Rich, poor & show off

I’ve just came back from a whole week stay in my home town with some constant trips to the city.

Disappointed I am, but this trip truly reminded me what I am in for if I were to move back to Msia for good. It was the very same reason I left home, the very reason that gave the joy to be out of it.

People really judged us(my husband & I) based on your appearance {judge a book by its cover?}, based on where I lived, what I wore & what I have. Apparently best behaviour isn’t good enough. I needed to know how to flaunt my assets & cash.

I have missed home for so many years. Now I am not sure.

On my job of almost 10years, I have served many.

I have met & served the people of 1st world countries, 3rd world countries & under-developed countries.
Some ‘1st world country’ behaved like 3rd world. Some 3rd world do have e grace of better than 1st world. Under-developed sometimes are the most gracious; without all the pretentions & hypocritic behaviour.

I have also MET & SERVED rich & famous, filthy rich, newly striked it rich, richer (who basically are just relatively richer than the people they know), on the rise(people who are climbing the ladder), middle class, affordables & poor people.

I have seen all sorts of attitudes & behaviours.
Some of them impressed me, some disgusted me.

My benefit: I get to choose who I want to be like, how I want to behave.

There is a chinese saying:
Comparing & competing amongst yourselves have no end.
You’re only digging your own grave.

An uncle once told me:
The greatest competition is yourself.
Not the neighbour or the top student in your class or that guy with the Sports BMW.

Some people live lavish lifestyles. Some want to show off. Some just want to survive.

I just want to live my life.
Happy & comfortable.

Hopefully the world allows me.

Learning Cantonese & Cooking

Asked my husband how to say Pumpkin in Cantonese:
"Nam kua"

And yesterday I kept talking about Winter Melon:
"Tong kua"

He brought up the topic and realized that there is no such thing as "Pat kua".

I looked up to him; my eyes blanked.

He explained:
East South West North : Tong Nam Sai Pat
There is "Tong Kua" (Winter Melon)
"Nam Kua" (Pumpkin)
"Sai Kua" (Watermelon)
but there is no Pat Kua.

Paintball in Jo-burg

Man, I did not know what is Paintball. When my colleague invited us go play paintball, I heard 'Pinball'.
And I questioned, "Pinball could be played psysically??"

Well, an ignorant bimbo like me seriously never heard of or seen Paintball. Moreover, I never really excel in sports, so I've decided long ago that I'm not good & won't get active anymore.

So it turned out to be an outdoor game. I don't mind. I like outdoor. Been couped up in room too much these days.
But I did not know until the day we went for it.

And miss bimbo here wore white as snow skinny jeans with 2-inch high heels. Seriously I didn't bring any other clothes or shoes. I've been to Johannesburg numerous times, but never do outdoor activity. How would I know...

We had our fun. Shooting & posing for fierce pictures. Acting like refugees, prisoner of war & terrorist.
It was funny. Even all the rest of the South African looked at us & grinned. The staff included.

1st round: We had one life. Once shot, you're dead. Raise hand in sign of surrender.
We heck care

2nd round: We had three lives. Shot 3times, you're dead.
The shields were big cushions. 1st all of us got good cover at triangle cushion. But had to move ahead to attack. Moved ahead to cillinder cushion.
Bad choice. Got attacked from left & right. It's too small for cover.
Somebody shot my leg. Big ball of blue ink splashed my white jeans on the left leg.
Damn! They had to shoot my jeans!

Ahh.. What a bother! I chose to go there. Play to the max!

3rd round: Then I realized each 'war field' has a name. This one's Kuwait. THe shields were 'hill' for covers & triangle of tins.
Someone got hit at the neck. We tried to help her though can't see where it hit with all the paint. Our worry was if it hit the limph point.

At few times, girls were hit on the head & paint splashed through the hair & the mask disable us from clear vision.

4th round: The -=+;' River. There is a tent in the middle. And in the tent there is a blue flag. Each team goes to each extreme end of the field. When whistle blow, go for the flag and bring back to base.
Prrrrrrriiiiiiiittttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!
We ran as quickly as we could. Just ran forward. The was a tiny river (or longkang) to cross. My team guy ran straight & grabbed the flag. Within one minute, the game was over. He brought it back to base.
Change side.
Prrrrrriiiiittttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!
Again, our team ran as quick. My other team boy fell. But he fell so gracefully he continue to crawl belly down. He managed to get up quick & ran for the flag. By this time, the opponent guy got it. But we shot him. He dropped it. My guy grabbed it. Ran back to base. We won again.

When the guy fell, they all thought he was ducking for cover to avoid the 'bullets'. hehe...
The power of national service training.

We decided to rest awhile before the next round.
Most of us are gasping because Johannesburg is so high in altitude (I was told that it's about 4000feet above sea level!!). I was already gasping in the 1st round after running just 5steps!
Well.. Obviously my asmathic background does not help.

5th round: The Baghdad.
Unlimited lives. Shoot until bullets finish or surrender. The shields are L-shaped walls.
I was shot at the leg! Again! And this time it was at a very close range. About 5meters. It was excruciating painful. I couldnt' move for awhile. I was holding my calf in pain when a guy ran into my cover. We both point our rifle at each other & found that we are team members. That was a close call. With such close range, if any of us hit, I could not begin to imagine the injury.

I surrendered not long after that. My rifle is empty.

At times we surrendered because our rifles was stucked.

The winner was a girl from my team. Hip hip hurray!!!!!!!

Man.. The last one was a yellow paint. The staff, looked my mighty white jeans, told me to immediately soak my jeans in water. Otherwise the colour might stay. The paint is actually water based.

So I did. Squeeky clean white.

But the yellow paint did not come off. It was not their paintball. It was probably personal paintballs that those locals brought. We kept picking paintballs from ground, hoping to load our rifles more.
This is a bad one.

