isn't that the prettiest, girliest thing you've seen in a while!

christmas went by rather uneventfully with the usual visiting and turkey. odd how you tend to remember the food more than you remember the people, like the superb cheesecake from coffee bean which i only just discovered after living 17 years in the dark. really sneaky huh, the way life tries to cheat you of these joyful moments? nonetheless christmas was a welcome change from the overall anxiety and bustle that my holidays have been filled with.

this year was slightly different from previous christmases though. for starters, my mom enlisted (read: held hostage) my help for cooking the christmas eve turkey, which meant i had to run to the oven to flip the bird around every 20 minutes for 4 hours. then my grandma refused to bake her awesome pineapple tarts and didn't cook the usual christmas day lunch, which meant i was deprived of a traditional eurasian christmas meal. and then, for once, my family did something which involved more than sitting around and eating on christmas day- we went to the gym to work out! can you believe that??? on christmas, no less. so much for my theory that calories need a holiday too.

oh! i got one really cool christmas present- an exclusive BRITNEY SPEARS(!!!!) perfume set which came in this uber funky bottle and with a bright pink handbag. it was the exact thing i was eyeing when we were in australia, but didn't buy cos i didn't wanna blow my holiday spendings on perfume. my dad was telling me he was '99% sure' that i would like it. so right so right! nothing like the true spirit of giving to perk up a christmas!

more seriously though, i think the best christmas present so far was hearing the news that marc has finally woken up from his coma, and was conscious for the most part of yesterday. that was something i've been waiting almost 2 weeks to hear, so really, it came as a huge huge huge relief. if i'm secure of anything at all this year, it's that you can be saved by your faith... and if the many unbelievable spiritual experiences i've had this year aren't worth giving thanks for, i don't know what is.

tomorrow, tomorrow will be a better day.

Soul Asylum: Runaway Train

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a slow torch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep
There's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

CHORUS
Runaway train never going back
Wrong way on a one way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here no there

Can you help me remember how to smile
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

Everything is cut and dry
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

CHORUS

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughin' at the rain
Little out of touch, little insane
Just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train never comin' back
Runaway train tearin' up the track
Runaway train burnin' in my veins
Runaway but it always seems the same

ok, so tomorrow is christmas. considering how things have been going, i'm not very much in a christmas mood. and marc still isn't conscious, but we shall have faith.

do you believe in magic?

or do you believe that God and God alone can save us?

yesterday afternoon i received this phone call from Nartz asking me if i was free in the evening because one of Marc's sisters asked me to go down and visit him. needless to say, i was extremely worried because i thought something serious had happened... anyway, so i put aside all other plans for the evening and rush down to the hospital. on the way there, Nartz calls again to clarify that it's Cheryl (who is marc's cousin, not sister) who is a 'witch' who has been communicating with marc through 'black magic', and that marc told her that he wants to see me. which is more than just a little bit 'dodgy'; it's entirely pissing because marc of all people knows that i don't give a crap about spells and black magic. i mean, here we are praying our hearts out that he gets better, and this cheryl person is screwing with all that by bringing 'black magic' into the picture. honestly, when this whole thing is over, there are a few people who are gonna be so screwed. and that includes the man himself, for causing all this worry and heartache.

anyway i guess i'm glad i went to see marc after all, he seems a little bit better. they've transferred him to a general ward (for dubious reasons, but nevermind) and his face is less swollen now that they've put the tubes through his throat instead. me, nartz and fabius were poking and shaking him to try and get him to wake up, but we only managed to get him to blink his eyes a few times. then nartz and fabius literally pried his eyes open, which i suspect nearly got us kicked out by the nurses. but the ward was so hot and stuffy- what a dreary way to spend christmas.

look marc, look what you've done.

it's been almost 2 weeks since marc's accident and he still hasn't opened his eyes yet. but at least the doctors think that he's stable enough to take him from critical to high dependency, so i guess right now we just have to have faith and wait.

ah well, life goes on i suppose, so i've decided to get over this obsession (it has to be unhealthy) and get on with living normally and getting ready for when school starts and i can't devote 24/7 to worrying about him.

sigh- why did you have to do that?

You said pain
Was cool. Cool was
What I said.
Your bottles of prozac
Happy pills you called them
Multi-purpose the more the merrier
Whatever works. Only
They never really
Worked did they.
Why couldn’t you say?
Why couldn’t I say?

You said you were so happy.

Now you’re here and I’m here
I’m choked for words
Afraid to touch
You, afraid to speak too
Loudly, afraid to move
Around you tubes are everywhere
This isn’t you.
This isn’t you.

