work

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It ‘s been about one and a half months I’ve started working in a permanent job now. Boy, has it been a tough ride. The first two weeks were like heaven — not much to do. Then, the work came pouring in. Some days I am left feeling a little overwhelmed, but all I can do is tell myself to carry on. I think part of how I am feeling stems from the fact I am a newbie. Sometimes I feel like I’m feeling my way around in the dark.  There are times when I am kicking myself for doing things so slowly, but right at the back of my mind I have to remind myself that it is all part of learning. The good thing is that my boss and colleagues are nice, but sometimes I just can’t help feeling a tad dumb because they seem to know what to do all the time.

That’s it isn’t it? I complain a lot, but at the end of the day I hang in there and everything turns out fine. I amaze myself at the end of it all. I’m not a quitter. No matter how bad it is, I will always remember what the late Prof. Goodman said. He told me that if I felt I didn’t understand something, someone else probably had the same question but wasn’t voicing his/her doubt as well. That made me feel a whole lot better — that I wasn’t alone in the dark. I also remember what my ex-colleague told me. It is precisely the things we are afraid of that we must do. If not, we will forever be in our comfort zone and not learn new things.

Yes yes, I can do it. Go me.

quick updates

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Went to the birdpark on Wednesday with KS and family. Erm…when was the last time I went there? When I was in primary school? School excursions and consent forms…nostalgic. Anyway, I think I enjoyed the penguins and owls *pictures meowzy here* the most. I also learnt that the boy attracts birds (and bird poop for that matter) because a lorikeet landed on his shoulder despite him having no bird seed to attract them birds.

月曜日、家族は日本に行く。私は行きたいけど、仕事から行けない。まぁ、仕方ないさ。来年行けるかも？

I start work next Monday. Hello early mornings. T_T でも、仕事は絶対頑張ります！ ^^V

the sudden realisation

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やっぱりね。

The feeling. The horror that creeps up to you and washes all over you. I knew it. I knew it all along that it was a mistake. Even as we sat in those meetings then, a small part of me knew that it was all a mistake and those who unknowingly came forward to pitch their ideas had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They will literally wasting their time for something that would never have even happened in the first place.

No. That’s not what hit me suddenly. As I was reading my ADV450 book (yup, the one that makes me laugh), the chapter assigned for reading was about those monster-type clients you’ll meet in your advertising career lifetime…I was reading about that one type – the hack. The one who talks over and over about one great idea and shoves it down your throat.

It hit me. It happened didn’t it? The way I was made to go to him and he told me his fabulous idea. The idea that someone told me later that it was used as the first version and that was a long way back. The work that I was supposed to do, but didn’t happen in the end coz I couldn’t produce it…coz I just wasn’t good enough. Fast forward. It is now produced by someone else and they’re so proud of it. Sure. The thing is that I could produce that too. Ok, anyway that’s beside the point. The point is…the colour…the buttons. It resembles what he told me. So, it happened didn’t it? そうでしょう？でしょう？酷いね。。。

since coming home

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Wow, the last time I updated my blog was in April. Well, I’m now back in Singapore for the summer holiday, living my other life. I pretty much got used to the life in USA that I felt a little disoriented when I came home. The culture, environment, and mannerism of people are all different.

Backtracking a little…the last few days of school in mid-May was spent finishing up projects and papers. The day before leaving Champaign, deary and I were packing up all our stuff in the apartment, moving them to my aunt’s place, and cleaning up the apartment for return. Cleaning up the apartment took longer than what we had expected. Among the Singaporeans staying in Goodwin-Stoughton, our apartment was probably the neatest and cleanest to begin with. It’s not like we held parties and trashed the place. We probably didn’t need to clean up that much, but we were afraid that Ramshaw would dump a huge cleaning bill on us. In the end, I think we returned the apartment cleaner than what was given to us when we just moved it.

Finished cleaning the apartment at midnight, that left us with only a few hours to pack our bags for home. Packing bags to go home has always been a pain for me simply coz I have too much barang. Got at least a few hours of sleep. Definitely not enough, but at least better than nothing.

