And another year passes us by. Did you do anything worth noting this year? Or was it another year you spent wasting and now have a ton of resolution unfulfilled?
It is wonderful how people’s manner change with the year. The beginning of the year brings about massive changes in personalities and with the passing days, they morph back to their old beings. Maybe it is because 365 days is a bit long to be a year, don’t you think?
Today I stumbled across this article “Navigating Love and Autism” in the New York Times by Amy Harmon.
The article circles around Jack Robinson and Kirsten Lindsmith, two people with autism and the effects of it on their relationship. These two people are in the autism spectrum, having Asperger’s syndrome. For the uninitiated, Asperger patients often dwell tunnel vision like, cannot see the big picture of a lot of things, miss obvious social cues and sees the world somewhat differently.
Reading about them makes me realize that sometimes it is not that easy for some people to be in relationships. Especially when you don’t know yourself enough to make it easier for your partner. The article talks a lot about the challenges they face in their relationship, one of them was about how Kirsten can only stand deep pressured touches and Jack will only tolerate light touches. Things like this can be tough when intimacy is one part of the relationship as well.
We often take it for granted that the person we share our beds with might be the wrong one just because he doesn’t like cereals in the morning or because she doesn’t like your best friend. There are so many out there who have real problems connecting and yet they brace through it.
Many times in a year I hear friends telling me that they are so close to breaking up with the other half because of a long list of excuses and reasons. When I ask the question “have you talked to him/her about it?”, I often get the shrug and the response “there is nothing to talk about”. This is really sad. Often their reasoning of breaking up is just to get out of the relationship with a person who has all the flaws in the world, but in reality, sometimes they have a valid reason such as the introduction of someone new in their lives.
I am often angered when I hear situations as such. It would be more respectful if you exit a relationship with a clean slate. If you have met someone else and want to work it with the third party, come clean. If you can’t put a finger where it is all wrong, be honest about it.
I for one have walked out of relationships without knowing why, but I do know that I walked out of it telling my other half that I honestly do not know why. It is a pity when one plays the other party and everyone gets hurt at the very end.
We should all take a leaf out of Jack and Kirsten’s book when it comes to being persistent at making something work. Even if it doesn’t succeed, at least you can proudly tell yourself that you have tried your very best, and that’s what that counts.
The year 2011 is coming to an end. I usually feel all sentimental and emotional when it is the end of the year. I have no idea why because the next year is just another year and everything remains the same, runs on the same timing belt and even feels the same.
Top 10 happy stuff that happened this year worth mentioning:
1) I made friends in the office.
2) I took on more responsibilities, and I am happy that I did.
3) I started running. I can now do 3km without stopping – although that is still a far cry from my intended 10km.
4) I drove to KK from Miri. It is a good experience but safe to say, I won’t be making that road trip again. The next time I intend to go to Sabah, I shall fly.
5) Coring got married and is having a dragon baby!
6) Allie grew and is now a beautiful and quite well behaved mongrel!
7) My doctor friends started working. =)
8) Gan proposed to his girlfriend and is now getting married next year!
9) I bought a house (albeit it is my parents’ house).
10) We saw a small little house in Miri we both liked.
Aside from that, the trip to KK. That is worth a post, but I’ll blog it together with this post.
We started from Miri at about 1pm and headed to Brunei, hoping to reach Limbang by nightfall. That we successfully did. We reached Limbang, which is in Sarawakian territory at about 6pm, checked into the Purnama Hotel (the only not too bad hotel in Limbang), headed out for dinner and slept the night away.
The next morning, we were at the Pandaruan ferry at 7.50am and waited for 2 and a half hours to cross a river which is less than 30 metres wide. The ferry services that link to Temburong, which is in Brunei territory, from 6am to 10pm (I assume it stops at 10 because the border checkpoint closes at 10pm). For years politicians have ranted about the difficulty of a non existant bridge but not one have actually sealed the deal of putting a bridge in place. News reports say that a bridge will be up and about by 2013 but when we were crossing, there was no sign of anyone putting any construction material or equipment to good use. In fact, there were none lying around.
