The February Post

Hi my name is Mak....Bee Tai Mak

who cares what i introduce myself as if you're going to ask the same darn question again next year.
we shall not even dwellth on the nauseating topic of chinese new year. that is certainly not how i would want to rmb Feb.

however thankfully, i manage to avoid all the usual dreaded questions singles get. and still retaining the "so....A levels coming soon eh?" and "hows uni?"
which would previously disgust me, but now brings me much joy.
perhaps it was my brightly-colored happy dress with butterflies, bees and sunflowers coupled with my cheery rosiness......

*pl wait while your image is being downloaded*

*download unsuccessful. pl try again*

ok end of cny talk. yucks.


career-wise, things have been happening that are beyond my wildest imagination.
i cant even begin to think whether they are good or bad.
but it is surely the hand of the Lord moving and nothing I can do about it.

once in awhile when things you thought were just beginning to settle down start stirring up sediments, you truly get that feeling that nothing in your life is controllable.
or even predictable for that matter.
once in awhile when you just think you made this nice house for yourself to live in, unpacked the furniture and spring-cleaned everything,
God decides to show you that He is The One who builts and destroys.
whether it leaves a sweet or sour taste in your mouth, you end up always being in awe.


thanks to animax, im back (i think) on my anime craze!
anime never fails to amaze and captivate me.
just when i thought i have become a mature, serious rational-thinking career woman,
1 spark of anime craze and i wish i was a samurai all over again.

sadly however, my mandarin is just not what it used to be (which is???)
i can no longer read my hardcopy original mangas which lay collecting dust on my shelves with the same aptitude. (hey i could do it in the past hokays)


Another amazing earth-shaking development this month is.... (hold on to your seats guys)

IM STARTING FITNESS CLASS!!!! (fine its aerobics but it doesnt sound as dorky when you say fitness)


sigh. yes i can no longer afford to act cool and be smug with that
"yea? who cares about exercise and ill eat what i want dam!"

i still wanna eat what i want.
but things dont look v good with my daily routine of Sit On Your Ass at the office.
not so concern so much with the F word (yet)....but i have TATT disease.

Tired All The Time.

not that i wanna be cheery and all "good morning world!" like..
but i just want to maintain full control of my senses and my brain at least till i crash at 11pm everyday.
to be able to crack jokes that make sense...defend myself from enemies and be able to counter-attack with missile firepower muahaha....

for now i have a perpetually "huh? what?" stupid look on my face.
my firepower comes in the form of nondescript grunts that nobody hears
and once in awhile when i do find it in myself to whip out a comeback....
it is usually too late.
eliciting more "huh?what?" responses from unimpressed foes

so yes.
the New and Improved Version now does :

fitness class on Mondays,
korean on Tuesdays,
band rehearsals on Thursdays,(sometimes badminton)
cell on Fridays,
GB on Saturdays,
band again on Saturday/Sundays,

and anime slotted anywhere in between.
o yea and work. haha forgot about it.

sighh....
the New and Improved Version really needs to sleep in

The 2009 Post

So here i am on the first day of the new year, finding myself glued to my human-shaped couch and staring blankly at the nonsensical nondescript shows going on TV and wondering which is worse? the stupidity of the people who came up with such nonsense or that of the people who choose to waste away their precious holidays watching them.

i was determined not to think about 2009. its just too simple that everyone just has to use the last day of every year to think about the year, and the next.
surely life runs in more complicated ways than this.
i reiterate my january 2009 post when i say

"2008..2009 whats the difference?
do people change at the time between 31st Dec 2008 2359hrs and 1st Jan 2009 0000hrs?"

but then while finally logging into my defunct FB a/c to send new year wishes to my beloved and always-missed korean friends, i chanced upon a random note:

"This was the time I stopped writing, and when I stopped writing, I think I stopped really reflecting, I stopped making greater sense of purpose in life, and I stopped remembering as much."

then i looked at my own blog.
out of the 12 months a year has given us, only 5 months had been blogged.
thats not even half.
at first i thought, well...im not exactly from that generation anymore.
i dont need to vent things out for the world to see and know how i feel.
i dont have the time...theres nothing to say....dont wanna talk about work after work hours...dont need a whole blog full of emo rantings and action-less random reflections etcetc....

