Opportunity cost

By the way, my train ride to Danga may have to be postponed indefinitely. Dad is so big on mahjong (actually my cousin is, so much so that she even arranged for my morning portion to be covered as I have to work) that he decided that he would not be able to wake up early enough on Sunday, the day after mahjong.

It's a bummer that I have to work this Saturday. I don't actually work on Saturdays but this is a special day and we all have to go back, working or not working, alternate or not alternate.

Well, I guess Danga will have to wait!

Progess thus far

I contacted my lawyer today. Going to hand her the documents tomorrow. Not me of course, my Dad is going to do it. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything will go smoothly henceforth.

I have been diverting my attention so far, by making travel plans to neighbouring countries and islands. Hopefully this would keep me sane for a while :)

One step closer still

I got it. He has come over to pass me the necessary documents. Now it is time for me to ask my lawyer to get to work.

Sounds real funny and, to a certain extent, mean, but I am feeling very excited now that all this is under way. There is a kind of tingly feeling crawling under my skin, urging me to finish this unfinished business.

Somehow, I just wished that when I opened my eyes tomorrow, it would be four months later and I do not need to go to court at all. Of course, I have to do that.

It was a little strange, seeing him again, under such familial circumstances.

Soon, soon...

Well, my soon-to-be ex will be passing me the relevant documents soon. Once that is done, it will be about 3 to 4 months before I am a totally free woman again.

It's funny how, that when it comes to this point of time, that I should feel that he is quite nice. However, I should not be fooled by the fact that he is said that he "loved me". After all, I was the one who wanted this, so there is no turning back.

My calm is still there but my panic is now reserved for my assignment that is going to be due in three weeks. Man! There is so much to do in such little time! It is not as if I did not want to start it earlier but the lecturer only gave us full details yesterday. Bummer.

Mini trips

Well after all that philosophical bull crap, time to let you guys in on some of my wonderlust. No where far, just a stone's throw away from home: Johor Baru.

Dad has been talking about Danga Mall for some weeks now. Even my China colleagues are talking about it. They want me to be 'tour guide' to them. Those who know me will know I am a little 'kayu'(sort of like a scaredy cat in Malay) and so I have decided to go there to recce out the place first. Hehe... .

We would be taking the train from Tanjong Pagar. Yeah!! I love trains. I have a strange aversion towards them, even though I was 'scared' by the black holes of the toilets when I was very, very little. It was also on my way to Malaysia. Cameron Highlands, my mum tells me. Apparently I was really urgent but upon seeing the black hole of a squatting toilet bowl, I decided to hold till I reached my destination. Don't ask me how I did it :P

Back to trains: I really fell in love with trains three years back when I was doing research on Puffing Billy before I went for my Melbourne trip. It really got me interested in steam engines.

Anyhow, I hope my trip to Danga City Mall next week will come to fruition. I will update it in my blog if I do go!

Smile and live the adventure

I was talking to a friend today and from what this friend was saying and doing, I suddenly had an 'ah-ha' moment. This friend (let's call the person A), to me, is not really living in the moment and is looking for a feeling, a process, that A feels should be sort after. By searching for these feelings and ideal situations, A (to me at least), already lost that moment.

Maybe to put it simply, A is not living in the present.

It dawned on me that life is an adventure, journey or what you might like to call it. No matter how bitter or sweet it is, I, at least I myself, should enjoy doing it. Or rather, I should try to be "present" in that experience, no matter how horrible or good it is.

It is in being fully present that I can come out of the experience, hopefully a better person, as in, I have experienced it (not necessarily in an advantageous way, say an argument, for example. I might have lost it). I learn from it. Hopefully then, I would become wiser, and thus a better person.

Sounds too philosophical in my own silly way? Perhaps. Maybe it is because I am just going through that sort of period in my life right now.

I am calm and happy, but in that calmness, I am a little worried whether this is the calm before the storm. Yet I know that even if the storm does come, I should still be able to weather it.

To all my friends and whoever is reading this: smile, if you are facing a very happy phase in your life and smile, if you think you are going through the worst. It can be a cynical smile at first but if you tried harder and genuinely smiled from the heart, I think you would realise a smile can take away a lot more stress and worries than you think it could :)

If we hold on together

It's interesting how the song "If we hold on together" by Diana Ross started playing on Class 95 when I was writing a letter to my soon-to-be ex. This song was sung when I attended the Beginning Experience retreat, a retreat for people who are going through divorce or are suffering the loss of a loved one.

