Bus Miss

Yday morning, I came to the bus stop in front of my building, only to see that my bus had already left. So I did what I normally do in these situations when I m late – turn around and dash to the bus stop at the back. There are three bus stops and a bus interchange around my area, so if you are fast enough, you cans till catch the bus at the next stop. As I was reaching a bus was pulling out. I was sure that I had missed it, cos tts wat normally happens. I stood there heaving non stop and cursing myself for not having put in enough effort in building my running speed and stamina. Then few minutes later, my bus comes! I just jumped. Not bad..after all this effort, some good came of it. Hopefully I wont have to miss buses anymore.

Dashback

I was jus reading a friend's blog and suddenly I was reminded of a very funny memory. In 1995, my parents had just purchased a new HDB apartment in Singapore. After living in shared rented apartments for few years, we finally were gonna have our own house. My dad had selected this place, it was totally empty and unrenovated.Pretty much in the same state as how it was whn it was first built cos no one had actually lived in that house. It was owned by a person who was not of good mental health who had not even bothered to ever unlock the house. My dad liked the place because of that, he felt that would give us the chance to renovate it as we wanted. Plus with out shoe string budget, most of the renovated houses were out of our league.

Anyways, we had already kinda moved into one bedroom room while the renovation of the kitchen and other rooms was still going on, as we had to vacate our previous house. We had to cook and sleep in the same room. The renovation lasted for about a week. One day while my mom was cooking, my brother suddenly asked "Amma, is dad the Raja (King) of this house?"

My mom laughed, surprised at such a wierd question, "Yes beta, he is..."

My brother continued "He must be a very poor Raja, the whole royal family is living in one room and the Rani (Queen) is doing the cooking."

I am still not sure why my brother ever said that, I dont think he knew wat he was saying. I remember we all laughed like crazy that day, we kept repeating his sentence. I think that day we were not just laughing at my brother's innocence and but also at our fate, where it had brought us. But over the years, the joke remained, rather the 'royal family' remained. Even now my mom n I sometimes joke about the 'poor Raja' and 'royal family living in one room'. How we struggled thru our initial years in Singapore, How we managed to laugh thru most of those times, I guess no one knows that better than us. While some memories are better locked inside the closet to be forgotten, there are some others that should always be remembered. While we have forgotten most of the hardships we went thru, I think we will never forget laughing our guts out that day.

yet another monday morning has come along...after a very eventful weekend

Saturday morning started early for me, with me dragging myself to Pasir ris park for an office cycling event. Ofcourse I had gotten up so ridiculously early that I reached an hour before I needed to.So I sat on one of the benches and read my novel. It was a lovely feeling, sitting there, so different from my usual morning reading places. This place was actually so green and sunny, I felt a strange sense of peace inside. Anyways, that was all the peace I got. Slowly all my colleagues arrived, and we set off on the cycles we had hired. Ofcourse luck wasnt with me, geez what was I thinking! From the moment we started my cycle was making noises and the gear kept coming loose. After about half hour, I decided to take it back and get it 'fixed'. The cycle shop guy looked my cycle and convinced me that nothing was wrong w the cycle. I din want to waste my two hours arguing with him, so I jus left. Less than 10 mins later, the chain came off. This is a small matter, I could handle this. So I did and then rode to the nearest washroom to get the grease stains off my hand. Guess wat! 5 mins later, the chain comes off again!! Never mind, nothing to worry, I can just do it again. and again and again...I wasted more than 45 mins jus gettin on and off my cycle and fixing the damn cycle chain.Of course byt hen the grease stains refused to go no matter how much soap I put. I gave up totally, since I had lost my colleagues and I doubted if I could catch up on my 'katara' cycle. I jus parked at the meeting spot and waited.

After rushing back from the cycling, I had to run to dance class. I was so tired that I cudnt dance for long, so after an hour I stopped trying.No one was really in the mood that day, so we all ended up chit chattin...as usual.

