Leave taking.

My memories will always be with me, wherever i go.

Having snuck off early on thursday, k picked me up, and we went to collect the flowers and balloons that i had ordered. Coming back to an empty office, i got to work. i wanted calla lillies, but didn't have enough time to wait. I settled on gerbera's, their lively, solid colours matching the stationery i was using.. It was only later i realised that they symbolise love of absent friends. Sigh. And so it began. Letters and gerberas left on keyboards. The gerbera's were not packaged elaborately, with only a single ribbon round their stems.. As i worked, i looked at secret bear, the care bear that sher had left with me for my last night. It's strange so much done can be squeezed into only a few paragraphs, but for now im wrung out, tired and aching in every way to write much, or want to elaborate more. As i wrote in the cards, every now and then i would look out, trying to memorise the view. The sun set which has always hypnotized. At the myna's and occasional crow, their whirling, perfect synchronised flight. Earlier in the day, adel had pressed a package into my hands, petting my hair and shoulders, yet again making it difficult for me. I hate goodbyes. So much to say, so little inclination to write about them now.

Friday loomed early and cheery After a torturous car rally, dinner at steve's house with the beautiful grounds and sonmewhat damp drinks at tango, i was ready for home. My cheeks were numb with all the smiling at the cameras, and i was almost exhausted form the day, but bed just didnt want to beckon. I hit my bed at about 5 that morning, but i didn't mind, because some nights just aren't meant to be spent alone.

It still hasnt ended. Coming home today, i checked my mail to find mail from colleagues that only made me run to get the nearest tissue/toilet roll.

Dammit.

"Don't want to leave, but we both know sometimes it's better to go. Somehow I know we'll meet again, not sure quite where and I don't know just when you're in my heart, so until then, smile, don't want to cry saying goodbye." -The Muppets

Dawning.

Listening to: office pitter patter and paper shuffles

Stabbed my subjects arm. Waited for him to stop bleeding from the pricks. Wicked at it while he looked on in fascination. I looked at him and smiled while letting him examine the blood sodden filter. He gave me a toothy grin, he of the nice voice and veiny arms, and remarked that i had to encourage his arm.

Inflictor of pain : "What?"
Inflictee: "You've got to encourage him, ask him to stop bleeding.."
I.o.P:" Him? Don't you mean..it?"
While concentrating on his arm, i hear this through my haze of concentration.
Inflictee: " Yar. The prick. You've got to encourage him"

I miss the times when i was young enough to enjoy conversation without an uncrossable long kang (read: gutter) in my brain.

After i leave, the office will also be slightly more goof proof, not just a small mercy when in an environment with a great deal of sharps and biohazards. It's no secret that i belong to a special group of the handicapped, known as the terminally klutzy. I havn't fallen flat on my face for quite some time now, so the universe must be saving the moment for a more embarrassing one when it can savour it. It deviousness can be observed when you see how it has gifted me with intermittent gracefullness, all the better for marked contrast.

Lookee this - the colour of pain.
See the girl in the left? Yeah. That, my friend, is something i can probably relate to very intimately, given enough time.

Besides finding like minded people who share my penchant for the awkwardly painful, i've also plumbed the depths of employee uselessness. Having days when one simply can't do anything work related, it was to my sweet, sweet delight that i discovered i had colleagues who were capable of being just as innane, or worse. No images will be displayed to protect the names of the guilty. The fact that i looked halloween ready in them, is of course, of no consequence. But honestly.. we could have done this and i bet no one would have batted an eye. I could also bet that they would join in. Well..Some of them anyway.

Of course all wasn't fun and play. Long long hours when deadlines were near, much eye rollin and furi0us frantic whispering in the halls of the facility were more than common.. but i guess every ending is always bitter sweet..

Sigh.

heavyheartedness

listening to: every day you've been away
Bebel gilberto

I saw a disturbance making its way through the throngs. Patiently, knowing it must make its way past me, i stilled my companion and schooled myself to alertness. Holding my yet unpaid item to my chest, i first saw a little old lady, hair all mussed up, with an apologetic smile limping her way to the queue behind me.