many excuses.

but i suddenly found that its true.
when i stopped writing. i stopped reflecting. and i stopped deriving precious nuggets of meaning in life from the everyday tide of routine and events.
routine becomes routine.
events come and pass.
stuff is just stuff.
and eventually...

i stopped remembering.

i found that its not that i didnt want to remember 2009.
i couldnt.
all i could conjure up were just stuff.
things that happened...people met...things done...things not done...
just things.
not any different from my mobile's calendar schedule or my to-do list or task folder

what became of those things? what happened to me because of things?
who knows?
maybe little sparkles of meaning were found, but were easily washed away by more new things and stuff. the lack of reflection had not allowed these sparkles the time and chance to be deeply engraved in me.

if i said ..."ah nothing much happened in 2009. just work. church things. stuff and things to keep life going on" it would be wrong.
there was so much to learn from all these....but my failure to realize the importance of reflection had allowed them to gradually diminish.

would i want the to be saying on 1 January 2011,
"ah nothing much happened in 2010. just work. church things. stuff and things to keep life going on"?
it was true that i was slowly beginning not to remember things...

but this had nothing to do with memory loss at all.

i remembered after coming back from Seoul in 2007, so much emotions and changes were taking place in me, and i realized later they had little to do with the physical reversed-homesickness typical of a returning exchange student. it had awakened something i never knew existed in me.

but it was too painful, and i was far too tired to revisit these changes again to do proper reflection and settle things within me.
so i did what was simple.

i chose not to do anything about it.

it was practical. it was rational and it was the easy way out.

but now as i look back.
i cant even remember what was it that changed. what had happened and why?
my own memory picks and chooses what to remember and fills up the gaps with substitutes of what i would feel comfortable recalling.
even if i wanted to reflect on it now. its far too late.
the folly of human memory - untrustable and inaccurate.

so i have decided.
that i will force myself if i have to, to write a post every month.
i dont want to not remember.

life is far too short for forgetfulness.

Happy New Year y'all.

The October Nove..i mean December Post

the worst thing to do is to be at excel class, sit in the front row...and surf FAILBLOG

my mouth aches in pain from trying really hard not to LOL
go read! http://failblog.org

sad is the day whichi have to enroll myself into basic excel class just to get out of office.
seriously the only thing keeping me sane at work are my colleagues.
the saying of "love for your work will keep you sane" is wrong.
sure i love my work, but its ur colleagues that make all the difference.
i really think that even if i have a shitty job i could stay for longer if my colleagues were gd
as opposed to having a great job but shitty colleagues.

even holeymoley is becoming bearable and perhaps even humourous.
i guess it has all to do with my distance away from him.
absence does make the heart fonder after all.
the more absence the more the heart grows fond.
altho "fond" may not be the word for the moment

so its finally the end of 2009.
im in no mood to have a whole emo reflecting 09 post.
thinking of 2010 gives me the jitters.
u know with more work (who know what other shat 2010 will bring?), more church, more everything and of course...less of me.

sometimes i think if the me of a couple of years ago could see that this was the life i was going to lead, that me would completely freak out.

not being able to sleep in EVER...doing OT at least 2-3 times a wk....mtg friends and bitching about WORK...not having the time and energy to put into band...no time to watch FRIENDS, 30rock and scrubs everyday....no time (and leading to no motivation) to watch anime and read manga (GASP)...sleeping by 12mn every !@#! day!!!!

i mean i used to wonder "what would make working people WANT to OT out of their own will?"

how much we have changed.
(or forced to change)
and our fighting spirit of stubbonness slowly grows weary and gives in to the ebb and flow of The Circle of Life.

as a gd friend of mine would say.
"well........you just gotta SUCK IT UP"


the only thing that would make The Circle of Life sweeter is a car.
yes. car.
i.need.a.car.

everything would be better

if.i.had.a.car

sounds like lyrics to a song

The September Post

Lets just ignore the minor details and assume that in J's world, September comes right after May shall we? and leave it as that haha.

