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xan123
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| I got visited by Two Deadly Viruses within this month. Mr Virus #1 came in the form of a very itchy cough, which rapidly transformed into the infamous Hell-I-Sound-Like-I-Went-For-A-Sex-Change cough. I ended up sounding extremely hoarse, extremely deep, teetering on the edge of I-Lost-My-Voice. And so, for many days, I was unable to sing in the shower... Oh and on that very day I got that cough, I was hit with BADDD flu and fever - I had to take half day's leave.
Thankfully, it ended within a week or so, all rise and shine, all chirpy and able to croon my favourite tunes again, much thanks to this made-in-China cough syrup that's actually made up of snow pears as its main ingredient. I tell you, it's the loveliest cough syrup I ever had... It tastes EXACTLY like caramel!!! Mmmmmm....
Ok anyway that was Mr Virus #1. About 2 weeks later, Mr Virus #2 came avisiting. This time I was hit with fever, headache, and a very mild case of flu. And this time, I tok A WHOLE DAY's leave. After the fever and headache left, I got slammed with an ultra painful sore throat. Not the kind where you get an acute pain. It's the kind where it feels there's a very painful lump, and you have a lot of trouble swallowing, and sleeping can become an absolute torture because that's where your throat becomes dry from breathing in the air-con, and you wake up having a very PAINFUL & DRY throat.
*ouch*
After 4 days of constantly sucking on sweets, cough drops, mint drops and downing bowls of green bean soup (very cooling), I'm recovered!!! Whoopee-doo!
For the record, those were my first major illnesses ever since coming to China. Amazing right... after 1.5 years...
~~~
I've recently taken to a very sadistic pleasure of smashing roaches. Baby ones too. In my living hostel. Right in the kitchen. They come out at night to scavenge. Scuttle around. Waving their disgusting antennae around. Too bad, alas, they meet a sadistic killer. Me. Mwahahahha... I no longer use the insecticide. I do'nt know how much pollutants I'm releasing into the air, and inhaling them. Anyway the insecticide is missing lah. But what's available for me, is the ever-functional fly swatter. Except this time, it's roachie-swatter. *another evil laugh*
*SMACK* goes the swatter, and roachie is flattened! Ta-da! Quick and simple! And environmentally friendly too 
~~~
Remember I was mooning (or rather, moaning) over taking a HR exam in May? I also announced that I flunked it.
And now I'm thoroughly dreading the moment I have to re-take it - November. Not because I do'nt like HR or anything, but the damn exam's in Chinese!!!!!! Not that I have a problem reading Chinese, but the damn MCQ has like, 120 questions and I only have 90 minutes to finish it!!! Not so bad, you say? It's VERY bad! First, my speed of reading Chinese is obviously slower compared to English, ok? Second, they throw out some terms that I don't understand! Thirdly, half of the questions are NOT "choose one answer", but "choose multiple answers"!!! Yeah I explained before about this confounding aspect of their MCQ before. Unlike single-choice MCQs where you can work out by rote of elimination, this damn system wants you to choose many answerS. GAH! So you're stuck thinking, is this ONE of the answers? It comes no surprise I flunked the MCQ part.
And as for the written part, GAH! I hate rote learning ok! I don't memorise entire pages and churn out for you bloody examiners like a machine. Can you please be more creative and set thinking questions, instead of making me a copy-machine???
Now lemme tell you my colleague who sat for the same exam as me, passed! By 1 mark!!! And it makes me boil that I couldn't get thru this damn exam because:
1) My collleague blatantly cheated because she sat right in the back of the very last row, in the VERY CORNER. I was sitting right in the bloody FRONT of the classroom. HOw da hell was I supposed to cheat, when every movement I make is monitered by the invigilator? So my colleague, was happily copying away chunks of info from her textbook while I... ... 
2) My colleague has been in HR for like, 3 years at least? I *barely* touched HR!!!
3) My colleague's local...so...DUH. No problem with comprehension.
Sigh sigh and more sigh. The upstairs-people are naturally hoping I can re-take, and I really don't know how to worm my way out without sounding like a loser. And to be truthfully honest, that stupid scrap of HR cert is utterly USELESS to me!!! EVen if I were to be some HR Director in future, no one in their right mind would recognise the China cert! Unless I work in China under HR (100% NO friggin' way).