After Temburong, the journey was actually quite smooth. We passed various towns which were really interesting. Dad and mom were so excited seeing all the small little towns on the way. We passed Lawas (Lawas airport was so small that I actually drove past it without noticing), Sipitang, Sindumin, Beaufort, Menumbok, Papar and Putatan. There were so many Catholic churches and chapels on the way that we were reeducated with the various saints I didn’t know the Vatican had beatified like a St. Monica.
We finally reached KK at about 4pm and went straight to our hotel, Likas Square Condotel. I was pissed to no end when the front desk told us that we could not check into the room because it was not ready. Hotels have a check out time of 12pm and a check in time of 2pm to cater for housekeeping. We came at 4pm which means housekeeping had 4 hours to do whatever necessary to make the room ready. We were told they needed an extra two and a half hours after pressing for a time to come back to the hotel if we had to go out.
So in the end, we were forced to go out to find someplace to have coffee and relax. We finally got a call from the hotel at past 6pm telling us the condo was ready. The place was alright actually. The condo had three rooms, a double bed, four single beds, a sofa and a TV, a dining table and a stove. The problem with the place is that housekeeping is never doing their job. We had to call for everything the next day, change of towels, extra coffee sachets, extra sugar, teaspoons and extra shampoo.
The worse thing about the hotel was that they were not service oriented at all. We checked out at 7 in the morning and headed to Gaya street. Mom realized she left her cardigan in the condo at about 9.20am. I called the hotel and asked the housekeeping to call me back to tell me if they found any. The call never came. We decided to drive back to the hotel. Mom went up to the front desk, explained everything and they called housekeeping. Housekeeping called back 5 minutes later and told the front desk they didn’t find anything in the condo. Mom insisted they let her up to the room because she was dead certain that she left her cardigan there.
The front desk reluctantly let her up and when they opened the door, lo and behold, the cardigan was there. Did housekeeping even bothered going to the room to check when they were asked? The horror of it all was that at close to 10am, the room was not even cleaned when we had already checked out at 7am. No wonder when we checked in we had to wait until past 6 to check into the room. That is one place I am never going to go back to.
Anyways, the drive back from KK was much smoother. We started at about 10.30am from KK, reached the small little tiny river to take the ferry across at about 1pm, drove to Bandar and hung out there for an hour and we were back in Miri for ikan bakar and lalapan by 7pm.
Mom and Dad and Baby really travelled a lot in the car this holiday. Pity I didn’t have a bigger car to ferry them around so they were stuck in the back seats for hours and hours at a go. =) But they were such good sports, never complaining about the bumpy ride and the small space. Hugs!
Happy Birthday, Goay!
Ever since your passing, birthdays have become less and less of a day to remember, but yours stuck with me. Maybe it’s because of that time in Singapore when I wanted to tell the MC at the basketball game that it was your birthday and you stopped me in my tracks with the deadliest stare you could muster. I knew better than to face your wrath then. =)
Exactly a year ago, the rest in KL surprised you with a cake in your house. We talked about how it might be your last birthday, trying to accept the situation bit by bit. It made no difference though, it still hurt massively to see you in pain, it hurt when you went and it still hurts now.
I supposed subsequent birthdays became unbearably hard when I heard of your predicament on the night of Anne’s birthday dinner. You could say it scarred me, but I could not look at birthdays the same way again. There were just more important things besides celebrating birthdays at that point in time. I sat down and thought about it, and a wave of enlightenment came over me; we should celebrate life, not just a day every year.
Ever since I turned a non-believer, I have ceased to believe in the existence of a paradise, a better place to be in, but I can’t bear to picture you completely gone. I think I understand the need to believe in an after world. I want you to be comfortable, to be happy where you are and without the belief in an after world, that doesn’t seem possible.
I miss you, Goay. I miss you a lot.
I know this is one of the most hated phrases in the world of employers, but sometimes you have to face it. Not everything thrown at you can be picked up and done without so much a grunt. I love working, I love doing work. What I don’t like is my momentum being broken with someone else’s work and worse still, people think you’re to pick up on it because you’re nice.
Mao had this particular work with this particular person. He asked me to stand in for him in his absence, so I did. Unfortunately, his customer doesn’t know the meaning of standing in and sure as hell doesn’t think the work that she shares is important enough to take time out to sit down, go through it and understand it.
