About Every Little Thing » Life

Yes, I’ve Got the Letter

Lis — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:54:59 +0000

I’ve officially reached thirty years of age. I know it’s difficult to tell from my childlike countenance but ’tis true. In Singapore, all of us are issued with a national registration identity card (or NRIC). When we reach thirty years of age, we’ll receive a very official-looking letter with official-looking complicated instructions such as “fold and tear along the perforated line”. Basically, this letter tells us to haul our arses somewhere and have our NRIC replaced (presumably because we look very different at age thirty compared to age fifteen when the NRIC is first issued). So among me mates, instead of going “OMG I’m effing THIRTY!”, we’ve taken to saying “OMG I’ve got the effing LETTER!”.

And yes, I’ve received the effing letter.

I’ll also like to thank you nice folks out there for the lovely birthday greetings. To fellow stick chick Laura for the cute birthday toy and Wolf for the handsome but very spiky drawing of himself, I LOVE THEM! To Deb, Ben, Greg, Kelly, and Francis, thank you for the haikus! Last but not least, to feefifoto, Claire, Nick, Mel, Kellypea, Zhu, Rouvanne, Sudiegirl and Shanti, thanks for the awesome birthday wishes!

I love you all. That is all.

Valentine’s Day with Johnny Depp

Lis — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:33:31 +0000

Last year, the Office Creep tried to ask me out. He didn’t try this year, which is just as well, I’m rapidly running out of rejection lines. A girlfriend and I decided we’d spend the evening with Johnny singing to us.

I’ve been nursing a cold the past couple of days and thought I’d be well enough to brave the crowds of lovey dovey couples. Obviously, my body had other plans. Just before I left the house, Mr. Migraine decided to come-a-knocking with flowers and candy. This didn’t bode well for the evening, but we’ve already bought our tickets so I decided to put on my brave face and went ahead with our plans.

Since it’s Valentine’s Day, there were couples everywhere. Couples with their arms around each other, couples who looked like siamese twins the way they seemed to be permanently attached to each other’s hip, couples playing tonsil hockey in the middle of the damn path, and couples taking their own sweet time strolling (again) smack in the middle of the damn path. Really, people, I don’t fucking care if you want to walk like time is travelling backwards while being glued to each other, but at least have the decency to keep to the side and DON’T BLOCK MY DAMN WAY especially when I’m going to be late. Geezus. Did I mention migraines make me grumpy?

Anyway, I made it to the movie in time. Sweeney Todd was marvellously macabre (mmm pussies in pies) and left me craving for a meat pie (definitely not the intended reaction to the movie). After the show, we descended upon one of the cafes to fill our tummies (savoury meat pies!) and engage in one of our favourite pastimes: people watching. We spotted some of these exhibits:

Exhibit A: Couples who dressed alike. I don’t know what is it about Valentine’s Day that makes otherwise sane couples think this is possibly a good idea. It’s not, okay? It’s not cute and Has No Speshul Meaning. You just look dumb, okay?

Exhibit B: Guys carrying their dates’ handbags. I’m not talking about heavy shopping bags. I’m talking about dainty, little handbags. Unless the girls have TWO broken arms, I don’t see any reason why they can’t carry their own fucking handbags.

Exhibit C.1: Girls with underwear showing through their clothes. We saw this really pretty girl at the cafe. She was wearing this fashionably short, egg yellow dress that was slightly translucent. When she stood up and walked past us, we could see she was wearing turquoise underwear, both bra and panties were a matching set. Seriously? The key to being a fabulous fashionista is to invest in a fucking full length mirror and good lighting. Unless that look was deliberate, in which case, you FAIL at fashion.

Exhibit C.2: Girls with underwear showing through their clothes. There was this other hot chick with really long, sleek hair in this hot little leopard’s print halter dress. Then the wind blew and we could see bra straps that were previously hidden under her hair. For fuck’s sake, WHY?

Did I mention migraines make me grumpy? So how was your Valentine’s Day?

Happy 50th Anniversary, Lego

Lis — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:00:14 +0000

Thanks to Google, I’m sure many of you know by now that it’s Lego’s 50th anniversary. Lego’s seriously the greatest toy ever made. Sure, I’ve played with the usual Barbie dolls and stuff, but Lego remains my greatest love. It brings back fond memories of lazy afternoons spent building the next Playboy mansion while my kid brother sits quietly in a corner, busy trapping ants with Lego windows.

What do you mean my brother’s a freak?

