Two days ago, I dreamt of insects. Yesterday night I dreamt of circles. I dreamt of things going around in circles, of circular shapes in every direction I look.
I related it to the same friend who interpreted my dream yesterday, and he told me that the circles represent infinity, going around in a loop without end, a monotonous existence… in other words, I’m stressed. Crap.
There was a museum, in a mall. They were holding an exhibit about insects, and I decided to explore it, along with a few other people. It did not turn out the way we expected it to be. I remember a huge mound of maggots on the floor behind us, threatening to engulf us. Streams of cockroaches scuttled all across the floor around us. We ran further into the museum to escape. Its path was like a maze. One of the “exhibitors” unleased two giant bees from one of the rooms we ran past. Strangely they did not bother us, although they were frightening. After some harrowing turns following the signs in the museum, we managed to escape to the carpark.
And I woke up.
When I related my nightmare to a friend, he pointed out that it fitted the description of my current office.
“It’s telling you how you feel about work,” he explained, and he recounted to me the numerous things I told him before about the place. And surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), the pieces clicked.
Hmm, maybe it’s time I put my escape plan into action?
For quite awhile now I’ve had to deal with a certain someone whose behaviour towards me, and other people, I cannot stand. Well, ok, other people can’t stand it either. On more than one occasion I have called her a total and utter bitch behind her back. But I do try to be fair to people, if someone annoys or infuriates me in a certain way, maybe it’s because I don’t like that certain aspect in people. Or maybe I’m having a bad day and was already irritable. Maybe s/he is actually a really nice person and I’m just being real mean.
The argument I usually phrase to myself (and other people whom I bitch about said person to) goes like this: “You know, she is a nice person, but…” And then today I realized that I could use that line to excuse just about anyone’s behaviour. “Jacob’s a really nice person, you know, except for that time he raped and murdered that poor 8 year old kid, gosh, something must have gotten into him!”
Enough is enough. It’s about time I learn to call a bitch a bitch and stop giving excuses for other people’s behaviour.
It was a few months ago when madhatter and I were discussing about redesigning our main site that I looked through my own blog template and realized how old, ugly, and in dire need of changing it was. It was horribly dated, and the more I look at it, the more horrified and embarassed I was at how bad it was, and how I knew that I could do a lot better. Then procrastination set in and I sat around mulling how to redesign my blog template for a couple of months.
Few days ago I finally set myself down at my computer, determined to at least start working on a new template. Since I had been very interested in typography lately, I decided that the best way to start was by going to dafont.com to pick out an interesting typeface and see where that would take me.
It was a very interesting journey, as I ended up making a template that I felt was very much unlike my personal self. This isn’t to say that it was bad. I actually really like it, even if it feels a little at odds with my personality. Surprisingly a lot of the elements of the current template also made its way into the new one, and it gelled together really nicely.
Now all I need to do is to code in the changes and make the new template come to life! Well, um, hopefully I’ll get to that soon-ish. Until then I’ve only got this header to show XD
Over the last few months, Significant Other and I have been spending months hunting for a house both of us want to live in. Both of us had no prior experience to this, so we went in with eyes wide open. No one warned us that we would have our asses handed to us by real estate agents.
Our house hunting nightmare started with us looking through the classified sections for places for sale that we were interested in, and calling the real estate agents in charge. Sounds simple enough? That’s what we thought until none of them called us back about our inquiries. We actually had to call them back to ask if they had any news, to which most of them would reply with oh, we haven’t checked yet, we’ll call you when we do. And then they never call back. Or we’d call them again but they’d just refuse to pick up the phone. Really, you’d think that with the state of the economy they’d be dying to make a sale.
Every now and then we’d get a real estate agent who would make a date with us to view a place, but once we were done with the viewing and asked for additional info they never got back to us.
Really, it was very irritating.
Some time later, we finally managed to meet ONE agent who actually called back when we made an inquiry about a particular place we were interested in buying. Significant Other and I fell in love with the condo unit, and wanted to buy it. He requested for an unit with two parking lots, and she showed us one. We were sold on the place, and decided to book the unit.
And then we discovered that she was trying to con us.
The day Significant Other was supposed to sign the booking agreement, the agent was late. By fifty minutes. And then she tried to make Significant Other sign the agreement in the car, which he declined because he obviously wanted to read the contract. Thankfully he did, because it stated that we were only supposed to have one parking lot. Not two.
When Significant Other pointed that out to her, she tried to cover it up by stating that “by lot no.29, they actually mean there’s lot 29 and lot 29B.” WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT IS THAT??!
So obviously the contract never got signed. She called him back for days afterwards trying to get him to change his mind, or perhaps look at another unit. Significant Other stopped picking up her calls. BTW, if you are reading this post and you happen to be that particular agent, PLEASE GO DIE IN A FIRE.
Shortly afterwards we contacted yet another real estate agent (the only reliable real estate agent we managed to get ahold of, I think mostly because she was recommended by a friend *rolls eyes*). We had contacted her much earlier about some townhouses in Hartamas, which were nice, but too expensive. She had mentioned at one point that we had a colleague handling the condo we liked, so she and her colleague showed us another unit. With two parking lots, guranteed.
We immediately decided to book it.
