in front of the relatives, like stroking their hair or cheek while sharing an insight into the trials of parenthood. Even 26-year-old kids.

These relatives and family friends are people I mostly see only once a year, who couldn't remember me telling them the past five new years in a row that yes, I've finished school, and yes, I've been working. And no, I'm not "still in that...you know, that thing you do." My father is the first to chip in and tell them, "She's jobless." By the time I rectify that with "Freelancing", it's too late - they all know for a fact that I'm unemployed and leeching off my parents.

Ah, and curse of being in your twenties and above and unmarried. For it is inevitable that EVERY relative will deign it necessary to ask you when you're getting married, EVEN THOUGH THEY NEVER RECEIVED AN INVITATION, which should be indication enough that they should shut up about it. Don't any of those smug so-called relations realise that it is rude to ask someone about marriage if they clearly aren't planning to yet? Yes, it's rude because it puts you in the spot over a subject that already has you fending off questions from various people at various times, including impatient parents who can't wait to hear the pitter patter of (more) little feet. Or those parents who don't want to look too old in your wedding photos (yes, this is a very real reason told by a very real parent in all seriousness). People, if I'm getting married, fret not - you WILL know about it.

Sometimes, I ponder the smartmouth answers I could give them when they ask when I'm getting married:

"Nah, my girlfriend would disapprove."
"I'm with my boyfriend just for the sex."
"So when is YOUR kid getting married? Only nine years old? Hey, in the old days, she'd be cooking for the new in-laws by now!"
"Marriage might impede my lifestyle as a swinger. My boyfriend sometimes joins in the orgies."
"We intend to go on living in sin."
"Gee, nothing destroys a healthy sex life like marriage." (Credit to Jeremy for this one)

But...I suspect I'll have to deal with a lot more than their gasps of horror if I utter any of these. Sigh.

My friend Lian said to me today that parents embarass us at new year because it's their one chance in the year to do so. I only half agree. I think that it isn't their one chance at doing it, but rather, it is their one chance to MAXIMISE it, so their offspring are embarassed in front of the greatest number of relatives and family friends all at once.

Chinese New Year is not a time for the young and unmarried. I'm pretty grateful that this new year, being sick, I got to hide in my room a lot of the time.

I went for an audition today, flu be damned. Even though I may not be as comfortable on the stage as I used to be, it's still the place I want to be more than anything, and this was an audition I'd been really looking forward to.

I did Blanche's monologue from A Streetcar Named Desire. The first sign I got that my choice might not be quite what I thought it was when a person from the panel said, "Wow" when I told him which piece I'd be doing. Next sign was after I was done, when they very friendly-like gave me a few tips which could help me tackle the piece better. The death knell came when they thanked me for my "courageous" attempt at a very challenging piece. I'm not expecting their call. At least they were really nice about it.

So that was what I did with my flu-ridden day. All 10 minutes of the audition. The rest of my day was spent doing just about nothing except TV, tidying up my room and occasionally listening to my mum grouse.

It's not so much my nose that's giving me problems, but my aching muscles and the strange hyper-sensitivity of my skin that I tend to have when I get a visit from the latest friendly neighbourhood virus. Kelvin and I both probably got the same thing, though poor Kelvin got it worse than me and has a fever while I barely have the sniffles.

It is thus that you find me genuinely sleepy at 1am, which is almost unheard of these days. Even more shockingly, I'd started to get sleepy from just past 9pm! But of course, being the person that I am, by the time I got everything done plus a good lot of dilly-dallying, it's now almost 4 hours later and I'm typing this blog instead of hopping into bed (which is just a figure of speech, since I literally have to climb into my loft bed).

So off I go now to bed...where I'll probably read until I really start to drop off. And then up at 7.30am to start my looooooooong first day of Chinese New Year.