We left for San Francisco. The few days there was quite an experience. We cycled twice over the Golden Gate bridge coz I was so slow that we missed the last ferry back. 😥 I got scolded a few times coz I was pretty lousy at controlling the bicycle and I had no strength to cycle uphill. The last time I cycled was probably in Secondary school and even so, I’m definitely not a good cyclist. I ended up feeling sore all over. The next day, we did a lot of walking. A LOT. I think the trip was probably the only time I ever did do that much exercise.

Now that I’m back home, I somehow feel a little disoriented. It’s like totally living another life. There’s like too much “chaos” around me that I miss the quiet life in USA. No doubt I enjoy the food here, but I definitely do not enjoy the weather. I can’t even step out for a few minutes without feeling hot and sticky all over. I NEED THE AIRCON ON 24/7!

I got internship as I planned. Not too bad, but definitely not what I had expected. Perhaps my poly internship was too slack and this is the REAL DEAL. My first day ended quite badly. Not that the people were mean and all, but I myself felt overwhelmed and wondered if I could deliver what was expected of me. I hate it when people think too highly of me. It gives me pressure to perform well and not screw up. And I AM worried about screwing up. I don’t like to shortchange people. When I work, I expect to contribute something so that the boss will think that he/she hired the right person. Thank God I had deary to cheer me up.

The thing about working is that I end up feeling so tired everyday that I don’t even have much time for leisure activities. Worse, my current workplace is far from home. I end up having to wake up at 6am everyday. Makes me miss studying. Then when I’m studying, I’ll feel like wanting to work coz then I can earn money. Yea yea…the grass is always greener on the other side.

Oh well, I’m going to make good of this internship and ask all those nagging questions I have. I don’t care if they are the simplest questions and they make me sound stupid. If I don’t ask, I’ll never learn.

My weekends are damn precious now. It’s my only time with deary since both of us are working.

my (lousy) banner

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This post is so that people know I wasn’t shaking legs during my poly internship. HAHAHA…actually the internship was quite a breeze and I really did spend about 1+ weeks shaking legs. I didn’t shake legs on purpose; they simply didn’t have anything for me to do.

Anyway, I was checking the ICA website some time ago for something for my dad when I got curious and decided to go click on the shipping crew page. Yes, that was what I was doing in NCS, 5 years ago. It was a big secret then since it is part of the government. I got a shock at what I say. THEY ACTUALLY USED MY WORK?! It was just a demo thing to present to the clients; roughly what the website would look like. My colleague who was in charge of the project then told me that I didn’t have to worry too much on the workability of the website since they would get their own designers to work on the real thing later. So, I did my best and didn’t worry too much. They only used my banner…BUT STILL?!

Looking at it now, I’m horrified. It’s such a lousy thing~~~ I didn’t know how to blend images then so all I did was smudge the edges of each image so that they looked like they flowed together. And the background of the banner was just some clicking around and playing with the set effects in Photoshop. Honestly, I got the background by chance. They wanted something watery looking. WAH~~~ WHY~~~

The only thing they changed about the banner was to crop it coz it was much thicker when I did it. The width was probably something like my blog banner. I think they might have resized it a little too coz the quality of the images and logo look a little compromised.

I decided to blog about this afterall since the topic came up at the dinner table again.

how to deal with disappointment

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I thought I had it planned and settled all nicely. Contact the relevant person, secure a spot, and include that in my application. Things were going pretty well until I received bad news in the form of an sms. I was denied internship coz 3 weeks is just too short. Huge blow…but I’ll push my luck a little. Replied saying that I don’t mind a job shadow which means I won’t be paid. The reply I got was that it could have been explored, however, HR must be rather busy so in short…no. Just politely replied to end off the conversation.