The lyrics are beautiful and so I thought I should record it down in my blog:

If We Hold On Together

Don’t lose your way
With each passing day
You’ve come so far
Don’t throw it away
Live believing
Dreams are for weaving
Wonders are waiting to start
Live your story
Faith, hope & glory
Hold to the truth in your heart

If we hold on together
I know our dreams will never die
Dreams see us through to forever
Where clouds roll by
For you and i

Souls in the wind
Must learn how to bend
Seek out a star
Hold on to the end
Valley, mountain
There is a fountain
Washes our tears all away
Words are swaying
Somebody's praying
Please let us come home to stay

If we hold on together
I know our dreams will never die
Dreams see us through to forever
Where clouds roll by
For you and i

When we are out there in the dark
We’ll dream about the sun
In the dark we’ll feel the light
Warm our hearts, everyone

If we hold on together
I know our dreams will never die
Dreams see us through to forever
As high as souls can fly
The clouds roll by
For you and i

A little reward

What did I do after seeing my lawyer?? I went to buy two pairs of shoes! I would have bought three if I did not stop myself in time. The shoes were just too lovely! The place? Golden Shoe Car Park. They have got shops on the first floor and there was this lovely shoe shop with my name on many of the shoes and so I had to get me some. :P

I somehow felt liberated and thought I had to celebrate making that first move towards liberation.

After those two pairs of shoes, which, by the way, were discounted (one pair was 70% off while another was 20% off), the day passed by like a dream.

Till tomorrow then!

Celebrate alone or loudly and in a bit of style

My birthday is coming up soon. I am just wondering how I should celebrate it. Have a big bang or spend it alone?

I could have a karaoke party or dinner party like before. This time, I might re-visit Al Dente and have a mini feast. Actually that was also a venue I thought of for my D party (divorce party, once everything has finalised). Well, I digress.

Another thought is to book a hotel room in one of those boutique hotels here in the little island and call the whole gang down to party.

Oh! This time around, I must also top it off with a tattoo that took me 3 years to decide upon. I think I have found the shop that I want to do it. It's at the Heeren. Will find out more before I finally do it. Have to do it before...oops! Almost revealed my age. Not ready to do that yet :P

Finally...

I am going to give myself a hug and brace myself for bigger things to come. I must also give myself a very belated pat on the back for finally doing something that I should have done half a year ago (although some might think I may not be worthy of the pat).

I arranged for an appointment with the lawyer. I am finally going to file. I did state that quite recently in one of my postings and I guess if one says it enough times, one will actually take action.

I guess I am the biggest procrastinator in the world but I just can't be rushed into things I guess. I suppose that it will be a big closure on a chapter of my life that spanned a good eight years.

Will I be more daring then? Will I be more ready to plunge into love? I am not sure. The sanguine part of me feels that I my have missed the boat, but the optimistic part of me...tells me that there is hope yet.

Beat box rules!!

To round off my very sedate Sunday, I went to watch Break Out: Extreme Dance Comedy from Korea with a good friend of mine.

We had our first experience with Yegam Theatre & Production Company when we went to tour in Korea. I am very glad that watching Jump was part of our itinerary. We got so hooked that we jumped at the opportunity to watch it here in Singapore.

This time around, there were beat boxers and b-boys and b-girls doing all that popping, locking and breakdancing to the sound of beat boxers such as Park Seon-Jun. I am still very amazed at how he could put the mic at his throat and produce such loud, fantastic sounds!!

There was never a dull moment in the show and there was so much comic relief that I had bad cramps from all that laughing. All in all, it was a fantastic experience. This fantastic experience was also preceded by a very good dinner at Al Dente.

I had wanted to eat at Al Dente quite a few years back. In fact, I wanted to hold my birthday there. I wanted to sit at the balcony and enjoy the bay view. At that time though, the whole balcony was booked for a private function and I never really got back to it.

Today, I finally set foot and had beer battered calamari, lasagna with wagyu beef and prosciutto ham pizza. It was coupled with a glass of house pour Merlot that went very well with the beef. I was so full I could hardly walk after that.

What was more, after the show, we went to Max Brenner's for some chocolaty stuff. I had a strawberry milk chocolate shake with yogurt. Yum, yum, yummy!! Service was very, very, very bad though. Unless you really have the patience or is not very hungry, I do not recommend you to go there at all.

