hello autumn!
07/11/2010
autumn drops
In the few weeks I slacked off from updates, the following happened:
- I went to work
- I got home from work
- One Friday when we got home from work, we found the modem died while we were away
- We replaced it with a new modem, but then the Ooma gave trouble
- It rained a lot (by Autumn in San Francisco standards)
- The San Francisco Giants won the World Series, beating the Texas Rangers (and Cliff Lee!) 4-1
- I had a sudden craving for shortbread cookies
- I made and consumed said shortbread cookies
- I also found, in the process, that perhaps a micro-grater isn’t the best way to grate your chocolate (it makes it into chocolate powder) – chopping the chocolate makes for more satisfying chips
- Good butter makes good cookies, leaving the butter out for a day makes for easy creaming
- I am still searching for the perfect everyday jacket – when I find it, I’m getting 2 of it
- I found the comfortablest pair of shoes, ever: the Reebok Easy Tone
And that’s the long and short of it. Halloween came and went too, but it was relatively uneventful. Anyway, 2.5 weeks to Thanksgiving, and more importantly, 3 weeks to Black Friday and Cyber Monday! Can’t wait!
the same, only different
13/10/2010
The Blue Angels
Have been back earning an honest day’s work now for about 10 weeks now. I don’t know how I feel about it, I’m mostly tired. I try to recall how I had seemingly boundless energy before – it’s mostly because I never put in a whole days’ work 
The culture at the Big Why doesn’t change. Most of the people you meet here are truly some of the most laid back, easy to get along with people. Most everyone is supportive and they try to be helpful. It’s a comfortable work environment.
But something’s a little different this time. I think this time around, I’m nice.
I don’t know what it is that’s making me go all soft on people. It could be a combination of factors. The list includes:
- Coming back after an extended break – perspective
- Getting older – again, perspective
- Getting wiser – more perspective!! And in a way, introspective
- Being a contractor – I don’t carry around a whole lot of baggage with me
- Being new in the environment – as someone starting from scratch you tend to embrace humility more firmly
- Being happy – I don’t know about this. I’m enjoying the work, but I’m not bowled over happy to be up at 6.45am most days
Whatever it is, perhaps the point is to just enjoy it while it lasts. 
That, I think, comes from perspective.
I really should be sleeping
25/09/2010
oohh lights
Been stewing over a couple of things unrelated to work, that’s keeping me up.
It’s been 2 months now since I started working again, and I guess I’m feeling a little more adjusted. The routine works, getting to and from work is a long commute, but it’s fairly easy. I’m also trying not to get heady with glee at being able to tell when garbage is being spewed and it is taking a lot more to stop myself from saying rude things and rolling my eyes. Honeymoon is officially over.
Also, my mentor of sorts – the person who was parceling off parts of his job – left for Bangalore today. On a jet plane. Not likely to return again.
It wasn’t me. I don’t think.
I’ve also been telling myself I’m feeling great this time around, because I’m not really being paid to give 2 hoots; so I feel completely alright leaving work at work, though I suspect deep down I’m really trying to convince myself that. The baggage though, I’ve managed to leave behind, and working in a new department on areas that were completely foreign to me is great for that. Alas, though I’m afraid I fall back into similar patterns, and find myself back at square one.
What then? I don’t know. I’m quite determined to do this swimmingly. And if there are some similar patterns, I suppose my only consolation is knowing it’s only temporary. Work life is quite enjoyable with an expiry date. Liberating.
What I’ve learnt in two months:
I’m incurably addicted to small eyes. Northern small eyes.
Incompetency is universal.
I still love working on the internet, and the Big Why is a warm bath.
I can drive and have my conference call, but not accomplish either very well.
The good news: the fall tv lineup is set, and House, Glee, 30 Rock, Community are coming back.
The bad news: I’m so tired by the time I get home, and the commute is so long, I grab dinner, hit the shower, and go straight to sleep.
The good news: there’s wifi in the bus.
