Making my Move

Technically speaking, my long leave has ended and i'm supposed to have shortlisted a few options, go through some discussions with some people and made some decisions on some positions.

My crazy colleagues rang me up to remind (/snide at) me that my gallivanting days are numbered and pestered me for hints on my future plans. As nosey as they may be, a part of me is thankful to them for remembering my minute existence. Afterall, you never know which day you might need their help again, so as obnoxious as the HR practioners can be in your current company, try not to step on their toes. Like previously mentioned, they can either make or break you.

Anyway, that's beside the point.

I took the initiative to email my GM on Sunday, to update her on some of my thoughts & progress, but till date i receive no reply. Yesterday i dropped her an SMS to check if she has received my email and she didnt reply either. Well, since the last thing i want to come across as is to appear super hard up for a job, i left it as it is.

However, not knowing if my email has been received offensively/ gladly/ neutrally, is quite a pain in the ass. It makes me wonder alot, especially before i sleep and i think it is mentally disturbing.

To be honest, i am not that excited to look back to the same organization anymore; the thought of facing the same people & environment bore me a whole dope, but if they are still keen to offer me some exposure in my desired field, of course i wouldn't close my door on it. Afterall, gaining entry into a new field is always the toughest.

Just a couple of minutes earlier, i got a call from my Ah Lian Manager. She had wanted to know my plans as well. Weirdly, i do not recall of any instructions before i left, to update her of my progress and plainly, i see no need to, but she seems eager to know where i want to head to next.

As usual, sustaining a conversation with somebody who has a problem with listening is always painful. Even with her phone call, i find her tone uncaring, like as if she called out of obligation. In fact, i rather she not call at all, for the stone-cold voice at the other end of the line, is piercingly disturbing.

Nevertheless, i think i survived the call with some politeness and friendliness still, at least by my standards. It's an occupational hazard/ blessing; you have to know when to sound hypocritically pleasant to people you dislike lah. If you don't know how to yet, you have to learn. It's the 105th skill listed in the Book of Surviving the (Back-Stabbing) Rat-Race.

Anyhoots, in the meantime, i will be keeping a lookout on the online recruitment portals and the papers. Having finally decided on something, albeit a non-easy route, is quite a relief.  ¶ J poppycocked at 2:02:00 PM
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  Not Quite the Heartlander

Recently the spell seems to catch on harder, although it is nothing fresh to claim that Singapore is a boring place.

It might be the size, it might be the people ruling it but everything seems to be made a tad too homogeneous for my liking. I would have complained the same eons ago but when you become the half of another, it somehow struck you twice as hard.

Now that i have the weekdays to myself, i have restricted shopping on weekends, simply for the sake of less queueing time for fitting rooms and cashiers. Not to mention the lack of crowd eases browsing & cruising along.

Even then, it is as mundane as it gets, to be stuck here with all the time in the world but with nowhere i wanna go, locally. Quite apparently, even new malls, supposedly gigantic, spot the same few giant retailers over & over again. I must say with all the space, they have very little to offer indeed. At least on the scale of novelty points.

No matter which mall comes up as a suggestion as to where we should go and have some "fun" at, there are only so many times i can try to keep a rested chin from falling off my palm out of total boredom.

I can safely comment that there is nothing left to do outdoors after 10pm, except to eat, drink, club & stroll. Of course, i am not suggesting that comparitively, other countries have more civilization for the night owls than us, hell, some even knock off before sunset, but at least while they are open in the day, they provide more leap-off-the-chair-exciting choices & varieties.

Well, on the flip side, maybe it seems so because of my greed for a change.

How is it, that people can live so contentedly in this tiny bubble, without feeling claustrophobic, without feeling the need to see and touch foreign lands, and without curiosity; for generations (!), i don't understand.

I reeeally don't understand.  ¶ J poppycocked at 11:18:00 PM
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  Blogger Back on List

Hey! Tetanus is back in town to write again!

Yeaa!  ¶ J poppycocked at 6:26:00 PM
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  I Hear Voices in my Head

I took away the comments thing again, as i received notes from comments-leavers directly to the designated email of the blog telling me it's not working properly. Apparently it just comes straight to the email. -_-'''

As if it is a sequel to my previous entry, more of conscious dreaming has been happening to my sleeps recently. I can't say i am thoroughly excited with this phenomenon, since it has left me to awake with an unsettling feeling most of the time.

