Journey mercies

I was in a customer meeting for a few hours earlier today and sat beside my colleague Shiva. As the customer was explaining about something, he grabbed my ThinkPad and started typing away on the Excel program to ask me some things about the customer.

After which we proceeded to gossip a bit. It tickled me to see how sophisticated we've become these days. Years ago, during schooldays, we would pass to one another written notes on paper torn out from our exercise books. Today, we relay messages to one another through notebooks. Yes, we've definitely evolved to great heights of sophistication today.

Did I say we have evolved? Sorry. Communications has evolved. Me and Shiva are still the same school kids passing notes to one another.




Oh yes, if you'll notice, I typed "DO NOT MAKE ME LAUGH AGAIN" in the printscreen because Shiva was the same dude who made me giggle insanely during a tender clarification meeting with another customer. I'm still horrified about that.

Thank God for being a female and having female charms! At one point, during the meeting, I wanted my customer to change some thing in a document. I prodded him to change it a few times. Each time he gave reasons why he shouldn't. I was a little hesitant to insist too strongly on the changes since he is the customer after all but after a while, I decided a change of tactic was required.

Before we closed the meeting I asked him one more time whether the changes could be made and proceeded to pout a little and widened my eyes just a little. He made the changes.

Another colleague, KC, was standing beside me and he made a remark about how useful feminine charms could be. I think he was the only one who noticed how I changed strategies and I gave him a dirty look for pointing it loudly. After all, such a tactic is most useful when it's deployed subtly. I don't often pull those tactics because I would like to think that I don't have to. But I must admit, it does help to get things done a little faster! Hehe. :P

Labels: Work tales

I finally remembered a friend worked in an area I frequent when meeting my customers and called him to go for a drink. And I finally decided to repay him the money I loaned from him.

Hehe.

Money I borrowed during last year Chinese New Year while gambling at chor tai di. And then compounded that amount by borrowing money to pay summons. Wedding summons that is. But that was because he didn't want to drop me at an ATM machine to withdraw the money. So the latter was his own doing.

As we talked, he mentioned he was going out with a girl I knew as well, though I met her only a few times. I got a little excited. After all, she didn't seem to be the frivolous type to get into any relationship just for the fun of it.


Me: So are you going to get married? *Getting excited*

WL: Aiyoh, not so soon lah!

Me: But you are going to get married? *Getting more and more excited*

WL: Well...

Me: Oooh! Oooh! *Very very excited*

WL: We registered...

Me: OOOOoooOOooo!!! *ClapClapClapClap*

WL: Eh! Wait for me to finish first lah! Registered is a bad word. We applied for pre-marriage counselling.

Me: Cheh. Oklah. At least you guys have an objective.


Aww... how nice. My ah beng good friend is experiencing a new chapter of his life.

Labels: Random things

I suddenly missed my maternal aunts who live in Taiping for some reason. I've been meaning to give them a call for a while so I finally did today. Hearing the delight in their voices when I called just to say hi made me feel so good.

The other reason why I called my aunts is because I know if I don't, they'll nag and complain next Chinese New Year that I didn't. Heh.

Among all my aunts, my eldest aunt and second eldest aunt sit closest to my heart for certain specific reasons.

I just realised today I have no pictures with my second aunt. That will have to be top priority the next time I meet my second aunt.

Labels: Musings

Decided to post up the rest of the pictures when I was in OZ in Feb.

I was supposed to go to a very important meeting this afternoon at a customer's office, and because of a pending issue my Netherland folks has been pressuring to close off, I had to rush to send off an email before I got disconnected from my notes for a few hours.

As I dashed off to the other end of the office (and it's huge ok), telling my colleague to wait out front so we could leave for the meeting, I heard my manager saying accusingly that I was always late.

Hehe. Painfully true. But it's not like I don't try.

In fact, after work, I rushed to a nearby mamak to meet Azli the Idiot for dinner and I arrived early! 15 minutes early. Doesn't matter that I forgot we were to meet at 7.30pm and not 7pm. 20 past 7 and he called asking where I was.


Me: Oi, I'm here already larh.

Him: Huh? Yeeeaaah right.

Me: What?! I really am!!!

Him: Yeeeeaaahh right. Don't lie.

Me: Serious!! I'm here already!! Where are you?

Him: Hmm... really ah. I'm at the traffic lights. Fine, I owe you one.

Me: What?! You think I was going to be late?!

Him: Heh... usual larh.

Labels: Random things

Tons and tons and tons of work! Yippee doo dah. My life is ever more fulfilled with the amount of work I can only think of work.

