I bumped into folks coincidentally on 3 separate occasions today.

Encounter #1: Exiting the lift at my vendor's office building while a friend was stepping into it.
Surprise element: Medium cos a) I'm seldom at my vendor's site, b) it only takes a few seconds to miss someone in the lift.
Result: Caught up with him before he went on vacation.

Encounter #2: Meeting a business associate in the parking lot at my vendor's office building.
Surprise element: Low cos a) I don't really know him, b) the whole world seems to have the same vendor as us.
Result: Gained a business lead from him. Yes, you can find business in a parking lot. Go figure.

Encounter #3: Meeting a junior college schoolmate across the road from my office building.
Surprise element: High cos a) he still remembered my name though I haven't seen him for many years, b) it turned out he's working in the next building to mine for the past 1.5 years and we never realised it.
Result: Got someone new to go lunch with.

Not a bad day really.

Another late night at work. My best friend just told me an analogy by a Nobel Prize winning economist which described children as durable goods. I thought it's pretty funny but can't remember the details. Sigh.

I'm always busy when I return to the office after taking medical leave.

Baking analogy at work today: when customers push me to deliver, I have to push bakers. When bakers happen to be friends, things may get sticky. Sometimes it becomes an alienating process cos bakers only see you wearing a tall chef cap and think you've forgotten how hard it is to bake. Sometimes it's easier at work to be impartial and not too much of a friend.

I landed in Milan the night before 1 May 1996 with 2 colleagues from my ex-company. We were staying on the outskirts of Milan but weren't due to start work on a project till the day after Labour Day. I remember poring over the map of Milan on Labour Day morning, looking at the Duomo right in the heart of Milan. I didn't know what the Duomo was then but I knew it's special and we had to go there. Then we were told that there would be no public transportation available since it's Labour Day. Unbelievable. We looked at the map again and tried to gauge the walking distance from our hotel to the Duomo. 2 hours? 3? Was it worth it? We decided to walk. So that was how we trudged down the cobbled roads in Milan while sidestepping dog poo and navigated our way down to the centre of Milan. It did take us about 3 hours and the journey down was quite fun really. But what stood out was when we rounded the final corner and came face to face with the Duomo. At that moment, if you made me walk all the way to our lodgings and back to the Duomo again, I would have done it gladly. Just to savour that moment.

d(O_O)b

Talking with Nelson about scenery reminded me about my fascination with the Duomo in Milan. It's not the grandest cathedral but it was the first one I've ever seen in Europe. For the 3+ months when I was working in Milan, I went to visit the Duomo nearly every weekend. There's something about this place and the square it was located in. To be frank, it's so beautiful I could turn religious.

Gods made earth for the humans but they made New Zealand for themselves.
- Nelson rambling on at 3 am.

I stubbornly refused to let the doctor check my temperature with the ear-thermometer that slid partly into the ear. He had to give me the good old thermometer to hold under my tongue. I guess I'm paranoid about anything that could threaten my hearing.

Nelson was telling me about the time he was in Milford Sounds, near Queenstown in New Zealand. He was on a cruise ship and unlike the rest of the folks who stayed under shelter, braved the cold and wet to be on deck. He couldn't understand why they didn't want to go out to see the wonderful scenery of sea, waterfalls and mountains with low-hanging clouds. He was in love with that moment. I asked if he wanted to recapture that moment when he fell in love with someone. He said no. On the contrary, at that moment he didn't need anyone, not even the nicest, hottest and best dispositioned girl on earth would have mattered to him.

I slept about 4 hours just now. I woke up at every hourly interval, looked at the time, thought nah and went back to sleep again.

While skimming through Harry Beckwith's marketing book The Invisible Touch, I came across this section which describes 8 keys to lasting relationships (with your customers, that is). They are:

1. Natural Affinity.
2. Trust:
3. Speed.
4. Apparent Expertise.
5. Sacrifice.
6. Completeness.
7. Magic Words.
8. Passion.

To put it bluntly, seek clients you would want as friends.

Certainty is fatal.

Talk about freaky coincidences. My regular doctor was away so I had a replacement doctor at the clinic today. The young replacement doctor looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't recall where I met him. So being my over-curious self, while he cross-examined me on my health symptoms, I cross-examined him on possible common friends. Then it turned out that we attended the same dinner with some folks a few months back. :) Mystery solved! The only bad thing is he was too generous with medication and I was given 4 different types to finish. I'm not too keen to take the antibiotics.

On the other hand, I really love Royksopp's song Remind Me.
All these things I write to remind me.

Sick and at home today. Sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, wheezing. Boss spread it to me. Woohoo. Wanted to go visit the doctor but got delayed cos I spent nearly an hour online reading a comic Nowhere Girl recommended by Dave.