He wasn’t a cruel boy or anything like that. Hell, he even made small paper coffins for the tiny ants after they’re done pining for the fjords and joined the choir invisible. He had respect for those ants. Oh yes, he did.

What do you mean my brother’s still a freak?

Anyhow, it was common to have our living room looked like we forgot to pick up our toys with the Lego windows strewn carelessly around. In actual fact, the Lego windows were carefully placed ant traps.

Of course, he doesn’t do that anymore. He’s discovered girls.

And then there’re these clips that combined my two biggest loves, Lego and Monty Python:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s just a flesh wound!

Click here to view the embedded video.

La La La La La

Telemarketers is Love

Lis — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:40:32 +0000

I love telemarketers.

No, seriously, I do. Picture this. It’s a slow day at the office and you’re bored out of your freakin’ mind. You’ve just seen an episode of The Office last night and you’re dying to try one of Jim’s pranks. You eye the colleague sitting next to you, you know, the one with the annoying laugh and even worse taste in music. You contemplate playing the prank on her but you’re afraid she’ll get mad and make good on her threat to report you to HR or worse, replace the Star Wars collectibles on your cubicle wall with pictures of David Hasselhoff. You’ll end up eating lunch alone for months, if not years.

It’s a tough decision but you decide to stay bored instead. As you make your 2893728th paper aeroplane, your phone rings. It’s a telemarketer. Your eyes light up. You haven’t had one of those for lunch for quite a while. You’re hungry. The telemarketer’s some guy from a fitness centre. As per Telemarketing 101, he sounds incredibly perky.

Fitness Centre Guy: Hi! I’m calling from xxx fitness centre! We’re having a promotion with abc bank, efg bank and xyz bank! You’re invited to enjoy a free session with a personal trainer blahblahboringshitblahblah! When would you like to come pick up your membership card?
Me: How did you get my number?
FCG: My marketing department gave me a list of numbers blahblahboringexplanationblahblah!
Me: I don’t want it.
FCG: Sorry?
Me: I’m not interested.
FCG: Aren’t you concerned about your health and fitness? It’s a good chance for you to … blahblahzzzzblahblah!
Me: Not really. I plan to be dead by 35.
FCG: …
Me: *hangs up*

Stick Chick 1: Telemarketer 0

Stop the Bleeding

Lis — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:27:00 +0000

When I was a kid, I used to do sleepovers at my aunt’s. She has two kids – my boy cousin and my girl cousin. My cousins and I were quite close in age so we were pretty much each other’s play mates when we were little. The girl cousin (to protect her identity, we’ll call her Sue even though her name is Danielle), Sue, is a few days younger than me and the boy cousin (same deal, we’ll call him Tom even though the name’s Edmund), Tom, is one year younger than Sue and me.

Sue and I were at that age where we found boys icky so we never wanted to play with Tom. Plus, he was the world’s biggest crybaby. Those Korean drama producers should hire him to act in their dramas (if you’ve ever watched any Korean dramas, you’ll know everyone cries in the damn shows) since he cried all the freakin’ time. Take away his toy cars? Cry. Feed him juice? Cry. Make him take a shower? Cry. Who the hell wanted to play with a puddle of tears? Certainly not us.

One day, Sue and I were minding our own business and plotting world domination with our Barbie dolls. Tom was probably bored because we didn’t want to play with him so he went to rummage through the bathroom cabinets. He emerged moments later clutching a packet of something. Apparently, he had found my aunt’s stash of sanitary napkins. Obviously at that young age, he had no idea what the hell the napkins were so he took them to my aunt who told him they were used to “stop bleeding” and to “put the damn things back where he found them”. That was that, or so we thought.

Do you see where this is going?

A few weekends later, I was there again for a sleepover. I don’t remember what Sue and I were doing, probably thinking of pranks to play on poor crybaby Tom. We heard a small thud followed by the sound of running feet. After a couple of minutes, we saw Tom running to my aunt with something white stuck to his forehead. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, dear Tom had sustained a tiny cut which had been bleeding, and to “stop the bleeding”, he stuck a sanitary napkin to his forehead with scotch tape. Clearly, he hadn’t discovered the adhesive qualities of the back of the pad. The expression on my aunt’s face when she saw him was as Mastercard put it, priceless. I think she couldn’t decide whether to yell at him or laugh. Of course, Sue and I didn’t realise what’s so funny about the whole damn thing till a few years later when we started to bleed ourselves (TMI! I know!). This is one story that’s definitely getting told when Tom gets married. Heh heh heh.

