Very confused

alright. i have questions for those who do their own web designs while squatting for free at blogspot.

1. Who hosts your pictures? I am using hello now, but i find that i have to load it as a post first to get the source before i can put it in my template.

2. Do you use a programme to design (eg dreamweaver etc) or do you hardcode your design?

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morning musings

I meet a colleague in the mornings in the pantry sometimes. She is an accountant for a subsidiary of our firm, single-handedly handling over 4 accounts, 1 of which is a profit-making business.

I find her an interesting individual. She is tall, skinny, very slightly dumpy in the hips, and likes to wear a scarf tight around her neck. Very quiet, she rarely initiates a conversation. She doesn't even say hello if you don't say it first. But if you meet her in her church on Sunday, she will come up to you, smile widely, shake your hand and say that she goes to this church. Her brother is a principal of a leading school here.

She also stikes me as extremely meticulous and conscientious, all derived from her attitude towards food. When she makes her coffee in the morning, she'll first pour an inch of milk into a cup, cover the cup, heat it in the microwave before adding hot water (freshly boiled, not from our hot water dispenser) because she likes her coffee hot. Today we had this conversation:

Me: "The lady just now, she is a new staff?"
She: "Yes, she works for us part time on X account."
(pause. she heats milk, i put bread in toaster etc.)
She: (looks at my toast, says factually) "You know how to toast bread - just right."
Me: "Yah. Don't know how to cook, but know how to toast."
(quiet. I spread bread with butter and kaya. She leaves pantry.)

Which makes me think she is well suited to her job.

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Life sucks

Life sucks like a giant sucking toilet sucker. It sucks like hope lost, thrown in the air, then caught again by the dog pound folks with a net, then brought to be shredded into a million trillion gazillion pieces then thrown in the air again, then breathed in by some stupid sea gull, who chokes to death on the shredded hope.

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rock bottom? think again.

Every time I think I have hit rock bottom in the fitness level, I discover new depths of physical lathargy. The other day, while doing rounds in my neighbourhood, I jogged about 4km only and had to stop 3 times to catch my breath! Three times! Not once, not twice, but three!!! I finished at the awe-inspiring sub-seven km/h pace. You know, after you've stopped once, you might as well stop three times. The heart feels better for it.

I love my table of distances and times. S doesn't like it cos I think she thinks it is too boring, but I like the numbers, especially when I want to re-live the over-20k weeks (like today when I'm feeling like all I can ever do is a sub-seven km/h pace). I like watching the numbers rise and fall over the weeks. The rise and fall of the numbers is inversely proportional to the fat around my belly, and also inversely proportional to the amount of overtime I'm doing at work. Gotta love it.

The run at CCK was great though. After a rousing game of badminton with A (forearm, shoulder and butt ached the next day), I jogged 11 rounds on lane 3 of the track. It was a beautiful, crisp smelling night. There were kids playing street soccer in the court off the track; it was dark; the track was spongey; sweet tinge of red rubber in the air; two aunties sitting on the sit-up bar talking; and running, hanging in the moment, without a watch.

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is this bliss?

Spent a happy week on course learning about flash, dreamweaver, and photoshop. The company was a 10 minute walk from my house, which meant that I was home by 5:30pm every day! The Parents got so used to me being home that they started calling me every evening to see if i wanted dinner which got on my nerves after a while, but i'm saying all that just to illustrate how much more "home" i've been last week than all year.

The course was alright. The people I took the course with were too slow though - and that dragged things out a little. I knew most of what they had to teach about photoshop, except for layer masks and creating logos, and flash was cool too. My manager whom i went with, who has a smile like exploding fireworks, got on my nerves by the last day, cos she talked too much and i kept having to undo her mistakes, but it was better having her there than being alone for lunch all four days. She was also alternatingly passionate and bitter about certain things - she told me that she thought that i was grossly underpaid and that they treated me no better than an `A' level student, which i would like to agree with on my worst days, and know that i have to take with a pinch of salt on the others. It is a virtue to be able to keep bitterness from taking root.

Now all i have to do with to spruce up this website, and see how i can integrate blogger and everything else. And of course get some work done.. eventually. :) Gosh I could be on course all year.

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The World According to Garp

I finished The World According to Garp by John Irving today. It is a compelling and well-told story, but it leaves the reader fretful about the world. Irving paints a world sharply divided, senselessly violent, and fundamentally unsafe. Although there are comic elements throughout the story – for example the case of poor Michael Molton – the tragedy always overwhelm the comic, leaving a bitter aftertaste.

So I prefer The Cider House Rules, simply because it is cheerier.

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stuck in parentheses

What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us are wrapped up in parenthesis. - John Irving, The Cider House Rules, 453.

What an excellent, true and perfect quote. I told LQ that I never compare myself to the characters I read in books, but I have to take it back, 'cos I do, and I'm doing it now.

Looking back at my life, I almost wonder if I'm in the business of collecting brackets. I hope not. Someday I hope all the brackets will fall away.

