this tone of voice...

There is this tone of voice that I sometimes would use to retort. At its very best it is a dismissive tone, rather nonchalant, but at its worst it is more of caustic and biting. I use it when I am unsure if a remark is supposed to be sarcastic or just a friendly joke. I also use it to test out if people are having negative thoughts about me through their reaction to my tone of voice. But using this tone can sometimes prove to be dangerous as it can easily lead to a communication breakdown.

There was this one time I used it to Zihui. She said something to me during a Maths lecture which I supposed it to be a playful sarcasm, so it used that tone to retort back, but she didnt take it well and continued the banter which didnt go well with me although we werent exactly in a badmouthing stage. Luckily, we managed to use clear up the mess of that communication breakdown by the end of that lecture without much damage to our friendship.

I didnt learn from my mistake and still like to often use that tone of voice to test grounds or when Im pissed but dont want to offend the other party. But there was another communication breakdown again with another person. This time it was because I was unsure if my friend’s remark was supposed to be sarcastic or just a friendly joke and I was a bit pissed that those words were said, so I used that tone. It turned out that that tone didnt go down with either of us and I became very very pissed. I dont know if my friend meant those words, but it really pained me. Sometimes people would say things they dont mean, but to the person who hears those words it might have been very painful. Just like I took my friend’s words to heart, my words might also hurt other before. I would like to just let every one of my friends know that Im sorry, if my words ever hurt them in any way.

Maybe, I shouldnt use that tone of voice anymore... But then again, not using that tone of voice would make me feel quite vulnerable... ...

Oh purple rain, please don't cry...

Heard a very old but nice song on tv. Chyi Chin’s Purple Rain, Zi3Yu3, its some old tv serials ending song. I remember Id used to like that song, but when was it, I cant remember. Possibly the mid-90s when there was a blossom of nice songs, the golden era of Chinese music when music was about great melodies and meaningful lyrics. Which album was Purple Rain from? Anyone has that CD?

Chyi Chin used to sing rather well, from what I remember of his songs. His songs also remind me of the Wubai kind of music, except that Wubai has a complete band to play music for him. Another thing I remember of Chyi Chin was his romance with Joey Wong. During the decade they were together, there were numerous reports that they had secretly got hitched in America or something similar, but all along, they never got married. Then there would be reports that they broke up and others would say they got back together and so on. Finally, that was it, a report revealing that Chyi Chin had a son borne by an ex-girlfriend. All along, Chyi Chin had this devoted lover image, no matter how badly Joey Wong spoke of him during their “off” periods, he would still say that Joey Wong was the person he truly loves. After that damned report, which Chyi Chin finally acknowledged, there were varying rumours that the couple was going ahead with their marriage plans and that Joey Wong dumped Chyi Chin. Only God really knew what was going on between them. Some time later, Joey Wong publicly admitted that their relationship was officially over. Even so, Chyi Chin still openly pined for the fair maiden.

Did Joey Wong dump Chyi Chin because of his past? Or were there really irreconcilable differences between them? Well, everyday folks like us will probably never know and it will never affect us personally in any way...

Sometimes I wonder, really, how does a relationship end? Especially relationships that lasted for many many years, I mean, after that many years wont you have fully understood and accepted that person? There is also the case of Ekin Cheng, he too ended a decade-old relationship for another person... Why, even after that long a time period, the relationship is still so fragile? In Japan, statistically, middle-aged people who have been married for over 20 years have registered the highest number of divorces. Why?!

My Chinese Birthday

Today the 6th day of the first lunar month is my Chinese birthday. Well, according to Chinese belief, I should have eaten longevity noodles with an egg for lunch just now, but instead, as nobody had remembered my Chinese birthday, I ate fish fillet and sausage omelette for lunch. I even had to cook the omelette myself! What a pathetic way to have lunch on a birthday...

