home

When someone tell you " there is no place like home".. what does the word "home" means?

these are some of the meanings I found:
1. A place where one lives; a residence
2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment.
3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household.
4a. An environment offering security and happiness.
4b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.
and the list goes on...

Amongst the meaning given above, only no. 1 & 2 is probably the most accurate description of my home. Unforunately for me, I do not feel that I have a family that occupies it, it is NOT an environment that offers me security nor happiness or even a place that I take refuge in.

To me, "home" = prison.

Encounter of the 3 kind

Lucky" me, I had 3 close encounters of chameleon 360 yesterday & today.

Encounter No. 1:
I had lunch arrangement with an colleague of mine (let's call her Slanted Neck (SN), dun be mistaken, she is a nice gal, but for some strange reason, whenever she walk pass me to get her usual dose of drink, her head will just be kinda slanted) SN has this perception that chameleon 360 and I are great pals (I can't blame SN since she is not aware of what chameleon 360 did), which SN kindly invited to her to come along for lunch. I g guess being a chameleon, its skin is pretty thick too ya, so Chameleon 360 actually came along *to my disgust*. Thankfully, I have been quite well trained by bunch of lovely gals that I grew up with to deal with such situation with poise! Shit man, I definitely was not going to lose my cool over chameleon 360's nonsense. There I had it, lunch with chameleon 360 and SN, chatting like good old pals! *god.. am I turning into chameleon too?*

Encounter No. 2:
As I mentioned that I had to attend "Higher Power sprouting nonsense" session yest, this incident happened just before that. I got a ride on my colleague's car to get to the hotel (since we were early, we end up going shoes shopping for one of the guys). While shopping, I receive a call from Chameleon 360 and in her probably sweetest and innocent voice, she asked if SN was with me (apparently SN was suppose to meet up with her and other colleagues to go together but there was miscommunication, they couldn't find each other), which I nicely responded that SN is not with me and was kind enough to try to contact SN to let her know Chameleon 360 is looking for her but goodness, just reflecting back on her politeness and tone just makes my hair stand!

Encounter No. 3:
Chameleon 360's role in her dept is doing training related stuff, there is some cross relationship b/w her dept and mine. "Lucky" me, I am also looking at training related stuff for my dept. Chameleon 360 was kind enough (more like no reason to be rude to me, since she lives on the term professional) to direct me new source for information when the initial link that I was looking for is down. unfortunately for me, when I had another question to ask she refused to answer my call again. So being professional, I emailed her and this is her response:"I am not in charge of the Australia website. pls ask the relevant person in charge" There is nothing wrong with her response really, if I were her I would probably give the same response but hey you were the one who directed me to that link and now I have to find the person in charge? I think the least Chameleon 360 could do (if she was all that professional) was to give me a name to follow it through to somewhere. So now it is like headless chicken, got the body but no head.

If we could categorise bitches, where would you place her in your chart? I would put her in the Super Group. As this is one of the most dangerous types you can encounter with. Maybe I should have a poll to rate this level of bitchiness.So, give me your ratings!!

I ain't climbing and I know why

Like many other meetings which I absolutely hate attending, today was no different. I had townhall session which my "grand" presence along with other colleagues were required to attend.

1stly, I do question the rationale of having us to attend since we are not exactly part of the organisation. We are referred to as "Contractors". So basically, we the contractors are paid a sum of money to do a particular job, after the end of it, likely, it is time for the organisation to say "thank you for your excellent service rendered the past year, however your services are not required anymore".

2ndly, why do I have to put myself through to listen to the load of crap that the "higher power" have to say when my time could be put to better use. They attempted to remind us of some fundamental themes which they would like everyone to be aware of. I can't remember all of it but I just cite you 2 examples.
1. communicate, communicate, communicate - how much talking has to be done before anything can be accomplished. becoz of this communication, amongst my colleagues and myself, we have lost a good precious 8 hrs, that is equal to 1 day of work that can be done!
2. act as 1 team - explanation of why "act as 1 team" is before you can be a true 1 team, you have to act as 1 team 1st.

The only realisation that I have is I ain't climbing fast and I know why.Do you?

Young again........