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good morning sunshine

it is monday again. it always happens, rain, shine or sleet, monday always comes around, and surprises you with a jolt when the alarm goes off. "why did i set the alarm on a sunday?" and then it slowly dawns on you, it is not the weekend anymore.

i need to seriously start thinking about finding a new job. i'm afraid of failing, afraid of inertia, afraid of regret, afraid of not even getting started. these are my options right now:
1. journalism
2. teaching
3. copywriting
what shall i do? i will give myself till june next year. gosh i will miss my office but "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do or what a man's gotta do won't get done and that won't do". Right.

Sigh.

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email reply to a designer friend

Heya,

Thanks for your draft for the poster for the "Faith and Reason" seminar.

Personal opinion here - I like your second design. I like the statue of Christ rising out of the double helix as it implies that both faith and reason fit together in a sensible fashion, yet it requires a jump from reason to faith. Also, to me, it hints at mystery - that Christ is both human and God - that things that seem to contradict each other (e.g. faith and reason) can co-exist and make sense. I also like the geometrical scribbles at the back of the second draft (not sure why colleagues asked you to take that out) cos it shows man's attempt to make sense of the world in a rational manner.

Christians have failed miserably in this long quest to make sense of the world using both faith and reason - cp world is flat vs world is round theory. But even when we stumble and make ourselves the laughing stock of the world, Christ is always there, and cannot ever be disproved (or proved, for that matter) by reason - which your design adequately shows.

Just thought to let you know what I thought. You are good at what you do. :) All of this is just my personal opinion though - it doesn't mean squat as to what will eventually get approved. :) You'll hear from my colleagues soon.

Take care,
L

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how well do you know me?

Was at may's blog clicking on her links when found a gem of a website - Quiz Your Friends. So went ahead and set a quiz about myself (what is my favourite bolster's name? which part of my body required 12 stitches? how many times have i been in love? etc. etc.) and sent it to my friends. These were their results:

• S -- 80
• TLC -- 60
• Sis -- 50

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running in the rain

Well, I've finally updated my running log after weeks of sitting around, eating twisties & chocolate chip cookies, watching tv, and consolidating fat.

When we started out on our jog yesterday, the air was cool and crisp, like fresh bedsheets. It was good to have S's familiar company. The cool crisp weather quickly changed though - before long it was pouring bucketfuls of water. Truckloads and whole reservoirs of water - it's strange that I didn't even consider that it would rain before we started, even though it has been raining just about every evening. By the time we got back, we were both drenched to the skin.

S and I always attract rain. The rain yesterday cannot compare to the time when we went jogging at Bishan and got caught in the monsoon. That time, there were an entire river flowing down the jogging path! We waited for the rain to get lighter in one of the shelters but it never did. Made a mad dash for it to the bus stop, then had to take very cold bus back, with two shoefuls of water. We even frightened some poor girl at the bus stop cos we looked so wet. She put her hand to her mouth and said, "Aiyoh." Haha!

ps. we have a new pedometer! :)

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can't put it down

A dead body ups the comic effect quite drastically.

I'm reading The Cider House Rules by John Irving right now and it is laugh-out-funny at some points. I am at the part where the gorgeous Wally and Candy drive to the orphanage. There is a dead body on the bed in the dispensary; outside, one of the orphans is sytematically scooping jelly and honey into his mouth; there is a dead featus reaching out of the enamel dish; a gleaming white cadillac among the squalar; Curly Day is having "a bad day" cos he wants to be picked by the pretty couple; Melony, the mean and biggest girl, does the first generous act in her life when she steals a book for Homer; the first quarrel between father and son; at the same time, an abortion and a live birth. Excellent stuff. It is like a crashing of life, ambition, hope and fear. Irving is a master at creating suituations full of pathos and intensity, but with just enough hilarity to tip it over so that it doesn't get overwhelming. It is somewhat like Angela's Ashes I suppose - that delicate balance. I just can't can't get enough of it.

If I taught English, I would set this chapter as prac crit.

I also read Bridget Jones' Diary over the weekend. Am reading so much cos trying to compensate for not being able to find a plot for NaNoWriMo - sulk. That was funny too - more light-hearted and irreverant. Her calling Daniel Cleaver and leaving a message she regretted, then homosexual friend Tom saying that he could call the number to get the code to delete the message, calls Daniel's place 12 times before figuring out the code, and on the 12th ring, Daniel picks up and Tom hangs up, making Daniel think that she called him obsessively, left a cheesy message, AND hung up when he picked up. Ha!

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red and yellow, black and white

My colleagues are so unbelievably racist.

Once, my manager made the comment that Indians (she used a different term here) always liked obiang (loud cheese ugly) colours because she wasn't happy with certain instructions about colour from the Indian boss. Thought that was a little below the belt, so I flat-out told them what I thought about that comment. Over lunch today, my other colleague talked about Geylang being full of "black black" people, She once told me not to take a certain bus because it was crowded with the above-mentioned people, and therefore very "smelly". !!! What's up??

What's up with fair people thinking that it is their right to hate those who are dark skinned? All over the world! For a long while, I thought that racism was a problem with the older generation here in Singapore and that it would eventually die out with them. I guess not, since my colleagues have apparently taken up the cause.

Really, the term "multi-racial" is such a facade. How can we be "multi-racial" when we are more than three-quarters Chinese? It is a political maneouver at creating the idea of equality, primarily because we are surrounded by Muslim countries.

On a more flippant note, I could marry an Indian. I think they are rather sexy actually. :)

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