my home is in empty spaces.

I'm sorry. I probably should explain why recent posts have sounded a tad defensive. Some issues both in work and at play.

At work a few weeks ago, I was recently subjected to an official complaint, otherwise known as "client very buay song ah". After a speedy investigation (speedy because of the technical SOP at our place that requires this sort of stuff), it was established that said 'buay song' client had no grounds for the complaint. At all. However it was a very nerve-wracking week.

Soon after, I fell sick. As you already know.

I'm still sick, although not with gut-churning intensity. Thank you God.

At play, ... ah. Aha. I think I'm being made use of by this guy. Not maliciously, but it does drain my energy nonetheless. If I'm not unhappy with you being a freshman, why are you unhappy with me for being of full-time employment age? There's the rub. And it would be nice if he could stop indicating in every word and action that my physical appearance is thoroughly unattractive to him. There.

I used to think it would break some privacy rule to disclose this, but he's been consistently rude and neglectful recently, so here goes. "I would want someone --exactly like you-- to be my girlfriend. Exactly like you! But younger and chio-er."

All here know what happened in my life previously ;-) and thus I do not feel a need to look astoundingly beautiful in order to be attractive. Something to the effect of very low tolerance for extraneous male attention now.

Which brings me to something rather sad. My MSN Messenger has died, and I can only get the most primitive version up and running. I guess this means that my conversations with friends I have since chucked are also gone. [Update: not! I found them. hehe] One of these friends is nw.t. . I remember telling him this, in mid-July '05.

i told you while loitering in your house the other day that i am not looking for a long-term r'ship, but a short-term one
and i balked when you asked me why, or what.
it's not really that difficult to explain or understand. i am looking around for one who has enough patience, self-confidence, and dare i say kindness/love towards me, to be tolerant of my awkward patches
the most awkward being that I'll probably shriek at him if he tries anything physical that i'm not comfortable with

It still applies. So there's no need to think that I'm looking for marriage or engagement or anything that will hold guys' attention more than a few months. I've seen permanence, and I've also seen it die. It's almost a miracle that I'm not homosexual as a result.

;-) have a good day, y'all.

Recent posts do not indicate much brain activity. This is because I think much better when confronted by real-life problems to be solved in the immediate future (yes, right now), and thankfully I am not such an idiot as to consider my blog and blogging to be problems.

Also because the audience for my place here is rather small, and I talk to most of them via IM anyway. Very, very often.

Do drop me an email if you'd like this blog to take off in a more lively direction. Till then, take care, and I'll see you again.

Happy New Year.

misc updates: i'm awake at this unearthly hour, yes. And working, because I need to get the work done before I return to my workplace.

Ignatius Low wrote a pretty good column on CNY in Singapore, in the ST Jan 29 issue. It encapsulates my frustrations quite well. No links, because ST is too cheapskate to make their online edition free.

This past week has been easy, because of the kindness of my colleagues in covering my work while I went off ostensibly to learn something new to me but actually to just sit quietly and do my favourite things - read, chitchat, play. And maybe memorize a few things here and there ;)

So that is why I have the time to blog.

Talked with J about a week ago, about people - I have wandered farther into strange human lands than most, and therefore connecting with new people does not bring that sense of wonder she still has. Almost, the reverse - I long for my familiar people, but they are all ... either gone, or far away.

Most of them are gone.

Even the person who scrounged through her Honours final semester is gone too. I have lost some part of my heart, and I want it back again. But it will not return no matter how much I call it.

My only home left, is in the now.

Amazing stuff, found on gssq's latest post.

Yes I know it looks like an IP address but this is a vid of a honda ad.

(Edit, 11/3/09: Honda choir ad now on Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuyaVcqTgic )

If you think I'm an annoyance but are too polite to tell me so, you can go to hell. you're just wasting your own and my time, and sacrificing all kinds of opportunities for both sides.

In other news after assorted uh convulsions of the upper respiratory tract, I now can take a few breaths without choking. congratulations. but if I tried to read the above aloud, i'd still end up gasping for air somewhere in the middle, punctuated by more assorted convulsions of the blah blah.
This is so ......... professional ;-)

My younger sis has acquired the flu as well from her own workplace. Suspicions run rife that she and I have different germs. I thus encounter logistical problems in nagging her to take care of herself while keeping a safe distance away from her.

and it's a sunny day.

Too much air. too much too much air.

what happened to the days where I could take a breath without choking?
(never mention the days I used to sing?)

