The "transformation"

So the client sees me and goes: "Oh my god what has happened to you??!!?! You lost so much weight!!!! How many kgs did you lose????" and promptly goes and gets the other senior officer to come see my "transformation".

I'm like errrrr turning purple by the second with embarrassment. What am I, a circus exhibition?

And there I'm sitting getting teased about how it must be a new girlfriend or if I'm getting married. How I wish, haha. Still, they're very nice people and one of my favourite clients. This is what I'd get out of bed for. And to the clients' credit, they haven't seen me for more than a year.

But I really errr don't think I've "transformed". I've like been stagnant on the same weight for a year. The trainer was just nagging me yesterday about my slow progress and how I've got to go do some cardio. "Exercise is not just a 2 hour/week thing. It's a 24/7 effort." yadda yadda yadda. I'm being lectured by a 23 year old. Sigh.

So I'm off to the gym at lunch today with my roommate in the office to errr do some running. Which I absolutely hate. Hate beyond hate. Maybe I can cycle.

I have noticed some changes though. The other day I was just scratching my butt (yes yes, it's disgusting, but MY BUTT WAS ITCHING), and, this is embarrassing, I suddenly exclaimed to myself: "I HAVE BUTT MUSCLES!!! WOWWEEEEE". If this gets out to my office colleagues I'll die of embarrassment.

I'm hopefully getting rid of those braces next month. Fingers crossed.

The trainer's quite a funny dude. He keeps complaining about how if he broke up with his girlfriend he'd have to start all over again and that it'd be "damn sian". I'm like "dude you're 23. shut up and suck it up". He likes drinking as well. So atypical.

Rainbows

Rainbows are visions
But only illusions

Thus speaketh Kermit the frog.

The day draweth closer. With each passing day I'm one step closer to what is hopefully a fat promotion with a fat pay rise. How fat, nobody knows. And I'm not sure if it's really there. It's like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Except one doesn't know where the rainbow ends. You just walk, walk and walk, and then one day you reach.

Come December, I'll know whether I've reached the end of the first rainbow (there's a bigger rainbow up ahead).

But I'm quite excited. Let's hope it happens.

Meanwhile people keep asking me if I'm reaching the end of my first rainbow. I don't know what to answer. If I say yes and I don't then I'll be embarrassed and I'll want to be like an ostrich burying my head in the sand. If I say no it feels like false modesty. So it usually ends with a "erm. I don't know. It's complicated. Ask me later."

So don't ask.

I've often gotten irritated with people who put on this fake-o accent
when talking to angmohs. Imagine, horror of horrors, that I find
myself doing it, and worse of all THAT I CAN'T STOP MYSELF FROM DOING
IT.

It's truly awful.

It's not that I intentionally fake it. It's just that I subconsciously
try to match their accent when I'm talking to them. Like how when I
talk to the hawker I'll use all my lahs and lors.

But the strange thing is that I've only got one accent, and it's based
on the English accent. So it's that same angmohfied accent whether I
talk to an Englishman, a German, an American or an Australian.

Help.

Acupuncture

I've been really grumpy of late. It's all due to this stupid sprained shoulder that I woke up with last Saturday. It began with a stiff neck. I went for a massage but was unfortunate enough to get some junior person. That evening, the pain started. It was so bad that I had to keep my arms in the air for relief; looking like a ballerina in front of my boss the whole evening while we were at a colleague's house warming.

Then for 3 solid days I kept waking up at 4.55 am. Don't ask me why that time. That added to my grumpiness.

On Monday I went to see a chinese doctor hoping that they could crack my bones back in place. It felt like something was pressing on a nerve. That didn't really work. All I got was a tuina massage and some chinese medicine. When I couldn't sleep again on Monday night, I decided enough was enough and went to see a Western doctor, who as expected, gave me some painkillers and anti inflammatory medicine, and sent me for an Xray.

I thought about seeing the chiropractor as the pain was getting quite unbearable, but they didn't want to see me until I got the results of my Xray back; fearing that it was a bone injury.

All that talk of a bone injury got me a little nervous; but on Friday the xray came back and there was nothing wrong with my neck bones.

But by then my thumb began to show numbness, which over the course of the week began to spread to the rest of my right arm. Something is definitely pressing on a nerve somewhere.

The western doctor has packed me off to see an orthopaedic surgeon for consultation, but that's not happening until early November. Meanwhile I'm suffering from pain every night and my whole gym routine has been fucked, leading to a 2 kg weight gain.

At choir yesterday I saw Sam limping in with an injured ankle. Seems she went to a chinese sinseh and had some acupuncture done. Shixuan also said he went to this particular doctor when he twisted his ankle a while back and gave them good review.

