Would I say I hate what I do? No, I enjoy what I do. Would I say I don’t like my current company? No, the people and the company are nice. But after burning three out of four weekends in the office since I got back a month ago (doesn’t feel like a month, but much, much longer) from vacation — and, mind, it’s not just one day, but both Saturdays and Sundays that I’m back in the office — I begin to wonder: maybe even masochistic workaholics have their limits.
Maybe it won’t be so bad if I knew this was just a “busy period”. Or if I had a balanced other parts of my life. The way my colleague put it, it’s one thing to work like that when we’re 22. But at our level, we would still work late when there’s a pitch or a launch because coz that’s how our industry (or business in general) is. But things are getting a little excessive. It’s like we got the extended sentence. Maybe I’m grouchy because I missed both dragon boat and yoga. Maybe I’m just tired and need sleep.
But on Saturday morning, I received a message from a friend talking about his trip — exploring canyons and deserts, riparian areas and meadows, the sights, the flora and fauna, the stars! — and I just felt happier. Elated. Ecstatic. From rock bottom to the top of the world. Like all isn’t that bad in the world. It made my morning, day, weekend. Feels kinda like this song.
It’s gonna be one of those days. A come-into-the-office-sleepwalking day. A can’t-even-pick-up-a-pen-without-dropping-it day. The skirt I wanted to wear in the morning had a missing button. I couldn’t get coffee out of two coffee machines in the office (though one of them managed to spit water out onto the counter).
And then at half past nine, looking at the pile of work on my table and the blank page not filled yet for the discussion in half an hour, I realised it was only Tuesday. Morning. Grrrrr…
(Image links to Radiohead’s music video “House of Cards”, a technological first directed by James Frost. Instead of using cameras, the promo was shot entirely by lasers and scanners.)
Between an Achy Back from training and Stiff Hamstrings from yoga, I walk funny on Mondays. My colleagues must think I have very fun weekends (they are fun, just not what others might think, and seriously, they are fun because they are my precious bit of non-work moments when I have no phone or email).
Work’s the same. There’s lots of it and not enough hours in a day. Everyone’s busy. R away on shoot. K’s agency is pitching like crazy. Eam’s stepped down as captain of the team (heard about it from David; he wasn’t at training coz I think he had an event over the weekend).
But everyone’s trying to stay chipper about it. The usual “times like these it’s good to be busy, it means you have a job.” Still, I think my brain needs a bit of a breather. It’s okay when I’m just slogging at it, but when I have to think ideas… you can’t get good or fresh ideas overnight. (You can try, you might get lucky, but the odds are against it most of the time.)
Which may explain why my weekend in the office was less productive that I had hoped. Minor affliction of Mental Block. If not monitored carefully, these things could aggravate into a case of Burn Out. (Of course, they could be remedied by regular Retail Therapy, or a maximum high dose of Spa, but who has time?)
I was online with one of my former bosses and relating my Chicago trip to him. He says that the market’s still bad there, and that my 6 days were probably more like a recce. He did mention the Green Card lottery. I’ve heard of it before, but didn’t know it was an official ballot. I guess there is always that. Or I could do the No Choice option: just leave here and search there (or starve trying).
Sigh. Not half a day later, I was online with Sling, talking about leaving again, but this time wishing I could go backpacking. Travelling. Anywhere but here.
I escaped work one evening and caught Star Trek again with K and R. The day after, K and I were gushing online to one another about New Kirk and New Spock. Especially New Spock. Damn, we’re going to fight over the same fictitious heartthrob. Of course, K pointed out that he might be gay, which was kinda a damper on the mood. Not that he is any more attainable to us were he not. And then we started surfing the net and swapping pictures (she’s using one of the pics as her icon now) and gushing some more. We’re definitely converts, we are. And then, we went back to work. (Actually, the break was quite refreshing and definitely a healthier way to get the heart racing than lighting up a cigarette.)
Girl silliness will always exist. But methinks stress is a catalyst.
This song came up, oddly enough, when I was reading something about an old music video by Trent Reznor. This led to the original of this song by NIN, which led to the cover by Johnny Cash on American Recordings IV. When first approached regarding this cover, Reznor admitted he was flattered but a bit worried that the idea sounded gimmicky. After the cover was released, he gave his reaction in an interview: “I had just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn’t mine anymore.”
Received with critical acclaim, “Hurt” was nominated in seven categories at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, and won for best cinematography.
The nights are hardest. And the mornings are no better. Bugger.
