I.DON'T.WANT.

Pretty random question but did you ever have times that you told someone no, you didnt want but the person keep insisting you do it and even keep prompting you to give reasons to say why you dont want? so i experienced that today and till now i feel pretty uncomfortable that i couldnt say no without giving any "justification". what happened to respecting people's feelings and why cant there be no reason for just not wanting it? 

on one hand i didnt want to be the party pooper. to be honest there is "no harm" in doing it. basically it was having lunch with the other lg after church and the other lg wanted to go some random ulu place for lunch. one of the guys drove, so not an issue in transport there and home but i felt uncomfortable because we already had lunch with them last week and i felt very awkward having no common topics with them. not a big fan of eating lunch with strangers and making small talks y'know.

so i shared my thoughts in not wanting to go and asked them to go ahead if they wanted. however one friend kept insisting i did, saying things like "we will be there with you, it's just you were overwhelmed last week cos there were only 2 of you sitting with them in the corner, they really want to get to know us" etc and i felt even worse that she was downplaying my feelings.

sorry bruh i dont care if people want to know me. i dont wanna know them. but in the end i sighed and just agreed to go. introvert me (or is it just adulting) feeling damn mentally tired now 😭

It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me

it's been about 3 months since i last sat (laid) down to write. not that there's nothing much happening but i dont have the discipline to process my daily thoughts and translate them into words

so how am i?

fine i guess. wouldnt say im very happy with life but at the same time im glad nth major happened i guess?

so what happened in the past months?

mar - busy with tax filing

end mar - moved into new place

apr - short holiday to langkawi with yy and kym (photos long overdue as usual)

may - salary increase

jun - office reno

current thoughts?

jaded. with work, with life. it seems like everyone's getting married or getting proposed to and im just stagnant in life. i guess some people prefer no change in life but no, i havent achieved what i want in life yet so i guess im not satisfied

but it's funny though, i rmb how 1 month ago there was a sermon which spoke to me about the exact thing i think about every day

i admit i can get pretty jealous about seeing other people get good things in life and forget to count my blessings sometimes

and as a christian i was very upset because i feel like i have done everything to serve the Lord and all i get in return is nothing or even bad things

and then that particular week the sermon talked about how christians should be called apart for god

non-christians on the surface may be getting better rewards in life

not implying that it's not right to chase after monetary rewards

but the difference between christians and non-christians should be our view towards monetary rewards

yes better rewards may equate to better lives on earth but eventually what's in God's kingdom will last

and i teared so badly upon hearing that

thankfully i was tuning in from home so nobody could see me cry :/

and last week one morning as i woke up in the bed of my rental room, i felt blessed that i could have this option of running away from my parents' house where i felt trapped and unhappy

many people even with money dont even have this option (':

it's tough i admit

just keeping faith that God's timing will always be perfect, that good things are worth the wait and bad things will come to past eventually ((:

Super duper long overdue again. It’s 4am on a workday and I’m still awake cos dem thoughts are haunting me again. Anyway,

Just (like 2 months ago!) Finished Why Women Kill. Came in wanting to see Lucy Liu but only realised that it was the wrong season about 4 episodes in (don’t ever trust non official sites haha)

But I stayed on to finish the wrong season anyway haha. Season 2 of Why Women Kill was still about women killing but there was a more focused storyline about this lady called Alma who was portrayed as fat and stupid (sorry for bluntness), or rather a simple housewife who had lofty dreams of entering some elite gardening club.

Despite her neighbour warning her to snap out of her fantasy because it’s just a lame club where Tai tais gossip about each other and that she was not atas enough to be a part of it, she was still determined to get into it. But along the way she got caught up in her lies to act like one of the uppers; she let her jealousy take over and she started killing to get what she wanted.

At first she was just silly to me. And naive. Like just an obiang housewife with no dress sense and worst of all, not smart. And with her husband’s secret revealed, it did look like her husband was the bad guy and she was a victim. But things really took a turn when she made use of her husband (and her hold of him) to get what she wanted. I seriously began to hate the character and wanted to skip all her scenes. (Oh ya her daughter was also chubby like her and I hated her guts to chase after guys?) The girl not impt but anyway

I was reminded of Ronald Dahls famous quote from Twits where “If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.”