Then it was rush home to change and go for dinner with some close friends at Rang Mahal. It took me such a long time to decide what to wear, that I was actually late. Normally I am ready in 10 mins, its just that I had no energry to get off the sofa and go figure out what to wear. Anyways, the dinner was as could be expected in a fancy restaurant, the company was great, as could be expected of close friends.

Kabul Express was probably the highlight of my rather tiring saturday. I really enjoyed the movie, although I am not sure where it can be ranked. It had some comedy and some serious moments, good time pass movie. Different from a lot of mainstream movies, thankfully with no 'romantic twist' in the story where the American girl falls madly in love with John Abrahim or he falls in love with some Afghan girl, decides to open a dabba and settle there. Of course the oversimplification of certain things annoyed me, but in view of the nature of the movie, I let them pass.

I had planned to be a good girl and clean up my room on sunday, but fate had different plans. I was woken up early morning by my mom to go for some bowling competition my dad had signed up for, excpet he wasnt around. So I had to replace the person who was replacing my dad, cos he cudnt make it in the last minute. I am not much of a bowler... I have hardly gone bowling much, and moreover I suck at all these games. But what the hell, I went anyways. It was fun, mainly cos I knew no one other than my brother and another family friend, so I din care how badly I did, which was not as bad as I expected. Occasionally I did manage to roll the ball such that it din end up in the trench. I din win the competition but I won the lucky draw prize..the first prize of a DVD player. I have never won anything in lucky draws before, so I was excited, even though I had no use for a DVD player, I would have prefered the stereo system that was the second prize.
Sigh..

It was raining the whole day so was glad to be stuck indoors for most part of it. Went to meet a friend in the evening. Catching up on stories and stuff after long time. It was fun and I felt good.

Well that kinda wrapped my weekend...

My new discovery

Every since exams have ended, I have tried to change my lifestyle...well slightly only. Gettin up later, reaching office on time and not before time, catching up on a lot of blog reading and news reading. Eating more fruits and drinking more water than before, gave up the coffee habit (except for the rare cup). Making a point to have some exercise included in my day (even if its jus a short walk). But one thing I actually look forward to is my cup of peppermint green tea. Its so refreshing, it makes me feel so revived after drinking it! I wasnt a big fan of green tea till recently. I tried all sorts of flavours, including lemon green tea. But the bitterness at the end always caught me. Now I love the after taste with the peppermint lingering in my mouth
...hmmm...

hmmm

Here I sit, staring at the wall blankly.I know its raining outside, yet I cant watch the rain like before. I am surrounded by grey walls and piles of paper. My desk din look like this before. My desk used to be long and neat. All paper tucked away in files and all my files in my drawers. Now I have no files or drawers, only papers and books all around me.I look around and survey the mess, not sure what to make of it. 'Din I just clean up yday?' I wonder to myself, ' How did I manage this in a day??' I used to sit in a huge office, looking out glass windows with so much space around me, so many people around me. Now I sit in a tiny, dingy lab, with people who dont speak the same lanaguages as me, and nor make the effort to.

...and it all came tumbling down...

a bad day I can handle, a bad 2-days I cans till make it..but a bad week? now that is way beyond my capacity. How is it even possible that out of the last 5 days, not a single one went well? I guess to a large part my last ppr was to be blamed. It went so horribly bad, so much worse than I could have ever imagined. Only once before in my life had I written such a bad paper...and I flunked that paper.That nagging feeling telling me you should ve found more time to study ( even thought it wasnt my fault I had meetings the whole of monday, day before my paper, not allowing me to do any revision), you should have paid more attention (I had not mugged my slides and gone for the paper, and the questions merely required u to vomit the lecture slides..arrgghh so irritating). This is not how I wanted to do my last exam, of course now I have doubts if it will really BE my last exam.
and this jus tumbled down and like a snowball, my fear, disappointment, anger, irritation all increased massively over the last few days. I have been moody, cranky and very short tempered with everyone around me.
hopefully a new week will bring a fresh new outlook...