life's choices

5.30pm.

the end of another hard day's work.

he is pounding hard on the threadmill, working out the day's tension and getting the blood pumping through his veins. the boss joins him downstairs at the gym. the two worked quietly side by side, sweat poring through the pores. he walking briskly, the boss cycling. the only sound emanating from the room is from the television. the men worked out in ackward silence.

after what seems like the longest time, the boss turned to him and asked, 'so, how much did you buy today?', referring to a business transaction that they were working on. not the strangest question to be ever uttered between boss and employee. except that he is also his father-in-law. and they have rarely talked about anything else besides work. and that the rest of the family have also rarely talked to the boss about anything else besides work.

life. it's all about your choices in life. who is to say it is worth it or not?

amazing discovery!

i have a new discovery that i will like to share with you. apparently, western women will not die from being knocked down by a car. i haven't discover the reason for their seeming natural immunity to road accidents yet, but i vow to never rest until i can uncover the truth behind their very well protected secret.

today morning, as my car was turning the bend, a couple of blondes were walking in the middle of the road. their confidence of exercising right in the middle of the road stems from their knowledge that they won't die even if a car was to knock them down at full speed. of course. however, being gracious and knowing that they are obstructing traffic, the lady on the left spied an approaching car with the corner of her eye, which has by now slowed to a crawl to follow the women, and slowly dragged her feet to one side of the road. she was insistent that she does not in any way alter the slow tempo of her exercise and so, was adamant about strolling slowly away. it is quite amazing. researchers the whole wide over will be most interested in dissecting these two breed of women in order to discover what is it that cause them to be so fearless in the face of death, or if indeed they are naturally protected from the forces of fast moving cars.

time for tea

yesterday, had tea once more with our two budding bosses. it has been a very long time since our last tea session. time has driven an invisible wall between friends. once we could talk about everything, now it takes time to warm up again. once we laughed over anything under the sun, now laughters sounded a little strained.

our tea sessions have never been anything more than just plain gibberish, chatting about anything and everything to let out a little steam in our life. taking a little time off from our daily, hectic yet mundane life to simply talk, listen and connect. the pureness of friendship.

lately, things have been changing. life changes all the time. our tea sessions have been slowly dwindling away. have we run out of topics to talk about? from our yet another gibberish session yesterday, i hardly think so. perhaps the tapering is due to the ackward positions we hold in our lives. no one lives for himself and himself alone. striking a delicate balance between our desire to lighten the hurculean load on the shoulders, even if only for a little while, through harmless pointless banters and the feelings of close and dear is a mighty, and very stressful, task. then again, i speak for myself only. them, they are just plain busy.

so, time and circumstances have driven a cold draft back to my disposition. yet i can't help it. i am not one to open up easily to strangers. i hold back, i protect, i hide. that is me. yet i regard them still as friends. as close as any friends can be. because of all our pointless banters.

choices

5.30pm.

the end of another hard day's work.

he is pounding hard on the threadmill, working out the day's tension and getting the blood pumping through his veins. the boss joins him downstairs at the gym. the two worked quietly side by side, sweat poring through the pores. he walking briskly, the boss cycling. the only sound emanating from the room is from the television. the men worked out in ackward silence.

after what seems like the longest time, the boss turned to him and asked, 'so, how much did you buy today?', referring to a business transaction that they were working on. not the strangest question to be ever uttered between boss and employee. except that he is also his father-in-law. and they have rarely talked about anything else besides work. and that the rest of the family have also rarely talked to the boss about anything else besides work.

life. it's all about your choices in life. who is to say it is worth it or not?

ring, ring........it's for you

still remember the good old days when you don't have this nagging troublesome bothersome thing by your side? that you are free to roam, without a care for time or place? that you don't need to have a thought for any other? and no whiny spoilt mega-attention-caller noise will shrill incessantly in your ear, demanding that you drop everything on your hands and listen attentively?

i am, of course, talking about my handphone. it doesn't get any more appealing just because i just changed to a pink one. it still demands my attention at the most frustrating of times; like when i am in the bathroom, when i am just about to fall asleep, when i am in the midst of enjoying my meal. of course, it doesn't ring when i am in a boring meeting, waiting for any divine intervention to come save me from dying a very slow and torturous death. the thing is evil, i tell you.