Initially Alma was just unpleasant to me, look and character wise, but after she started killing and doing all those disgusting things it was clear to me that she was just ugly. Same like her daughter but at least she had some saving grace.

On the other hand, the original antagonist Rita, (rich 60s mean girl) though she did some pretty (no pun intended) scheming stuff like sabo-ing Alma and embarrassing her in front of the other Tai tais, she never took her pranks further by involving murder. Perhaps she was like what Ronald Dahl said too, compared with Alma the stuff she did was considered pretty mild and with her pretty exterior it made it easier to watch her.

But in the end she was killed by Alma and didn’t manage to elope with her bf *cries* despite that it’s a good ending though, Alma got jailed for all the bad stuff she had done but all the nice people were killed by her 🙈

I particularly liked how Rita reflected at the end before she was killed. She said this:
”No one is truly beautiful until they learn to love unselfishly. And those who receive such love are the richest people of all.”

Aww. Pity she didn’t get her happily ever after with Scooter but still you go girl. Proud of how you didn’t forget your roots ((:

P.S. Season 1 was way way way better. Won’t give spoilers here but with Lucy Liu you know it’s good haha

Overdue as usual but I wanna write this down cos I’m v v v grateful that everything turned out ok ((:

So we started this happy hour (hh) thing in the office where each dept took charge of planning a themed event + food and drinks every month. My hr team was supposed to do it last year but it got pushed back to this year jan. it coincidentally aligned with cny so our theme was settled and most of the programmes we had in mind were easily planned out cos of cny traditions

It was also the first of many years that we could do cny physically so we could finally give red packets in person (and have less people complain about how giving ang pows digitally is actually worth less cos of cpf and how it has no feel to receive ang pows digitally etc -.-) and also cos it was the first hh of the year we wanted to start the new year with a bang (and also cos secretly we wanted to beat the finance team in being the best hh) so there was lots of pressure to do it well

So many things happened in a flash but I’ll try to list them down here:

1. The highlight was def the lucky draw cash prizes $$$$$. we met with a lot of restrictions in giving out cash to employees and also tried desperately to find a big glass bowl to hold the lucky draw names but thankfully all worked out in the end. Found an acrylic display case cover in the office which we shamelessly borrowed :P leaving the poor display naked tho hahha

2. Very stretched organising team
We’re only a small 4 people team plus sam had already planned to go back to Malaysia so she was going to be away for most of the planning part + the actual event. thank goodness she managed to get a ticket back to sg eventually so she was around to help with the event (: Maya was also non-chinese so it wasn’t nice to get her to be involved much so mostly it was me + ep doing all the planning. v v v thankful for her (:

And there was supposed to be the new hrbp who was supposed to join 1 day before the event. But some stuff happened and she didn’t manage to join on her initial start date (secretly happy that she didn’t join but story for another day) so we were short-handed again

3. The date we chose for the hh was also very late - we did it on the 12th day of cny, after cny as many people were on leave the week before cny and tbh when we were planning we weren’t even sure whether a lot of stuff that we wanted were still available after cny O.o thankfully all was well

4. God of Fortune outfit
Another highlight of our event was having our ang moh CFO dress up in the Cai Shen Ye outfit. He’s very sporting and he’s a bit chubby so he was perfect for the role hahaha. As a surprise we kept it from our employees who was the CSY and had the CSY enter into the room as a highlight event and had him throw gold chocolate ingots. He was too engrossed in the role and was very focused in aiming at the employees instead HAHAHHA

Initially when I googled the rental was about $98 from Lazada and some costume stores. Did more googling and managed to find a cheaper vendor through Carousell (it really sells everything!) the vendor MIA-ed on me for a while so I was quite worried but it turned out fine in the end. The costume was lovely and I couldn’t resist trying it on myself before the event heheh

5. Food
We initially wanted to order buffet and had already narrowed down a caterer to order from. Unfortunately the delivery date we wanted was unavailable and so we scrambled to find other caterers - in the process we found out that cos it was the cny period, caterers only offered the cny menu - like the full main courses which wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted light bites cos of our timing and some caterers even had cny surcharge - $120 extra just cos it was cny period though it wasn’t the 1st/2nd/3rd day :O so it was a huge NO for us. and we were brainstorming and ep mentioned tarts like what finance had so I was googling tarts/pastries sth along that line and we stumbled upon this decent French bakery online where we eventually ordered pastries from (the mgmt can be a bit atas so it was perfect - food was good and looked decent and compatible for drinks) and oh the food was halal too so it was parfaite

