ok i'm going to sound like xinying in this post (sentimental and easily moved)
haha anyway, miss wong (JC teacher who helped get me the job in theatre) heard about The Troubles with the show i'm doing now and she and her friend (who also helped me get the job) called me up in the middle of the night (2am) to ask me what's up and to offer advice and help and future help. i'm so touched. (there! i said it. i sound like xinying) They heard through the grapevine that the show isn't doing well in terms of production and they are worried that i'm not getting trained well and that my first experience in professional theatre is going to put me off theatre forever. and miss wong's friend who is in the theatre business said to call her anytime if i needed help. i don't even know her personally! haven't seen her face to face. so nice of them right? haha this makes up for all the shit i have to take at work.
thank you God! everytime my life becomes shitty, somebody will invariably turn up and be extra nice to me. i'm not saying that everybody loves me. i just think that most people in this world do. haha EGO EGO EGO! so hard to ignore my likeability that's why animals run from me and flag sellers avoid me like plague.
luckily, i'm a happy kid, very optimistic and cheerful when under fire and being treated like trash (if you ignore the smouldering rage and murderous urge. it's not that there are specific people who create trouble for me specifically. it's just that prejudice against youngsters in the workplace is very much alive hereabouts.

work has left me tired and drained. now that we are moving into theatre soon, rehearsal hours are 10am-10pm daily. even on sundays and public holidays. lucky for me, they postponed tomorrow's rehearsal to sunday last minute and i can't make it. the people i work with, let's see what i can say about them, some are rather nice but some are just pain weird. it is always wise not to bitch on a blog. suffice to say that the decision makers are indecisive and there exist those who ask me to lift overhead projectors onto high shelves single-handedly one moment and, a few minutes later, tell the boys to tighten the screws i already tightened because i'm a girl and thus have no strength. well, screw it! for the sake of maintaining good working relations, i swallowed my pride and almost choked. Yes, let the boys tighten the screws cos the girls ain't good for anything other than throwing OHPs around. next time they ask me to lift the wooden staircase prop(which I've been doing for ages) I'll just break a nail and start to cry while accidently lifting the stairs above my head and letting it fall to the ground. hopefully, it will splinter and we will be left with a few pieces of sad looking wood. haha so much for not bitching. anyway, i hoped i managed to be vague and ambiguous enough to keep out of trouble. personal feelings and work don't mix. (usually refers to office affairs but in this case, the phrase refers to the desire to commit crimes that are classified according to 1st degree, 2nd degree and 3rd degree and which carry death sentences. it's not drug-trafficking. guess again.

2 days ago, my grandmother had the cancerours thing in her lung removed and 1/3 of her right lung along with it. doctors are optimistic cos it appears that it hadn't had the chance to spread to lymph nodes (which is very good). my mother visited her today and said she was alert and itching to get out of bed.

just chatted with ah boy on msn. she said she would try to take some photos of her blondie friends for me. hee hee. feed my psychotic obbession.

Utterly insulted by undisguised rudeness

I just received an "invitation" letter from AJ inviting distinguished service award winners to an award presentation on college day. The letter can only be described as incredibly rude. An unprovoked attack on the maturity and character of ex-AJ students who will be acknowledged as outstanding leaders by the school ( a sentence filled with scarasm and irony if you didn't notice).
Here are few extracts from the letter which is printed on yellow paper. ( for formal invitations, white or ivory is usually the standard)

"Please report at "1.00pm sharp in LT1"* on the said day for a rehearsal of the prize-giving ceremony. Please take note that you will not be allowed to receive the award on stage if you report too late and miss the rehearsal."

*this part is underlined

"As this is a formal occasion, we will be following a strict dress code appropriate for such an occasion: plain light-coloured long-sleeve shirt, dress pants, tie and formal shoes for males; formal light-coloured blouse and skirt or dress and court shoes for females. (No** jeans, Bermudas, mini-skirts, T-shirts, spaghetti straps and see-through blouses, sports/track shoes or slippers permitted). We regret that award recipients who are not appropriately dressed will not be allowed on stage.***"

