Journey mercies

Two Fridays ago, my company had its annual dinner at Shangri-La Hotel in town. I didn't go to the one the year before, because my grandmother passed away just two days before, and so had to rush back to Taiping for the funeral. Talking about my grandma... it's been a year since she's gone. I was always a little closer to my paternal grandparents, but my maternal grandma was still a pretty strong fixture in my life.

I remember when we were very much younger and she was more robust, she used to gamble with her friends and smoked cigarettes. She also taught us how to play some of the card games, and whenever someone shouted, "Lai, pok kiau!*" she would join in with a merry glint in her eyes. During her funeral, some of us were playing cards beside her coffin, which I thought a little odd initially. But when I thought about it, I think if her spirit did linger that day, she would have stood there with the same glint in her eyes.

She also used to sew blanket quilts for us, and the blanket I use now was made by her many years back. I also have a gold ring and a jade pendant she gave me as keepsakes. She bought quite a number of jewelry, which she gave each grandchild one. And one day, I'm going to pass along those keepsakes to my grandchildren.

Anyway, setting aside the melancholy, the annual dinner was themed "Masquerade Night". I don't have any benchmarks since this is the first annual dinner I've gone to. But somehow, still felt that it could have been much much better. The timing was bad, since it was our quarter closing and most sales managers did not join since they were too stressed about their numbers to. In fact, there were two colleagues who were standing behind me during the dinner talking about work and I had to turn around and tell them to just enjoy the night just that one time without talking about work. It apparently worked because one of them switched his mobile off so as not to be distracted again.

I guess the night was not all together that bad. It was still fun spending time with colleagues in a non-stressful environment. Unfortunately, not much pictures to upload yet, because I didn't have my camera with me and I'm still waiting for others to pass me their pictures. Oh yes, and because it's the quarter end, I didn't even have time to look for a dress. The dress I'm wearing is actually 7 years old! I've only worn it 2 times and my mom once before the dinner, so it's still in pretty good shape. Hehe... You can't see my hair, but I dashed out of the house 2 hours before the dinner to search frantically for a mask and to do my hair. I am ever the last minuter!






*Come, let's gamble!
**Grocery stores