modus operandi

For some reason I was feeling extremely tired at work yesterday even though the night before I slept half an hour earlier than usual. It didn't help that the air-con in the office building has been crazy the past few days. First it was freezing, then two days ago it was cold in the morning but warm in the afternoon (because, apparently, someone shut off the vents. The idiot. There was no air circulation and we had to leave our office door open to let the AC from the corridor in!) and it was cold again yesterday morning but slightly less so in the afternoon. Hence my extremely bad headache that set in after lunch. The two Panadol pills I took helped, but only just a bit because my head still hurt (and I kept falling asleep) for the rest of the day.

So I did something I wanted to since starting work but never managed to. I slept at 10p.m. instead of my usual midnight bedtime. Then I woke up at 3a.m. because my body's used to having just 5-6 hours of sleep and because it was starting to rain then and the wind was howling madly. Somehow I managed to fall back asleep. I seriously need to start sleeping earlier every week night because after the long(er) sleep last night, I felt so much better at work this morning.

(Actually, I had the rest of this entry written down in my notebook this afternoon because I have half-day workdays on the eve of public holidays. After some shopping after work for a lunchbox bag and some socks, I had planned to stay in the library to do stuff on Albus because no one at home was able to connect to the Internet since yesterday even though our modem seemed to be working fine. Turned out every electric socket in the library was hogged—some people were just watching videos, what the hell?!—and half of all previously available sockets were either locked down or blocked. Seriously, public library facilities management, DOUBLE-YOU-TEE-EFF?! I didn't have Albus's battery with me because it was getting swollen and I didn't want to risk using it to breaking point and with no available socket, I just sat on a random cushion, endured a creepy guy in a purple tee who kept walking around my area, and wrote. And read a bit of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets until it was time to go home. Congrats to those who read/made it this far. Even I think all that was way too boring to blog about.)

( Click for random thoughts of randomness )

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以上、Chii です。

No thanks to those people burning vegetation illegally over at our dear neighbouring Indonesia, we've been having serious haze for almost a week. It was so bad we were practically surrounded by a fog, and the moment you step out from any indoor area you could smell something. BURNING. And the haze didn't let up until after a huge storm yesterday afternoon in the west and another one this morning in the east where I am. I hope that means I can sleep with my windows open tonight and not needing to worry about breathing in vegetation ash while asleep.
 

VIDEO MONDAY 25

I really don't have much to say about this anymore. At least not anything profound and moving.

People, do you not see what hate does to others? Being hateful doesn't rid the world of the things you don't understand or can't accept. Your hate is making others hate themselves for things that are out of their control and making them think that they're worthless when they're not. What makes you think you are without traits that would incite dislike from other people? Why is it that you're not driven to the point where you think there's nothing in your life left to live for and the only way to stop feeling like a sorry excuse for a human being is to take your own life? Because there are people who hate less. Because there are people who at least understand, even if they don't accept certain things. Because there are people capable of giving a little bit more love.

It gets better, only if we believe enough to let it—if we hate a little less and love a little more.

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以上、Chii です。

Can the monsoon/rainy season come already? It's so hot and humid I sweat even more easily than usual and the tap water is warm. THE TAP WATER. IS WARM.

On the topic of a little less fail, after 22 years of EPIC FAIL, I've finally learned how to ride a bicycle! Just this past weekend, K.Ying's uni friends had some project thingy (which I had no idea how to explain) but the objective of it was to teach a skill or something. So I was (one of the two) guinea pig(s) of the project and they had to teach me how to ride a bicycle.

After two days of two hours of bike riding each, lots of shrieking, almost-cursing (which I had to self-censor to "FISH!" instead because there were kids around), too many times of almost-falling-off-the-bicycle, a few bruises, countless scratches from the pedals, getting sunburnt, I finally managed to stay on the bicycle long enough to be considered cycling. Herein is the end to all the teasing I kept getting for not knowing how to cycle. HAH! Also, this meant that, technically, I only took less than four hours to learn how to ride a bicycle. WIN! :D

(Aah... Gotta live with the sunburn, aching arms and the pain in the seat of my bum for a few more days.)
 

VIDEO MONDAY 23

This is just beautiful.

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以上、Chii です。

Well, there's this rule/clause thing about being their employee and blogging, so I guess I can't really say where I'm working, but if you're on my Facebook or Twitter, you'd have known by now, anyway. For those who still don't, as specific as I can get without getting into trouble, it's a publishing company, and I'm doing an assistant/admin sort of position.

What does this mean?

Regular pay! Nine hours a day, five days a week away from the parents! More freedom (I hope)! I can watch shows and read my books and my mother will have no reason to complain and nag because HELL YEAH I'M NO LONGER UNEMPLOYED!

Goodness. Now I owe lots of people dinners. But. Whatever!!! Goodbye, unemployment! *Dances happy flaily dance*

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以上、Chii です。

So this week's been pretty boring. Except for when I've had to meet up with the recruitment agency that searches for candidates for Wiley on Thursday for sort of an pre-interview preparation (see this entry) for the actual interview with Wiley on Friday.

The actual interview, though, was. Whoa. Every bit as intense as my friend had described (she went for the same interview a few weeks before me but wasn't successful, obviously, but she found a job in an events/marketing company). There was a panel of three people from the journal production team who interviewed me, and they really did have a stack of papers from which there were questions they asked me with. And and. They wrote down all the answers I gave. Goodness. Then, after all the questions I had to do a test on identifying printing errors and another on replying to a complain email.

I went for my interview at 9.30a.m. and by the time I got out the office building it was 11.30a.m.

It was all right though, I guess. At least all that preparation the night before until 3.30a.m. (because I was reading a Merlin Big Bang fanfic until 2.30a.m. Heh) on 'What questions to ask interviewers' and 'How to reply to a letter of complaint' kept me from freaking out.

I really hope I get this job. One, it stops my mother from nagging at me every day; and two, I'll finally have one foot in the publishing industry. (Also, after passing by Parkview Square so many times I've finally been inside the building and gosh, it was posh. Of course, that's only the lobby and bar on the ground floor, but GIMME THE JOB SO I CAN BE IN THIS BUILDING MORE THAN ONCE.) But time will tell; the last day to get a call from the human resource department is 4 October. In the mean time I can only cross my fingers. And continue with mass résumé-emailing, starting tomorrow.

( Regarding Wednesday's To-do List )

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以上、Chii です。