And I want to get out of
There, I want to look
Away from you
But somehow I can’t take
My eyes off you
I’m scared.
But somehow I can’t tell
You that can I.
Do you know I’m there?
Do you know

All the thoughts and memories
They rush through me I can’t take
Seeing you I can’t take
Not seeing you. I want to cry
But there’s no one I can cry to now.


Thought you didn’t mean
Anything
More to me; I guess
I was wrong.

just got back from changi hospital after seeing marc. they took him off sedatives yesterday, but he's still unconscious. his arms and legs are strapped to the bed because he keeps having fits, which are probably due to physical pain and trauma. when i went into the room the first time last night, i nearly started crying. my mouth suddenly went dry. then i was holding his hand for a while and he started having spasms and thrashing about on the bed, and i didn't know what to do. i was so damn scared. then the machine next to him started making weird noises and his intra cranial pressure (ICP) jumped from like 24-50 and i had to run out of the room and call the nurses. if the ICP jumps too high it might cause the clot in his brain to burst, and that would be very, very bad.

i feel like crap because i only found out about his accident on monday, even though it happened on thursday night. he got hit by a taxi and he was flung off the windscreen onto the other side of the road. he had 2 blood clots- one was surgically removed successfully, but the other one's in his left cerebral hemisphere and is too close to the nerves to operate. it might affect his speech and half his body's movements. he's been in intensive care for almost a week and he still hasn't woken up yet, and he's also still on life support which, the neurologist very nicely put, is 'prolonging his life'. it hurt so much to see him like that. i was watching him throughout the visiting hours yesterday and today, so i was there when the neurologist and neurosurgeon examined him. i asked the neurologist what the chance of him having permanent brain damage was, and he said that there'd probably be some 'deficit' in his speech and co-ordination, but we won't know till he wakes up and they do a full assesment of him. basically it's like a stroke, and every moment that he's unconscious, his chances of recovery get less and less.

it's so ironic because i just started attachment at SGH neurology department, and i spent yesterday looking at other cases of brain problems, like epilepsy, stroke and dementia. which was extremely trying because the whole time i kept imagining what marc would be like and whether he'd be as bad as those people who kept having sporadic seizures. but nothing prepared me for seeing him yesterday; he's completely covered in tubes and his fits aren't even sporadic, they're continuous.

shadowing neurologists also made me realise how serious his condition is, which is highly critical to say the least. the papers reported that he was in 'stable condition', but that's bullshit- until they can take him off life support it's still touch and go. but his dad asked the neurosurgeon what his chances of 'making it' were and he said that he was quite confident since his vital signs were okay. i made his dad and sis promise to call me in case of anything, and now i keep jumping whenever my phone vibrates.

i'm so stressed and so worried, but i guess the only thing i can do for him is to pray and be there to support him as much as i can. i'm still praying that he will open his eyes and start recovering soon- if you're reading this, please say a prayer for him too. he's only 17, and he has his whole life ahead of him. please, pray.

i am pissed to report that the cleaning of the female washroom is now concurrently in progress on all floors. great; constipation, just what i needed.

came across this unbelievably hilarious paragraph from foucault yesterday:

'...all hot drinks the seventeenth centruy used and abused risk becoming harmful: relaxation, general humidity, softness of the entire organism- this is what threatens those who consume too many such infusions. And since these are the distinctive traits of the female body, as opposed to virile dryness and solidity, the abuse of hot drinks risks leading to a general feminization of the human race: "Most men are censured, not without reason, for having degenerated in contracting the softness, the habits, and the inclinations of women; there is lacking only a resemblance in bodily constitution. Excessive use of moisture immediately accelearates the metamorphosis and makes the two sexes almost as alike in the physical as in the moral realm... Woe to the human race... There will be no more plowmen, artisans, soldiers, for they will soon be robbed of the strength and vigor necessary to their profession."'

that's right, guys- drink up your hot cuppas, for soon, your balls will rot away and you'll become just like us 'soft' women, with no strength in our soft, relaxed bodies to do anything. who needs people to give birth to the future of our generation when you can have people tilling the fields and fighting wars, after all! better get your priorities right, make a few sacrifices and stop slurping those coffees!

had a bbq at my place on sunday- was shit tired yesterday from all the clearing up! once i was at work, everytime i closed my eyes for an extra-long blink, i would get hallucinations of my bed, and have to pray not to let my head fall flat on the keyboard in front of me. that, as we all know, would SO not be the way to convince people that you're a pro office worker and NOT a 17 year old kid 30 years younger than them.

was feeling really bad about the bbq at first because i only realised after i confirmed the date with everyone that i had also agreed to help soph with somethingood at the same time, and obviously i couldn't cancel out of the bbq since i was the one hosting it. luckily i managed to get matthias to take over my duties from me (what's a vice-chair for, eh?) though that also means that i am probably eternally indebted to him now and will be reminded of this everytime kwok throws a fit on exco. so now i get to permanently handle kwok and his botox-y mood swings. yay. what more could a girl ask for?

