something is rotten in the state of denmark..

Read this last Friday and then this today..

ko lian tai.. :(

cunning linguist

In a recent conversation with a colleague..

colleague : Oei! I just saw what you did.. wah.. power man..

me : Huh? Really uh.. How so?

colleague : Very beek biak loh..

me : Beek biak? You mean sart sart boon bee bee kind of beek biak huh?

colleague : Comfirmed.. 强啊!

无题

原以为不用上班心情一定会非常漂亮，没想到上司的一封电邮就足以让我无比烦躁。。加上整晚无法入眠，导致现在胸口紧绷，闷闷的，可是想吐又吐不出来。。

也不知道要写什么。。头晕晕的。。满脑子没有头绪。。只想要做些东西希望能让我暂时忘掉恼人的疼痛。。

woof! 临走前没有什么交待，只嘱咐我不可把他的博客网变成粉红色，其余的我想做什么都随我。。 我开玩笑跟他说我会用中文来写作因为我肯定他不一定办得到。。 ：）后来想想 woof! 的众多读者不一定都双语兼通。。所以还是决定用英文比较妥当。

那天 woof! 电邮我说那里的星空非常灿烂，真的是天上星星数不清。。而他也不一会儿就睡着了。。

那一夜星光灿烂。。

再过两天 woof! 就要回来了。。我想大家都好想念他吧。。

放心。。 两天很快就过去了。。

it must be the storm..

The storm outside the window looks like a scene taken from the movie, War of the Worlds..

I remember an afternoon when I was much younger when it rained as hard with lightnings and thunder and the works. I knew my father was coming home from work around that time and so I felt my stomach all knotted up with fear and anxiety that he would be struck by lightning on his way back. I remember crying myself to sleep when he did not return at the usual time but that was really silly of me since he must have been detained as he was seeking shelter from the storm.

Hmm.. how strange.. this entry was supposed to be more bitching about my cannot-make-it female boss and how I damage controlled to make right the wrong she intended to do to a vendor that we hired.

It must be the storm that got me all sentimental.. it must be the storm that got me to talk about something personal again.. it must be the storm that made me not take responsibility for my own action but to blame it on the storm..

But since I have started.. what the hell?

In brief, damage control costs $480 and will be borne by another colleague and me. I am a sucker I know.. but I figured that goodwill, integrity and treating people right are more important than putting up with her bullying ways :(

In any case, I have a strange suspicion from the spat we had over emails that it's a face-off situation between the two of us already. A storm is brewing and I sense a foreboding.. o well.. my horoscope yesterday did warn me that:

You may feel uncertain about your personal life or a partnership you are in. Don't let anyone get the better of you. Make suggestions, but be prepared to go it alone if you must.

See.. even the stars knew I was doomed to commit a career suicide..

I think I best go curl up in bed now..

pattern liao liao..

When I was offered this blog as a platform to air my views and what not, I told myself that my material will be nothing very personal since it is after all not my own blog.

Still, I have a burning question to ask and that is if any of you are frustrated with work.

If so, can one of the chief contributing factors be that you are reporting to a female boss?

Now I had worked for/with demanding female bosses before but none are half as cannot make it as my current immediate boss. What I cannot tolerate most about her is the fact that she does not treat people right. One wonders how she manages to rise to her present position without being backstabbed to death!

And as much as I cannot identify with her leadership or see eye to eye with her, I cannot bring myself to stoop so low as to lodge a complaint against her but the negative energy that is brewing within threatens to blow me up into smithereens!

There appears to be little possibility for a win-win situation.

it's all in the mind..

In the face of adversity, how does/should one react?

Take a look at exhibit A, although it's completely squeezed out of shape, it still looks so cheerful and optimistic, not to mention its indifference to voices of dissent or unkind words behind its back.

Yet, this state is usually unattainable by most people, especially when other people suka suka choot pattern.

[Note: the choice of verbs used in the question above. The latter is an auxiliary verb that connotes obligation and thus not necessarily done out of free-will.]

----------------

In any case, here's a portrait of exhibit A. Are you not amazed by the singlemindedness of the person who did it? Goodness knows why exhibit A is still lying around at home when it has found a replacement already.

My mum did this.
Her frugality really puts me to shame.

on companionship

Is it winter already?

Is there no hand out there for me to hold?

O what I would give to have a warm body to snuggle up to..

