I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

The place is still kind of sparcely furnished. We’ve the bed we shipped from Singapore, I ordered another for the spare room, and there’s a dining table that came with the house.

I like the empty living room, but it’s hecka echoey. It does make cleaning up a breeze though. Hee.

Our room is complete though. I carved out a space in our room just for me. I am sitting there now, almost 3 in the morning. I can’t really sleep, I think I had too much tea. I have a nice little armchair, a matching ottoman, a little work light, and my knitting gear (some of it) stuffed into a box under the window by the chair. I even got a pseudo-designer magazine table – which FedEx delivered and left at my doorstep, how clever – to complete the space. It’s comfortable.

I enjoy being at home. It’s the only place that feels like home.

Cos. Outside on the streets it feels like a throwback in time. Cyclists hovering all over the street (them greenies), people spitting everywhere – on the road (again them greenies), on the sidewalk (what we call the pavement), potholes in badly maintained roads, old cinemas, bad traffic, bad manners. Of the lot the spitting has to be the most disgusting. It’s not surprising to come across random but generous wads of rather malignant looking loogie just standing there in the sun, glowing, waiting to be trampled on.

The horror. The irony. The civilised nation.

While it might be just one more thing to look out for while navigating myself around the city, the other being poop, it’s not something you’d expect in a large, cosmopolitan city in a developed country, you know, a member of the First World since you’d have to pass pretty stringent GDP criteria, and I’m thinking, the higher the GDP, the better the education, and therefore the more civilised. It’s a wild presumption on my part, I agree. I mean, they can’t spell, and they don’t really speak English anymore.

On the issue of littering and spitting and gum, I have to say even though our policy back in Singapore is a tad authoritarian, I am grateful for growing up in a relatively clean, sterile country. Yes, it would’ve been better if people refrained from behaviour which is selfish and inconsiderate out of the goodness of their hearts. But education alone would have taken too long. Now, I feel proud when people mention how clean Singapore is. Yes, we don’t do it through the goodness of our hearts, we do it because there are consequences of not complying. But, I don’t have to put up with gum or loogie on my shoe, and more importantly, people everywhere are the same whereever it is they say they come from, so I’m grateful for the practical, realistic and deliberate decision to raise the social standard of the lowest common denominator.

There is no perfect state.

I would suppose there is much to be said for being the Land of the Free. Perhaps some day I will appreciate the hubris and the gile of a people blatantly unafraid to speak up, unafraid to oppose, unafraid to question, unafraid to look stupid. Maybe that someday I will appreciate how my earnings will be taken to subsidise a broken system flooded with inefficiency and a misguided belief in welfare. It might even be the same someday when I find enjoyment in having someone with dubious intentions and intelligence decide what’s best for me and how I should think and what I should do. When that someday comes I hope I don’t get shot dead on the free streets, and I certainly hope I don’t land near a gleaming loogie.

And that’s why I relish being at home.

The place is still kind of sparcely furnished. We’ve the bed we shipped from Singapore, I ordered another for the spare room, and there’s a dining table that came with the house.

I like the empty living room, but it’s hecka echoey. It does make cleaning up a breeze though. Hee.

Our room is complete though. I carved out a space in our room just for me. I am sitting there now, almost 3 in the morning. I can’t really sleep, I think I had too much tea. I have a nice little armchair, a matching ottoman, a little work light, and my knitting gear (some of it) stuffed into a box under the window by the chair. I even got a pseudo-designer magazine table – which FedEx delivered and left at my doorstep, how clever – to complete the space. It’s comfortable.

I enjoy being at home. It’s the only place that feels like home.

Cos. Outside on the streets it feels like a throwback in time. Cyclists hovering all over the street (them greenies), people spitting everywhere – on the road (again them greenies), on the sidewalk (what we call the pavement), potholes in badly maintained roads, old cinemas, bad traffic, bad manners. Of the lot the spitting has to be the most disgusting. It’s not surprising to come across random but generous wads of rather malignant looking loogie just standing there in the sun, glowing, waiting to be trampled on.

The horror. The irony. The civilised nation.

While it might be just one more thing to look out for while navigating myself around the city, the other being poop, it’s not something you’d expect in a large, cosmopolitan city in a developed country, you know, a member of the First World since you’d have to pass pretty stringent GDP criteria, and I’m thinking, the higher the GDP, the better the education, and therefore the more civilised. It’s a wild presumption on my part, I agree. I mean, they can’t spell, and they don’t really speak English anymore.

On the issue of littering and spitting and gum, I have to say even though our policy back in Singapore is a tad authoritarian, I am grateful for growing up in a relatively clean, sterile country. Yes, it would’ve been better if people refrained from behaviour which is selfish and inconsiderate out of the goodness of their hearts. But education alone would have taken too long. Now, I feel proud when people mention how clean Singapore is. Yes, we don’t do it through the goodness of our hearts, we do it because there are consequences of not complying. But, I don’t have to put up with gum or loogie on my shoe, and more importantly, people everywhere are the same whereever it is they say they come from, so I’m grateful for the practical, realistic and deliberate decision to raise the social standard of the lowest common denominator.

There is no perfect state.

I would suppose there is much to be said for being the Land of the Free. Perhaps some day I will appreciate the hubris and the gile of a people blatantly unafraid to speak up, unafraid to oppose, unafraid to question, unafraid to look stupid. Maybe that someday I will appreciate how my earnings will be taken to subsidise a broken system flooded with inefficiency and a misguided belief in welfare. It might even be the same someday when I find enjoyment in having someone with dubious intentions and intelligence decide what’s best for me and how I should think and what I should do. When that someday comes I hope I don’t get shot dead on the free streets, and I certainly hope I don’t land near a gleaming loogie.

