anniversary

alrite.. so today marks one full year since i started this job. woohoo! and along with the one year service milestone comes...


- a 10% pay cut. haha.. nah.. it's not wat you think. i now get the option to use 10% of my salary to buy company shares. for every dollar that i put in, the company also chips in 50%. so technically.. i guess i'm taking a 10% pay cut in order to get a 5% pay rise? hm.. oh well, i figured that the company shares will have to take a 33.3% tumble before i actually start to lose my money, so why the hell not?


- an expired security pass. ah.. reliving the fun days one year ago when i had to borrow passes just to go to the loo..


- a new office. and about time too! heard news since a few months back that there's going to be a new lab and we were going to shift into it once it's ready. fast forward 3 months later to today and we're still here. yet another fine example of ruthless efficiency! well, the room is still not ready yet, but we're moving out temporarily to another floor to make space for the other team that's expanding. it means we have to move twice, but i think it's worth it just not to hear the question "so when's the new lab going to be ready ah? are you moving down soon?" wat seems like every day. yes, as you might guess, subtlety is not one of their strong points. haha


- a sore throat. urgh. come to think of it, i've oni taken 1 day of MC so far for that whole vodka incident.. maybe it's gonna be time for a 2nd one soon. hm..


1 year's come and gone. sheesh, how time flies. and u know wat? it may already have been a year since i started work, but i still don't know how to answer that annoying question : "how's work?" so far, the only response i can give is "ok lor." i mean, wat else do u expect me to say rite? official secrets and all that stuff. and not that you'll understand wat i do. heck, even i don't understand wat i'm doing sometimes, lol. ah well.. the search for the perfect comeback to that question continues. hopefully, i'll find it before the next May 30th. haha

wedding

so today is Nasral's big day. met with Simon at Kovan before Mariam picked us up and drove us to Pasir Ris for the wedding.

haven't seen either of them for about a year since Mariam's wedding last year. and she's gonna be a mother soon! so the girl i grew up with playing catching, hop-skotch and five-stones with is going to be a mother soon. sigh.. yet another reminder of how old we all have become..

so we arrived at the place in Pasir Ris, twisting and turning until we got to the place on the map only to find that there is not only one, but two Malay weddings going on at the same time. hm.. none of us knows anyone in Nasral's family or any of his friends. luckily we had the address.. skarli go to the wrong wedding, eat until shiok shiok then realise alamak! wrong one lah! then how? lol

so we got to the correct wedding, and it turns out the bridal couple isn't there. seems that in Malay weddings, the couple goes to both the bride and groom's place and spend a little time at both places. reached there ard 2, and Nasral's brother told us he won't be back there until 3:30. ok.. so that just leaves only one thing to do until then: makan lah! i think i'm lucky to have Malay neighbours since young - it lets me appreciate their food much better.

sat down at one of the tables and we were promptly given door gifts. Nasral has chosen to give out white eggs in pouches. after having our fill of nasi bryani and rendang, Simon looked at the white egg and asked if it was cooked. we took out our eggs and shook it a bit and came to a consensus that it was indeed and even remarked that it was quite rare to find white chicken eggs in Singapore.

then Simon had the smart idea to eat it right there and then, and he started peeling it. he looked at me and said, "eh, join me leh. otherwise i'd feel quite greedy eating it alone." and well, i couldn't leave my buddy alone in the lurch like this right? so i started peeling my egg too.

i should have known it was trouble the moment i started peeling it. the shell didn't fall apart straightaway like your normal boiled egg, but rather in bits and pieces. and the membrane was hard, making it even harder to peel the bits of shell away. it took a while, but we finally managed to remove the shell, although i have to admit, it didn't look very appetising with chunks of the egg missing here and there. Simon got his peeled first and he took a bite. he then turned to me and said..

"it's salted egg."

ah... crap...

i took a bite just to make sure he's right.

he's right. ok....

so we then had 2 choices: either continue to eat the rest of the salted egg like it was the most natural thing in the world to do, or.. refuse to eat any more of the egg - which would then tell the rest of the people around us that these 2 chinese morons had thought it was normal boiled egg and had started eating it until they realised it was salted egg. hm..

the answer was obvious: pride was defintely more important. so we ate the eggs - salty egg white portion and all - like it was something that we do it all the time. i wonder if the people around us had noticed our pained expressions while we were eating tho. lol.. fortunately, the eggs weren't that salty lah, still tahan-able. when i told my parents about the incident later, even they were suprised that they had chosen to give out salted eggs for door gifts - they've never heard of such a thing before. so it's not my fault! and besides, it was Simon's stupid idea. hmph..

and after we washed down our salted eggs with lots and lots of syrup drink, it was time for the bridal couple to arrive with all their entourage of drummer boys. so far, i've only heard their drums from my home upstairs, this is the first time i'm hearing them from so close and i was suprised to hear that they actually sing along to the drum beats. and man, those drums were loud sia.

we didn't stay long after that tho. thing about Malay weddings is that the bridal couple usually just sits up there on the stage and hardly mingles with the crowd. so while the drummer boys were still playing away, we quietly made our way up to the bride and groom to send them our best wishes. i haven't seen Nasral in 14 years, but he still looks the same as he does in Primary 6 - which leads us to conclude that among the all of us, he's the only one who still looks like the person on his NRIC. haha

overall, it was a good day even though most of the time it was just of the 3 of us - walking down memory lane, talking about old times and realising just how far along we have all come along in our own ways. so where will the next 14 years take us? only time will tell..

efficiency - part deux

remember those people who took more than half a year to tell me that i had submitted an incomplete form? well, looks like somebody has cleaned up their act..

after a lot of pushing from my boss, i must have been put on their super high priority list or something. i went for their screening test last thursday, and what do you know? my boss receives an email from their boss at 8 in the morning on tuesday (remember that monday is a public holiday), informing him that my clearance has been approved - effective since friday. wow, now that's ruthless efficiency!!

but it's not that i don't appreciate being cleared at rocket speed like this, but i get the distinct feeling that there was more than 1 good "wayang" going on at a government office last week. haha.. but, let's not go there - i think it's quite enough. the man has apologised for what seems to me to be an honest mistake. let bygones be bygones and move on already..