scheduled outage at 4.30pm PST

i'm super annoyed. and whiny :(

the EARLIEST test date that i got was on the THIRD of JULY?! wth. that means i have to keep going into the driving website and refreshing in the hope of getting a new test date that's earlier.. :S cross my fingers and toes! the irritating thing is that yesterday it was at 2nd june but i forgot to top up enough money, and update my instructor i/c so by the time i got all that done after work today.. you see what happened when procrastination and stupidity hit!!

ROAR.

but i'm eating locus to celebrate passing final theory. yay :P

now to whine about getting flabby. although the muscles are debulking, which is good, the flab is starting to show! and i'm getting ailments i never got when i was actively exercising :S what a bloody problem being unfit and flabby is :S i better start doing some exercise while rotting in front of the tv.

i don't like shows with unscrupulous backstabbers

today was quite a good day! despite sleeping late last night reading the advanced theory book, i managed to sleep in an extra hour :D yay. but the stupidest thing happened :( and i wasted $2, which is like a third of my hourly pay! i booked my theory practice date wrongly so when i reached the driving centre, i had nothing to do for one whole hour until the next session. but the good news is i passed! xD and i had driving lesson just, where i got to drive on the road finally! but i need to improve road awareness :P it's something i learnt since flying, which i really miss. whee 4th gear!

oh and the above meant that i got to pon half day's work! :D on top of the 2 days i ponned to go thailand~ hahaa :D not like there was alot for me to do today. i slacked like mad. my next job shall be in customer service (: and i hope i can get more pay! need to start looking now :D

on to thailand.

the flight reminded me of how thankful i am that i got to fly in syfc! and it reminded me of how i probably wouldn't mind flying for the rest of my life but i'm fickle and quite scared that if i get bored of it, there won't be anything left for me, or of me! heehee. i think i'm going to sign up for RSAF just for the heck of it. but back to the original topic! i loved sitting in the plane, even though it was cramped :D and the best thing was that i was legal and could drink their red wine on the plane, and the wine was good! the bad thing about both flights was that the first time, the entertainment system crashed on me -.- so it had to be rebooted and by the time i started watching the movie, there wasn't enough time left to finish it. the reason the system crashed in the first place was because my fingers were too fast then the thing couldn't respond with timeliness so it died. what a noob. ended up watching half of The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. i want to finish. on the return flight, watched the Bourne Ultimatum, but i knew i couldn't finish anyway so, no expectations no annoyance! :P life lesson, that.

thailand itself was quite fun. spent most of the time waiting for people, shopping, ate when necessary. bought a whole load of snacks home :S fat. my dining table is topped with thai local products now. the nice thing was finally seeing my cousins and getting to interact with them after so long! it seems like we're less like strangers now (: and that made me happy. hahaa but there was still the customary awkwardness between relatives who haven't met for ages. anyway, the original version of compgames is like half the price in thailand! :S BUT I FORGOT to go and buy. wails. i will get it the next time i go there, after i get a new and stable computer with a whole lot of ram and processor capabilities and a cool graphix card! :D

and i think i'll miss my current workplace even though i've only been here for a month :( let's not think of it so soon even though there are only 11 days left and time really flies. on the bright side, i don't have to think about driving theory anymore.. so where did i put the practical book!

smile, and the rainbow will shine for you in the sunbeams after the storm

how amusing, I'm once again bereft of a task to do! I tried to find the files, to no avail.. maybe I didn't try hard enough but it's seriously super annoying. Files just pop out of nowhere like a few hours later or the next day, to my consternation, it just reappears! Anyway, I'm pretending to type a letter now and this is the contents of the letter, I just stuck the format down and am happily keyboarding away :P maybe this will be the newest kind of sport! Typingsports :O how amusing. I bet everyone who's walking past is amazed that I can actually see what I'm typing despite the font being 8, and the view size 75% :P

after a week of slacking, or rather being too tired to do anything except rot the moment I get home, I finally completed one page of my piano homework! Fortunately, I have another week after this one to finish it because this weekend, I'll be off to Thailand and be back on monday night! :) shopping! And meeting relatives I haven't seen hide nor hair of in quite a long time. I remember when we were smaller, we used to meet up weekly for outings, or to do stuff together! Like eat, go grandma's place, go zoo, CC organized events, etc.

