9 posts tagged “happy”

Today I did not get to meet Joseph Stig.litz. But my colleague Ger.rie did. I lent her my copy of Making Globalization Work so she could read it a bit before meeting him. And the darling girl got me an autograph from Mr Stig.litz!

I screamed when I saw it, I'm not ashamed to say.

Someone said the nicest thing to me this morning. She's an ex-colleague, who recently switched from radio to the main national broadsheet. I've always liked her; she's always so calm and composed, she has the best voice of anyone I know, she goes to ashram retreats in Myanmar for her vacations and once, when she was eating alone at the canteen and an acquaintance asked if she could join her, she said, "No sorry, I'm recuperating from socialising."

Let's call her S. The last time I'd seen her before this was at her farewell dinner early last month. Her boyfriend, D, was there too. This morning when we met, quite out of the blue she said, "I'm so happy to see you! You know D was really impressed with you, well actually we both were. And afterwards we were talking about everybody there and we said, yeah of all of them Yasmine's probably going to go the furthest."

Naturally I asked why.

"Because you're so bright, you pick up things very fast - like when people are talking you immediately know what they're talking about. And you're so charming. People get so comfortable with you and they want to spill their guts out to you!"

Soooo nice right? Too bad all this isn't really true once you get to know me well enough. Still, it was really cool to hear it from someone I've always admired.

Anyway what really happened that night was, five of us split up from the rest of the group after dinner and walked to the train station together. Somehow I ended up walking in front with D, while S was just behind us talking to another colleague. I asked D about when he started living in Singapore, how much he travels, etc and while he was telling me his life story, I overheard S and the other colleague behind us gossiping about office politics.

When D paused for breath, I immediately jumped in and said, "I'm so sorry. I was listening to you, but I was also listening to them - I can't help it, it's too interesting, I'm sorry!" And then I demanded to be included in the gossip about office politics.

You see, kaypoh people make the best journalists ok.

This evening, I had dinner with Mun.a, Naz and Yaya. The routine is usually as such:

Mun.a bitches about someone at work.
Yaya bitches about someone at work.
I bitch about someone at work.
Naz tells us about men she's dating.

Me: Ok, is there any other guy in the picture?
Naz: Yeah. 35-year-old divorcé with two kids.
Everyone else: NO! No no no no no! Stay away from him please!

But later on, on the bus...

Naz: You know the 35-year-old divorcé with two kids? He's got sugar daddy material.
Me: Yeah but you'd have to sleep with him.
Naz: I would never sleep with him.
Me: He won't buy you stuff if he's not getting anything in return though.
Naz: But he's already offered to buy me stuff even before we've met. I've just been saying no no no...
Me: Yeah just say no and ignore him. But wait... what kind of stuff? Some things you can't say no too.
Naz: Ferragamo shoes.
Me: Yes.
Naz: Spa packages.
Me: Yes.
Naz: He wanted to get me a phone too.
Me: Yes. Ok you know what, I think he's really trustworthy. I can see him as a responsible and stable fixture in your life.
Naz: He asked for my size. I was like, no no no no... well 7 or 8, I'm not sure.

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'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.

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.

My mornings tend to be crappy. These are some of the things that make my mornings suck:

1. Having to wake up, and not being able to. Like, hallucinations-and-sleep-paralysis not being able to.
2. Not being able to get a cab to get to an assignment and thus being late.
3. Being extremely hungry but not having time to eat anything.
4. Not being able to find anything I want to wear.
5. Getting a slew of calls and SMSes while I am sleeping, thus continuously disturbing my sleep so that when I finally wake up, I feel tired.
6. Having bad, panicky dreams about work.
7. Having my mother power up the vaacuum cleaner just an hour before I'm supposed to wake up.

And yesterday, this happened in the morning:

8. Got a call from work while I was sleeping, telling me to go to YISHUN because a man had been hit by a train.

But as the day progresses, it tends to improve. For example, on Monday, I woke up really tired and dreading work, but when I got to work, I found out the bosses weren't going to be around all week, and next week too.

And yesterday, by the time I got to Yishun from my house at Bedok, it was already much too late to catch any of the drama. Life was back to normal. I hardly had to do anything.

In the evening, my colleagues and I ordered pizza just for the heck of it, and had a small party. Then I got to meet Mr Bob. We walked around Cold Storage. I bought a tin of almond powder because the design of the packaging doesn't seem to have been changed at all since the company first adopted it in the 1920s. There's a drawing of a Caucasian-looking woman in a blue dress with roses in her curly black hair sipping almond milk against a bright yellow background, and there are Chinese words next to her. Mr Bob bought Cadbury's hot chocolate powder.

