votw

'the voices of the women" - stars of the show!

encounters

not a terribly good day.

the company we're doing a study on returned our pre-interview questionnaire with incomplete answers, signs of possible reluctance to divulge much info, signs of possible misunderstanding of questions, and, to add to that, criticism of our questions, as if the person answering it had something against us. We value the comments, and there was certainly some room for improvement in some of our questions .. but even with some of those comments, they could have still answered our questions but instead, the person took a "you guys don't seem to understand what you're doing, I'm not even gonna attempt to answer this question" approach. Team members are now totally demoralized, and we have a face-to-face interview with these people this Friday. i'm getting the "this company must think we're a bunch of incompetent kids" and slight tinges of the "i'm gonna totally fail this subject" feeling right now.

and, at 11.10 pm, after post-rehearsal supper, i spent a good 15 minutes blaring my car horn in backwater brickfields in hope that the driver of the car parked directly in my way out of the parking lot would move it out of the way. nothing happened, and the mamak patrons were probably turning deaf with all the noise i was making. i created such a racket that some guys at the mamak decided to come over and help direct my way out of the parking lot thru an extremely narrow bit of space on one side. yes, i DID figure earlier that i could try and squeeze my way out through that narrow space, but i really didn't feel like going through the struggle.. what with the dim lighting, the narrow road, the large number of visually-challenged pedestrians in the area and the wide 4-wheel drive i'm driving which side mirrors don't retract properly no more. and, hey, the blinkin' Proton WAS directly obstructing my path out of the parking lot (i was in a stress-induced "it's a matter of principle" mode). just as i had finished the arduous task of backing my way out of the lot with the help of the 'traffic wardens', the driver of the offending car appeared. let's just say i created a bit more noise pollution before finally driving off.

and on the Sprint highway on the way home, i was looking in the rear-view mirror while changing lanes and i saw (or i thought i saw)... a riderless motorcycle dragging closely behind it a car with no headlights on. the otherworldly vehicle finally passed me on the fast lane - it was a blinkin' Trike* scooter. it had a huge rear carriage, which gave the illusion of a "car with no headlights on", and, because the rider was leaning back and the height of the rear carriage extended above the driver, you couldn't see his head in the dark while looking thru the rear-view mirror. dang thing bloody freaked me out for a while...

* www.motortrike.com - tho i don't think there's a photo of the model i saw on the Sprint.

opening the dusted case

contrary to what i feared, i CAN still play the violin! *yay*
them left fingers just need to be re-stretched..
and will need to replace the bits of rubber-coating on the feet of the shoulder rest which have somewhat disintegrated..

time, and the [perceived?] lack of it

time passes very, very quickly when you're a student. and being a full-time postgraduate means...

... a lot of hours need to be put in - to start with, each lecture is 3 hours long (undergrad lectures lasted an hour). and for at least two modules we have a weekly case study to be discussed as a group (we were told not to complain because if we were in Harvard or Oxford, we'd be having two case studies per night). to add on to that, 5 out of the 6 modules have assessed coursework. so group discussions happen on a regular basis. so regular that we don't seem to have time to read up the material before a discussion comes along.

... the office will call once in a while when someone needs help on some files which i had previously handled. the first week of my sabbatical (which was also the first week of classes) was a bit of a nightmare because i kept worrying about the progress of certain files at work while trying to adjust my brain to think in a different discipline ("stakeholder" in the legal sense isn't the same as "stakeholder" in the business sense - no wonder the merchant bankers in the recent deal were confused when the legal team insisted that "protecting the interests of the stakeholders" was "too vague"!). anyway, am glad to have finally 'officially' handed over my files to the new recruit who has taken over my portfolio.

... you don't get to take advantage of the free laser printing in the office anymore... haha, just kidding... not.

... you would have thought that you'd have a more 'flexible' timetable, not realizing that the reality is that it's just a disguised version of 'irregular working hours'. i wonder how much of my list of 'possible things to do with free time' will still be done:

. teach art to kids? (still haven't gone around to checking out the nearby centre)
. teach english? (ditto)
. teach piano? (can't bring myself to sacrificing my weekends yet)
. work towards the FTCL? (this means i gotta go for classes. not for the unemployed! :-D)
. guitar? (progress: i've cleaned the case)
. violin? (progress: i've cleaned the case)
. update my website? (progress: at least i've put SOMEthing up on the 'home' page. today.)
. peddling my perceived web design skills to unsuspecting pals? (progress: a possible freelance designing job coming up! which is why i had to put SOMEthing up on the home page. sample, lah.)
. clear up room? (progress: don't ask.)
. oh yeah. wedding planning. (progress: grandma has sent me the almanac for good dates in 2005.)

... suddenly legal research and drafting legal opinions seemed so easy. it's hard to break out of what you've been used to and grown comfortable with, to venture into different fields. but that's the only way to improve, no?

... you have assessments and exams to worry about. wonder why this wasn't so apparent when i was applying for the course. :-D

in the wee small hours

things not to do at 2.40 a.m. :

#1 - drafting a publicity poster for a concert. may end up giving very strange directions to the city.

#2 - attempting to sight-read the piano part of a Christmas medley that starts "steady and soulful, with some freedom" and continues a few pages later with "hip shuffle". just waaay too early in the morning to go telling funky rhythms on the mountain, over the hills and ev'rywhere.

the sandman calls. hallelujah.

digest this!

never understood why it is that when i eat absolute rubbish at the stall at the dusty road by the grubby open drain, my tummy doesn't give two hoots about the filth entering it, but i get the worst cases of stomach upsets and virus attacks from what appear to be benign meals at hotel functions, pizza places or the neighbourhood steakhouse.

possible hypotheses:

(1) guess what? your classy hotel, favourite pizza joint and neighbourhood steakhouse may look clean, but in reality the stall by the drain is far more sanitary than their kitchens!

(2) i eat more than most women or men (friends and family will testify to this) and thus, according to the laws of probability, it is more probable that i will catch any contaminants which may be present in the food being consumed.

(3) i've got what people have started to sympathetically refer to as a "sensitive stomach".

HEY, i used to buy those bright-coloured drinks that ol' Pakcik dispenses from grimy containers amidst clouds of smoke from environmentally-unaware school buses that traverse busy jalan bukit bintang, and i lived to tell the tale.. who ya calling sensitive, huh? then again, if hypothesis (1) above is correct, the likes of Pakcik's stall are in fact the cleanest food joints around..

what EXACTLY is a "sensitive" stomach anyway?

(4) as a friend recently eloquently put it, "aiyaa, your stomach needs the nonsense laa. you cannot eat at classy places laa."

(NB. Hypothesis (1), if correct, would also disprove this.)

(5) what the heck. it's just my luck.