"As a White Knight you expect nothing in return for your good deeds. You are one of the true 'Givers' of the world. You are the anonymous philanthropist who shares your wealth, your time and your life with others. To give, is its own reward and as a White Knight you seek no other. On the positive side you are merciful, sympathetic, helpful, giving and heroic. On the negative side you may be impulsively decisive, sentimental and misdirected. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms."

http://www.cmi-lmi.com/wknight.html

You must be kidding.

What do you say to someone who does not share your outlook on life, and does not want to listen to you?

Nothing. You say absolutely nothing.

-----

Am home this early by parental order because I have been sicky sick this week. I consider this more than fair in view of the fact that it was my family who made sure I could walk to the GP's when they found me huddled in a corner of the kitchen on Sunday morning crying and unsure if I was too cold or too hot. And who also made sure I didn't eat "unsuitable" foods during the week. And who experimented with honey steamed apples for me. And who bravely didn't laugh at me when in my feverish state the Panadol dissolved in my mouth before I could properly swallow it. Thanks.

-----

Was going to say something but it slipped completely out of mind.

Ah yes. Free inadvertently romantic advice from a government website: "give [...] a ring or request a proposal". Hahahahaha!

-----

No social commentary or whatever. Bliptz.

For the first time in a long time in Singapore.... I see non-soggy pigeons.

You know that it is a sad day, when you have finally found the time to blog, logged in to your long-abandoned account and everything, and see yourself freezing up with a moment's writer's block on viewing this big blank white screen.

Writer's block on a blog. *rolls eyes*

Not so easy to sustain one's interests when one possesseth not any of the following:

• personal writing desk
• home library
• people who are actually interested in listening to infantile babbles about one's interests. Infantile because... work chews up a lot of energy and short+long-term memory.
• access to full-text bio journals anymore

and when one is supposed to do other things as well, such as:

• consider paying more to parents
• talk more to parents because they now have absolutely no idea what I'm up to and I'd like to keep them informed
• find a skincare regime to suit the office air-conditioned environment I'm in, most of my waking hours
• think about my future
• get my younger sister interested in following up on her interests (yeah yeah, when I'm not following up on mine.)
• read the books that I have bought! which are not all related to my interests, more along the lines of "seeing new things" on the cheap, yada yada. books are wonderful.

But work is pleasant, most of the time.

Would like to point out that contrary to the opinion of many of my friends, I do not have the luxury of unthinking work-time [e.g. reading and replying to inane work emails on status enquiries, the microseconds between hitting Search and waiting for the results to load, speed-reading through huge stacks of junk in order to find gold, formatting dumb Powerpoint presentations, and other assorted highjinks that a normal office worker would be up to], in the guise of work. I also go barely 5 straight minutes in a workday without working even when our section is at full strength.

Emotion.

If you, or anyone else who knows me be it friend or casual acquaintance, as long as I have ever drunk tea with you before, if all of you knew each other, that would be almost the sum total of who I was.

Then if you had known me from the time I first touched a piano to the time my music shattered to now where it has recovered from its broken state, you might know more about who I am.

If you had known me forever to see that in one respect I have not changed and never will, and that aspect is a certain emotion towards all....

Perhaps you might love me.

At the very least you would be able to know what hurts me.

what were you like when you were young?

- a question asked of me in all simplicity yesterday.

Yesterday I gave you an answer that was only partial, and thought no more about it. There were other things about you that I was thinking of, and struggling not to think too much about...

This morning on the way to work, the sky was dark enough that I was reminded of your question by the surroundings' similarity to when I was making my daily freezing trans-island journey to JC. That young =)

When I was that age, and younger still, and perhaps a little older, till that time we spoke about, I was as I said focused and determined. Better.

But what I didn't say, because I didn't know how to say it, was what I was focused on. At that time you asked me, only the more banal issues came to mind: my siblings, my parents. my friends. Those, especially my family, will take a longer time for me to describe than you would have the patience to listen.

This morning I remembered that what I was truly focused on was emotion. The study of emotion.

[to be continued later]

This afternoon was quite pleasant.

Mens rea. Because one of my pals is a lawyer-to-be. =)

Yes as G says, I have been missing from cyberspace for ages - 7 entries in one month is kinda low. This might be because I have been inexplicably sleeping my way through all my weekends for the past five weeks, and a computer is the last thing on earth I want to be looking at when I'm home during the week.

Now that I'm actually awake, I just want to go back to sleep. Ta.