merry is love ;

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu'd the gowans fine;
But we've wandered mony a weary fit
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidled i' the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere,
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

YAY!!!

God knows how I am going to work the following day but YESSS, mahjong tomorrow!! What's more, we are going to have three sets so yay!! Non-stop mahjong throughout the night! With a bbq to start and some alcohol to drink (I heard green tea goes well with Absolut), it is going to be just great. =D

Dear Santa,

It is a quiet Christmas this year. I am beginning to regret not going Momo / MoS or even the Orchard Countdown because it is quite sad to be listening to Christmas songs on the radio and doing nothing else. In previous years, my family will have a barbecue and my place will feel very festive with all that laughter, feasting and chatting. New year. New year, we will have it. Will you make that happen for me?

My feet and toes are still hurting from Friday's activities. What the crap. Can you please remind me to remind myself never to wear heels to club again? Make this stick in my head: If I ever do it another time, it is absolutely at my own risk and I will have to bear terrible consequences.

I know I haven't been a totally good girl but will you drop me a present this year? I will leave my rubbish chute door open if you are. You see, I live on the 19th floor and as far as I know, the rubbish chute is the only secret way up that is big enough for you to climb up, no offence. Or if you want to save the trouble, you can grant me this wish of mine - please let me get good grades for my A's.

P.s. I heard today that Santa house receives mails addressed to Santa even if they are without stamps. I hope the elves also read blogs.

Your girl,
Teresa

'Tis the season of giving

I want to go donate blood! It is more meaningful, useful and necessary compared to all the other material stuff / chocolates etc. that people usually give during Christmas. Now, I am just looking for some company to do it post-Christmas, pre-New Year. Anyone?

My maiden clubbing experience

turned out to be, err, quite cheap. Okay we didn't really club per se but at least we entered The Clinic and stood around long enough to have the smell stick to me even after two showers. Yay, my friend is working there! We also drank some alcohol, albeit from 7 Eleven. :) We had every intention to get more drinks at the club okay. More specifically 'graveyard', 'cause the 3 bottles the two of us shared weren't enough to get us high and that drink I heard from M and 'Nice Colleague' is very potent. Then, M's friend came to pick us up to go Dbl O, in a Merc no less. But but but, M was denied entry 'cause she had flip flops on so here we are at the computer at the early hour of 2am all sober, awake and alert. Never mind. Next week! 'Nice Colleague' was saying she hasn't chionged in a long while and wants to check out MoS.

Work has been pretty slack this week so 'Nice Colleague' has been telling me quite a lot lately. Now I know about her childhood, her Ah Ma, brother, sister, the ghosts in her mother-in-law house that she is staying in, her husband's insecurity, why she is married so young, some of her suitors, the things that happened in the office before, her interest in fishing. She suggested jogging after work 'cause she and me both badly want to lose weight but I strongly objected because I can't run for nuts!

Okay, come work on Tuesday, I am going to bring my track shoes and a set of running attire to put in the office so that I can jog whenever I want to after work. Better increase my stamina before jogging with her. And not forgetting lemon juice! I am going to start on the lemons again. Of course with my gastric pills within reach. :)

Looking forward to mahjong next week!

The four of us

We will stand through time. I know it.

Why is it so empty tonight?

I sign in to MSN and am quite shocked to see so many people offline. Has work robbed all of them of their MSN time? Or is today being a Wednesday, and thus Ladies' Night, the reason why 95 percent of the people I look forward to seeing and chatting online everyday disappeared. Feeling a wee bit lonely. I think much also has to do with being tired even though I haven't been doing anything much. That plus the fact that I would probably have been out with them if I wasn't on this quest to pay for my own college fees which, by the way, another two friends said is impossible.

Weighed myself today after a long long while and I gained 2kgs! Gosh. No wonder my belly is so huge now. It is the food I tell you. And the sitting down at the desk after all that food.

Update on the computer situation: I made yet another discovery today. Someone has added msn.com to the restricted list on my computer so that I cannot access the site. No, I wasn't trying to download MSN again. Me being the brilliant me, and not forgetting also a request from a friend, got round the problem by having email chats now. I think I'm getting better at discovering the tracks of whatever is done behind my back. Let's see what they will do now.