My printer is a hunk of junk

I HATE my printer. Over a year ago when I told my dad that I'd be buying a simple, reliable printer and/or scanner, he started gushing about getting a fabulous new 4-in-1 (print, scan, fax, copy) wonder machine that can be accessed wirelessly. This way, we can do a zillion things on it from anywhere in the new house. Since I use a desktop (I abhor lpatops), I assume "anywhere in the house" was where my dad would be printing from, since he was the one using a laptop.

Not that I'd ever seen him work at home in 26 years of my life. Still, since he insisted on making the second-biggest and second-nicest room into his 'study' instead of letting me have it as my bedroom, I assumed he planned on working from home a lot more, hence the need for the monster printer he suggested.

The result: Not only was I was the one delegated to research and pick out a suitable monster, which turned out to be a Brother MFC-410CN, I also ended up with it in my room, not the 'study'. It now takes up about 20% of the real estate on my desk. There are two reasons why:

1) Only two rooms have a phone line in this new house - the dining room and the master bedroom - and my dad doesn't want to run any lines between rooms. Hence, the 'study' has no phone line. Hence, bye-bye to fax function. The 'study' that my dad wanted has turned out to be a storage room of sorts which holds my parents' books, photo albums and various displayables on the shelves, while the cupboards hold clothes that won't fit into their bedroom closet, linen, seasonal decorations and miscellaneous junk. My mum came to the conclusion that the printer simply cannot fit anywhere in there, including on the desk ("very ugly, lah"). And since she won't have the grey chunk in her bedroom nor in the dining room in plain view, my room was the natural place to park the large, ugly object.

2) After another round of figuring out what additional hardware is required to make the printer wirelessly network-ready and buying it, I spent three days trying to configure everything and get them all to work together. Considering I'm not terribly tech-savvy, getting four different devices (two of them wireless thingos, including the router) to shake hands was a gruelling process. Finally, I managed to print wirelessly! Hurray! BUT...absolutely nothing else could be done wirelessly, including getting the printer utilities to even detect the printer. In the end, I gave up and just USBed it to my desktop.

Apart from its unwanted proximity, the printer has a lot of other qualities that certainly don't endear it to me:

i) This 'intelligent' printer has a built-in clean function...which ensures that I woken up by the whirling and clicking sounds at 10am anytime I want to sleep in, unless I unplug the damn thing.

ii) Even more interestingly, the cleaning process automatically sucks up a tiny bit of ink each time it cleans the print heads, which means my ink will be eventually drained even if I never print a thing.

iii) And, if even one out of four (black, yellow, magenta, cyan) ink cartridges is empty, it will refuse to print ANYTHING at all. In fact, you can't access a single thing on the printer while the "ink empty" message is on, not even the built-in menu. I can't even print a greyscale document if the colour cartridges are empty! WTF??!!

iv) And, to add insult to injury, the bloody thing doesn't print properly!! The first few prints were sort of ok, but a little blurry. As the months went on, it started to throw in little splotches and lines of unwanted ink as well. As I'd never had to print anything important and the imperfections weren't great, I left it alone. And today, lo and behold - it prints multiple images!








The maintenance programme built to solve alignment problems didn't do a thing to help. How the hell am I supposed to invoice my client if they can't bloody read the printout??

So what I've ended up with is just a really large scanner. That makes noise on its own.

Ball-and-chain

It is a terrible thing to live without freedom.

Freedom to move.
Freedom to speak.
Freedom to live.
Freedom to know the truth.
Freedom to tell the truth.
Freedom to love.
Freedom to hate.
Freedom to fuck.
Freedom to sleep at any damned hour one pleases.
And most importantly: Freedom to think.

The bloodiest battles in human history often revolve around the overwhelming desire to gain freedom and oust tyranny and oppression. Fighting for freedom rouses the greatest passions in people. There is no greater frustration in humankind than to be incapacitated by bonds of any kind.