With such glowing reviews and another night of pain on Saturday, I woke up bright and early to  go see the doctor,  at this decrepit place called The Odeon, next to Katong Shopping Centre.

The queue was excruciatingly long; I waited some 2 hours while parked on a double yellow line. Fortunately no parking ticket there.

The highlight of the trip was two things.

First, my virgin acupuncture treatment. It's a strange sensation. As the needle goes in, you feel as if a pimple has been burst and all the pus is oozing out. I'm sure that was all blood, because I spied the dustbin and saw a lot of bloody tissue. Still, it didn't hurt very badly, and MAGICALLY, the pain is now completely gone. Apparently acupuncture can be used to release tension. Who knew that? Magic magic magic.

The second highlight was this really cute doctor. Ok well not cute in the conventional sense, but she had the cutest voice. My back was faced away when I first heard her in the background talking to another patient, and it sounded like it belonged to a really cute person. It had this very lazy but sexy chinese drawl, almost Taiwanese, and extends to both speaking in Mandarin and speaking in English. As a result the English sounds almost melodious, like how the HK ppl speak English.  I can't really describe how, except to imagine that it sounds like the sort of voice you would expect from a movie scene on a lazy Sunday morning when the actress is in bed wearing the protagonist's shirt, and eating strawberries and sipping champagne. The face is cute too, with cute little freckles.

I'm meant to go back in a couple of days for a follow up treatment. I really can't wait. I think I want to marry a TCM doctor.

All things Mac

The new Macs are out!!!! The Macbook is absolutely gorgeous I feel like buying one right now. As is the new 27" iMac!!! At only S$2388 it is a bargain! Makes my pure 24" iMac now look vastly outdated. =(

I bet Val is buying the 27" iMac.

I'll just have to be content with my order for the new Magic Mouse this morning.

Agony is

When you can't sleep properly for 2 days in a row.

When at 4.50 am in the morning, you awake because your shoulder is
killing you.

When you have to take painkillers to sleep.

I am in AGONY. HELP.

Empathy

Has my job changed me so much or have I always been this way? I feel
as if I've got a complete lack of empathy.

My colleague's had two miscarriages, the second worse than the first
and possibly could result in chemotherapy. Even if not, she has been
advised not to conceive for another year. Meanwhile, she's 31; tick
tock tick tock. What went through my head? "oh. Hrm. Ok. Oh well. "

And then this week my colleague's mum has relapsed into stage 4
cancer. The kind which is like...the end is imminent...and again I
thought: "oh. Hm. Ok tt's a bit sad and unfortunate."

Is this normal I wonder.

Wowweeee

This is what happens when you try to do work at 5 am in the morning:

"The security created by the Pao Kung bread shop...."

I am sunburnt from wakeboarding. GRR. WHY. I put on sunblock.

Boomz part II

I think Singaporeans tend to have a poor command of English in
general. I mean my wonderful secretary has written the following at
least 10 times to various people:

"Your speedy respond is most appreciated."

I cringe each time I see it.

And then there was that woman from WDA this morning in the lift.
Didn't know what she was talking about. It was half chinese and half
english.

It's not as if my secretary's chinese is very good either. I was
calling stupid HTC to describe the problems I'm having with my mobile
phone, and the Taiwanese or PRC guy on the other side didn't
understand me, so I passed the phone to my secretary to help describe
the problem. Her Chinese was probably only marginally better than
mine. Sigh

Updates

Its been a while.

In the course of a week I got smashed twice.

Once last Friday, when I decided after drinking a bottle of red wine
with a friend tt it was a good idea to start downing some vodka we
opened a bottle of Absolut and finished half of it while watching some
show I can't really remember but which stars Angelina Jolie and was
about assassins. I didn't make it home that night.

Then two days ago we had a presentation to attend. At 7 pm the tremors
started and an order to evacuate the building given. Except instead of
evacuating me n my roommate went back up to the presentation floor to
drink up what was left. I had about 8 glasses at least.

Then we decided it was a good idea to take advantage on the Champagne
promotion at New Asia Bar. We grabbed two other colleagues and went
there where between the 4 of us we polished off another 3 bottles of
Champagne. The idea was to pick up ang moh chicks but we didn't see
any pretty ones.

Apparently my colleague found me sleeping in the toilet.

And I lost my phone. Why couldn't I have lost my office blackberry instead.

GRRRRR.

What a decadent week. My brain cells are really trying to recover.
I've pledged not to get smashed again. That is, until Xmas. We'll
see.