Late Friday madness

Every Fri, I would go to work happy - cos it's Fri! - even though I know that at the end of the day, I would likely be working until quite late, either cos there is work or cos I have no exciting plan.

But yesterday, um, two days ago, I had a great time though I ended late. CY messaged me at 9+ when she left work so we met for a late dinner in J8. I ordered a chicken foldover minus mayo but got one with mayo. I didn't notice and took a bite at one corner before the chap found me, gave me the right one and dumped the wrong fella!

Anyway, that's not the point. We were both so tired but it seemed that laughter (and nonsense) would not desert beaten bodies and minds..

Warning: girls' talk and morbidity ahead..

1) I'll call this human anatomy..

Told her about this 13-year-old who got pregnant and her 16-year-old bf who was likely headed for the boys' home. Imagine, 13 leh! And some 30-year-olds are still virgins! I recalled a conversation with SZ many years back that it was amazing how kids knew how to have sex.. Survival instinct?

Topic veered to our, um, first period, which we recalled with much amusement.. We did have nurses going round the primary schools talking about puberty and distributing pads before that but well they didn't seem to be too effective cos when the inevitable really happened, we were like, "Oh no, what's this? Am I going to DIE?!" :p

CY told me this schoolmate was saying that every time she did standing broad jump, she thought her pad would fly out! That just sent us into fits!!

2) And this could be nothing but morbidity..

Thought of this suddenly some time ago in the bathroom. Maybe cos I've always been paranoid about slipping to my death or worse in the stupid bathroom.

Nowadays, the only contacts we have of friends are (a) mobile, (b) email, and (c) MSN or equivalent, unless you're close enough to have the home number. Then if I were to die suddenly, many people would not know cos I sure as hell could not respond to your beeping! And knowing the mother, she would sooner switch off my mobile.

And CY said a friend cancelled her landline cos no one uses it! There..

So, my dearest friends who have the house number, pls leave a comment in this space if you realise my demise.. I mean, no one reads the obitraries every day right?!

That led to pictures in obitraries. She would take a photo with Mini her dear rabbit and of course I would take one with my Meh. And btw, if I die, pls place Meh next to me.. I'll take her with me to sayang..

Suddenly inspired to come up with a will..

Getting too late and too full of nonsense.. I should sleep.. tired but it was a very happy Sat - will blog when pictures are in.. Happy birthday, CY!! :)

In the red

Big ticket items this year:
body treatments: $2,000
Pinky: $1,000
Kyushu: $2,300

Other big cheques coming up:
Japan, the free-and-easy after Kyushu: $1,500
Insurance and savings plans: $4,200

Total: $11,000

Then the news came: year-end bonus of 2.2 months. Combine that with the 0.5 month in July, and the performance bonus in March, I have a slight deficit.

Think I should review my spending habits for 2007..

body facial treatments: $2,000 *sighs*
Pinky: $1,000 no new phone!
Kyushu Hokkaido: $2,300 $3,000

Total, including insurance and savings plans: $9,200

I'll incur less if I stop having those giant pimples - better start drinking more water!

Ouch..

mf: My pimple hurts..
Na: I have a whole face of them..
mf: Is that painful?
Na: What do you think?!

Gosh.. I honestly didn't realise that the whole face could hurt from pimples! I have hit a high of four now, in the shape of a inverted cross - one giant on the forehead, two by my lips and one new giant on my chin..

Sito: Everyone has a fixed number of pimples; you haven't had many in your teens so they're all coming at you now!

Oh no =(

Btw, White Dragon has deciphered miso correctly! Was surprised when I saw his sms cos I thought the first correct answer would come from a girl.. Come on, girls!

Bye bye and welcome

Very excited cos I just received a new Fujitsu this morning!

Yeah yeah yeah! :)

In the pm when I finally had a bit of time, I thrashed all remaining documents in my old laptop and clicked on "shut down". Suddenly, I felt sad..

Sighs, she has been a good girl =(

Bye bye, my good old girl..

Introducing miso

I realise that I often make up conversations in my head - when I'm commuting, waiting for people, lazing in bed; whenever I'm on my own, whenever I'm bored. I would have a thought on something, then I would respond to that thought; a question would pop into my head, and I would answer it myself.

Think I prefer to talk with myself than simply to myself. Hence I created a twin for mf. Let's call her miso. You may speculate on the meaning but she is not the soup.

The first conversation with my identified other..

mf: The day off diet sounds interesting.. My day off could be Fri or Sat..
miso: You mean once a week you take a day off bingeing to eat healthily for once?
mf: *.*

Expect more of miso..

The halfway mark

In the midst of work, a significant day had come and gone.. It was on 3 Nov 2003 that I started work. Which means I've been working for just over three years now!