** this word is in bold
*** this sentence is in bold

What an insulting letter! If it was really a formal occasion, I would have expected the "invitation" letter to be far more respectful in its tone and, of course, for it to be printed on better paper. Not something that looks so cheap and trashy. (I'm nitpicking here but surely you see my point) If you look at the letter, you can very cleary see that the the main emphasis is not on inviting someone to recieve an award but on threatening to withold the award if the person does not turn up appropriately dressed! Talk about rudeness! The use of bold text and the thinly vieled threats exposes Ms XXX XXXX XXX from the College Day Awards Committee ( as stated at the bottom of the letter) as totally lacking in class and as someone who views everyone as a disobedient, deliquent student. Urgh! I am so disgusted and completely insulted. I don't think anyone will actually turn up after receiving such a rude letter. Only those who want to get their faces into AJ magazines will make the effort to show up. Since there is the option of turning up to collect the award from the office after the "ceremony", award receipients who don't like to be insulted should all do so.

This event should be boycotted.

Most people in AJ are very nice and occasionally you find someone with class. However, as the organising committee of the "21st College Day 2005" demonstrates, the college still has a long, long way to go in terms of getting mutual respect between teachers and students , teachers and ex-student as well, for that matter.

At the back of my lower jaw, on both sides, I'm experiencing problems. Bloody hell wisdom teeth are coming out. not really painful. yet. but i can feel them crowding out the other teeth. Since i'm so busy these few weeks with rehearsals, i won't be able to go the the dentist till the show is over. oh my... where's a good plier when you need one? I could just pull out the teeth myself and save the trouble.

I feel like travelling again. I miss Italy. I miss New Zealand. I miss places that I've never even been to. This condition is known as wanderlust (no, no, nothing to do with lewdness). The only thing I don't miss about international travel is the airplane flight. damned motion sickness.

Is it just me or does the new pope look like Saruman from the Lord of the Rings movies?
ok, ok... I'll stop going on and on about this pope stuff.

HABEMUS PAPAM!!!!!! We have a Pope!
Joseph Ratzinger from Germany will now be known as Benedict XVI
http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/index.asp

i'm so tired.... WE HAVE A POPE!
ZZZZZZzzzzzz

this whole day i've been waiting for news about the conclave. I'm very excited that we are going to have a new pope. so i knew that the cardinals were going to vote at about 11am vatican time which is 5pm here. my brother, hubert msged me at about 5.55pm when i was in rehearsal to say that there still isn't a new pope.

anyway, you probably think i'm either bonkers or very bored to be so excited and interested in this pope busines. wadever. I hope it the black nigerian guy who gets it. it'll be fun. then maybe i'll become less racist. (i'm not racist actually, don't report me to the Straits Times ok?)

black pope or white, we are supposed to trust in the holy spirit to guide the old guys in conclave in their choice of a new pope.

I have this brilliant idea. I should enter the religious life. Like nun. but don't pay attention to me cos i'm mad and i always have brilliant plans that are forgotten the next day. Wonder what my mother wil do if i tell her i'm planning to be a nun. start saving like mad for retirement i suppose. after all, nuns take vows of poverty so i won't be able to pay for her retirement holidays.

going mad, mad, mad. and the brainpower is going down, down, down...

in the short one week that my sister was back in singapore, she managed to add a pair of addidas sunglass and an iPod to the sum total of her material possessions. So yah, she deserves respect. wriggling so much out of my parents is not really easy normally. but when you are the first kid in the family to study abroad, i guess it makes you extra special. I can't believe my little sister beat me to it.

anyway, i was very relieved that steven decided to pay for her iPod. I had initially promised to buy it for adela (story of blackmail omitted) luckily, steven agreed to pay for it. my eccentric sister named the iPod Oracle, as in THE Oracle from the Matrix that tells Neo exactly what he needs to hear. when we got home from the store, she introduced Oracle to Marvin (her laptop) and then told Marvin not to be jealous.

during her short stay, adela also spent a lot of time with her rabbits. she also put a small teddy bear in the rabbit cage (I don't know why. before the rabbits were sterilised, she put a furry cloth in and the male rabbit started shagging it. I really don't know what the furry bear is for this time. don't ask, don't ask)

