back off

i have been so irritable.

i just spent the entire afternoon doing absolutely nothing in front of the comp. people have walked in and out of my room but honestly, i really want to be left alone. i havent slept in my bed all week. and i dont feel like talking, nor socialising, nor having any contact with anyone right now. and even if i did, it is solely for the purpose of not jutting out too sorely from the norm.

pop tried to arrange dinner with me and i said i had to go out. said i've got a friend to meet. and where am i headed, honestly? i've got a ticket booked at 9pm for 2012 with the rest. do i feel bad about rejecting my dad the way i did? no. not at all. maybe i will, in a couple of weeks when christmas comes around the corner and the feeling of love and joy starts to overwhelm me. but right now, no. not at all. not one bit. but what did that poor old man do to piss me off so bad? nothing! absolutely nothing. like i said, i just dont feel like talking.

maybe i just dont feel like talking to my parents. or anyone familiar. maybe this dire need to get away and talk to strangers to live out a week on my own is starting to eat into me. i'd rather sit infront of the computer playing loser fishville on facebook than to have lunch with my church mates. which brings me to another point.

i met rachel right after church today and we were talking about cell groups and stuff. and i've been thinking for the longest time ever that we, us, core group of divers, should have regular biblestudy sessions. and then we both concluded that people from our batch, or the years between or before/after our batch have disappeared. so theres this void of strangers, or people that are way too familiar that you dont quite want to mingle with. so people end up dropping off from church like flies. i'm a fine example of that, and i wouldnt deny. so there.

i know my parents are trying. and i think if i had to parent myself, i would have drowned this ungrateful kid a long time ago. i can be such a pain in the ass if i choose to be. like i said, learn to back off. get obvious hints from my monowordedness. "what are you doing gloria?....stuff" "where are you going?...out". i dont feel like talking. i just dont. dont force me to scream at you.

loo told me once that it is very difficult to love me. i know. and i dont blame her. i'm too extreme, she says. that i'm either too good, or too nasty. poor people. poor glorias friends. poor papa and mama ngoi. but find comfort in the fact that i know it, and i'm trying. and this past year has been nothing more than an eye opener to learn about myself thru someone else. my very own walking and living reflection. its a God given gift that we're in each other's lives because no one else can tell us how we're like, unless you see it for yourself.

i'm sorry world. just let me be and let me dwell in my moment please...

habitudes

gracie invited me to a seminar like thing that she was going for on personal leadership and though it seemed interesting, i had half a mind to vegetate in front of the tv that night. it was one of those nights where watching the same old episode of simpsons or friends seemed more enticing than anything else in the world.

eugene started to chant in the background with an uncanny similarity to nelson muntz' the big bully from simpsons, "ahha..somebody's not going for the seminar, ah ha!" grr. trust me, i wanted to prove him right and slump right back into the couch. but knowing that gracie had paid for me to go, and that i was missing out on the christmas concert i was invited for, for this.... i just had to.

so i peeled myself off the chair and left. walked my way to katong mall/shopping centre. whichever made sense to me and called gracie. so she says its katong shopping mall. like huh! which? make up your mind! then she gives me mixed up instructions of where to go. i ended up walking around in circles in our crappozoid humidity and finally got to the place which was approximiately 50m from where i started from. shitzu man. pissed as hell i was, this was the one person who leads groups up for expeditions and up mountains to camp. what kind of instructions does she give! urghh.

so i got in, sat thru the seminar, steaming with anger and perspiration and i found out it was a church event thing organised by cornerstone. maybe the devil was working within me, but i actually got mad knowing it was a christian thing. totally weird that i felt the way i did, but i did. and i'll curse at satan extra hard for making me feel that way. and though i know my life isnt much of a testimony of God's handiwork, i dont believe i've moved that far away as yet because it actually got better. and i started to enjoy every bit of it. maybe because i walked in while they were screening a snippet of braveheart, one of my favourite movies of all time. or maybe because the speaker wasnt an irritating singaporean guy who spoke with words that were laced with singlish. Tim Elmore had the perfect speech of all time. to me at least. i felt that it spoke, raw and real, short and sweet. the seminar was organised by the same people who were putting together youth: more than gold for next year's youth olympics. and it was amazing to see these people getting together like they did to touch and move the lives of many, together in the body of christ.