Bring on today. Let's see what to make of it.

Today I bought Lamb's latest album What Sound and Royksopp's album Melody AM. While paying up, the counter staff at the music store beamed at my copy of Royksopp's CD and asked if I've heard Zero 7. I said yes and he went on to recommend the Avalanches. I smiled and said I've just got that. Then he was so nice as to go check if there are other similar CDs for me to get. Unfortunately, I've already got them all.

What struck me was this stranger went out of the way to help me cos he felt an affinity to what I listened to. From that CD purchase, he read my music likes and dislikes. Some people can be read like a book. Well, I can be read like a CD.

While chatting online with Nelson, he told me that he could already tell what I would be doing today. I said what? And he replied that I would either be thinking about music, buying music, listening to music or writing about music. Bingo.

It's a rainy morning so I've got my excuse to skip gym again.

Borders is having a 3-for-2 promotion for certain books and I kept hovering round wondering if I should buy Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. The attraction is that Pi is mentioned on the first page and well, I have a thing for Pi. I've thought that Pi will make a good name for a record label cos it's simple; infinite; and in Eco's words... "that number which, however irrational to sublunar minds, through a higher rationality binds the circumference and diameter of all possible circles". I've been told that Pi Records already exist though. What also ticks some friends off is I can't remember their phone numbers, but I can quote Pi off the top of my head up to 21 decimal places even on a bad day. lol.

Anyway to cut it short, I never found enough books to buy for the 3-for-2 promotion so I didn't buy the book after all. And this morning I climbed out of bed and decided to go rummage randomly through my monster piles of unread books. And I found I already have a copy from a few years back. :) It felt like Christmas morning.

I heard Kathryn Williams' latest album Little Black Numbers in limabean's car and she sounded really lovely. Reminded me of Beth Orton actually. It was strangely hypnotic when she sang, and all of us fell quiet in the car and listened. Well, cept when limabean cussed another driver. I turned to ask him how he could cuss while listening to this and he replied that he could multitask. lol.

So here's lyrics to that song which didn't stop him cussing. It's the second track called Soul to Feet. Hey, thanks for the company. :)

You only stop talking, when you're sleeping
There's got to be something wrong
With your past.
I can't talk if I'm thinking
I'm not going to move so fast

Is your life so exciting?
You have to tell everyone you meet
Try to make it so enticing
You wear your soul out to your feet
Always leave before them
You want them to think
You've got so much to do
Maybe they're not thinking of you

If you would shut up
Someone could save you
Manipulate everything
And that's how I love you
- Kathryn Williams' song Soul to Feet

I was telling my best friend that my Uni girlfriend's hubby needed to work 7 days a week and 14 hours a day. My best friend's immediate response was that this guy must be working in a coffee shop. Well actually, he's a banker.

I'm online waiting for my hair to dry so I can go to sleep. I glanced at one of my watches and did a double-take when I saw the time was 9:30. I could have sworn it's 4:30 am instead. Then I realised the watch is probably set to another time zone when I went travelling, and it wasn't set back. For all this while, this watch lost track of time.

I missed playing pool for the second week in a row. Instead, my best friend and I went to Phuture to attend a gig where our friend was one of the DJs. This friend spins drum & bass but unfortunately, most of the Phuture crowd didn't know that. So when he spun, he succeeded in nearly clearing the dancefloor about 20 minutes into the set. lol. My best friend and I did our usual frantic big movement arm flailings which we consider dancing (think Michael Stipe of REM in the music video for Losing my Religion). In fact we never coordinate our dance steps, we just dance whatever way we like. Most of the stray dancers round us looked like the folks we saw at Insomnia too. Afterwards, we 3 sat on the steps outside Zouk and chatted a little. And it felt strangely serene.

I'm in the office at 7.30pm on a Friday night, waiting for a person related to my work to turn up. He's one hour late and I doubt if he'll show, so my work probably won't get done tonight. I don't have his contact details and I can't call him, and I'm quite pissed off. But then again, it's Friday night.

I'm online thinking of what to blog since I woke this morning. I can't think of anything and Hegemony suggested to start with a joke. And I can't think of any either.

I called a good friend yesterday cos I felt miserable all of a sudden. For no reason at all. He was busy so he said he would call me back. I sms'd back to tell him not to, that the moment would pass. He called me right back and asked me what's wrong. I couldn't say anything cept repeat that NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING is wrong. He didn't believe me and I told him I couldn't talk. So he asked me to call him back when I could talk ok? But I didn't, cos I didn't know how to put it.

Now I thought of what I wanted to tell you. I wanted to say at that moment, that I'm afraid I'm incapable of falling in love.