I’m not sure if this is what music from the Caribbean sounds like. Growing up, listening to my parents’ Beatles cassettes, I always thought this song was from that area, namely Jamaica. Don’t know why. Probably because it was the only place I knew of that was remotely related to that region. For all you know, the Fab Four were singing about Brixton. Anyhoo, it’s a happy song. We got a job, so happy ever after in the marketplace we shall work. Life goes on. :)
Last week was hard. (New boss, new projects, which is technically a good sign, because these are good new projects.) And this week was showing signs of being harder. (It’s do-able, it’s just a lot.)
One of those days I had it up to my ears and went to met Jun for a late dinner to drown my sorrows in some wonton soup despite the ridiculously hot weather of the past fortnight.
She’s busy too, but the light at the end of her tunnel is that she’s hoping for an October holiday to London-Paris-Barcelona-Morocco for three weeks. Or Vienna-Budapest-Krakow-Prague. Or Spain-Morocco. She’s also trying to get me to join her.
I don’t want to go, partly because I’ve been to most of these places, except for Spain-Morocco, which I don’t want to rush through in three weeks. Of course, there’s the fact that I don’t have three weeks leave to spare. My leave is precious, and I’m saving it for I’m not sure what. But there we were, world map spread open on the coffeeshop table, looking at the proximities of coutries and the permutations of possible journeys. And all this talk has made my feet itchy again. (Imagine Turkey-Jordan-Egypt together with the Spain-Morocco. Sweeeet…)
Anyway, she has a colleague that had had enough of work. And quit his job, without another job. Then went on a cruise to the Caribbean with his family.
The secret of being able to do something like that was that he was the scion of some casino family in the region. Ah, so deceptively simple.
The two of us then went back to seeking comfort in our wonton, talking about her vacation plans. I told her I didn’t think she could cover London-Paris-Barcelona-Morocco in three weeks. I mean, I guess she could, if she really wanted to, but it’d be a just these places and none of the other towns along the way (and it still seems very touch-and-go). She said airfares are cheap, though I think there’ll be a lot of days wasted travelling. I suggested Amsterdam and Belgium (she wasn’t interested) or Scotland (maybe). Or even Switzerland (which she now really likes).
But in the middle of it all, we suddenly burst out: “How can anyone just quit his job and run off to a Caribbean cruise, just like that?! It’s… it’s- it’s rude!” And we expressed our disapproval at such inconsiderate behaviour.
I remember thinking: So, that’s what people who don’t have to work do for a living. They don’t become rare book collectors. They join advertising. Together with the rest of us who, all bright-eyed and idealistic, were dumb enough to think we could earn a good living and like our jobs. The realisation was enough to make one weep in her wonton soup.
Here’s a website I chanced upon a while back and occasionally stumble back into sometimes. I can’t recall what exact searches I was doing, but I’ve ended up here more than once: NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.
It’s Google that’s leading me here, so it must get hit quite frequently; comforting to know so I’m no that unusual a freak. Still, I’ll take a break from the astronomy stuff. Girl geek, not cool. And astronomy nerd bravado probably isn’t one of the best things for a girl to flaunt.
(Much as I’m glad to be a geek, I once told my colleague I was in Astronomy Club in junior college, and he replied, “You really tried your hardest to be one, didn’t you?” Thanks, Phil, you really know how to make a girl feel good. And people wonder why I’m such a private person. In hindsight, I should’ve taken my dictionary and launched it towards the space-time region of his flamboyant head. Hee.)
Anyhoo, I’ve seen the Milky Way before, when I was really young and my dad pointed it out to me. But it didn’t look anywhere close to any of these amazing images.
The website’s got plenty many pictures — astronomy is such a broad subject — some more amazing than others. Go to the APOD index or do a search (milky way or nebula, etc). I think the best pictures turn up. Our world is awesome, but every now and then, it’s nice to peek into what wonders the universe holds.
V838 Monocerotis is variable star in the constellation Monoceros (Unicorn) that experienced a major outburst observed in early 2002, reaching maximum visual magnitude on 6 February before starting to dim. It was originally thought to be a typical nova eruption, but later experienced a second brightening, mostly in infrared wavelengths, in early April.
The clouds in the picture are light echoes, a phenomenon produced by rapidly brightening objects like novae and supernovae, where light from the same event, e.g. a nova, is reflected off interstellar dust, which may or may not be related to said event, and arrives at the viewer at a later time than the initial flash. The expansion of V838 Monocerotis is expected to grow until 2010, which means you’ve still got some time to catch the last remnants of the cloud.