anyway, the bbq. we spent like an hour trying to get the fire to start. actually quah and co built quite a nice fire, but then they went off and i had to, uh, look after it, and then the fire kinda died. i swear, i was only trying to help! but luckily bobo came to the rescue and we soon had satays and otah roasting away over a really chio flame.

along with raw satays, me paulee and markwang also perfected the art of cooking papadums underneath the bbq grill! the added advantage of cooking it below the grill itself is that you not only get a stronger flame, you also get all the oil and sauce from the satays on top of the grill dripping down to the papadum, giving it extra flavour and oOmPh! it was quite cool actually, cos the papadums started off as little pathetic flat pieces of paper, but within 5 seconds became this really voluptious bubbling crispy thing. so friggin pro!

a lot of people actually got lost walking into the condo, though i don't see how that's possible because it's like only a FIVE minute walk from the mrt. and that's when i'm wearing no-grip slippers and doing the whole ah-ma thing. and people were walking for like half an hour and still not getting anywhere near the location. issit just me or does everybody's sense of direction suck??? hmmm... or maybe i just gave wrong directions, heh.

after we got the bbq started, we also got started on the dunking business. i mean, what's a poolside party without the pool?? and people still came without spare changes of clothes; some people just never learn. and some people, like erica, came in frilly tops and SKIRTS. hahahaha. like THAT's gonna stop anyone from dunking you. due to his 45 kg feather frame, paulee was the first victim. i think he brought gerald down with him though. then the guys tried to carry the whole bench into the pool in order to dunk us girls, and i got really scared cos hey i had a refundable deposit on the place and i don't think the guards would have like a bbq bench in the pool very much. so after that i kinda got pushed in, though i didn't really care because i was wearing a swimming costume underneath anyway, so it's not like i had to contend with damp underwear like the rest.

but nonetheless, the girls betrayed me, and that meant the end of our alliance. after that they all ran into the girls toilet to hide, thinking it would stop the guys from coming after them. well i switched off the light switch in the toilet, which made them start shrieking hysterically- even though the switch for the lights was just INSIDE the toilet and they could have easily switched it on themselves. so we were kinda stuck in a deadlock and the girls camped in the toilet for another half hour. then, when they suspected we were off guard, they made a dash for the function room and locked us out. nice. but there were these huge windows at the side of the function room, facing the ornamental pond, and guess what? the windows weren't locked from the inside. and so 'operation extraction' (as marcus put it) began. gerald climbed in through the window and tried to pull erica out into the pool, but it backfired and gerald was nearly pushed into the pool himself. i was so friggin scared one of the residents would come out and complain about disruption of peace or something. anyway, marcus and gerald finally managed to squeeze through the windows and infiltrated the enemy barracks. which is how we managed to drag nic and christina, (struggling and screaming, no less) and with each of us grabbing onto one limb, all the way out to the pool. and then we swung them back and forth before launching them into the pool.

then some real smartass tried to dunk marcus, which resulted in half the world getting dunked as well. including erica, who realised her grave mistake halfway through, once marcus started gripping HER arm really tightly. soon enough, her screams of 'get marcus' progressed to 'don't dunk marcus! don't dunk marcus!' and then subsequently became quick yelps of 'get my handphone out of my pocket'. hahahaha. we ended up dunking everybody who stayed on, except the pussy markwang who was wearing a white shirt and claiming to not have a change of clothes for his chelsea-arsenal gathering later on. so i must say we did quite well. and i didn't even get sent off from the grounds; what a bonus!

hoping to organise another bbq sometime soon for somethingood and debate, but it'll probably be a while till i recover from the hassle of this one. you have NO IDEA how much shit we generated. like i think we filled up 2 whole garbage bins, not counting the crap we flushed down the toilet bowl and in the plants, or the ice which marcus conveniently dumped in the furnace of the guy's sauna.

all in all, 'twas huge fun. almost enough to rejuvinate me for the week ahead at work. i guess i'm not the only one in this crap though- fellow intern randy just emailed me and said "btw, i've been religiously checkin my e-mail evryday cuz it's e onli communicatin channel i hav left tt can sustain more than 160 words @ a go". my sentiments exactly! screw bloody office networks!

great lyrics by that guy, bruce springsteen

"The Rising"

Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me
Lost track of how far I've gone
How far I've gone, how high I've climbed
On my back's a sixty pound stone
On my shoulder a half mile line

Come on up for the rising
Com on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Left the house this morning
Bells ringing filled the air
Wearin' the cross of my calling
On wheels of fire I come rollin' down here

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Li,li, li,li,li,li, li,li,li