i do remember, the good old times, when someone asked me for my handphone number and i answered, 'oh, i don't usually switch it on', and it was fine, it was acceptable. nobody shrinks from you in a heartbeat as if you are some strange alien from another planet. nobody leaves their phone on 24/7 in that era (anybody commenting that it must have been a very long time ago can consider themselves dead meat). the other day, a colleague mentioned to me that he can always be contacted, that he leaves his phone on 24/7. my immediate thought was 'so? who doesn't? what's the big deal?'. from being a luxury, it has become a necessity, a part of the human anatomy even.

so, can you live one whole day without your handphone? can I live one whole day without my phone? i gladly can, and i gladly will, if i am not being seriously reprimanded as being irresponsible for not carrying my phone around like a new-born baby in need of constant nourishment. by my own flesh and blood nonetheless. he deems it irresponsible. sigh. i didn't see that coming. it's no longer normal to leave your handphone in your room and go down for dinner. it's not normal to exist independently without your handphone for a matter of few hours. people have to be at the beck and call of others within the blink of an eye. all these must be improving communication between people by a vast margin. but yet i don't see it.

i miss the ring-free days. i miss being uncontactable. perhaps that's why i love vacationing in the u.s. of a and japan. where they have a totally different type of tele-communication system than ours and our handphones are rendered useless. but then they had to come up with 3g!!! i will seriously have to consider spending some vacation time in some remote uncivilised uninhabitated island. to escape from the evil shrilling sound of ......THE HANDPHONE!

i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world

i feel like a barbie doll today.

and my owner just rotated my leg 360 degrees.

both right and left.

umpteenth times

a peek into my day

was woken from my deep slumber by a faint toot-toot-toot sound emanating from my right side. when i begin to realise that the irritating sound plays no part in my dream, consciousness filter through the thick blanket of slumber and the details of my dream began to vaporise.

thus began my day. sleepwalked to the bathroom, emerged wide awake, prepared breakfast and lunch to feed the ever-hungry ones, hit their little bums to hurry them out of the door, sat down for a little brekkie myself with the other half, along with some side order of newspaper. when he was also off for another day's worth of paycheck, i decided to venture out on a little adventure of my own. to the gym i will go, heigh ho, heigh ho.

for all the 4, or was it 5, years that i have been staying there, i have never visited the in-house gym. walked past it many a times but the quiet, dark room has always been a little intimidating. if it was dark and quiet, it would have been fine. however, i can just imagine all these fit, beefy looking people in tight fitting clothes, without an ounce of fat on their body, looking every inch a mr universe, or a miss universe, working out side by side with me. gyms are not for beautiful looking people. they already look good enough, go out somewhere and flaunt it. gyms are for people with love handles, elephant thighs and jiggling bits to pant, pound, exert and sweat in order to look like them. they should ban all those already-fit looking people from the gym. return only when you start to look like one of us; the normal a-little-greedy, a-little-unfit, a-little-jiggly part of the population.

today i was ready for a little ackwardness, i have put on my thick-skin face. with a reader's digest in hand, so that i can suavely walk past the gym with my face deeply engrossed in the book should it be full of those fit beautiful creatures, i headed off for the gym. and to my surprise, it was dark and empty, as usual. with 240 units in the condominium, and an average occupancy of 4 persons per household, making a total of 960 people living in that place of dwelling, not 1, not a single soul, will come down for a little bit of panting and gasping at 8.30am in the morning. perhaps they are doing some panting and gasping already in their unit :-p.

so, i was left blissfully alone for my very first virgin visit to the gym in my condo, where i sweated a little, panted a little and overall did my body some good, even if only marginably better than my usual imitation of a couch potato.

by 9am, i was back up in my unit, resting on the sofa waiting for the body to cool down once more before i hit the shower. it was an energetic morning. after the good workout, at 9am in the morning, i was ready to...... drift back to sleep. smelly clothes and all. having woken up at 6.30am, i want to crawl back to sleep. so badly. but my day has begun and even if only in lethargic mode, i will continue. whoever says exercise makes you more alert?