Tim spoke about many things, about how we should all focus, the first step to personal leadership. to be a flood or a river, to undertake everything and be destructive, or be focused like a river and bring life to the people. then he spoke about priorities and gave an aged old analogy about putting the big rocks in first, then will everything else flow into place. but what really struck a chord was when he quoted the movie hitch when will smith talked about the iceberg theory.

what you see of every iceberg, if you see one that is, is just a mere 10% of what it is worth. what you dont see however, the other 90% of it, is what actually makes or break you. the bigger bit that actually sinks the ship, or in a more positively light, the bit below the surface that actually supports the tip. in the same way, it is our character that moulds our outwardly appearance; the 10% that's visible. so it really isnt worth bragging about our skills if our character holds no weight. its our being and not our doing that truly matters because if our being is there, it will hold up that 10% of outward doing that others will see.

food for thought eh. need not deny, it was a good seminar..

a blast from the past

i havent been as nostalgic as i was these past couple of days. its days like these where i dread the end of yet another year. i dont like being smacked hard in the face with my past. not that i had a bad past to deal with, its depressing to know where my life has brought me to, too vast a difference from what it was before. i had the perfect life. the perfect social circle. the perfect upbringing. what happened.

i was all geared up for camp. the last camp for birdpark this year. and lo and behold, it was an MGS camp. not just any MGS camp, but a MGS girls brigade camp. when i said a blast from the past, it truly was a blast from the past. no discount to that at all.

i met old old teachers like Mrs Tay. everyone loves Mrs Tay. you cannot ask an MG girl and have a blank stare in reply with a huh, who's that. it just doesnt happen. and the scary bit was that she still remembers me! she taught me when i was in p2. also one of the main reasons why i joined the girls brigade. but more so because they always got out of class for their extra cirricular activities. hurhur. but thats besides the point. so she went ard proudly proclaiming, "GIRLS! say hello to GLoria!! our very own MGS girl, also a GB girl!!" man.. and all these young kiddos were like... oooh.. hellllooo glooorriaaa..... hurhur.

and then there was tracy, and gloria chong. oh man, old girls. my seniors. it was a good camp. everyone was like, oh.. gloria, now i know why youre like that. now i know why you burst into a song every few seconds. now i know why youre so loud and screamish. now i know where all that cheekiness came from. now i know....and the list goes on..

i spent most of my time talking to the old teachers and officers. evangeline chong invited me back from the christmas concert too. and i was just going through Siyue's photos after she added me on facebook after camp, and i realised some things really dont change. its the same after so many years. the same people. the same christmas concert. the same choir arrangement. even when i went thru her recent photos, it was the same end of year funfair. the same noticeboard doodling. the same girls prancing ard crazily. the same girl with guitar, or guitar chucked at the back of class. it's the culture, an inbuild tradition even xiaoyi would agree, and for what its worth, once an mg girl, always an mg girl.

pictureS!

hurhur, i know they should be bigger....


facilitators!


staff lunch. haha.

knackered

i've had such a long week. its unbelievable when people ask what i'm doing now and i say, oh im bumming, and yet be as exhausted as i am. strange but true.

i think i've clocked in at least a hundred hours of work this week. what?! you mean there are more than 100 hours per week? haha, shitzu. trust me, i wouldnt have known either.

i sent loo off at the airport on monday, after picking her at 4ish in the morning. then i had swimming at jurongwest which was quite the refresher i needed i guess. then camped back to back from monday to wednesday. and i trooped on down to get my hands dirty fixing regulators for our end of year maintenance. and then i was down at janices all the way till 4am in the morning prepping up for an LV tasting event she had the next day at 9am. all the chefs cooked till morning. i was totally gone by then. my back hurt, my stomach was painful from being so empty. i didnt even find the time to eat! and by 830 in the morning, i was back at the birdpark running a day tour till 330pm. met robert for lunch where we sat at simply bread profiling random people who walked in. funny. and i had to rush back to get changed to pick the parents up for pop's retirement service at the chinese annual conference in paya lebar chinese methodist church. which was SUCH a grand event. in fact, it was quite a tearjerker to see the dad all geared up in his doctorate gown getting crowned with his PHD hat by the Bishop of Singapore. i should dig up the pictures from my brother and have it blasted here. oh daddy.

anyway. that's thursday..only. i havent even mentioned how i was having a stomach flu by the end of the week. gah! i had another camp on friday and i practically talked through the night with xiaoyi catching up so by saturday, i was falling asleep at every chance i could, and least to say running to the toilet every moment i was awake. it was hilarious rushing the kids for a toilet break so many times during camp just because I HAD to go.. and taking gracie's expired antacid didnt help either. i got to the rambai for the DSAT Nitrox programme that chris was conducting and barely kept awake for the entire time. thank God it was merely basic concepts and formulas to plonk numbers into. i think i was still the freshest out of school, out of the lot. so it was easypeasy picking it up in my sleepy stupor. bagged with slumber or not, i aced the exam. no, i had a perfect score. haha. well done gloria, even chris' jaw dropped especially since he asked me to take the exam the following week when i was more awake. i got back and did some work while waiting for robert to get off work so we could catch up over wine and cheese and doritos again. funny how its the only time we get to whine to each other about the week since he lives just one door down. haha. i'm such a useless housemate.

finally, sunday. due to obvious reasons, i didnt wake up for church. not surprising though. ben called a million times because he was downstairs waiting for me to open up for the longest time ever. he needed a shower after prodding his boots in mud all morning at the site. i reckon shrek's shed's almost done. i was supposed to meet Aaron for our anti-sharking meeting and it strangely escalated into a combination of all my favourite people. haha. how odd. there was ben, and eugene, and robert. and aaron of course. haha, it was weird. but it was a good meeting. more on that when i actually get things on paper. then eugene and i met up with leslie for dinner and he pulled out some really interesting insiders info. hurhur. thats for me to know and for you to find out. rushed home for family time and had to rescue robert from his singlish date. haha.

yesterday and today was fix reg day. i'm almost thru the 10th one. which is good, but its such a downer to know that that's only the 1st stage we're talking about. argh, save me. camp tmr again.......... its becoming a cycle. it better pay off somehow......... or payoff for cambodia.. hur..

farewells

i was never good at goodbyes. i've learnt through the years to shield and distant thinking that the pain of parting wouldnt eat into me that bad. but i dont think so. through the past few weeks of having someone so dear, be so distant. it aint fun. really. but its so much easier when you're the one doing it. people will always leave i guess. its part and parcel of life.

i bumped into singee last night at the bar. and she was like, yeah, its only 2 years what... i think the last time i saw you was a good 3 years ago. well, i thought to myself... true.. but you're not christine. its uncomparable. sigh. :( i went through the airport farewell pictures and compared it to the many others we've taken through the years, i dont think we've changed much at all! you have to see it for yourself!

christine's farewell 2009

liwei's farewell 2004

mingdao's farewell 2002

and then there's liwei.. haha. my not-so-little brother.. i will always remember the days when you were shorter than me. hurhur..

christine's farewell 2009

liwei's farewell 2004

and finally, the best bit of it all, guan. it was like a blast from the past when we posed for this picture..

guano!

christine's farewell 2009

and this....*drumroollllss.....

man! look at those teeth! haha. mingdao's farewell 2002.

so go, fly off, sail off.. go coop yourself up and mull over yourself. take your time if you have to because when the foundation's set, some things just never change.... in a good way of course. and after it all, you can still come back and gloria will be here with her short arms opened wide with a smile like the father of the prodigal son..but i must add...thank God i got rid of those teeth. haha.

The King of (soda) Pop!

When it comes to the art of marketing and choosing your select few of clients rather than to please the world, John Nese, owner of Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Los Angeles has the answer. Selling more than 500 varieties of soda pop, he has dedicated his life to the bubbly beverages, going beyond countries and centuries, much more than your average bubbly guy would.

what amazes me however, apart from the millions of soda pops i now want to try is that this guy is absolutely right! i think it's time to rethink the way we market our businesses and not be a walmart full of choices just to please everyone. we need to find that someone to please instead. that someone who actually cares about what you do. that someone who will contribute to what you stand for. that someone who will tell someone else.

for him to have turned pepsi down as a vendor, i have to hand it to him. as much as he is for the added air in his drinks, hes far off from added air in his head. what a true, honest and absolutely brilliant way of running his sodapop land.

i want an andrew

oh darn it. i just checked the weather forecast and it isnt going to rain.. :( that means i've got to teach swimming. gah, i'm such a bum.

speaking of which, i was talking to Mohan last night over a couple of beers and he was like, hey, you're not too bad for a bummer. you've practically got 3 jobs, not including diving! i was like, hey, you're quite right. i never thought of it that way actually. haha! but the even funnier thing, i still dont have the money to alot of things i want to do. stubborn am i to not have sent a single resume since i've left, i'm not giving up just yet. bum i shall!