The bad news: everyone and his pet cat in the bus is trying to do all sorts of bandwidth chomping crap (in the name of work, right!) so it’d be close to impossible to watch it on hulu on the bus.
The good news: there’s always mobile broadband.
The bad news: it costs an arm and a leg, and they quite possibly write it in the contract to name your first-born “Verizon”.
The good news: I can always read in the bus instead.
The bad news: it makes me sleepy, or want to throw up. Either of which is quite unglam.
This can go on and on, but I trust you get the picture.
Happy 8-9-10!
08/09/2010
Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe
I’m tired as heck, but it only happens once a millennium, and it’s my birthday to boot. For someone who appreciates perfection, it’s a sweet coincidence for me. So sweet, I dragged it out over two timezones.
Crazy much?
This year I got myself a new cellphone (Nokia E63 – cos I’m cheap) and a new watch (Citizen Eco-Drive, cos I’m not a big fan of changing batteries). I’m contemplating a new iPod, since my Nano 1st Gen is 5 years old.
Greedy much?
Well, I figure now that I’m back to work I should treat myself. Just to make getting to work palatable. Anyway.
I’ll leave you with what I was thinking when I took that picture:
忍一时，风平浪静。
退一步，海阔天空。
Just like old times
15/08/2010
Time flies. Even when you’re not having fun. I’ve traded my live-free life for gainful employment, and though it pays the bills, I’d rather be not working. Ah well, we all haveta do what we don’t like sometime.
Well, work life this time around, is like going to school. I get up super early, then go catch my ‘school bus’, which to be fair, is a large-ass 80 seater, with tables, cupholders and wi-fi. The bus ride takes an hour and a half (in traffic) and drops me off right in front of my building. That’s of note, since the campus is fairly large. Then 9 hours later, we reverse the whole activity and I get home 12 hours later, a lot grumpier, and annoyed I’ve 2.5 hours to have dinner, get cleaned up, finish any miscellany and get to sleep. Rinse and repeat.
At the office – more like school. I try to keep quiet, I don’t ask very many questions, and I only have 2 friends. I constantly harass my friends from the previous grade (co-workers from a previous life) because I don’t really mix with my own classmates very much. I don’t know if it’s cos I find it naturally hard to make friends, and I do, or if it’s because we don’t have a lot in common. Maybe both.
In other news, found a bunch of my classmates on Facebook cos someone put an old class photo up. Looking back, those were pretty fun times too. Maybe in 20 years I’ll look back on work and find it fun.
ch-ch-ch-changes
23/07/2010
alternate dahlia
Yes, I threw letters out. Cards, notes, scrawny little gifts from inexperienced little boys, trinkets, toys, I threw a bunch out. I’m not going to try and suggest what you should or should not do with your belongings. I’m not going to make excuses. I’m going to tell you how I decided to do it.
It’d been years since I read those letters, looked at those trinkets. We’ve come a long way from then.
Are we the same girls? Perhaps.
Do I remember how I felt when I received those pieces of correspondence? Yes.
Do I feel it’s physical existence is a part of the large baggage I carry about in life? Yes.
Have things changed? Yes.
Will I get rid of it all one day? Perhaps, I’m not sure. I’d hope to be evolved enough about it. Evidently it’s just aspiration.
Aspiration to what? The belief that whatever we hold dear is always with us. And the physical manifestation, perhaps, is merely temporary, cold comfort.
pen pals
11/07/2010
all swirley inside
My niece finally got herself an email address. She’s been writing to me for about a month now, I got the first email a couple of weeks after I got back from Singapore.
It’s totally cute, cos she’s been trying out different fonts, background colours, sign-offs. She offers small snippets on the latest at home and school.
It totally takes me back more than 20 years – I used to write to my baby cousin. It was always a treat getting physical mail in the box. Alas my cousin is a baby no longer, she’s now a mother of a toddler, with another on the way. And yet I still lead a relatively low responsibility, low obligation life. I do enjoy a life lived untethered.