Dazed. Blank. What am I going to do? You don’t know how much this would mean to me. What it would cost me. What am I going to use to prove myself? Is it my fault? Did I bring this upon myself? Should I have just gone ahead as planned instead of cutting the time to 3 weeks? But I was really tired… 🙁

Thank God, I was with Deary. He gave me hugs and the strength I needed to deal with the disappointment. As everyone knows, I recover quickly from such unhappy episodes. I’m fine now and have some little plans in mind. Hopefully they work out fine.

Looking on the brighter side, at least I get the time I want to fully relax.

the event and the list

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After 3 days of little sleep, the event is finally over. I think the hardest part of the registration desk job was to keep awake while there is really nothing to do. I tried arranging the name tags, doodling on the note pad, testing the limit of my sight while checking out sponsor tables for freebies, talking to Cass, eating…I must say I really exhausted all possible ways of keeping myself occupied so that I would not fall asleep. All this was going on while Qing Xian was loading powerpoint presentations and happily surfing the net for haunted places in Singapore on Maru-chan in the ballroom. Argh…I really wanted to surf the net too~~~ My beloved Maru-chan~~~

I think the little sleep we got has taken its toll on Deary. He has fallen sick. Awwwwww… 🙁 From this event, I really saw how Deary is so serious about work. I think he really earned the respect and trust of his employer/ex-lecturer. I have much to learn and follow. I don’t know, maybe it’s a personal standard I set for myself. I don’t like to short-change my employer, so I want to make sure I do a perfect job. However, it seems like I always manage to screw up a little. *pokes self* I’m sure it also has something to do with my confidence problem. *sigh*

Work aside, I think I sort of have a clothes-buying list forming…mostly lolita stuff to match the pink sweet lolita dress I got from Body Line.

  1. White tights (preferably 80 denier)
  2. Frilly knee-high white socks
  3. Pink/White lolita bag
  4. White Mary-Jane lolita shoes
  5. White frilly long-sleeved blouse
  6. White frilly short-sleeved blouse
  7. Denim shorts
  8. Denim mini skirt

I discovered to my horror that there is a stitching error on the sleeve of my pink sweet lolita dress. I guess I will have to unpick a bit… Oh and the white long-sleeved blouse I got from Body Line, the lady kinda lied? It is a bit too big. *sigh*

Now that I have something of sweet lolita…I am thinking wa lolita next…

disgusting creep

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Boy, you chose the wrong time to mess with me. You chose the time when my alter ego comes out to play and you pissed me off…not too badly, but good enough for me to rip you apart.

Who the fuck cares if you’re 43, 1.7m tall, 65kg, and in an unhappy marraige? Facebook is not mIRC where you go “intro? a/s/l?” Like piss off you creep. I am not going to get to know you better even if we both work (or worked) in the same company.

Oh, and UNCLE, I don’t do flings.

almost there

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There are times when I almost want to burst, frustrated at my inability to reach my computer…

Sis
Thanks for the prayers. Sis has been discharged since last Saturday. I wouldn’t say that the problems have been solved but at least now that she has gotten a bit of help from professionals, I think she is also trying to sort out how she feels. It’s back to the rather cramped house (since my grandparents came to stay) but I guess everyone’s trying not to bother each other and step on each other’s toes.

School
I don’t care if people are going to say I’m desperate. As long as I know I tried, even if the ending is not what I want, at least I’m comforted.

I went to an American School fair. DePaul had a booth there. I talked to the school advisor. I know I sounded kinda strange coz I really didn’t know how to approach the topic. How embarassing can it get to “bother” people when I have already been rejected. But Mr Durbin was nice, he said he would check out with the admissions people to see what was the actual reason behind the rejection. He did offer a possibility that my poly grades are not considered academic and thus the only grades that were looked at was my O’level results (which sucked big time).

I was kinda disappointed to hear that reason. If it was 5-10 years ago, I would have accepted that reason. Poly was once deemed as the path for all those who got “lousier” grades and couldn’t make it to JC. But now, it seems that people like me (people who can’t even smell the air of JC) are fighting to get into poly with O’level 7-pointers. Which means that poly’s standards have been raised by a lot. Could almost say it’s of equal standing to JC.

