once a guide, always a guide

yesterday while the rest of the world was probably too engrossed in their world of magic and spells with the arrival of the long-awaited seventh book (no i don't read harry potter =P), i met up with special people whom i haven't seen in a long long time! i guess it took them quite a bit of effort to tear their eyes away from the book, but we had such a fun time i bet our time spent together was more interesting than any page of the book!

us at fish & co! the person who organized the outing actually couldn't make it in the end because she came down with flu. sigh, that lowly ar.. it's also a pity that jingxiu couldn't come. i haven't talked to her properly in years! so it was just dory, kwa, bra and me who met up in ulu novena! it was my first time to novena square! or was it united square? i can't remember, there're 3 buildings over there right? anyway, it felt really good to see that everyone's still the same. dory with her contagious laughter, kwa my fellow ah-xiao who is ever so nice to talk to, and bra who talks at the speed of light. these are the people who once again make me believe that some things never change. :)

mm hmm i want to linger here.. suddenly i miss going for guides camps. those days we pitched our own tents, fixed our very own shoeracks, clothesline, baggage racks, we cooked our meals with twigs and leaves.. we stifled our yawns while enduring debriefs that lasted an eternity, and we stuck by each other during sentry duty. those days we watched the singapore idol finals in the school lecture theatre, we went crazy during campfires, and we went around freaking juniors out/getting ourselves freaked out by seniors during the ghostly treasure hunts. we were blindfolded during sabotage sessions, we ate marshmellows mixed with chilli sauce and pepper while enthusiastically asking to be fed more of such delicious foods. those days we were scolded, praised, then scolded all over again. we shuffled our boots during footdrill, we did our pushups together, we did hentak kaki till lactic acid threatened to spill out.. those days we were so sweaty, smelly, dirty, and disgusting. but those days i was with these bad-weather friends of mine and we were tired but happy. that's why i think those days are still the best.

the rainbow-coloured lights of one raffles quay

erm. has it been more than a month since i last blogged? this place feels so foreign now. maybe i should really start reviving this dead mushroom or i'll just continue being lazy and leave it to rot when im in london! though it’s not that mushrooms dislike rotting anyway.. hahaha. okay! i shall start updating from the beginning of an end!

4th july was my last day of work at the law firm! which pretty much explains why i’m finally free to blog! (though it has been weeks since i ended work already. okay okay im just lazy) the past 3 months or so at work passed by so quickly it seemed like just yesterday when i first entered the firm awkwardly with a pair of weird toes-unfriendly shoes that was so lousy their soles would come off the bases without warning. i knew next to nothing about taking over a secretary’s duties, and also next to no one (apart from my erjie and bernie kor) in that green and foreign building. after ying2 and chuan yuan stopped working, and lowly ended her internship, i thought i would be spending lunchtime eating alone at some ulu corner of raffles place everyday, which was really quite a sad thought to entertain. what was worse, the cbd area is just the perfect place where you jaywalk together with crowds of busy people – women on their stilettos, men in their long sleeves – and rush off to some place, all the while contemplating whether these people even know where they are headed. yet somehow, what i anticipated did not come close to materializing. even before i had the time to fret about where to go for lunch, i actually found myself eating mixed veg rice with tofu and potatoes during lunchtime in the office, while i watched one litre of tears and engine in front of the computer together with colleagues who call themselves my imaginary friends.

isn’t it scary if you wake up one day to find that everything and everyone that mattered to you only happened and existed in your mind? just imagine how i was almost driven to the brink of my sanity by their repeated claims that they only resided in my mind! thankfully there was still an ounce of logic left in me that reminded me that imaginary friends wouldn’t tell you that they’re imaginary! correct? hahaha. this was the kind of rubbish i had to put up with everyday!

presenting.. my colleagues at the firm! i shall give them nicknames to er, protect their privacy! =P

miso soup! she's my really nice and cute boss! can you believe it? i actually had the audacity to tell her not to close my freecell game when she caught me playing! :O if it's someone else i think i would have been fired already.

smiley boss! this is my other boss! she's always friendly and smiling so i thoroughly enjoyed helping her scan, photocopy, file and deliver documents!