First came the mutters of a man, then the man himself. Shorter than i am, with the meaningless smile of the intellectually disabled, he was scratching all over with insatiable fingers. Intelligible mutters and little twitches, that emaciatedness of frame.. Suddenly a great heavyness overcame me. This old lady, way past the age when she should be caring for a child, lines of her sacrifices etched so deeply all over.. why should she be apologetic about bringing her son, now a little past middle aged, into the public? I felt a great urge to shake the auntie in front of me, she with the horrible sneer and look of disgust as she looked at the pair. What gave her the right to think she was better than the old lady who probably had to look at the most basic needs of her child?

All around people were staring, staring. Didn't they realise that the man was a person and not an oddity to be gaped at? Don't parents teach their children manners these days? I am not asking for no looks at all, but for gods sake, not stares that make a man and his mother a freakshow.

Most of all, what pains is me is that the old lady had to not only get used to unkind stares, but also feel that she had to feel bad in any way at all. That apologetic smile, that dipped head, that gnarled figure..

I think on this, and yes, im greatful for everything that has been gifted me, no matter how small a blessing it is. My burdens are considered a "norm", my appearance nothing to be freaked out about. Relatively anyway.

If there was one thing i could ask of the people who read this, it is to emphatise with those who are less earthly fortunate. So maybe the person is a con artist. Will a dollar or 5 hurt you? Will it mean as much to you as to the lady selling those overpriced tissues? Will a smile at a person who is obviously poorer kill you?

It means nothing to feel a little more human once in a while.

Intrepidity

Listening to: Feels just like it should
Jamiroquai


I'm not elated at the news. The second interview with the opthalmologist is on monday, provided i can make it.

Last wednesday, i stepped onto the 4th level of the centre. Everyone was coiffed and heeled. Glancing through the forms i had to fill out, i grimaced when i realised that i would have to fill up the equivalent of my entire bloody resume. ~Fuck me~ Let them try reading my handwriting. That'll have them reverting to my c.v.

I've never dreaded interviews. Nervousness is a problem that disintegrates when i've started talking.

I greeted my iinterviewer by name, having had the receptionist think i was genuinely interested in her day.She had leaked the number of applicants so far, the name of my interviewer, and how long they had been looking. Karen, the HR manager, was youngish, snappy and suffered no fools. Her questions came fast and i could feel her weighing every reply. At the end of the interview- she told me that i might not have the job satisfaction i craved since the interaction with the patients were far and few inbetween. The blunt woman also mentioned that she had already seen someone that day whom she had her eye on.

I feel like.. i've been tossed a candy bar as a consolation prize.

A year ago i would have inclined my head and left it as that. This time after a bit, Karen gave me a wry grin. The second interview was mine.

I laugh as i remember what i told her. She must think me an impertinent chit. I had zero temper when i first started in the hospitals. I had more tolerance when i first started at the facility. I wonder what kind of person i'll be at 30?

Dichotomy

It's striking me more and more. The duplicity of the human nature.

From reinforcement as a child, and observations when an adolescent, your behaviour is moulded; as mine is. Realizing that race can sometimes be a double edged sword, the face of the byproduct that is myself is demure, polite and apparently respectful ( to a certain degree ) . Hardly the wild child an eurasian girl might be stereotyped to be. Older now, i'm less conscious of what people think, and what the herd thinks of me is anyone's guess.

People are fooled by fascades of civility and charm all the time, and i am no exception. Often it seems to me that the people most harmless are the ones who might, at first glance, seem terribly abrasive and tactless. When these speak- people roll their eyes, give knowing smiles and seem to take it all in their stride. After all, we already know what they're like.

But what about the ones who always appear level headed and unprejudiced? Those who flinch at brash displays, moderate their own behaviour and temper their speech to genial civility? They seem to be as moral as they come but.. when things happen, we're shocked and dismayed at the displays sometimes put up for no one's benefit.