How I spent V day.

Sent Dad to the airport and had a nice scrumptious meal of stewed meat with rice a la Taiwan (i.e pork with quite a bit of fats. Sinful, I know, but I have to eat chicken five days a week so weekends are my let-go days).

Went to Popular Bookshop after that and spent about $100 buying all sorts of nonsense, including a Dymo Label Maker. I have already looked at that stuff for the umpteenth time. Why? I was influenced by the kids who label their water bottles and everything else with it. The 'last straw' came when one of them had ironed on their name onto their bed sheets. That's when I decided to do some sleuth work and find out whether the label marker I had been eyeing does the job. It does!! Now, I have become a label freak. I labelled my files, my pens, my drawers, my almost everything!! It's my newest stress reliever 'toy'.

Other than labelling, I also did lots of filing of my lecture notes. I am beginning to think that I am a categorisation freak. Well, this probably stemmed from my previous job where everything had to be categorised and colour coded too! It's funny how I learn to become neat once again after living for so many years. Hee!

In the evening, I went to the supermarket. I spent two hours there, combing through the aisles and discovering new products and reminiscing the old. Once again, I stopped by at the Ziploc bags for a little too long. I already have three different sizes at home and had to stop myself from buying more. Excuse to self: save the earth. This Ziploc thing is another obsession to put items of similar usage together, i.e categorisation yet again. :P

Through the kids, I have learned to eat healthily and to watch what I am eating and bought lots of stuff that I have stopped buying a long time ago. Things like cornflakes (that were high in calcium), milk that was rich in omega 3 and 6, and so on.

Still later in the evening, I was watching TV when my friend messaged me to watch "My big fat fabulous wedding" on MTV channel. She told me that the girl who was getting married looked 90% like me! Hahaha!!! YES! I got a shock when I changed to that channel for she really did look like me but she was many, many times richer for her wedding cost $2 million!!!!!! She was a Japanese and mum said she was fatter than me. It was her way of complimenting that I have slimmed down. Haha!

The girl that looks like me!

All in all, it was a peaceful day well spent mostly at home. I am recharged and looking forward to the week ahead. Gotta prepare myself now as my little ones have got ten thousand and one "why's" to ask me, so much so that I feel like I am perpetually taking exams. Hahahaha!

Am I having mid-life crisis?

As I lay, half inclined on my bed, reading Cleo magazine, I started having a panic attack of sorts; somewhat like a mid-life crisis.

You see, the Cleo Bachelor contest is going on and I was looking through all the contestants. Most of them are 22,23 or 25,26 year-olds. I am way past that. Does that make an old hag? I read their little individual interviews and most want sporty girls. If you count trekking, cycling and swimming sporty, then I still fit the bill. Worse still, one said he would not prefer his girl to be too short.

Well, all these may well be highly personalised and overly publicised opinions of a bunch of 50 guys, but it did not help me allay my fears and worries that all too soon, I will reach the big four-o. Well, not quite there yet, but the feeling of it reaching faster is very real.

It did not help that I have been worrying recently about being all alone when I get old and the thought of who I should ask to settle my funeral when I die came about. You see, I am an only child and the thought of both my parents going before me, is another supposition that I do not take too lightly.

It also does not help that today is Valentine's Day (V Day) and my mahjong session was cancelled because my cousin has a bad flu (I don't blame her, really. The flu bug has been going around, having a field day!). I would now have to think of things to occupy myself and try not to go out as it would cost me a lot in monetary terms plus emotionally, I am not going to feel any better just looking at those couples giving you the smirk looks on their faces.

Don't get me wrong, they have full right to do so. After all, they have found their ONE. I just wish that V Day was never really invented or that it never got so commercialised such that it ostracised and marginalised the singles or those in gray areas (like myself).

Well, enough of wallowing and all that worries and fuss. Life has to go on. At least I had a nice claypot rice meal with Dad the night before and that quality family time is good enough a V Day present as any other.

An almost artistic afternoon.

Went to watch the much talked about Taiwanese play, "The Village" yesterday at the Esplanade. Dad watched it the night before as he had another show to catch and so I went alone.

It was a very good performance with a stellar cast. It was these tv personalities walked out of the tv set and we were meeting them in real life. Yes, most of them are stars that we see in Taiwanese tv drama serials.

