Not at peace...

Thursday was the most dreaded day of all for the the past two weeks.

Our peaceful and serene office got broken when my boss came back from her leave. As usual, I got a call from her first thing in the morning to attend the briefing for her behalf as she said she has "lots of things to clear, to busy to attend the briefing". In the afternoon, she dragged me along for a meeting at the corporate office. I noiced that she wasn't paying attention at the meeting and looked bored and uninterested. My colleague was right in telling me that the sole purpose of bringng me to the meeting was to listen to the meeting for her so that she can know anything by asking me, assuming that I will listen and know everything that went on at the meeting. How terrible! Never have I seen a department head as irresponsible and lazy as her. At the meeting, everyone asked relevant questions at appropraite points. For her, she was uninterested. Another dept head who came with us gave me puzzling looks on why my boss looked so bored in the meeting as there were several good points to take note of. Then suddenly at the later half, she asked a question that was slightly out of point and it showed that she doesn't know what the presenter was talking about. At one point, she even used a handout to hide herself as she primed and fussed over her hair with a mirror. How embarrassing.......

The usual crap went on at work the next day. A director from another dept brought to our attention that our email signature was missing of a corporate tagline in addition to our promotional tagline. When she emailed my boss about this, she just replied with an email signature instruction attachment and just shirked the responsibility to IT dept, saying that she instructed them to handle this some time ago. I felt she should inform everyone and emphasized on the corporate guidelines for email signature to make IT's job easier. As usual, she chose to ignore this. Its exasperating to work with her......

The comforting part for the past few days was meeting mel, sy and cher for dinner yesterday. They finished their exams this week and all of them looked relieved. We went to New York New York at City Link. I had the Philly Cheesy Steak Sandwich (If I remember correctly....). Its nice but the fries are salty and soggy. Mel didn't sleep at all the previous night and looked tired. I was irritating him with everything that I said in response to him......so funny : P. After settling the bill, we laid back in our seats thinking what else to do. And we continued by standing outside the restaurant still having no idea where to go. We walked slowly to the mrt station and then decided to go to mel's place to play mahjong. Talking, joking and laughing all the way to his place......when we sat down to play, mel's aunt mentioned that a guy who plays mahjong against three girls will end up losing to all. And its true! He lost to the three of us...oops....We stopped at 南风 (took two hours to play!) and decided to call it a day. Everyone was tired....

Have a nice weekend...my right knee still hurts..:(

19 April 2008 9.27pm

Heed the Pain

I was reading the papers yesterday when I came across the term "Stress Fracture". It happened to basketball star Yao Ming when he had to undergo surgery on his left foot due to stress fracture, caused by extensive exhaustion from playing. Stress frature is not like a fracture or breaking of the bone but is caused by constant trauma to the bone with insufficient rest and repair and this causes the bone to weaken over time. According to the article (The Sunday Times, Lifestyle section, "Bones Feel Stress of Bad Break", 13 April 2008, P.9), stress fracture is most often caused by an increase in the intensity or impact during exercise and improper protection and support from your shoes or equipments used. Besides high-impact exercise, people who are obese, tall in stature, wear heels, have irregular menstruation or suffering from osteoporosis and poor diet are also prone to such frature. I started to worry a bit when I finish reading the article as I have a nagging pain in my right knee for the past two weeks. Its not very painful and it doesn't hurt when I walk. But it hurts when my right leg is turned a certain angle or when I moved or get up after sitting or standing for a long while. It also hurts when I get up in the morning and after my gym class and running. I should have change my pair of running shoes some time ago. Guess the support and cushion has wore out and the impact from running has gone to my knees. Prevention is better than cure so I must replace my shoes. Always wear the proper footwear according to the type of activity you are doing, do exercise that strengthens the muscles and take more calcium and vitamin D! Hope I can still run......:(

Also read from the same paper that drinking tea is good for the brain as tea contains a natural compound called catechins. It protects the brain cells from the build-up of damaging protein over the years and this maintains the cognitive ability of the brain ("Give your Brain a Tea Break", The Sunday Times,, Home section, 13 April 2008, P.1). Hmm...lots of readings about health for a day....haha

Watched Street Kings on sat with suz and YA. Keanu Reeves' age seems to have shown in the movie as he looked slightly older than before. I think the last time I saw him on the big screen was in the movie "The Lake House", a romantic love story starring alongside Sandra Bullock. He was really good-looking in that movie....anyway Street Kings is average. Probably should catch it on a weekday to save the money if you intend to watch it.

Looking forward to the day.....

14 Apr 2008 10.05pm

Bad Omen?

