Miscellaneous memos

I had my blood pressure checked on Saturday, and the nurse who was taking the reading got restless and called her colleague over to double check the machine.

“There is something wrong, her reading is too low.” The nurse muttered in Mandarin.

“She just has low blood pressure.” The other nurse replied.

All this happened right in front of me, oblivious to the fact that I was sitting right in front of them, listening to the whole exchange. Were they assuming that I did not understand?

They hooked me up to another machine, and the reading was the same.

“She just has low blood pressure.” The nurse said in relief. “Should we tell her?”

“No, we don’t want to worry her for nothing.” The other nurse said with certainty.

WTH!?!? I have heard everything already. Really, I am not invisible or deaf.

It has been absolute mayhem since I got back, not least of all, it’s been due to the fact that it is earnings season once again.

So while I am committed to help out in a friend’s wedding, as one of those annoying people who bar the groom from entering the bride’s house, until he coughs up money; I never knew that there was so much work involved.

Meetings about strategies to go about doing things (ways to leach money off the groom I suppose), hen night preparations, duties involved etc.

Only I don’t really have the time right now to throw myself into the planning, and yes the wedding is in January.

So forgive me, this newbie, while I potter around trying to find the spare time, and really needs to get through this madness known as earnings season first.

I haven’t really forgotten about what I have to do. This is the first time a good friend is getting married, and I want to be there, front and centre for her.

Travelling to a different city always yields tales that seem otherworldly from the transient.

So while I could tell you that I ate frogs’ legs, shot from guns, almost got lost in a maze of underground tunnels, sat in a sampan for hours and almost drowned in the Mekong while dozing off, got carsick for the first time, stayed in a posh hotel suite (entirely with no intentions of doing so), sat on a motorcycle with two other people (with no side car), got offered dog meat and the list goes on.

But what I will say that is that I finally discovered the mystery of the plumbing system.

When I still a really poor student in uni staying in a hostel (which was not too long ago), I had two other housemates, a Vietnamese girl L and a Japanese girl M. Read the rest of this entry »

I will be leaving the day after tomorrow, and I still have not packed. My travel companion is just as bad if not worse.

I am working late tomorrow and have this itch to nip to MOS before heading home, but I shall try to resist the urge. I have to mentally steer myself clear of the temptation to drink myself to oblivion and then end up in my bed, a messy tangle of sheets and legs, with absolutely no memory of how I ended up there.

Am very excited really, that I am going to visit one of those ’seething slums of Asia’ as Anne Rice so eloquently puts it.

The heat, the noise, the colours, and a break from the haze, things I look forward to and will blissfully embrace, minus the trouble.

Will be back next week.

I lost my mobile phone on Saturday night. It was partly my fault, having left it behind, which I readily concede that I was in part to blame.

But having discovered that I had lost it not more than five minutes earlier, I went straight away to call my phone, only to have the person who picked it up, turn it off. Subsequent calls that I made to the phone directed it to voicemail, meaning the person who picked it up had turned it off for good.

Read the rest of this entry »

Having waited, planned and plotted for this day to go on without a hitch for ages, I even took the precaution of telling my boss that I had to leave early, just so we could all watch Russell Peters in peace.

It was all worth it. The exorbitant ticket price. My discomfort from the sniffles. The horrendously bad haze, that made it difficult to breathe.

I met up with the boys at Tanjong Pagar MRT and we walked straight to the venue. It started slightly later than expected and there was a warm up before the Man, himself came on, and we were having the time of our lives.

I don’t think I ever laughed as hard and as much as I did that night. His interaction with the audience was amazing and after all of it, I can definitely say that yes, the hype is all true and he was my Internet god before I discovered Youtube.

We went for halal wanton mee after the show. (A recommendation of Joe’s) Quite the irony considering how wanton mee is usually cooked with pork, but this one was just as good if better than most of the good wanton mee around.

We wanted to go to Zouk for drinks later that night, seeing how we got the ‘1 for 1′ special for working in a certain industry but it was just too darn crowded. So we made our way to Clarke Quay for some margaritas and gazed out at the river in which the haze made everything seem so foggy, it felt like we were extras on a’Phantom of the Opera’ set.

I have been having the most prolonged bout of illness the past week. All these symptoms of cold, fever, sniffles, sore throat and achy muscles, came and went at some point, and I was barely aware most of the time, having been doused with high dosages of sleep-inducing medication.

I suspect much of it was induced by the air pollution that is the haze, over the city. But let’s not point fingers to our fine neighbours who are trying to fight the flames of forest fires.

Of course, that did not stop me from living it up over the weekend. Will write more soon, be prepared for a deluge of entries and a couple of protected ones.

I was taking the lift up to my apartment, when the old man who was with me in the lift, said, ‘You have to come up and take a look, it is so bad, you can’t see anything.’

He was addressing the lady next to me, who lived on a much lower floor than him and she turned and addressed me, ‘Would you like to join us?’

The three of us stopped at the elderly gentleman’s floor and looked out at the view from the landing. We were able to make out the objects closer to our building, but then from there on there was a bleak blanket of grey cloud over what would have been the city.

We tsked around at the view, then made our way back down to our respective floors.

It’s what is making me sick right now, so will get back when my system clears up abit.

 http://www.todayonline.com/articles/145629.asp