To have you nestle your head in my arms and bring spring to my life..

what's in a name?

To woof's legion of adoring fans and "harem" (the former being what I perceived, the latter his own imagination), I have been asked to blog in proxy of woof! to keep his baby active while he contemplates with life's bigger issues in NZ for the next one week. For the first entry, I decided to talk about names since that was one of the questions I posed woof wrt why he called himself that after he made me the offer to blog in his absence.

I always think that the screen names that people use for various purposes tell a story about the person himself as it reveals a little of his characteristics. In the case of woof, not only is his love for dogs apparent in the choice of his screen name, it also suggests that he is a loyal and faithful friend and companion like his dog that keeps him company all the time. The name chosen also in some ways dictates and shapes the general tone and feel of the blog.

Amongst the many screen names I have seen, my favourite has to be Lancerlord and Tenanus Tetanus for the male bloggers and mis_nomer and wallflower for the female bloggers. A screen name that intrigues me is G.marks.the.spot as I always wonder if G is the first letter of the person's actual name and which spot the blog owner wants to mark and why so she wants to mark that spot. Ball of Yarn's abbreviation, BoY I think is quite cute and appropriate as it suggests a touch of innocence in the manner in which he spins his yarn, and that he is a person who is untainted by the forces of evil out there which is waiting to corrupt the susceptible majority.

But screen names aside, what are some names that you have heard that made you go, "What were their parents thinking about when they were naming their child?"

Back in my parents' days when the infant mortality rates were high, it was a common practice to name newborn babies after animals as it was believed that the child would have a higher chance of survival (along the lines of totem spirit??) and thus easier to bring up. As a result, it is not unusual to hear names like 狗 (dog), 熊 (bear), 虎 (tiger), 豹 (leopard) and 燕 (swallow)..

Today, parents start planning for their unborn child's name way before it is due to be delivered as it is in part due to the waning population that has plagued Singapore and many other fast growing countries as well as the desire to give the child a head start with a good name in our very competitive world.

For the Chinese names, many parents and eager grandparents would consult fortune tellers for them to count the number of strokes in the chinese characters as well as to take into consideration the hour in which the child is born. Some of the more traditional ones are bound by this thing called a 家谱 (something like genealogy) in their quest for a name. In the case of an english or christian name, parents often read books to learn the meaning of the name in various languages and cultures and/or are affected by the latest trends.

In my not-so-accurate census, there seems to be more sophisticated sounding English names (Winston, Ian, Irvin, Eleanor, Genevieve, Eugenia, Charmaine etc) in the people whose age ranges between late 20s to early 40s and more adventurous, alternative and perhaps androgynous sounding names (Boulder, Moon, Apple, Titan, Dion, Aubury, Beckham etc) among the younger generation. This is as opposed to the more common names (John, Peter, Jason, Mary, Sally, Angela, etc) in my parents' era.

A friend who is currently in Australia making babies told us before she left that should she be successful in this trip, she is going to name the child after the place that the baby is conceived. Hence, her boy would be named Port while her girl Fairy if they are made there. As she would be visiting the Apostles during her trip, she also considered naming her child after the one which had fallen and we were like HUH?? in the car when she was telling us her intentions. As I always like the name Lucifer, I suggested it and that received some stares and little attention from my friends who promptly moved on to another name. I guess this is in part due to the negative connotations of the name since I have yet to hear someone daring enough to name his child Lucifer.

I recently heard a story of a man who was forced to change his english name after he migrated to Australia as his name was often made the butt of jokes. This man who was able to get by with his dialect name in Singapore has a normal english name which he seldom used when he was in Singapore. His parents had named him Harry which is fine and if you recall, it is also our MM's name when he was a student overseas. Alas! What made him reserved about using his given english name is the fact that it sounded really unfortunate when coupled with his surname. And since he has to bear his surname until his dying days, he decided that it is imperative to change his English name just so that the Australians will stopping mocking his name. I am sure you are by now quite curious what his surname is and some of the more perceptive ones may have guessed it already. You are right if your guess is Kok. Yes, his parents had given him the name Harry Kok and he had put up with it and went through secondary school and NS under the guise of his less eyebrow raising dialect name in Singapore.

Incidentally, the friend I mentioned above married a man whose surname is Sng and she told us that a name she would not even consider is Charles as it would sound like the hokkien phrase chow sng which means the stench from food that has gone bad.