Its has been an "eventful" week. As my boss is on leave this whole week till next thurs, I have been attending the morning meetings. So on wed morning, I attended the morning briefing. Everything went as usual.....the new nasty director (the one who has been mean to me) was taking a long time as usual, talking about his department updates until he suddenly made a comment at my department, looking at me and said that the postcard that was distributed for an outlet has outdated information and is of the incorrect size and was totally unlike what he has approved previously. I was immediately puzzled that he has the new postcards already so I just replied by asking him whether all these incorrect postcards are with him. Also, I reminded him that the artwork was approved by him, my asst GM and GM. He insisted the postcards are wrong and has collected them back. My GM just wanted us to make sure that these postcards are taken back and no longer in distribution. As the other directors took their turn to do their updates, I quickly smsed my colleague about the terrible situation that just happened. She replied me immediately that the postcards that the nasty director has are actually old ones! The new ones that were approved are still at the vendor being printed and packed! Instead of clarifying the situation with us, he chose to attack me at the meeting saying that the postcard is crap! (yes, he even used the words "crap things" to describe the incorrect info on the postcard) How rude and unnecessary! Another director was so mad at him for bringing out this matter that she helped to defend me and then walked out of the boardroom 'cos she was fuming. When it was finally my turn to present any updates, I explained to everyone that the nasty director's dept has circulated the old postcards and the new ones have not arrived yet. The nasty director pretend not to hear me and looked occupied in his documents. I was so angry after the meeting, including my colleagues as well. Things did not go well for us that day as this matter was followed by an extremely unfriendly and rude email from nasty director. We were infuriated even further!

Later that day, I learnt from my colleague that she had a bad dream the previous night. She dreamt that my boss has ordered the three of us to go to her place to pick up a document file and bring it to my GM as she is away on leave. We went to her place and saw a huge antique cupboard. When we opened it, there were rows and rows of archived files and then we took the one we needed. My colleague continued saying I was the one who mentioned that we should get back to work and then I tried to close the cupboard. But the doors wouldn't close and suddenly, we were surrounded by "spirits". My colleague woke up immediately after that and could even remember those faces. She consulted a friend who knows something about interpretation of dreams and said that a dream like this would refer to "bad people at work" (in chinese, it means something like 小人在做怪). I was spooked when I heard this as things were really not smooth-going for us lately. And I was attacked by the nasty director that morning after my colleague had that dream the night before. Really unlucky....

Yesterday, I had menstrual cramps and took a day's mc to rest. And I had a wierd dream last night. I dreamt there was a snake in my room and it crawled to the top of my old wardrobe (by the way, my current wardrobe is built in to the wall. The wardrobe I saw in my dreams was my old cupboard from a long time ago...). Dreaming about a snake does not seem to be an auspicious sign. Hmm...I think the fengshui in my office is quite bad because my colleagues and I face a lot of problems at work. And there are the wierd dreams that me and my colleague had...

We cleared out a lot of unwanted stuff in the office today and it looks less cluttered now. Still lots of work to do and I hope to clear most of them next monday. After work, I went to meet jy as she has an extra invitation to an Onistuka Tiger S/S 2008 fashion show at Zouk. Its a popular brand of Japanese streetwear and sneakers. I met her colleagues as well and they were a rather fun and humourous bunch of people, especially this guy who seems to be the joker of the group. We waited a long while to get in and waited..... again for the show to start. In between we took some nice pictures and I was entertained by her colleagues' funny antics. Sometimes, I find these fashion events a bit of a drag as there is always a long queue to get in and the fashion show always starts late. But then again, what's new....

12 April 2008 2:06am

Definitely, Maybe

Its ger's birthday today. Happy Birthday Ger!

Just caught a movie just now with Ljun called "Definitely, Maybe"

The storyline is not bad, not super fantastic but it was meaningful in a way. I won't give away the story here but anyway the movie was about the main character, William, who was telling his love life revolving around three women to his daughter, Maya. William is going through a divorce with his wife. While telling the story, he changed the names of the three women in order for his daughter to guess which of the three ladies is her mum. William said there is a happy ending to the story and his daughter didn't believe it as her parents are divorcing. This is the part that touched me. The happy ending was Maya herself. Having his daughter was a happy ending to William. But this is not the end of the story so go watch it.

But what I learnt from the story is that in life, you have to go through several heartbreaks to realise who the love of your life is. He or she might be with you all these while and you have always like him or her but you never realised it until you lost that person and found them again.

Brought a tear to my eye.......
8 Apr 2008 11:15pm