I rubbed with Dynamo. And soaked in Vanish. Ok. Can do.
Thankfully it's still a good white.

Paintball.. My 1st experience.

Thank you guys, for all the fun!

Cotton wool over the City of Johannesburg

I have just landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. The land of safari.

Unfortunately it is very very cold. We arrived into the morning of 1degree centigrade. It was indeed surprising for me. For I normally encounter JOhannesburg with heat & sun. It's still sunny & bright as usual. But the chill & dry climate really got into my throat. We all look like we smoke cigar whenever we breathed.

My surprise today is:
It was so foggy in the city when we arrived at 0610hrs. Bright & sunny but I was so shocked when I looked outside the window. I thought what I saw was the ocean/sea! But look closely it is actually the fog covering the city. We could only make out from the 4 factory chimneys! (Well, surely nobody can possibly place factory with chimneys in the sead?!)

We thought (or kinda hope for diversion. More $$$. Chance of 2 1/2times wage. hehe) there will be either circulating or diversion. It looks really impossible to land. When pilot announced 'Crew to stations', I thought they're just hoping for the better.
I could feel for the captain-in-training pilot. It would have been a tremendous pressure of test & decision.

So we sat quietly on our seat. Constantly looking outside. It really look like cotton wool covering the city. In my sleepy mind, disgusting thought like moth covers came across my mind.

Nearing landing, I really didn't think that they're serious about landing in that condition. In my opinion, or rather, my vision; the visibility is less than 100m. In fact to really see things clearly, it's actually a visibility of about less than 50m.

Now I really understand what the www.yahoo.com/weather's visibility is for. Not for me land airplane-lah of course,
but for possible drivers too.

We did land.

Not only we landed, it was incredible. Smooth & extremely safe, I wanted to clap. I was kinda disappointed that nobody did. Because European normally do.
Everything went extremely well.
Never have I felt this kind of pride for the pilots that SIA trained.
What looked like the most dangerous turned into the safest ride.

We praised the pilot for the landing. But the humble guy accredited to auto-pilot.
Auto-pilot or manual, the plane needs a man.
We had a great team that did that today.

Thank you for the safe flight.

Out of Sight

HBO kept showing Out of Sight this month.
I consider this movie one of the sexiest movies of my time.

That was George Clooney & Jennifer Lopez at their best. Not that they don't look good now.
They definitely still do.
George Clooney is still on top of the list for Sexiest Man while Jennifer Lopez, who finally decided to keep her profile extremely low, is still on top for best-dressed celebrity. That goes to say that she looks hell best in whatever she wear.

But boy.. don't they look young in that movie.

Ahh... how time passed.

I think these two celebrities look awfully good now.

I think my prime was at when I was 24. I'm 29 now. I understand that I'm beginning to look quite haggard after all those hard work suffering from late nights, jet lags & physical strain.
All I could do is hide beneath great make-up, nice clothes bought from overseas & branded bags. All to hide my flaws.
Not that I do that deliberately.

People compliment me that I look better now. But I do kinda feel otherwise.
I'm aging & I'm getting tired.
I'm not unhappy, but neither am I truly joyful.
Life has treated me both good & bad.

But whatever it is, I do hope that I look good like how Jennifer Lopez can maintain hers in years to come. Or decades to come.
Without all those cost of $$$$ for botox, facials, skincare, spa... etc.
Hopefully regular products are sufficient.

hehe...

Me Bullied. No way?

I was 'zapped' at work recently.

i still can't get over it. Call me petty. But even if I were at fault, she didn't have the right to tell me off so rudely. Because everybody realized that I wasn't all that wrong either, or the only one at wrong.

She's very pretty but decided that she'd have two boyfriends in different places. Can you believe that? I thought that is so 80s or 90s! Whatever happen to self-dignity.

I did not judge her at first. But her conversation with a colleague was so darn loud (I was sitting about 2feet away) that I thought I was invited to listen to the conversation.

Later, she snapped at me for being nosy.

I did my apology.

But she wanted her own win-win situation. So, again she 'advised' me also that 'there is a better way of correcting new staff'.

Talk about double-standard. Well, she didn't do a better job herself.

I felt very upset with how the whole thing was twisted into her benefit.

She wasn't even in the position to 'advise' me this way in the most intimidating manner.

I complained this to another fellow colleague.

I agreed with her comment thereafter:
She's just a pretty face.
She's not beautiful.

Elite 300 Staff.. My foot!

I went for the training to understand the leased equipment. It's built on 1996 but refurnished on 2006. I don't quite understand why the owning company wanted to sell it.

Some high post man came to talk to us about our new assignment. Yes, I do understand the management point of view. I do understand the predicament that my company went into because of French's stupid & silly company. I also understand that it's only cost effective & it's wise to phase out our equipments as the French equipment was supposed to be received June last year, 2006.

So should I really blame the silly & stupid French company? Some blame the company. Some blame the staff union.

They selected 300 staff to go on this assignment for 10mths. And they selected the staff based on their low MC rate per year (or last year). These low MC that we're talking about is 1 day or less.

What a severe punishment..

Now they tried to make us feel good by saying "We're the Chosen ones". So what? Are we crossing the Red Sea or what?

3 Auckland projects with English & Japanese/Shanghai projects per month. Sound so lucrative? How about my exhaustion? How about the long rest in order to back Malaysia? So what this is a so-called more lucrative offer? I'm already receiving such income anyway.

THey had totally robbed my joy of my work. I could have go anywhere, especially USA & Paris the next 14months. Now the whole thing about staying on the job till next year seems so empty. Not only boring & empty, it's torturing also.

Man.. I'm gonna be hating New Zealand even more. I haven't been having good experience in there.