But perhaps the greatest source of struggle for freedom comes not from great battles or revolutions, but from little struggles from little people in their little lives. The small girl is not allowed to go out and play with the other kids at the park. The young woman finds herself once again receiving the wrath of her parent after foolishly speaking her own mind. The old man in the wheelchair looks wistfully at the strong legs of his running grandchild.

No one really appreciates the freedom they have until it is taken away from them or if they genuinely comprehend the stories of people who don't have it. None of that "Oh, that's terrible," while wondering what kind of whining fusspot would complain about a lack of freedom. I'm talking about true understanding and empathy.

This posting is probably not really going anywhere as I'm too tired to put together a more concrete discussion. I'm not really sure why I'm suddenly saying all this about freedom out of the blue. Probably because this notion is constantly on my mind in some form or other.

You see, the young woman taking the heat after speaking her own mind - that's me.

Why the whys

Here's my train of thought: I read Elaine's message of guilty pleasure in reading her own blog -> I admitted that I enjoy reading my own blog -> I thought about which entry is my favourite -> Figured it's my very first entry -> Remembered that it was the words in that first entry that made me want to start a blog -> Made me think of why I started a blog in the first place -> Made me think of all the "whys" bloggers get asked.

Then that confounding word "why" got stuck in my head. I'm sure countless people out there have been asked, rather inanely, why they want to keep a blog. (Personally, I place "Why do you want to keep a blog?" right beside "So when are you getting married?" - both are stupid, inane, tactless and rude questions.) In any case, some bloggers know their reasons, some have never even stopped to ask themselves. Non-bloggers have sometimes accused bloggers of being exhibitionists and narcissists, putting their thoughts in the public arena like that. I see blogging as no different from placing clay gnomes in one's garden.

Seems most people want an explanation for everything. Why does rain fall in drops instead of globs? Why do my friends find me smelly? Why do we exist? Why do I always pick the slowest lane in a traffic jam? Why do humans suffer? Why don't we know how big the universe really is?

I never understood why people must always want all their "whys" answered. Some think they might find their answers in a church. Some think they might find them in their kitchen sink. Some spend entire lives exploring their "whys" and "what ifs" (they're called philosophers). Some are resigned to the notion that they'll never know their "whys".

My question is, why does there always have to be a "why"? Is it so hard to consider the possibility that might not be a need for "why", that there may not be a reason for everything? Is it so hard to believe that some things just are, no "whys" or "buts" required?

(I think I've said "why" too many times already and it may be getting annoying.)

While I do believe that the physical and emotional world has its set of cause and effect, I find it hard to understand the obsession with wanting to comprehend the 'grander scheme of things'. Wouldn't one be so much more at peace in acknowledging that maybe life just is?

It's a personal perspective and everyone has their own way of viewing the universe, or at least what they can see of it (which isn't very much). While my views on 'purpose in life' and spirituality may not be the most popular, especially in the environment in which I grew up, what I've figured out for myself has given me the peace that my religious teachings have never given me. No "whys" about who I am. I just am.

Tagged! Meme of Four

Meme of 4
Copied from: Elaine

4 jobs you’ve had in your life
Associate Editor (promoted from Writer)
Editorial Assistant
Backstage Crew (voluntary)
Tax Assistant

4 movies you could watch over and over
As Good As It Gets
The Birdcage
Chicago
Fellowship of the Ring

4 TV shows you love(d) to watch
Frasier
The Simpsons
New Detectives, Discovery Channel
Fresh Prince of Bel Air (loved)

4 places you’ve lived
River Valley
Seletar
NTU Hall of Residence X
King's Road

4 places you’ve been on vacation to
Santa Cruz, California, USA
Sydney, Australia
Lucerne, Switzerland
Xi-an, China

4 places you would rather be
The porch of my old home in Seletar on a rainy day
Under an aurora
By the sea
Over the sea (on a boat/ship)

4 of your favourite foods
Godiva pralines
Durian
Sushi
Nasi padang (at Rendezvous Restaurant)

4 websites you visit daily
Waiter Rant
Webshots
Kelvin's blog
AlterNet

4 tagged
My sister - I strongly suspect she won't do this, though
(I don't know any other blogger well enough to tag!)