I accompanied a Uni girlfriend to go shopping last night. She was running errands for her busy husband and buying stuff for him. Out of the blue, she turned and told me she remembered one time when I was running errands for my first ex too. She said she remembered me searching for dental floss for him, and that I got agitated when it couldn't be found. But I can't remember any of it. I was criminally ruthless about forgetting him about we broke up. I am aware of my notoriously bad memory, and had systematically removed every trace of him... contact details, birthdate, photos. And after all this time, nothing has remained. In the end, she offered me an old memory which I've completely erased.

Baking analogy at work today. My mum complains sometimes that I'm so seldom at home that my home seems more like a hotel. Nowadays I'm so seldom in the office/ bakery that my office/ bakery seems more like a hotel too. I'm hardly ever at my seat for more than an hour before I'm off again. Customer meetings, team meetings, management meetings, lunch meetings, investigative meetings, pre-sales meetings, vendor meetings... I meet more often than I eat everyday.

Every single comment has been wiped out. How strange.

This is the day
This is the time
To stare at the skies in wonder
We live a lie
You'll never find
Never in a month of Sundays
You should have seen
What I've seen
He doubles up and comes back Mondays
And he will come
Into your heart
It goes on and on and on
- from Doves' song Here it Comes. Currently what I'm listening to, on loan from my best friend.

Last night I lapsed into one of my rare dreams. I saw myself visiting an old girlfriend at her current place in Colorado. Colorado? I dreamt about Colorado? I'm not even sure what it looks like.

I used to think that work is just work, a means to funding my interests like books, music, movies and pool. I thought I would wish to love what I do cos it takes up a huge chunk of my time, but if I can't.. well then I can't. Maybe I didn't try hard enough and I'm getting it all wrong.

How you work reflects on who you are. If you love your job, your customers can tell. Customers trust people who love their jobs.

Baking analogy at work today (minus the baking elements): Work is personal.

Hegemony, ok truce! Quest, how about a truce too? :)

Quite surprised to read about blogging while scanning for industry updates in this week's local issue of Computerworld. Nothing new except the site Blog You! got mentioned for reviewing and rating blogs.

Baking analogy at work today. Baking the same old cakes competently is not enough to secure business. I'm trying to look for new varieties of cakes my bakers can bake. I need a cake version of the pearl tea phenomenon.

We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise
I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone,
a long long time ago

Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With The Man Who Sold The World
- from David Bowie's The Man who sold the World

Now I'm online blogging while Quest and Hegemony are trying to convince me that they're the same person. One will be telling me something and moments later, the other will tell me the same thing. Like deja vu. Evil monsters. I know you are 2 separate entities! :)

On being too logical. I stand accused of being too reasonable at times, of thinking before feeling. Sometimes being stoic really exasperates people.

My old PC just had a seizure. In dog years, it should be at least 100 years old. I don't know why I persisted in using it despite having bought a laptop to replace it. Not only is it slow, it's also installed with an unwieldy Netscape 4.5 which crashes everytime I try to read Hegemony's blog. Oh well, now I'm forced to move on. I'm only wondering if my typing will be affected since I'm going to type on laptop keyboards both at home and at work. Hmm.

More useless information from Wordsmith but I love them anyway. :)

An epenthesis is when a person adds a syllable to a word. A haplology is when a person drops a syllable. A good example is the word "aluminium" which in the US is known as "aluminum".

Britons often accuse Americans of haplology while the latter believe it is the former who are committing epenthesis.

A cartoon song-and-dance about the bombing of Afghanistan. Ironic humour.

I don't dispose of any CD, crap or not. They're all part of my listening experience. If i don't listen to crap, I'll take good music for granted.

Found a site to randomly generate Smiths' lyrics. Don't know about you but this tickled me. :)

I outdid myself by buying 9 articles of clothing as compared to only 1 CD (Rae & Christian's picks for Anotherlatenight) this past weekend. Today's shopping partner is my UK travel mate. This is the woman whom I end up buying the same clothes with when we go shopping. If we don't coordinate before we meet up, we run a high risk of wearing twin outfits. And we have the same hairstyle and are around the same height too. lol.

About Rae & Christian's Anotherlatenight selections. I'm most intrigued by the last song on the album, which is Jose Feliciano's cover of The Mamas and The Papas' California Dreamin. It's described as psychedelic-flamenco and sounds absolutely heavenly.

My mum is a hoarder. Whenever I pack out unworn clothes from my closet, she will secretly pack them back in again. As a result, I don't have space and she'll blame me for always buying clothes. Then when I pack my closet again, I'll find clothes that I thought I had packed out for the Salvation Army. Urgh. These include my brother's T-shirts and he's married and moved out for years! My mum's logic is he'll need these T-shirts if he ever needs to stay with us again. OMG.