Disgusted. Can't even continue.

Labels: Random things

Besides the occasional romance novels (yeah, can't stop talking about it now), my all time favourite genre of books to read are fantasy novels. I love those stories of magic, dragons and demon slayers.

I find that there's a third genre I enjoy reading, but I've not exploited it enough - autobiographies. I enjoy getting into the heads of people who've impacted history in some way or the other, and seeing it happening through their eyes.

I managed to pick up a real gem of a book 2 weeks ago - The Dragon's Pearl. Written by the daughter of a prominent Thai politician who lived with her brother in China under the ward of Zhou Enlai during the period of the Cold War.

Reading the book made me realise one thing; I really don't know much. It made me feel naive, sheltered and quite unchallenged.

And quite frankly, I never really knew what China was about. I grew up knowing it existed, and there once lived a person called Mao Zedong, and China's history is one so extensive and so complicated, I never tried to know it because I would be too confused to remember anyway. It made me realise how much I take history for granted, and maybe if people appreciated it a little more, we would not keep repeating the same mistakes.

But one thing is for sure, our history books are rubbish. Its only a glossary of the events and history, unfortunately, is too easily subjected to interpretation. And Malaysian history textbooks are so obviously skewed, it doesn't just set the eyes rolling, it sets the eye socket spinning as well.

After finishing the book today, I was so intrigued by China's history, I spent an hour over the Internet learning more about it. Then during dinner, when I went out with a friend...


Me: How much do you know about China?

KK: China? Hmmm... China...

Me: Ok, let me make it easier. How well do you know about Mao Zedong?

KK: Mao? Oklarh... he united China with its many provinces... a lot of people died... Eh wait!! Wrong person!! I was thinking of Genghis Khan!!!

Me: Eh?!!? Hello! Genghis Khan didn't unite China larh!!

KK: Err... oh yarrhh... it's that Huang something guy! Ya ya... I have a book on the 100 most prominent people in history and he's in it. Mao ah? He's quite recent right? Only died quite recently?

Me: If you call the 1970s recent. Looks like you don't know much about China either. Hehe.


Anyway, this book really set my head spinning a little. It invoked so much in me to mull over. It makes me feel a bit of regret, that I had not known more about China's history earlier. I would have seen my friends from China in a different light had I known the context of their history. I wonder now, what is it like for my contemporaries to have grown up in China and how their history shapes their perspective.

But humans have too fickle a mind and we forget all too easily. An excerpt I particularly liked from the book as Zhou talked of people losing perspective:


"A man was on a long journey," Zhou said, "and after a time he ran out of food. He struggled on, but there was nothing to eat, and he was becoming desperate. Finally he met a family on the road, and he asked them for some bread. The old lady in the family gave him three mantou, which was all she had. The man was still hungry, though, and barely paused to give thanks. Then he passed by another house along the road and went in and asked for food. The people there gave him half of a bun. Now he was full and felt satisfied for the first time in a long while. That half bun saved his life, he said, thanking the family profusely."

Zhou never forgot his history. He knew how much the latest policies built on the contributions of the past. He remembered those who had sacrificed to build the revolution.


Like I said, the book gave me a lot to mull about, though the thoughts are still unformed.

Labels: Musings

Two very dear people in my life have fallen in love with one another. And for some reason, their love for each other has made me feel incredibly loved as well!

Sometimes when two people are very in love, the poor single friend can sometimes end up feeling like a lamppost, or even neglected. But for some reason, I feel as if love for me has been doubled! On rare occasions, I feel uncomfortable with all the love that I'm nearly tempted to wish that they could be like normal couples and focus on each other. Nearly! But never quite.

Their love story is so Bhollywood (Bollywood + Hollywood). So full of joy and yet so full of pain.

And today, when both of them seemed to be plunging a little into their shared pain, I seemed to become all the more important to both of them to be a little of a float to keep their heads above the water.

Gosh, I don't know what's going to happen to their story, but I feel their pain. I truly do.

I never understood why I was so important in their relationship until today. He gave her everything. She could only give me.

Labels: Friends, Musings

It only occured to me when I got back from Perth I never did post the pictures when I was in Australia in February.

Labels: Work tales

I got tagged by Florence. And while I think that this tagging thing is pretty much in my sek pau mou yeh chou (nothing to do) category, hehe... it's still nice to be remembered that I exist to other people, so I shall obediently comply!

So I'm to state eight random facts/habits about myself then tag another eight person in turn.