I swear it is bizarre to the point of instantly drifting away to dreamland upon closing my eyes. There are even occasions when i very consciously tell myself to just wake up so that everything will be over, while dreaming a bad one. I sincerely hope this is just a phase and will pass on soon.

Well, since it is often believed that one should make the best out of any situation one is in, i am however, interested to be enlightened on the meaning of my oh-so-strange dreams.

Of one that i still can remember from yesterday's morning (see? i even know i was dreaming in the morning), i dreamt that i was a dancer and due to put up a performance with "Cave People" as the theme. So you would have imagined, the costume would be very Flintstones' era and the hair would be done big, looney and knotty.

So we were sitting around in the dance room, listening to the dance instructor briefing us on how to get our emotions and expressions right for the mood of the dance. Distinctly, he demonstrated drinking from a cup of water and holding his face away in disgust and disapproval, like he is the caveman experiencing a modern beverage for the first time.

Subsequently he wanted us to follow suit and picked of all people, me, to do it for the class. Somehow, i couldn't get it right and broke away in laughter most of the time or ended up wearing a half trying-to-look-agonized, half trying-to-control-my-grinning look on my face.

So, with my head perched over the plastic cup of water, i just kept trying and trying in front of the class, with the dance instructor correcting me over and over again.

In utter embarrassment and the same unsettling feeling i woke up with after, i opened my eyes with frowns of dismay.

Unfortunately, this is just one of the many puzzling dreams i get in the late of time and i wish somebody would decipher and interpret it for me, someone like a dream therapist? I read previously that the last dream of the sleep is often most related to reality (or is it the other way round?).

By the way, i will not take answers like "you must be thinking too much" or "get a life!" very seriously. Thank you very much.  ¶ J poppycocked at 7:50:00 PM
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  The Trilogy

Singapore Dreaming

It's a miracle. I'm awake at this hour, the earliest yet eversince i dropped out of the rat-race for a breather. I must have only closed my eyes for some 3 to 4 hours, given the outing last night.

Thanks to the nightmare i was having just before i regained consciousness to the world; it literally panicked me awake.

I dreamt of parting with Wil before the outing ended last night only to realise i had my bag left locked in his bike's box. It was horrifying even in the dreams to imagine leaving all your belongings like wallet & most importantly, handphone, with somebody else.

It is also not good news to know that my handphone has found its way to the category of "Necessities".

In the dream, the first reaction upon such realization was to call him before he leaves the building BUT since i have his number stored in my handphone & in my handphone only, i didn't have his number to call, not to mention any of our mutual friends'.

You know sometimes when you dream of something unpleasant, despite being asleep, you will still be conscious enough to want to will yourself to wake up, only to find yourself paralyzed with the inability to open your eyes?

The feeling was almost like that, except that i did open my eyes, almost immediately no less. It was as if somebody had jolted me out of sleep & miraculously no matter how long i was in denial to get out of bed, i couldn't fall asleep anymore.

In the sleepless mode, i have decided i will keep a separate record of all the contacts in my mobile from now on, just in case the situation really takes place one fine day.

I was still telling the girls the other day that even when i was working, i couldn't wake up without setting the alarm even though i have to wake up at the same time everyday. With my irregular sleeping pattern now, i am a little worried of readjusting back when the need arises.

Is there such a thing as "no bio-clock", i wonder?

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Her Wedding

Some 1 month ago, i was informed by one of my primary school girlfriends that she is getting hitched & was cordially invited to her R.O.M party.

We are talking about someone i have not seen for about a decade or so. It was only in recent years she somehow found my contacts again & added me on MSN.

Even though we are residing in close proximity, we hardly bump into one another or make the effort to meet up.

The bride was once in my B.F.F category & probably the only one who had made it there. Well, even though she did not stay in the category, she was still somebody significant once.

We hung out in a larger group & there were days we could visit her house almost every other day, just to slug around or watch teletext. Yes, teletext. It was the in-thing before IRC came. Of course, when we were out or in school, we did tonnes of crazy stuff together too.

However, she has always been a rather problematic kid. She reads & kept to herself alot & was the kind to go to the Ladies during class just to comb & wet her hair. She was forever entangled in BGR troubles & at later stage, whenever she was depressed she would mutilate her wrist with a pen-knife. The wounds were not deep enough to kill but enough to make the sight disturbing. Due to multiple & repeated mutilation, there was a period of time she would only appear in long-sleeved blouses.