So, the question is…do we poly graduates really have a future? What lies in store for us outside of the country if our grades are not going to be considered?

Work
My lunchtime buddy, Selina has left. 😥 I will always remember her love for the fried fish at the 菜饭 stall at the interchange. So much that she said she would burn their stall down if she didn’t get to eat it. Hahaha…oopz. Wishing her all the best in her studies. 🙂

Shimei, the new temp staff left after 3 days citing family reasons. Ok, that leaves me as the only temp staff left in Motor Processing. Which also means I have to do everything. Processing/issuing motor policies (DUH!), calling up other insurance companies to check on customers’ NCD (a tiring thing to do), franking and posting the mail, bringing down the motor proposals for scanning and passing the foreign maid payments for processing, facing the (nonsense) servicing staff downstairs.

Had quite a bad experience for the last. My colleague says that’s the “spirit” of most of the Income staff. Let me explain my position first. I am, well, just…THE TEMP STAFF, which means I am not in the position to argue with anyone lest I wanna get kicked out. Very dangerous position to be in. To put it nicely, the temp staff assists the full-timers with their work. To put it horribly, the temp staff does the sai gang.

Now that I’m done with explaining my position, I shall move on to that “spirit”. When a problem arises, everyone likes to 耍太极。Whoa, you should see how everyone becomes 太极 experts and the problem goes unsolved for a week or more. Hello, shouldn’t we be putting our heads together to solve it and then settle our differences later? And when a solution presents itself (whether temporary or not), shouldn’t we just take it first?

Now to put the 2 together… Being the temp staff, I’m usually the middleman for most things. You could say that it’s partly due to my unfamiliarity to most issues. But, there are times when I can see the solution so clearly that it frustrates me to see no one trying to well, MOVE! Oh wait, I can’t do anything coz I’m just the lowly *drumroll* temp staff.

Ktv
Met some poly mates last Saturday. Had dinner then moved on to KBox at Cine. Although KBox isn’t the choice place for Japanese songs (like I can’t find OLIVIA’s “A Little Pain” in KBox can I?), I know I can still find something Japanese to sing. Was kinda surprised to find 伊藤由奈’s “Endless Story” though. The last time we went to KBox, Per, Sis and I resorted to choosing the chinese version and Myojo Young Song lyrics. I would have done that for SweetS’ “虹色の永遠” but I didn’t have the lyrics on hand that day. And I DO NOT rely on romanji anymore.

Just coz I sing Japanese songs or utter a few Japanese phrases doesn’t make me pro. I only sing slower songs coz then I can read. Even if I sing slightly faster songs, it’s coz I am already familiar with the tune and most of the lyrics. More like memorisation work.

Heehee…going CS-ing on my birthday. Woohoo!

Elisia’s 必唱 Japanese song list:

  1. NewS – NEWSニッポン (super high song…1 2 3 4 5 6 7 it’s BIG NEWS!!!)
  2. NewS – 希望~Yell~ (another high song…can sing 90% of the song)
  3. NewS – チェリッシュ (it’s not really 必唱 since I can only sing the chorus part but we can do the hand actions…haha)
  4. NewS – ずっと (don’t care if it’s a bit low…Massu sang it and anyway, it’s a nice song)
  5. OLIVIA inspi’ REIRA (TRAPNEST) – A Little Pain (can sing 95% of the song)
  6. REIRA starring Yuna Ito – Endless Story
  7. YUI for 雨音 薫 – Good-bye Days
  8. 薫 雨音 (Sawajiri Erika) – タイヨウのうた
  9. Berryz工房 – ジリリ キテル
  10. モーニング娘。- ふるさと (will choose to sing it only if not in Cash)
  11. 宇多田ヒカル – First Love (will choose to sing it only if not in Cash)

Attempting/might attempt to make these songs 必唱:

  1. モーニング娘。さくら組 – さくら満開 (it’s slow enough…haha)
  2. SweetS – Color Of Tears
  3. SweetS – 虹色の永遠 (this is an exception coz the machine in Cash doesn’t have this song…have to use the chinese version)
  4. 大塚 愛 – 金魚花火
  5. 浜崎あゆみ – Who… (going to check out if the machine in Cash has it…love this song a lot)

Birthday
You never really notice that years have passed until you notice the poster on your wall is dated year 2003. Yea…the “A Ballads” poster on my room wall…

Can’t believe it’s my birthday again. I must have been working too hard to notice. Haha… I only noticed when Mum gave me the envelope to make a Lent time donation. I was like “I thought you gave us already…” then trailed off when I realised it was last year’s envelope I was referring to. Anyway, Lent time means it’s close to Easter which means it’s near my birthday.

Anyway, I haven’t really thought of what I wanted. More tamis I guess. Hahaha… I want a strawberry cake this year. Last year was black forest. I have compiled my wish list under ‘links’.

give me more random topics

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“I swear that one day, my computer is going to explode in my face.”

Some random topics…

Computer
Yes, you read the topic sentence. I’ve been fiddling around with my computer a lot. Adding and removing programs. So much that my computer gives out weird (but unharmful) error messages, hangs at random moments, is getting slower and slower when starting up and generally a bitch most of the time.

Just this evening, I was trying to change some configurations so I will be able to type in traditional Chinese. Downloading the global IME and in so doing, having to uninstall Microsoft Visio coz it isn’t a legal copy and the Microsoft website doesn’t recognise it. Oopz…*protests* poor students can’t afford totally legal stuff. Besides, I only needed it when I was still studying in TP. Hardly use it now.

I still haven’t burnt out all the stuff I downloaded. Hehe…Nad, don’t think your 320GB hard drive is almighty. Very soon it will fill up and you’ll be complaining that you need more space. Anyway, I’ve been saying that I want to burn out my stuff and reformat my computer so many times but I haven’t done so. Procrastinator.

Cars
Ever since I started working with the motor processing team in NTUC Income, I’ve started to notice cars on the road a lot more.

May I conclude that a Kia Picanto is a cute car! :heart: I would love to own this cute car if I ever learn how to drive. My car would be pink. Although Kia Picantos don’t come in this shade but I could always get it repainted right? Well, all this is of course…impossible. Coz we all know that…

  1. Cars are freakin’ expensive in Singapore. Or at least the COE is.
  2. Motor insurance is also freakin’ expensive. Trust me, I know.
  3. Elisia has a lousy sense of direction. HAHAHAHAHA… :rofl:

And I’m still trying to find out the model and make of the cute pink car in the neighbouring carpark.

Money and Music
While most girls spend their money on clothes, I spend most of my money on CDs and magazines.

The minute I got my pay, I walked into a cd shop and exited with…

  1. 花样少年少女 OST
  2. YUI – From Me To You album
  3. Yuna Ito – Heart album
  4. BoA – Made In Twenty (20) album

That’s like a lot of money. See, that’s why people resort to downloading music.

It’s kinda ironic also that I buy the cds and don’t listen to them as a cd. As in, I rip the songs out and transfer them to my mp3 player so I can listen to the songs as I walk to work and back home everyday.

Sudoku
Sudoku is addictive. At first, I couldn’t understand what was all the fuss about a little puzzle. Never knew or even bothered to find out how to play it. Until a few days ago, I decided to make an attempt at it since there was one in the newspapers that is given out free every morning at the office building. Not like I would pick up a copy of the newspaper every morning since it’s in Chinese. Don’t get me wrong, I CAN read and understand Chinese but I’m just lazy to read the language since it takes me much longer to read something in Chinese than in English. Anyway, I only pick up a copy of the newspaper if an article on the front cover catches my eye.

After this exciting discovery that Sudoku is addictive, I’m going to pick up the newspaper every morning. Whether I read the articles or not, that’s none of your business. Hahaha…