the champions
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i went home early on friday night and bumped into my neighbour in the elevator. there was an awkward silence. i tried the break the ice and asked if she has a cat as i hear it meowing sometimes. her eyes lit up. "yes i do! you MUST come in to visit us - i'm sure you'll love melina-boy. please come" how do you refuse an invite like that? i trotted after her into the apartment then sat down on the floor for a chat where i proceeded to learn more about this woman than i had for the 4 years we've been neighbours
my neighbour is 40 years old and just quit her job as it was getting "a little too much". she is rediscovering her what's important to her, reconnecting with her family, etc. she feels that her entire life has been a mirage and without her job she's left with nothing
however
what really disturbed me was how she repeated her conversation, word for word. "my cat is so fat - he weighs 16 pounds - there was this one time when i had to take him to the vet, i put a leash on him and people thought he was a dog!" word for word. once every 15 min or so. i can still hear her voice in my head repeating the same sentence. the first 2 times i thought oh well i guess people repeat things when they get older, but at the 4th and 5th time i started getting quite worried.
poor woman must've gone through some serious trauma. all the time she was smiling but i could feel the loneliness pouring out of her
i don't want to end up like that... seriously underweight alone at 40 living in a cramped 500 sq ft apartment with an overweight cat repeating the same stories to strangers like a broken record. [play.stop.rewind.play]
but who am i to judge her? i am sure plenty of us are equally flawed and messed up one way or the other...
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another glimpse into my life
Dragon boat fotos: http://share.shutterfly.com/osi.jsp?i=EeANmrVq4ZtGzmw
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Found this apartment i really like - 1st floor of an old chinese building but it's newly rennovated and has a great layout ... landlord's asking a little too much though, fingers crossed i'll get it for a good deal...
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we kicked ass yesterday
placed 3rd in the first heat (<2 secs difference from the 1st team)
and 6th in the semi finals (but it was the fatest semi finals of the 3... i was also told we were leading at 2-3rd place up till 20 meters to the finish line, but didn't have enough endurance to "power up" till the end)
so all in we probably ranked top 10 in the expat-B men's division
not bad for a team who's only trained for 10 sessions with very different skill levels
was very pleased with how well we did. it felt awesome to give it your all and we were the best we've ever been
pushing thru to the finishing line... see how in synch our paddles were?? we're the second team from the bottom of the pix. i'm sitting on the left, fourth row from the front (you can kinda see me if you blow up the picture)
(source: International Herald Tribune) front page baby!!
i'm really going to miss our weekly training sessions .....
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wow
i got the link to the Mood Analysis (http://www.colorgenics.com) from heyjude
just as she said, the results blew my mind away. spot on:
You are a very sensitive person and you try hard (perhaps a little too hard) to make favorable impressions and to be recognized by your peers. But you have that inherent need to feel appreciated and admired and you are easily hurt if all of your endeavors go by unappreciated or not acknowledged. Stop trying so hard.
You are a true extrovert, frivolous and outgoing. You need to feel in control of any situation. If matters are not proceeding according to plan you tend to get extremely irritable and perhaps become difficult to live with.
You give the impression that you are a self-sufficient individual, pretending that you are stoical - indifferent to pain or pleasure. But this is not so, for in truth you are an extremely emotional person, one that may make hasty decisions and perhaps repent at leisure. It is time now perhaps to break the bond of detachment and become the real 'you' - the you that you would like to be.
It is said that we are all influenced by our environment and indeed you are no exception. It would seem at this time that even though you may be surrounded by people, you are experiencing an inner loneliness. Fortunately you are sufficiently strong minded to realise that life has a great deal to offer you and that you may miss your share of experiences if you fail to make the best use of every opportunity. You therefore pursue your objectives with a fierce intensity and are prepared to commit yourself deeply and readily. You believe that whatever you would like to do or think 'you can do' - you do! It is because of this attitude that you may be considered by others as arrogant and even conceited, but its fair to say that whatever it is that you really want out of life you will put your heart and soul into it and will not take 'NO' for an answer.
You are afraid that you may not be able to realize or achieve your hopes and desires and so you insist that people should accept you as you are and appreciate your rights to anything that you aspire to.
| Download of the day: D12 - My Band |
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the worst thing happened to me this weekend
Sunday 4pm
after dragon boat practice i got a call from this guy who claimed to be the customer service rep. of my bank - he asked if i had made withdrawals at a branch of HK$20,000 (that's US$2,500) in the last 20 minutes, as that was flagged as an abnormal transaction activity in their security system. i panicked - there's no way i'd withdraw that much money EVER and definitely not within the last 20 minutes as i was paddling. He asked me to check if my card was in my wallet - it wasn't. Then he asked if i want to cancel my card right now for security. He asked for my name and particulars for verification, then said he'll jump off the line while I key in my pin number into the phone for final verification. Music came on, exactly like what happens when you do phone banking when they put you on hold. I canceled my card and hung up. Everything felt so legitimate...
Monday 9am
got into the office and read email from my friend describing exactly the same scenario. shit shit shit shit. heart pounding, i went on line to check my bank balance, but by then some HK$90,000 (US$11k) have disappeared. I was in shock. i ran to the police, filed my report, and froze all my assets at the bank. I kept kicking myself for how careless i was. The ironic thing was, despite all that withdrawal made from my account, HSBC (bank) never called me to vet those transactions!!! and i got tricked into giving away my pin on the phone as the fraud called under the pretense of checking an abnormal transaction activity on my account!
so yeah, expensive lesson learned. 1) never leave your belongings unattended 2) never give your pin number away on an unsecure line. age old wisdoms i know. don't remind me i still feel immensely stupid
but something good did come out of this. they say that it's in times of distress that you realize who your friends really are. it's true. to all my friends who called to check on how i'm coping, offered their sympathy and help, told me a dirty joke to cheer me up, checked on the internet for any precedence for my case, bought me "de stress drinks", and my boss who called up our internal system security team to get in touch with the HK police, a heartfelt thank you. don't know where i'd be without you
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i went hiking a few weekends ago and Ai Ling helped me take this picture with her camera phone
waa - flowers that look like turtles...
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i never used to understand why my mom would get so frustrated when she couldn't see (she has a bad case of presbyopia)
but then my own eyesight suddenly got worse in the past 2 weeks . when i take off my contacts things look much fuzzier, and i've been finding it increasingly difficult to do things w/o my contacts in
like today, my network cable was disconnected and it took me 20 whole minutes to figure out how the wires ran and what was connected to what, and another 10 minutes to fix it
i almost drove myself crazy, running around this tiny space (my living room) that i thought i knew like the back of my hand, only to find it so alien when it was out of focused
my few minutes of stress gave me a glimpse of how it must feel to be "handicapped"; feeling helpless and frusrated at failing to do things that used to require zero effort
but isn't that what everyone goes through when they get old??
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