I Love.. And I Hate..

I love...
- Hayao Miyazaki's animated films. They made me smile, laughed and cried.
- smartly groomed men (Korean men's ruffled hairstyle optional).
- loved going on business trips.. I could ogle above-mentioned men without denting my pockets.
- angelic voices from unexpected faces.. faces people deemed not pretty enough. Bravo to Susan Boyle.
- Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong dramas & movies.
- kooky dance-and-sing sequences.
- to complain. J called me the Complaint Queen. *shrug*
- men who can take my grouchy no-talk persona in the morning before I have coffee.
- men who listen to my complaints without any complaints.
- men who just shrug when I spat out Ribena just a centimeter away from their sleeves.
- men who drag me off to coffee breaks when I was depressed & frustrated with imbecilic colleagues.
- men who invite me along for business trips and feel immeasurably guilty when he can't spend time with me on the weekends.
- men who share my love for Hong Kong and distaste for Taiwan.
- men who chat me with on MSN while he's sitting hust in front on me.
- it when people say "go to Sylvie, she'll know what to do.."
- watching people dance. Sadly I have 3 left feet.
- sweating toxins out of the body in Hot Yoga.
- buying skincare products. My bank balance is sighing in disgust.
- to travel, and travel.


I hate...
- watching Hong Kong movies in Singapore. They are all dubbed in atrocious Mandarin!
- going to highly rated eateries cos Singaporeans' tastes inevitably suck.
- people who go to sleep the second they see heavily pregnant women/elderly folks/ parents with kids boarding the train. Karma, people.
- bossy people who think they know everything. Hello, I got tested with Mensa, OK? No numb brains here, and I don't claim to know a lot of stuff myself.
- people who just spew things they read/hear on the way to work to sound knowledgeful. They sound too desperate instead.
- colleagues who acted blur and pushed their responsibilities. WTH, I joined the company two years ago and you're still saying "we're still learning" after the 10th year in the company. Dun make me laugh and puke at the same time.
- men who took off their shoes and rub their feet at my cubicle. WTF?
- men who dig around their shoes sole for (hidden) nuggets of gold. WTF?? With our European counterpart looking on in bewilderment.
- people who come looking me to me to solve their problems. WTF? Am I your boss? Or your mother??
- people who expect me to catch every bloody mistake other people make only 10days before all my new product launches. WTF? Aren't they supposed to be their own job? Since when was my job scope include validating GLOBAL business unit & REGIONAL marketing stuff? The last I heard, I'm in the engineering department.
- people exhorting me to agree to a 5% pay cut when they themselves are getting 10-400x monthly bonuses at year end while I get a measly half-month bonus.
- it when people say "go to Sylvie, she'll know what to do" every hour of the 5 working days. Use your blain, people or they'll rot.
- being tickled in the waist. Even by the best friend. I specifically TOLD her not to do it.
- people who acts blur and refuse to pay up their debts. Karma, people.
- drinking latter with milk. Euuww.
- owing people money.

My Authentic Japanese Name

Tried a Japanese name generator, and voila, my name turns out to be.. erm Stone Well Blessed with Love.

Sounded more like a Native American name rather than a Japanese one. Oh well.. pretty accurate I guess. My family can readily concur that I'm quite stone-headed.

My authentic Japanese name is 石井 Ishii (stone well) 愛恵 Itoe (bless with love).

Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

When Can We See This in Singapore

What would you get when you put a train station + creative brains + great songs to shake your bon-bon to?

Ta-da... T-Mobile's advert, shot at Liverpool Street station.

Read & watch this great ad here.

This is a challenge to the big telco companies out there and the ad people (assuming my great blog is being read by more than yours truly):

Outdance the Brits! And do it at the great Dhoby Ghaut interchange station where the soaring escalators would look smashing on TV like the stairs at Liverpool Street station (but pls stop the escalators from moving else you'll have people stumbling all).

And who said the Brits are staid??

p/s: Drop me a note if this is going to happen, I wanna dance. Or even if I failed the audition, I want to be there to jig along!

I Need A Life Outside Work

Stop calling and messaging me when I'd said I was on MC. How did anyone expect me to be coherent when I was doped up to my gills?!

