Todo lo demás

In which one takes a picture of delicious food, and the other describes how delicious the delicious-looking food looks.

muffin

Chocolate muffin with chocolate sprinkles, eaten by Eva in her office in Beirut.

Jun-E’s description:

Behold, the fluffy chocolate muffin with respectably-sized chocolate sprinkles on the top. The chocolatey goodness spills out of the tiny paper liner, beckoning seductively to its eater. A bite yields multiple layers of texture – the slightly crunchy crust, the soft and spongy cake, and plump chocolate chips that burst with liquid pleasure when they come in contact with one’s mouth. I want to eat that muffin. I want to detonate all of the mines on that chocolatey minefield. WANT.

Things are crazy at work, but I’m feeling positive about where everything is going so I am taking a moment to blog during lunch time, to post a quote that I quite liked from this page.

I write to discover what I know.

I write to discover what I know.

I do think that it is true, especially for the work that I do, which is mostly research. By the time the text arises from many layers of fluff and things I thought I knew, something clicks and now I truly know. For a brief moment, everything makes sense, and then the process of processing knowledge continues and the clarity clouds up again.

I’m often very attached to what I write. For, it’s not only words, because it’s just the tip of the iceberg that you see. Behind those words are concepts, ideas, syntheses, observations, stirred into a wordsmith’s cauldron – where they are boiled and reduced into strings of understanding. Then these strings are carefully laid in sentences that have just the right number of words. No more, no less.

The words are the physical result of all the time spent in one’s head, when one could easily be frolicking at the beach or napping in a hammock. God knows that the space in my head is not the best place to be most of the time. It’s a dark shed filled with odds and ends, stacked with many folders of dusty and forgotten thoughts, as well as heaps of scrap paper filled with new and unfinished scribbling. It’s cluttered, and one has to swim through the junk to get to the good stuff. There is some good stuff in there. You just have to find the right ones and put the right combination into the cauldron, so that magic can happen.

Such is the effort required to put strings of words into paragraphs so that they eventually culminate into a worthy piece of writing. Let us take a moment to appreciate and respect all the people out working hard to cobble together the written word – whether in the form of novels, reports, copywriting, letters, diaries, or even haikus on a piece of napkin.

And on we persevere.

Back into this topsy-turvy mess of a life that I suspended for four weeks of awesomeness.

But, I shall not fret. This morning I was telling Leo about all the thoughts that have been running through my head on various things to be done and I realised that I was beginning to sound like a madwoman. Heavily jetlagged (woke up at 3:30am and sleep has eluded me since then) and barely coherent, I jumped from area to area of my woeful life and threw up a string of random inadequacies that I bumped into while running frantically within my head.

I realise now that I should chill, try to take stock of the things that need to be done, deflate them out of their inflated proportions, and allocate time to them. For instance, emails to be sent to friends – I could perfectly clear a weeknight to do it, with a glass of red wine and a cat purring by my side. Cleaning up the house – I just need to pluck up the courage to call a cleaning company and arrange for a time for them cleaning ladies to come sort things out. (I don’t know why it takes so much for me to make a phone call, but it does. I don’t like talking on the phone.) Mountains of work from various projects – I just need to start doing them, and control the panic monster when it rears its ugly head and scares me into hiding my head under the sand consuming junk content from Facebook and Reddit.

After putting the post-Argentinian mess in order, I can then allocate time to do other things that I want to do in life, like routine exercise and reading Spanish books. Oh I also need to sort out the pictures from Argentina, put them online onto Flickr (so many promises made to people, that must not be forsaken), and arrange them into a photo book to be printed when the next Groupon deal comes around.

I just checked, and the next Groupon deal *is* around, and ends in four days. Gotta try to download the software tonight and tinker with it.

Anyway. Gotta chill, and start work now. Lots of interesting material to wrap my head around!

 

Oh god. I just had the most hellish week ever. With so many unexpected things happening…. like a few months crammed into a week. There are some personal stuff that I’d prefer not to share too specifically, but I still want to blog about it, so pardon the vagueness. Four main things happened this week:

  • A Big Problem (BP) happened: Can’t share too much except that it’s big, and it’s a problem. It’s somewhat resolved now, but with big implications.
  • Work work: Had a deadline on Friday (the 17th), with multiple smaller deadlines leading up to it.
  • MESYM work: Had a deadline on Saturday (today) morning.
  • Lost cat: Spot ran away, joining his runaway brother Kenneth.