1. I hate wearing loose panties. I like them tight and snug. (Whaaaaat!?! Supposed to be random right?!?!)

2. Fact No. 1 was as a result of being traumatised by my mother and sister laughing super hard at me when I was a wee child. I kept wearing this underwear which band was so loose, it kept falling off. And being the innovative child I was, I took a rubber band and tied as much loose underwear as I could (like one would tie a ponytail) to keep it from falling. My mother and sister saw it one day when I was in a changing room and they laughed so hard I was forever traumatised by loose underwear.

3. I can sleep anywhere, anytime. During my grandmother's funeral, the weather in Taiping was unbearably hot in the afternoon. So hot it was a bit of a challenge even to sleep. But I prevailed. When my maternal sixth aunt saw me sleeping in the room despite the heat and humidity, she was incredulous. She couldn't believe how I could sleep in such a weather. In fact, I slept so well that she was convinced to join me.

4. I actually like reading romance novels. Everytime I'm in a bookstore, I would try to sneak a glance at the romance sections as discreetly as I can. If there's very few people in the store, I'll browse through it a bit. But if there are a few people hovering nearby especially guys, I pretend to turn my nose up at it and then head towards the Non-Fiction section and pretend to browse through autobiographies of people like Nelson Mandela and other impressive sounding names.

5. Having a sister who's on scholarship to do her PhD in Cornell and does schmancy-mancy things like comparative literature and political science, I'd like people to think I could be fairly intellectual. But really, all I like to do is bum out in front of the TV watching E!, movies and TV series, read my fantasy novels with occasional romance novels and play computer games. Nothing really intellectually stimulating. In another life, I would have been perfectly contented being a secretary. But nooOooo... my parents decided I had to do more with my life.

6. I used to crack my knuckles quite a bit. Then I got bored. So I started cracking the proximal inter-phalangeal joint of my fingers. Then I got bored, and I started cracking the proximal inter-phalangeal joint of my toes.

7. I am most articulate in writing when I am angry. Each word and each sentence is to drive home a scathing and pointed remark. When I was in ME, my manager would happily let me be the one to draft out the emails for her when it was time for an internal email cat fight. She claimed it was the only time when I wasn't long-winded like I usually was.

8. I can be quite confrontational, even as a child. Loooong time ago, when we were wee kids, my siblings, cousin and I were waiting in a bank for our grandmother, two kids claimed we took their spot. One of them started threatening that they would hit us and though being the youngest among the four, I remember shouting back at them, "Come lah! Hit us lah!" They backed off nearly immediately and went to sulk at another corner. I remember my siblings and cousin laughing a little in surprise at me.

And then there was another time when I was still a pretty young kid, we were in Genting Highlands for a family trip. We took a bus from Awana up to Genting, and when it was time to grab the bus to go down to Awana again, the crowd was pretty unruly with everyone rushing to get onboard and pushing and shoving against each other. I was so annoyed being pressed in the rushing crowd I snapped at a lady behind me, "Stop pushing! Why you don't know how to line up ah?!" My aunt who was I was tagging along laughed as she told my uncle my reaction.

Oh yes, and I'm so confrontational that I get very annoyed when people do not outrightly speak their minds but insinuate their displeasure of me through veiled words. I actually lose my temper, when a person insinuates rather being forthright with what they think. If somebody has something to say, say it to my face and don't hide behind snide tones, pretentious facial expressions and supposedly political words.

Yeah, I'm pretty abrasive that way. No wonder people find it hard to get along with me.

Labels: Random things

"I thought you were happening, but you're not."

My colleague said to me today. When he found out I could not drink that much alcohol, I don't smoke, I went to church in Perth instead of joining the other more 'fun' activities, and that I help out in an orphanage.

Oh yes. And that during my one year in UK, I could use one hand to count the number of times I've visited the pub. And the fact that my weekly schedules in UK was pretty much where Mondays I go to church in the evenings for Globe Cafe, occasionally joining Focus Groups (student Bible study groups) on Tuesday evenings, occasionally joining the Christian Union group on Wednesday nights, the Christian Student Action group on Thursday nights, the Chinese Christian Fellowship group on Friday night, can't for the life think what I usually do on Saturday nights and then JPC services in the mornings and evenings on Sunday.

Aaahh... good times.

I am a person of two extremes. On one hand, I have some people always passing comments like, "I thought you smoked! You look like a person who smokes!" and "You look like a real party animal!" and "You look like you can outdrink the rest of us!" While on the other hand, I'm the kind who well, would love to end up being in church everyday if I could. Well, maybe not everyday, but something like that.

