You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2008.
Money Can’t Buy Happiness
And it’s a good thing, because you won’t have any.
- Fortune, June 23, 2008.
I think I should have that etched on my wallet. I’m sure it’ll get me through some tough times in London. Ha!
Note: Yes, I read Fortune and Forbes during my lunch hour. How sad. They’re the only magazines on the office’s magazine rack. How self-educational and sophisticated! Better than reading Hello! and OK! right? Certainly pushes me several notches up the corporate caste system!
Note to Note: That was positive thinking in practice.
I am stressed.
I am officially stressed.
Do not downplay the amount of stress I am under right now.
It is not funny, nor can you explain me out of it, nor can you logic me out of it, or otherwise talk me out of it through any other way.
The money I will be spending is mine.
The job I will be giving up is mine.
The friends, family, photo albums, mementos, and cat that I am leaving behind are MINE.
The turtle I will be giving up to a friend, that I know my family will throw into the sea once I’m gone, is mine.
Just because I know that I won’t die doesn’t mean that I’m not worried about living a no-life because I wouldn’t have money to play some hockey or buy some popcorn and watch a movie.
The lifestyle that I will be giving up is mine.
The person opening bank accounts; buying plane tickets; running around the British Consulate; explaining to my boss that I’m leaving; going to job interviews and all that will be me.
The person with an uncertain future is ME.
Just because I will find a job, even if it is any odd job, doesn’t take away all the other reasons that I am stressed.
So stop saying it’ll be alright.
Because I know everything will end up alright. But I am still stressed. So shoot me.
I have every right to be.
Stop pettifying my worries.
Funny things happen when you work over the internet with multitutes of people spread over many different countries.
Funnier things happen when you finally get to meet these people after having worked with them for over a year.
Showing perhaps the nature of human sociology; or the close-proximal-social lives of our ancestors; we tend to imagine for ourselves who the people behind emails are.
I have been told many a times that I turn out to be totally different to who people imagine me to be based on my emails.
Since no one has been willing to explain to me what my email version is like, I imagine that it’s not good.
I do not blame them. Being a person that makes sure rules are followed, a person that sometimes also sets the rules, I am the scrouge of Marketing; nit-picking and sweating all the small stuff; stuff that no one else bothers to sweat about that I am paid to sweat about.
As a matter of fact, I realize my work emails have recently been along the lines of, “No. You can’t do that.” or, “Do that. Or else.”
So, I’m not surprised if entire country teams think of me as some old widow with graying hair, tinky glasses, crooked nose and a high-pitched voice making sure everyone has their shirts tucked in for my pure enjoyment.
Yesterday, this person said to me, “Wow. You look very different from what I imagine…”
“Yeah? What did you imagine me as?”
“Hahaha…you look much better than I imagine! Hahaha…”
And then she walked away.
I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment to my in-person self, or as an insult on my email-self.
On a different note, this dude introduced himself to me:
“Hi! I’m Chan.”
“Hi, Chan….”
“Oh, you know, the Chan who sends you all those emails?”
“OMG. I’ve corresponded with you for over a year and I’ve always thought you were a female!”
No, of course I didn’t say that. But I wanted to run into a toilet stall and bang my head against the wall and laugh hysterically.
Ok. Maybe not.
The thing with Chinese names, and especially those from a dialect you’re not familiar with, is that you can’t really tell whether they’re male or female.
Perhaps this shows that I’m sexist (?), but I’ve also just recently realized that the computer technician I’ve worked with for the past year is a female. (Since when do you find female computer geeks?!)
Since I found one residing in Singapore.
Therefore, I propose that, if you have only a Chinese name (or any other non-sex-obvious name), I suggest you identify your sex at the beginning of our correspondence, so that I can imagine you correctly. Thank you.
On Thursday, all of working Hong Kong spent the afternoon sending each other text messages, emails, msn messages and whatever other things there are to send, to update each other on the incoming Typhoon Nuri.
I don’t know how, but it seems like everyone else knows that this is gonna be a DIRECT hit and that we’re gonna get one of the biggest storms ever.
No. Hong Kongers aren’t that interested in storms actually.
Or rather, we are interested in them in terms of, when a really big typhoon comes….we don’t have to go to work!
The whole city shuts down: schools, offices, banks, sporting events, shops, planes, ferries, buses and most other forms of transport.
Everyone stays home and sleeps in. Woohoo!
So, we did get directly hit on Friday and the whole city celebrated by sleeping, going to dim sum, venturing out to the cinema (Yes, they stay open. Apparently, they do great business on typhoon days.) and…watching the Olympics.
This time, we got hit by a Typhoon No. 9, which, apparently, is the biggest typhoon we’ve had since 2003.
You see, summer is typhoon season here, and typhoons in Hong Kong are given various numbers between 1 and 10 to signify their severity.