~~~
On a lighter note, I'm very happily watching the season of Heroes :) :) :)
Nice! | | |
| Life works in very strange ways. Fate brings you to places unpredictable. From the very moment I took up this job, several changes have swirled around my puny little existence. These changes...some of them lead to a chain reaction that I could never have fathomed. And I can't express enough to say how thankful I am for the way my life has turned out.
"Things happen for a reason."
Simple, comprehensible, reasonable.
I shall chart down as many changes that comes to mind at this time:
- A clean and convenient break from a meaningless courtship
- An enormous surge in my spoken Chinese proficiency
- Separation from family & friends
- Different outlook at work, dealing with a whole different kind of people
- Having the fortune to have an amazing Supervisor who has trained me to a level which most SGrean bosses would have failed to do
- A chain of events that has led me to my current job scope, which subsequently has paved the way to a soon-to-be wholly different environment.
Have you ever had the feeling that the events that happened before that made you feel despondent, depressed and down, somehow lead to a whole new different adventure, one which you embrace?
Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts... | | |
| Tak boleh tahan! I FINALLY went out and got the electric bug-racket-zapper to use within the company premises. Beside it was frighteningly freaky to see hordes of mozzies snoozing on the pristine walls, looking satiated. BAH!!! So armed with my electric zapper, I started a military rampage to EXTERMINATE THE VERMIN!!! The most sickening area was the 1st floor pantry, where there'd easily be 10 mozzies plastered onto one tiny area at any one time. So with my beloved zapper, I started ridding the lil' pantry of the damn bloodsuckers. And then I went to other areas of the office to do the same. See one, zap one. See another one, ZAP ZAP ZAP!!!
ZZZZZZAAAAAAPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!
And when my commendable crusade ended, the result was frightfully morbid. Probably about 30 mozzies were stuck onto the racket, with dozens more fallen off to the floor. Worse still, some poor unlucky victims were fried; the smell of electrified mozzies was....nauseating man. I tell ya man, it was really some kind of mozzie INFESTATION, something you'd expect from a C-grade horror movie...disgusting bugs taking over your life and world.
And the worst thing is, the HR peeps in the Co couldn't care less. I showed the evidence to the HR Manager and all he could do was just GRIN like a Cheshire fool and said, "Good, good." Really.
But also, the mentality of the people here are really weird. They're oblivious to these pathetic bloodsuckers! All they do is sit around and complain about getting bitten, with NO ONE taking the initiative to get insecticide, or clear stagnant puddles of water (which are by the way everywhere), or get the zappers, or put out mosquito coil. Some of them never even seen the zapper before!!! The most they did was put out the coil, and I had to explain to them like pre-adolescents that coils only DRIVE AWAY the vermin, but do not SOLVE the problem. Sheesh!!!
Ladies & gentlemen...China will never improve within 10 years.
Now on to my Co., (kinda sad isn't it, that I keep talking abt my Co and nothing else...sigh), my HR Boss is MISERLY man! 2 of my colleagues are supposed to attend a course at the factory and since they're stationed in Shanghai, they need to get transport to get here. While everything can be easily chop-chop get done by hiring the company driver, my HR Boss wanted my poor colleagues to travel via train to the train station before getting the driver to fetch them from there.
@_@
Yes there IS road tax to be paid from Shanghai to here, BUT if the top mgmt are paid millions every month, what's a measly tens of dollars (S$)?!?!?!??! Penny wise, pound foolish.
My lovely female new colleague, brought back NONYA BAH CHANG from her recent leave back to SG, all hand-made by her mom!! I MISS MY NONYA BAH CHANG!!! Holy SHit! I am SO deprived man! I haven't had bah chang in more than a year! I mean the nonya type. The recent Dumpling Festival, was celebrated here as well (DUH it's a Chinese custom), but all I got was China dumplings... :( :( :(
1 was the 'sweet version', simply made of rice plus ONE pathetic red date. The other was the 'salty version', just some fatty pork with salted egg yolk.
Mmmmmm nonya chang tastes like pure HEAVEN when you haven't had it so long. It's so orgasmic, it brings you right into ecstasy... Ahhhh..... Sigh....
(No seriously, when you are deprived of certain taken-for-granted things, they become luxuries)
I'm still thinking of my nonya chang...suffering withdrawal symptoms now... | | |
| Tak boleh tahan! I FINALLY went out and got the electric bug-racket-zapper to use within the company premises. Beside it was frighteningly freaky to see hordes of mozzies snoozing on the pristine walls, looking satiated. BAH!!! So armed with my electric zapper, I started a military rampage to EXTERMINATE THE VERMIN!!! The most sickening area was the 1st floor pantry, where there'd easily be 10 mozzies plastered onto one tiny area at any one time. So with my beloved zapper, I started ridding the lil' pantry of the damn bloodsuckers. And then I went to other areas of the office to do the same. See one, zap one. See another one, ZAP ZAP ZAP!!!
ZZZZZZAAAAAAPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!
And when my commendable crusade ended, the result was frightfully morbid. Probably about 30 mozzies were stuck onto the racket, with dozens more fallen off to the floor. Worse still, some poor unlucky victims were fried; the smell of electrified mozzies was....nauseating man. I tell ya man, it was really some kind of mozzie INFESTATION, something you'd expect from a C-grade horror movie...disgusting bugs taking over your life and world.
And the worst thing is, the HR peeps in the Co couldn't care less. I showed the evidence to the HR Manager and all he could do was just GRIN like a Cheshire fool and said, "Good, good." Really.
But also, the mentality of the people here are really weird. They're oblivious to these pathetic bloodsuckers! All they do is sit around and complain about getting bitten, with NO ONE taking the initiative to get insecticide, or clear stagnant puddles of water (which are by the way everywhere), or get the zappers, or put out mosquito coil. Some of them never even seen the zapper before!!! The most they did was put out the coil, and I had to explain to them like pre-adolescents that coils only DRIVE AWAY the vermin, but do not SOLVE the problem. Sheesh!!!
Ladies & gentlemen...China will never improve within 10 years.
Now on to my Co., (kinda sad isn't it, that I keep talking abt my Co and nothing else...sigh), my HR Boss is MISERLY man! 2 of my colleagues are supposed to attend a course at the factory and since they're stationed in Shanghai, they need to get transport to get here. While everything can be easily chop-chop get done by hiring the company driver, my HR Boss wanted my poor colleagues to travel via train to the train station before getting the driver to fetch them from there.
@_@
Yes there IS road tax to be paid from Shanghai to here, BUT if the top mgmt are paid millions every month, what's a measly tens of dollars (S$)?!?!?!??! Penny wise, pound foolish.
My lovely female new colleague, brought back NONYA BAH CHANG from her recent leave back to SG, all hand-made by her mom!! I MISS MY NONYA BAH CHANG!!! Holy SHit! I am SO deprived man! I haven't had bah chang in more than a year! I mean the nonya type. The recent Dumpling Festival, was celebrated here as well (DUH it's a Chinese custom), but all I got was China dumplings... :( :( :(
1 was the 'sweet version', simply made of rice plus ONE pathetic red date. The other was the 'salty version', just some fatty pork with salted egg yolk.
Mmmmmm nonya chang tastes like pure HEAVEN when you haven't had it so long. It's so orgasmic, it brings you right into ecstasy... Ahhhh..... Sigh....
(No seriously, when you are deprived of certain taken-for-granted things, they become luxuries)
I'm still thinking of my nonya chang...suffering withdrawal symptoms now... | | |
| Some people in the company can be very ethically very unscrupulous. I have made up my mind to leave this co when my contract ends for various reasons.
1) People
2) Culture (policies, family-owned business)
3) Exposure
While I've mentioned (2) + (3), I don't think I've talked about (1) much. A chat conversation with a fellow SG colleague left me to wonder what kind of screwed up Co I'm in. You see, my friend-cum-colleague is in a relationship with our GM. Sounds rather scandalous eh, but actually they're just 2 young chaps (23 for the girl, 27 for the guy). No dirty business around. Now I already know that the GM is somewhat a player, but I took the optimistic view, hoping that he was better in nature than what is rumored. I like him a lot, because he's a truly funny guy and life is never boring around him. He shakes up the whole environment and is a pretty nice lad.
But my SG colleague...after feeding me with the news today, left me utterly dishearted, disgusted and disappointed with him. *GAH* Well some people might say my SG colleague is being malicious and is spreading wild tales, but I can assure everyone she's a very good and righteous person, full of integrity and honor.
Apparently, the GM has been two-timing my friend/colleague. He has gotten to know of another girl 8 months ago and brought her to the SG office to parade her around... I don't know if my friend knows about it but I'd rather she be kept in the dark. Ignorance is bliss. But I feel very very sorry for her. And like a protective mother hen, I will NOT let anyone bully her. I shall psycho her to break up with him....
Grrrrrr.... | | |
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