It’s the shuttle flying in front of a giant yellow sponge in space. Hee. Okay, not really. Here’s the correct caption:
In this tightly cropped image, the NASA space shuttle Atlantis is seen in silhouette during solar transit, Tuesday, May 12, 2009, from Florida. This image was made before Atlantis and the crew of STS-125 had grappled the Hubble Space Telescope. Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)
The STS-125 Mission is the current space shuttle mission, being flown by Atlantis, and the fifth and final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Atlantis is carrying two new instruments to the HST, a replacement Fine Guidance Sensor, and six new gyroscopes and batteries to allow the telescope to continue to function at least through 2014. Yay. (Then what? No one really knows. Boo.)
I’m not sure if this is a good thing, this article from nytimes.com. Not the article, but what it’s about. I checked the date — maybe it was printed on 1 April, maybe it was a prank. Nope. Coming from a family of Scouts and Guides, I’m all for the motto to “Be Prepared”, but I found this a little unsettling. (And even if I wasn’t, I think would still find it weird.) It’s just strange. Somehow it’s one thing when kids play Counter-Strike, it’s another when they are crouched low beside a door about to storm an unused building.
What happened to campfires and canoeing, flying foxes and pioneering and backwoodsman cooking with live chickens? Sure, the world has changed lots from holding hands and singing Kumbaya, but this? Maybe instead of the clove hitch, now you learn how to tie a noose. Hmm.
Yes, the response is unanimous. Star Trek is awesome. And I’m not the only Jedi geek saying that. Not the only Jedi geek gushing about how it took the series boldly backward, and how it is humorous, but never in a way that mocked the old series. Some of my friends, serious fanboys and fangirls they, are raving about it too. Whee.
One of my classmates who’s planning a Star Wars wedding on 31 October (I don’t know how he got his fiancé to agree to that, but at least that it’s hard for him to forget the date, plus I guess it’s sweet that she agreed to it) might now be re-thinking the theme. How to celebrate Star Wars in the wake of Star Trek?
Anyway, there’s another movie coming up. Not exactly the same as the When Kirk Met Spock movie, but a best buddies pairing of a different cult set — the reunion of Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal of Y Tu Mamá También, the excellent coming-of-age road trip movie written and directed by brother team, Carlos Cuarón (who wrote) and Alfonso Cuarón (who directed). Really liked that movie, even if I didn’t get the full story until a few years later.
In this new movie directed by Carlos and produced by Alfonso’s production company, Rudo Y Cursi, Luna and García Bernal play half brothers, Beto and Tato, plantation workers in a “banana town” who both find fame as professional soccer players on rival teams and end up fighting over who’s better. Rudo Y Cursi are their nicknames, which translate roughly into “tough” (Luna) and “corny” (García Bernal).
Read the nytimes.com review. Even if it’s a so-so verdict (the people who leave comments like it disagree though), the movie still sounds interesting. Otherwise, there’s always eye-candies Luna and García Bernal.
I wonder if/when the movie will make it to our shores.
Flashback to 9 years old. 7pm and it’s dinnertime at my grandmother’s flat which is downstairs of my parents’ flat. The TV would be on, if my grandparents and parents allowed it, but, darn, they’re showing Star Trek.
With the funny fake alien landscapes and the not-cool weapons and the layout of the bridge where, every now and then, everyone would run to one side of the bridge and then run to the other side while the screen tilts. And I don’t like the layout of the bridge and the tight bright blue or red costumes. So not cool like Star Wars.
Flashback to 12 years old. I’m on the living room sofa and they are showing Star Trek: The Motion Picture on TV. I fall asleep halfway. Still not cool compared to Star Wars.
Flashback to the 80’s. Star Trek: The Next Generation. I catch the earlier seasons. I still don’t like the bridge and the uniforms, but have to admit the series is okay. However it’s still not as cool as Star Wars.
Flashback to 2002. My friend calls me and asks if I want to watch Star Trek: Nemesis. His girlfriend doesn’t want to. It’s my first Star Trek movie. Wasn’t too bad, but still like Star Wars. better.
1999-2005. Episodes I, II and III. OMG, what have they done?!
Flashback to December 2008. What? They’re bringing back the Star Trek franchise? And hottie potottie Eric Bana is playing an alien bad guy? Why?! But, hey, the trailer looks quite promising. The sci-fi nerd in me is quite objective, it seems.
Then this evening. Wow. That was a really cool movie. They really did bring the franchise back. And they did it quite cleverly (meaning the plot is plausible in the sci-fi geek mentality) and quite seamlessly. The action sequences were well done and the dialogue was witty enough. It was enjoyable to watch. J.J. Abrams and team did a good job.