As a kid who knows no better, it was alot for me to take in. As much as i would like to remain as a supportive friend even when we parted for different secondary schools, it was difficult since we made new friends & basically moved on. It was unfortunate that the clique she hung out with in secondary school was seemingly girls like her or perhaps worse. When she was with us, even though we were playful & rebellious, we had her in check but with friends who condone her behaviour, it was no surprise she went wayward shortly after. After Sec 2, she dropped out.

In the whole of my secondary school life, perhaps i saw her once or twice. On & off, i hear mutual friends talking about how she was getting on. Distinctively there was once i recalled, when i was mugging for a Physics test on the eve, i got a call from her telling me she was preggie. She was my first girlfriend to get pregnant at our age so I was only short of blacking out in shock. I still remember what my first words to her were; helplessly, i told her "At least you know you are fertile." And she laughed.

As she was still a minor back then, the chap responsible for it went to Boys' Home after her parents refused to hear of the marriage proposal from the chap's family, so she had it aborted despite loving kids. I can't quite remember but vaguely, i think she had another one after that.

When i saw her last night, there were plenty of mixed feelings. There she stood, in a simple, pink gown, looking radiant & happy. She was pretty much the same, except that she put on a few more pounds & a tattoo. She must have repeated "Thank you for coming" and "I'm really happy you all are here" for 6 or 7 times for the night.

I was glad to be there for her but even more elated i went with Wil & Mel. There were only 3 of us from Primary School, and 2 from her secondary school. Since she had lost contact with most of her schooling friends, the remaining guests were all her colleagues. We felt a little out of place but her parents who still remember me (afterall how could they not since i used to hang out at their place so much), helped in making us feel at ease with their hospitality.

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Primary School Pals

Anyway, we only managed to catch up a little as she was busy fleeting around attending to guests. The 3 of us left after an hour or 2 since the guys wanted to grab dinner. They said the buffet portion were appetizers. -_-'''

In the end, we wento an eatery at Kovan, stayed to chat till 2am & we talked alot into the past.

I got acquainted with them when i was a prefect back in P4 & had to monitor the P7s and i'm glad i had to, otherwise i would never have known nice folks like them. We hung out so much we practically saw each other more than we saw our family at that time, it was ridiculous.

Of course, BGRs were a big hit back then & there were the A-likes-B-but-B-likes-C situations. But everything just seems amusing in retrospect.

Education, social circle aside, they are very earnest people to be with and that's why times with them are simple yet pleasurable. They are very real and free people, free not as in they have nothing else better to do but free, as in soul & spiritually. No matter how much they have been through in life, i don't think they will ever morph into empty-shelled hypocrites who blow air kisses at acquaintances.

I think the both of them, together with another guy pal, TM, subconsciously, have benchmarked the criteria for men. Conservative to a certain extent, they are MEN-men, the kinds with spines, if you know what i'm talking about. They are opinionated, straight-forward in their likes & dislikes and can be as stubborn as a mule but they are protective of girls, and not just to their girlfriends, which is what i really appreciate about them. You just feel safe with them because you know they will always watch your back.

These are not people borned with silver spoons in their mouths nor did they do their "air-levels" but they are rugged & down to earth people who sometimes struggle to make ends meet.

It's not necessarily something tangible they do which you could put a finger to it to derive this conclusion about them. It's more like trivialities, like the way they talk & walk with you. Body language you might say but it just shows, and this kinda thing is simply not taught in schools.

I sincerely dunno if you can find anymore guys like them out there but i do believe they are a rare breed and i think i have been lucky enough to keep them as my friends.

So ladies, i hope you find yours too.  ¶ J poppycocked at 8:47:00 AM
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  I Must B Losing My Mind It's ez to lose ur mind when u hv the same thing appearing everywhere & all the time in the recent spate of events.

Lately, there has been dis reviving thing about ex-singer Jimmy Ye a.k.a Ye Liang Jun around.

I duno since when, his mp3s began to resurface, and b4 i noe it, i'm humming along to his tunes all over again.

Then my silly frens started searching for his old MTVs to watch, for reminiscing & nostalgia, when we hit the KTV recently. Like a string of dem in continuance.

Next thing i noe, he's a judge on the new series of Project Superstar so it seems.

And the last straw came when i saw his album, the one wif all the green leaves surrounding his head, resting in Mo's room.

It is little wonder why i dreamt of Jimmy Ye, performing yet again on stage last night.

The strangest thing about the dream was, when the emcee was interviewing him b4 he sang, he spoke faggotilly.

Word has it in reality, he's not straight. Mayb dat has impacted the way i imagined him in my dreams. Lol. Plus, it must have been combined wif Eliz's recent sagas about TF.

