Singaporean-isms we don't hear nowadays

Overhead on radio this morning, this is a compilation of Uniquely Singaporean phrases from the old school that we don't hear in modern Singapore:

1. You confirm come, guarantee chop

2. Your grandfather road is it?

3. Pattern more than badminton

4. Ya ya papaya

5. You ownself do lor

6. Napshot kali pok

7. Gabra like zebra

8. You think I thought, who confirm?

9. You ask me, I ask who?

10. You see me no up, is it?

11. Can also can, cannot also can

12. Yellow yellow dirty fellow, green green eat dustbin

Invisible

There is this guy in my (soon-to-be-ex) company that I am totally in awe of.

For the wrong reasons, of course.

Please let me gripe. I don't have much more to gripe about, having only 9 working days left in this company.

Anyway...

In my three years here, I have spoken less than a dozen times to him (if not less). That amounts to less than 5 times a year. Somehow I think this figure is overestimated and optimistic. It is probably 5 times over the past 3 years, sans the times we nodded heads to each other along the corridor.

Basically he sits in his cubicle from 8 to 5, doing his thing quietly, not talking dumb dumb refusing to talk to anyone. Even when you bump into him along the corridor to the gents, he looks at the ground and avoids eye contact with you. Nobody knows if he exists or comes to work. I think nobody notices!

The first few times, I was not used to it. "What's up with this guy?", I thought.

People come and go out of your life, sometimes fleetingly. But he is truly the quietest and least communicable human being I have come across in my whole life. And he is supposed to be some Excel genius whatmore.

In an office environment, I guess I have to accept that colleagues will remain colleagues, or "friends who happen to be colleagues" or even better (cynically, of course), "colleagues who happen to be friends". Even so, the next person sitting next to you is a human being. You have to talk to him or her. Even if its about some dumb topic like Ronaldo's latest masquerade or Malaysian politics, but at least it gets the throat vibrating.

I really wonder how some people can sit next to other people around them (talkative ones whatmore) and still be able put on a convincing performance of The Invisible Man.

And no, in case you are wondering, its not the 40-year-old-virginal Englishman I blogged about in my old blog.

The End, but a Beginning

I am pleased to announce that I have resigned from my current job. I have been waiting for this day for a good long time. Finally, I did it last Tuesday, 1st July 2008.

After almost three years, this job has seen through some of the best and worst times in my life - happy, sad, confused, ridiculed, vengeful, etc. It has seen through one of the saddest events in my life - my breakup and one of the most indignant - missing out on a promotion.

I have had the chance to meet some really wonderful people and some of the nastiest and shadiest idiots pieces of shit characters you could find anywhere. The best gift this job has given me - never trust anyone.

I will be giving up a lot of things - my impending promotion, my involvement in high visibility projects, my pay, my friends colleagues, the beautiful babes the weekly soccer game I have with the guys... the list goes on.

Where am I going? I can't say much. But I will definitely be learning new things and flying around more, an opportunity which the company never gave me. While some cocksucker fellow peer (I won't mention names, of course) travelled twice in a year to exotic destinations, the furthest I ever went is Muar and Sentosa (the Melbourne trip doesn't count - it was a holiday on our own expenses).

For my next job, I will be taking a pay cut, needing to slog like a "mad dog" (like how Uncle Louis puts it) and living the next couple of years in training. It is something I have never tried before but I hope I will grow to be addicted to it.

I've never ever once thought that I would take up this job as a career but perhaps that is the path God wants me to tread. Things happen for a reason. And for this reason, I shall put in my best effort.

Goodbye. It was good while it lasted.