Then again, who actually celebrates their Chinese birthday? I mean, like how many people even know when is their Chinese birthday? Or their Eight Characters? Ancient Chinese have a belief that everything on earth is predestined when one is born, so, our Eight Characters actually holds the key to our whole meaning of existence on earth. Our Eight Characters includes the year of our birth, the month, the day, and the time, each denotation consists of two characters, hence its name, the Eight Characters.

sian sian sian!!!

over with the dumb SATs liao... dont think i will actually do well, but deep down i do hope i can do well, at the very lest better than my previous score.

i went to acjc, not knowing anyone, not knowing what to do, but luckily i met these two tj students who were very friendly, sunni and nikita, from 0103! thanks! it turned out that there are many tj people around, at least 20% of the people there were from tj, and were wearing school uniform. i can only guess that there were many more in plain clothes. the rest were ac students, but mostly ex-ac students, ya, the whole lot were retaking that dumb test.

from now on, i am very free liao. and i badly want to go out!!! friends, where are you?! can any little body ask poor joan out? shopping?! lunch?! dinner?! anything?! i am damn bored!!!

gongxi gongxi

gong xi fa cai!
wan shi ru yi!

i wore the racial harmony day outfit with the oriental wooden slip-ons to the hyatts grand reunion dinner just now. well, 50% of the guests there wore mandarin or pseudo-mandarin outfits, of which 70% of the female guests wore that and 95% of the kids under 12, so i didnt look out of place in that outfit. took a whole lot of pix, of me and my family and of the glorious food. will be putting them up on my blog asap after i learn how to do it. my father recommended me to do it through frontpage, but well, i will have to see how far my limited computer knowledge can bring me to. till then... ...

for now, its pure word descriptions! heehee... first dish, yusheng, need not say anything about it. second dish, golden suckling pig, with sweet sauce and egg wrap like those for peking duck kind. oh man, cant wait to show the pix... third dish, you people are so so going to envy me, sharks fin soup with fish maw, the soup is the clear soup kind, not the starched kind and the sharks fin is the whole piece kind, not the individual strand kind, wow, you should see it man! well, pix coming out asap... fourth dish, abalone in coconut, its a very tropical looking dish, but fell short of expectations, only one (quite thick though) slice of abalone with sea cucumber, crab meat, dried scallops and white fungus, okay lah, still a top dish, only that i would prefer it if the abalone was whole... there was also oysters with whole mushrooms, fried prawns in wasabi mayo sauce (only a tinge of wasabi taste so it was just perfect!), korean-styled noodles, and of course the dessert buffet!!! i took a whole lot more photos, cant wait to let everyone ee the wonderful chocolate fountain, strawberry cheesecakes, tiramisu, chocolate mousse, mango pudding and a whole range of icecream. not forgetting other desserts such as tangyuan, berry pies and traditional new year snacks... ...

the whole atmosphere there was very festive as the hotel invited acrobats, a magician (a very lousy one though, his tricks were all seen through by my cousins and we ended up dissing the poor magician throughout), a chinese orchestra, and a lion dance troop. each guest was also given a 200g 4 by 7 white/milk chocolate bar as door gift. really, this dinner, priced at approximately $90 per head was like 10 times more worth it than our pathetic prom dinner (though they are of a different kind of atmosphere). interested? next year perhaps can suggest that to your parents/grandparents?

Fallen Angel Cries...

this is it.

the name of this blogskin coincidentally is a wong kar wai movie title. 1996, starring leon lai and takeshi kaneshiro, it is one of two wong kar wai movies without tony leung chiu wai involved. fallen angels, or duo4 luo4 tian1 shi3, is about hong kong prostitutes, and like most other wongs movies, the plot is forgettable. the blogskin was done by someone called wah_biangz, due credit must be given. i dont know if wah_biangz is a guy or girl, only that that person should be 18 this year, and i strongly suspect that wah_biangz is a singaporean. i mean, which other peoples in the world would call themselves wah_biangz man. here, im bowing three times to wah_biangz in gratitude of this wonderful skin which i think really expresses my deep felt sentiments. with a blog titled castle in the clouds, this angel is now degenerated, only able to pine for the clouds... ...

okay, enough of all the introduction. i hereby proclaim myself yet again unemployed! im done with the stint with john little, made many new friends, some others would be jerlin, julius, jin rong, willy... but ive also met some really qigek people, like this dumb sub packer whom i dont know his name, and dont want to know anyway. he was me and sherrys sub packer for 45min on sunday when our packers when for dinner. in the first min, he had already pissed me off with his lack of common sense. i had this customer who bought over $200 worth of items and my counter was overflowing with lots of small items, so i asked the dear dumb packer to help me pack the stuff first since sherrys customer had only bought a single bag which sherry could easily pack it herself, but my dear dumb packer started ranting that since sherrys customer had only one item, he wanted to pack that first. nevermind that, but he continued ranting that i treated him as if he was a thousand-handed guanyin. like come on man, what your problem?!