So have you heard of any names that brought a smile to you face or made you feel like strangling their parents for not thinking through the various language permutations before naming their child?

If so, share share leh.. :p

------
Correction

It should be Tetanus and not Tenanus (Thanks to Nuanda who spotted my typo). :)

Baaaa...

I'm finally off! To a place where the stars shine bright, where the green green pastures will heal my eyes after thousands of hours of staring at the computer screen..

Back on 2 November.. till then, be good!

And YJ, good luck and god speed for the Big One!

haha... couldn't resist this pic... so saccharine sweet it's almost yicky!

Spy vs. Spy

Dunno about you, but 1 of my staples growing up was the Mad Magazine... remember Spy vs. Spy?

Here are some ads from the USA:

No. 1

No. 2

No. 3

No. 4

Ha ha

Just as I was laughing at Li-er for wearing her cardi inside out...

I was just slouching in my chair and suddenly it occurred to me to be a little strange that the horsey on my Ralph Lauren vest which I always wear in the office was on my right chest than my left, as it ought to be...

Then I realised I've just been walking around the office for the past 3 hours with my vest inside out.. genius...

Manja

YT bought a baby Husky a few weeks ago, whom I saw for the first time about 10 days ago... the first time we met, he didn't seem very keen to play - it was only the next day when he was brought to the vet that we found out he had caught some bug at the puppy farm and was actually suffering from pretty bad pneumonia...

Saw him again last Friday, IV drip, shaven paw and all... not a pretty sight, and definitely not in the mood to play...

Then YT had to go off overseas this past Monday, leaving baby with the vet... went to visit him today, and he look far more spritely... terribly painful (to me) sounding phlegm-y cough, and pleading eyes, but at least he had the energy to constantly scratch himself behind the ears with his paw... seeing as he had been without much human interaction for the past few days, I spent almost 2 hours reading Business Week as he alternated between resting his head on my shoes, licking it (haha, it did look shinier after he was done) and hiding under the stool I was sitting on...

When it was time to leave, I got up, and he immediately did so as well, then plonking himself right next to my new position... I took a few steps to the right, and he adjusted himself accordingly.. 2 steps forward, and he followed.. how manja is that?

Placed him back in his cage, and he immediately sprawled on the bottom and flashed those pleading eyes again... emotional blackmail! I finally gave in and promised to visit him again on Friday...

Baby!

Check out SIA's latest A380 baby, red clown nose and all!

Link

20 Years Too Late

Had a dream last night that was 20 years too late in the making, though I was of my current age in the dream...

I somehow bought 2 hamsters as pets, and as I was happily carrying them home, I started realising that my mother was going to be so mad that I bought "silly and smelly pets", and got more and more flustered as I got nearer home!

Maybe it's a sign that I should move out soon... heh,,

Sunday

Think I found my new favourite thing to do on a Sunday morning!

Catching the 10am show, in an empty theatre, and with a Starbucks grande latte in ward away the chill in the barely-occupied theatre... 1 blanket would be nice, but that's a bit too much, not to mention you don't want ure stuff touching the many years of spilled drinks on the carpet / sticky floor..

Watched The 40-year old Virgin today.. have to admit that I found many parts amusing, tho some were just sick! Like the waxing part, I almost buried my head in my companion's shoulder.. haha.. the thought of the pain was overwhelming! And you definitely shouldn't mix a crass-comedy with a romantic theme.. that just sux!

+++

Had lunch at Pepper Lunch.. got the hamburger steak, which was pretty ok.. tho someone please enlighten me - are you supposed to put the honey whatever sauce on the bean sprouts? Cos the bean sprouts tasted pretty yucky half cooked...

Why was I Not Told of This?!

Why was I not told of this? - the favourite line of 1 of my bosses..

Why was I not told that there is a new Mercedes Benz model on the market?!

It's a beaut! And I will smack the person who says that it looks like a Honda Stream.. haha... I'm not really into SUVs or MPVs, but this one is quite a beauty.. few things beat the current generation E-Class if you ask me though..

And for some reason, I'm a sucker for nice dashboards.. it's usually 1 of the first things I look at when I see a car up close.. as dashboards go, almost nothing beats a Merc one!

Hugz

Isn't it amazing that there are days when a 1kb .gif makes so much difference? On a really bad day, seeing it there when you turn on your screen just takes a small load off my mind for a while.. of course nothing beats the real thing, where I swear there are times when I really feel as if some of the anger / tension / fear dissipates when I hold someone for more than a few seconds...

