Friday night party

I miss home terribly, but where is home? If home is where you can always turn yourself to, then it is in Guangzhou. If home is where your friends are, then it is in Melbourne. I miss both places. The next time I go back to Guangzhou, I will see a lot of curious little nephews and nieces running around and calling me “aunty”. When I go back to Melbourne, my cousins will be as tall as me and are ready to go out clubbing as mad as me. Wow~~~ I always dream about these days to come. Throwing myself alone in a new country is not easy.

I went to Stu’s Birthday party on Friday night. I have known him for two plus years, way back to Melbourne Uni days. He took the P&G offer to work in the Singapore headquarter for more than a year now. It is such a coincident that we live so close to each other and happens to work in the same sector – Healthcare. Anyway, that was an Aussie party, which means a lot of booze, with majority of people attended have Melbourne backgrounds. After several crappy Singapore nights out, I really enjoyed this Aussie way of pastime, just lazing around and talk to people you don't know. Singapore is named as a small village, which is so true. I thought I would not know anyone in Singapore, yet I met two in the party. One is studying the same course as me. I recognized him because his face looks very familiar to me. In our conversations, I found out he started in the same year as me and used to live in IH (Hey Nicole, if you are reading my blog, can you remember a Singaporean guy you know from IH?). The other one is a Melbourne born-and-bred Malaysian girl who works in the same building as mine! She is on the advertising side of WPP group. Hooray, my friend’s circle is expanding.

The sale is on!

To kick start the great Singapore summer sale, the famous department store Robinson placed a full page ad on two Singapore mainstream newspapers with a 15 sec TV commercial on Thursday. Guess, Polo Jeans, and many more branded shops followed on Friday. By Saturday, I was closed to be broke with two figures left in my bank account! For God’s sake, pay day is next week and the battle will carry on.

The Singapore National Library is a big disappointment. It has an impressive architect design, however, books that are sitting on the capacious second floor and above are for viewing only, while those for the publics are squashing and sharing half of its space with a car park. The worst thing is, there are only ten library tables; people are either sitting on the floor or slumping onto sludge sofas. I have got a back pain after reading inside for three hours. What a beautiful yet hollow creation in Singapore!

Jurong Hill

After a few years on the dance floor, I finally make up my mind to take up ballroom dance. Only when I learn the grace of ballroom dance, I could interpret the realm of dance.

My dance friends drove us for dinner on Jurong Hill, where an overview of Jurong Island is captured under our eye-lids. Jurong Island is a restricted area, where oil refineries located. The owl-light glossed over the island as a curtain, covering up this busy industrial area from outside intruders. We were watching dark comes to bring out lights from tankers, cranes, industrial factories and the city.

难得清闲

Since a long time, I could not work out of the office before 7pm regardless how early I come in everyday. This week is a quite week for the team. Several of the lead consultants are sick, and clients’ workloads die down a bit in this post-event period. PR and advertising work has its ebb and flow; an ebb time forecasts another surge ahead. I am trying to equip myself with more PR knowledge for another busy time so I will not caught unprepared and did a lousy job like this time.

This industry is not easy for me. I have to treat myself like a high-graded telemarketer earning no commission, create my own product (story angle, interviewee), sellto customers (journalist) and with no respect. Yet the skills and ways of getting things done in a short pace of time is valuable and transferable. I could take away the learnings and move on to other industries.

Blow, blow, blow the clothes

Our company’s offsite is an absolute boot camp! We were starved in the first day, testing our physical endurance on the second and running around the Johor island like in an army training on the last day. We were given the “opportunity” to feed ostriches by dipping our bare hands in mixing forge, running around the ostrich farm to count the 222 ostriches in order to move onto the next check point, hand making coconut milk, cutting rubber from trees, picking coconuts from tree tops and eating with our hands in a seldom seen traditional Malay “Compomt” house. The aftermath of three days physical activities is half of the staffs are sick and piles of work on the desk.

Work is piling up on my desk as well as in my outlook inbox day after day. On average, I receive about 60 emails a day and one third of them are RSVP. I come in at about 7.30am and can not leave the office till 9pm for most days. Firstly because there are a long list of things to do and it keeps adding on more and more and more till I have to start another new paper. Secondly, my language skill still needs to be polished, that slows me down significantly. Singapore is a very tough place to live. In a big and premium firm like us, clients demands for the best outcomes and our boss expects a lot from us on the other end. Some seniors are very supportive and willing to give advice to help me improve and step up, while others are showing cold face and would scold you whenever you make mistakes. You just have to face it, swallow the bitterness and continue to smile and work.

Yesterday was the worst day in my life. I made a huge mistake in compiling a media list that I have left out the whole TV section. Bear depressive stress and bursting tears I was scolded by all of my seniors as I caused them to work on a public holiday. “Sorry” is not enough in the Asian work culture. They trust you only if you can prove that you can bring money in. That is the reality, that is the real true face of a competitive world.

To put salt on my wounds, I languidly did my laundry last night after the offsite. As Singapore rains in most afternoons, so I thought I could put it out at night so I can take it back in the next morning. I put two sticks out and fell down to sleep soon after. At around 4am, I was awoke by water splashed on my face, a blustering thunderstorm was sweeping across Singapore. Winds was blowing from all corners. By the time I rushed to take my clothes back in, they were GONE. After an extensive search of the surrounding area, I could only found one stick with three clothes lying next to a rubbish bin! The rest of my clothes, including my under wears are missing and have no hope to be retrieved.

My total lost are: two Esprit tops, one skirt, one short pans, one Alter pans (my 18th birthday present and one of my favorite), one cotton on gym top, one company offsite t-shirt, three bras and four panties!