Woot!

I learnt how to calculate the chinese 8 characters (shen chen ba zi) today! The perks of working at LTPK. I am so going to get my own book. Well, in short, my 8 characters say that my life will be good so that means S's one will also be. Hurray to us! I also had a little palmistry done today 'cause my palm lines are quite unlike most people. Auntie says I have a special ability and later in my life - about 25 years old, I will know it. She said something about strategising/planning? Not too sure. Does that mean I will be, errr, sly, cunning and manipulative? She did say I will be successful. Okay, I know, in life, it is 30% fate/luck and 70% hard work. 'Nice Colleague' ('Jealous Colleague shall now be known as 'Nice Colleague' because she really is nice) kept telling me to make full use of my time now, grab opportunities that come by so I won't have any regrets later. I am going to bug Auntie to teach me about all these the next few months. So interesting!

And we had Pizza Hut for lunch today! Yummy yummy.

Temple life is becoming more fun though work is unbearingly boring for now. They say mid month is accounting's slack period which is really true. I have been slacking for at least 3 hours the past few days at work. But chatting with my colleagues has been quite entertaining, perhaps because peak period is not here yet and everyone is still relaxed and not stressed. Anyhow, it is enough for me to say work is good, unlike the rest of the 95 percent of our working batchmates suffering, or so they say.

Carnivorous

Consumed way too much meat this weekend. Yesterday - swedish meatballs and chicken wings, today - veal shank. I actually resorted to drinking lemon juice after, let's see, about a month of not drinking it. So long until the fresh lemons in my fridge became slightly frozen lemons.

Note to self: One: Recommend French restaurant at Serangoon for pretty good and affordable food. There are postcards to take some more. Two: Go Holland Village to eat one day.

Will go swimming after work tomorrow. Must must must! Too much calories and fats piled on these 2 days. Arms and ~~tummy~~ belly have become flabby crap that go jiggle jiggle with the little-est movement.

The Nike sale was a disappointment! Second day and running shorts and caps were already no where to be seen. We left the place empty-handed again. Ikea Tampines was so-so. Crowd was quite tolerable. But the restaurant, gosh. Have to queue to enter then queue again for food. Was looking forward to trying the meatballs but it turned out just alright. The others were satisfying but not totally fantastic. Anyway, the recipe for the meatballs is published in today's newspapers. Maybe I can modify it to be like 7 parts pork and 3 parts beef so that it won't taste so beefy right, SH the pork lover? Better get your first pay soon. We are waiting waiting waiting! =)

I may have been guarding myself against the wrong person. More often than not (yes I do concede that), I make inaccurate first judgements about people. 'Jealous colleague' may be 'Nice colleague' and 'Nice mentor' may be 'Jealous mentor' after all. I don't know how the culprit can be all fine and dandy after being so horrid behind my back. Two-faced b****, whoever that may be.

Someone back there hates me

Yesterday I joked to ZX that if my MSN was to be deleted again, someone in the office must really hate me. It happened. This morning - no more MSN in my computer! Time removed: 19:02:15. Just great. Someone is checking my computer after I leave every day. Too bad all three colleagues stayed late yesterday or else I would have figured out who's the culprit. Now, all three seem to equally likely - the jealous colleague, the mentor and the try-to-take-care-of-me colleague. Sucks to be working in an environment like this. It reminds me of the conversation my accountant and I had in the cab.

These days have been nothing short of boring. We watched tv today. There was no tea served. The first since I started working. I called one of the China contractors for the very first time. I still cannot get the hang of balancing accounts. I am going into office tomorrow with absolutely nothing to do. The end of the month is approaching then peak period starts. Tell Ah Pui to bring more mee goreng next time, they said. Because then, we will not even have time to eat. Crap shit.

Boring!