Is undesirable behaviour more shocking in someone 'quieter' because of the inevitable comparison that follows? We shake our heads, thinking they were the last people we'd think who indulge in such activity. Or do people who are generally outwardly rude/disgusting have more opportunity to air their grievances?

What's your tolerence level for being disgusted?
*warning- pics aren't of the eye candy variety*

Faith.

I know it's a cornball thing but love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? I say fall head over heels. Find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart.

Run the risk, if you get hurt, you'll come back. Because, the truth is.. there is no sense living your life without this. To make the journey and not fall deeply in love -- well, you haven't lived a life at all. You have to try.

Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived.

Then again, i'll write when i've actually fallen :) That's would be a first.

Profanation.

Its been some time since i wrote on my dreams.

They lacked the vividness they used to infuse into my night; those nocturnal escapades into the depths of my anesthetized consciousness.

Over the weekend i had lucid dreams, recurringly of snakes. I've never been afraid of them, and it gave me a thrill to handle them when opportunity gifted me, watching the nervousness of the others around me while simultaneously looking at the beauty of the reptilian form. Smooth coils of muscle, latent power on call, all hooded eyes and small flickers. Besides, more often than not, they look half dead draped on mine , or on the arms of others. The small ones in my dream were all tiny, well camouflaged on the ground. Tracing patterns that seemingly none except myself could see, i found the head only to have them rear up and sink their fangs into the smooth flesh of my open palms. It was the same all through out; I'd scout, consciously aware that well concealed as they all were, i'd find them for sure.

Most maintain that the key to oneirology lies in symbology. Some are of the view that the interpretation lies in your own belief of what the symbol denotes to you. Others insist that a key set of meanings mean the same to all. Strangely, on animals, both concur. If a snake is to mark you, a betrayal is about to happen. I laughed, and shook my head. I'd store it up to scare people who offered up their deliverings of their unconscious to me. Whether it be a self-fulfilling prophecy or not, the supposed meaning of the dream did come true for me on monday.

Slither away. Your angel wings don't seem to be working so well anymore.

Promises all laid out, repeatedly asked till i gave in. Cave in i did finally, but again i'm reminded that words are fallible. Men have always been frail. Emotions are infirm.

Listening to: Silent all these years
tori amos


You cannot see the walls that divide your hand
From his or hers or mine when you think you touch it.
You cannot see the walls because they are glass,
And glass is nothing until you try to pass it.
Beat on it if you like, but not too hard,
For glass will break you even while you break it.
Shout, and the sound will be broken and driven backwards,
For glass, though clear as water, is deaf as granite.
This fraudulent inhibition is cunning:
wise men content themselves
with breathing patterns on it.

Of men and hair.

Bumped into my old hairdresser, and felt like i was meeting an ex boyfriend. Not that i treat them badly of course, being the nice person that i am. Right. Moving on.

This one was an exception. The last time he was doing my hair, he had found out that i had broken up with then current squeeze. Later he got a little too enthusiastic while he was cutting my fringe, and not knowing what to do, i ended up folding my arms across my chest under that protective sheet and feeling jittery. I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, but it was enough for me to swear never to go back to him.

Back to the awkward meeting. When i saw him, i felt..terrible. He smiled, and our eyes met. I couldn't just walk away, so i walked slowly to him, smiling weakly. He eyeballed my hair, and oh god.. He noticed everything that i had done to it! Perm? Check. New fringe? Check. Sideswept straggly ends that make me look just a teeny bit younger? Check. My toes curled inwards as he noted each little detail, and for some reason i felt..unfaithful. Treacherous.

I spurned my hairdresser, and im still feeling guilty.

Of moving on.

Listening to: Autograph
tears

On friday i made a decision, and now i have slightly more than a month left at nus.
How apt that my last post was one of transition. Has it been almost a year already?