This morning I woke up and decided to pack my closet instead of going for a jog. I packed out 2 bags' worth of jackets, T-shirts, blouses, pants and tops and in the process, I also found clothes I didn't even know I bought. I found a LILAC dress, 2 LILAC tops and a wonderful black number lurking around the closet. Anyway, I am not letting those 2 bags out of my sight. I'm going to bring them over to my bro when I leave the house so that my mum has no chance to pack them back in again. I must break out of this stupid cycle!

deadboi taped a nipple ring to his left nipple to test his mum's reaction to it as if he really pierced it. His mum actually bought it. lol.

Here's another blog to whet your appetite. It's called, erm, Confessions of a Porn Star. Dun ask me why. :)

Basically I got into bimbo mode and went shopping giddily with Yoyo (yes, the boy understands clothes) and my jc girlfriend. Surprisingly I bought clothes and not a single CD. Actually I was thinking of buying Rae & Christian's session for AnotherLateNight, Modjo or Zero 7, but I just got distracted. We ended up talking about how women are supposed to be categorised by seasons to see what sort of colours suit them. I thought I'm autumn/ winter cos of the muted colours I wear but Yoyo and my jc girlfriend thought I look like spring and wear colours like LILAC. Let me see, is LILAC the hip colour some time back when every woman and her sister were wearing it? Is LILAC the colour I thought I could convince myself to wear and ended up burying such coloured clothes at the back of the closet?

Great. I have a saccharine look.

I have no idea why I'm awake since I've slept just 5 hours. Upper arms are feeling a bit sore as they normally do after a night of elbow jabs while dancing at Zouk. But hey, it's been so long since I last danced seriously. I really had fun. :) And that's all for now while I go out and get a life today.

My ex-colleague told me Poland holds 3rd place in the European Dragon Boat race. I didn't even know such a race exists in Europe.

Here's a funny email I got today :)

An English university creative writing class was asked to write a concise essay containing the following elements:

1)Religion 2) Royalty 3) Sex 4) Mystery

The prizewinner wrote:
"My God," said the queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who did it?"

Finally Friday. Wandered into work listening to Zero7's Simple Things which my Table Tennis Junkie has lent me. Swopping pool for Zouk tonight. :)

A girlfriend just sms'd me this morning to say her marriage ceremony at ROM (Registrar of Marriage) can't proceed cos the government just declared it as election day and hence, a public holiday. Well, ROM doesn't open on holidays. This is the first friend I know whose wedding got disrupted by the elections.

Apples and oranges analogy on love. Let's say everyone loves to eat apples. However apples are rare and oranges are common. But there are people who only want to eat apples. And not just any apples, only red ones. Green apples won't do. If there are no apples in sight, these folks starve. Then there are those people who think they can eat oranges instead and acquire a different taste. But after eating oranges, they start thinking about the missing apples.

And then, there are those people who try not to be hungry.

I was blowing off steam by swearing in an email to my best friend. I was being unusually vehement, and he replied 'another 10 f**ks, i give you a call'. So I answered with an email going 'F**K F**K F**K F**K F**K F**K F**K F**K F**K'. I only typed 9 so I could test if he counted them at all or just called me right away.

He counted. My best friend in this universe emailed back '1 more to go! pls f**k sparingly...'. See how methodical he is? lol.

Hmm. I don't know why I bleeped out the swear bits with *. Limabean is a bad influence when it comes to swearing. It feels so natural to swear with him around.

Another baking analogy about work. I HATE writing proposals. I HATE that I'm good at it. :( All those years of education boil down to this?

Baking analogy at work today. You never know what you can learn from your customers. Today I had lunch with an American customer who used to be a lawyer, and he explained briefly on American law and the concept of class action. If I didn't misunderstand him, class action is an act which allows people to sue on behalf of everyone else in the world in the same predicament. Eg. if I sold millions of cakes internationally and one customer were to think I've rigged my price way above market price, this customer could sue me on behalf of all the other remaining cake-eaters in the world. I'm not sure if this concept works here. Any enlightenment from limabean? :)

My mind is a blank this morning.

My best friend said that everything about music is innocent cos we're not taught to interpret it. Hmm.

I'm the most docile of customers. I don't send food back, even if the order is mixed up or the food is cold. And I don't complain to management about bad service. But what does rile me is the charging of annual fees on credit cards. I don't understand why I have to pay the bank to let me use their credit card. Especially when I've been a loyal customer who has paid bills promptly for the last 7 years. And the bank is giving new members waivers from annual fees. Is this how customer loyalty is retained? I just don't get it.

