Yay for Christmas!

I can't believe it's almost Christmas! Another year's gone by and all those cliches about reflecting on the past year and looking forward into the next can't be avoided... Finally, I get to go on a mini-vacation away from the daily grind of work and just relax and forget about all the problems I've been having lately.

Yes, it's true, the last week has been really really shitty. It had nothing to do with Grace being here (or did it??? Haha just kidding Grace!! ) but I dunno why so much shit happened.

It started with falling off my bike last Thursday. Then over the weekend, we went to a spa, and it turned out to be a NUDE spa, and no swimsuits were permitted. It was really awkward at first cuz of all the 'hairy snouts' flopping around and of course there were nude ladies too but after a while I tried to act cool (didnt' really work). We had signed up for a HAMAM treatment, which was a traditional Turkish bath where you get scrubbed all over your body, and were again shocked to realise it was done by men. Not only that, but it's done in an open area with other naked people all over the place! But in the end, we went through with it anyway.

I shook hands with my HAMAM guy, who told me that all I needed to do was 'relax'. I tried my best and told him to avoid my left knee which I had scraped up while falling off my bike, and he did so that was good. But the massaging/kneading of my legs was BRUTAL and after the 20 min treatment I found a big purple bruise on my left calf!!! (ahhhh the agony!!!)

Next up was a pedicure upstairs. The lady was using some kind of device I had never seen being used for pedicures before, it was sort of like a dentist drill but on the end of it was some sort of screwdriver/flat metal chisel that she was running up and down the side of my big toenail. She started w/ my left foot, and it hurt a bit but not THAT much... but when she went to my right big toe, she just kept on digging deeper into my toe along the side of my toenail, so that before I knew it, I was shrieking like a baboon to her to STOP!! STOP!!! but she just kept going!!!!! for at least a few seconds. By the time she stopped, blood started pouring out of my toe, along the edge, and she just calmly took a cotton to my foot and said that it was 'normal'.

NORMAL!?!? I was NOT convinced. In fact, I was mortified!!!!!!!!! and in a LOT OF PAIN!! I now know what it feels like to be a war victim, I think, the ones who get tortured by having their limbs cut off, or their intestines pulled out of them while alive, etc. because I was WATCHING the lady CUT into my toe and I could do nothing about it! and after I was bleeding, I was probably in shock cuz I started shaking in my chair at what she did to me :(

If that wasn't enough, I found another big cut in my finger (from where I have no clue) which bled and bled... then a few days ago I went to a tanning salon and went to the 'turbo sunner' for 10 mins, thinking that my asian skin wouldnt burn like the dutchies even though I was warned by the girl who worked there... and what do you know... 24 hours after the tanning, my ass and back is as red as a lobster and it hurts to move :(

ANNNNND... this morning when I was washing a few dishes, I accidentally dropped a small glass and it broke into literally 50+ pieces, and I found 2 shards of glass jammed into my left pinky finger!!!! (which bled too). WHAT THE HELL!!!!!!!!!!! I hope all these little bad things have come to an end...

Oh.. btw... Merry Christmas everyone! :)

I used to think it was crazy when people would call me more than 1ce or 2ce in a row when trying to reach me. There was this one time a few years ago when a guy I knew called my house and I really didn't feel like talking to him. It went something like this:

*ring ring*
"Oh look it's BOY-X."
[pick up. hang up.]

*ring ring*
"Oh look, him again."
[pick up. hang up.]

*ring ring*
[pick up. hang up.]

*ring ring*
[pick up. hang up.]

Repeat 5x more.

*ring ring*
"Hello?"
"Hi, it's me, BOY-X."
"Oh hey. Did you just call me a few minutes ago?"
"What..? No..."
"Oh, okay."
[roll eyes.]

Anyway, I think I now finally understand the phenomenon of chronic dialing syndrome. It came upon me last night as I was sitting at our company xmas party, 'alone' at my table while those around me hee-hawed loudly in Dutch. I tried to appear amused with myself and my glass of white wine, but really, how amused can a girl look when she's sitting all by herself???? So, in order to alleviate the boredom, I started dialing for people to talk to, and before I knew it, I was pushing the send button repeatedly and listening anxiously to the beeps on the line and hoping that a human voice would be on the other end to say hello...