reminiscence. anyway, i spoke too soon! all the work started coming in :P and i just finished the faxing and stuff. there's 1h 20 min to go!

alright, i'm home and woah did time fly after i finished complaining.. suddenly there was a stack of stuff for me to file and was i surprised i was glad to go around riffling through the brown paper files! boredom must have really hit hard. i should probably update my phone music library when i get back (:

there was something else i wanted to write about but i forgot so save it for another day! was probably something fleeting and random anyway. OH. real life cs sounds cool :( i want to play.. it's the funnest thing i've heard about NS so far! there's a ghost town, because people used to live on tekong but they probably got chased away by the army! hahaa oh well, hope everyone takes care and enjoys their whatever experiences! be it NS or working lol :D

papercuts

yeah, the title says it all! i got a new papercut today.. and according to my mom, it's common amongst officefolk :S how horrid, i got 2 scars on the back on my left hand already from papercuts! and the annoying thing is that you can't even feel them.. today was a relatively normal day. and i guess the amazing thing about work is that you really identify with the phrase TGIF, not to mention you manage to keep track of the days! the after As period was characterised by a blending of days, because everyday seemed the same but i still kind of miss the slacking.

to stop whining, other people seem to have it worse, but more exciting jobs. i should look for an exciting job but.. laziness (:

oh well, at least yesterday was a fun day! we lanned for 4 hours straight, had dinner and hokkaido green tea icecream.. where i did my usual thing at the icecream stall: i tried 2 flavours: dark choc and banana choc that looked interesting or popular (by the amount left in the tub) and decided to get green tea again xP it's not my fault that green tea is the most appealing to my tastebuds <3

anw for lan, we learnt how to counter-strike! and i improved xD but i think the guy teaching us, plan, was probably (a) amused, and (b) slightly bored. he was super nice to come out and teach us to lan :D thanks!! hmm anyway, i think he gave alot of chances and let us use his character for target practice but i made a few nice kills. the bad thing about cs is that after we'd played for 2h, i started feeling giddy and headachy and the place was getting increasingly stuffy-feeling :S but the lanshop was quite cool :D it was $1.20/hr! and my comp was fast.. the last time i lanned, the comp died on me halfway :( horrid thing.

next up was dota! or rather warcraft III, because we tried dota for awhile but the game was super slow.. then i was getting extremely bored. luckily everyone came to a consensus to change map :D and we played enfo's! which i like. i have a horribly short attention span i think :P but we lost both rounds, which i don't like :( but time was running out so couldn't play another round. another map we tried was Darwin's Island. which was quite fun as well :P except the level 10 green dragon was imbal, until we sacrificed ourselves so that one person managed to reach level 11 and end the game.

i found my favourite heroes :D i like magii! particularly the moon mage that i used, which was super cool and leveled up/ earned money super fast! i like stuff that i can stand away and get kills with :P not really a melee kind of person coz i know i will get annoyed and just chiong through even knowing that i'll get killed instead :( useless. unless there's some hero with a like berserker skill. coz the first hero i chose was Kai the thief or something, which i'd chosen before because well, he just looks cool :P anw i earned so much money :D:D hahahahaa but i need to learn the point of the spells. i want to lan some more instead of going to work..

oh well at least tmr there's driving, at the expense of class girls' dinner with mdm lee :S i couldn't get it changed. aasdfjkalsd;jfkajdff. boo. driving better rock! :D

i should probably get my piano hw done, especially the melody writing parts! i don't know why but i procrastinate (one new year resolution broken) when it comes to doing it! rawr.

anyway, today was a cool day :D my private pilot's license has finally arrived! i should probably celebrate by booking a driving lesson or setting a confirmed day/time every week to go driving on. hmm.

yesterday was a very i don't-know-what-to-feel day, and it's one of the few times in a really long while that i did something spontaneous!

anyway, the ambivalence was because it was one my colleagues last day at work, and it so happens that she's the secretary whose workload i was hired to help handle after she's gone! not very likely that will happen, more like i will help the other people, who will take over her stuff. so we had a farewell lunch at some chinese restaurant near chinatown. it was quite a, the only word i can use to describe it is, stoned, affair. there were mainly 2 people talking in the entire table, while the rest of us, erm, stoned or chuckled at the appropriate times. it made me miss having meals with friends and classmates, or bubble tea sessions! when alot of people will be talking at the same time, but to different audiences.. bleah.