Have you had similar embarrassing experiences? Perhaps you thought a condom was a balloon and tried to blow one? Or a tampon was used to stop nose bleeds? Share them in the comments? If you’re too embarrassed, you can always use the same old “it happened to my friend” method but we’ll all know it happened to you anyway. Even better, why not post about it in your blog and let me know? If there’re enough stories, I’ll put up a post with links to them and share them with the whole intarweb. I mean, who doesn’t love an embarrassing story, right? Right?

Ushering in 2008 with my hand

Lis — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:33:00 +0000

Wolf’s post about his, uhm, unfriendly fingers reminded me of something I used to do when I was a kid. Back when I was still in school, my friends and I used to draw faces on our hands and have meaningful conversations with each other’s hands all the time. By meaningful, I meant topics like “Mrs XXX is a total bitch” or ” I want to marry Brett Anderson when I grow up!” etc.. Well hey, I was a convent girl and convent girls are bored all the freakin’ time. In any case, I thought I’ll reproduce the faces for a trip down memory lane.

Introducing Miss Blinky!

This is Miss Blinky when she’s sort of grimacing.

Here, Miss Blinky is having an… I mean making an “O” face.

Happy New Year, everyone!

PS: I might be doing some house cleaning on the labels this week. If you’re reading this blog through a reader and don’t want to be flooded with old posts, you might want to enable the “ignore updated posts” option. If you don’t have that option, well, that’s too bad.

Weddings and Ghosts

Lis — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:32:00 +0000

The beginning of September saw the end of the month of the Hungry Ghost Festival. The Chinese believe that during this period of time, there’s sort of a prison break, or rather a hell break, and all the ghosts are let loose on earth to eat your food, drink your milkshakes and watch your TV. The Chinese generally consider it a Bad Thing to hold a wedding during this time. I guess they’re afraid the ghosts will crash the party and drink all their beer. So when the seventh lunar month ended, the weddings returned with a vengeance and that’s partly what I’ve been busy with.

I’m not the biggest fan of weddings mainly because I hate making small talk with strangers. And then there’s the “OMG you’re still single let me fix you up with my husband’s brother’s cousin-in-law’s daughter’s monkey! He’s still single too! He cooks! He cleans! And he shits rainbows!” No kidding. Maybe you should consider asking him to join the circus.

I was at yet another wedding dinner the other night and was seated next to a nice, friendly guy who was busy trying to save my soul. After the business of introductions (how do you do, I’m Nice Guy and I’m an engineer, so what do you do?) has been concluded, he plunged into soul-saving in earnest.

Nice Guy: So do you believe in Jesus?
Me: Is that the dude who turned water into wine?
Nice Guy: Yes, among other miracles.
Me: He must be pretty popular at parties.

I’ll save you from the details of the rest of the conversation as it’s mostly spreading-the-gospel stuff. We did have an interesting time debating Christian doctrine. Three quarters into the dinner, the wine ran out and we were a little sloshed by then.

Me: Dude, I think it’ll be a good idea for your Jesus friend to crash this dinner now.
Nice Guy: Totally.

Sadly, the answer to that prayer was no. He didn’t turn up and we remained thirsty.

A Day in the Life of Lis

Lis — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:09:00 +0000

Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, upon hearing my reply, they always say something like “oh how fun is that! I bet you’ve such an exciting life”. I can hear all of you going “what the hell does she work as? Professional sky diver? Mafia chick? Bank employee?” For the purpose of this post, let’s just say I’m a corporate drone, cos’ as you know, if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.

So what better way to show you how exciting my life is than in the form of stick men drawings? I present to you A Day in the Life of Lis.

A Day in the Life of Lis
It’s 9a.m. and I’m at my desk typing away excitingly. 1001 emails to reply. This will be an exciting day indeed.

Now it’s 1p.m. and it’s way too exciting to leave my desk (300 emails down, 701 more to go) so I’m eating my exciting McDonalds lunch here.

Fast forward to 4p.m. and it’s time for an exciting tea break at my desk. Mmm, a steaming mug of English Breakfast tea with some Tim Tams. How exciting!

After 12 hours of excitement, I’m ready to call it a day at 9p.m. and head for home.

Dinner and a bath later, it’s 12a.m. and I decide to have one last dose of excitement before going to bed. That’s right, I decide to catch up on all your blog posts.