The Mopho Life

Phones have come a long way, haven't they? From a simple child’s cup-and-string (though I have no firsthand experience of this as my cup-and-string phones never worked) to today’s mini mobile wonders, some of which look like little more than an eraser-sized mess of buttons.

I remember my dad’s first car phone, an odd white contraption whose number started with “334”. I often wondered who called him more frequently on it – his clients or my mother. She once embarrassed him when she called him on the car phone and said, “Hello, Nut!” With him in the car at that point were three middle-aged male colleagues of his who were tickled to no end when he explained later that it was a pet name my parents had for each other.

I wonder if people still have car phones. The last time I saw one was in the movie Bowfinger when Steve Martin’s character embarrassed himself when he ripped out a car phone and pretended it was a mobile phone, during which time the wire slipped out of his sleeve and dangled tellingly from the phone. Maybe that’s all car phones are good for – embarrassing people.

I’d resisted getting a mobile phone as long as I could. (Can I call it a “mopho”? I’ve always wanted to do that…nah, will stick to “handphone” like the rest of Singapore.) I was happily using a pager for a few years, trying not to succumb to my mother’s pressure for me to start using a mobile phone, as I had an accurate guess as to who would be the one calling me most frequently. I don’t remember why I finally caved in and got my first – a Nokia 3210, or The Brick, as some people called it. Not that it was very big, but it was heavy. Still, it was a good, hardy phone that lasted almost four years before number 5 on the keypad called it quits.

We all have many stories revolving around mobile phones. Here are some of the memorable ones I have, in no particular order.

Go BEEP yourself, preferably in front of the client

I had a colleague called Cynthia for awhile, an unpleasant person who had a talent, among others, for finding fault with everyone and everything around her and bitching (not complaining, bitching) about it vehemently. She also had an awful attitude to working with others.

One group of clients comprised a committee of ten people or so, so our meetings usually had a total of 13 people, including my boss, Cynthia and myself. During one particular meeting:

1) Her handphone rang loudly and she took the call in the meeting room. I assumed it was an important call, like from a supplier, until I heard her accent change dramatically and figured it was her British boyfriend.

2) Awhile after that phonecall, a message arrived on her phone with a loud BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP, and she proceeded to reply it…while ignoring the proceedings of the meeting, and then later asking me what happened (trying talking to someone who’s trying to take minutes for a fast-paced meeting and you’ll have an idea how I felt). Not wanting to interrupt the client, I motioned for her to turn off her phone, to which she just grinned humourlessly, and then did nothing.

3) Her phone goes BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP again, and she replied it again. Assuming that she hadn’t understood me earlier, I wrote on a piece of paper, “Turn off your phone” and showed it to her. She took one look at it, and pointedly turned away from me and the piece of paper.

Lovely person, isn’t she?

Told you my mother would call

This is a scenario that would happen up to a few times a week when I was working full-time.

I would be at my desk most of the working day, getting up only to get a drink. And then, at some point, I would decide to visit the ladies for ichiban business. Upon returning to my desk after all of two minutes in the loo, I would see a missed call on my handphone. Yes, my mother. I would return her call, to which she’d say, “Where were you??!! Oh, the toilet? Why are you always in the toilet?” I swear, within weeks of joining whichever company I’m at, all my colleagues know about my mum, and most would have picked up her calls to the office after failing to reach me on my handphone.

Mothership calling

Sorry, this is a mother story again. Some background here. My previous house had two storeys, and since my mum chose to spend most of her time in her upstairs bedroom, she had to either shout to get our attention, or find some other means. And some other means she did find. First was a loud remote beeping system that could be activated with two devices, one of which she kept in her room, the other in her car. She developed a system of beeps for different members of the household: quick, repeated beeps for the maid; a single beep for my sister; slow, repeated beeps for me. Later, she tried using an intercom system to communicate between rooms.