It has been months(or even years) since I did anything I would deem as exciting.. but on fri, I did... I pierce another ear-hole, just one side. Sheeh.. (i can see you cursing at me.. like that considered exciting meh?) The main reason is simple, it was done in a moment of madness and this remind me of how i was as a teenager. It felt great to be to young at heart even for that brief moment.

It all started as a innocent fri, I was just hanging out wif a fren (let's call her siao charbor ) . On an unplanned stop, we decided to check out or to be exact siao charbor wanted to check out earrings which we happily make our way to 77th St. While browsing around, I spotted someone familiar and it turn out to be my colleague (let's call her AJ).

AJ was there together with her husband and daughter. The sole purpose was to bring her daughter to pierce one side of her ear, in the name of FUN. Which personally I find it absolutely fanastic! How often do you see a colleague of yours ( that has 2 teenage kids, you probably can make a guess on her age ya?!) bringing her kid to a place like 77th St to pierce her ear (one side mind you).

Maybe I belong to old school of thought where I reckon my parents would bring me to jewellery store to pierce my ears or I don't even see myself being there with my parents for that matter. (for the record, my 1st pair of ear-holes was done together with my 'kah chng' at age of 14yrs old, behind my parent's back. I was afraid I would be slaughter by my parents for disfiguring my beautiful ear lopes)

You can pretty much tell that siao charbor and I was simply amazed at the coolness of AJ. We were like little kids looking from behind the counter, see how AJ was encouraging her daughter to pierce. Also kaypohing, we gave "advice" to AJ & daughter on where to pierce, laughing here and there, wowing at how cool AJ was.

In a moment of cheeki-ness, siao charbor & I ask AJ to be cool and pierce one side as well, and in return siao charbo and I will also do likewise and she readily agree..in the name of FUN! If AJ will do it soo readily, how could I (can't speak on behalf of siao charbor but I think she feels the same too) reject such FUN right..there i was (together with siao charbor), jumping on the bandwagon.. in like 5mins, we both got ourselves another ear-hole! I felt young again!!

Are you a chameleon 360?

Even had a situation or a person throwing a 'fastball' at you and it just 'hits' you right into your face.. well i am sure you did and I just had one thrown right into my face by colleague, let's call this colleague - chameleon 360.

You know how it is like when you 1st join a new organisation, everyone and everything is new, you are unsure of stuff and I guess one of the survival instinct is to know people around you, and you build rapport/be friends with them.As fate permit, I gotta to know chameleon 360 and I thought hey maybe I try to build rapport which I have to say I was quite successful until last week.

Conversations with chameleon 360 were mainly emails (hey we need to bitch sometimes over email dun we?) or over lunches. for 1 wk, chameleon 360 was like your good friend however just last week, chameleon 360 did a "chameleon 360".. she started to ignore me which really puzzled me. There I was thinking, did I say or do something that offended chameleon 360 unknowingly, or maybe chameleon 360 was just in plain bad mood all thanks to ever so faithful visit from auntie beloved? So being the ever matured me (yes yes, i see eye rolling....) I did the most logical thing, I left chameleon 360 alone (everyone need their space ya?). Today I drop chameleon 360 a message telling chameleon 360 that this situation is rather awkward and that if I have done something unknowingly that offended chameleon 360, I will apologise. Let's clear the air... Doesn't this sound logical? Well, I sure did think this was the most appropriate thing to do. chameleon 360 did give a reply which I have to say it is the most bizzard message I have ever received. It goes like this : "There is nothing wrong, stop imaging things. those ridiculous emails/sms are nevertheless getting on my nerves.let be more professional". Geez what kinda of person is chameleon 360? What kinda load of crap was that!?! I went into shock which naturally turn into 'what the F***, who do you think you are treating me like this. Obviously you have not tasted 'FOF' (like how tripwire has affectionately call me to be)!' You start to question, why are there such chameleon 360 around? What is their purpose in this world? Are they here to bring balance to the people who are considered normal? If there is hell, there is heaven. If there is water, there is fire? Is that how everything co-exist together? Does such thing still exist beyond your youth where you just tell your friend:" I don't friend you already"

But touch-FOF-not, I opted for the cool approach, I simply just reply"ok great, see ya tomolo." Why look silly infront of chameleon 360 ya? Such person are not worth our time isn't it?