The way they developed Kirk’s character is quite good, though I kept thinking, haha, that guy is “Willian Shatner”…
Spock was cool too, though my friends were distracted by, that guy’s Sylar on Heroes (which I never caught on to, so it was no biggie to me). (In fact, he’s quite cute.)
It was also interesting to meet the “new” versions of the characters and see how they joined the crew of the USS Enterprise. Heh. Who knew I would ever be rooting for the spaceship I thought was outstanding in its shape, but somehow odd as far as spaceships go, even the unusual ones.
I still don’t like the costumes though, but the modernised versions are waaaay better (except for the sky diving scenes, which I thought the costumes looked a little cheesy, like something retro but was made contemporary). My dislike stems from the realness and practicality of the outfits. They don’t seem very practical for space travel (granted my gripe is with the 1966 series, and even with ST:TNG). Like spaceship pilots would have jumpsuits similar to what real pilots would wear, you know? Not that I want to draw comparisons, but the X-Wing pilot’s outfit is much more functional, as are some of the fighting space vessels in Star Wars, which was why I liked it (the original trilogy only) so much. Anyway, that’s just me…
But it’s funny how there is this generation of crazy Star Wars fans that, I think, grew a little disillusioned with the recent Star Wars stuff, even as this new stuff is breeding a new generation of Star Wars fans. And then this Star Trek comes along…
Anyhoo, I’ll end off here, and just say: now I know what the movie poster means. All said, I’m a convert from Jedi to Trekkie (for a while, at least).
The first couple team (the first two Races were won by teams of two alpha-males), the first husband-wife team, the first African-American team… They all did it. And finally, the first Asian team has won The Amazing Race. Whee. Congrats to Tammy and Victor Jih, brother and sister, lawyers from Harvard.
I’ve not been following the last few seasons of The Amazing Race — no time. But my family still does and I hear updates and occasionally see snippets of what’s happening.
Like how one team didn’t play fair at a task involving rickshaws when they arrived first at the location, pumped up the flat tires of their rickshaw, then hid the air pumps to confuse the other teams who all laboured at pulling rickshaws that had flat tires. My mum was so pleased they were penalised (but not enough as they weren’t eliminated in that round).
Or, how, in the last round of elimination, with four teams left racing for a million dollars, the two sisters in third place were running towards the finishing mat of that leg of the race, knowing that the last team was close behind them. Then suddenly one sister decides she needs to pee (she drank a lot in the previous task which involved eating scorpions).
They arrived at the mat last, missing out by just a few seconds, and got kicked out. For a million bucks, you’d think she’d pee herself. That was a very expensive pee break.
Some netizens felt that it was unfair that, as good as their teamwork became, as smart and athletic as the two of them were, Tammy and Victor had an advantage in the last part of the race, which took part in China. But, hey, there have been lots of races that passed through South America, and teams that took Spanish in high school gained a slight advantage over other racers, regardless of whether they were Caucasian, African American, Asian or Martian. And teams have openly used gender, looks, sex, age, disability, to their advantage whenever they needed to (which is fun to watch).
Besides, Amazing Race has been to China before. And that this team made it this far into this race wasn’t pre-planned anyways. So there.
The most inspiring team has to be the mum with the deaf son. Many say the mum’s amazingly tough and the pair did accomplish a feat by finishing the race, albeit in third place. But there are some detractors on the Net who feels she babies him too much. Anyway, they lost because, from the looks of it, the pressure got to him and his mind wasn’t thinking straight in the last challenge. He froze, and went from first to last place.
Both my mum and my brother’s gf don’t like the cheerleaders because they were always beating others down or calling them stupid (or one of them was, at least). Sure, maybe some of the opinions of the racers are subjective, but that’s the whole fun of watching reality TV with others.
And The Amazing Race is good. (Gee, it’s only won ten Primetime Emmy Awards…)
It’s probably one of two reality shows I would watch because I enjoy it (and not because I have too much time on my hands and I want to ridicule it, heehee), the other being Project Runway.
It’s about travel. Goes around the world from developed cities to developing nations. It lets the general public see parts of the world that they may never get to visit. Hopefully, it opens people’s minds to the diversity of cultures out there. And inspires people to want to get out and see the world more.
Thanks to Amazing Race Season 3, I thought to visit Vietnam — I had a 3-week gap between jobs and my friend coincidentally had leave to clear and we wanted to go somewhere within the region — and it was simply the most amazing.
Was it a profession of love for a woman? Or a cover-up story for a friend and fellow artist he admired greatly?
In the book “Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence”, two German art historians, Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, have hypothesize that Vincent van Gogh did not cut off his own ear in a fit of lunacy on the night of December 23, 1888, before presenting it to a prostitute, as hsitory says he did.