Here’s a rough idea of what happened last week, starting from exactly seven days ago:

Saturday: Was hungover and sick after a night of drinking with Rachel and Eva (through skype). Found out about the BP. The rest of the day was spent working, and being sick. Missed a childhood friend’s wedding.

Sunday: Work, as I had a deadline on Monday morning. Slept 5 hours that night.

Monday: Woke up early to work. Did not meet deadline. In the evening, had to work on BP. After solving a major step of BP, went home and slept from 11pm-2am. Woke up and worked till 7am and sent in an acceptable draft. Still incomplete but acceptable.

Tuesday (public holiday): Slept from 7am-1pm out of sheer exhaustion. Woke up and continued working until the evening, when we had a MESYM event till late. Came home, Spotty was still around. Before midnight he had left. My second cat left me.

Wednesday: Took emergency leave in the morning to work on BP. It took the entire morning, and was extremely stressful, amidst  pressing work issues and a lost cat. Luckily we were able to solve it, by about 1pm. Rushed back to the office and worked till about 8pm, till I crashed my parents’ anniversary dinner – was initially going to miss it because I was so busy, but eventually I made it…. after a lot of mess like Leo’s dead phone, a lost taxi driver, and a broken down taxi. And loads of rain. Got home at 11pm and collapsed into bed.

Thursday: Woke up to work at 5:30am. Then went to the office. Got home around 8pm, continued working till about 10pm. Then started work on another MESYM-related deadline till 12am. Argued with Leo on MESYM-related work till about 1am.

Friday (public holiday): Submission deadline for the big report at work. Had to go into the office at 10am, came home at about 1pm, then started to work from 3pm…. all the way up to 9:30pm, when I submitted the report. Had dinner, and started work on MESYM from 11pm to 3am. Collapsed.

Saturday (today): Woke up at 7am to continue writing. Managed to meet MESYM deadline at 9am.

It is 10am now. I reviewed the entire week and I’m quite amazed that I’m still in one piece after the whirlwind of torment that I was subjected to. I hadn’t been this stressed for a really long time now – and it’s not only work stress (and I have two jobs), but stress from personal issues and also Spotty never came back. I slept less than 5 hours every day at irregular hours, and had no time for myself – so no exercise, no learning Spanish, no time to even just sit down and relax for the entire week.

I was supposed to go to Malacca for a field trip today to see an eco home, and a solar power plant. But no. Today I shall rest.

Even my keyboard protested about the workload- the left arrow key fell off from too much abuse. Argh. I don’t blame you at all, left arrow key. I’m sure if my liver had the option, it’d have fallen off too.

Now that I’m free to sleep, I feel completely awake. Don’t know what to do. Swim? Read? Lie around? What do normal people do when they have time?

So I’ve been trying to blog to no avail. Today is the day that I finally update my blog in the new year! I owe it to all the drafts that were never published!

I can’t believe that we’re 9 days into the new year already. Oh shit I must remind myself to RSVP for something (deadline today, and I have this habit of leaving everything to the last day), and print Leo’s travel documents to Singapore. Leo says that I am cerebro de gallina (brain of a chicken), which is the Spanish way of saying scatter-brain, which is the English way of describing someone who simply does not have a functional short-term memory. Most of the time I walk into a room and wonder what I was supposed to do there. Or say something and forget what my point was mid-sentence. Or forget a person’s name immediately after I’ve been introduced to them.

That’s a problem, especially in the workplace, when all the names blur into each other and I categorise people according to their initials. Ok this person is a “Z”. It could be Zul, Zainal, Zakaria, Zara… if my brain had the capacity to store the rest of the characters beyond the Z I would probably be more confident in talking to people. I’m always afraid that I’d get caught out not knowing someone’s name, which happens.

