Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
“My current favourite art has ended its first chapter. I think it’s a good closure, though it left my heart dangling on a very fine string towards the end.
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The Adominable Charles Christopher
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At the moment, reeling from the final panel and feeling really happy and glad about it, I like to say that following Karl’s art since a few months ago has been a good investment. I even bought the t-shirt! And I hope he will go away for a good deserving rest, and come back pregnant (metaphorically) with bigger and more exciting imaginations to carry Charles Christopher and his new friends into even grander journeys.
Saturday, June 6th, 2009
“…whether my email is being ignored or genuinely did not arrived. But yea, I think after last night, I don’t think I should continue waiting for a response anymore. It has been what? Three weeks?
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Sigh.”
Monday, May 4th, 2009
…at the bank…
“Okay! Thanks ya!”
“Hey, wait. Did you perm your hair?”
“Yea I did. Haha!” *glows*
“Purposely wan ar?”
“Uh, … no la. Accidently wan. I wanted to cut my hair at first. But when I walked into the hair salon, I tripped and fell into a basket full of hair curlers. I was struggling to get out when I knocked my head on a shelf that was right above my head. And then the impact caused a bottle of hair perming solution – ammonium thioglycolate – to fall on my hair that was already stuck on my hair. I pengsan for about thirty to forty minutes. I guess when I was out, the hair salon’s aircon stopped working and the heat from that afternoon was just enough to activate the ammonium thioglycolate to work its curse. By the time I woke up, I was surrounded by paramedics and the hair salon owner was not allowed to do anything to my hair except to rinse it. The paramedics sent me home and told me to rest for a full week before I go and attempt to cut my hair again.”
I never understand people who ask questions like “purposely wan ar?”.
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
“… to resist Twitter. Follow me at @akukelabu.”
Monday, April 13th, 2009
“You know that feeling. That rush that fills up your heart when something (shoes, jackets, pen, puppy, vacation, person, y’know, those things) comes into the view of your eyes. And immediately you dart your eyes elsewhere and breathes out, in attempt to not collapse in the heat of that rush. That same rush feeling that you get by merely thinking about it even after not seeing it for days. That very same feeling you get, when you google it in attempt to find out more about it. The same feeling that you get, when you daydream about it and play that one song on repeat the whole day. The same feeling that you get again, when you check your e-mail everyday, holding your breath, hoping that somehow, that it will be written be in bold, waiting for you in your inbox. That very same feeling that comes almost every hour since you last saw it (even just once), then without you realising it, comes less often now. Then one day, you realised that you forgot to think about it that particular day and feel extremely guilty. You don’t think much about that guilt because, it’s silly lah. Slowly, you stop thinking altogether. Maybe just once a day, which slowly fades to once a week, because you know, you have a busy life to lead. Slowly you stop thinking about it completely. Not even once anymore.
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That initial rush has ran out. Ran out of gas, because in this day and age, it’s too uncertain to be harping on. Harping on something that deep down inside, at the very first moment that your heart leaped, you knew it wouldn’t be. But you hoped! That’s what’s important right? Hope? It’s too expensive to hope. Hope is a commodity that not many can afford now. Comfort comes in certainty.
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How have I stopped being an idealist?”
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
“… to tweet.”
Friday, April 10th, 2009
“I had a dream. I was in a musical. I was rehearsing. In that dream, I remembered every line, every lyric, every word. Then I woke up. In attempt to try to decifer my dream later, I quickly wrote down the lines of the lyrics on my hand with a pen that I always have by my bedside counter. Then I went back to sleep.
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When I woke up and having remembered that dream, I quickly checked my hand. Then I realised I dreamed that I wrote down my dream.
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Now the only thing I remember about the original dream was that Annie Lennox was in it. She played lead.
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Fuck this shit.”