ex-pregnant lady! this is the secretary whose duties i had to cover once she took her maternity leave. now she's not pregnant anymore! her baby is so adorable im going to visit her house again and pinch the baby's cheeks. this photo was taken against the scenic night view from our office on my last day of work and it totally reminds me of the scenery from the Peak in hongkong!

now here's the cute baby! but she looks very distressed in this photo. i wonder why, but it's definitely not because of the person carrying her! she was in very good hands!

badah the pretty pregnant lady! i love calling her badah even though she hates it. she sits next to me in the office so i keep bugging her all the time! badah badah badah!

beauty from "beauty and the beast"! i only have a photo of her nice hair because she said she looked like shit that day and so she refused to let me take a nice photo of her! i don't have a photo of kelian tinky winky too! beauty and kelian tinky winky are the two whom i love disturbing! we watch touching japanese dramas during lunchtime and cry like mad. or at least, kelian tinky winky and i will cry while the cold-blooded beauty will think we're overreacting.

cold sore! =P she totally doesn't look her age! i always see her planning birthday celebrations, ordering cakes and buffets for our department! she's my fellow samsui woman!

my favourite pantry auntie! she's the one who started calling me "gin na!" i miss the yummy and cheap mixed veg rice, nasi lemak, char kway tiao and my $2 noodles that she helps to buy for our lunch! she's so sweet she gave me a pizza bun the day before my last day of work because she would be on leave the next day :)

i think i've become an expert at formatting documents after all this time of mouse-clicking! i've also learnt to be more alert (or so i think!) after days of forgetting to shut down smiley boss' computer! miso soup actually ganged up with the rest to bluff me into believing that not shutting down the computer will prevent smiley boss from working remotely and i was so stressed and guilty after that! i've learnt how things work in a law firm - the different departments, the hierachy and how saying that lawyers are busy is always a mere understatement. i've also witnessed a teeny weeny bit of office politics, which was already quite scary, not to mention how it is even more frightening that what i saw and heard only made up the tip of an iceberg.

those 3 months, i've shared tons of fun and laughter with these people. they always irritate me with the mention of the omnipresent mosquito man and the two "J"s we sometimes see in the firm, which actually boiled down to total rubbish. "chee kueh!" became the new vulgarity and sometimes i really do miss this bunch of people who call me by my sec1 nickname like it's some kind of bad word. i've grown used to how beauty will raise an eyebrow and answer back in her own hostile manner, "you've got an issue with that?" whenever i ask her something stupid. or how ex-pregnant lady loves to intimidate people with her classic "suck my toes la". then there's badah with her sudden outburst of "我是马来人! 我不会讲华语!" when we actually attempted to explain something to her in chinese. and how can i forget kelian tinky winky who got herself the nickname ever since she turned up for work in a purple dress and all she lacked was a red bag to render the gay image complete. her reply to my "怎么办? 怎么办?" will always be an irritating "屁股切两半!"

outside office hours, we did so many things together too! we ate mr. bean's soyabean icecream and because of something gross that ex-pregnant lady uttered which i would remember for life (don't worry though, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the icecream!), i developed a phobia of eating it again. we tasted hokkaido icecream together and i learnt that xing fu-ness meant being teleported all the way to hokkaido and feeling snowflakes all around you. we tried out the new anything/whatever drink (don't ever attempt to ask the cashier for anything or whatever or you'll end up re-enacting the commercial!) and the process of buying the can drinks was so exasperating i almost puked blood. in the office we ate pizza hut, macs, kfc, a whole load of cakes, and we pigged out during trolley fridays. banquet, sakae sushi, tcc, and the soup spoon were some places where we left our footprints.

the pretty night view from our office :) despite how i was at times really very very exhausted from having to be at tuition sessions after work each day, and how i had to wake up so early just to drag myself to work each morning, the above-mentioned people made everything a lot more bearable and enjoyable. much as i always complain to them that i want to quit and i hate working with them, i actually do mean the opposite. sometimes i think of the funny things that happened and i laugh at those silly memories and miss those days of walking alongside the rainbow-coloured lights of one raffles quay.