So Dorcas springs on us this week the news that she is headed for Perth (a.k.a. Out. Of. Hell.) for her Masters in Ed. Psych, and is leaving "soon" (a.k.a. the 24th), which prompts a flurry of preparation for a goodbye party that really isn't much of one, unless you consider Canadian 2-in-1 Pizza, Bacardi and Coke, and Desperate Housewives an appropriate farewell-bidding combination. It's at Louise's place with Eekia, choir Adeline, and HCJC Debbie (who I barely know), and the apartment, though old, manages to squeak into the category of cosy. It has other plus points - overlooking Holland V's Coffee Club being one of them - but I digress. Dorcas. Is leaving - and not a moment too soon, I suppose, 2 years being about the outer limits of the amount of time one can tolerate in this damn country without beginning to pull ones hair out by the roots. I'm glad that all of this fell into place for her - partly because her situation is one that I hope ends up being pleasingly symmetrical to mine - but also because she really deserves to be happy, and it's nice that someone in this whole lousy mess is getting their due.

Other stories: Louise is angling to get out of JTC to join a company that will pay her to spend a month in Italy indulging in haute couture and Bacchanal. Eekia is teaching music to Sec 1s in Montfort Secondary School using the medium of film. Production of Arrested Development is being shut down this season to make way for American Dad, and people need to write to Gail Berman to tell him what an idiot* he is.

And I spent most of the afternoon staring at my handphone wondering why it was resolutely not ringing.

*This blog, I think, suffers significantly from the fact that I strain not to curse on it. I will rethink this policy.

exactly

during constantine

(which was, by the way, highly sacrilegous, and not terribly good to boot)

-- cp comments that films such as these work only with the catholic faith, what with its ripeness of iconography and plentitude of arcane rituals. if the movie featured protestants, we agree, keanu reeves would have had to talk the demons to death. or irritate them until they fled.

so who are they kidding again?

How this was put into print I'll never know. I know there's a sucker born every minute, but do they all reside in Singapore?

I have obtained Microsoft Frontpage (pirated), so you can definitely expect a personal homepage to be up and running sometime in the next, say, 15 years.

Currently reading:
The Hours - Michael Cunningham

recap

In all fairness, office life is several degrees east of tolerable, thanks largely to (a) long lunches, (b) strong coffee, and (c) colleagues who (on the large part) just want to make an honest day's wage (Is that supremely naive? Are office politics inevitable?). Things are benign enough that I can coast, which is good in one way, but bad in another - loss of momentum can be a killer.

*

I'd not mentioned actual work much in this blog because I thought it a rather dull topic, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give a rundown of my JD.

1) Ridicule of ineptitude in writing
(I can't give examples for fear of prosecution, but if you've received my emails you'll know what I'm talking about.)

2) Arranging for meetings to discuss Nothing Of Any Particular Importance

3) Attending said meetings

4) Coordinating a project to discover why the company, staff population 12,000, has such swelling ranks of underperforming middle management, and what the hell can be done about it

5) Poking around at other people's salaries, and wondering why I don't get paid that much, or if I ever will. (Hint: No)

6) Deleting spam mail from the company inbox

7) Smiling at my boss and telling him that he has Excellent Ideas, Most Excellent Indeed

8) Thinking about resigning, and going quietly insane while doing so

Happy CNY

-- to all and sundry, and may you, yearly, have fish

"Remuneration", I think, is one of the ugliest words in the English language.

10:45 a.m.

(i call cp)

cp: hello
me: hi! where are you now?
cp: boon lay
me: really? i'm in town. just y'know, hanging out and doing nothing in particular
cp: how long have you been planning this call for?
me: quite a while. but trust me, it was worth the wait

So it's done. The interview was the most technical I've been through - sort of (I guess) like a scaled-down version of defending ones thesis. (Having never actually defended a thesis, I apologise if the comparison is in any way obscene). Had to talk about pigeons and BOLD signals and HDRs and lie barefacedly about my critical (big inverted commas) contributions to science. Dolling up ignorance is an art. Perhaps I should, as Von suggests, go into consultancy.

I was completely numb for about an hour after it was all over, and when I came to I discovered that I had somehow landed up in Starbucks with one of the largest mugs of coffee I'd ever seen in front of me. This was, luckily enough, when the day began to pick up. Finally got to see The Aviator (Ian Holm!) as well as finish reading Bennett. On now to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, which I hope I'll be able cope with. (Probably not.)

panic/hysterics/etc.

as usual.

had planned to ask my dad to help print my independent study paper (in color, on his office printer) to give to the interviewers tomorrow as a writing sample, but procrastinated and ended up not getting it to him on time, which meant that i had to print it at home, except that of course we had run out of paper. sped out to orchard in ragamuffin clothes only to find that all stationery shops in town had conspired to close at 9 (time of arrival: 9:07). last desperate fling was taka, which mercifully had one ream of paper left in stock.