Baking analogy outside work. It's cheaper to retain an existing customer than to find a new one.

Seems like Quest has taken it upon himself to rename my nick in his referral links as well. Well, blog war heh? :) Go ahead and check out Questifah's Chronoscape then.

Baking analogy at work today. Going off to visit a customer soon to find out if he's hungry, when he's hungry and what he's hungry for. Hopefully he's in the mood for cakes.

I didn't realise mosques are open 24 hours a day when my muslim colleague informed me of the fact. He told me matter-of-factly that God won't sleep.

I'm not the spare! I'm the main tyre! Woohoo! :)

B12 told me Alan Greenspan termed spending money freely as irrational exuberance. Never heard that before.

Today's word from Wordsmith is Greenmail, which is derived from the words green (money) and mail (blackmail). It means "the practice of buying a large quantity of a company's stock as a hostile takeover measure, and then selling it to the company at a higher price."

Baking analogy at work today. My boss taught me about liability, ie. if you sell a cake which lands your customer in hospital suffering from food poisoning: are you liable to repay only the full costs of the cake, or are you liable for the hospitalization fees as well?

I remember that a friend who's in the States once named a network of servers after MRT stations in Singapore. He said it helps him to remember the locations of the servers relative to one another in the network. Besides, it amused him. :) I don't know why I recalled this for no good reason.

If you bought $1000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79.
- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld (US) on Nortel's dismal showing on the stock market. So drinking beer beats buying stock now?

Ok ok, I enjoy cheap thrills. No matter how many personality tests or name analysis I've done, there's always room for one more. So here's an analysis of my names from another name analysis site Quest stumbled upon. Just like the more traditional Chinese analyse the strokes of the Chinese characters for names, maybe future parents should test name combinations on this site before naming their kids?

Real name analysis:
You don't fair well under inharmonious conditions. You are very peace loving. You can get very upset when you are frustrated. You are soft-hearted with a charitable nature. You are relatively demonstrative in your affections. You enjoy being stroked verbally and physically. You have good recuperative abilities. You are determined. You have high aspirations and a cheery disposition. You have much enthusiasm with a driving attitude toward achievement in life. You can handle details well. You have a methodical mind.

You are fair-minded sometimes to the point of being opinionated. You have a strong need to be loved and appreciated. You can be quite inventive and quite curious. You need to learn to be expressive. You are a person who cannot tolerate being misunderstood.

Nick analysis (vaya):
You have difficulty getting emotionally close to others. You believe in live and let live. You are future oriented. You have much enthusiasm with a driving attitude toward achievement in life. Your independence and freedom are important to you. You have a need to be up front.

Hegemony has renamed my nick in his referral links so I thought what the heck, if you can't beat them join them. :) Henceforth I dub thee... Hegemohamed. Muahahaha.

I was just given the breakfast recipe for Milo Energy Bites. It refers to toasted bread spread with butter/ margarine, followed by generous sprinking of Milo powder on top. Gee, how did people think this up? A colleague commented that eating this will induce too much coughing. On the other hand, I also know people who have eaten coffee powder after drinking coffee no longer kept them awake during all-nighters.

Baking analogy at work today. Actually, it's been ages since I last baked. I'm not sure I can bake an edible cake anymore and a part of me feels sad that I'm losing my techie edge. Oh well.

I didn't have time to blog at work today. When I finally got home, I found One Blind Mouse has blogged an entire library worth. Well ok, I exaggerate but you get the idea. So this is the reason why I don't get so many personal emails anymore heh? Everyone is blogging instead. lol.

I was out with my UK travel mate and bought another 2 CDs today. One is a Valen Hsu compilation (one of a rare handful of Chinese CDs I've got). It's difficult for me to acquire Chinese or classical music since I'm virtually clueless about both; so when I do, it's mostly by gut feel.

But it's the other album I bought which made my day. I bought Avalanches' Since I Left You. This dance album was so well favoured it was named the album of the month for a couple of music magazines like Jockey Slut, NME, Mixmag, Uncut and Ministry. Knowing this, I've got high expectations for this album and it doesn't disappoint.

The CD cover art intrigued me from the start. It's a painting of people escaping in row boats from a sinking ship. This is an unusual interpretation of the title track Since I Left You and the whole album follows in the same vein. As the review mentioned, this album contains over 900 individual samples so it's pretty incredible that it got released in the first place.

Nelson found this article to explain to me why he likes Chicane's music. He was listening to Chicane while he was on a roadtrip in New Zealand and somehow the music became part of it.

Other people have different memories for the same music you listen to.

Though I slept at 2 am this morning, I woke automatically by 7 and couldn't coax myself back to sleep. For quite a while, I laid still and blank in this limbo-like moment I didn't want to get up from. So I curled up, plugged into my Discman and listened to Depeche Mode singing It's No Good on auto-repeat. And life became more bearable.

