“your pseudo battle with the drinks aunty is turning farcical” ~ The Other Half

After ignoring me for about 2 years while I worked in The Firm, the pantry aunty decided out of the blue one day that she shall wash and fill my cup and bottle every day as she does for all the other lawyers on the floor.

That’s really nice, except that she picks up my cup and bottle at about 9am and doesn’t come back with it till close to 12 noon, just round the time I am about to die from thirst.

So I should just get my own water and wash my own cup, right?

But then I can’t!! Because when I do and if I am not at my desk when she comes round [which is really often since I would have either run off to Court, be in my boss’s room or haven’t got to work yet], she’d still pick up my cup and bottle and only return it to me at noon anyway. And I can’t just go up to her and tell her that I don’t want her picking up my water and cup anymore. She might think that I am trying to break up with her and take it personally and stop emptying my trash or something. As it is, she doesn’t empty my trash everyday [because she would come round in the evenings, look in my bin, and cursorily decide on some days that it’s not worth her time to empty it] and as a result I have just killed a cockroach nymph on my desk last week. She also doesn’t vacuum my office all the time too. Sometimes when she comes round with the vacuum during lunch and I am in my office, she just skips my room. When I had a granola disaster in my room a few months back and begged her to vacuum, she told me she would only do it at lunch but didn’t so I picked up all the granola off the floor with my hands through the course of the day.

So I decided that I should bring my own drinks in so that I won’t die from thirst in the mornings if I am not going to Court, which worked out all right for a while.

Then one day while I was sitting in my desk and she came round to return the cups and bottles, she gave me the wrong cup. After about 5 years of me working here and owning the same cup.

One off incident, right?

And then it happened three more times.

Today, she returned my cup to me while I was seated at my desk. It is the correct cup, except that she didn’t tell me that she had somehow accidentally chipped my cup. I only found out when I tried to drink out of it.

No big deal, I thought. I’d just go and buy a new cup during lunch.

Except that if she can return the wrong cup to me on some days even after close to 6 years of me working here, there is a very significant possibility that she’d be so utterly confused if I were to procure a new cup. Her cosmic balance will be upset or something and then she might have a meltdown and throw her trolley full of cups and bottles at me or something. I have no desire to round the whole 24th floor peering into all the lawyers’ rooms to find my [new] cup.

Argh.

ETA at 3:13pm – I have failed to buy a new cup over lunch in spite of scouring the area for one, because, according to School Marm, “Only Christians drink water.” How sad is my life? On our way back from lunch, I remarked that I should just go home tonight and ask my mother for one because mothers always have plenty of these things lying around. And then it occurred to us that our daughters might have this very same conversation about us 20 years from now. :S

one of those days

…when you decide that it’s better for the general public that you stay in your office and clear work and not talk to anyone since everyone you’ve ever spoken to since the day started had invariably pissed you off in some way or other, to the point where someone comes into your room and asks “hey did I leave my wallet here just now?” and the immediate reply you thought of was “no, but did you leave your brains in your wallet and misplaced them both together?”

And I found out today that one of Romanian’s national dishes is something called Meech.

Time to go home before I lose my marbles permanently, methinks.

Problem is that I have problems getting out of my seat because The Lion has been snuggling against my right sciatic nerve all day and it really hurts to walk right now.

How tragic is my life.

exasperation and arrogance

Various things I have said to various people over the course of today…

“My face is not synonymous with [The Firm] or [The Buddha]! I certainly in no way resemble [The Buddha]! Last I recalled, even when heavily pregnant, I was only about half the size of [The Buddha]! Just because you have a matter with [The Firm] and / or [The Buddha] doesn’t naturally mean that you call me and ask me about it!!!”

“When I was growing up, I was the only HY I knew. Thereafter, all of these other HYs sprouted up all over the place. There are 2 in this office and if you realise, they are all cheap replicates. There is only one of me. If you want to test that, why don’t you hire her and then I quit my job and we see whether she do my job?”

*

I was just told before I left work today that apparently a whole bunch of people at work hate my guts.

Maybe, just maybe, a couple of years ago I would have cared and got all emo and angsty.

But then, truth be told, I wasn’t entirely surprised when I heard. Not that I was working hard to endear myself to people anyway. In fact, I had written some of those very same people off because they were either (a) too uninterested (b) have absolutely no pride in their work (c) doesn’t try hard enough (d) displayed tendencies of being completely irresponsible / unaccountable for work (e) all of the above.

Maybe this is all part of growing up, accepting that there is such a thing as senseless mob mentality, accepting that the world isn’t expected to see your point of view.

