Inevitability

I end my day today with a good laugh at the names of my 2 cilents. Ok, kinda evil actually, to be laughing at others’ names.

But there’s this fellow out there called Tin Dong ok. Not funny meh? I think it’s damn funny lo. What were his parents thinking about?! Their poor son must have been teased so constantly. “The siao one. Siao Ding Dong. Siao siao siao.”

Ok, I’m so mean.

Then I saw another one that’s even funnier.

An ah-mah called Ah Pek. Ya, I do mean that her name is Ah Pek. For example, Tan Ah Pek.

Damn funny ok. Not funny meh? Meh meh meh??

It is not 100% official yet as the recipient of this year’s title won’t be officially unveiled by the France Football magazine, which organizes voting of the annual award, until 27 Nov in Paris. But rumours have it that darling Fabio Cannavaro, captain of Italy’s World Cup champion team, currently Real Madrid defender, will win the honour of the 2006 Ballon d’Or — the Golden Ball — as the European soccer player of the year.

I’m thrilled of course, being a Fabio Cannavaro fan after watching his stunning performance at this year’s FIFA World Cup as one of the “Berlin Wall” solid defense of the  Italy’s World Cup winning squad. Last year’s honour had gone to Brazil’s and Barcelona’s Ronaldinho. Thumbs up to him but this year he hasn’t been doing that great so Fabio Cannavaro is lined up to succeed him and become the 51st European Player of The Year according to reports. 

Cannavaro is one of 50 players on the shortlist for the award, which also includes World Cup-winning teammates Gianluigi Buffon, Gennaro Gattuso, Fabio Grosso, Andrea Pirlo, Luca Toni and Gianluca Zambrotta. I heard that retiree Zidane was 5th on the list.

Congrats, Fabio! You know that I heart you.  

Ahhh just received the latest update from the IT manager of the main office! Apparently all’s not resolved yet…

Dear Colleagues …

We have successively removed the deadly virus from 50% of the PC population last night. (walau they had to work OT. Ok la, my sympathies.) The rest was not removed for a variety of reasons – primarily if the PC was not powered on.

Similar to a biological virus which can regenerate and spread from a single sample, the deadly computer virus needs to be removed completely to prevent any reoccurrence.

As part of immediate problem-resolution measures, we seek your understanding and cooperation as we pro-actively perform an anti-virus scan on your PC system – ONLY IF your PC was not scanned last night. We are targeting to start the anti-virus scan today at 11.45AM. You may experience some slowness in your PC system when the scanning is active.

Please do not be alarmed. You can also choose to log off and leave your PC switched on as the scanning can be performed in the background. If any virus is detected in your PC, a slew of cleaning measures will be activated to remove/disable the virus.

They are so dead.

Something major, well at least I felt that it was, happened at the base yesterday. Now I said base because I’m a staff there but I’m stationed here instead. Like you work for a Singapore company, but you may be stationed at Hong Kong or America. Which was quite sad for me yesterday because all was peaceful and quiet here but I think it must have been pretty exciting over there (meaning: can do less work while kpo-ing about the latest situation).

Apparently, quoting exactly what the IT manager from the main office said in his email, they “have detected a deadly virus which is spreading rapidly across the network”. They informed everyone not to use the network and to save everything that they’ve on the network cause I guess that there was a risk that they couldn’t recover everything in the end. I’m not sure if they’ve already removed the virus after they did the mass anti-virus scan on all the PC systems yesterday but I didn’t receive any more email about the virus today so I guess all’s good so far.

But something like this happening on our grounds is bad lah. ALL the computers were infected and the staff couldn’t use their computers to do work for several hours. Besides there’s so much important information on our network. Hell will break loose if any is lost in the process. I guess that my worries are not unfounded as one of the BIG BIG BIG bosses actually sent an email to, hmm, advise (cause he wasn’t really scolding) so that, quoting his words, “this does not happen again”.

I think the IT people are in deep shit. They block this website and that website, and probably 100 more websites that the staff can’t access. And then they have gone ahead and let a deadly virus infect our system. Brilliant work, dudes.

Some days ago, perhaps last week, when I was been listening to 987FM as usual during work, the DJ was talking about how more and more Singaporeans are littering according to National Environment Agency. And it’s no surprise that more than half of the number of litterbugs caught this year is young Singaporeans. No surprise anymore because these days when anything bad happens, there’s always this 99.5% that the younger generation is involved.

It’s irony because Singapore has this beautiful name as a ‘Clean and Green’ city for as long as I can remember. Yet more and more of us are dirtying the land, perhaps slowly throwing away this nice title should the problem not be resolved. Even more irony considering the number of anti-littering campaigns that Singapore has all these years. I think one of the things that Singapore has the most has to be campaigns haha. We’ve campaigns for all sorts of things imaginable! This has to be some kind of a Guinness World Record.