but what i really want to tell you about is what happened next. there were two cashiers nearby - one line seemed a lot shorter than the other, so i chose that one (which, of course, turned out to be short only because the ladies at the head of the queue were purchasing enough pots and pans to prepare meals simultaneously for everyone in continental asia). two poly students joined the queue behind me, and despite my fuming, i couldn't help but overhear the bit of their conversation which went: "i find psychology very interesting...(so-and-so) told me the other day that the human brain is actually really small"

which was funny on so many levels that i couldn't help but explode into laughter, probably making everyone around me think i was certifiable, but whatever, because i'm sure that some higher power had dictated that i be right there right then just so i could be privy to that little snippet of inanity. i really needed that. i mean, just half-an-hour before i was telling someone (online) that if i didn't get this job i would have to immediately go and look for a very tall building. honestly, it's all a bloody joke anyway. life is only sometimes kind, but fortunately, it is almost always hilarious.

no time

-- to blog what with reaching home bone tired every day long after sundown. in brief: dinner at the marina mandarin with gsk interviewers and candidates on saturday (good; everyone very welcoming and chummy despite most people having enough letters appended to the back of their names to make up a decent-sized alphabet), then pell mell to addy's for awfully chocolate cake and saunders and french. sunday: church, then out with yen and two of the british candidates i offered to get lunch with/show around. over-ordered at westlake and struggled mightily with trying to explain the concept of yu sheng to obviously-baffled company (me: all the ingredients have significance because chinese words can be pronounced the same way but mean different things. yen: like punes. me: yes, or plays on words.) then to the botanic gardens and the evolution path which featured signboards describing the various stages of plant phylogeny, signboards with such marvelous titles as "the flowering of the world". et cetera. today: sniffling most of the morning. cover letters bad enough to send me into conniptions. silent curses at boss for trying to correct my already-correct spelling. then, at 5:30, hurtling down the ecp at 150 km/h so as to be on time for gsk cruise on the cheng ho (minz, or anyone familiar with chinese history: was he the one with the yellow umbrellas?). taxi fare: $24.60. ouch. tried to make conversation with one of the panel members about schizophrenia except probably made huge fool of self for talking about pharmacological treatment of negative symptoms, which i suspect is not really done. got mildly seasick, correctly identified someone's west indian accent (mother from mauritius), misidentified kusu island and staggered home half-dead from exhaustion.

will try and get some reading in before bed.

cp continues to call me in the mornings in the hopes that his taunting will become the subject of every single entry on this blog. i must say he has been quite successful so far

At work, when i'm especially bored, I sift through my old sent-mail box, and lament the fact that less than a year ago I was busy - frenetically busy - with things that I actually wanted to do: labs, the SSA, R&B and just generally having a good time. A little strange, perhaps, but I think only natural, part of the process of grieving, coming to terms.

(Choonping: I was genuinely smoking out: was out of the main office, purportedly at a meeting, if by "meeting" you mean "sitting in the canteen all morning drinking coffee". It wasn't lunch. I haven't reached that state of depravity just yet.)

Currently reading: The Catastrophist - Ronan Bennett
(how many books can you name that are set in the congo?)

9:42 a.m.

[handphone rings. i pick up.]

me: hello
cp: hi! it's me!
me: hi. what's up?
cp: you sound depressed.
me: is that all you called to say?
cp: actually, yes. [laughs] so what are you doing now?
me: right now? i'm calling people to offer them jobs.

[pause]

cp: the irony of all this is sheer poetry isn't it?

and he had just woken up. i am mocked, mercilessly.

conspiracy

the first shuttle bus to tanah merah mrt from my workplace departs 5:32 or thereabouts; the one after that a good 20-25 minutes later. Which means either

a) one leaves the office just as the minute hand whispers past the six, incurring baleful looks from colleagues and bosses alike, or
b) one resigns oneself to catching the second bus, whereupon one thinks: oh well, may as well look industrious in the mean time and earn brownie points with TPTB, particularly as the bus stop outside ALH provides no shade whatsoever, and is, in fact, at the perfect angle to receive the brunt of the sun's rays at that time of day.

which means that they get a good 15 minutes extra labour out of us every afternoon. for those of you keeping score, that works out to a whopping 3390 minutes, or 847.5 hours a year. devilish.

the surviving fish is looking very pleased with his act of darwinian supremacy. i shall rid him of smugness by getting him another friend next week.

how boring work is

my stapler

dinner at addy's

= da bao from adam road hawker center + steamed prawns, fresh from the straits of malacca + a too-good-to-eat fruit platter (eaten). choonping called me up mid-afternoon to apologise in advance for his absence (he was going to cook), but since i didn't know about that beforehand i could not feel too disappointed (as i think he hoped i would be).

~~

whereas we were merely bitchy in rjc, i'm beginning to feel that we're now honestly bitter and vindictive and all too ready to take potshots at everyone and everything, and while i don't want our misery and acrimony to be justified, the sorry fact is that it rather is. and from that, you can extrapolate the post-prandial topics of conversation, which means that all that needs to be said has been.

(except: thanks for the fforde, su-lin. anyone else who wants it can get in line behind yen)

one (1) of my fish died