Instead, they claim Van Gogh concocted the tale to protect fellow artist and admired friend, Paul Gauguin, who had been visiting Arles, after much persuasion from the Dutch painter. The two men were purportedly arguing over a prostitute that both lusted over, or over art, which they were known to quarrel fiercely over, whether it should be drawn from life or from imagination. (Yet Van Gogh also felt an increasing fear that Gauguin was going to desert him.)
As the discussion grew heated, Gauguin, known to be an excellent fencer, perhaps deliberately or accidentally, in anger or self-defence, lopped off the Van Gogh’s ear. He later threw his sword into the Rhône, and left Arles, never to return again (he left for Tatiti shortly afterwards and never saw Van Gogh again) while Van Gogh staggered to deliver the bit of ear.
Truth or fiction? We may never know.
This is one of those instances where academics pour of what evidence exists from history — police statements, witnesses’ accounts, artists’ letters — and come up with new interpretations and conjectures. It’s not the first time. Even to the cut-ear-off-for-lover legend, one existing theory suggests that Gauguin’s departure was what drove Van Gogh to cut his ear off, which he presented as a gift to said lover.
However, since Van Gogh is one of the most researched and written about painters in the history of Western art, this scenario may be the latest to be put forth, but it will most likely not be the last. Did he or didn’t he, doesn’t matter. What doesn’t change is the amazing works of art that Van Gogh left behind that still mesmerise the world to this day.
Saturday in the office. Sunday in the office. Didn’t get to go to training to show off my newish still-whiter-than-thou’s long sleeved tee (which my friends noticed at last week’s training and expressed appropriate envy, heehee). Also didn’t get to go to yoga, because it was Mother’s Day and I wouldn’t have had enough time. However, I did have a very nice lunch with my mum and my grandmother. Unfortunately, I ate too much, and at the end of a week of crap eating and not getting out much. Grr. I want fish soup. Or sashimi salad.
I saw the cockatoos again this morning, flying out of the patch of wilderness next to the road near my home. I was going to the office, on a Saturday, that is a public holiday. Bugger.
From birds to amphibians, too bad about the green frog in the commercial for The Prince’s Rainforests Project Awareness Campaign. It was kinda sweet, but it would’ve been sweeter (albeit a PR and Humane Society and Customs and Animal Control Department nightmare) if it wasn’t computer generated. It did remind me of a brief encounter long ago when I was a teenager at Outward Bound School. Came back from supper in the mess one night and found a tiny bright green treefrog on my dorm bunk, sitting on top of my white sheets. It was adorable, limbs all tucked in. Clean and unslimy. I smiled at it, picked it up, and, in one of those moments which in hindsight I wonder why I didn’t do something because it was the most obvious thing to do and yet my mind was too one-tracked or thinking about other stuff that it didn’t occur to me to do it, which happens to me a lot, I let it go outside the window without giving it a kiss. Darn. (He was soooo adorable though, cute little green treefrog.)
Not a squawk. Not a tweet. But a screech. That’s one of the things that never fails to turn my head. It’s like a mini-banshee, in daylight, in a flashing blur of white.
I saw three cockatoos sweeping over the road yesterday morning, to perch on a big rain tree to watch us sad sods trudge the beaten path to work. Free as a bird, and a pretty one at that.
Last time, my friends didn’t believe me when I told them I saw wild parrots on my way home from school or when I was out cycling. I know they were parrots because of their screeching (my grandma’s neighbour had a pet macaw that could screech something wicked). Sometimes I’d be close enough to tell they were not oversized albino mynahs sitting in the trees. Anyway, one time, a cockatoo perched on the papaya tree in the garden outside my bedroom, happily feasting on a ripe fruit. Yep, cockatoo alright.
It looked so magnificent — perfectly white with a crest of yellow. So pure. Pretty, in an understated way.
(By the way, I loved that papaya tree; I’m not a big papaya eater but its fruit was really sweet. And once in a while, a leaf stalk or fruit would grow out awkwardly and provide a perch for birds to stand. And they would peck and feast on the sweet papaya flesh, especially the glossy starlings. I used to shoot plastic pellets from my bedroom window to scare the starlings away, when I ought to be doing my homework. But I know that’s very bad now, not doing homework… Okay, I meant bothering the starlings.)
Anyway, I never figured out if those cockatoos were migrating or feral, but they have been seen and noticed more in recent years. A small resident flock of Yellow Crested Cockatoos is regularly spotted in the Changi area.
.jpg){kind=link}