"Because the dawn right before the sun rises is the darkest / Even in the far future, never forget the you of right now."
Hosted a bunch of friends over yesterday for my annual Raya gathering! It’s always unusual to see my different spheres of friends interacting with one another but also heartening to see them get along well too~ As always, we had a good time catching up over some great food (thanks Mother) and reminiscing over times past.
May the summers of our 20s shine bright and shine long 🙂
Second consecutive post about work, oops. But I have to let the anxiety out on some platform lol.
This is because….I’ve finally been scheduled for a written test and an interview for an officer scheme I’ve been wanting for some time. All my colleagues say it’s doable and I shouldn’t stress about it but I can’t help it. Anxiety runs through my blood hahahaha. I know that in hindsight, I’ll see myself as being silly and getting worked up over nothing but I’m not living in the future. I’m living in right now and right now, I haven’t gone through the test. I don’t know the level of difficulty, I don’t know if the interview panel will be nice to me, and I don’t know if I will not fumble and screw it up.
I guess all I can do now is prepare. The written test is in less than 24 hours (offsite; and I’ll be given 12 hours to submit it). Wish me luck.
So, I’ve been feeling a bit of work stress over the past couple weeks namely due to 2 reasons: 1) A perennially sleeping member on the team and 2) uncertainty over my leave plans.
On #1:
So, okay my team itself is the smallest team in the department. So if one of us don’t pull their weight you can really feel it. Here comes the biggest problem: a perenially sleeping member on the team. Every time I’m partnered with them (using a gender neutral term here so that I won’t get pinpointed), I feel so exhausted cos I’m actually doing my own work plus babysitting them and making sure that things don’t screw up. It gets exhausting, fast. The icing on the cake is that this person is supposedly ranked higher than me. Shouldn’t their pay go to me then since I’m doing their work?
On #2:
I’ve been hinting to my sup for 2 weeks that I may be taking a short leave during the upcoming holiday weekend in August. So far, it was fine. And then this week, they (gender neutral term again) said maybe to put it on hold cos one of the other team members would be away for that period. And I’m like “??? But there’s still 2 other members in office during those two working days plus we have nothing scheduled during the time that I will be away”. But alas, I got shot down. I’m just thinking of hecking it and just going to Penang but idk. They said to give it one more week but prices would only increase , I have to renew my passport, and I hate uncertainty.
Someone enlighten me pls.
Maybe all these work woes are a sign that I should move on hahaha. Another 6 more months, I’ll hang in there.
Now that the hype over last week’s event is over, I feel like it’s finally safe for me to talk about it here. Lately, I’ve been a bit obsessed with getting all my social media on private (cos I finally decided to cut some toxic friendships) but I haven’t figured out how to do it on here so ehhhhh.
Anyway, yes, last week was crazy. We worked 12 hour shifts for 5 days straight and it was completely exhausting. Add on to the fact that it was the last week of Ramadan and we worked straight through the normal 5 day workweek before that (no weekends for us), it was no wonder that a lot of us fell ill during/after it ended.
I played a very minuscule role in the whole thing but it was really interesting to see media from all over the world pouring into our tiny island to cover the historic event. Also, the really cute Korean/Japanese reporters made the long days more worth it hahaha.
I also got interviewed by various media about how we managed to set up everything in such a short amount of time, and gurl I was so shy hahahaha. Hopefully I gave a coherent enough of an answer for them lol.
And now, I’m looking forward to settling back into office with a normal amount of workload. The event was great and all but I need my routine back.
I’m finally doing it! Signed up for classes this morning and now I’m soooo excited to begin. There’s still about two more weeks to go but I honestly can’t wait. They will probably start with teaching us the alphabets but I’ve sort of self-taught myself that (you can do it too under 30 mins lol) but it would be great to finally learn the proper pronunciations. I’m looking at you ‘seo’ and ‘so’.
But yay thank you SkillsFuture lol. One of the rare few times that I feel so pumped after starting adulthood so I’m taking it as a good sign. Also, I practically know nobody in this class but the teacher reviews at this school are pretty good so I’m optimistic that things will turn out well.
Wish me luck!