And thus concludes this week’s exciting episode on A Day in the Life of Lis. Have an exciting weekend!

Any similarities between what my office and my home looked like were purely coincidental.

Harry Potter and the Deadly Dentist

Lis — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 16:07:00 +0000

I must be a sadist. Why else would I schedule regular half yearly check ups with the dentist? In any case, I was due for one a couple days ago so I decided to be brave and paid a visit to my dentist.

At the clinic, the receptionist told me I had to wait quite a bit because the patient before me was having some problems with her teeth (don’t we all?). Damn, what was I going to do to amuse myself while waiting? Just when I was having to make a tough decision between folding paper aeroplanes out of the magazines strewn across the coffee table and annoying the receptionist by asking her every five minutes how long did I still have to wait, this kid came in with his mum. This was just as well since I was sure annoying the receptionist would have dire consequences. She’d probably make me wait even longer, or worse, change the waiting room’s TV channel to something exciting like Days of our Lives.

Anyway, the kid? Well, he was what Harry Potter would look like if he was Chinese and about six years old, with a Transformers toy (Optimus Prime!) in his hand instead of an eleven inch holly and phoenix feather wand (no, I’m not a hardcore Harry Potter fan, why do you ask?). His mum went to the receptionist and Harry Potter sat next to me. After a while, the mum came over and told him to be good while she went to the store next door to buy something. I was bored so I thought, what the heck, and started talking to him.

“Are you Harry Potter?”

He grinned at me and shook his head. That’s when I realised Harry Potter here had lost his two front teeth. Maybe Voldermort ate them for breakfast.

“What are you in for?”

Hang on, that sounded like a jail cell conversation. The kid opened his mouth and started tugging at a tooth with his fingers. The tooth was shaky. Here for another tooth extraction, I guess. Should have just asked Voldermort to have it for supper or something.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

He shook his head and went back to his toy. Man, Harry Potter sure liked his Transformers.

“That’s good. You’re not supposed to talk to strangers anyway, no matter how pretty they are.”

Hee.

Just then, I heard my name being called. As I walked into the torture chamber, I contemplated screaming my head off while in the chair just to scare the kid. Nah, of course I didn’t do it. What did you think I was, a sadist? No, don’t answer that.

No Such Thing As a Free Lunch

Lis — Mon, 14 May 2007 06:54:00 +0000

Got a call from one of those “you’ve won a gazillion dollars in a lucky draw you’ve never heard of !!!eleventyone!!” timeshare scammers the other day.

Timeshare Scammer: Hello, We’re calling from Timeshare Scammers Limited* and wish to inform you that you’ve been selected to receive a free gift worth $4,000.
Me: Ok.
TS: The gift includes a 8-day Thailand hotel stay, spa vouchers blahblahblah.
Me: Ok.
TS: We’re a newly set up company blahblah promote our new packages blahblah NATAS blahblahblah.
Me: Ok.
TS: Just to reassure you, we’re not one of those timeshare companies. This gift is offered to you with no strings attached.
Me: Ok.
TS: You’ll not need to purchase anything before receiving the gift.
Me: Ok
TS: At the same time, we’ll like to do a presentation with you to promote our new packages. The presentation will take about an hour. Will you be available at 2pm tomorrow?
Me: Ok.
TS: Our office is located at blahblahblah. By the way, I’m Angeline**. Please ask for me at the reception blahblahblah.
Me: Ok.
TS: We’ve reserved the gift for you so please ensure that you turn up tomorrow or we’ll have to do some explaining to our sponsors.
Me: Ok.
TS: In case you get lost or you’ve further enquiries, our hotline number is 6xxxxxxx.
Me: Ok.
TS: Now I’ll need to pass the phone over to my supervisor so that he knows I’m doing my job.
Me: Ok.
Timeshare Scammer’s Supervisor: Hi, I’m Angeline’s supervisor, Michael**. Has she explained everything to you?
Me: Ok.
TSS: So you’ll be here at 2pm tomorrow to collect your gift?
Me: Ok.
TSS: As it’s Angeline’s off day tomorrow, she’ll be coming back specially to conduct the presentation for you. Please make sure you come.
Me: Ok.
TSS: *Repeats address and hotline number*
Me: Ok.
TSS: Can we have your name so we can reserve the gift for you?
Me: No speak English.
TSS: …
Me: *Hangs up*

*Name changed because I can’t remember jack shit.
**Names may have been changed by the guilty to protect their sorry asses.