Spirits above and behind me
Faces gone, black eyes burnin' bright
May their precious blood forever bind me
Lord as I stand before your fiery light

Li,li, li,li,li,li, li,li,li

I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of the line

Sky of blackness and sorrow (a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)
Sky of glory and sadness (a dream of life)
Sky of mercy, sky of fear (a dream of life)
Sky of memory and shadow (a dream of life)
Your burnin' wind fills my arms tonight
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life (a dream of life)

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Li,li, li,li,li,li, li,li,li

this is to die for; if i actually manage to hold this for 0.1 s, and achieve nothing else in the rest of my lifetime, i will die happy.



tell me, where do such freaks come from?

incidentally, and ironically, i think being in the office for such prolonged lengths of time is turning me into a fitness freak. maybe having your butt almost surgically attached to a chair 10.5 hours a day cures you of any couch-potato tendencies for the rest of the time you're awake. suddenly i feel motivated to swim, stretch, practice gym, go to the real gym, do weights etc. all i need now is a skipping rope and two ponytails!

over the past week, i've come to notice a few distinct trends here at the office. so, let's put our project work skills to good use and run a little trend analysis on the situation:

trend #1: The Hovering High-Pitched Woman

this Woman appears everytime i am in the middle of illicitly surfing the net or working on web graphics in adobe photoshop. the Woman inevitably makes some gesture of looking for the colleague behind me, who is -always- never around, and then spends a few extra minutes behind my table, furrowing her brows and presumably recovering from the shocking discovery of the colleague's absence. i know about her high-pitchedness because she always says 'where's kenneth' in her canine range before proceeding to irritate me further by looking over my shoulder to snoop on what i'm doing.

(an alternative version of The High-Pitched Woman is the Mysterious Tech Support Guy, who turns up whenever the same colleague is not around, and then annoys with a rendition of 'kenneth zai4 na2 li3' thereafter he leans on the wall of my cubicle-thingy, and gives me this imploring look, as if i'm hiding kenneth in my drawer or something)

trend analysis:
1. like, hELLo wOmAn!! all you have to do to see that mr missing colleague is not around is to LOOK from a safe distance of 20 metres, because, in case you've forgotten, we DON'T HAVE ANY DOORS around our desks! which means that he'd be visible if he was there, and if he isn't visible, then there's a good chance that he isn't there! which means you needn't waste your time walking all the way over to his table and giving me a heart attack!

2. what's up with the staring over my shoulder?? don't you KNOW that this is what interns do? they slack on the job! and that's because we're being paid approximately 5% of your monthly salary, plus we're wasting our precious school holidays away, PLUS we aren't getting any 4 months year-end bonus like you are! so sheesh man, stop looking so surprised- what else do you expect us to do? work???

trend #2: The Concurrent Cleaning of Female Toilets on All Levels

about half the time when i need to go to the toilet, i go there only to discover that it's being cleaned. but hey, that shouldn't be a problem, because this is a big building and surely there have to be toilets on other floors. so i walk to the next floor, and then the next floor, and then the next floor... and guess what?? they're ALL being cleaned!! at the SAME time!

trend analysis:
1. this has GOT to be a bloody conspiracy! why can't they just clean the toilets once a day, and not clean every floor's toilets at the same time?? i never knew they had that many janitors in the first place! and this is the government- we're supposed to be saving money here, hello???

2. how come nobody cleans the guy's toilet? come to think of it, i've ALWAYS seen the female toilet being cleaned, but NEVER the male's! what's this, gender discrimination? just because girls can't pee standing up doesn't mean that we can't aim you know? if you clean the female toilet twenty times a day and there's STILL a smell of piss coming from the corridor outside the toilets, where do you think the smell is coming from??? and i don't even have a Ph.D to know this!

would like to rant more, but the aforesaid Woman featured in trend #1 is at it again, and i don't think she'd like to see my little commentary on her.

hey, so this is my new blog. apart from being sick of seeing the layout of the old one, and apart from hating having nosey people digging around for shit at the old blog, i also happen to have around 10 million hours of free time here at the office. so this is my way of occupying myself, in order to not let my brain turn into a spaghetti of once active brain wires and brain juice. yes, you heard me right; i'm presuming a person's brain has to be active to allow her to type a blog entry.

right, i just figured it out: real spaghetti- now -that- is what i feel like eating right now.

actually i've recently been given real work to do at the office, but i just finished my report on WHO like 2 hours ago and that has got to be my quota for the day. hey, i crapped up a 23-page, 4013 word report in one and a half days. and that's with leaving early, coming late, and going for extended lunch breaks. methinks i deserve a busybee award! or at least a commendation for surviving 6 and a half days on the friggin job!

and guess what, my director's on leave, so that means i get to LEAVE EARLY today!