okay, i didnt mind that, but not long after, i needed some help with the nets machine as it ran out of paper, and i could not fit the paper in, i asked him if he knew how to do it, he tried but couldnt do it, but later muttered under his breath that feeding paper into the nets machine was supposed to be my job and why wasnt i able to do it. i was so shocked when i heard that, so i asked him what did he mean by that, he was like ohh nothing, i was just talking to myself. hey, if you are not happy say it out lah, what do you mean by saying in that manner?! like you are so great meh?

being a cashier, i had to retain my composure and smile to all my customers even though i was boiling inside. but i did almost lose my cool at one point in time when i was almost done with a customer, left with only one item to scan. my dumb packer was like telling me to just press 3. i mean, press what 3?! only one item was left why did i need to press 3? he went over to my keyboard and pressed function 3, repeat line, cos that item was the same with the previous item. he said that that would have been much faster, but really, walking to the key board and pressing that button was slower that me scanning that item. i told him off, he was damn displeased and started ranting under his breath. really, if there werent many customers, he would have been dead meat!

xumin was also pissed off with him when she came by my counter to collect the used plastic shopping bags and asked him if he could compress those bags when he dumped them in her bag. ya, he started ranting again. sherry was also quite unhappy when our place was filled with plastic bags (my legs was literary buried under those plastic bags) and he ranted that our counter was like a rubbish dump. in actual fact, he was supposed to be the one clearing the bags, but he didnt do it. he blamed us. but when we have long queue of customers behind us, we really couldnt do anything about it. thanks a lot im never seeing him ever again!

but luckily, that 45min was the only bad thing that happened to me during my 8 days of work. also, i got the chance to touch and see a $1000 note, purple in colour, with a picture of the government house on it, and a US$100 note, a true greenback...

looking forward: dinner at hyatts tmr night. chocolate fountain, here i come!!! but then again, i recently gained some weight again, my pantes became tighter. damn scared leh... sekali after tmr night i cant wear my new clothes then how arh?! die... i think i better not eat lunch, keep my stomach empty for dinner, so so looking forward to it! poor friends, i promise to give a full account of my meal in great detail asap so you can imagine yourself eating them. till then, you may quench your appetite with my 12 jan's piece! *giggles* *more giggles* *most giggles*

Warehouse Sales at the Expo

my arms and back are so so tired from all the heavy manual work setting up the wares for sales. my legs are tired from all the walking and standing around over long periods of time. my butt aches from all the long periods of time sitting on the cold hard expo ground. the term cashier was in fact a farce as basically i didnt do much cashiering, i did do some, but most of the time is doing odd works and trying out different ways to skive off work while apparently doing work.

the only thing good that came out of this stint was the friends id made. the girls ive befriends on tues and wed, rose, felicia, andrea, jaime, colleen, it was fun hanging out with them thinking of ways to do work when we werent doing anything at all. confused? an example, packing and folding clothes allowed us to have an excuse to sit of the floor, so we took a box of clothes, tagged them, folded them, sorted them in designs and colours, packed them neatly into the box, all at extremely slow speeds, then emptied the box, and packed them all over again. another example, when we were supposed to put up signages, we took the different signs and walked all around the expo hall looking as though we were finding suitable positions to put them up when we were in fact just blindly walking around and chatting. okay, i aint that lazy! it was just that most of the stuff we were supposed to do had been done and there was nothing to do but we cant blatantly just sit around and do nothing so we had to think of these ways to occupy ourselves!

finally, today i got to touch the cash till and serve customers. n i hell screwed them all up man! i broke down on the first customer i served. i was like so damn slow, made a whole lot of mistakes, and had to trouble my poor in-charge siew geok to help me clear up the mess while i had to endure pissed look of that dear customer. i fumbled on my first customer paying by nets too. id just blanked out on how to operate that stupid machine and had to call in siew geok again. luckily this customer was very easy going and he n his friend actually could joke with me being a pathetic greenhorn. well, to redeem myself, my cashiering skills actually improved along with the number of customers id served. yay!

n i did make more friends today. there is fellow cashier sherry whom i slacked around with today after id got ridden of my cashiering duties, my dear packer ser yang from ntu who had to work for his hostel hall, some other slacking merchandise clearer thian boon and his friend who took sherry and i on a slacking expedition around the expo hall, a poor san who had to sort out ladies wear all by himself until sherry, colleen and i went over to skive by apparently helping him, and many more other fellow slacking souls. another redemption was that john little really employed too many temp staff this time.