After moving into an apartment, we figured she wouldn't need any such devices. Wrong again. There’s a very loud device in the dining room that plays Für Elise in a doorbell-like tone, and the volume is enough to startle me from within my room. That’s for her to call the maid.

And as for me…she calls my handphone. From two rooms away. So, dear friends, if you’re ever with me in my house and see that I’m receiving a mobile call from my home phone, don’t worry, no one in my family is insane. My mother’s just trying to intercom me.

Wait…just as you are thinking that I find mobile phones the bane of civilised society…I’d say you’re right. But, like many an idiotic loony, it has its redeeming qualities sometimes.

“I love you”

…is all I need to see to make me smile from the inside out, even if it’s just an SMS.

Will I?

Am listening to this song now, and I ask myself, when my turn comes to see death coming for me, will I ask the same?

Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?

"Will I?" from the musical Rent

Mask

[I hadn't intended to blog, but this idea came to me and I had to jot down what I had. It's a very rough sketch of my idea, and I'll take time to refine and develop it later.]

Every person wears a mask. Everyone knows that, though some may seem not to. It's just a matter of deciding whether they'll accept another person at mask value.

Some people wear different masks for different days of the week, some for different people they meet. Some wear the same mask for days on end, some for decades. Some people fool themselves into believing that they have no mask, that what people see of them is what they really are. They're wrong of course - that's the mask they wear for themselves.

Jin wore a carefully crafted mask, and she kept it on most of the time. It had a lovely, ceramic-like quality, with delicate facial features painted on to achieve an overall effect of cold innocence. A first glance would give a casual observer an impression of a young woman just emerged from her chrysalis of girlhood, serenely unaware of the existence of human malice and not inclined to find out.

But Jin wore her mask improperly. She fooled only the most naive or apathetic of acquaintances, or those who were too self-absorbed to look too deeply into anyone else.

For all the care she put into crafting her mask, Jin neglected the most important aspect of a mask – it must fit the one who wears it, or at least appear to do so. Jin’s mask was ill-fitting, and her body did not learn how to move with the mask. She wore her mask like how a brightly-dressed circus clown would have worn a stark, solemn Noh mask.

It is an uncomfortable encounter if you should meet someone whose face never quite matches up to what their body is telling you. Jin was such a person. Few people could reconcile the tight, wary body language she subconsciously carried around with the soft, accepting impression her face gave. If you weren’t sure what to think of her, all you had to do was shake her hand.

Most people who shook Jin’s hand immediately saw the disparity between the calm, innocent face they saw and the touch they received. Jin’s hands were almost always sweaty, but they were never cold. If you extended your right hand to her, she would thrust a moist, warm hand into it, and, unlike most people with sweaty palms, she would grasp your hand tightly. While you resisted squirming out of her strange grip, you might raise your eyes to meet hers. And there, if you were sharp, you would catch a glint in her eyes that you would not have found pleasant at all, in spite of the generally innocent arrangement of her face. And if your intuition were spot-on, you might even come to think that she delighted in your discomfort in the tight, wet grip of her hand.

For in crafting her mask, Jin forgot about her eyes. A well-crafted mask can lend its effect even to the only naked part of its wearer’s face. Jin’s mask left open the windows to her soul, and she wrongly assumed that no one would look in there if they had her mask to look at. She wrongly assumed that if she kept her mask cold, innocent and beautiful, she would be able to hide from the world the gleeful malice that really lay beneath.

Is it regicide if she's the queen only of this house?

Today is the first time I've raised my voice at my mother, and as an aftermath, I'm sitting here crying my eyes out only because I can't do anything else to vent my rage. I can't even cry loud enough to be heard. I can't throw my soft toys around like I used to as my current room is too small. I can't punch the walls like I used to because she's in the next room and she'd hear and she'd get even angrier that I'm showing any anger at all.