i just watched bicentenial man, totally ruined my entire afternoon because i didnt get any work done. i planned for a day worth of emails and research to get things up and going but i guess its not going to happen because i have to run out to teach swimming. ah. God send some rain.

i even woke up early to finish up the book for mom to stop bugging me. after a night full of drinks at the pit and a bottle of wine we had in the room over doritos and babybel cheese, i still managed to crawl out of bed. not because i had quite the high speed chase of a dream and was shocked awake, but because i had to. speaking of which, it was weird. it felt so real. i dreamt that i was driving off the edge of a highway at super high speeds... the car flew up and i knew i was going to crash head straight. it was even more real than the times í've driven home half asleep thinking that i was dreaming. thank God. not the kind of dreams that you'd want to get every night, but i must say i might have shed some pounds with all the extra brain activity going on up there.

sigh, i want an andrew...... if you've watched bicentenial man, you'd know exactly how i feel......

reg machine

funny how we made it for supper. haha, quite interesting a night i must say.

so we had a little wine tasting during work. my 'ongoing wine class' was still in the process of making me a mini sommeliér. then we fooled around with the leftover tea i was having and threw a little whisky in. african sunset tea to be precised. so now we have it, we've got the tequila sunrise, now we've got the whisky sunset. it makes perfect sense does it not? haha.

so we trooped on downstairs, this guy shouts across the pit and goes, you've got a stunning tan girl. i looked over, saw a bunch of guys by the bar and naturally i smiled. Zain looks up, shouts out my name, and i was like..HEY! its you! hellllloooo... so i walked over, got introduced to the rest and it somehow escalated into a nightful of margarittas and tequila shots along with robert and derrick. so thats where i met Mohan, an interesting chap, just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. i feel sorry for him, i do. but heyhey, mr. girl-youve-got-a-stunning-tan's a fellow diver too. it absolutely reconfirms my theory about how when you meet a fellow diver, its like meeting someone from the same hometown. like yo man, youre a bro man. haha. i kid you not.

so it was a fun night. i havent had a night like that in a while. we even made it to supper. ive said that already havent i. its late. im so not going to teach kids at the park tmr. anyway. i dont recall eating though if not i bet i'd have curry stains all over while i slobbered through a prata. i love the look on derricks face in the picture. haha. but anyhow, thats that. and the funny thing is, people wake up with hangovers after a night like that, i usually wake up dehydrated with non stop diarrhea, but extremely hyper. i remember the last time i was like that and i named all the lunch boxes at the birdpark. i so need to find that picture...hahahaha. good times.

so hyper as i was, it gave me the drive i needed. the go go go. the 'get to the rambai and go go go'. i was in the mood to get things done and sorted. i need that. we all need that. we all have to be like that to get him out of his slump. i dont think anyone could have gone through the 40 regs that loo and i did in the time that we did. if we knew what to do, we could have done soooo muuchh more. and it wasnt even boring. meticulous, but not boring. ah, i wanna go on.

so getting drunk isnt really a bad thing sometimes. you've just gotta manage it right, and have a body like mine to react to it. hahaha. woohooo..

1819

i woke up with the strangest of dreams. i dreamt that they offered me a part time job back at the birdpark and was going to pay me $1819 per month, coming in periodically like i already do. wahh... this is weird. must ask jerry to buy the number. haha.

i cant decipher whether ive been missing the job too much or just missing having a job in general. who knows really. but i think i've pulled myself out of my semi-melodramatic mode and its time to get going.

this weekend was good. strangely good. though it didnt quite end the way i wanted it to, it was ok nonetheless. i saw monstrous looking fishes. even a 30cm long nudi. that was one hell of a strange creature. and gorgeous decorator crabs! and a million cuttlefishes. hurhurhur. i think i need to retrain myself to purge out the unneccessary bitches bitchiness and to not partake in any of it. im too young and alive to be old and grouchy. we can leave that for the other not so young and not so alive creatures.

so i met Mr & Mrs Stanley. what a darling couple they are. i can only thank God for allowing me to chance upon their enquiry. lets see what is to come and what chatsworth has to offer! woohoo!

well, i guess at least when the world fails you, i know i still have my roomie to bitch to at 5am in the morning. haha. i heart thee even tho youre such a dramaqueen. whee!