Me: I told my very Christian colleague that I was disillusioned with religion and he asked, have you ever thought about going to church?
U.ma: Cos your religion is false. His is real! So if you're disillusioned with religion, it's not religion that's the problem... it's YOUR religion. Christ is your saviour!
My favourite thing in the world is to find someone as lazy as I am:
Gerrie: That's a cute umbrella.
Me: No, it's embarrassing, it's got "breast screening" written on it.
Gerrie: That's good! It's a good thing! I've been meaning to go get tested, you know, but I just keep putting it off.
Me: Do we really need to yet? I don't think so right? 'Cos in the advertisement it's only middle-aged women.
Gerrie: You think? But I read magazines, right, and breast cancer really hits everyone, everyone. I mean, Kylie Minogue. Everybody gets it.
Me: True.
Gerrie: Plus it's hereditary right? And my aunts have gotten it, and I'm really really sure that I'll get it too someday.
Me: OK, then get tested!
Gerrie: But if I got it I wouldn't have to do my FYP...
My second favourite thing is karma:
Me: Hey, I remember another guy who said I was ugly! To my face! I bumped into him just now.
Russian: Kill him! Because you are fire! Hot sexy fire!
Me: It's ok, he's really fat now.
Russian: Hee hee.
I have had a fucking awesome week. The business desk is FUCKING AWESOME.
Too lazy to write properly, so a list:
1. Biz desk colleague #1, let's call him William, had a great story about how he bumped into friggin Alex Kapranos when the band was here in February. He not only went up to Alex and asked him (in the worst English possible), "Are you happen to be in a band?", he showed him around and chatted with him for over an hour and then got put on the band's guest list so he got free entry to the concert and the after-party. I was all, "I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight, William, you know that right?" and he was like, "Yasmine I didn't know you were so cool, listening to such great music." I was like, helloooo.
2. Therefore, the first person in the office I've met who shares my music taste. Who actually has a particular music taste. Who knows who Maximo Park is. He was at the Bangkok fest too.
3. I made a new friend - biz desk intern Gerr.ie. I don't know what I'm going to do without her when she leaves in two weeks. It's been five days and we're already in love. This evening she hugged me when I left to go home. This morning she gave me a Christmas card which almost made me cry, it was so damn sweet. She can't swim or cycle either. That revelation was really the thing that sealed our bond on the first day.
4. Biz desk gets a steady flow of free food, especially during Christmas period. This past week I have been eating constantly. Pecan pie, Marks & Spencer's biscuits, chocolates, chocolate-coated apricots, ice cream log cakes from Gelare, cookies. Today four of us had to go to the reception twice because we received so much food. We even got a whole roasted turkey, complete with cranberry sauce, gravy, salad and sauteed vegetables on the side. Also tons of wine.
5. Oh yeah, I've also been learning things. Not much, because everyone was in the holiday spirit, you know. Wrote my first business feature. Very short and simple though. Also, I feel relieved not to have to do the things that the gen desk has been doing this past week -- wading knee-deep in water for flood coverage, fluff pieces on Christmas sales.
6. Today there was an office party. It was great fun. Mountains of really good food. SY, my best friend in the newsroom, and I each won 50-dollar vouchers to Pasta Fresca.
7. So we treated a bunch of our colleagues to dinner just now. My colleagues are so majorly cool. I have so much fun with them, I feel like I'm cheating on the Tuesday Group. I went from being super lonely and depressed at The Economist to having actual friends here. People who confide in me. People who don't talk about their children because -- guess what -- they're all around the same age as me and don't have children either! You can't imagine how happy I am.
The only way this month could get better is if I bump into Alex Kapranos myself.
I know having coffee with dinner will make me nervous all night, so much so that I feel like vomitting from anxiety. I know I will feel very tired but cannot sleep. I know I will feel like talking, at very high speed, to someone who'd rather sleep or watch porn. I know all this, yet I still took coffee with dinner tonight.
As far as I can tell, the only antidote to a caffeine rush at night would be good sex.
I guess I'll go read up on business concepts instead.
The Russian had to review Borat on Thursday. He invited me. He told me the press screening was at Yangtze. I said, are you serious? He said yes. I still thought he was joking. Then I asked the reviewer from my station if she was going to watch it too. She said yes. I asked, it's at Yangtze right? She said, when my girlfriend told me about that I thought she was joking but now that you've said it I guess it must be true.