The story is about a Dependents' Village, a very real part of Taiwanese history. These people went over to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-Shek, thinking that it will be temporary and that they will be going back to China after a short stay. The short stay turned into years and from one generation, they have their second and even third generations in Taiwan.

It was a play that made me laugh and cry, cry and laugh some more. At the end of it all, we were treated to 'bao' (buns) as in the play, this old lady from Tianjin taught this Taiwanese girl how to make Tianjin 'baozi' (buns).

I had a leisurely stroll through the Esplanade and even caught some Visual Arts exhibition. I must applaud Esplanade though for they are able to make art accessible to the general public. Only thing is whether the general public are willing to go there to see it for themselves.

What I did not like was some of those obnoxious people who went for the show. There was this man dressed in nicely ironed shirt and pants. I was queueing up for drinks during the interval and he just walked right into me to walk to the other side while he was on his phone. No word of "excuse me".

Then, as I was going to order my drink, he cut the very long queue and got his drinks first!!!! The worst part was that the bartender did not even bother to ask him to follow the queue. Someone else in the queue had to point it out.

I was already giving him daggers and sword stares but really did not want to lower myself to his level to tell him off. He did not even apologise and just walked away. I really didn't know who to be madder with: the bartender or the obnoxious man.

All in all tbough, the experience was generally good. I went home feeling a little more....ahem...artistic.

Time to find closure

It was a weird kind of afternoon. After lunch with some friends at Yummy Claypot at Joo Chiat, I walked towards the bus stop, homeward.

I site Katong Catholic Bookshop. It was a place that I have wanted to step into, not too far away from home, but never did get a chance to go in. Instead, I usually go to Carlo Catholic Society all the way in town (Queen Street).

As I walked into the shop, I was very conscious of being the only customer in the shop. I slowly browsed through each and every shelf of books. Then I saw this whole shelf of books on Catholics and divorce. It was like God had asked me to go there. As cliche as it may sound, it was like He wanted me to find some more of my own answers. I got two books and was so tempted to buy yet another rosary, but I stopped myself. I must say though, they may have less selection of rosaries than Carlo, but they have really nice ones.

In the evening, instead of watching tv, I decided to continue tidying the cupboard full of stuff from my old house and old office. As I was deciding between which to throw and which to keep, I chanced upon the photos I took with two colleagues on my wedding day. I chanced upon the well-wishers' cards, I chanced upon the mass booklet that were printed and given out on that day (I still kept a few) and I chanced upon the picture of the chihuahua that I had to give away (back to my ex).

It brought me back to a time when I was happy and then not so happy and I fast forwarded it to the time right now. It also reminded me that I have not yet filed for divorce, that I had been procrastinating, even though a large part of it is more so because of his parents and not him.

It did not help that V day is coming. I have been skipping all those lovey-dovey advertisements and promotional emails. I don't have the strength to any feelings towards V day anymore; be it hurt, sorry, angry, lonely, whatsoever.

Then I chanced upon some computer floppy disks. Not the really big, floppy ones but the more stylish ones that by now is also obsolete. I had wanted to keep them all, as there was information in there, but like the past, it is pointless. As the information cannot be extracted anymore (unless I go through lots of trouble).

Just like the disks that I decided to throw away, it is time that I find closure to my long estranged marriage. I will start communicating with the lawyer after the 15th day of Chinese New Year, just in case the lawyer is 'pantang' (superstitious) and doesn't want to start the year with such cases. Hee!

Gibberish

I had wanted to blog about bad drivers and bad driving but decided that that was an overdone topic. I can blog till the cows come home and there will still be bad drivers.

Oh! but this I must say though. The other day, I saw on the electronic board that said "Fire engine on Lane 1". Instead of giving way and changing to lane 2, I see many taxis speeding happily on Lane 1. I was cursing and swearing away when it suddenly dawned on me that they might not be able to read English (no offence meant). If they are not able to read what is on the board, then I think there is a flaw in the system.

Anyway, I digress. My cousin and I were talking about how Singaporeans are neither good in speaking English or Mandarin and also how some do not even see the need to speak proper English since they have Singlish (Singapore English).

We went on to talk about punctuations and came to this interesting and yet, I think, important point that "a man eating tiger and a man-eating tiger" has two very different meanings. It made me wonder what life would be like without any sort of punctuation marks...?