A lightness of step, a release of tension from my shoulders and laughter that went on through the day. Tears as well, knowing that i'll be leaving new found people i've come to enjoy being with. God. Hopefully i don't cry when i leave.

Of settling

Listening to: Bad day
Daniel powter

Gave a impromtu mini tour to angel, and my workarea was an attraction on the way to dinner.

His expression was one of shock- He couldn't believe i had been at the same place for so long without leaving any sign of "me" on my desk. No pictures, no cutesy girly identifiers ( i'm not that kind of girl), no mess.. in short- Nothing. Of course i had the usual trays and assorted papers in a stack, but i had left no mark; if not for my handwriting on an article lying around, he would never guessed it was mine.

"No personality", i retorted.

When i first moved into my little area by the window, i had a gazillion things i wanted to do to pretty up the area. They never came to fruition. I was musing a little, and it's true that it takes a long time for me to want to personalize anything. Of course i love an area that i can call mine, and my privacy is tantamount to sacred , but I always feel like i'm passing by, that soon the urge to move will strike and less belongings will make it easier to relocate. Also, the more things you display, the more people will be able to analyse you. What? Call me anal, but it's true.

The same goes for everything else. I know once i start to feel at home, soon everything will be one big mess, and the cleaning up will be shite.

Sometimes it's easier to compartmentalise. I'm just a lazy emotional vagabond :)

Pringles when you need a salt boost

The anticipation of the trip ahead when the plane takes off

Being able to sit in a car in p.j's and being bought whatever i need. Just sit and jaga the music dial, princess.

Listening to palm leaves rustling on a cool night along the shores.

Being hugged when you least expect it.

Making a baby smile

simply sleeping with that someone you trust and know

Of moments simple

these are the ones i like best

Of stolen laughter

My mind is in the gutter. What would you think if you heard these?

*1*
Rushing along the corridoor one morning, i spotted J with a cabinet which had been overturned. I called out to him with greeting and asked him what he was doing. Brandishing a screwdriver, he innocently replied," I'm screwing! Very tiring. "

*2*
Overheard from the corridoor while with a subject. Our lab tech was talking loudly to one of the nurses in the room while i was with a subject. She was supposed to take someone's blood.
" Aye, Mr I is waiting in the room waiting for you to suck him!"
Crude, but sometimes when you're stressed, small things set you off.

*3*
A reply to me while offering someone a male friend a seat. This time i had my mind dumped back in the gutter. Not my fault.
"No thanks, i think best standing up"
I must have had a pretty spaced out look on my face because he added the next line worriedly.
"Erm, no pun intended ok?"

Of heroes and shrews

Listening to: Mariah Carey
We belong together

Last week spawned a whole new chapter in humiliation, workwise.

The investigator for my two studies is a physician who is reknowned for his curtness, directness and impatience. If you have have something to say to him, you damned well better get your rationale and facts right, BEFORE you go to him with issues. Mincing around with words simply isn't his style. Let's call him baby blues, because he has one of the most penetrating looks i have seen. I've never been afraid of him, and i've even felt a little affinity with him strangely. I sense a softening in him whenever he talks to me, and he has never snapped at me, or spoken a harsh word. Thank god for small mercies in my unit, i certainly need them. He's always running around, finding him in the office is like a treasure hunt. I've even resorted to waiting outside the loo on a tip from a patient. He was surprised, yes, but a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do.

In one of my routine visits to hunt him down for documentation issues, i was asked to bring with me a question pertaining to one of my subjects. To cut a long story short, he said he would get back to me on the issue. He also asked whose question it was and i told him that it was a collective decision formed by the team after discussion. When asked what i thought of the question, i shrugged and said that as this was my first study, if i received advice which was better than my own decisions i would consider them. To my flushingly great chargrin, my team leader came to me in the afternoon. B.blues had stalked to her desk after my visit to him (deigning to come into our staff office) and demanded to have a talk with her.