6. Alcohol
We asked a wine connoisseur colleague for recommendations and he gave us some, including the links where we could order from. Got the office manager to help order using the corporate card. We tot all was ok cos we got the order confirmation and all we had to do was to wait for the order but shit happened as usual. The supplier called to say that the stuff we ordered weren’t available in sg so they had to order from Italy - which meant they couldn’t deliver on time for our event. Managed to order the same wine through ntuc and had them delivered on time though we couldn’t get the promo the initial website offered and we could only order less quantity cos it was pricier per bottle. But thankfully the quantity was enough for the event

7. Bak kwa
We had a mix of Malays and Indians in the company so we had to be particular in making sure our food was halal/vegetarian. Did a bit of googling and found some places like mr bean and eu yan sang sold vegetarian bak kwa so we decided to buy and try. Ended up mr bean didn’t sell them this year and eu yan sang was oos very early. Managed to find them in ntuc and tried in the office but it was quite yucky >.< the pinoy colleagues had a lot of fun trying to trial and error the oven bake timing to get the crispiest bak kwa in the meantime tho and eventually we just stuck to the normal real bak kwa hahaha

8. Fortune Cookies
We found this nice brand called HK garden which was halal and was relatively cheap so I bought 1 pack to try first. However when I wanted to buy more on the 1st day of cny, IT WAS OUT OF STOCK IN NTUC. Went to a few branches and couldn’t find at all. I panicked and was contemplating to get the other not-so-nice and expensive brand but thankfully I found the supplier online and ordered through there. phew. A bit pricier than ntuc but at least was the right brand ((:

9. Lo Hei
The date we had our event was after the 7th day so places wouldn’t sell yusheng anymore…but we went for lunch at ion one day and we chanced upon soup spoon selling it. Did a bit of google and was damn relieved that they continued to sell past the 7th day. Had a bit of hiccup when it was taken down from their website but asked the physical store and they said they still sold, just not online anymore. Eventually managed to do a pre-order to ensure the sashimi was fresh and was very thankful our employees loved it (esp the mgmt) cos the soup spoon lo hei was more westernised with quinoa (?!?! What in the world) and rocket salad and not the traditional kind

10. Ice box
B only told us she wasn’t going to chill our drinks like 1 day before our event so we scrambled to buy ice and have it delivered to us..+ extra charges for short notice delivery but no choice ):

Also borrowed a styrofoam box from Leon quite last min..thankfully he obliged and tbh when the ice came 1 bag was miserably sitting in the styrofoam box while the other 2 bags were dripping on the floor….and out of the blue the cleaner auntie came to tell me she found 3 more styrofoam boxes and had placed them downstairs for me (‘: and so my ice was saved from melting and our drinks could be kept cold. thank you cute auntie <3 <3 <3

11. Grab vouchers
We had a pop quiz and had promised $8 grab voucher to the winners. After the event we got B to send the $8 redemption link to the winners and she then told us it wasn’t possible -.- the min was $10 and could only be in denominations of 10. so we had 2 options, either to give out $8 by cheque instead of grab (meaning I had to prepare another 8 cheques and get approval what not) or to increase our prize money by $2 to make it $10 (and thereby eating into our budget more). Dunno why she didn’t tell us when we were planning it and had even communicated to the employees. I mean she would have known right? She’s the one in charge of sending out vouchers and she used grab for all the company couriers and stuff zzz but then after that I rmbed someone transferred me $15 before so it’s def not in denominations of $10 like she said. Did a bit of playing around on the app and I realised that it was indeed possible to pay people whatever amount - through grab wallet and not by purchasing the vouchers. No thanks to our office manager though. Such a B HAHAHAH

Overall though the emcees a bit cocked up (they had minor disagreements between themselves lol), a lot of people came to say that they had fun and i guess that's all that really mattered (': all those sleepless nights and running around doing errands and whatnots

This was me playing around in the CSY outfit

 Damn cute hahaha even came with an ingot and scroll as props

In other news, it’s been almost a year since I moved out of my parents’ home into a rented unit outside but unfortunately all good things must come to an end. When it was time for renewal, my landlady wanted to increase the rent by $200 so I was like no it’s not worth it anymore though I really really like the room (will miss the floor to ceiling windows the most) and given the rental market situation outside it was quite hard to find another room at this price. But thankfully someone reached out to me online; he was posting for his parents and it was quite funny how he included “Christian” in his description of the landlords (his parents) and during the viewing he asked if I had any religion and I said christian too and his mum immediately agreed upon hearing that :D can’t believe it but I know God it’s You who’s at work :D

Happy new year! 