and the spontaneity stemmed from me walking from my office at raffles place to bugis, to attend some weird workshop i signed up for on thursday. it was an options trading thing that was advertised in My Paper. either way, although there were one to two useful points, a large part of the talk was a sales pitch! and he was quite an effective salesman, but the one-time investment was too large for me to want to commit although the returns seemed attractive.. that was when i knew to be wary :P

so it's the end of the week! i can't wait for tomorrow's outing :D

mid-week fatigue

It's Wednesday again. How fast time flies! I realized I forgot to complain about the many blisters I suffered through wearing flats. Besides the heels, which are terribly ugly and scarred now ): I can only describe my two little toes as two gigantic blisters! Which they were, last week.. now I put on double layered protection: plasters and socks!

The most interesting thing about today is that I got sent out to run two errands, once in the morning, and once after lunch… all for the dept head, one of which was I think some personal stuff. Man, the things bosses get away with xP amusing. So I took a nice early morning stroll to the banks and to the postbox. The postbox was quite hard to find, not that I was complaining, I'd been hoping that I'd take longer to find it actually x) hehe, laziness is a hard habit to kick!

The second errand was to buy 5 sets of YaKun butter-kaya toast back. This time, I went out armed with Stiglitz's Globalisation and its Discontents. Wow, I never appreciated traffic lights before this :P it's extremely important that you observe road safety! We have to wait for the green man to light, and never cross when it's flashing or threatening to flash so that we manage to finish the introduction. Once again, I'd hoped to get lost and read more because the Ya-Kun was quite hidden... or that the person would take super long to make the toast. but once more, my plans were foiled.. oh well :P quite interesting, at least i learnt more about the local geography besides that maps are much easier than being lost in the middle of a bunch of tall buildings with names stuck at the top of the building where you can't see it.

I did a table today, another bills thing. Not very exciting either. I think youth workers have much more fun! Although the amount of effort and heart put into the job is much greater too. xP I think it's more worth it, but then again, this is the thinking of a teen with no family to support, and no real need for income. (:

Anyway, after i finished writing the above, more work came in! and now i have more work than i know what to do with.. better ask the lady when i have to finish it by. more and more people are giving me work to do :P that's why you should never complain about not having stuff to do, even if only in your heart! the perks of having stuff to do is that i work, even though my brain isn't really working, and somehow when i have something to do, i don't feel tired :D almost refused to wake up today, it was so comfy in bed :S

Either way, i'm progressing on facebook's my car, and my plane, and my heroes ability - i wonder what's with all the appeal to egocentrism: "my, my, all mine!"

oh, i forgot to mention the papercuts. i got my first few papercuts today -.-" not that it's much to be excited or glad about.. ugly :( and i'm getting fat. (just had to add the customary whiny part :P hehe)

life.

OW. as i tried to push the stupid file clip thing back on top of the entire stack of papers, it BIT my thumb.. fortunately, the skin isn't broken, i.e. no blood. unfortunately, i can see where the blood vessels have broken, i.e. big bruise.

Anyway, I had a weird sense of déjà vu as I was shuffling and filing invoices again. Yeah, just before the thumb got caught in the clip. i guess I'd probably seen it in some dream somewhere before, wearing the exact same outfit. This is quite plausible, given the limited number of office wear I own, hence the limited permutations possible. it's a 4C2*4C2 affair. I was shopping for clothes everyday for the first week and wearing whatever i bought the day before to work! :S that tells you the extent of my work wardrobe misery.

"How's work?" is the most common question, or a variant of it, being posed nowadays. I guess I should just recount the not-so-many, but seemingly interminable days of paper-shuffling at the office. The people are nice, but to an inherently lazy person, it just seems off to ask people if they have stuff for me to do. This is mostly what I've been doing, sitting around when I don't feel like getting up to ask people for stuff to do and hoping they will come along and dump stuff on me. If not, I occupy myself with newspapers periodically (hoho) and in the mornings, I facebook and check gmail. Today, I signed up for an options trading course on Friday, but I think I may pass because I'll miss my daily 10pm show!