Later in school I used to correspond with a couple of friends by mail. Some of it still sit in boxes in my room at my parents. Unfortunately I did have to make a call and discard some, difficult as it might have been. Email, however, is a different creature. No one writes on email the way they do in a letter. Not really. For some reason, letters read more earnestly.
Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe there’s just a little more honesty when you put pen to paper. After all, it’s so much easier to backspace, ctrl-backspace your way to perfection.
Happy Independence Day!
03/07/2010
Sunrise
To everyone who gives a damn, Happy Independence Day! On 2 Jul, 234 years ago, 12 colonies voted for independence and 1 abstained, thus severing ties with Great Britain. 2 days later, after edits were complete, the Declaration of Independence was approved, and sent to the printers.
It is interesting to note that it was only signed about a month later, on 2 August. However everyone seems perfectly satisfied celebrating the day it went to the printers.
And so the brave New World came to be, and the people here lived with the entitlement of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness thereafter.
The end!
the great equaliser
16/06/2010
I’ve always been convinced of this theory: the great equaliser.
In life, everything will come to a net gain of zero.
We get born mostly with nothing, and we die with the same amount. Someone walking down the street – great faces often look blah from behind, and vice versa. We all think it some time, oftentimes cloaking that same theory under the “God is Fair” category, don’t we? The smart guy with the horrible personality, the affable girl with the overlooked looks.
That’s life. You win some, you lose some. Highs and lows. In the end, it’s a net zero.
A rose by any other name
Yesterday, I harvested some of the blooms from the front garden. I’ve gotten too lazy to tend to the back garden, so as good as it looks in front (its ok, not all that great) it’s as bad as it looks behind (by that regard, it shouldn’t be all that overgrown). The Windemere rosebush I planted last year is doing wonderfully. The blooms are a delicate pink, scented lightly with a fruity floral note, a very hybrid tea sort of scent; and best of all, it’s one of those peony shaped blooms. I love those. It’s like two plants in one. This spring the plant sprung enthusiastically into production, and I snipped a bounty of blooms. It isn’t even summer yet, so I expect a little more mileage from the bush. I went ahead and planted some lavender last autumn as well, in the front (yeah, it’s a bit of a jungle out there) and harvested some of that as well. It’s very tempting to leave the blooms on the plant till the wilt, because it lasts longer. But pruning the plants and harvesting the blooms encourages the plant to produce more.
So the flowers are snipped, and I’ve not ever been so pleased with the quantity of cut flowers in my home as I was yesterday. The living room smells faintly of roses – the way it should, and not really of lavender which is a little disappointing.
This morning, I decided to give coffee another try. Come on. Millions of people around the world swear by it. Am I really the going to be pretty much the last bastion? So I boil my water, I set up my Aeropress and put the coffee in (one scoop, cos I’m a wuss). I fill the hot water into the number 2.5 line (also cos I’m a wuss). So I pour the water in, and I hear it dripping in even before I stick the plunger in. Eh? Leaky much? So I decide to check on it, I lift the device over the cup and guess what.
Liquid runs over my left hand. Coffee on the sink, the counter, the dishwasher (that was open because it’s my dish rack), the floor. My pyjamas. Oh crap. My hand stings. Water. Cold water. Run run run it over my hand. Grab knife. Slice aloe. Crap one good hand is pretty useless. Oh man, smells putrid. Like armpit. I will endure. Slice slice get the gel. Cold water run run run over raw red hand. Ow pain pain the sting. Dry hand dry hand quick. Slather stinky armpit aloe on. More more ow pain pain!!!
Ah crap. Clean up royal freaking mess in kitchen.
So yes. While my living room now smells heavenly, my kitchen briefly smelled of coffee (remember the sting! Ow!!!) and armpit.
The universe speaks. It’ll all come to nought. To not get pissed at the f**ked up hand and having to clean the kitchen for the lovely roses and lavender in the next room – that takes perhaps a more evolved person than I am.