So we went to Yangtze. It was creepy. After taking a lift to the fourth floor, you see a dinghy corridor and it's not at all clear how you're supposed to get to the cinema. And once you reach the box office, you will look around and think, this is a cinema???!! There were four movies showing at the cinema: three soft- to hardcore porn films and Borat.
Inside the theatre, the floor was sloping. The seats were worn with decades of use and quite uncomfortable. The screen was small. The curtain covering it actually looked like a curtain; it was maroon and scalloped. The last time I was in a theatre like that, I was watching He-Man: Masters of the Universe.
It also smelled bad.
Obviously, the film distributors thought it would be "cool" to make us feel as if we were watching the film in Kazakhstan itself. But it was not "cool". It was more "gross" and "like totally creepy".
Before the film started I was convinced that the whole set-up was a hoax for Channel 5's latest gag show, tentatively titled "Laughter Nation" and at the time the movie was supposed to start, a person would instead come out to the front of the theatre and announce that this wasn't, in fact, the media screening but an elaborate prank, haha!
This did not happen, but there was a man who walked around before the film with a video camera, shooting everyone and trying to make people talk like Borat to the camera, so I am not fully convinced yet that my suspicions will not come true.
I'm a business reporter now.
Last Wednesday my editor pulled me aside and said there was an opening at the business desk, and was I interested? She listed a few advantages of moving to the business desk, the chief one being better prospects for my future. She gave me two days to decide.
In the two days I spoke to several people, including two reporters from the business desk who told me I should join them, my friends from the general desk who practically begged me to stay and the Russian, who said I should do what I wanted.
Eventually I drew up a list of pros and cons. Well, I was going to, but then I realised there was no point -- there were only two cons against many, many pros:
Cons:
Sitting far away from my general desk friends (though still in the same office)
Having to buy a different set of French textbooks for the Saturday classes
Pros:
No more working weekends
Learning new skills
Not having to bug my friends for soundbites anymore
Better career prospects
And many more factors I shouldn't enumerate on a website
When my editor told me about the opening, it felt like a very important moment. For the first time in my life, I felt a very strong feeling of opportunity come knocking. It came looking for me. I didn't have to do anything. I wouldn't have to sit for a test, not even an interview. All I had to do was say yes. And I also had a very strong feeling that saying yes would open many more doors ahead.
A few months back I wrote about how my dreams were dying. When this opportunity opened itself up to me I felt my dreams surging back to life. There were options and possibilities now; I could choose not to be at a dead end anymore.
And so, obviously, I said yes. I had my first day at the business desk today. It's still too early to tell whether all those visceral signs were just chemical misfirings in my brain or if this is really the start to something good. But I did have a fun first day. I am learning new things, and getting intimidated all over again, but also excited. It excites me to know that in a couple of years I'll be an expert on business and financial issues, issues that I've usually been so afraid of.
I don't know if it was just that this opening came by right at the time when I was fully and truly cynical about general news reporting in Singapore, or if it's maturity, or that I've become a full-fledged bourgeois capitalist myself, but for the first time in my life I feel no fear or distaste towards learning about business and finance. It all feels like it's happening at the right time.
And I am very tired, but I just wanted to note this down in case I forget after a good sleep:
Please avoid travelling with parents again as much as possible. I'm not sure what they thought I was looking for in the holiday when I said, "I'm exhausted, I need a break and I want to go to a beach resort so I can sleep. A lot." They kept dragging me away from the beach to sight-see, which was not worth the time away from the beach because there is only shit to see in Langkawi, like dried-up waterfalls, terrible land planning and abandoned buildings everywhere. In all I only got to spend a total of about 6 hours at the beach. I'm so sad.
My parents spent 0 hours at the beach. But on Saturday they forced my brothers to go to the beach with me. My brothers walked around the beach and sat by the sea for about an hour and by the end of the hour they looked like they'd been forced to do something very unpleasant. They didn't swim at all in these three days. Is this natural behaviour? I think their brains are fucked up by TV and Playstation. All they wanted to do was sit in the hotel room and watch cable. My mum even offered to pay for them to go snorkelling and they said no. They wanted to go shopping instead.
Malaysia's service and tourism industry in general isn't so great. We stayed in a four-star hotel and the rooms were way below expectation. Floors made your feet black and our aircon was spoilt so I froze and didn't get any sleep at all on Friday night. Like that time me and Farah got the spoilt aircon room in Pakse.