Will try to make the following recount as interesting as possible. So, let's start from last Monday: my first day of work.

I arrived at the company where I would be spending one-odd month of my life in, with no expectations, except a slight hint at the mundaneity that would turn out to characterize my days in the office. I reported at the 17 th floor, where I was promptly ushered into a waiting room. I think a lot of my time is spent waiting – for the photocopier, for something to do, for the websites to load. Fortunately, there's internet access! (: however limited. Then I met the HR person, and another lady who brought me to the 16 th floor, which is where I'm working, set up the computer stuff and introduced me to the department head. I'm working at the IP dept, which sounds cool, but actually isn't because it's the same old thing, over and over and over again.

Since it was my first day, the "manager" showed me the basic stuff, and taught me how to use the copier and fax machines, find files, and all that. But it was barely enough to occupy the before-lunch period. We went for lunch together, since it was my first time here and I was (and am rather) clueless about the layout of the entire place. To me, it seems like one huge lump of buildings plonked randomly in the same small space, unplanned, and ugly – just look at the skyline! Or rather, the lack of it. ok, i've digressed.

Back to the topic. Yeah, it was lunch at Golden Shoe, which is quite quirkily known as Golden Shoe Car Park – I have no idea why they would name a hawker centre a car park. Then back to the office where the manager, a really nice lady, found me stuff to do. By the end of the day, I was initiated into how to draft invoices. Tuesday, I learnt how to scan files, rename and email them. Basic stuff. And I got to fax my first document I think, not very memorable as you can see. The coolest thing about the computer is it's REAL (as in non-trial) version of Adobe Acrobat, and it's the professional version! So you can really edit, bookmark and create PDFs from single/multiple files! I'm sounding like a geek, but it's seriously quite cool. So, I combined my first PDF Tuesday as well . Ohh I used another fun program, called Photoplus to edit some pics, like designs of some product. It was easy, but I guess the novelty made it fun :P

Printing and filing are like norms. Everyday, that week, I had something to print or copy or file. No biggie. I think my biggest complaint is that I don't know exactly why I'm doing something although I have to do it! It's like just follow instructions, so much so that I feel my brain rotting. Luckily, I have brain-food in the form of music homework (yeah gasp, I'm actually turning to it for solace) and books, which are much more lovely than homework!

My most detested task is the finding of files. I REALLY DON'T LIKE LOOKING FOR STUFF I DIDN'T PUT AWAY! Honestly, they need an electronic system or something. It's super hard finding files, rawr. Then, you feel awful when you can't find a file and have to turn up sheepishly empty-handed. Horrid! Not to mention the many files lying everywhere, and piled up everywhere! At least, I've discovered that a paper-shuffler's life is not for me. I refuse to work with physical files, which imho, should just be for archival, backup purposes! It's a super pain-in-the-ass to hunt for things! I can barely find my own stuff after I leave them lying around, much less, someone else's stuff in all sorts of weird places. Fine, the places aren't weird, it's just that I have to knock on doors to get into rooms that are being occupied and search the place. It's uncomfortable to look for stuff in people's places when they are around, even if you have permission! I think it's a personal space kind of thing, and probably just me being quirky.

Wednesday. I had to create some time ledger table that gave me a headache. Honestly, they should have keyed the data into a table already instead of using –spacebar- and random stuff to format it so it LOOKED like it was in a table, but was actually not and super hard to format. Maybe it got converted from something else into word…rawr who cares, it was all tiny words and super troublesome to copy-paste that I resorted to retyping everything out! ): at least it took up time. Oh, and Wednesday's lunch was skipped for a Chinatown trip. Apparently, it's their secretarial/paralegal dept's tradition to go Chinatown to buy CNY cards for their clients.. shrugs, I just went along for the ride. And we had to take the longgggg route back because it started pouring all of a sudden! How fickle, the weather.

Hmm, this reminds me, I wonder how the NS people are doing, what with all the wacky weather changes.. hopefully they are all well! Since NS seems to involve a lot of outdoors stuff, although I'm given to know that in reality, a lot of things are indoors – pampered kids.