working at this expo sales really introduced many different kinds of people to me and it let me see how unreasonable some singaporeans can be. there was this old malay woman who wanted to buy a whole lot of crockery and insisted to the cashier that it is cheaper than we thought so when we knew matter of factly that we were correct. that woman insisted on seeing our in-charge, and when told over and over again the correct price, she decided to leave that big box of breakable items with us and continued shopping while thinking if she still wanted those goods. she came back to that same counter again with another box of similar crockery and said she didnt want the previous box when basically both are of the same items with the same price. really damn kanasai one!!!

the most head shaking people are those women who pick up bags and bags of clothes over to a corner then slowly pick and decide which ones do they really want, then just dump the rest of the clothes around. some women are even more impressive. since this john little sale is not equipped with fitting rooms, those women would pick up bags of clothes over to one side and try them on over their clothes, under their clothes, and when picking out clothes for children, they treated the whole expo area as one big fitting room. those poor kids. by the mid day, most kids were visibly bored stiff. one little boy around 2 years was so fed up with his mother that he kept walking away from her to sherry, colleen and me picking up hangers for us. like duh?! but because we were as bored as him, we humoured him. like even more duh?!

if only there were like some shuai ges around, maybe work will be more fun. but basically the guys there are like so so pathetic, not to mention short, like double the patheticness. haiz...

daydreaming of cny eve

the eve of chinese new year, reunion dinner at hyatt.

hahaha... just thinking about it makes me feel so so good! yu sheng. waited one whole year for it and finally i will be eating it like soon. sharks fin soup. still thinking of the one i had at the oriental last september/october when i went for a wedding dinner and now i can have it again. abalone. with all those skylight, new moon, fortune, blah blah adverts on tv, i want mine too. but the one thing that im like so so dying for and which is a speciality of most hyatt dinners is their dessert buffet! i remember one reunion dinner at hyatt, there was this chocolate fountain a la charlie and the chocolate factory... ... aww... *joan floating somewhere in heaven liao*

okay, earth to joan! the present most important thing is to come up with the perfect outfit to wear for the occasion. my mother wants me to wear what i wore for racial harmony day cos its a chinese new year celebration, for those who cant remember what i wore or didnt see me in that outfit, its a light pink sleeveless qipao top with a baby pink ankle length skirt. well, now the only thing im pondering is what shoes to match. should i wear my silver daniel yam heels or a reddish brown wooden craved with patterns slip-ons with silver finish. the daniel yam heels would be classy enough for the event, i mean, its at hyatt! but the wooden slip-ons has an oriental touch to complete the cheena look my mother want me to have for that day. comments?

well, either shoe i put on will still allow me to indulge in my favourites... really, who cares if sharks are facing extinction. really, who cares if you will see two joans after cny. okay, joan cares for the latter, but she will lose the extra joan straight after all the cny dinners.

sian day

want to scale new heights of the art of procrastination? learn a trick or two from the master herself. can you beat this procrastination record? id just sent my prom dress for drycleaning ytd, after one month and five days! then i went back down to tj to pass a book to my junior. seeing the newbies and the poor year 2s, i felt a certain sense of achievement, finally, i need not suffer like them anymore! hahaha...

after that, i could have went straight back home and slack another day with my tv set, but after talking to eunice, hearing her planning to go shopping for black skirts with yingling, i decided to go with them. they were going to the robinsons sale at the expo to get black skirts to wear for their banquet job at some hotel, kudos to them for finally finding a job! well, i didnt get any skirt, but being one who really likes buying things, i got myself a pair of jeans. okay, to redeem myself, the jeans was a necessity because now i can only wear one pair of pants out of all those my mother and i own. in a way, id treat it as a good piece of new as it meant that ive lost weight! yay! my waist is slimmer!

but yingling and eunice couldnt get everything they needed there so we made a trip to tampines. and the inherent shopper inside me got the better of things and i bought a pair of boots there, from everbest. the original price of the boots was $79.90 but the shop was having a 10% storewide discount, and as there was some marks on the shoe(which were cleaned away after some wiping so it wasnt a big deal), the salesgirl gave me another 10% off. but the story didnt just end there, cos the salesgirl in the end charged me $69.90 for the boots, which after the 20% discount costs only about $55. what a steal! i will match my new boots with the esprit outfit my aunt bought for me some weeks ago or with the esprit dress i bought on a 20% discount, or... suddenly, i cant wait for new year, i can get to wear all my nice new clothes...