Apparently he guessed, correctly, that my earlier question to him had come from her. Frustrated because he thought he had been through the same issues with her, he had come to 'straighten out a few issues'. He told her off, telling her that as protocol leader i should be given more leeway in my work and not have to be a messenger for her.

To his credit, he's observant and nothing if not sharp. Managment style is overbearing, to say the least. But going behind my back and telling her this? Even if i needed a knight, i'd not find one in my work place. Torn between anger and remembering he was trying to be nice, i decided not to say anything to him just yet.

That's not the worst bit. Abovementioned team leader (TL) sent off a scathing mail to him, cc'ing it to his manager and my big boss. In it she stated that he was unreasonable to his staff among other things. My name was in it.

What the hell is wrong with these people? Are they not capable of settling grudges and talking to each other in a civil and mature manner? For fuck's sake.

i'm so bloody mortified. For the rest of the week i couldn't bring myself to meet his eyes. He probably thinks im an ungrateful bitch. Spoke to him today, i felt like he wanted to ask me what the mail was about, but sher was around, and he settled for a work conversation instead. I looked into his eyes, and there was nothing there except a tiredness and tightness around his eyes.

Screw managment. Screw emotional women bosses and screw men who think they have to have heroes!

Of floozies.

I had a hunch this would happen. Went to work at 7.30am only to find i have the day off. So that's from the east to Buona Vista, and from the bloody hospital to the east again. I'd map it out but Picassa/Hello does't seem to want to play with me today.

Get with it, faith, get with the damn program already.

On the other hand a little fun when the rest are working wouldn't be remiss :)

Of surprises.

Listening to: Carnaval
lisa ono

I love, love surprises. Me and the rest of the population of women. We're female like that. Occasionally though, i get a surprise that makes my toes curl, and the rest of me want to hurl.

I noticed a rather traumatised envelope on the dining room table the other day. After eyeballing it, i decide to pick it up, and give it a more thorough visual molest. Turning the envelope over to the front after staring at tattered backing, i noted the american stamps, and after a long silent moment, my name. That wasn't the most interesting bit though. The year the postal services had stamped on the letter? 1997.

I felt terrible. The letter had come, albeit a little late, but it had. And i had doubted. The letter was written in touching earnestness, asking me to do adolescentish things. Write back. Think of him. Wait for him. Did i want the pictures? Do i have a boy friend? I placed a hand on my churning tum and closed my eyes to picture the gangly writer. Earnest.

Damn. This is a bit much. And what happened to delay it's arrival so? Still. Courtesy demands a reply. Perhaps when im 32 i'll get a reply.

i miss earnestness.

Of love of simplicity

Listening to: World
new order

While deciding whether to skewer fish or rip shrimp, i turned to look at what fi had pointed out. What i saw made me smile, and was alot more notice worthy than the saddam look alike i had leered (not the right word, but we'll move on) at a table behind. To my left was a table with 3 rather young children, one still in a high chair. In between telling the oldest to shuddup, and the others to eat up, the parents were talking to each other in a language all their own. Under the table, where no one should have noticed, a little mutual.. footsie was taking place.

I smiled. Hope for all the jaded lovers after all.

Of depths.

Listening to: the special two
missy higgins

I'm singing in the rain,
Just singing in the rain,
What a glorious feeling I know.

Glorious rain, the sweetness of the sound of cascading drops, pelting down hard on my windows. I'm always happy when it pours. Even an overcast sky turns a weekday a holiday. I've always had a fascination with water; large expanses of seas, small reflections on puddles. It's always good. I never wear mascara anyway, and i'm not averse to running through the rain. I never did maintain a glamorous image anyway.