Continued with the table until Thursday because it was so tedious. Then, I had to help with another table. But hey, all these are better than having nothing to do and ending up typing the blog entry I felt like typing so long ago but never got down to doing it. And woah, is it turning out to be a long entry!

Thursday was normal day. I can't remember anything extraordinary, honestly! And that goes for Friday. Oh wait, Friday, I had to search for stuff INSIDE files instead. Tedious stuff, and seriously, there are quite a lot of things missing when you have to look for them! Annoying. Goes to show how filing is fallible, and that even in a not-so-big firm, troublesome. I was also given the task that I managed to make last until today – taking out 2007 invoices from their respective files, arranging them in ascending chronological/numerical order (since they were originally in descending), removing the staples and finally scanning them to my email. Following which, I had to rename them as per instructions. It's a good job for multitasking – I'm almost done with my book! Not to mention, stoning. The reason I had to make my task last until today is because, the lady who gives me the majority of stuff to do is on leave. She comes back tomorrow, you have no idea how glad I am that she'll be back tomorrow! :D haha and I doubt she will either.

I feel like I have no life ): although I'm not a fan of the "life" concept, I feel like I'm not doing all that I could possibly do! Maybe I should attend that options trading thing after all, just for self-improvement purposes.. despite the cost of a tv show, which I can most probably record :P

I'll just continue blogging until the end of they day, which is due in 45 minutes?! Maybe go hide in the toilet awhile, as I did one day to sms and read out of sheer boredom. I think I managed to squirrel myself away in there for 20 minutes. The weekends weren't very exciting either, somehow I think NS people got the better deal – free food, lodging, new friends, new experiences, money, being less bored than I am (which is the main point) ;P lol.

Went for piano lesson on Saturday, after conking out on Friday because I think I'd gone to learn driving (: ohh driving is fun, although I stalled the car once or twice in the beginning because I was too eager despite having temporarily forgotten the feel of the clutch and half-clutch. He kept telling me to go slower. Boo. Anyway, the most part of the lesson was spent practicing my half-clutch: reversing and moving forward in a straight line at snail-equivalent speed. Oh, and I passed my final theory evaluation on one of these nights, and went for final theory practice. Although there was only a 2% improvement after practicing, w.r.t. my evaluation scores.

After piano lesson, I think I was too slow, so didn't manage to meet up with Jon for food or something because I'd to rush to meet my mom, grandma and aunts at Orchard Point before 3pm. Sorry! By the time I was nearing town, it was about 2.30pm. The fun thing about travelling now is that you find ways to cut transport costs due to the appalling loss of student concession:– I walked from my piano teacher's house to Tanah Merah. In truth, it was only a 10 minute walk.. Either way, I had buffet at Bird's Nest House, where we got coerced into buying 2 cans of abalone. The buffet was quite yummy (: and it wasn't that expensive. I had 3.5 desserts :D but was stuffed. Can't afford to eat too much now.. getting fat from lack of exercise! Following that was shopping at ps, and then to grandma's place for mahjong until late.

Hence, I woke up late on Sunday, went to buy groceries, cny stuff and the like then rotted at home.

Now, I'm rotting in the office! As I have been doing for the past two days. There were 3 files of invoices to complete see. So I finished 0.5 on Friday, 1 on Monday and 1 today. Removing staples is troublesome but it makes the scanning so much more easy because you can use the feeder! Which is not a pok feeder like the one in school.

Alright I'm officially bored if I'm comparing photocopiers.

Half an hour left… I think I can possibly waste it as I've wasted the previous half of the day. The only interesting thing was that I'd to go to Hong Leong Building to get something signed and when I came out it was storming. Thanks to the nice aunty who shared her umbrella with me to get across (: luckily my office is only a zebra's crossing away.. xP

January 14, 2008

Organ Donation

Gordon Brown's new plan for "presumed consent" for organ donation, modelled after the Spanish institution which boasts the highest number of organ donors in the world, is in my opinion, dubious. Despite good intentions, there seems to be obvious side effects resulting from the use of such a system.