Win Already

Tonight's Mars v. Venus on Power 98:

Deejay: Which band sang Bohemian Rhapsody?

Female Contestant: *silence*

*5 seconds up*

Deejay: Guess something..

Female Contestant: S Club Seven?

This one really win already...

Kermee..

Kermee...
Just realised that as a kid (and even now), there are quite a few Sesame Street characters I don't like:
Kermit: Love!
Fozzie Bear: Like
Sam the Eagle: Who?
Ms. Pizzy: Irritating
Statler & Waldorf: Don't like
The Swedish Chef: Don't like
Amimal: Loathe!
Dr. Honeydew & Beaker: Irritating
Rowlf: Like
Gonzo: Ok lah..

Not on the list:
Big Bird: Whoopie I love!
Grover: My favourite! He's the slightly loser nice guy.. my hero!

I'm a Fool!

Had a bit of spare time this trip to go shopping and walk around.. managed to buy more of my favourite Footjoy bare-bones-model golf gloves for S$12/3 each... much cheaper than the $19 they try to sell for in Singapore.. anyone wants some during my next trip there?

But my stupidity also showed.. YT had asked me to buy for her some tees as she was running out.. they were going for around 12 for THB50, and I thought they were a little expensive.. then some sales guy comes up to me and tells me that he has a bucket of tees which sells at THB160 (around SGD7) for as much as your 2 hands can cup at 1 go (around 130 apparently)... hmmm that sounded like a really good so I said ok, and was rather pleased with myself when I dug deep into the bucket and produced a huge handful..

At least, until I was at the cashier, when the sales guy handed me a small plastic bag full of tees... what the hell was I thinking?? What am I going to do with the 100 tees which YT doesn't need / want ???

Eons Ago

Meme from the delightful Li-er... Mr responses:

How old were you when you...

1) took your very first baby step? Dunno.. I only have photos of me crawling on my parents bed absolutely nekkid... eeks..

2) had your bicycle license? 6/7 years old.. I remember my father teaching me how to cycle, from 4 wheels, to 3, to 2.. and photos to show for it..

3) were told you needed spectacles? 10/11 years old

4) had chicken pox? 13.. Chicken pox's also when I... errr... discovered about parts of my anatomy, but that's another story...

5) got your first part-time job? 24 - tuition.. proud to say I was a SGD35/hr whore, not your garden variety $25/hr ones..

6) fell in love for the first time? think it was 10...

7) got your first full-time job? 25 years old.. the 2 years later I came out into the job market hasn't been compensated for my by screwed up salary yet...

8) had your driving license? 20 years old.. the rest of my "hokkein peng" unit had ORD-ed and there was a lot of time on my hands in camp, so I got permission to book out 3 times a week for driving lessons.. remember my refresher lesson before my test was a disaster and my instructor told me I was bound to fail... turned out I passed on my first try..

9) had your funky pager? 19 years old.. egg-shaped motorola

10) had your cool mobile phone? 22 years old.. Nokia 3210

11) finish your tertiary studies? 24 years old

Shan't "arrow" anyone, but please so feel free to participate!

Melons

Had to wait to see a colleague this morning, and so I wandered around the floor and started talking to another colleague who used to work on my floor..

Somehow the conversation veered to me saying I was going to Bangkok, and whether she wanted anything from there...

Now this colleague in question is particularly well-endowed, and when I asked her, she hesitated for a brief moment before saying that there is something, but she felt paiseh asking.. the colleague I was supposed to meet with beckoned at me to signal she was ready, so to finish up the conversation with the well-endowed colleague, I said "bras ah?"

She shot me a shocked look... apparently what she wanted was a necklace from the weekend market... oops! hahaha...

Dang.. thought it was my once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy a D-cup bra....

Karen

On Power 98 last night, during the Mars v. Venus contest:

Question: What is the name of the only female smurf?

Male Contestant's Answer: Err.. Karen?

Wah lau! Tho Smurfette looks like a Karen alright..

Jie Mei

Remember my law school classmate who stays 15m away from me? She's getting married in a few weeks.

And since I live practically next door, I'm invited to be the jie(3) mei(4) on the morning of the wedding to partake in the chance at a small fortune from the groom's side when he comes to "buy" the bride.. heh..