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
“The thing about having secrets is that there’s no one to talk to if you need to talk about it. So if you have one, post online about it!
www.onesentence.org
www.fmylife.com
www.postsecret.blogspot.com
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
“So my work place hires foreign helper workers. I restraint myself from calling them in derogatory names, in attempt to be politically correct. So yea, we hire help. We’ve been hiring them for years and every batch of them, when their permit expires, are replaced by a new batch of hired helpers. Each batch lasts about two years, depending on whether some of them prefer to extend their services with us or not. So far, we have got at least five of these hired workers who has been loyal and good enough to stay with us for more than 10 years. We allow them back to their hometown for two months every year, but because these expenses are coming out of their own pocket, they don’t do it every year. Some of them have even became like family to us, watching my siblings and I grow up in the compounds of the factory. Some even brought their family here to live and are now, in my opinion, thriving.
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The latest new batch of about 20 helpers came early last year. They are the latest so far, since the ministry announced ‘NO MORE VISA’. And my oh my, they are the worst. Some can hardly understand simple english, and even after working with us, in a full english speaking environment (well, maybe not. But at least 80% of the time, we speak english), some still can’t just pick up. One even still needs to be guided on where to sign on his pay slip, after signing the same damn paper for sixteen months, twice a month!
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Last week, this guy, Hanif, managed to get himself into the hospital. His second time. But the story is so interesting. This is how it happened. From day one, he’s been a bit slow. Actually, a bit slow is an understatement. He’s one of the slower ones. I don’t know how he managed through the ’survival of the fittest’ stage of his conception. Must be a fluke. So Hanif is slow. He’s tall and he has long arms. He has this constant overdose face that he wears everywhere he goes. And naturally, when working with someone with little patience (i.e. my dad), he gets scolding a lot. It’s okay, really, because he don’t understand why the person who is paying him, is yelling at him in another language. I’ve seen this happened before. My dad blows off his top yelling at him, while he just stare at my dad without any expression.
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So last week, Hanif called in sick. He told my head engineer that he wasn’t feeling well. Actually, he just didn’t turn up at work, and my head engineer had to go to their living quarters to hunt him down and ask why wasn’t he at work, and why if he’s not at work, did he not fill in a leave application. So anyway, he said he was sick. And he didn’t fill in the application, because he wanted to go see the doctor later, to get an MC.
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Later the same day, I got a frantic call from one of the other foreign helpers, saying that Hanif has got into an accident at home. I wasn’t around so I got another senior manager to settle the ‘problem’. Turns out, sick old blur Hanif, couldn’t sleep his sickness off. He was too bothered by sounds made by pegions, that had crept into the ceiling of the house. And sick old blur Hanif, climbed up into the space between the ceiling and the roof, in attempt to hunt and catch these pegions, to later fry and cook and eat them. One false step (or actually a true step, but because Hanif being Hanif, thinks that the ceiling is made of thick hardwood) later, he fell through the ceiling and fell onto the floor of the first storey.
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The fell made a small cut on the back of his head, and he lay there, fainted, and bleeding for an hour and a half, before he regained consciousness and called for help. You wonder why no one was around to help him. But someone was! The night shift workers who were sleeping downstairs heard the loud sound of the crash, and quickly searched the house, but because you see, Hanif crash landed in one of the senior worker’s room that was locked, so no one suspected anything amiss.
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Words cannot describe the feelings I felt when this was reported to me. Hanif was later brought to the hospital, and on the way there, he didn’t even attempted to stop the bleeding by pressing on to the wound. He let it bled all over the car. Thinking that he got a long holiday up ahead, he was very obviously and visually disappointed when the doctors discharged him that very night after 6 hours of observation. Still, he limped back to the car after the doctor gave him a clean bill of health.
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Yesterday, after four days of resting, he didn’t turn up to work. When asked why, he said he was still sick and has pains all over his body. I didn’t buy it. Because right after telling me that he’s still sick, he asked if his salary will be counted because he’s on MC. I told him his MC expired last Saturday, and if he still wants to stay at home, he would have to go see the doctor again to get a new extended MC. He said he will cycle or take a ride on a bicycle to see our panel doctor.
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I’m so tempted to ask the management to send him back to his country, because clearly he is less than the help that he has been hired to be. Grrr…….. It’s situations like these that tests my patience for the stupid and the idiotic.
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*file under dealing with idiots*
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