So imagine LKY’s disappointment that what he has painstakingly built over the decades is being slowly ruined by his younger people, so-called pillars of the future, bit by bit.

But LKY can be proud of me lah.

Cause I’m a good citizen who never litters. And I do mean NEVER.

If you ever catch me littering, I’ll gladly give you $100.I even pick up small bits of trash that I accidentally drop.

It’s 7.03pm and I’m still in office.

Hoorays. Who knew that the day would come when I would actually be working OT with no OT pay?

Oh anyway the bank didn’t even call me. They just credited the money into my account. I guess that with my full name and almost complete account number, they felt safe enough to credit it into my account.

I hope that they didn’t think I was stupid.   

Had hell of a time yesterday.

Went to Vivocity to catch “Casino Royale” cause Cyn’s company had a private screening for staff at a mere $2 per ticket. So damn cheap for a good cinema theatre like that. Seats are the most far apart that I’ve ever experienced so far. The rows are arranged such that the tall bastard sitting in front can never manage to block your view even if he tries to. Well, I won’t say the same if he’s Yao Ming though, but it’s unlikely to bump into him in the theatre in Singapore, and if you do, you can either take it as super heng or super suay lah.

But “Casino Royale” is TOO DAMN LONG.  The first hour or so was exciting. It was like watching a stunt performance, totally breath-taking. And Daniel Craig as James Bond? I’ve absolutely nothing against him in the first place, even before watching the movie, unlike the movie critics who thought that he wasn’t suitable cause he’s not tall enough, not suave enough or has blue eyes and blond hair. It appears that James Bond is supposed to be dark-haired. But well, from what I’ve read, he has successfully silenced all criticism with his performance in the year’s blockbuster. They even felt that he’s the next best Bond after Sean Connery.

I’ve never seen a Sean Connery-Bond movie before so I can’t comment on that. To be honest, I’ve never seen that many Bond movies. But Daniel Craig as Bond? Well I think he’s good enough. He looks sharp, he does all his own stunts, he looks like he can honestly deliver a good punch. Pierce Brosnan looks like he can’t even swat a mosquito.

Then we had a yummy dinner at Thai Express. I love Thai food. Ok, I love all spicy food hahah. But it was scary cause less than 3 hours later, we went to have ice cream at Häagen-Dazs. Hee hee. Ice cream is mouth-watering! I think there must be some genetic basis for girls’ love for ice cream and chocolate!

I went to meet dear Isa impromptu for drinks late at night. I brought her to Timbre and she liked it too. You should try Timbre if you’ve not been there yet. The food’s great, there’s a relatively wide variety of drinks, the crowd’s pretty hip and the band is not too bad.

We shared some beer, ok, not some since we basically had a jug each, and just chatted. It’s always a different experience chatting with Isa cause we are both forthright and open-minded, and we did share many issues that we have on our minds last night. I do have a lot of insecurity in THAT aspect and it helps to know that I’m not alone. 

Her friend was supposed to join us but Timbre’s pretty secluded and he couldn’t find his way after an hour of driving and by the time he reached, Timbre was going to close haha. So he ended up just driving us home. But just as I was a street away from my cosy home, Isa decided that she really wanted to go clubbing and we drove back to town, to Zouk.

I haven’t club in months. Cause all my other friends don’t go clubbing except Isa. And Melis’ away, far far away at USA. It’s always a major plus point that both Isa and me share the love for R&B! So off to Phuture we went at 2.30am in the wee morning of Sunday, when Phuture was going to close at 4am. She thought we were too happening hahah. 

It was fun. The music was cool. An hour plus was barely enough but it’s still better than nothing. And she met some more friends so I made some more friends. And we had more drinks. Ok, I only had one more bottle of beer cause I felt that I couldn’t drink anymore and puking is the last thing that I want to do again. But she went ahead and drank till she couldn’t really walk anymore hahah. All my friends should see her and then they would never ever think that I drink too much anymore. I’m an understatement.

We ended the day, though strictly speaking a new day had just begun for many others who should be waking up in a few hours’ time, with supper and by the time I reached home, which was 530am, I couldn’t barely keep myself awake. I woke up pretty early this afternoon just to have lunch with my family (so noble yea)  and I’d a splitting headache for the entire day. I guess it’s like a hangover. Not ideally good for my health but well, we only live once. Play hard, work hard, mates.

Update: Today’s Monday and I still woke up with a headache. This is bad. =(

So bloody excited when I received my pay check for last month’s work yesterday after work. I even left half an hour earlier just so that I could reach the main office (Novena) before it closed at 6pm. Went to drop it at the bank immediately so that the money could be credited into my account today cause my bank account’s almost empty. Couldn’t really remember if my account number starts with 118 or 119 and even called up my sis who was at home to double check for me.