Over what? Over suddenly accusing me of answering back to her, when I thought all we were doing was chatting. This, after spending most of this week accusing me of neglecting her, of being inconsiderate, being rude, not spending enough time with her, of arguing with her (i.e. my gently-expressed views did not suit her). All this, after I spend almost all of my meals and days with her (weekdays included since I'm freelancing), after making sure I sit and chat with her at least once a day, after scheduling my weeks and days around her plans, after putting up with her giving me shit about how SHE feels MY relationship should be.

As it is, I try not to talk too much if I know what I'm thinking isn't something she'd agree on. But it seems that these days, there's almost no telling what will set her off, or what will get her to start picking on me on the stupidest, littlest things.

(I can hear her now slamming things around in the next room.)

I usually don't want to blog about anything about parents or bosses. But I really, really, REALLY need to vent somewhere. I've absolutely no one to talk to about this now. I was tempted to run out of the house just now and call my sister from outside, but the dowager would've seen me go out and start up some fresh hell about what a bad daughter with what a bad temper I am. Anyway, she beat me to the punch, as a minute later, I heard her dialling the phone next door. There's only one number she would dial that requires more than 20 digits in it and it's obviously my sister.

And I wasn't even shouting, just raising my voice a bit - that's not even up to the volume I'd use to call for someone one room away. But yes, according to her, I was shouting at her. According to her, only she has the right to shout around here.

Earlier today, she implied that I was being selfish for doing 'my own things' rather than accompany her to buy CNY sweets in Chinatown today. The 'my own things' in question is actually a freelance job I've taken up that has unexpectedly required me to work on it most of today, and I need to call my client as well. As such, I had to ask her if we could go to Chinatown next week instead of today, and after all, CNY is still almost three weeks away. And sure, 'she understands'. 'Understands', as in, very, very reluctantly compromised to go alone, after trying her darndest to make me feel awful by using guilt trips and snapping at me. And by the way, I didn't really expect my project to end by today in the first place, I just told her that the beginning of the week was impossible and that I preferred next week, but she insisted to go today. And some twisting of my words was definitely what she did along the way, and no, I'm not allowed to defend myself, because that means I'm arguing.

And this was just a part of today's carnival. Can I just tell my client I can't do this project today because I'm sick (of my mother)?

I hate sounding like an angsty teenager who's suddenly decided to start raging against her parents. But if living like this and worse for my whole life has given me sulking adolescent angst, then anyone who doesn't like it can EAT ME.

I'm 26 years old and thoroughly SICK of being a little rag doll not allowed to think, speak or act like anything other than what my dowager wants. REPRESSED is one of the most understated words you could use for me. Like I said, patience is gone and is no longer in Kansas. I'm not sorry for having raised my voice. That was long-overdue, and not even a percentage of what she deserves.

Greetings and Fumigations

Today is not a good day. First I have domestic tensions, which does nothing for my closet temper (any show of displeasure is unacceptable, hence all anger and resentment must be concealed at all times, resulting in a very angry, very repressed Daffy). For added fun, I have full-on PMS-induced impatience, angst and greatly shortened fuse.

And the finishing touch - a freelance job that's driving me a little batty. No matter that it's a subject matter and writing style that's new to me, I can usually handle new things well enough. But after four loooooooooong meetings and dozens of comments and revisions later, I'm getting just a tad tired. Sure, I've handled finicky clients before, but not quite like this. Yesterday, I sat through a long meeting with one of them and received comments on my first draft, which pretty much resulted in my having to re-write most of it, which isn't really anything unusual. And then, I check my email today, and found emails from five other people who, upon being forwarded the draft, decided to send their own sets of comments. AND I'm supposed to call another person tomorrow for HIS input. Suffice to say, it'd be a challenge to fit all the differing comments and suggestions. 4,800 words suddenly seems very tight for all the extra content requested.