No. 1 is the least severe. Then it goes to No. 3, No. 8, No. 9 and No. 10 depending on wind speed and other meteorological information I can’t be bothered to understand. (No, I have no idea what happened to all the other numbers.)
When it is Typhoon Signal No. 8 or up, we shut down.
So, being a Hong Konger, I either pray for no typhoon, or a big nasty one. Because if we get just a No. 3, we are made to slog through the wind and rain to work. Which, as you can imagine, is not fun.
Especially when the wind flips your umbrella over when you’re waiting for the bus.
Never mind that windows fly out into the streets and rain glass on the sidewalks, or that huge billboards come apart, or that bricks drop out of the sky, or that bamboo scaffolding becomes bamboo heaps and block traffic, or that trees get uprooted or sign-posts and lamp-posts turn into scrap metal and occasionally the odd crazy surfer die……we all root for the biggest typhoon we can get.
But once you are safely home and you look out the window and see that the normally busy sea is devoid of ships, and you can’t see anyone out and about downstairs, and you’re starting to have difficulty telling sky from sea…..you celebrate and eat ice-cream in your pajamas and watch the storm go by. :)
We originally planned a weekend away, going up north to Shenzhen for some cheap R&R of massages, free buffets, pirated goods and coffin-sized hostel bunks. But since we are girls and were long overdue for some girlie cry-fest drama, alas, the trip didn’t materialize, and Cora and I were left consoling each other with a trip to a “remote” beach we’ve never been to before.
We usually go to Stanley to satisfy our beach cravings, since it’s got a cool market, even cooler (read: expensive) bars and restaurants, plus, we know our way around.
But to satisfy our (or rather, probably just my) taste for adventure, we decided to venture out to Shek O.
Before we went, I did a Google search to see what it looks like. Wiki showed me this:
Ah…looks good right?
So we traveled to Central. Realized the Central to Shek O bus has been scrapped. So we did the MTR.
We emerged at a bus stop, queuing with countless school girls, moms and screaming kids, teenage boys trying to be cool and chattering Filipino workers under the not-so-cool sun. Some dumb woman managed to cut in front of me. (Who’s dumber now?!)
We hopped on the bus, found separate seats coz the bus was so full, and proceeded to endure what felt like a teeth-clattering mobile market on the verge of collapse from the sound.
Cora had to endure inane teenage boy sex-talk-swearing behind her, while I had to put up with high-pitched teenage girlie gossip about farting boys.
The bus weaved in and out of steep narrow bends up and down South HK Island….and for a moment, up on a hill, we got a glimpse at what awaited us at the end of the torturous ride….and it made my mouth go dry.
When the bus finally stopped, flustered and half-deaf, we fell out of the bus to be greeted with something not unlike a train station in India. Masses of people mulling about, waiting for transport, screaming at kids, and old men and women badgering you to buy second-hand bamboo mats and rent umbrellas.
We thought we’d arrived at a different country altogether.
We pushed through the people and stumbled onto the beach, and this is the scene that greeted us.
We dropped our jaws.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a packed beach in my entire life.
You look left….
And you look right….
It’s like the umbrellas just keep on going.
These two photos don’t show it very well, coz it looks like there is still ample amount of sand just in front of me. But really, you wouldn’t set your towel down there. There’s somehow a collectively acknowledged but unspoken rule that that stretch of sand is to be left devoid of ray-sucking humans and is to remain as a thruway.
Unable to find space, Cora and I eventually trodded to the front of the umbrella-mass, and decided to set up camp at just the high tide mark, where the soft dry sand starts disappearing, where the sand is still matted and damp, basically where few others want to be.
It sort of felt like walking to the very front of an open-air concert in a park and decide to sit at the very very front, in front of everyone else’s who’s been comfortably set, blocking their views.
The beach was a cacophony of noise and people. It seemed like, ever since hopping onto the MTR and riding the bus, there’s been this non-stop buzzing noise in the background.
It was actually quite a stressful beach experience. You can’t really swim in the waters without bumping into someone.
The only time we felt relaxed was when we laid down on our backs and people-watched….
….played around with the camera (and no, I didn’t take this picture)…..read bits of a book….
….and basically tried to adjust our field of vision to any space that does not contain people.
The showers and toilets facilities were horrid, and the bus ride home just as noisy. We both concluded that it was probably our worse beach experience ever and we’ve come away traumatized.
Ironically, it could also be our last beach-escape together for a long time to come, if her plan to go to the US comes through, and my runaway trip to London succeeds.
But strangely enough, despite of everything we say about the beach that day, we are actually missing it. Missing the few moments we forgot that there were people around. Missing the few moments when we were engrossed in the bright blue sky, forgetting work, our jobs, responsibilities, and whatever plans we have for the future.
It’s true. Sometimes, all you really need is a good friend, a bit of sun, and some clear blue skies.
Recent Comments