Note to self: Go shopping this weekend to buy a dress... hee hee...

Humility

Thought my golf was sufficiently decent, but I was obviously wrong...

Arranged to meet YT for golf yesterday... the idea was to meet at 5:15 and get in a round at the short course at Eng Neo... we'd played there once I think in 2001 before I tui chu jiang hu but never stepped back there since..

There was supposed to be a conference call at 5pm yesterday, but I rather curtly told the other party that this week was a rather busy week (it is!) and I had something else on at 5pm (yeah - leaving the office to play.. heh), so if we could re-schedule. I swear he said it'd take all of 10 minutes, so we agreed for 4:30pm instead.

So the conference call started at 4:30pm and went on and on and on... 4:45... 4:50.. 5:00... 5:10.. thank god my colleague "killed" the conference at 5:15, and I bolted out of the door..

My golf yesterday was horrible.. we started at 5:40, thinking that we could finish a full course, but this was not to be.. my shots went freaking everywhere, I lost 5 balls, and hurled expletives countless times, both climbing up the steep-ish slopes as well as when I flubbed the shots.. now I can imagine how people throw / break their clubs in a moment of anger at the golf course... Now this was really a lesson in humility, when I got carried away thinking my skills were significantly better than I thought I had at the range...

Tock!

HJ's first golf session outside the range, and he's 1 lucky bird!

Around 15m from the hole, and the green was on elevated ground so he couldn't exactly see how the ball went, but when he took a swing, the ball flew towards me (I was holding onto the flag), I instinctly lifted the flag and stepped to the left... tock! wah lau! the ball literally flew into the hole!

It also bounced out of the hole, but that's besides the point...

Fore!

Met HJ for lunch - we had meant to check out this second-hand golf clubs shop that 2 of my colleagues told me about.. It's at Kreta Ayer Street / Road, and we decided to do lunch at this really good wanton mee / roast pork place nestled between the Keong Siak Street houses of pleasure..

The Kreta Ayer shop had a huue range, but the proprietor seemed more interested in reconditioning the grip of some golf clubs than closing transactions.. we didn't get any advice, much less the advice we were looking for, so we left really quick..

Checked out the shops at Far East Shopping Centre instead.. to cut the long story short, HJ bought:
a. Mizuno MX-17 irons (really beginner irons, and hence I'm not going to but them at 50% price when he tires of them.. dang..)
b. Taylor Made something wood
c. Hippo-brand putter (I personally think putting is more human skill than determinant on the implement itself)

At the driving range, I was getting 120m with his 8-iron and 130m with the 7-iron, minimal rolling.. no complaints!

Think we'll go to the Nee Soon short course tomorrow..

Miserable

Colleague asked me to join him in meeting an external counsel which he uses for his work.. if nothing else, I thought it'd be a free nice dinner, so I said yes..

We left the office at 5:45 and were really early, so we decided to pop into a drinking joint for some beer and snacks first.. If you work for an organisation with a lot of caucasian bosses and cannot find him at around 5pm on Fridays, I can now tell you where he is..

So we got a beer each, and calamari and wings and prawn & bacon kebabs.. bitched about work and colleagues, and the dude we were supposed to meet called up almost immediately, so we told him to join us first.. So he appears, we talk talk listen listen, and miraculously his other colleague appears as well! More talk talk listen listen, and apparently his colleague had asked 2 other colleagues to come join us...

Now the back-slapping and golf-handicap-comparing really begins.. stories of how 1 of them could throw his club 50m and finish a game with a bent putter started coming out, as well as how theyalways lose big money to the Japanese for small small golf game bets..

Colleague has to leave at around 9pm to pick up his wife, and I took the opportunity to leave as well.. which meant that I had 4 pints of beer in me and only 2 chicken drumsticks, 1 wing, 3 rings of calamari, 3 prawns wrapped with bacon.. cabbed home, and was feeling positively nasty and hungry with that beer on an empty (by my standards) stomach...

Lay in bed groaning for an hour before I finally fell asleep at 10+.. woke up really really hungry at 3+am, and could only find some inferior-brand cup noodles... yuck..

What happened to my foie gras and lamb chops and Penfolds Grange on a nice, white tablecloth?

What Day is It?

Happy Children's Day!

Remember some of these?
a. The Malay Children's Day song;
b. Free erasers / rulers from the school;
c. Teachers performing for us instead of the other way around.