hurray for short nails!

who would have thought that such a mundane affair would make me so happy. a combination of a bad memory and procrastination have allowed me to grow my nails to an unsightly length. of course it never got this nasty, but it was just unkempt enough for it to irk me and make me wonder if anyone who glanced at my hands would go "gross, he should cut his nails"

i just realized that i feel a sense of achievement for completing the simple task of taking the nail clipper out of my bathroom cabinet and trimming my nails back to neatness in all of three minutes.

i am a sad sad man, but my nails are cut.

yay!

more write much good

i complain about everyone else not updating their blog, but i am no better. nevermind, two more days to my day off, and god knows i need the rest, even if its not god's intended day of rest.

hopefully, i'll be able to detail more of my blase existence then.

the frustrated hunter

you know it's there.

i mean, it was there not too long ago right? you saw it, touched it, reminded yourself that you would be needing it soon, and to remember where it was when that time came.

so you search...and search...and you still can't find it.

oh don't get me wrong, it's fantastic to find the watch you were looking for a month ago and finally given up for lost. seems like murphy's law is in effect again, for you are suddenly finding every other damn thing you lost in the past six months. everything, that is, except the one thing that you want to find NOW.

you know it's there. you just have to bide your time and know that you will find it after the urge to find it has subsided. maybe it'll take one day, maybe one year, but it will show up... eventually.

sigh. at least you now have the watch again... for now.

too blank, too long?

as abi was so kind to point out, my blog was completely blank today. maybe i've not been writing enough, maybe i still haven't completely gotten the hang of movable type, or maybe i just suck at this whole computer thing.

regardless, here's the pity entry of the week, if only to ensure that i have SOMETHING other than a blank slate.

i am officially unemployed today.

my contract with ST was terminated yesterday, but thank god i sign the new contract tomorrow for conversion to a fulltime postion with all the benefits instead of the crap initial 6-month contract. not too bad considering i've only been there for a little over a month. hello dental and medical benefits, hello paid sick days, and hello 21 days of annual leave. but before that, a sad goodbye to my unlimited transport claims. I sure will miss taking all those cabs.

in other news, american fast food chain hardee's seems to have given flicks like supersize me a big FUCK YOU by introducing their latest in artery-clogging burgers. it looks evil, but hell i'll try anything once.

thieving bastards

it's taken me three days to get down to writing about my latest fiasco, partly because i needed the time to simmer down, but mainly because i've been lazy and unmotivated, preferring to enjoy my three off days slacking with the woman, friends and family.

but back to the story.

thursday wasn't the best of days, working the late shift, i got drenched in the rain on my first assignment, but showers of blessing they were, i was later to find out that my second job was cancelled. so i head home, to don a new set of clothes, and head off to my 8pm assignment in an upper serangoon hdb estate. some small fluff story on parchment craft. after almost an hour there with the reporter, i managed to get the pictures i needed, and both she and i got ready to leave. i open the door, and lo and behold, my shoes are missing.

for those of you who aren't familiar with singapore, here are a couple of basic facts; for one, most people here live in housing development board (hdb) flats. in short, many families stacked on top of one another in government subsidized housing. no they aren't the projects of chicago, but like any large scale housing projects, it has its good and bad areas. secondly, it is in line with asian culture to take your shoes off when entering someone's home, both as a form of respect, as well as for hygiene purposes.

knowing that my job would require me to frequently visit the homes of many a newsmaker, as well as walk a lot, it was only logical to buy a sturdy pair of shoes that would come off and on easily.

i bought this pair about a month ago, and had finally broken it in. the leather was soft and supple, the soles had moulded to the contours of my feet, and the overall look of the shoes had progressed to that slightly scuffed, used look also known as 'seasoned'.

then those bastards stole my shoes.

that's right. i left my shoes outside the apartment, and when i came out 40 minutes later, they were gone. how low does one get? to steal other people's shoes?

i rant and rave, only to find out that in the heartlands, one doesn't just LEAVE their shoes outside someone's flat. i gather its something you automatically learn from growing up in a hdb estate. i on the other hand, never had much of an opportunity to go through the school of hard knocks, and i guess my ideals about the inherent goodness in all people were misplaced.

had to blow another $160 getting the same pair of shoes, which bruises my wallet, but that doesn't quite hurt so much as the thought of breaking in a new pair of shoes all over again. oh my poor feet. as for leaving my shoes outside someone's house unattended? well NEVER AGAIN!

and to the shoe thief (thieves?), may you get blisters that never heal on your feet for all eternity you low down scum of the earth.

bah.

saying it succinctly

dave quipped, "so as bad as this is, no one can feel worse than john kerry. today he has to realize that he is less popular than george w. bush."

but i think my friend tim said it best when he commented, "we could nominate satan as a republican and we would elect him"

he was talking about the state of indiana, but somehow, it seems to sum up the situation pretty nicely.

how is this possible?

After every dumb thing that he's done, after every soldier he's had an indirect hand in killing, after all the money he's spent , after all the jobs he's lost...

how is bush STILL looking like he's about to get reelected to a second term in office?

it's 6:21pm in singapore, 5:21am EST, and while there are still 4% of precincts yet to report, bush has 254 projected votes versus kerry's 252. only problem is, ohio, iowa and new mexico all look like they are going to go to the wrong candidate.

i guess i am lucky in a way, while almost 54 million kerry supporters are going to wake up to the terrible news, i get to sleep it off.

yet the nightmares of another four years with dubya might keep me from getting any shut eye at all.

there is still hope, but not a whole lot of it.

dare i mock?

before i start, let me acknowledge that singapore isn't without its lack of language problems. "lah", "leh", "lor" and "meh" are only a handful of punctuations that we use in this colorful homegrown language called singlish. it comes so natually to locals, that i sometimes forget that it really isn't the english my foreign friends are used to. at least we have the coxford singlish dictionary to shed light on the meaning of those everyday words.

maybe i'd like to think that my command of the english language is above average for this part of the world (and in saying that, i am sure i will make a bunch of grammatical and spelling mistakes in this entry), maybe noticing the mistakes that others make makes me feel better about myself (inferiority complex remember?), or maybe i am just mean.

regardless, i have a penchant for making fun of people (as if you didn't already know), and being the condescending bastard that i am, stuff like engrish.com just cracks me up.

engrish is defined as "the humorous english mistakes that appear in japanese advertising and product design" according to the website, which goes on to explain how japanese use english more as a design element instead of an attempt to communicate.

i am sure that i had a good reason for starting this entry. i believe it was something along the lines of how we should embrace the different versions of english that we hear around the world and how that lends itself to establishing a national identity etc. but i've lost my train of thought, and will just have to say that if seeing t-shirts with slogans like separately: since ever quest number prime leave around thing mathematics, signs that point you to where flesh meat is sold, and snacks called homo sausage make you laugh, then you too have embraced the wonderful world of engrish!