One of my first memories.. I must have been 3 or 4. I learnt how to swim before i hit kindergarten. The father had left me on the steps of the adult pool to get a little something something. Being the fool girl that i was and still am, i decided to take a little unassisted walk into the cool blue of the pool. A baby step at a time, i walked. Slowly because of my stubby legs (some things never change), calmly because i was too young to panic even when my nose was below the water; I continued to the pool floor, and i remember.. I remember.. looking around at everyone's legs, eyes wide. I felt no distress at all. In my naviete, i breathed in. I wasn't in the slightest discomfort. There was a feeling of immense calm, the muffled gurgles of distorted sounds you get when your ears are in the water, a warm feeling of being cloaked in.. comfort. The next thing i remember was being hauled up by my arm painfully, and staring at my dad in confusion, wondering why he was so flustered. I'm pretty sure it didn't last for more than a minute, but it felt like a private eternity of deja vu.

Another memory. In a living room. No parents, siblings in church, hormones in a tizzy(some things never change), whispers amid my manic giggles.. Our warped conversation, of my dares and your promises.. Into the garden we walked barefooted and with my hand in yours, a slight drizzle adding to my goose pimples. To the pool we ran, looking out for the neighbours over their high wall. Once again i was carried down the steps, as in my toddlerhood. I swear i never felt cold even as the sodden cloth of my clothes left me, all wrapped up in the shine of your eyes as i was. I was drawing a parallel even as you moved nearer to me. This time i wasn't just submerged in the deep waters of a pool, but so much more.

To draw parallels in life from even the most basic and mundane happenstance. Whether 23 or 6 years ago, they strike at the most awkward and incongruous of times. Someone mentioned he was a karang guni of belongings. I guess that would make me an equally avid collector, but of memories.

How long will this written memory last online? Will someone stumble upon it when i've all but forgotten this blog? Will whatever inadequate read i've provided here spark off someone else's memories? An unwritten, unquantified meme.

Carl jung maintained that all consciousness and symbology is a collective one. Is it possible that we all feed off the exact same stream of emotions, the same niagara's of bliss, the same pale dredges from the deep?

When i think about this, i don't feel quite so much like a legal alien anymore.

Of expectations, great.. and small.

Listening to: Sympathethique
Costes la suite

Had to pop into office today for another subject, and had a little talk with him while we were waiting for his bloods to fill the little vacuum tubes that were nicely arrayed on my tray.
There, in the semi-sterile environment, with dimmed lights and steady hum of the machinery for backdrop, we talked of his wives, girlfriends and his present post of a big honcho for an automobile bigwig company.

"It's all about managing your expectations and priorities. Never settle, never assume".

His words, although simple, have been with me since this afternoon. I've maintained that as my own private motto for a large bit of my life. A simple thing to remember, but never easy to stomach. I've practiced it to such an extent, that it's now first nature for me to compartmentalise. We discuss, i take. A transaction, nothing more, nothing less. I'll only take something, anything, if it's been shaken into me; in the rare instances that i've given in, and asked.. when it was withheld from me i felt doubly ashamed. And now- i never make the same mistake. Flayed with the embarrassment of seeming weak, who ever said that negative reinforcement didn't make one learn was asexual as well as a frigid academic.

So now, sans expectations on others, and too many on myself, i stumble along. Raising my eyes to look at that passer by might be my undoing, and so i lower them again to concentrate on the road most travelled.

Don't expect. Don't assume.

Never want.

Of unease.

Listening to: Walking with a ghost
tegan and sara

I can't put my finger on it.

Made arrangements for the scope today. I think.. company is not needed. It's not that important and fussing over small things annoy the hell out of me. Sorry, make that irritate the Fuck out of me. Snapped at the mother for reminding me to make the appts. If she knew i had to do the scope, she'd flip, and i don't feel like discussing this with her.

What worries me the most- My lethargy. It worries me because unlike anything else, this is tangible, and can be felt, can be observed. Im so tired by the end of a work day. My head spins after a fast walk. I realise that no matter how much i sleep during the day, i can still rest at night. Easily.

So terribly tired. Tired of hearing of all the things people go through. Tired of hearing them talk of their own personal hell. What kind of place is this, that has mostly broken people walking around?