Oh imagine the trauma.  ¶ J poppycocked at 5:30:00 PM
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  Movie Night After combing Vivocity for the 3rd time, it doesn't feel so colossal now.

While waiting for our movie to start, we had plenty of time to kill so we practically walked up & down, to & fro, and then up & down again. Dis is wad u get for unplanned outings.

But it was fun for an unplanned outing- not dat we shud do dis too often, feasting on a variety of food at the basement of the complex, so much so we skipped dinner altogether. I had intended on having Teochew porridge at the market for supper on the way back but the movie ended abit later than we expected so no go. Scared eat too much canot sleep lah.

Anyway, we caught The Prestige. Finally...after much deliberation. In summary, it's all about magic, deception & outwitting.

The setting of the show took place in old-time London so their English was accented & made some of the dialogues a little difficult to catch. But it was rather well-written in my opinion; seemingly profound, but understandable, not long-winded & leaves space for interpretation, i likkke...I took interest in wad Tesla said to the Great Danton in the scene when he tried to warn him from the perils of obsession. I wonder where these scriptwriters got their sayings from...

Of course, any movie wif old-London as a setting had to be very dark, gloomy & grey. I wonder why. Then again, dey had a part in Colorado, which was also featured pretty grey. Mayb the filming set nvr left the country...Hurhur..Budget tight, just shoot the scene at some ulu corner of London wif a hill.

Anyhoo, i tot the show was pretty well-done, exceeded my expectations by quite a margin. The twists were fantastic, made us drop our jaws abit although i was hoping for a more complex explanation to the mystery at the end. It was like a kinda-saw-it-coming-but-not-yet answer from all the hints thruout the show. But it was enjoyable on the overall.

Of all the movies currently screening, it should be the most worthwhile to watch already lah.

Of coz another reason why it's coz other movies screening now suck.  ¶ J poppycocked at 1:47:00 AM
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  Fotos of D&D The dinner started wif some latin dancers shakin' their booty & ermm...bosoms...u noe how latin dance is like...so use ur imagination.

The foto's blur, but dun blame mi, coz dey were shimmy-ing at such high speed ma.

Pretty, pretty, lotsa colors!

Aiya, u can't see! But the one taking a bow is the leading lady of the performance. Like a drag show kinda thing where the diva lip-syncs to the song.

Very sassy...colleague told mi she/ he performs at Boom Boom Room.

Then there is our siao onz GM, who dressed up as...i assume, a ghost bride.

Trust us, when we saw her at the carpark, it freaked all of us out. If not for her car & her hubby standing wif her which gave her away, we wouldn't have guessed.

She was kinda disappointed we recognized her from afar though. Lol.

Darn, i shud have asked her to stand at a corner in the toilet to start freakin' people out.

Then when dey invited her on stage, she literally drifted from her table to the stage...i caught one spooky shot of her.

Pity she didnt win Best Dressed.

Speaking of which, here are all the nominees for Best Dressed!

Click to enlarge for captions.

Another one of them wif a clearer view of everybody, coz the lights came on, and those who are blocked in the previous foto can be seen here too.

The nominees are put up to perform a seductive dance, including dancing around an imaginary pole, for the audience to judge who shall be the winner. But the dance must be relevant to the characters dey r representing for the nite.

The emcee demonstrated once & boy, can he shake his booty or can he shake his booty....the one wif the blondish cock head is him.

Here's one of the Pontianak. She was hilarious coz she did the dance real slow-mo to fit her female ghost image. And she took her time to look as creepy as she could.

Imagine....all wif the song "Tuo Diao" in the background. Lol.

And here's one of the werewolf harrassing the flirty nurse. Oooh by then, he has already thrown off his mask while dancing...

More like lecher wolf reli.

And then he went down on the floor, while dancing wif the nurse. So old-school loh...

He's at the bottom right-hand side of the foto, in case u can't see coz it's pretty dark.

Underneath the werewolf mask, he actually bleached his hair just for the event to the same color as his fake fur. Can see in the foto? Damn garang...but he has to bleach it back before appearing for work on Monday, otherwise his clients might get a nerve popped.

Good thing he won. Well-deserved.

And here's my face painting for dat nite. I wanted a spider but FRJ did it, then i wanted a scorpion but K did it so i chose to have a butterfly but the face painter said witches don't have butterflies one la!

And so he gave mi a moth...Nice leh..i likkke.  ¶ J poppycocked at 6:08:00 PM
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