“I’m getting old and I need something to rely on…
And if you have a minute,
Why don’t we go,
Talk about it,
Somewhere only we know.”
Keane – Somewhere only we know
***
“This is the way you left me,
I’m not pretending,
No hope, no love, no glory,
No happy ending.”
Mika – Happy Ending
***
Yup, mainstream at its best.
The sound of the alarm clock this morning was like a (very loud) herald of impending doom. I’d been away from the office so long that I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to be unceremoniously awoken from peaceful slumber at an ungodly hour. Blame it on many idyllic late nights and even later mornings, or make that afternoons, heh.
The situation at work is pretty dire now that my third (within the span of 1 year!) and newest boss has moved on to greener pastures after only 1 month with the company. I joke that the reason she left was that I drove her to desperation, but when yet another colleague asks me who’s going to help them with numerous proposals in the pipeline, it’s with very little humour that I reply with “Me, myself and I”.
When it comes to work, one thing has become clearer with time though, more and more I want to be less and less like my colleagues. I don’t want work that I do not love to become my entire life. I don’t want to slave from sun up to sun down (and then some) for something I consider just a means to support my lifestyle. I don’t want it to eat into my free time. I don’t want a promotion as I have had more than I can handle for the past year though it would be nice to have a title that denotes seniority. Just give me more money and move along.
Sigh.
So I’m still looking for that grand passion though, that thing for which I will not need and alarm clock to wake me up to do.
Just the other day amidst scrambling with a proposal (yet again!) some idiot interrupted me. This despite me putting on my most foreboding ‘don’t-mess-with-me-I-have-no-time-for-you-unless-you-require-the-Heimlich-
manouvere-performed-on-you-pronto!’ face. I could see him hovering at the corner of my eye, circling closer and closer, just waiting to interject when I relaxed my expression a little bit.
After pleasantries and business cards were exchanged during which I gave him the world’s most fake smile designed to shoo away pesky bugs, he proceeded to interrogate and give me career advice. Yes, you heard right. In less than a minute of meeting an outsider in my own office, he has proclaimed that I must step up the ladder and move to a multinational company. If I wasn’t so stunned at his audacity, I would have laughed my head off. This stranger who could very well be younger than I am making a snap decision as to where my career path lies and has the cheek to nod gravely and encourage me to seriously consider it.
This is only the second time something like this has ever happened to me. The other time I bumped into this new recruit from another department on his first day, at the photocopy machine. He took a peek at the proposal I was making a copy of then told me with utter seriousness that it would be a difficult proposal to write even though he admitted that he himself had no experience in the subject matter. For the whole time I was there making the copy, I struggled to look polite as he tried to drive home his point and seemed genuinely worried about my capabilities (or the lack of it I suppose). And all this after just saying hello to me for the first time and having no idea what I do. I walked off with as much dignity as I could muster while cursing him under my breath. Heh. You wouldn’t believe that we’re friends now and he has since apologized when I chastised him about his tactless opening performance.
I guess some people just lack the brain cells that modulate timing and appropriate behaviour.
Funny how a review of the past can bring you to a different conclusion of your actions and those of others in the light of new experience. Things I thought were innocent and harmless are only ‘technically’ so now (if you’re calculative and very dumb), but for all intents and purposes damage was done whether those it was perpetrated against know about it or not. And I am sorry though the person who should hear it can never know nor would ever appreciate hearing it. Now I can put myself in someone else’s shoes and know it was wrong, no matter how smugly I thought that I did the right thing in the end, it was only barely so and not nearly enough by any standards.
It hasn’t stopped, this looking back and reviewing what I thought was settled and done with. It doesn’t mean that anything is resurrected, far from it, most of these things are deader than dead, just that the conclusions that I neatly tied them up with bear rethinking now and again.
In hindsight, insight.
Valentine’s dinner was lovely.
It was the whole new experience of doing the expected, of having reservations at a fully booked Japanese restaurant that was appropriately decked out for the occasion. It was finding that with the 6 course dinner (:!) we could have our portrait taken and I had a complimentary gift as well. It was the delight that my hun had also arranged a surprise for me though the waitress was less than discreet resulting in my discovery of said surprise before the appropriate time!
But mostly it was being with, looking at and holding the dearest man one could wish for. I do believe I’ve never seen him smile so much at me ever! This made me wish even then at the dinner that I could have been a better companion what with me being so sleepy and tired I had a tough time avoiding sliding off the chair and under the table. Forgive me hun, my timing sure sucks. Looking back, my lethargy was probably also the pre-cursor to spending the next 2 days sick in bed tenderly nursed by him. Yet another thing I can’t thank him enough for.
Big news is, in a moment of rash decision, I promised to cook for him next year. Me, cook! Hun, if the food turns out bland or has to be scrapped of the bottom of the pan, just be grateful if I don’t end up poisoning you ;). Oh boy, nose to the grindstone, just one year left to practice!
(Oh, almost forgot, I love you hun!)
This will be a short list since I’m nodding off (Yes I’m in the office, and your point is?!!).
It really didn’t matter so much where or what we did, but it mattered a lot that he came up with the idea and actually called the restaurant up to determine our options before surprising me by broaching the subject. And for someone who doesn’t plan ahead, to tell me that he had been ‘thinking’ about it 2 weeks in advance was music to my ears. I’m certainly looking forward to it.
Plan for Day 1: Nothing
Plan for Day 2; Nothing
Plan for Day 3: Nothing
Plan for Day 4: Oh, you catch my drift :)
Well, technically just moving 3 floors down, which isn’t such a big deal except that I’m going to lose my very strategic ‘feng-shui-optimized’ (and by that obviously I mean I can blog and surf in peace, like duh!) current seating position. And it’s all the more painful because I endured many months in a very open space which seriously limited my ‘recreational’ activities, only to be promoted last month to this much coveted place to the envy of all my colleagues. The seating plan in the new office space hasn’t been allocated yet, but with my luck (and I have none) I will almost certainly be placed right under the nose of the big boss. I can just feel it in my bones; my days of blogging in the office are numbered…
I’m 29 years old this year.
Nope. No matter how often I repeat this to myself, it still hasn’t sunk in.
You see, I spent the better part of early 2007 reconciling myself to the fact (or at least I thought it was) that I would be turning 28 by the end of the year. And now it appears that I have in reality aged 1 year overnight! Oh the shock and horror of it all!
Funny thing is, my dear friend who pointed this out to me and made me do the match and all, also went around merrily proclaiming she would be 28 this year. There is obviously only one conclusion that can be drawn from this revelation: when you turn the ripe old age of 29, memory is the first to go. Not a surprise actually.
How could I have missed the signs? It was plain to see: all of a sudden the new recruits at work are younger than I am, the lines around my eyes are more prominent, oh, and don’t even get me started on the southward migration of my fleshy bits. Come to think of it, my weight gain probably has more to do with an age-induced slowdown of metabolism rate rather than my pleasant assumption that it was a by-product of happiness and being lovingly fed by my other half.
But the fact remains:
My mind and body are in decline!
My prime is over! (which really is extremely unfair since I don’t remember ever experiencing a ‘prime’, damnit!)
I have dwindled my youth away!
Erm…can you say drama queen?
Well at least this gives me the right to huff and puff and blow away the next person that dares to call me a ‘girl’. And yet I still feel like a kid. Being called a ‘woman’ is for grown-ups and I have such a long way to go.
29. Heh, can I even count that high anymore with my feeble brain?