So?

So I've served half my bond. THAT, is worthy of mention :)

Back again..

A good half moon has passed since my last entry.. As I mentioned, we have moved into our new office. The boxes were moved the day I last blogged but we didn't actually operate out of the new office until the following Tues pm when the broadband was finally up.. No server yet so we're living on VPN. Troublesome but we'll bear with it willingly - just look at the varieties of food on offer! :p

And within two weeks of indulgence at lunch, I managed to convince myself to do something that I have been procrastinating - jogging in the mornings!

I started last Thurs when I only had to be at work at 930am at a seminar. I kept it up on Sat, and today, I went again and arrived at my workshop before 9am. The timing is perfect. I shall no longer start work at 7+ or 8am every day! I'll jog! :)

Phew!

Blogged a whole lot of pictures (and words, of course) at one go after a relatively long absence! Have fun reading cos I'm going on another hiatus.. Be busy with fixing and settling into the new office, in addition to scary deadlines and meetings..

I'm starting to see age showing on my face.. Very scared ~.~

But now I'm more hungry than sad, off I go!

"f/u"

SZ once asked what f/u was, when I used it in an earlier entry. Bump replied her comment/question for me; I stopped commenting on my own blog already in case you haven't noticed..

So, one day, I picked up a call to hear a giggling colleague..

A: In your email subject, what does f/u stand for?
mf: Follow up..
A (to B in the background): FOLLOW UP!
*B took over phone**
B: A thought you were scolding me..
mf: *blur* Huh? *A and B laughing at the other end* .. .. Oh dear! I didn't think it would be mistaken!
B: A is too free..
A: I thought you were scolding B..
mf: If I wanted to scold him, I would use capital F!
A: Haha, I'll tell him that!

On retrospect, I think I'll just spell it out in full :p

Visiting Grams

I went to find Grams one day after an external meeting that ended about lunch time. Since I was going to move to my new office soon, I thought I'd find her while I was still working nearby..

Haven't really chatted with her for some time, cos usually the elders were talking and the only communication between the generations was on food. That day, it wasn't too different actually..

Grams: I'll fry an egg for you..
mf: No need, this will do..
Grams: Just chicken with ginger?
mf: No problem! :)

Grams filled my rice bowl with a lot of rice and steamed pumpkin. When she went for another scoop, I almost forcibly grabbed the bowl away :p Of course I didn't cos she heard me say "enough!"

We were sitting about after lunch..

Grams: You want bee lok? ("Milo" in dialect..)
mf: No need :)

Two seconds later..

Grams: Pomelo? There's some on the table..
mf: Really? Ok :p

But besides food..

Grams: How long have you been working?
mf: Three years.
Grams: Oh, so three more years to go..

Grams remember the length of my bond! :)

I realised my Hokkien was getting real bad.. Also noticed that Grams seemed to have aged a bit.. But she is still very cute la, this Grams of mine..

Grams: You're not fat.. until you're old..
mf: *.*
Grams: Then you cannot help it.. See? I have two big layers here..

And she went on to pinch her upper and lower abdomen! I touched - soft :p I guess I could deal with that at her age, and with such a lovely grand daughter, ha!

Her birthday is coming, we're celebrating on 5 Nov, a Sunday so everyone could join in. I learnt that she was born in the year of the pig, which made her 83 this year or 84 going by the lunar calendar. I always thought she was born in the year of the chicken, must have heard wrongly last time.. :p

Went by Polar to chat with Aunt on my way back to office. Uncle and family should be getting the food. Aunt hasn't made plans for the cake yet so I offered to get the cake with Yan. How exciting! :)

Did you see mf?

There was a one-second frame of me on TV on the night of Sunday, 22 Oct 2006! Sito had more air time than me, unfair!!

Some time back, Mediacorp came by the studio to film for a production, which was finally aired. JK helped me record - thanks :) But I don't know how to upload the DVD :p Anyway, it's only a second of me. And I think I wasn't even smiling *.*

I was inspired to look through my dancing photos and found a cool one from the competition:



It was tango :) How? Fierce not? Grrr...

And a group photo of some of us after the comp - hot auntie next to me ok..



(Oops, organisers were rushing to clear the venue for a wedding dinner :p)

Update on Tomato Town

Came back from somewhere one Sat and took this:



I always think clothes hanging out of a flat are something unique to us. There's at least one picture of that at Fabric of the Nation - I like :)

Had some fun another Sat watching the birth of a new floor..

Before, just a mesh of mess..



Filling in the gaps with fresh cement from a mixer.. Thought it looked poo-y :p



Tidying up using what seemed like a household scrub..