SHINee just dropped their new MV and it’s such a bop like always but for some reason I feel so sad about it? It’s mainly due to the fact that this is their first comeback after Jonghyun’s passing but even the expressions on their face are pretty melancholy to me. Combined with the muted / pastel colour throughout the entire MV – it just got to me. That last shot of them looking in the well with a shadow that very much looks like Jonghyun’s silhouette makes me a goner.
Congrats on your 10th anniversary, darlings. You all have gone through so much together and the fact that you’re still sticking together makes me so proud but also makes me weep. You’ve all done well.
Hello! I’m finally back on here after roughly 5 long months. I have been writing in the months in between though. This always happens to me I realise – I get so excited about writing online, then I go back to my physical journal, then I just don’t do either and then the cycle repeats itself. By now, I probably have a 1000 digital selves floating around the internet. Oh well, it doesn’t bother me that much.
But yes, now I am really excited to blog / write online again. Especially after buying a new laptop! Cinna has been an amazing partner for close to 7 years – especially during some of the lonely moments in uni – but he has been so slow in doing anything that I have given up.
So say hello to Anpanman (truly the hero I needed at this point in time). Anpan is a sleek Asus laptop (I don’t talk tech so I’m not exactly sure what model he is) but he’s very lightweight (perfect for petite me!) and should be able to play Steam games (oh yessssss). And most importantly, typing on him is like a dream. The only drawback is that he doesn’t have a backlit keyboard. Either that, or I haven’t figured out how to turn on that function yet. But other than that he’s perfect.
I think it’s finally safe to say that I am 75% recovered from my bout of the flu virus. The past week has been horrible – between tolerating high fever, hacking cough, and still carrying on with work when I can – I was more than happy when Friday ended and the weekend began.
I’m pretty happy where I am now too. Things at work are looking up (no more office politics / petty games yay) and things might be looking up elsewhere too hahaha.
I bought a ticket for EXO’s Elyxion concert in March this weekend too! Wallet is crying but heart is wholly happy and eagerly anticipating it. I can finally see Chen live and witness his heavenly vocals.
I’ve also been deliberating on working on my writing more this year and not sure where to start. Should I just set up another blog where I can just write freely whenever the inspiration hits me (not like a journal, but like a creative writing outlet)? Or should I keep it to myself for the moment and just pen it down in a notebook. I’ve been feeling inspired by @_mumblebee on insta and thinking maybe I should start with a short story or a poem (even though I have completely no experience in the latter).
All these what-ifs are annoying. I should just go and do it, right?
Been a while since I last posted! Nothing much has changed – except that now I’ve been tasked to give an extremely high level presentation in a month. Of course, I am internally freaked out. I think I was noticeably freaked out when my director told me about it lol. He kept asking if I was fine afterwards. Definitely not my finest moment.
But, now that I had time to comprehend it, I think I am coming around to it. I wanted to make this year a year where I try new things and well, I’m gonna achieve that with this presentation lol. Doesn’t mean that the anxiety has gone away though. It is still there every time I think about it.
I’m gonna look at it with a positive lens though. Even though public speaking is not my forte, I will take it in stride and still do my best on it. Wish me luck. I will need every ounce of it hurhur.
Hello! I know it’s been a while since I’ve last written (I wrote more frequently in my physical journal though) but I just needed some time to grieve over Jonghyun and make sure I made peace with it before I continued writing here. Strange, right? But I felt like that was the only way I could do him right, in a way.
Anyway, here I am writing my annual Year in Review post. I think I’ve always done it every year but since I have a very fickle mind and love to change websites, it’s all scattered over the internet. And I can’t even remember the names of some of the websites I created. What a pity.
In hindsight, I think 2017 was one of my best years so far. Lucky me since 17 is my favourite number. But I did go into this year planning to make this year work (the second half of 2016 was a mess but looking back those months made me who I am today so…)
Not to delay things further, these are some of the memorable moments of my 2017, in thematic order. It includes ups and downs like any other year but I think as a whole, it definitely was a great year. Great for me personally, but not for the whole world in general sigh.
And I think that’s it! Some pretty strong points up there. I’m really glad for this year and how it turned out to be. If I was a character in a video game, I’d definitely earned some XP points and maybe leveled up too ^^
Here’s to hoping that 2018 will be a good year.
This is where my thoughts lie. 