And that’s why I relish being at home.

Nothing fancy today, but a nice short story about God. Kinda. Well. His 9 billion names. It being Easter weekend and all, thought it would be keeping with the season.

Found a bunch of historical figures on Facebook, time sure hasn’t done anyone any favours. Most of them are married, some with kids. They seem happy. That’s nice. I realise I can’t remember the names of many old crushes. Seems that there were filed in my head as Says My Name with a Cute Brit Accent, or Lives Across the Street with Twin Brothers, or Friend of Ex-Boyfriend#2.

I need to find other stuff to do online besides shop and stalk.

In other news, my new favourite movie title is Quantum of Solace. It’s very Daniel Craig-as-James-Bond like.

Tried Chicken Poop lip balm (no poop in it, really). Too oily. The lavender in it is nice, but it’s a little weird tasting it. Soybean oil is too viscuous for lips. Sticking to Burt’s Bees.

I don’t get it. Are we all 14? Are we still doing birthday parties? With cake and balloons and little hats and punch from a little plastic cup? And “surprise!” followed by *feigned surprise*?

Received our second surprise-birthday party invite today. Both were sent by the dude’s significant other. They usually involve very secretive operations, very complicated plans, very over-the-top dramatics, and a very pedestrian climax. I’m a grinch. I know.

I like a surprise as much as the dude down the street, but it does not involve gazillions of family and/or friends.
<– /begin shamless plug –>
I mean, if KF surreptitiously got me a present (64GB solid state preferred, but who’s splitting hairs?), that’d surprise the socks off of me.
<– /end shameless plug –>
But squeezing 30 people behind a sofa to yell at me on my birthday is more likely to piss me off more than anything.

Do women find some kind of need to organise a surprise thing for their significant others to:
1) play some kind of conduitory role in their S.O’s lives?
2) assuage the guilt of occupying the rest of his life?
3) assert the happy-yuppie-but-we’re-still-kids status for the viewing public?
4) all of the above?

I’m a grinch. I know.

We’ve crawled into December now. I’ve spent about four and a half months here. Like it or not, watch it or not, want it to or not, time passes.

It’s getting cold again. Under 10°C in the day. My fingers and toes are freezing as my brain tries to make sense of how it can look so bright and scorching hot and yet be this frigid.

It’s getting foggy again. Woo.

In other news, I’m (also) stuck in San Francisco on Facebook. No changing regional networks willy-nilly, they say, only once every 60 days. Great. So much for exploring the regions.

Had a long week. I feel fatigued. I need space of my own.

Driving lessons. Retail hours. Dinner. Research. Chores. Home.

BLAH.

Had my second driving lesson yesterday. And this time, I drove on the freeway.

The driving instructor picked me up bright and early at 9am. Bleary eyed and sleepy, I adjusted my seat and mirrors and headed down to the Great Highway. We headed South and before I knew it, we were on our way down to Pacifica.

View Larger Map

The drive was really nice, and when your senses are maxed out trying to process all the information available: cars on the street in front of you, cars on the road behind you, instructions from the driving instructor, an hour goes by with the blink of an eye. Time flies when you’re behind the wheel. Fruit flies like a banana.

After a short drive to Pacifica, which by the way is really pleasant because we took the Ocean Route, we headed back towards Chinatown.

View Larger Map

Driving on the freeway was a tad scary, but if I psyche myself to pretend it’s some driving game, it’s ok again. Also comforting to know that if I bash the car, the instructor’s car is insured.

Traffic downtown was crazy, and it was raining. It slowed to a crawl, but I stuck in there and managed to get there in 1 piece. Car intact as well.

It was fun. I get to drive again on Tuesday. Yay!

It’s nice to be back working in a start-up environment. Not that I didn’t treat my time at the Big Why with the same irreverence reserved for a start-up, but things are always different in a small outfit where everyone has a direct and vested interest in making things happen. Things at the Big Why circa 2007 is certainly different from life at the Big Why circa 2001.

What I did love at the Big Why was the fact that it didn’t matter whether you were some unhappy dead-beat engineer (probably called Harry) working on a small cog in a periphery and unimportant big wheel. If you have been lucky enough to be hired at the right time, you would probably have enough money in the bank to tell your recently-hired-probably-spineless-definitely-clueless boss to f**k off and pretty much do what you want (or not do anything), since he probably needs to pay off his mortgage while you bought your house with cold hard cash after exercising your gazillions of options. It always kept things interesting. And real. And funny.

I try to carry on that tradition, where-ever I am, but it’s hard when:
1. My name isn’t the slightest bit close to Harry
2. Unfortunately, I wasn’t hired at quite the right time
3. Unfortunately, I didn’t get gazillions of options
4. I can’t even buy a car with cold hard cash

I will try to make do with just snapping at my current boss when I’m feeling particularly adventurous.

In other news: it’s raining tonight. Another first for me in this new land. According to the weather widget on my browser, it should be 15°C outside, but it feels a lot lower than that. The room, however, is toasty, thanks to the lights and my laptop. Tomorrow looks to be a 19°C sunny day, so perhaps I don’t need a sweater.

Ok. First we have to establish that, I was at the Big Why for a damn long time. I mean, internet years are like dog years – so in that sense I spent close to half a century at the Big Why.

I even forgave them when Jerry showed up at the SG office a few months before I joined them.

But hey, when Filo shows up a few months after I leave, I think it’s a sign.

What? Can’t have more than one Supreme Commander in the house? I’m a care and share sorta person! I’m willing to share the limelight on occasion!

Anyway.