Firstly, besides the obvious human rights issues - that we should get to decide what happens to our bodies after death, there are possible adverse side effects. By putting political clout behind this move, in a bid to get doctors and nurses to be more alert in identifying possible donors before their death, it could play havoc with the medical staff's subconscious. Assuming the patient has various organs suitable for donation, and has consented to donation after being sought out by donor coordinators, no one can possibly know if the medical staff would put less effort into keeping this patient alive.. obviously, the exception would be terminally-ill patients. Nonetheless, this could be a case of saving one at the expense of the other, and doctors have to make the choice between the one more easily saved, or the one that is harder to save, excluding the political/ reputational perks that go with making successful organ transplants.

Secondly, there is the matter of education of the public. With presumed consent, it is highly probable that a large majority of the general low-income population who are less likely to follow the news would remain unaware of this. Furthermore, since they have a higher mortality rate due to the high-risk, low-pay jobs, the living habitat or the decreased access to healthcare as compared to the wealthy, these would possibly make up the highest proportion of organ donors, especially under the "presumed consent" model.

There are also problems when it comes to tradition and culture of ethnic minorities in the UK, such as the chinese, muslims and hindus. There are cultural and religious taboos with regard to the removal of organs. Furthermore, there is certain emotional trauma to family members involved, especially if they had no inkling of the program prior to receipt of their recently deceased loved one's corpse. Imagine what you would feel during funeral preparations, you had to face a mortifyingly ugly slash across the body. Doubtless, it would have been sewn up. Yet such a sight would be an additional blow to the loss of a loved one.

These are just some thoughts that floated into my mind while i was browsing TODAY, bored at work! I guess the point that struck me most would be point 1, on how doctors and nurses could be influenced, and i feel that it is quite an important and intriguing issue - how such measures can backfire from being an improvement to a disaster to the healthcare sector although such effects may never be adequately proven by empiricism or statistics.

be the wind beneath my wings

why not let me fly? and be the blanket that i know will be there to keep me warm when i need. or is that a selfish thought. is it selfish to want to reach and achieve?

it's so hard to know what to do when you're being torn in two directions, and the compromises are so few. maybe when your heart and your head are mutually exclusive, maybe then, it'd be easier to think and make a decision. i guess this is what life will be like without a map, a direction, a purpose. this is probably why somehow, unerringly, people will search for something to hold on to, be it a set of beliefs, a sentence, a truth, but usually, people search for a goal, something they were meant to do. i guess in comic books, in films and on television, this would probably be your life agenda, the one big thing you were put where you are to accomplish. but what then?

i'll make my decision tonight: university decisions are complicated because of the dreams VS reality, many other warring factors, and the added dimension of the world as "your oyster".

thanks flight, we really have an "it's complicated" thing going on.

how the grass is always greener when you've chosen a side

happy new year 2 days later (:

today i learnt how it feels not to be greedy, and not to wait for things to happen that may happen. anyway, the good news is i got a one month job, the bad news is that i got better offers after i signed the contract. but as abovementioned, all other offers tend to look better.. and at the moment, the opportunity cost of not committing myself to a job was much greater than that of commitment, so i seized the chance and shut out the rest! so this is what it feels like to be on the market, handed a deal, and setting down your decision in unerasable ink.. learning lab just called with the offer of an internship, and i could have gotten a better paying and shorter term relief teaching job from a call on the way home! oh well, i'm scared the law firm person i'm supposed to report to will have a bad impression of me because i changed the date on the contract, twice.. in order to fit the iras entrance date. and now, i got a learning lab offer! i think i know someone who's there.. i guess i have some market value after all :P

the perks of a job: spending money, which is actually a pittance. i can't afford to buy anything, honestly!
the downsides: no more time for (a) piano, (b)going out and higher costs for driving

i shan't think so much, quite apprehensive but i hope i'll do a good job there and leave a good impression! the second complaint-worthy thing is i have to actually come out with capital to get clothes, shoes, bag! that are suitable for work.. which will possibly cost more than what i earn but, heck i'm going to budget and am confident in looking good for work, given i can find the right stuff at the right price! maybe i have myself to blame for wallowing in the comfort of casual, throw-on clothing with no regard for "prettiness" and more for convenience.. money, money, money.. welcome to the real world.

it's an experience! my first ever job! actually, everything we do, the thing that stays with us (until we get amnesia, or dementia) will be memories.. honestly, i feel like whining, yeah and give me more cheese to go with it.