That finally brought us to the end of our nightmare. Although, judging by the way our agents argued tirelessly with the unit owner’s real estate agent to let us book the place instead of holding out for a better offer, it seems like there are many unpleasant twists and turns out to surprise the uninitiated home buyer.
Next time, I guess we should just buy a property straight from the fucking developers. Hopefully THAT’S easier than navigating this stupid minefield.
Ee Laine: my stomach really hurts 
whiterabbit: ouch. something you ate?
Ee Laine: i dunno. it’s been days already and the pain’s on and off
whiterabbit: maybe you should go see the doctor?
Ee Laine: it’s too expensive
whiterabbit:
whiterabbit: don’t worry baybeh. i’ll be all the medicine you need 
Ee Laine: ok now my stomach hurts even more now
whiterabbit: i’m sorry i just HAD to say that XD
The other day Significant Other expressed his frustration at how he just could not hit his sparring partner in his last Muay Thai class as he just couldn’t bring himself to hit a girl, which his classmates found very amusing. Listening sympathetically, I patted his head and told him reassuringly that don’t worry, one day he too can be a poster boy for domestic abuse.
Sadly he was not as amused as I was, but perhaps I had too much fun coming up with hilarious situations that would land him into trouble, such as this one:
If I took up Muay Thai with him and we sparred together in practice and I wound up with bruises, telling concerned people that we got into a fight and he hit me would be the absoulte, complete, uncensored truth XD
A few months ago, during the flooding of my office basement carpark, I sprained my right wrist. While this was an unfortunate incident (as I am right-handed), I didn’t really think much about it. Well, of course it sucked that I was forced to come to work the next day even though I could barely move my wrist, but hey, life sucks, and it’ll get better in time right? A colleague even recommended an oriental tit-tar place for me to go to, and I went to get my wrist treated there due to her insistence. As a result, my wrist got better. Until the very last treatment anyway.
The last treatment I received at the shop went as on as normal as the rest of the other treatments. I was told to remove the herbal bandage at all times if my skin itched or if I developed an allergy, but no such thing happened during the duration of my treatment. Until (of course), the very last treatment, whereby my arm suddenly broke out in this mega huge rash and swelled to proportions that rivaled my freshly sprained wrist. Till this day I have no idea how or why the rash suddenly developed – did my body have had enough of the herbal treatment? Perhaps I ate too much seafood in the following days?
I did not want to see a doctor about the allergy as I have had enough of seeing doctors at the time, so I decided to just let it be and hope that it would disappear. By the end of the first week it was disappearing – so I decided to celebrate with some alcohol and seafood, which turned out to be a bad, bad idea. The rash came back with a vengeance, and it was another three to four weeks before I touched anything related to alcohol or seafood in fear that the rash would kick up another fuss.
You really can’t imagine how happy I was to finally be able to eat seafood and drink alcohol again. Then last week, while playing badminton with my colleagues, I noticed that my wrist hurt again whenever I twisted it. So I told them perhaps I should take a rest and not tax it for awhile.
And then this Monday, I slipped and fell down next to the staircase (please don’t ask how). Guess what happened. Yup, it appears that I may have sprained my wrist AGAIN (in addition to scraping some skin off my fingers and some bruises here and there). And as is the tradition with most Chinese families, when you sprain something, you apply Chinese medicated oil to the area to help heal it.
…
Guess what this particular medicated oil did to my arm.
…
If you guessed that it gave me an allergic reaction, then you win.
It’s been ten years, and I still remember
Ten years, and I am still afraid
Ten years, and the hatred still burns
Ten years, and my tears still sting.
It’s been ten years, you probably don’t remember
But it’s been ten years, and all I want to do is forget.
I meant to write this right after I came back last week. And then a week passed by… oops :p
Anyway, last Saturday I flew down to Singapore with some really great people to catch the Asian premiere of Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds. Since madhatter has already written a good post about it, for a better description of the concert I would refer to this.
In short I would say that this concert was much better than PLAY, which I attended two years back. And of course it was made a million times more awesome by Nobuo Uematsu’s appearance (although being the complete blurcase I am, I had trouble spotting him even after two people pointed out exactly where in the hall he was sitting. And of course I also missed the brief moment when they shined the spotlight on where he was sitting -_-).
Some of the pieces they played were so good I forgot I hated the game it came from (I’m looking at you, FFVIII). Some I didn’t recognize since I’ve only played FFVII onwards on the PS & PS2, and the remake of FFIII and FFIV (which I have yet to finish, because everyone keeps dying and I just found that really depressing -_-) on the Nintendo DS. I enjoyed them anyway 
The concert was also really awesome because it was filled with rabid Final Fantasy fans who screamed their lungs out every time a song finished playing, and especially when they announced the encore songs (which were really, REALLY fantastic!). I swear half of them must be Malaysian too, judging from what I heard from a friend who attended the Q&A session, who said that a lot of people screamed when they said they were in talks to bring the concert to Malaysia. I sincerely hope that they will because that will be SO TOTALLY AWESOME XD
I missed the Q&A session to line up for a chance to get Nobuo Uematsu’s signature but sadly I did not manage to get it as they cut the line off shortly before it would reach our turns T_T The concert organizers didn’t allow anyone to take photos of him either T_T But at least I got to see him up close, because he passed by the line after he was done with the signing… which was how I knew we weren’t going to be getting his signature lol. Oh well :/