I can be a messenger but when I have to decode what has been already stated in phantom meetings and what is a boss’s wild imagination with no help whatsoever from the customer who is supposed to be in the know for these things, it gets ugly. I don’t have the time or patience for these kinds of ignorance and will forever more have no space in my bones for it.
Sometimes one has just got to tell those bitches that it is NOT MY WORK!
I really have to control my spending.. especially when online shopping is the case in point here. Over the past month, I must have spent more than RM500 on clothes. Today, right after I said I will stop spending online, I bought RM180 bucks of clothes. Comparatively, they are still much cheaper than the ones in Miri, and better looking clothes they are. However, I am not buying in volume, that’s for sure.
But this is remarkably true that when it isn’t hard cash, people don’t have that will to hold on to it. Merchandise looks better that way.
Today was just a big spending spree. Facial, waxing, good food, online shopping. Honestly, I can see why people say they don’t save more just because they earn more.
My sister’s iPad is pretty awesome I must say. Not that hard to type if you are already a fast typist on the normal keyboard. It just takes practice not to hit the screen too hard. But I think most people are two finger typists. So I think the iPad is quite under utilized for a lot of people.
I probably didn’t think very much thoroughly when I volunteered myself to be the relief TC secretary. I honestly thought it would be a good opportunity for me to learn from the best spin doctors in the company, to get a feel of how our so called parent would lecture us and a peek of how to write the best papers that would get endorsed. The real problem with the role is that if at anytime the acting TC secretary or the current TC secretary gets a new role, I would be forced to take her/his place by default until the time a new one comes into the picture.
Now, considering all this, I still went and volunteered for it. A month down the road, I am beginning to think that it was quite a dim idea. Consider this, the current acting secretary has been asked and coerced to apply for the actual secretary job. However, she has stated quite blatantly that she will not apply for it because it is not a promotion, an upgrade of financial remuneration and worse, it is a heavier job for the same amount of money. Understandably of course, I would do no such thing either.
Then things took for an interesting turn. Her highest superior opened her window for her (in the company, your window has to be opened before you can apply for another job in the group) and she began to apply for jobs, every other jobs except the one that they want her for. Her immediate supervisor seems to be quite fond of me and has told me once or twice that she has began applying for jobs outside the current concern.
It really didn’t occur to me until yesterday when she was telling me about the job that was of an expatriation salary and a higher job group level but doing the exact same thing of a TC secretary in the neighbouring country. The sudden realization of that I might have to take over her role came late yesterday and today it ballooned up to a full blown panic attack.
Why you ask? Simple. I have holidays planned. A TC secretary is inhuman. Therefore the position requires you never to fall sick, take a day off or go jet setting on a holiday anytime where there is a TC, which is every week except for weeks of huge celebrations. Now, I am panicking because someone else needs to also be a relief if I am to go off and do what I have booked myself in for next year.
*shudders* *shakes* *faints*
Then it all boils down to hanging around and about. We finally went to Bekenu, after all these while being here in Miri, to have their famous “ikan Tutu” or Tutu fish. Bekenu is about 60 or so kilometer from Miri, it is after Lambir and Borneo Rainforest National Park. The town is really small, the fish market is right below the government clinic and there is a small square of shops with empty kopitiams even at lunch. The restaurant in Bekenu that we went to was called “Sing Chiong Restaurant”.
We had the Tutu fish (in a oysterish-kind of sauce and loads of fried shredded ginger), fantastic lean pork meat with ginger and onions and cangkuk manis with egg. The fish had a texture similar to cod fish. You get that oilyness of the fish but it didn’t break away that easily. That was supplemented with two fresh coconuts, which was really good. The flesh of the coconut came off easy and it wasn’t chilled (I don’t like chilled coconut). The texture of the flesh was smooth and it was sweet.
Our meal for two costed us RM81. Considering we had really good coconut, succulent fish and yummy pork, I’d say that was worth it! =)
I could not get into the site when the big sale was going on. There were tons of people trying to get free tickets or really cheap tickets to everywhere! So finally, after like two days, I finally got in and got Rm10 tickets to KL for the weekend of Gan’s wedding. Unfortunately, those cheap tickets were from Wednesday to Wednesday. So I got another ticket to Bandung for the Thursday to Saturday! Woooohooooooo! All hail cheap tickets!