By lunch time, I had absolutely nothing more to do. After a few just-trying-to-waste-some-time stuff, I played minesweeper, freecell and solitaire at work while my mentor took a nap (she even snored). In that time, I also discreetly re-installed MSN on my computer and chatted with ZX. But I resorted to changing my status to appearing offline because it was such a torment to have to constantly look over my shoulder so that the 'jealous colleague' will not catch me MSN-ing. Unbelievable that I would rather do that after all the effort in secretly installing the programme than be all jittery every other second. Bleh.

The prospect of my mentor giving birth only next year is looking dimmer as the days go by. I don't want her to leave! As it is, the office is no fun. With my mentor, conversation topics revolve around work, giving birth, children, Qi Yuwu (he came to the temple yesterday), her sister-in-law, her mother-in-law and drama serials. Without her, the office is silent except for queries about work. I observed that they don't even talk that freely with each other. I don't talk that much because the things they talk about have totally no link to me. That much is obvious.

Perhaps for now the only thing I like is the supply of food. I can put just one 10-dollar note in my bag on Monday and end the week with the same 10-dollar note. Lunch is provided. There will be a cup of tea served to each of us every afternoon for, well, tea. There is biscuits and instant coffee, tea and milo in the cupboard. Packet drinks and canned coffee are in a refrigerator in a committee member's room which we have access to. Sometimes, suppliers/contractors/workers will buy snacks for us. Yesterday, there were egg tarts and char siew sou. Today, there was dessert. Oh, I also managed to eat a slice of roast pig today. Eat heng heng, they said.

Okay, four more months. Press on!

Mahjong seems to be unachievable. Even pool seems to be that. Bowling too. Perhaps even night cycling. Hope that will happen on Friday.

All that leaves now is dinner and shopping maybe? But it is nearing Christmas and I don't really like to squeeze with the crowd. Plus, I am broke. My first pay cheque is burnt. I don't know on what but I am quite sure it is all spent and gone.

So, I am back to being a no-lifer.

AHHH!

Some freaking person freaking deleted MSN on my office computer! I strongly suspect it is my (jealous) colleague. I say that because there are only three other people in the office. One tries to take care of me and my mentor has seen me using MSN in front of her and said nothing. Of course, that is also because my mentor chats too. That (jealous) colleague - I don't really talk to her at all - saw me using it and playing Freecell on Friday. She must be the one. She looks like one capable of this kind of sneaky act. That woman.

And my mentor is probably going to leave end of this month. Early end of this month. I hope and pray she doesn't give birth so soon, even though she wishes otherwise. I did tell her so.

The TPK girl

So I heard today that I am very well-known in the job agency at Shenton. I am referred to as the TPK girl a.k.a Mother Teresa. Right. They were wondering (just like so many others) if I was also the one clearing joss sticks. Even the action they use to mimic that was the same as all the others. And they also joked about how I will shave my head and become a nun after my 5 month stint there. Nun-in-training - as I was always said.

I did some simple calculations and realised my salary is so pathetic. I badly need another job. Actually, after seeing the servers do their job on prom night and thinking they all looked so zai, I am considering being a banquet waitress. Plus, the last time I asked, the pay is pretty good! Shall keep in mind.

Everything I knew just went out the window

I was so excited to receive A's sms just now I practically 'screamed' to M on MSN 'A IS BACK!!'. I have so many things to tell her - good and bad.

I was quite surprised when my colleague asked me for advice today on whether she should stay in her job or not. As it is, it is only my fourth day there. And it was something she had never mentioned to any one in the office. Except for me; or so she said.

She is one interesting colleague. She openly admits she is scared to die. She goes for health insurance and oil painting lessons after work. She plays with tarot cards, even gone for lessons for it. She strongly believes in karma and the like. She helped me to calculate my birth number. It turned out to be a 3. She knows by heart what all these numbers imply about the person. She has books about stuff like that in her drawer and she photocopied some for me. She wants to open a school and therefore is contemplating if she should join as a lowly assistant teacher to learn the ropes.

Did I mention that I was actually crazy enough to take the MRT train from Pasir Ris all the way to Boon Lay and back to Aljunied yesterday just because I was trying to figure out why and how It happened? That was a whole two hour ride. My butt totally hurt after that. And the whole time, I was only listening to two songs - Move Along and Just My Imagination. I have not gotten sick of them yet.

Speak to me.

