A very bad dream

Anyway, it was on a warm and humid Sunday night that I went to bed last night. Little did I know that I would wake up in a shock after a horrible nightmare.

In the dream, she was back. The good old days came back. Holding hands in the sunshine, tinkling glasses in restaurants, hand-in-hand walking down the streets.

It was bliss. Just like the good old happy days.

And then the dream turned into a nightmare.

Somehow we were walking along a bridge connecting two blocks of HDB flats. She was talking on the phone; I was holding her hand.

All of a sudden, she lost balance and fell off the bridge. It happened in a flash. I flailed out trying to catch her but all I caught was her phone. My clutching hand grabbed thin air as she grew smaller and smaller, her screams echoing all around. I could see her bouncing off the walls and finally came to a stop below. No one could have survived that fall.

I panicked, dialing whatever number I could get my hands on. The police emergency hotline was engaged, and so was the ambulance's. I tried running down the stairs to get help but hit a cul-de-sac.

I was running out of ideas, and very desperate. I started thinking about how to break the news to her parents.

And then I woke up.

In a shock and gasping.

What a relief when I found that it was only a dream.

For the rest of the day, I was struggling through the work as I kept thinking about the episode and also from the loss of sleep.

My First Letter from a Law Firm

Yesterday, Dad passed me a letter from the mailbox.

A letter from a law firm. Can't be anything good.

I viciously tore off the envelope to see what the contents entailed. To my shock, I found that M1 has decided to send me a Letter of Demand for the $261 I owe them! Plus the lawyer firm's fees, I now owe them $314!

It is a long story but summarily, I owe M1 (the smallest telecommunications company in the country) my last phone bill which was $61 but they decided to tag an extra $200 for "breaking my contract" after I jumped ship to SingTel following iPhone's release. But, my contract was over two years ago, I argued. They then said they gave me a 50% discount off my regular bills about a year ago, and that constituted an extension of contract. But I wasn't told anything about any extension of contract! It seemed more like a loyalty reward more than anything else.

So, a very peeved me decided not to pay them the $261 till the dispute was resolved.

And hence came the lawyer's letter.

Well done, M1. I will never be your customer ever again. Take the bloody $314 as a parting gift. You could have made more from me in the future but your myopic business sense and Neanderthal customer service is simply legendary in my eyes.

Lastly, thanks - and fuck you back.

Just me, my thoughts and my keyboard

I was just ruminating...

... that exactly a year ago, I was lying in hospital from dengue fever.

Fast forward a year later to present, things are very much different.

I'm not sure about you but I do now think that things happen for a reason, good or bad. Previously when the shit hits the fan, I start to question my spiritual beliefs, why He is not helping, why is He letting it happen, etc.

I now communicate very well with God and I feel totally at peace spiritually. I look forward to Sunday masses now whereas (get ready for this) it used to be a drag sometimes in the past (oops!).

Things are going on well for me in my studies and training but I do wish time can pass faster during the studying!

Back to the dengue fever episode, it made me sit up and look around at the loved ones around me and realisation hits - lightning streaked across the sky, thunder rumbled and my eyes opened - that the one who was not there should not be a loved one anymore.

The Delete button was pressed and with it went all dodgy hopes and any clinging optimism along with it. Fresh water was poured into the then-empty glass.

I did not enjoy being ill and lying on the hospital bed, waiting for time to pass (where in reality it crawled). But I did enjoy the three weeks of medical leave after that. The mornings of leisurely walks to the coffeeshop to have my coffee, toast bread and eggs while catching up on the morning paper. They may not be expensive truffles or equally pretentious earl grey, but they brought out the best experience of that "sick" period. The rest of the morning was usually filled in with DVDs (I remember Click and Gwen Stefani very well) and a nap. And not to forget those mornings of medical reviews at Mount E along Orchard, followed by leisurely shopping walks and lunches with Cheryl who tottered out of her Wheelock Place office before her other colleagues do! Oops!

I do miss the days at my ex-company. The whole days of doing nothing but talking to other colleagues and acting busy (when workload is light, of course). And especially the days of rushing through proposals with the chums and meeting the datelines (and hence avoiding being screwed). The satisfaction of seeing through a successful project and restraining the impulse to retort arrogant management fools.

Ah... those were the days.

Apologies if this post doesn't make sense at all. I will try to blog more often, just give me some time to rediscover my writing touch and blogging prose.

A Very Late Update

After a long hiatus and some pushing by Sam, I finally got down to putting this update down before my procrastinating Dark Side keeps me away from doing it again.

It's been such a long time since I updated the blog. Basically since I left my previous company and joined the new one - about 16 weeks ago. Gosh, it has been so long ago! Yet it felt like only yesterday that I was sitting in my old spacious cubicle and slacking surfing working.

Where I am working now, I got no cubicle, not if you count the 1m by 1m desk that I am using now. I must say the on-job training is wonderful, curriculum well structured and will lead me to professional accreditation. The instructors are experienced and knowledgeable though I do feel that they are erratic sometimes, which puts you off from asking them questions. To them, a question is an insult to their teaching ability and as welcome as a fart in a crowded lift. Nonetheless, the old-school methods used in some of the training exercises are truly amazing.

Oh yes, I do enjoy the flying around very much too :)

In a nutshell, there is not a single minute that I regretted choosing this new job over the last, though I had to take a severe pay cut and being put through the most gruelling training I have ever been on. But I'm savouring every minute of it. I have always wondered what I have always wanted to do and never been able to find an answer, but today I can honestly say that what I am doing now is something that I will want to do for the rest of my career.

I now have a new group of colleagues. Some good, some bad, some neither here nor there, but some are truly detestable. Good friends are hard to find these days, but I am glad to have found a small clique within to hang out with. We help each other out during the training and keep everyone on par with the curriculum so no one gets left behind.

There is also a group of soccer mates to have a game with after our training ends for the day. We play once weekly but so far I have been nearly injured twice so I guess I won't find it a hurry to join them any time soon.

The first phase of the training will end next February. The second phase will take me to Perth, Western Australia for about a year and thereafter to Brisbane for a further couple of months.

I'm looking forward to it!

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.