speaking of nice new clothes, ive got this pair of op boardshorts free from my sisters friend. my sisters friend (a guy) likes this girl and bought a whole lot of gifts for her for her birthday, but as she didnt like him, she only accepted a pencil case from him. faced with the rest of the items, he can only give them away. and inheriting my maxim of no take whit no take(translate it into chinese literarily), my sister brought home the boardshorts, but as it wasnt her size, haha, it became mine!

counting my new clothes, blouse from esprit, miniskirt also from esprit, cotton spag top from 37degrees, boardshorts 37degrees, black dress esprit, boardshorts op, pink polo longsleeved top from ralph lauren polo (a gift from my uncle who bought it cheap from vietnam), tinted jeans bum (the one i got today), a red handbag from bum (a gift from my sister which she got in malaysia where i horibly didnt want to go), studded boots (the one i got today), pink shawl (a christmas present from an aunt), well, i think thats about it. wow, cant wait to wear them! umm, must start experimenting them and see what i should wear on the first day of cny, maybe picking out the outfit for the reunion dinner is more important if i get to go to some hotel or restaurant for dinner this year, and the 7th day dinner, that definitely will be at a hotel or restaurant... ...

bags, shoes, clothes, no one girl can ever have enough of them... a very good tagline used by a shoe shop that i came across in a book for advertising, “theres always a little Imelda in us”. note: Imelda Marcos, owner of over 1150 pairs of branded shoes, wife of Ferdinand Marcos, notoriously corrupt ex-president of Philippines who was toppled over by the people in the late 80s (die, cant seem to remember the exact year when i even used it for my history a levels exam less than 2 months ago, this is very bad!)

dear friends, please come and meet up with me after the cny so that i can parade round in my new clothes. thank you.

Job Job Job and some Resolutions

ive found a job. with john little at the expo for 8 days. its sort of like just the right kind of work for me, near my place, very short tern, working in shits so i wont fall into a routine, but early enough for me to start sleeping well. i wont say the pay is good, but it pays reasonably well for me to want to take up the job offer... hee... they are even paying us for the orientation session and our training session...

this job interview was nothing i expected other than the extremely long queue formed. from the last john little job interview they had and what i heard from people, large numbers of people swarmed the interview area during the time slots, so my friend and i decided to go there super early. still, the was already a lot of people there at the time we reached and had to join the long queue. about 20 min in the queue, my friend and i were segregated out from the queue. it seems that john little was only taking in students waiting for a level results and the jobs were filled on a first-come-first-serve basis. i dont know if i completely agree of their selection of temp workers, but i just feel lucky that ive finally found some work.

john little is offering another 3 weeks to a month stint at their various outlets in mid feb for their sale. i verbally gave my consent. well, the timing is just right, after the expo stint, after the cny and my dumb SATs and with an adequate 2 weeks rest before working again... quite lucky to land this john little stint, opened up other paths of working routes for me without any sort of interviews. now to think of it, other then the robinsons one which i backed out just during the queuing up, i didnt go for another other job interviews and since the john little one didnt have an interview, i dont have any experience of interviews at all! dont know if its good or bad...

and in the meantime, i still have my SATs to worry about... im like so damn pissed lor... ive got to go to a gawddamn faraway place right across the country in acjc to take that stupid test! id better do well for it, or id be like even more pissed than i am now which would be very bad... i wonder where is everyone else taking the test. it had better not be that im the only one taking the test in acjc, that would be like so sad...

anw, at this bright start of the new year, ive set myself some wishes. not resolutions since not all can me achieved by my sheer effort and i dont know if i can actually keep them, its more of wishes, hopefully procrastination doesnt step in and i can fulfil these wishes by the end of the year!
1. earn money
2. learn diving
3. get good a level results
4. get good SAT scores
5. find a boyfriend
6. become prettier
7. finish up everything im doing halfway
8. be a more fanatical fan of faye and wubai
9. perm my hair
10. get my ears pierced

well, that reminds me, when are we going to get our ears pierced?!! and friends, i will start evangelising all of you to fall in love with faye and wubai, so better prepare for it! anyone interested in diving? please let me know, then we can go for lessons together.