Actually I really dont care if nobody ever reads this blog anymore.
in the past it used to be me coming up with (hopefully) funny and frank anecdotes on everyday life and happenings and making people laugh, or get mad, or...

its not that now im more serious or boring like we would assume all working people to slowly degenerate into...(now lets discuss the intricacies of the new interest rates for CPF blahablahaa)

i guess i would say im more contemplative now.
im more in the stage where u know u are going to change but u wanna try to retain as much essence of the old you as possible and not let it all fade away.

i shall omit anymore talk of work. (except when it comes to EXCEPTIONAL colleague behavior that demands a close psychological analysis of how deranged the human mind can get and begs the big question of "how do you know if a person is mildly autistic?")

ok maybe abit about work.
recently abit of my worst nightmare had come thru - i.e. i had been embroiled into office politics
politics is one of the stupidest things ever to come out from the exhaust pipe of working life.
i simply cannot CANNOT tolerate or understand people who are so easily offended..or rank-conscious..or takes every single bloody comment personally.
one wonders how long such specimens would live. perhaps in the greater scheme of things in life, such population filtering is necessary in nature.

but yet on the other end of the spectrum is me, someone who totally doesnt care about politics or rank. which isnt completely right either. it is after all, a civil service.
so yes learning bit by bit. the slow formation of the Working J and the Normal J.
May the two never shallth meeth.

i have also learn the valuable lesson that people can be absolutely gossip mongers with their snooty noses! seriously boredem is the first sign of warning of a real desperate rumour monger.
i mean i go out to buy books with a colleague during lunch and tongues can start wagging already. never mind the colleague is old enough to be my father.
and ive recently got the news headlines that im attached! wow. big news indeed considering im not aware of this fact myself and i have no idea who the other person is. yep. never met before.
curiouser and curiouser.
amazing thing is i keep such a low profile of myself hiding amongst the shrubbery all the time

so yes learning alot of life lessons thru work.
am currently on a long course now and LOVIN IT
the course itself is of course(hurhur) boring. its pure subjected torture and someone has just GOT to invent a device that prys open the eye lids forcefully...perhaps attached to the back of ur head of smth.
but my coursemates are quite awesome. met up with an old acquaintance from sa which is great.
missing my favourite white-haired crowd back at office and my new boss. (o yea i have a new boss! in addition to the old one of course. she is a complete knock-out. period.)

but mostly, the course has kickstarted me thinking about my future in this place.
something which i really hate to do - i.e. plan for the future which obviously includes change.
i can shelf it aside for now i guess but it wil come back to haunt me in a couple of years time.

things are changing as well in church.

the mass diaspora of working adults from the youthnet to the adultnet is causing unsettling feelings in me till today.
so sure, ive made my choice to stay. im pretty sure this is not all God can use me for in youthnet. i mean if u look back, ive not done much and have been hiding conveniently behind the facade of busying myself with the celebration ministry.

so yes from today on, every saturday mornings are spent at a GB company in a school of a faraway land called Jurong East.
this is something ive nv done before. sacrifice my precious precious saturday sleep-in mornings to travel halfway across the globe to engage youths of a CCA which has haunted my past.
deja vu indeed.

so why am i putting myself thru this?
if u say cos i love the youth. wrong. politically correct but wrong.
every fibre and shread of my being is screaming in opposition to my dragging myself out of bed every saturday. ive never had a battle between my flesh and spirit so real and tangible (perhaps i may have punched myself awake) as this

frankly i dont have a reason. im still clueless.
but if there needs to be one, i can say straight to u that im doing this to stay in youthnet
to stay in my cell group.
not politically correct at all.
but yet i know that my time here is not done yet.
and based on that simple truth, the only thing left to do is "just try lor"
i mean if u dont know where else to go, its not wrong to stay and wait.
wait for the clear sign one day where He will tell me "ok well done. now i have big plans for you at ur workplace"
which is also the day i will significantly dread.
i can never ever picture myself leaving the cell.
this cell whom i have literally grown up with.
no doubt the day will come.
but till it does, no point thinking and moping about it.
perhaps then all of them would have started working and we can all move tog?? yesyes?
that would be perfect.

at times like these
i feel like a chesspiece
but in the sense its a pretty gd thing to be in uncertainty that is beyond ur control.
whether in my career, church, friends, family, personal life, lefty. (how long IS that dog going to live???)
but that is the beauty of it.
to know that there is absolutely nothing i can do about anything.
some call that peaceful anxiety.
i want that

a blog post i never thot ill write in my life:


Things to do when you have HFMD


1. Drink #$@%loads of water

2. Watch Friends

3. Think about your own friends (and how you get more jokes than condolences)

4. Wash your hands after/before you eat/shit/sleep/watch tv/read/think/breathe/pat your dog/touch anything/everything

5. Think about how the hell you got HFMD (this will take up most of the time)

6. Write down possibilities of how the hell you got HFMD

7. Think of what you plan to do to the person who gave you HFMD

8. Think of who you would like to pass HFMD to (use the list of Who Made Fun Of You Having HFMD as guidelines)

9. Plan possible places to infect (google "places to bring your kids in Singapore" for preferable target zones)

10.Give first names to all your spots (use the list of Who Made Fun Of You Having HFMD as guidelines)



WHY GOD WHY??!?!?!?!?!??!?!

The April Post

Last night's department dinner was spectacularly boring.
this kind of dinner things are what i detest most.
its like "hey heres ur food. but wait...2 more hours til you can start"
and ur forced to mingle with others outside ur section after being forcibly split up (sounds familiar??)

it never works.
everyones just gonna be sticking to whoever familiar they can find around them. (and going to hate the organizers for splitting them up)

why not just let everyone be with whoever they wanna be with.
everyone has fun, you get the credit for an enjoyable night.
lets just dispose with the faux formalities huh?

ok la. the guy beside me was quite nice.
but could see he was putting in the extra effort to make conversation.
something SMU has obviously failed to impart to me.

but the smalltalk repetition of repeating what you do, and listening to what others does really makes me appreciate even more what im doing.
not that everyone else's jobs are suckier than urs.
but you really get to appreciate the connectiveness of each role.
and im extremely happy in my own role.

i also met the batch of fresh grads who started work same day as me,
all hanging out together, them all being in the same section,
and then i look at myself, hanging out with white-haired men.
and actually enjoying conversations much more with the latter instead.
hows that for weird haha.

sure alot of you may tease me about it, that im "ageing quickly" being around older people more often than others.
but ive never in my life appreciated elders more than at my work.
ok firstly they arent THAT old. maybe late 60s.
and they arent ur typical limping around complaining about how everyone doesnt appreciate them anymore, that they are "has-beens" etc.

they are more happening than me sia.
zipping around the island just to find the best chicken rice or chendol,
planning trips to Israel and Sarawak,
beating 30-somethings in the department table-tennis championships.

i mean, when i grow old im so going to be like that man

people my age would usually be on the journey of searching for what matters in life,
paths to take etc.
but these people have already been there and past that.
we always think our generations are so different, that what they have to say doesnt really matter and out of respect we just nod and smile as if condemning them to dementia already.

but if you really sit down and listen to them,
you'd realize we arent that different after all.

yesterday i planned out a whole speech to say to the new officers (motherhood and stuff)

but in the end, it was them who commanded the whole orientation course with real-life experiences and stories which brought to life old dusty archival files previously detached to us.
and that is really the story of their lives.

within that time, i have already a vision of what i wanna be next time in the far future.
theres no need to rack my brains to think of these things.
and everyday, i thank God for putting me in their company at such a young age.
that right from the start, I already know how im going to end.

sabishii da ne......

yes so after sending my whole family off at the airport last night,

This is Day 1 - Janelle All Alone

Most people would break a leg just to be alone in their houses.
but for me, the worst possible sound is the silence of an empty home.
because really, in the Mak household, pockets of silence are as rare as an untouched tub of ice cream.

i got really scared sleeping last night.
i dont actually have a problem with sleeping alone,
but for the past few days we had been making police reports
against some occultic clan rituals going on outside our place,
possibly due to the proximity of the japanese cemetry.
i tell you, just watching them perform will freak the beejezus out of you.

but after a good long prayer,
and knowing that nothing can ever touch this household because it belongs to God,
i finally slept peacefully.

so here i am, in my shivering room staring at the comp screen,
awaiting the clock to strike 6.
while all the other Maks are having steaming bowls of yakisoba in Tokyo,
meeting cute japanese boys and basically, being in THE WORLD OF ANIME AND MANGA.