Calling poor Kelvin didn't help either. Patience is no longer hanging on by a very thin thread - it has snapped off and is whirling around the vortex at winds up to 200mph. The worst thing about having PMS is that I often end up snapping at people who try to help by offering solutions, when all I want is someone I can just bitch to without having to answer to all their questions and suggestions and defend my thoughts. Hence, with each new suggestion he made about what I should do, I only got more and more impatient and angry, and even angrier that I couldn't show that I was angry because he meant well. By the time I was done holding my tongue as fast as I could (and it wasn't very fast), I reckon he was a little upset and I was fuming worse than ever.

At this point in time, I'm feeling positively homicidal. Did I mention I'm having PMS? And that there's absolutely no chocolate in the house? Going out for apple cinnamon prata with ice cream topped on doesn't sound bad at all...except that it's raining. Again.

And I have work to do.

Any masochists out there offering their services right now? I need to vent...

About me

I received this questionnaire email some time ago, apparently passed on by those bored at work to those equally bored at work. I'm pretty sure most of us have done something of this sort some time or other, so you get the idea. I'm bored again now, so here goes.

1. Name as it appears on your birth certificate: Daphne Ong Beng Hui
2. Nickname(s): Daffy, Daffy Duck, Creature, Monster, Hui Hui, Ah Beng, Destroyer
3. Parents' name(s): Ted & Valerie
4. Number of candles that appeared on your last birthday cake: 8 (2 big, 6 small)
5. Date that you regularly blow them out: 30 October
6. Pets: My IBM
7. Hair color: Black, with bits of white, dammit
8. Tattoos: No
9. Piercings: Both ears
10. Favorite colour: Deep, dark red
11. Hometown: Singapore
12. Current residence: Leonie Hill
13. Favorite food: Hard to choose...durian?
14. Been to Africa? No
15. Been toilet papering? No
16. Loved somebody so much it made you cry? Of course
17. Been in a car accident? Not really
18. Croutons or bacon bits?: Croutons
19. Current car you drive: Mum's Celica
20. Favorite movie? As Good As It Gets
21. Favorite holiday: The longest one
22. Favorite day of the week: Friday night
23. Favorite word or phrase: Aurora
24. Favorite toothpaste: None - brushing is a necessary evil
25. Favorite Restaurant: Book Cafe
26. Favorite flowers: Dark orange gerberas
27. Favorite drink(s): Sex on the Beach, Long Island Iced Tea at Black Angus
28. Favorite sport to watch: Tie between gymnastics & Olympic diving
29. Preferred type of ice cream: Cherry Garcia by Ben & Jerry
30. Favorite Sesame Street character: The honkers
31. Last book you read: Wicked
32. Favorite fast food restaurant: Some taqueria my sis brings me to in Santa Cruz. Love their burritos
33. When was your last hospital visit? My own: 1992. Just visiting: early 2003
34. What color is your bedroom carpet? Some tough, transparent thing under the chair so it won't scratch the parquet floor
35. How many times did you fail your driver's test? Once - it really wasn't my fault!
36. Who is the last person you got email from before this? Dilbert Daily Comic
37. Have you ever been convicted of a crime? Nope
38. Which single store would you choose to max out your credit? Ross
39. What do you do when you are bored? Play computer games/Xbox
40. Name the friend that lives farthest away from you: Oliver in Germany (if family counts, that'll be my sis's family & friends in Santa Cruz, CA, USA)
41. Most annoying thing people ask? "So when are YOU getting married?"
42. Where are you working now? At my desk (freelancing)
43. Favorite all time TV show? Tie between Frasier & Simpsons
44. Last person you were out to dinner with? Kelvin
45. What's in your CD player right now? Soundtrack to Rent
46. PC or Mac?: PC
47. One of the biggest things you are thankful for right now? The internet