The other day I was asked by this rather imposing lady who works in the next office (don’t know what she’s called) if one of the guys who sit outside of my office was there. Of course she said, is “Whatshisname” (pseudonym to protect the innocent) there? I froze because she was imposing, and in my two seconds of lag time Whatshisname replied that he was there. The problem is, I had always thought that Whatshisname was the guy who sat opposite this guy. I think it wasn’t good form to hesitate, but it could have been worse if I had actually answered. So now I know that Whatshisname is Whatshisname, and OtherGuy is OtherGuy.

I’ve been working in my office for a little more than 6 months, by the way.

Anyway. I don’t know how I managed to ramble on and on, but this post is looking promising so far. Maybe I’ll even publish it.

The new year has been relatively good. Workload picked up a notch, and I’m stressed lots of times, but I’m doing my best to keep myself balanced. For one, I’ve moved my working hours from 0745-1645 to 0930-1900. It’s an extra half hour that I’m staying in the office (to avoid traffic) but so far I like it. I have swum in the morning for two days in a row now. It’s just about half an hour, but it gets the daily exercise routine out of the way (it’s sometimes very hard to get motivated to exercise after a long day of work). I get more sleep (15 more minutes), and I think I’m more productive at work. I also get to eat breakfast together with Leo, who makes me coffee, and muesli+fruit. A far cry from the Milo+crackers breakfast that I’m used to eating at work.

So at least my body is being taken care of, in turn it will take care of my having to focus on work. Before you ask, I’m now typing this during my lunch time. Surely a girl can rest once in a while.

What else. I’ve started burning candles and essential oil in the office which improves my mood. We’re getting a new couch at home, courtesy of my uncle. Hand-me-downs are awesome! And this is after about 9 months without a couch. I am looking forward to it. I’m sure Spot would enjoy it too. Unfortunately I think Kenneth is lost for good. Sometimes I think of him when it rains, or when I see a straggly street cat going past. There was nothing we could have done, and this could have happened at any time since he was always the roaming type. I just hope that he’s having a better life now.

Oh well. Lunch time is over, and I should probably get back to work. Now is the decisive moment to act –

*presses publish*

So Kenneth decided to walk out one night (the night before yesterday night) and has not come home since. We’ve combed the condominium compounds and looked at all the awkward corners that he could be hiding in. Spot is being clingy because this is possibly the first time that he’s been without his brother. We are hoping that Kenneth is just lost and is not in any sort of trouble. He’s usually quite jumpy and fearful of humans except us, so it could be that he was scared of something and just ran and ran, and now he’s lost. If he’s not busy finding his way home, I hope that at least he got picked up by some kind folks…

We’ve put up notices. There is nothing else we can do except to wait, and refrain from thinking scary thoughts.

It’s Christmas Day and I am bored. I don’t celebrate Christmas myself but we are going to my cousin’s later because their family does.

Yesterday I was mopey because of FOMO. Yes, for you oldies out there, FOMO is a thing and it means Fear Of Missing Out. Somewhere besides here, someone was having a grand party. With bubbles and champagne. I glowered at my hot pot. The negativity begot more negativity. So instead of enjoying my hotpot and Leo’s company I was moody the entire night and gave the taxi driver a middle finger on the way back. My first middle finger in a very long time.

Well, in my defence he was trying to swindle us. He put in a RM2 surcharge although there was no reason to (we didn’t book the taxi, and it was way before midnight), and  insisted that we pay RM11.2 instead of RM9.2. Normally I would either pay it or argue, but I was in no mood to do either. We insisted to pay our fare with no surcharge, then he started insulting us about not being able to afford RM2.

I was so pissed off that I left the car, and slammed the door behind me.

“Fuck you! I will come and slap your face!” He got out of the car and waved a fist at me.

I gave him a death stare and flipped him off. And stomped up the steps into safety. Leo paid him the exact amount that we should, nothing more.

I went to bed, still seething in a cloud of negativity. This morning I woke up feeling better and we talked through some stuff, so my middle fingers are now retired and occupied in the wholesome activity of typing.

I am still bored. We’re going shopping now for groceries to bring some vegetarian cooking to the dinner later. I’m going to wow the meat-eating crowd with some awesome tempeh.