Need a new job... STAT!

Irony

It came back a full circle, my relationship with J.

We met in the course of work in 2003, I left the company in 2004 and we lost contact in 2005.

The astrologer was bloody definitely wrong. I'm still a singleton.

Move forward to 2008, I'm back at the company. And last week I was informed that J would be the engineering manager supporting our work. Since the bulk of my products are being manufactured in his company, I can't see the way out.

Face the music, the voice whispered.

Easier said than done, when I barely have the idea what happened a few years ago.

Three months ago, I was at this company for a new line qualification. I was waiting at the lobby when he walked past. His glance passed over me, he did not pause in his stride and moved on.

Fine, if that is the way to be.

I will smooth my face into perfect blankness the next time we meet.

The weapons are engaged.

Indifference.

Smooth Ride

It was after a colleague's wedding dinner, another colleague offered to drive me & another girl home. Of course we jumped at the chance of taking a ride in his BMW 335.

Wait, wait, we're not that highly paid, it's just him whom is loaded to have bought this BMW 335 after selling his Mercedes Benz SLK.

As we cruised on the CTE/SLE and back to SLE after dropping the girl, my colleague asked me, "Have you met anyone interesting in the office? What kind of guys are you looking for? There are so many single guys around, you girls have your pick!"

I considered his questions, and gave some glib answers:
- presentable (don't have to be movie star handsome; nice-looking enough for me to consider waking up to his face everyday in the morning for the rest of my life)
- intelligent (smarter or at least as smart as I am)
- confident (enough self assurance to withstand/accept my stubborness/frankness/bluntness)
- humurous (won't get mad if I laugh at him, able to laugh at himself and other mundane things in life)
- kind (won't treat people like bugs, the crush-you-like-a-cockroach mentality would only turn me off and make me nasty)

Of course, the words in brackets were left unsaid but I thought he understood them.

"Singapore guys not geniuses but they are not brick dumb either. Not looking for a rich guy? You really haven't met anyone whom fulfills your criteria?"

I laughed, "If he's smart, he'll be rich if he's not already rich right now. Too bad you're married with a kid. I really like your car."

:)

Super Klutz Girl is Back

I'm back.

Fresh off getting a brand new handset, I was impatient to slide in the battery & SIM card and plug it to the charger and happily explore the 5MP camera.

Yet, 8 hours later, I sat stumped on the bed. With scratched/cracked nails. And the back cover that stayed stubbornly immobile.

WTH?

I gotta ask Doraemon to help uncover it. His sister got a similar set not so long ago.

Klutzy klutzy Sylvie...

Feeling Like Death Warmed Over

I've been known to have bouts of coughing/flu frequently. But this time it really dragged on for weeks.

Last week, after I visited the good doctor for the THIRD time in two weeks for the same sickness, my colleague pulled me off to cafeteria for a quick break.

Turned out my colleague was dying to tell me something. Her relationship with her second boyfriend ended six years ago, yet they still continue to live together in the same flat as her sisters. There was no closure, and even though she went on to meet other guys and is going steady with someone right now, she was still holding a torch for her ex/flatmate.

And she was dealt a hard blow when her ex dived into a serious relationship three weeks ago. Every mention of the other girl, every time he was late coming home and every weekend he was spending her was torturing her.

There's no going back to the past, they have to move on, yet the fact that it's the turning point for them breaks her heart.

She could only move forward, and give her blessings to her ex. She wants to retain the friendship that has lasted more than two decades, and cherish the good memories.

She was saying she admired me for being very clear on Doraemon, and hoped that she could do the same for her ex.

I tried to excuse myself when I felt my eyes getting wet by blaming it on the indefatigable bug. Yet I knew better. Hadn't the scene be played between Doraemon and I? We aren't flatmates, we just live nearby each other and got on so famously well that many thought we were a dating couple.

But there's no denying the same heavy squeezing which I'd felt when I knew that there were no way we could move beyond friendship. I just hope that the process wouldn't be too hard for her.

I was really feeling like death warmed over, both physically and emotionally.

-_-