I can't think of that many moments where I felt more like a loser. In front of me sat the Head of my business unit, chatting somewhat secretly with the mean-looking Dutch lady who sat beside her, the one with the wrinkled face, slitty eyes, fake red lil lips and fried permed white hair. On my left was my boss, filling up the air with her snorty laughter, having a great time, in her snazzy shiny white blazer.

So ya, it was kinda shitty being there but as most expats in NL know, the Dutch aren't known for being very considerate at all, which includes the fact that they will speak in Dutch around you without caring that you don't understand a word. Even if you tell them you only speak English, it doesn't seem to matter. It would make more sense if they didnt speak English, but most of them do but still choose to exclude people. It didn't matter that much to me actually, because I wasn't that interested in talking to these people about work anyway, which is what most of them resorted to.

--

In other news, I had my second official bike accident yesterday. After the work party, I jetted out of there early so I could get back home and chill. But as I approached the ferry terminal that would take me back to Central Station, I stopped the bike, only to teeter and tip to the left, adn before I knew it, I landed on my knee and elbow, trapped under the bike. I lay there for 2 seconds, thinking "not again..." and then picked myself up and acted like nothing happened.

There were at least 4 people standing about 5 feet away from me, but none of them said a word, and just stood in the darkness. I went towards the water so I didn't have to face them, and then I hear, "How is it?" from behind me.

Turns out it's a 'friendly' Surinamese guy, who in our conversation tells me what he does for a living, that he enjoys walking in the night, that he lives in the SouthEast of Amsterdam (translation: ghetto), that he has no girlfriend, that he can teach me Dutch and that he'd like to take me out sometime.

Big WOOP and WHAT a SURPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Man.. Surinamese guys are so damned predictable. Way to pick up a girl when she's down, man!!!

I did my best to fend him off, but as we got to the other side of the water, I decided to take a peek at my knee, which was feeling rather numb. To my surprise, it was deep red and oozing with thick blood!!! Ahhhh, at least last time when I fell off my bike, I had jeans on and I just got a slight scrape in my knee. But THIS time it was just pantyhose and that got scraped off right away.. and by the time I got home, the pantyhose had dried up w/ my blood and gotten stuck to my skin!!

Ohhh the pain!!!!!!!!! :'(

I'm bored too.

TEN YEARS AGO I...wore oversized adidas track suits and baggy wide leg jeans, had braces and were dying to get em off so I could finally feel the skin of an apple burst against my teeth, chew caramel candies and all that kinda good stuff, and had a scary/stalker obsession with a guy whom I thought we were "made for each other".

FIVE YEARS AGO I...was in my 2nd year of Uni, having dimsum, Costco and grocery outings with my Grandma often, playing with my crazy white cat Pinky and wearing a LOTTA fleece. I also watched Days of our Lives religiously :)

ONE YEAR AGO I...lived with Sofie and Nico in a cute 'dollhouse', in Amsterdam working for the same company in a different department, rushing like mad to get a huge yearbook project completed and planning what to do for Christmas.

YESTERDAY I...ripped the bottoms of my feet open (or at least it felt that way) dancing on the oceandiva, did the YMCA, robot, and the fish, and felt the room (and my head) spin while we danced to '(I've had) The time of my life' (Dirty Dancing)

FIVE SNACKS I ENJOY:
Fruit (especially persimmons and mangos)
Kit Kat
Rice pudding
Stroopwafels
Coconut macaroons

FIVE SONGS I KNOW ALL THE WORDS TO:
Ode to a Friend - Jann Arden
Symbolistic White Walls - Matthew Good Band
Separated - Usher
Rendezvous - Craig David
I Wanna Know - Joe

FIVE THINGS I WOULD DO WITH 100 MILLION DOLLARS:
Invest (that goes without saying)
Give the ones I love something they have always wished for
Get my eyes lasered and my mom's too
Buy a loft in Hong Kong (Island)!
Take a year off to travel the world

