Stuck In The Middle With You

"I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair, and I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs, clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you!"

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Conjunctivitis, Because Every Blink Fucking Hurts

Imagine a shard of glass craving down your eyeballs,

then multiple that by 10 times per minute.

Of course, those who contracted conjunctivitis react differently to it. Some choose to look at it in a positive spin, saying to themselves: Hey, at least I get some days off work!

But all I thought was… wtf… you only start screwing up my eyeballs on a Friday night?!

Couldn’t you have the decency to start on Monday, you little microscopic bastards?!

Like in the middle of crunch time at the office?! Let all my co-workers see me spasm in painful agony, with tainted tears flying at every direction.

I’m sure I’ll like get a week’s worth of MC. Nothing like dramatizing an infectious disease in front of your bosses to really want them to get you off work.

Needless to say, there goes a perfectly good weekend. Missed Pei Ru’s birthday party, movie outings, a tour of the new Monash campus and quality fraging time down at the ole café.

Of course, I was devastated when I realized that the virus wasn’t an onset of some really cool super power...

Like x-ray vision… yeah, I could see how that could come in handy.

Anyway, I was just reading a book after a college reunion dinner on Friday night when all of the sudden, I felt this prick in my left eye. I thought it was just dust or something so I tried to wash it out.

Obviously, it didn’t work so instead of worrying about it, I thought I’ll just sleep it off.

Woke up the next morning feeling absolutely terrible.

What was truly sickening was that it was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, and the sunlight kept my eyes tearing.

I could hardly keep my eyes open to walk, let alone drive… which I tried to do because David and me were planning to head down to the new Monash campus to hand in our graduation ceremony’s conformation forms (Graduation! Yea!).

Well, after picking up Dave, I thought I’ll just swing on by the nearest pharmacy to get some Eye Mo before heading down to Sunway, seeing how it miraculously works all the time for people on TV.

But deep down, I knew the bitter truth.

Janie’s entire school librarian corp had conjunctivitis and she had stayed home for the better part of the past week. Then my grandma caught it too.

I guess it is like some viral “pass-the-parcel” game.

At this point, my pinkish eyes were a leaking tap and I could only see about a couple of meters ahead before my vision starts to water out.

And David really insisted I go see a doctor instead of using my self-proclaimed “ultra-human perception and 1337 reaction time” to drive us safely to Monash.

Well, at least I am putting my company’s health benefits to good use. Just flash my medical card to any participating panel clinics and fill up a short form and you’re good to go.

Bothersome hassle of actually paying for medical services? Gone!

So yeah, found out I still could watch TV.

If I look to the left and blink slowly, it doesn’t hurt!

It took awhile to get use to blinking like an… idiot… but hey, at least I got to watch tons of weaponry documentaries, music videos, cartoons and back-to-back episodes of Ghost Whisperer.

Jennifer Love Hewitt = yummy!

Oh, I did get Monday off though. Which eliminates my usual Monday blues for the week… unfortunately, it doesn’t cure my Tuesday blues, Wednesday blues, Thurs… … …

"YOU’RE a trophy wife? What contest in hell did I win?"
- Peter Boyle (1935 - 2006) -

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Now Armed with a Tie and a Office Shirt

What is the definition of lucky?

Is it getting what you specifically want, or stumbling into things that you didn’t want in the first place but, after thinking about it, needed?

I guess that pretty sums up what had happen to me since my last entry, oh-so many months ago.

I’ve dropped the freelancer work culture aspirations and ended up in a corporate monkey suit.

Well, it doesn’t sound that bad, really. There are after all the undeniable perks such as a stable (and very sweet I might add!) income$$$ and the experienced gained from working at a multinational company.

In case you didn’t know, I’ve ended up working with DKSH (Kneel before the awful might of the Fantree!).

We are a trading house, dealing with goods such as condoms all the way to pet food. We distribute M&Ms, Ovaltine, Pedigree, Whiskas, Scholl Shoes, Brand’s Essence of Chicken, Mattel Toys, Durex, Mamy Poko, Sofy, Gallo Wines, Timex watches, Casio digital cameras, raw chemicals and a shitload of other stuff.

We are basically the largest and the big daddy of the distribution industry. However, being the middle man, we are constantly being torn into two halves by the agencies we represent and the global key buyers such as Giant/Carrefour/Tesco.

Being a management trainee, my job is to… well, learn. A one-year educational tour of the various departments that makes up the company.

Can’t say that being in a sales field was what I had in mind as a career choice, but it’s a prim and proper, 5-days a week, 9-5 job.

We will see how it goes then.

“Fall down seven, get up eight.”
- Old Japanese saying -