And dried!



The following week, they started to build the lift shaft on the other side.

You may find these photos a bit "huh?!" but I'm very happy! Every little progress is bringing me closer to my room, closer to sanity :)

有朋自远方来！

Took two days of leave to play host to Jens and Eric. Woke up early on Children's Day to fetch Jens from the airport. We met Eric at the hotel; he arrived a short while ago by train. It had been three years since we met!

mf: Eric, you put on some weight!
Eric: Mean!
Jens: You look the same..

Gee, and I thought I lost weight since then.. Bad karma from being mean to Eric :p

Our first stop was to refuel with dim sum, marking the beginning of three days of decadence.. The first time we went to Liaison (or Liaisons?) in Oxford for dim sum, Jens was frowning at the thought of eating chicken feet but when he tried it, he loved it!

We walked around the Tanjong Pagar and Chinatown area where we visited the Chinatown Heritage Centre (I like but no photos) and found this:



More recently, I happened to walk down a spiral staircase at Scarlet Hotel cos the only lift broke down.. I like spiral staircase, pretty, but it's not too fun to walk though..

We walked all the way to the entire (really!) City Hall/Suntec/Esplanade area, passing by the bridge whose name I forgot - the one that divides North and South Bridge Roads - and took this picture:



If you look carefully, you would have seen that the buildings on the right are a bit crooked.. Think it was something to do with Jens's camera cos I'm pretty sure these buildings are straight!

It was a short day as they were tired from the travelling and the walking. When I parted with them after dinner and was waiting for my train, I bumped into Jo and CS. Thought it an odd coincidence: Jens came from Germany, Eric from KL; Jo is working in KL and CS is German.. Anyway, key is I got to see and touch Jo's tummy! Six months already, how exciting :)

After breakfast at a hawker centre the next day, we went to ACM cos they were flipping brochures and found something interesting. Of course ACM is interesting! I like too :) But it wasn't opened yet when we got there!! We left ACM and were walking along the river when we saw the police bring up a dead body ~.~ How scary.. We promptly left for Orchard..



This was all over Orchard Road. By Kusama Yayoi who was also the one who did the Stairway to Heaven I posted earlier.

Somehow I like the red and white polka dots, so happy :)

Spent some time in Borders and Kinokuniya where they bought some books and gifts. Eric found "Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman".. I could only remember one type of men to avoid: men who read girls' books like this!! Oh, Eric.. *shake head* We split our sides laughing, dropped the book and left :p

Jens wanted to try fried kway tiao so we went to Food Republic for king-sized servings and king-sized prawns! I didn't have it cos wasn't hungry but promised to treat myself to it the next time (which was a few days later :p)

Checked out the Opera Gallery, saw some interesting pieces by Salvador Dali there. But I was attracted to this and Jens took a picture:



I'm going to pin this somewhere to remind me to never allow myself to balloon!

We had gelato - I made up for my usual Children's Day treat :) - before going back to ACM in the mid afternoon but I was too tired to walk so I sat in the lobby while they explored the museum. Chatted with a PRC lady while waiting - disrupted my nap but she was quite interesting and inspired me to think about what I would like to do ten years from now..

Trigger-happy outside the museum cos it's me :)



And that's us!



We were beaten but we bravely carried on to Little India for the lights. Had some weird prata and I decided that Jens must try to the real stuff! We cabbed to the Upper Thomson one for dinner #2 :) And there was this foot reflexology place nearby so we went in to nurse our poor feet though Eric opted out. It was slightly painful for me, a regular, but Jens didn't even flinch! Was the uncle kind to him? Hmm..

It rained on the third and last day. We tried to do the Biennale route but were trapped in the Chinese temple for a while. I picked a chiam :p Hey, I'm starting to believe in this cos this chiam and the lot I got in Asakusa last year actually said the same thing!

Sent Eric to the train station before sending Jens to Changi. Jens brought me some souvenirs from home - so happy! Lovely calendar prints of Cologne and Cornwall complete with a feminine touch in the form of an EDT - danke! :)

Was talking with Jens about our countries' low birth rates and how some like the Nordic countries had TFR of 1.8. We hence parted:

mf: In case we meet only three years later, take good care!
Jens: By then, we'll have 1.8 TFR!

:p

So nice to see them again, seems like yesterday when we were mugging in the library, running programmes and codes in the lab, having ramen at Edamame, cruising the motorways in Cornwall.. Sighs.. Old already la :p

Don't know when I'll meet Jens again - Germany is damn far! - but I'll be going to KL next March! That's me, planning for trips so far ahead.. In fact, I've decided to go to Japan in next Sep for Miki's wedding, even before my Japan trip this year has been confirmed!!