Maybe I'm so into music cos it serves to distract me.

Hegemony gets a personal blog too. :)

I just want to stop hearing bad news sometimes.

It rained for a week
and I kept my head down
trying to think what
you reminded me of:
a fire that had ravaged
an Ohio town,
and spooked me at noon
with my headlights still on
- from Joe Henry's song This Close to You

I bought an old Joe Henry album called Kindness of the World, a Mute Records sampler as well as the October issue of Uncut magazine from the HMV sale. Then I attended a bbq at my colleague's place and stuffed myself for hours before coming home again. Before I realise it, Saturday has hit its curfew and given way to Sunday.

If the chefs are having fun, shouldn't we just enjoy our food?
- extract from a music review someone sent me, where the chefs are DJs from the DJ Kicks series

Waiting for my best friend so I can jog while he blades this morning. This whole day is packed with activities but I wonder if I'll rather prefer to snuggle up with a book instead.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.
- another sort of sms which would get me to phone back instantaneously.

deadboi had his first tattoo done recently. He said it was in the shape of Ohm. I couldn't picture it and asked my best friend, but all he thought of was the Physics measurement Ohm (in the shape of Omega). It's only later when deadboi sent me a pic and explained, that I knew Ohm was the Buddhist symbol of life. lol.

Behold I give unto you power to tread on serpents... and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
- Luke 10:19

Actually, the above describes what I think about my identity ring perfectly. I have a simple engraved silver ID ring which looks like a flat edge flanked by 2 hooks, not a closed circle. It's a talisman which I've been wearing nearly daily since '95. This ring has followed me everywhere in my travels, to weddings, funerals and birthdays, through breakups, reconciliations and breakups again, to gigs and concerts, to work. It has a lot of sentimental value for me.

Hence when Shing the jeweler who made this ring held a show last night, I went along with my best friend and his SO to attend. It felt odd, bringing the ring to see its maker. The show theme was called Remnants.

The door gift was a stack of beautiful cards printed with different showcased designs, as well as a little ring case filled with the remnants of material left over from those used to make the designs for the show. Inside the ring case is also a little balled-up slip of paper which quotes:

There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
- Anais Nin

Though I don't know the jeweler personally, I'm glad she persevered all these years. She made a ring that I wore for 7 years. That's really something isn't it?

Baking analogy at work today. It's depressing selling cakes on Friday cos you have to dress formally while your colleagues don't on casual Friday. It's even worse when your customers are observing casual Friday too. Then you stand out like Santa Claus on a nudist beach, if you get my drift. Sometimes I wonder if I could ever meet customers wearing my weekend cutoffs and flip-flops and still convince them based on my abilities. If we could just cut through all the bullshit show & tell.

Using baking analogy about work, my Chicago friend was trying to explain about redundancy problems with his oven. Redundant meaning a standby flame kicks in if the primary flame dies out, but the standby flame doesn't seem to come on fast enough or strong enough. As a result, the cake doesn't rise and can't get baked. I asked him if there is some other way to describe it so the oven can sound more sympathetic or human. I'm moronic aren't I?

I went to play pool with my colleagues just now, even though it's not Friday night. One colleague explained that he hadn't played for 15 years and proceeded to thrash everyone at the game. The rest of us just sputtered '15 years?!' throughout the pool session like broken records.

Baking analogy at work yesterday. You can't sell cakes to customers who can only afford doughnuts.

George Jones shares a veggie burger with Jim Morrison at MacDonald's, where their order is taken by Jerry Lewis. The chef is Franz Kafka. The background muzak is Mahler's Symphony No. 1
- Brett Sparks of the band Handsome Family, when asked to define their music

Feline has shifted to a more reader-friendly blog url. lol.

Blogger was down most of today. Sigh.

From this robot quiz Quest mentioned, I found out I'm C3PO from Star Wars. Man.

I slept more than 10 hours last night and felt much better this morning. Inbetween, I logged on and chatted with Hegemony about, erm, ducks. He's got a pet duck called Skittle which he feeds, among other things, protein pellets to. I've never seen the breed of ducks called Indian Runners, which he mentioned look funny cos they look like bowling pins. :) It also seems that a duck's quack can't be echoed. Odd isn't it?

My colleagues and I were coughing, sniffing and collapsing all over the office today. And we have a central air conditioning system circulating round the whole building too. If I were the building management folks, I would seal up our office and quarantine everyone.

I've finally received my Uncut magazine directly subscribed from UK. The only problem is I was expecting it since the August issue and they've just sent me the November issue. I guess I'll go out and buy the October issue. I really hope they haven't mailed the older issues which are all in transit goodness knows where.