Prom! I was overwhelmed upon entering Pan Pac last night. Luckily, S and A were with me. Everyone so well-dressed and looking stunning it made us embarrassed to step out of the cab. Especially me since I was not dressed for the occasion, what with skirt and blouse. Yes, totally work-ish clothes because I only managed to get off an hour earlier from work. S made me apply lip gloss and sprayed body glitter all over but I was definitely still looking shabby beside all of them. Never mind, I did not regret it.

I did not want to disappoint anyone - Val, Amanda, Peimun, Mag, Alicia, Sherry, perhaps even Sharon - for helping me so so much. I wanted to wish Sam a Happy Birthday. And of course, I wanted to see my mates in oh-so-formal suits and dresses. My goodness, they all looked fabulous.

Have I talked about my work? As it turns out, my job is totally not what I had expected. I am doing accounts. Like what the crap? My contract clearly stated I am a temporary admin assistant. What's more, I will be left all alone come very soon with absolutely no one to consult should I have any doubts. It is almost frightening because I am the one making all the payments - big payments, giving salaries, doing income etc. Everything I am doing concerns money, more specifically the outflow of money, which makes it a million times worse. Plus, I have to liase with China contractors. I mean call the China office and talk about payments and all in Chinese. In Chinese! Gosh.

As if it can get any worse

I have been hit by the flu bug. Not suffering the whole works yet but I am positive it will come very soon. Already my throat is hurting bad and I so hate to have sore throat.

My procrastination did me in again. My CT just sms-ed me to ask if I got the job. How do I answer? If only I had sent the e-mail last night. Okay, I am going to send the e-mail to the SMU person now. Now or never.

And we are one day from prom and I have not gotten my clothes yet. Just great.

My mind is made up

Whether or not I am applying for leave on Tuesday will depend on whether I need to work on the coming Saturday 'cause this coming weekend is the only possible time my whole family can go on a short getaway. If I have work on Saturday, I cannot possibly take leave from work on Tuesday to make it twice absent during the first week. Doesn't reflect well at all and family comes first. Okay, one thing decided.

Just crafted out an e-mail to send to the SMU person expressing my apologies but it will remain as a draft till I decide it doesn't make me seem like a patronising and horrid girl in any terms. I think I should come up with one for my CT too.

I'm quite reluctant to sleep 'cause I know that when I wake, it is going to be time to step out of the house again. 5 more hours to subjecting my feet to that torture again. Bleh!

All I want for now is a..

Foot massage!

Ahhh! My feet are hurting so bad. I bet they are very much unwilling to carry this heavy piece of shit around for another long day but they shall do so again. Tomorrow. Ugh. I think I might just indulge myself a little after all this crap is over and go for a nice, soothing foot massage.

Today I realised my stupidity to have wasted my slack time going out so often (and having my feet hurt like crap at the end of the day). Only 3 days staying home since the exams ended - way too few. Now that I am going to start work next week and I want some alone time, I don't have the chance to 'cause there is friggin' prom stuff to settle which, by the way, is totally not settled.

Anyhow, I have given myself many many way out. First, I have not applied for leave yet and still have not figured how, or more accurately, if I will do it on my first day. But that I should be able to get the answer by 9am on Monday since both A and I agreed that if I were to ask, I will do so in the car. Second, I could go after work in slightly more formal wear but nonetheless not prom-sy stuff. Third, I just remembered I don't have my ticket and I am not going with her, plus we will not be meeting any time before prom. Brilliant!

I am beginning to like late-comers or setting appointments later on purpose so that I can sit somewhere to drink coffee, tea or whatever, and read a book in between. Does this come from maturity?

Did I mention I got the SMU job as well? I think I'm getting better at interviews. Rejecting that job though was very very unpleasant. I think my CT has a bad impression of me now. Not forgetting the SMU library people. And that is my dream school.

Note to self: Clear rubbish after eating at fast food joints.

I used to do that until about 2 years ago when suddenly everyone around me expected people to clean up after them. It felt odd to bother to clear my tray when 7 other people sitting at the same table didn't. Never mind, from today, I shall cultivate that good habit again.