I've got my good side and my oh-so-dark side.

And the tension between this two extremes can be really tough at times. The last thing I want is people to look at me and think of me as a really pious person. But nor do I want to think of me as a wild child. Worst, a hypocrite. If I could, I would just want them to see me as someone working things out with God.

Don't ask me to balance up my two extremes. The tension could make me go off. Seriously. It's always one or the other end of the see-saw.

But you ask me, I choose to be at the boring end, really.


My dark side whispering: Boring? Hah! See you in heaven buddy! If you can make it through the pearly gates while I'm partying with the angels. We'll see who has the last laugh! Boring indeed. Hmmmmmmphhhh.

Labels: Musings, Work tales

There's been some level of discomfort (to put it mildly) over certain things which relates to one of my closest colleagues leaving the company. There has been mixed emotions of disappointment, indignation, anger, outrage, sadness, resentment.

The other night I was reading 2 Timothy and found 2 Tim 2:16 striking me; "Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly."

I've been guilty of this, because of godless chatter, it has inevitably caused the situation above. Some people call it spreading negativity, some call it honesty. Whatever it is to different people, it was me getting too involved with unimportant matters that distracted me.

I don't know why, but I somehow always attract people who know too much of the current affairs in the office. They end up telling me so much things that it's hard for me to resist from being pulled into it. I guess the lure of knowing more feeds into my tendency of wanting to be in control and in power of my situation. Not knowing what happens in the office makes me feel somehow lacking in some way.

What really gave me a wake up call to me indulging in godless chatter was when I was minding my own business in the office today when someone pinged me on Sametime. It was a colleague I only interacted with once or twice and never met before. He started by asking me about something, and then moved on to complaining about another colleague.

A little surprised, but ok, I could understand his frustration. Then he started complaining about a third party involved with the situation that led to the frustration. And then he started telling me about how this third party treated his colleague and how he had an affair with his colleague's wife! He had put it a little more crudely than that though.

At that point I lifted my head. This was waaaaaayyyy too much information. And very weird that he should spend 20 minutes gossiping about people who I knew by reputation but never met before. Like whaddup man!?

Previously, when information like that was given to me, it was in small and discreet doses, like someone feeding a subtle poison. But this dude was like splashing a bucketfull of it at me causing me to taste its bitter foulness in its entirety.

Thank goodness he ended the conversation as abruptly as he did starting it. I really didn't want to hear anymore of his gossips. I think it's time for me to start being deaf and dumb to these kind of things.

Labels: Random things

[+] Yay! I've finally mailed it! Now to pray and wait!

[+] Met up with a college mate I've not seen in years. Very timely. Just when I needed to borrow RM30. ;)

[+] Was amused to find in a mamak in Bangsar, it had a PA system set up to warn patrons of police giving summons to those who double parked. "Saman, saman, saman!"

Now that's called value-added services.

[+] I was talking to colleague S today and he was telling me about how someone had asked colleague J why he was such good friends with the Malays instead of with the Chinese people. S was very annoyed with that remark because he felt it narrow-minded and racist.

If there were any weird traits I could identify, it would be that I tend to be comfortable with all other races except for the Chinese race. I love Malays, Indians, Bahamians, Caucasians more than Chinese folks.

Best friend in kindergarten was a Malay girl, best friends in primary were Indian girls, though in secondary school, my mom was relieved I finally had close Chinese friends (the irony, it was the most superficial friendships I ever had).

In college, my best buddies were Punjabi, Indian and Malay folks. While in university, though I was close to a group of Chinese folks, the most special friendships I made was with an English dude and a Bahamian girl. In the office, my closest buddy was a guy who was mixed Chinese and Indian but looked like a Malay, as well as other Malay and Indian people.

Oh yes, and I have the weirdest fascination with African Americans. Don't ask me why, I just am.

[+] I'm a fiercely loyal person. A colleague mentioned today that my loyalty is unquestioned because apparently I proved it to him when I stood up for him against my own manager, risking political suicide.

It reminded me of my first manager, SM, in ME, when she told me about the manager's training they had where the AP bosses put her on stage as a case study and were questioning her on her team's (which was just me and her) cohesiveness and loyalty. She was the only one among all the managers, who could say that she would trust me with her ATM pin number, and yes, even her life.

SM and I were more than best friends. Seven managers after her, it only occurred to me how extremely fortunate I had been to have a manager like her. I don't think I could ever find the same chemistry we had with anyone else.

She was Indian too. :)

Labels: Random things