According to another Friends test on Emode, I'm Phoebe. Great, I get to be the ditzy blonde who sings Smelly Cat.

Want to know what kind of song you'll be? Try out Emode's latest test. Mine's supposed to be Katrina & the Waves' Walking on Sunshine. Upbeat. Hmm.

If you wish to make an apple pie truly from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
-Carl Sagan

My ex-colleague in Poland has recently subscribed me to A.Word.A.Day on Wordsmith. Today's word is cecity, from the Latin word caecus. A whimsical word for blindness.

Monday wasn't a good day was it? I would have told you your dad used to have a thing for the name Jessica from the book Dune. Dear Jesse. A Madonna song you know. Can't find the lyrics online somehow but someday I'll find you. I just know it.

There is a distinction between "defeated" and "unable to escape."... If you are in a corner with a gun pointed at you, you are checkmated. If you are in a closet, and can't get out without being shot, you are stalemated.
- Hal Lewis, a reader of the Wordsmith reading list comments on chess definitions

Baking analogy at work today. I must remember it's important not just to bake and sell cakes, but to motivate bakers. No matter how busy, I must not lose sight of this.

I bought the complete works of Lewis Carroll from the mobile bookfair today. I have been procrastinating against buying it cos it is readily available in the library and I have read it before. But I bought the book more as a reference since Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass have been inferenced quite often in programming/ logic processing.

I don't think I appreciated this classic the first time round. Some things have to be revisited before their true meaning becomes clear.

We are substituting people for strategy. Instead of working out plans and goals, directors look at another company that is doing what they think they want to do, and they hire an executive from that company and hope.
- Peter Cappelli (Wharton School management professor)

I thought this insight applies to more than just business scenarios. Sometimes all you want is to be saved.

My best friend has moved his .plan to a blog of sorts but his text layout doesn't change. lol.

They told me you don't love me
Over a cup of coffee
And I just have to look away
A million miles between us
Planets crash into dust
I just let it fade away
- Garbage's song Cup of Coffee. It's from the latest Garbage album Beautiful Garbage which I didn't like enough to get. But I did like this song when I heard it on the sampling machine at Border's yesterday. It reminded me of what a friend has described as Hopefulness vs Hopelessness.

Ok ok. So Electrin, Quest and I played another game of Literati this morning after I woke up. But today is surely my last day with this game. I need a life! lol.

Sometimes I get disconcerted when friends in real life quote my blog entries nearly ad verbatim back to me.

One Blind Mouse commented on my tendency to blog about inconsequential things, rather than what I really feel. It's true. This blog is more a memory aid, and too public for me to reveal myself. This blog can't and doesn't replace my friends. It's my dear friends who have to hear me out.

Despite my previous post, I ended up playing 2 games of Literati till 3 am this morning. One with my best friend; and the other with him, Quest and Hegemony. I can really retire from the game now. :)

I've decided to stop playing Literati after playing my 4th game. I realise that I don't have enough time to spare. lol.

My best friend told me a puzzle today. It's like this: there are 100 closed doors in a row. You go down the row, opening every single door. Then you return to the starting point and close every alternate door along the row. Then you return to the starting point and go to every third door, closing it if it's open or opening it if it's closed. You keep doing this until you go to the 100th door straight from the starting point. So, at the end of this exercise, how many doors are open and how many are closed?

While we were chatting online, Hegemony forwarded me a graduation pic of his pretty girlfriend. He also sent me a pic of him in his 'wilder' days with a blue goatee. I commented that I couldn't see his eyes cos he wore sunglasses in the pic, and he forwarded a pic of one of his eyes. Wow. I received another pic of his nose, as well as one of his extracted wisdom tooth. Hegemony said that he always keeps a cache of pics of his bodyparts in his folder (no dirty pics though). Hmm.

I was encouraging deadboi to start his own blog (see, my evil influences are far-reaching) and he said he writes in 3 voices. One of a carribean pimp. One of a feminist Marxist, a lil like Valerie Solanos, an angry unshaved bra-less dyke. And one of a sitar-playing Hare Krishna devotee. Eh. Will be looking forward to his blog with bated breath then. Hiaks.

I went for my regular Friday night pool as usual. The others were running late so I curled up with cushions, and slept fitfully for an hour on the black couch at my favourite pool joint. I plugged into an auto-repeat of Tori Amos' cover of Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence and slept clutching my cell phone. Every so often, I would jerk up when my cell phone vibrated and tell people groggily how to meet up. Too many late nights this week I guess. :)

A guy my UK travel mate knew was entrusted by other women folk to find out if a guy (let's call him X) is attached. So what he did was to email X point-blank to ask if he's attached. And he cc'd this email to all the women folk. lol.