:-p

a tale unfolds

funny how life is like a movie, or a thick novel. slowly the story unfolds, page by page, day by day. the scene changes, the characters changes, everything changes. over time, i've been telling a story in this blog of mine. perhaps not in such an obvious manner but now i link together the stories that were told.

http://2ching.blogspot.com/2008/03/of-life-and-living.html

http://2ching.blogspot.com/2009/03/whole-lifetime.html.

that was then. this is now.

we didn't know why, when, how, why and what . time revealed all. one year later, she was gone, all the mystery unveiled. now we know when, what and how. we still don't understand the 'why', why one can stand passively by the sidelines, watching her waste away a little each day. i don't think we will ever understand. still, it was their decision. we can sigh, we can grieve, we can say a million times over what a senseless waste it was, but ultimately, it was her life on her hands

now, 6 months down the road, he is being introduced to blind dates. it seemed like just yesterday that she left, that i touched her cold, still body for a pulse. the image is still too vividly stuck in my mind's eye.

yet, can you blame him? there isn't a correct or wrong length of time to grieve. here is a man who has always had someone to take care of him since his first breath on earth. first his mother, then his sister, and straight on into the laps of his wife. a man who never had to do any housework for even one day or even cook for himself. a man whose answer to a pile of unwashed undergarments is to buy some more new ones. is his a tale of a man blissfully sheltered all his life, or the sad story of one who has always needed others?

we laugh at the stories of his blind dates gone wrong. we gleefully accept that he needs someone in his life to take care of him. friends and families eagerly look for someone to hold his hand for the rest of the journey. have we forgotten? did we close the chapter on 20 years of marriage and a whole lifetime? perhaps one can love many at the same time, perhaps to love does not mean not to grieve.

i steal a glance at him. he does not look sad. he does not look lonely. perhaps he is a master of disguises. or perhaps only at night, when all is dark and silent, and the spot beside him on the bed is cold and empty. a whole lifetime together and it ends like this. only when it is dark and silent.

it would have been poetic to have just ended at the previous paragraph. but i see no joy in wishing for a man to pine pointlessly for someone who has gone. i do injustice in claiming that i do not see him grieve. grieve is his and his alone, he does not have to show, me or anyone else. 6 months down the road, he has a new lease on life. i wish him well.

the sun stole a kiss without my knowing it

came back with a slight sunburn without even knowing it. i looked into the mirror and saw a woman with a very healthy (over)glow looking back at me. didn't give the reddish nose and rosy cheeks a second thought, though looking back my face did feel tighter and a little chafed. over time, the rudolph nose started chapping and peeling. only then did it struck me that indeed, i was sunburnt, from too much fun under the sun. whilst wearing a jacket. with a fog enveloping me. in genting.

how does one arrive in genting all cold and freezing, jumping on one foot to the other to keep warm and leave with a sunburn?

the day when heaven cries

i love rainy days. days when the sky is gloomy and it is wet and cold all around. when the pitter patter of raindrops is like a soothing lullaby to my soul. when the positive ions in the air re-energises my spirit.

i realise lately that it rains on the funerals of some people. on some category of people with specifications and requirements that i do not understand. it rains during the final journeys of some ...but yet not others. i can only imagine that these people are tender people. people who have never hurt another soul in their lives. good people. people that the heaven above feels sad for bringing away. people that makes the sky weeps. i have attended two funerals this year and on both funerals, the sky opened briefly and pour down a little tears.

now, on dark gloomy days, on days that make me feel good and recharges the essence that is me, i feel a little sad. that somewhere someplace another good person has passed away.

hello

he asked, how come mr. x never greets me in the office anymore? eventhough he greets everyone else and most certainly those directly related to the boss. it seems, he has become invisible. which is strange, because he is never one to step on anyone else's shoes, nor one for rough words or loud voice. always polite to others, it dawned on him suddenly that mr. x seems to have ceased acknowledging his existence.

is it shallowness? he is still related to the boss, so it seems illogical. or was mr. x offended by him because of some work issues. but perhaps in ways that even he is not made aware of. maybe mr. x is stuck with some shares that he cannot sell because of him? sometimes our work is not who we are but is what others see of us and who they imagine we become.