Adela flew back to aussieland on a valuair flight. did you know that if you want inflight entertainment on valuair, you have to pay 10 bucks for this laptop-like machine called a personal entertainment appliance? it is a lot thicker than a laptop and looked really heavy in the picture. Adela brought Marvin and Oracle. more than enough entertainment considering the fact that she had saved 6 movies in Oracle. the iPod functions as an external hard disk as well as a music player. adela whined me into helping her save The Incredibles, The Exocist, Goodbye Lenin!, Hitler - The Rise of Evil, Open Water and Schindler's List into her Oracle. in the music department, she also whined my into loading my whole music collection into Oracle. Her policy on audio-visual entertainmemt is: jie jie pay, i enjoy for free. But i made her say, "thank you Lao Da" after that. felt good.

just before adela had to get her butt through security and onto the plane, we ran around the airport looking for a chocolate shop. we found one and i bought her a GIGANTIC block of chocolate to keep her company on the flight. It was my way of saying thanks because she paid for my haircut that morning. Fair's fair.

Hello, i'm officially in the theatre business. haha it's quite a good job for me. no need to wake up early. I work till late. Then, since the workplace is so far from my home, I reach home at about 11pm at night.

I basically work in the black box where rehearsals are held. for those who don't know, thhe black box is a theatre space that is, well, all black. The walls are all soundproof so if you get locked up inside accidently, you can shout your lungs out and no one will be able to here you. When you are alone inside, it's totally silent and any sound that you make will seem to disappear cos it's all absorbed by the walls and there is no echo. And my favourite part is that it's air-conditioned. Yesterday it was at just the right temperature for me. Sadly, the other people started shivering and sneezing so i had to turn it up.

when i signed the contract, i noticed the employee insurance thing that says that if you get injured or killed on the job your family gets compensated thhis much this much. I thought it was pretty funny until i found out that in order to get into the control room, you have to climb a ladder which is located in a small, cramed little room. And i also discovered that the storeroom was huge with shelves all over that look like they can collapse anytime. So now i don't find the insurance thing funny anymore. I hope i don't fall down the ladder and crack my skull.

Been reading the reports about the late Pope and listening to internet radio programmes about him. He was a good Pope although not everything he said was agreeable with everybody. Catholics all over the world are mourning the death of John Paul II (or Giovanni Paolo II as he was know in Italy). We pray to the Holy Spirit to give us a new Pope who will lead the Church in these unstable times. The new pope will have to deal with things like Michael Jackson type priests who, you know, do things to choir boys. And the euthanasia issue. And the female bishops issue. Lots of didfficult pope things to do. Oh well...

You know, the da vinci code stuff about the Opus Dei and the secret conclaves? It sounds too cool to be true but the conclave will really take place. They will go in to the room and be locked inside until they decide on a new pope. And the opus dei is said to be pushing for a more traditional and conservative pope. The second in command guy at the vatican is a member of the opus dei. It's like real-life Da Vinci code without the fiction and melodrama but with all the coolness.

Wish I was in Rome now. I remember the Vatican when I visited it. Such an impressive place. And St Peter's Square is so huge and actually a circle rather than square. During the last days of the pope, the whole square was constantly filled with 50 to 70 thousand people at any one time, all praying for him. I would like to have seen that. And the night before he died, they gave out candles in little plastic cups to the people there and there was a sea of little flames in the square under the window of the pope's bedroom. I want to be in Vatican City. And even though I'm a sucky catholic, I feel sad that we've lost the pope and I'll pray for a good pope to be elected.

Ok, i've accepted the assistant stage manager job. They are flying in some thai actors for this play. I hope they are transverstites. I think they are funny and I've never met one before. Should be fun to work with them. I'll be paid 1200 for about a month. That's pretty ok especially as i've been reading the recent news articles about theatre people who are paid like shit. However, considering the crazy rehearsal hours, it is quite borderline-low pay. Rehearsals start on 18 april but there are a few yet-to-be-confirmed meetings before then. I'm glad I asked Miss Wong to help me ask around for jobs like that. Stops me from rotting at home because I refuse to do waitressing, sales and relief teaching.

I watched Miss Congeniality 2 yesterday. Compared to the first one, it was sucky. But I like lame shit so it was ok. Follows the same type of story line but without the guy. I consider this an improvement. And the new black girl partner can really fight. Before the movie started, they showed the trailer for the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. Looked cool. I will watch that.