FIVE BAD HABITS:
Avoid making decisions
Changing my mind too much
Never being completely satisfied
Getting annoyed with kids too easily
Binging on chocolate and waffles

FIVE BIGGEST JOYS:
BODYPUMP!!! :-)
Going to new places and seeing how others live
Making videos and editing them
Drawing cartoons
Chocolate chip cookies ... mmmm

FIVE FAVORITE TOYS:
Three Fishballs
Excreman
Digital Camera
Treadmill
Ipod

FIVE PLACES I WOULD RUN AWAY TO:
Vancouver
Hong Kong
Jamaica
LA/SF
New York

FIVE THINGS I WOULD NEVER WEAR:
A complete LULULEMON/TNA track suit
White jeans
A nose ring
White pantyhose
Leather pants
A wedding ring (hahahahahah..;)

FIVE FAVORITE TV SHOWS:
Dr. Phil
Oprah
Spongebob
Will & Grace
King of Queens

“Prison life consists of routine, and then more routine.”

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Okay, so it might not be fair to compare work to prison, but you have to agree that there IS a lot of routine involved. You struggle to wake up every morning, put on your suit, trudge down the stairs, get on the tram, beep into the building, sit at your desk, attend a few meetings, zone out at the desk, wait a few hours, and then leave work, only to start the cycle again for the rest of the week.

I can’t decide whether having routine at work is a good or bad thing. I think most people would claim that they want a dynamic, challenging job that throws them curveballs on a daily basis. I would also say the same. BUT I can also see the other side, because it could be very comforting to just go to work, do what you gotta do, and then leave without anything hanging over your head.

“Work” for me also used to be much more defined. Sure, I have things to do now, but my tasks aren’t as clear as they used to be. What do I mean? Well… Back in the hey day when I wore grey clown pants, a greasy white/grey striped shirt and floppy green visor for A&W, my job was very clear. I was to:

• Take customers’ orders (Do you wanna biggy-size that?)
• Serve food to customers
• Bag take-out orders
• Clean the dining area
• Clean the toilets
• Take out the trash, etc.

Every task could be written out and checked off once completed, it was so clear. Oh look, the straws are almost out, we need more straws. Oh, oh, the ketchup’s spurting, we need to fill that up. Running low on extra large soda cups. Milkshake machine’s making a bit too much noise, we need more mix for that too. And so it went…The 8-hour shifts flew by as if they were only 2.

I remember when I first started at my so-called corporate job about one year ago and meeting my fellow coworkers. One of them introduced himself as responsible for Sustainable Development for an entire business unit. During our one-on-one meeting, I kept asking him, “So…what exactly do you do?” to which he responded with a slew of phrases that I (not surprisingly) cannot remember even one, and I am still unsure of what exactly he does to contribute to Sustainable Development for that entire business unit. I just didn’t understand what he was doing while on the phone, or in front of his computer for 8 hours in a day.

But eventually, it clicked, and now I realise that what people do at their desks is really a sort of façade. We’re all working in a maze of emails, corresponding with people, dealing with IT problems, googling something now and then (I’m pretty sure it’s not only me), making PowerPoint presentations, planning meetings, etc. Everyone seems to think that what they do is mighty important, when in fact, perhaps what they do doesn’t make an ounce of difference to the all and powerful multinational corporation.

I guess that’s the difference between working on the front line, and working on a ‘higher’ level (headquarters). On the front line, it’s clear what you gotta do. In fact, it can be very noticeable if you don’t do your job, (ie. No more ketchup!!) and when you are sitting behind a desk, doing ‘high-level’ stuff, it can become very ambiguous and vague what exactly you’re supposed to be doing…

Perhaps it’s just me and the other people in headquarters actually have lots of tasks to keep them busy. It could be true. But sometimes, when I am staring blankly at my screen, wondering what else I can possibly google today, I wish I had a mindless job which was simple enough for me to do without thinking, and just let the time fly by (and the money roll in.) ;)