OMG WHEN WILL IT BE MY TURN TO GO THERE EVER?!?!?!
i hear my kenshin calling out to me....

well i guess this is what you call, GROWING UP.
yes not everything can go your way (more often it is like that).
but well, sacrificing for the country - sounds better this way haha.

你是何等荣美

i thoroughly enjoyed last wk's chinese svc.
in fact every chinese svc is a blast.
you cannot believe the atmosphere in the place where old people gather to dance and prostrate themselves wholeheartedly to worship despite their fraility.

even with my handful of Ab keys to trip over and trying hard not to take my eyes off the score lest i lose track of where the song is going knowing my incredible speed at which i read Chinese,
when God is here, all these vanish just like that.

Chinese words which take forever for me to translate suddenly seep into me with utmost simplicity and meaning.

Lunched with a very happy grandma after the service where she ordered a crazed spread and introduced me to whoever within 5m who would listen as "my grand daughter the pianist just now"

who would ever have guessed the day janelle spent an entire Sunday lunching with a group of old people speaking mandarin and at the end of the day,
created a "赞美崇拜" ipod playlist.

God does have a very ironic sense of humour.

The March Post

wellwell so its been yet another month.

work is starting to get draggy and draining.
still a great job. but all things will ultimately reach the ball-and-chain stage.
yet i dont want to be constantly searching for something to motivate me everyday,
or always wishing/looking forward to the next getaway or escapade.
everyone seems to be living this way but i really cant bring myself to slip into that rut.

although it would be great if i had a farmhouse in a European countryside where i could read beside a lake, drink coffee and grow tomatoes and cabbages all day.

but one thing ive recently learnt,
is not to ever allow your performance at work determine what you really are.
i thot SMU had already stripped me of whatever dignity or ego that ive had.
but at my first taste of receiving my work back with that horrifying red marks,
and looking nothing like what it was supposed to be at the beginning,

i once again felt that long-forgotten bitter taste in my mouth.

and i realize, ever since knowing that ive gotten this job purely by God's grace - a special entry grade.
unknowingly, ive begun to doubt it. whether i really did deserve this or not.
and always needing to prove my abilities fit for this "special entry".

humans are truly forgetful creatures.

one day we praise God and we cant believe how good He is to us.

another day we allow the tides of reality to wash it all away and replace it with doubt - doubt in whatever grace has given us.
and that nagging need to always fill up that doubt with our own strength.

forgetfulness is indeed worse than faithlessness

it will eat you up inside little by little,
and you will eventually be consumed,
unless you decide, that your abilities or what people think of what you can do,
will never determine who you really are in His sight.

because thats what really matters -
He will take care of you

so i was at a high school the other day manning an event we held there.


i thot i would be so sickened at the thought of being surrounded by the usual high school noises...
you know, giggling girls, stomping of stairs by starchy whitewashed Bata shoes making squeaky sounds, recess bells, annoucements over a usually spoilt PA system but it doesnt matter since nobody ever listens to them anyway....etc.

but when i got there...i found myself rather jealous instead.

jealous of those squeaky overly whitewashed Bata shoes,

jealous of those pre-pubescent screaming voices grabbing stray worksheets and files just to rush for the next class,

jealous of the recess bell and the herd-stomping on the stairs towards the canteen that followed immediately after it,

jealous of the snaking-long queues in front of the artifically-flavored drink stall and MSG-laden fishball noodles shop,

jealous of the war-clashing noises between the Er-Hu Orchestra and Electric Guitar Club during CCA sessions,

jealous of the sweaty bodies ambling out from the basketball court to the sidegate bus-stop with ice-cold packets of H2O,

even jealous....of the whole row of wayward, untidy uniformed latecomers getting a lecture in the middle of the assembly area, before disgracefully sent back to join their classmates.

i remembered always trying to be that paikia. but the cannot-make-it kind.

"girl whats that behind your back!"
"huh what?"
"that thing you're hiding! its a packet drink isnt it?!"
"huh?"
"you're not allowed to bring food and drinks up to class!"
"huh...its not mine..i was helping my friend to throw"
"whats ur friend's name?"
"erm...janelle"
"isnt that UR name?!"
-______________________________-


ahhh...school life..
will there ever be another time such as this again?

looking back...
i thank God for the whole chunk of detentions and disciplinary action ive chalked up.
for these are the things that memories are made up of