Talking about the Hitchiker's guide, any of you read it before? Adela and I are fans of the book. But unlike Adela, I'm not mad. She named her Acer Tablet laptop Marvin, after the character, Marvin the Paranoid Android, in the book. And she enjoys talking to Marvin. She likes to lock the door to her room and have conversations with Marvin. People in the homestay are scared and think there is someone else in the room with her.
One of the other girls in the same homestay as her is called Jill Ho, ex-Nanyang girl. She's a complete bitch. The backstabber, clingy, guy-stalker, max-out-the-internet-bandwidth-so-it-gets-downgraded-to-50Kps-causing-mass-suffering kind. Total bitch. I told my sister to just murder her and deliver everyone in the homestay from suffering. She wanted to do it but was worried for Marvin. If she killed Jill and fled the country, Marvin would surely get the heat from the police. My sister really cares for Marvin. I think she misses her rabbits to omuch, that's why she is going mad.
Another interesting Adela incident is about her presentation in class. She told me that she did a presentation on population control in Aussieland. Afterwards, the teacher took her aside and said that she really liked certain aspects of the presentation like eye contact, use of visual aids etc. However, certain aspects were really disturbing. Like her plan to promote mass suicide as a means of population control. When she told me, I was very proud.
By the way, I just named my laptop Feagle. Rhymes with Beagle. Feagle talked to Marvin over dinner yesterday (both computers were being charged). They talked about babies and Feagle knew a lot about population control and said kids sucked. Marvin didn't know much about babies but was an expert on cooking and Jaime Oliver. Then, Adela was told to SHADDUP! by the homestay people because she was talking too loudly with Marvin. So Marvin hid under the bed.
Lucky I'm not crazy. Erm... at least I don't talk aloud to Feagle. I just believe that my electronic device has a name and personality. That's all.

I'm going to meet the production manager of a theatre ccompany and they are looking for an assistant stage manager for a show in May. Hope it's not one of those artistic porn plays.
My sister is coming back on saturday. I'll have to rearrange the furniture in the room again. Luckily for me she's only staying for about a week. I'll be hard getting used to one bed after sleping on two for so long.

I did some work today. Well, sort of. If slacking around in your parents office can be called work. My mother said she would pay me 30 buck a day to do odd jobs in the office. That is pretty peanuts pay but like any good econs student, I considered the compensating differentials ( is that what it's called? can't really recall). Even though I get paid only 30 bucks, being my parents, they have to pay for my food and snacks and they won't be allowed to bully me. I also took into the account the fact that i'll be able to use the nice, nice printer anytime. cool "job" and the timing is so flexible. Basically, I work when I feel like it and sleep when i don't. Damn am I a spoilt brat.

I was supposed to file the payment vouchers for the 12 months of 2004 but I only managed about 5 months when Steven called me away from the filing. We went to OG and bought bed sheets and comforters for this apartment that as to be done up to be rented out. Then, we had lunch. After that, we picked up my grandmother and went to Mount Elizabeth to consult with a specialist about her maybe cancer, maybe not tumour thing in her lung.

I was quite surprised when I received an April Fool sms from xinying after that. Somehow, thinking about lung cancer, surgery, CAT scans, PET scans and pet cats just saps away a person's humour. I had almost forgotten that it was April Fools Day. How could I? I guess you really need lots of buddies around to be able to enjoy such "occasions". Of course you also have to not think about suspicious lung tumours that stil have doctors scratching their heads after a CAT scan and two needle biopsies. Argh.. out of my mind I banish thee unhappy thought!

We then went to the apartment that had to be made to look nice. It's a unit in UE square. If you have ever seen the development, you will know that it boasts some of singapore's most cement bloock looking architecture. Every thing is dull and greyish and looks like the building that Neo and Trinity busted into the save Morpheus in The Matrix. That's why I didn't believe Steven when he said that it had been designed by the late architect legend, Kenzo Tange. So, Steven told the story. Haha apparently, United commisioned Tange to design the development and agreed to pay him a certain amount. Then, United decided it want to cut costs and decreased the architect's fee. Naturally, Tange got pissed off and made little "improvements" and "modifications" to his plans. The result is a architectural monstrosity that strangely has little signs of potential greatness that fell flat on it's face.

Interesting world we live in.