Why is the new year always happy? Im not very sure either but since the new year is always associated with new opportunities, new clothes etc and new is almost always better i guess

Anyway im not one big on resolutions but im kinda the reflective type so i guess here are my thoughts about the new year

Things to be thankful for in 2022

1. Resumption of travel! didnt travel far last year, only crossed the border haha but being able to travel again brings so much joy and relief of stress though it's only to our neighbouring country. i feel that travel makes people open and more cultured and travel also makes me appreciative of SG - the efficient customs, the safety, the transport and the sheltered walkways. yes weird thing to mention but every time it rains im reminded of my piano teacher telling me to be grateful that SG govt (not PAP sponsored post thanks) spends money to build shelters. she had some students from hk and their parents were telling her that when they moved from hk, one of the things they realized that sg was different from hk was the sheltered walkways which they were very grateful for.
2. Moving out of my parents' house. though i wish it's cos i got married or got my own place but i guess it's close enough. am very appreciative of the freedom i get and the opportunity to be independent (though i say i was rather independent since young, i washed my own clothes, i cooked etc) but it's different when it comes to making decisions. one thing i hated back home was that i couldnt use the kitchen freely and i couldnt buy home appliances though i said i would pay for them. oh and how i would be scolded for forgetting to off the wifi before i went to bed. yes sounds stupid but my father is very particular about leaving wifi on when nobody is at home or when everyone is asleep :/ maybe it did make a difference in the internet bill? i dunno
3. Managed to catch up on some shows on my bucket list. haha it's a simple joy for me. i finished a couple of korean zombie/supernatural dramas like happiness, kingdom (my fav genre hehe), netflix ori like emily in paris and wednesday (addams) (pls watch it's good) and some disney movies like encanto (skipped all the singing but is still good) heh. oh and im waitng for alice in borderland 2 to be uploaded on (unconventional) sites hehe

Things to focus in 2023

1. Sleeping earlier hahah. ironic that it's now 1.30am as i type this..i have been sleeping at 4+am the past few nights cos i was playing games/watching shows and i told myself i'll try to sleep earlier but i always feel the gush of inspiration to write in the middle of nights :O anyway work is starting in 2 days so yes i'll sleep earlier haha
2. More discipline in health. exercise has been on my list of resolutions for years buttttttt no excuses haha. im quite a lazy person to be honest. you know there are those 20min exercise videos that you can do every day but i still dont do them 😳 haha but i think other than exercise i feel that i should work on my diet too. i promise i'll cut on macs/kfc/fried food/oily food and DRINK MORE WATER. seems simple but i realize that if im in the office i rarely drink water. i just drink coffee and buy avocado for lunch and then it's tea after lunch  😳😳😳
3. Reading/Studying. i like going to the library or buying books at bookshops actually. but i dont read hahahahahaaha. if there is the movie version of the book i would rather spend the 2h to watch it. but i try to read i guess. like maybe a few pages before bed? lately travels to malaysia have also prompted me that i need to work on my melayu again. i learnt it before and still can comprehend 50% of the signs in malaysia and can converse comfortably to get around but i wanna push my ability to 80%? or best be effectively trilingual which can be helpful for mps hehe
4. Learning a new skill. been wanting to re-learn blading for a while, anyone wanna learn with me? or maybe skateboarding. seems cool!
5. and most importantly. more focus on devotion. im scared to admit but i think i might have backslided a bit ): 2022 hasnt been the best year and i confess that i may not have been the best christian. i use vulgarities, i judge people and in 2023 i will try to be more conscious of my actions. and be more disciplined in daily devotions (i did day 1 so im off to a good start! :))

that's all for now i guess and p.s. looking for an accountability partner on my list above :D and hopefully when i revisit this in a year i can say i am proud of myself (': gn!