“Eh my account number starts with 118 or 119 huh?”

“118.”

“Then it’s blah-blah-blah-blah-blah (of course I’m not telling you the numbers) right?”

“Ya correct.”

“Okok thanks.”

Happily dropped the cheque at the bank.

Went home and my sister asked, “Ay you didn’t write the wrong account number right??”

“118-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah loh”

“How about the “6″?!”

Bloody hell. I forgot that there’s one more 6 at the end.

Toying with the idea of getting a tattoo AGAIN.

This urge, this desire to get a tattoo has been on and off for like, what, 5-6 years. “Off” is usually when I honestly can’t decide on a spot on my body, and given my height, honestly not much space to choose from, to place one.

Come on, you know, putting the pain factor aside, cause I’ve a really high pain threshold (try wearing heels that cut your feet every single bloody day) so that’s not a threatening issue, a tattoo is bloody for life and I need to find a spot on my body when I can flaunt it as and when I want, and yet keep it under cover during work to keep things professional. I’m not sure if my *ahem* “cilents” still want to do *ahem* “business” with me if they see my tattoo. The poor old ladies and gentlemen probably would think that I would chop them up during their sleep to make “ren rou char siew buns”.

And no, I don’t want it to be on my waist or back cause that’s so cliche. If I can afford to have it in the light all the time, I will gladly have it on my hand or the inner of my lower arm. But I can’t.

Now I’m thinking of having one on the back of my neck cause yesterday I saw this dude with one on his and it helps that he was cool too haha. Sometimes I think that I’m hopeless, I mean you will probably think, what are you exactly going to do with that tattoo. It won’t help you strike lottery and it causes pain and it’s damn expensive la.

But there’s this strange thing in humans called desire. And sometimes, or rather often, you can’t truly explain why you want a particular thing or person (but that would be lust then), but you just know that if you can’t have it/him/her, then there’s always going to be this empty space in you.

But if I can drag this affair off until maybe I’m 30 or older, I would probably drop the idea myself. I mean, why would I want it on my droopy, flabby, wrinkly skin?

I caught the new movie “Step Up” yesterday and that’s probably the most exciting thing that ever happened to me this weekend. Damn I need a life.

Anyway don’t expect an innovative story. Dance’s hot these days, especially after the launching of Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance“ which just finished its 2nd season in US. Hence we’ve been seeing an endless flow of films centered around dance, like “Save The Last Dance”, “Shall We Dance” and “Take The Lead”. So expect the storyline of this new movie to be cliché and predictable. But nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.

I’m usually quite disgusted with most of the mainstream movies that are so commercialized and manufactured to sell to a teenage audience, but I do catch one now and then if it ain’t sound that bad. The last one I caught was unfortunately a terrible choice and decision – “Lovewrecked”. Everything was wrecked about that movie.

But anyway I wanted to catch this one because I’ve heard songs from the soundtrack on radio. They are hip-hop and I love them. Now, a bad soundtrack won’t really break a movie but a good one can make it better. And indeed, I absolutely enjoyed the energy, the beat, the music, the moves in the movie. If you like dance, you should catch this. If you like hip-hop, man what are you waiting for. Overall, it was pure fluffy entertainment. Don’t go in expecting too much or analyze it too deeply and you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

And may I say that Channing Tatum is absolutely, undeniably HOT. Yes, as in H-O-T all in capitals. I’m not sure if “Step Up” would have been as good as it was without him. His moves are soooo smooth. And his body..woot! I shall not even go into that lest it’ll make me drool.

His role as Tyler Gage in the movie, a rebel from the wrong side of Baltimore’s tracks, reminds me of Eminem. You know, a white guy stuck in the slums with the niggers. I’ve nothing against the blacks but I feel for the white to find it so much harder to gain acceptance in such an environment. He needs to make a greater effort and take a longer time to get to where others can go to in something like a snap of the finger. But when eventually he does get there, now that’s what i call a proud accomplishment.

I admit that I’m having what my friend aptly calls “Quarter-life Crisis”. It’s much better now that I’ve found a job and settled an aspect of my life. But much more remains unknown and I’ve never fretted more. 23’s still considered young but I’m scared that I would still be the same, stuck at the same spot, a few more years down the road and that freaks me out because I won’t be exactly young by then right. I probably need to make changes but maybe I’m scared, maybe I’m lazy, so yes please, just kill me. Why don’t they have the Idiot’s Guide To Being 23 at Popular? So yes, huck finn, life at 23 sucks. Cheers.