Then we ate yoghurt and pudding with forks.

And today is the start of my one-week break! I skillfully avoided the morning by waking up at 11:45, and now I am wondering what to do with my day. Should I go to the library? Go to Gramophone to look for Meerkat Manor? Watch a movie? Stay home and do my French homework then watch downloaded TV?

The possibilities are endless.

Since my informal pact with Adri.an last Sunday to read more, I am happy to announce that I have renewed my zeal and passion for reading and even imposed a new regime on my reading habits.

Have I not been reading these past few months? No, I have. The problem was simply that I was taking too damn long to finish any book I picked up. Where my monthly average used to be five books (back in the heyday of university, when a girl had time to debate communism, capitalism and religion, take extra classes for fun, find new music every now and then and still had time to finish five books a month), it has lately dwindled to two, or maybe three in a really good month.

When did I realise I was driving myself into an existential crisis? When I walked into Kino with three of my favourite boys on Sunday (that would be Lia.n-Yi, Adri.an and Soo Hia.n) and didn't really feel like buying anything.

What?! you gasp. No!

But yes. It was true. I kept thinking, "I don't have space in my room anymore and I could always try the library."

Such filthy, obscene thoughts. I bought three books just to prove to myself that I hadn't yet sold all of my soul to the devil: Arthur and George, The Night Watch and The Architecture of Happiness.

Then when I got home I started reading A Transatlantic Love Affair, a collection of Simone de Beauvoir's letters to her American lover Nelson Algren, from the beginning. I had started reading it when Li.an-Yi first gave it to me for my birthday two years ago but because it's much too big and heavy to carry around outside and there's not much of a plot to stick to, I kept getting distracted by other books and eventually shelved it. Well now it's bedtime reading. Small, mobile books for day, chunky episodic epics for night.

My daytime reading at the moment is, as you can see from my book list on the right, The Trouble With Islam Today by Irshad Manji. I am almost done with it and it's not bad. I do wish she had used a less informal, less casual tone in her writing -- you can practically see her rolling her eyes and making wild gestures with her arms at certain punctuations -- but I understand that there was a reason for that, which was to speak particularly to the MTV-addled brains of westernised young Muslims.

But that aside, it has a nice historical summary of the death of debate in Islam, her arguments are backed up by credible sources and she makes a good case for questioning everything your parents ever taught you. I started reading this book pretty much already on her side, so nothing in it shocked or offended me, but I can see some of my more religious friends being scandalised by some of the things she writes.

I also do very much like the fact that she rages against the anti-Semitism that comes with every Muslim child's education. If I hear another "I don't like Jews" or "I don't support Israeli goods" or "You know what those Jews are like," at least now I have more intelligent things to respond with than merely, "But you don't know any Jews!"

On Wednesday I ended work at 3 pm (because I started at 6 am) and instead of going straight home to sleep, I went to Bedok Central. Actually, more than anything, I wanted to buy things from The Body Shop but when I got there I found that The Body Shop had closed down, so I ended up at the library. I told myself I should only borrow two books at most. Oh well, I went home with four: My Life As a Fake, Notes on a Scandal (before the movie comes out I want to read the book!), Pelagia and the White Bulldog (I've been eyeing this one at Kino but it's too expensive) and Half a Yellow Sun (I read the first chapter in The New York Times and was hooked, so this was a particularly delightful find).

Onwards, then.

The past few days I've been missing Bangkok quite a bit, I'm not sure why.

I don't know about you guys who were there too, but everytime I hear a Maximo Park song I'm transported right back to the concrete concert field in Muang Thong Thani, wandering around in circles between gigs looking at dirty farangs and eating rock festival food. In Thailand that would be Dunkin' Donuts and tung hoon salad with chicken sausage.

And so I am pleased and excited to no end that I'm going to Cambodia with my friends soon. Sure, it's the Angkor Wat and killing fields, not eight bands and endless jumping, but it's going to be just as magic, if not more so. Good things happen when you go in large numbers to foreign lands. I can't wait. I'd start buying travel supplies now if it weren't three months away.

I did 40 minutes of yoga today after many months of not exercising. Now my elbows feel like they're not strong enough to hold on to the flesh on my arms, my head's all a-swirling and my legs don't feel made for walking. So weak. So flabby. What a state of disrepair I'm in.

Well at least I'm happy. Happy like this song --

Sometimes I get so hungry
I think about pie all day.
Just a little whipped cream
And honey, I'm on my way.
And a piece of the pecan pie
And you, that's all I want.
Just a piece of pecan pie.
And all I want is you.

-- sung by this man: