BBQ is fun, and truth from facebook

This week has been a hell week for me. Work and lack of sufficient sleep made me overall grouchy. However, it ended with a smashing BBQ at Bayshore. Alcohol, music, meat, clams, mushrooms, nicely grilled buttered corn, grilled bread with avocado mix homemade spread, and Otah. My dear friends who did the grocery shopping while I shamelessly napped at home also bought my favorite beer of the moment-ASAHI. Thank you.

Weird sign at BBQ pit, huh?


Of course it was harder to complete work on time with Facebook to distract.
After facebooking, I realized I really should make an effort to keep in touch with people.

A Gu Wah Zai friend obsessed with cigars had ended up in Philly. He cursed Indiana weather repeatedly when we were in school, so why he is there now is a mystery I will attempt to solve soon. Another friend who traveled all over the States with me in a van got married three months ago; and yet another is a proud father of a six-month-old cutie son!
I seriously suck as a friend at times, but I shall endeavor to be a better one.

I felt the earth move under my feet

Last Wednesday evening, around 7.15 pm in manager’s fish tank office. Feeling nauseous and stuffy as office air conditioning auto shut off by 6 pm.

Teleconference call with ana* client who went through the report point by point, line by line. I was dying slowly inside. I might not get to eat dinner that night, I thought, all the Shenton restaurants would be closed by the time the client complete his droning. He was beginning to sound foreign.

I felt giddy, damn the client, he’s going to make my head explode. I laid my head on the table. Didn’t help. Ooh the building was moving, I realized slowly…ahhh… that’s why I felt giddy. I walked out of the fish tank and noted all my coworkers looking around, dazed. Whoohoo! Legit excuse to cut off the client.

I yelled over to client who was still online, “We’ll talk tomorrow, we’re leaving the building now!” Client gave a quick ok! His building was moving too.

I grabbed my (really) cute (real) leather hand bag, and wasted a few seconds wondering if I should carry my duty free NZ wine a coworker had bought for me. Nah. Forgot my mobile too.

Laziness overcame life preservation, we took the lift down (from 11th floor), which stopped at almost e-v-e-r-y floor, I felt. Some silly office girl (from the 6th floor office) couldn’t decide if she should run back to grab her wallet, so the lift was held up for another five seconds. I seriously wanted to shove her out of the elevator. Next time, I'll take the stairs, I thought, less aggravation. We made it to the first floor eventually, and headed off for Kopi at a nearby shop house.

That night and the following morning, Singaporeans felt little shakes in their high rise flats and offices, as Indonesia was hit by a series of Richter scale 8 quakes.

Let's love our bods!

I’m very into loose fluffy comfy cotton or linen tops. I hopefully think they make me look ethereal, but the truth is, ethereal bag lady is more like it.

I went to FCUK and tried on this full-of-etheral potential top that looked cute on the hanger. Wah, if I ever want to look heroin-skinny-anorexic ...this top is IT!

I’ve not had this problem for a while. I was very skinny growing up. Skinny brings a whole different set of problems.

You can’t fit into clothes 70% of the time, and when you do, you look like a crap cheapo hanger. People always joke (this is bad joke, not funny at all) about how you have to grab on to lamp posts just in case the strong gale of wind sweeps you away. You also can't stop wondering why you’re not growing fast enough and if you’re going to be SHORT for the rest of your life (no more wondering).

I now do grow, but sideways only. But the good thing is that it’s easier to wear stuff. I was very happy when I went shopping in Bangkok and realized I was considered medium-size.

What’s the point of this blog? I forgot. It’s Monday morning (2 a.m.) and I’m getting tired. I shall sum it up as we should not take our body shapes for granted – it could be much worse. We could be in the best shapes of our lives now. Love your tummy bulge and rub it lovingly now.

IT Milestone.

Oh, I have finally joined Facebook! This is my 2nd major IT achievement for the year.
The first one was starting a blog (this one). I skipped the Friendster revolution.

Facebook lessons so far:

*The girls will attach cute, or he-ow profile pictures.
The guys (or at least those I know) don’t really give a damn and look remarkably identical... like curvy question marks.

*I do feel very exposed out there.
I feel my Friends are Exposed out there too, same for Strangers. Paranoia, there are definitely potential weirdos tracking our messy spider webs of friendship. Terminate account soon.

* Long lost friends can be found.
I had located 4*100m relay teammates, a girl who used to help me skip morning assemblies without fail, someone I traveled to Paris with as a blur bank intern, a friend who gave me my very first Neil Gaiman novel.

The winner of long lost friends catergory, however, belongs to YahLeng: In 2000, I visited NYC and stayed with a friend’s friend’s sister, YahLeng. She found me on my third Facebook day. Wow!

* My friends are very mature people.
I had been throwing SO MANY sheep, cows and chickens at people, but hardly anyone threw one back at me. They don’t play. Or they didn’t want to play with me. : (

*Except for May, no one else fed me.
I had to survive solely on her virtual peppermint candy for the past three days. I did not consume the other candy given by a stranger, my parents had taught me better than that.
I must be virtually anorexic and starving to virtual death by now. I had to DIY to turn myself into a virtual vampire, no one helped. Oh! The indignity.

congrats!

I blogged a couple of weeks ago on Jia Jia, known as Regine by world, who took part in a men’s shampoo reality show competition… she won! Congrats!



Tasks she had to perform, to prove she can be a man as well, included changing air tyres (like a male mechanic), opening durian husks (like a male Geylang stall operator), kicking a football (like F Ahmad the male), catch cockroaches…so gross, she cried on national tv over this one, I would too.

Jia Jia also had to survive catty comments from the other contestants, which I attribute to real jealousy and devious ploy to get more TV coverage. She was gracious enough to smile and shrug them all off; this calm attitude must be part of previous pageant training.

But anyway, I hope Jia Jia did a 360-degree attitude turn, shoot laser glares, give a wild victory yelp, execute two backflips & a somersault, and wave the trophy and 10,000-dollar cheque in their faces after the camera was switched off. Which, will be childish but immensely satisfying.