Baking analogy at work. Recently I turned down an offer to work for an overseas bakery, with the chance to be trained in Germany for at least 6 months before being stationed around the world. Foolish? I don't know. Maybe I will regret it sometime later but it is the most unselfish thing to do now. Yesterday, the head of that bakery phoned me personally from Germany to ask me why I rejected his offer. I explained to him that I had to take over my departing colleague's job too and it would be irresponsible to go. He told me not to hesitate to contact him if I ever change my mind at any time cos he really liked to hire me. What intrigued me was that he has never met me. We had a phone interview before he saw me for the first and only time at a video-conferencing interview. What I can't fathom is the Trust. A stranger really trusted me.

Introducing Fe|ine's blog. Is Blogspot better than Dairyland? :)

Lyrics to Tori Amos' cover songs in StrangeLittleGirls. I especially like the covers of Eminem's '97 Bonnie and Clyde and the hauntingly sparse rendition of Depeche Mode's Enjoy the Silence. Songs can't get sadder than this.

I played another game of Literati with Hegemony last night and this time I lost quite badly. I only felt more determined to play Literati with him again (if he's willing of cos) till hopefully I can win. :) I know I can play with other people too but he is the most challenging player I know so far, since he's rated (played more than 20 games) while I'm only a provisional player. It's not that I want to beat him per se, it's just that playing against him is a benchmark to measure my learning curve. This is the same way I learnt to play pool with my best friend.

It's not only the game which is important, but whom you play with.

How probable is it to bump into my jc girlfriend in the cineplex toilet accidentally after watching different movies? Should I go buy 4D now?

I also bought an album of cover songs (or what I call alter-ego songs) by Tori Amos called StrangeLittleGirls. I liked her slow rendition of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit and wonder what she'll do with this odd collection of songs.

Yoyo called me up last minute to go watch the french movie Le Roi Danse (The King Dances) cos his best friend couldn't make it. Must say I really enjoyed watching it. It's about french baroque music by the composer Lully, and how it reflected the state governed by King Louis XIV (the Sun King). Yoyo remembered Lully cos Lully died from gangrene infection after stabbing his foot with a music baton. Eh. Afterwards, I went and bought the movie soundtrack from HMV. To get me to buy classical music, that's really something ok. lol.

You can tell things about people from how they play games. For example, though I didn't really know Hegemony, I made a few deductions from playing one game of Literati (scrabble) online with him. He was careful and paid attention, even to the letters I was holding. He was patient and didn't make me forfeit the game, though I made him wait a few times while I tried to test out strange word combinations. He also taught me some words I didn't think of forming, even though it meant I scored for them. And most importantly, he didn't make me feel bad about losing.

Baking analogy at work today: whenever I try to sell cakes to potential customers, my colleague kept asking me to tell them about my work experience first. So I asked him why he does that and he told me that it's cos I don't look old enough to sell the cakes we bake. Despite dressing and working like a baker, I don't look like one.

Seems like there's a 6-car pile-up on the CTE this rainy morning. Bakers have been phoning in apologetically to say they're stuck in traffic. Take it easy and drive carefully folks.

Who would have thought searching for "drill-exercise in school for sports day" would lead to my blog? lol.

Baking analogy at work for the moment. I am running 2 bakeries now cos another bakery head has fled the coop. I considered fleeing too, but then I decided to stay and stick it out. After making that decision, I felt so calm and settled. So last night I worked till I'm the last one left, ate a bit of mooncake for dinner and went home.

But I'm happy cos I had a chance to read while commuting to work. Cos friends sms me. Cos I received air mail from Poland. Cos I played a new Yahoo game Literati with Hegemony for the first time last night and didn't think I lost too badly (207 vs 263). Cos I could sleep the whole night through. So yes yes yes, I'm thankful.

It's going to be another busy day today.

Happiness is watching the sunrise over the Anapurna range in Nepal.
Happiness is enjoying a cup of bubble tea with you on a Saturday afternoon.
Happiness is enjoying a glass of delicious ice kachang with you and CC in Hanoi on a hot and balmy night.
Happiness is buying a longed for pashmina scarf.
- an sms from my jc girlfriend on counting her blessings.

When I met my US travel mate at the movies yesterday, she mentioned that she also bought books at the same mobile bookfair I was at. And coincidentally, one of her purchases is PO Bronson's The Nudist on the Late Shift though she didn't know I bought the same book. So do friends end up reading the same books?

It was my turn to visit the mobile bookfair today again and I bought a book entitled The Lore and Legends of Wall Street. Did someone else buy that too? :)

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
- Kafka. I wish.