Ok well that was all the bad stuff but there was good stuff as well. At least I got to spend some time at the beach, which was bliss. I finished reading one book in the three days. I managed to sneak in some swimming when my family left me alone while they went shopping. I got a massage. The seafood was great. And when they were not annoying me, my family was quite good company. Also my parents decided that I wouldn't have to pay for anything while in Langkawi, so I only paid for room and airfare. And well, I got to see Langkawi.
What are the things in life that you're truly passionate about?
Submitted by Jess.
Literature - the only thing that's really endured lack of time and the working life.
Languages - after French, I'm debating between Chinese for the practicality and Spanish for the coolness. It will be another 2 years before I have to decide though.
Travel? I don't travel much but I would do more if I had the money. Who wouldn't?
Fair trade, social justice, etc - used to have a lot more time to talk about these things when I was in school. Now I'm volunteering for the Make Poverty History campaign. It really doesn't feel like enough though.
Music and films? I used to be a lot more passionate about these in school, when I had the time to be. Now it's waned. Hence the need to resolve to watch more films.
Yesterday, Mr Bob took the day off from work. We watched Quinceanera, which was pretty good. Then we went book shopping. He bought for me Moby Dick in English, and two books in French: Anton Chekov's Stories for Laughing and Smiling, which was originally in Russian, and Albert Camus' L'etranger. Getting to read Camus in its original language -- I'm excited to no end.
Then we ate a buffet dinner at Intercontinental Hotel, because he had vouchers so we could eat for free! We had: salad, then soup and bread with dips (hummus, cranberry/beetroot/some red plant, pesto in olive oil and crushed olives in olive oil), then fresh seafood, then pasta (me: fettucine in pesto and garlic, him: fettucine bolognaise), then one thin slice of beef and a small portion of seafood crepe shared (because by this time we were pretty much full), then dessert (me: chocolate croissant pudding, him: apple pie) and tea.
The food was very good, but I didn't think it was worth the original price of $52+++ per head. I'm proud to say that we didn't waste any food! Well ok, I wasted half a cookie which I nibbled at but couldn't finish for fear of vomiting.
It has been a very good break so far. I'm flying off to Langkawi tonight, with my family. I have to share a room with my brothers, which makes me nervous. And I have to spend three whole days with my parents, which I'm starting to fear might not have been a good decision on my part. Wish me luck!
Also thank you to everyone who remembered my birthday and dropped me a note. It really means a lot.
I feel bad. My mother bought a... I don't even know what to call it, a flowy baju kurung-type thing but more casual for me and I couldn't help but show my dislike for it.
The whole suit is a dark grey with two blue and light grey ribbon-like stripes kind of flowing down the side. The top extends to my knees and it's translucent, and could actually work with pants. But it really doesn't look spectacular in any way to me.
She asked me if I liked it and I said it was ok, and she said, ok only? and I said, yeah, it's nothing special and she said, it costs 150 dollars! and I said, what the hell?!
She kept insisting that this type of clothing was currently in fashion, and I kept replying that I didn't want to look like every goddamn minah in a headscarf. No offense to you if you're one of these girls, but it looks like the kind of thing that would be worn by one of those tudung girls who wear make-up and long skirts and whom everyone describes as "sweet". And, like, hello, I wear stripes or sweaters with drawings of animals on them. I only wear short skirts. I don't do flowy. I definitely don't do sweet.
After rejecting it, I felt bad so I ran out after my mother and said ok ok, I'll wear it to work with pants. Then she said, what about the skirt? I said, I'll wear it to weddings and shit and hari raya next year. And she said, so you'll just wear it once or twice and I'm like, how often do you want me to wear it woman?
Then she made me try it on, and I pointed out that once I put on my headscarf the pretty design bit at the chest will be covered anyway and she said, forget it I'll try to find someone to buy it from me.
So yeah, I feel bad. But I also have to wonder what registers in the head of a woman who has lived with me for 24 years and sees me go to work everyday and washes all my clothes and STILL doesn't know what my taste in clothes run to.
I guess it's understandable, she being the same woman who passes by my bedroom everyday and sees how one entire wall is almost entirely covered with books but still thinks that what I do alone in my room will somehow lead to pregnancy.
Fuck lah. How am I supposed to compensate for this? Oh, I know. Let her handle my wedding couture, 100 percent.
I am already crying at the horror of the thought.