Oh well. No one particularly liked Dominique Francon, or Howard Roark, or Dagny Taggart, or Hank Rearden. And these are some of my favourite protagonists.

At the end of the day, it is really only the music that matters.

The person who told me about this was someone whose opinion matters to me, who thought that I should know for my well being. As such, I have decided to spend some time reflecting on it and I think I have just spent the requisite amount of time on a non-issue.

Time to get back to knitting my receiving blanket for The Coming Of The Big Cat. Heh.

blip

The appeal for this matter will go on tomorrow morning.

Does that explain why I feel so crap right now?

unleavened bread out of a tube of forgotten durian kueh

What you need:

A tube of durian kueh brought over by a neighbour from Malaysia to thank us for picking up her newspapers over the weekend she was away, preferably about 120g.

Two adults, both of whom do not like durian kueh, and a Peanut who is far too small to be eating a whole tube of sweet durian kueh on her own.

An oven, and a female with an overactive imagination labouring under the belief that she can make anything work with a little bit of thinking out of the box.

1 cup of plain flour, 1/2 cup of self raising flour, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 1/4 cup of brown sugar mixed together in a metal bowl.

Said durian kueh, 125g of butter and 1/2 cup of water melted together in a saucepan then added to the flour mixture into a dough.

A loaf tin lined with baking paper to place said dough, baked in an oven heated up to 180 degrees over 20 minutes or so, then turned off with the bread still in it for another 10 minutes or so.

And then we have breakfast fit for a king! Well, more or less…The bread is moist and dense, slightly cake-ish with a nice whiff of durian. Both The Other Half and the Peanut thought it was good.

Serve with a dusting of powdered sugar on the top if you so wish.

a small update

I suddenly have 2 trainees and one temp staff.

It’s bizarre how I go from not having any help at all to having a lot of help. Over the last couple of weeks, I have people constantly coming into my room asking me questions and find myself explaining stuff to people I didn’t think I would one day have to explain to people, like the difference between lump sum cost of repairs and part-by-part cost of repairs, the objective of pleadings, the aim of medical re-examinations, the doctrine of stare decisis, how to format a letter onto the letterhead, when is something without prejudice…stuff I haven’t even thought about in years because they were so deeply ingrained in the work that I do everyday that they have become a sort of second nature to me.

It’s really quite surreal and bewildering.

At the same time, I suppose it is a good thing to be reminded of the little bits of mortar that holds the bricks up together once in a while. I remember my piano teacher telling me once about how you only become a better pianist when you start teaching other people. It’s a bit like that. The purpose and function of everything suddenly makes much more sense and significance to me as I struggle to find the words to help someone else make sense of the jungle of jargon that is my work.

But then, no amount of extra help is going to dig me out of this hole I am currently in, this hole of having an appeal next week and not having finished the submissions for it yet, a hole I am hoping to get out of by the end of today with the help of lots of Jacques Loussier, drinking water and (very hopefully) intellectual thought.

Oh well. Back to the grind.

/disgruntled

I have been in Court four days of this week and it looks like I will have to spend tomorrow afternoon in Court too.

Curls burst into my office this afternoon and said to me, “I was in Court this afternoon and someone asked me how far along your pregnancy you were and I was like, is she pregnant?! And then someone else said 5 months! 5 months!!! Then they ask me how come I didn’t know you were pregnant. They even ask me whether I still work in [The Firm]! I’m sorry I didn’t know you were pregnant!!! I realised that every time I see you it’s from behind and I didn’t notice you from the front!!!”

But of course she only sees me from behind. That’s the oh so familiar view of me dragging my case walking out of the office to go to Court.

And I was just remarking to someone else in Court this morning that everyone in Court down to the judges know I am preggers and hardly anyone in the office does. Just goes to show how much more time I spend in Court than in the office.

Then again, I don’t need to jump queue in the office [as in I am pregnant and hungry / tired / cannot stand for long so let me go into Chambers first] so no one needs to know anyway. It’s not as if they treat me any better when I am preggers.

sylvia rediscovered

The Other Half and I were clearing our front hall on Sunday afternoon when I rediscovered my forgotten mp3 player, which had remained uncharged since we returned from Russia more than a year ago.

The problem I have with the mp3 player is this: I have lost the plug charger and am only able to charge it via USB on a computer. On top of that, because it is a Sony mp3 player, I can only add songs via some special Sony programme. I have since changed my laptop at work and cannot install new programs unless I carry my laptop over to the IT Department and get them to unlock it for me, which I am of course far too lazy to do.

So I charged it up full, brought it to Russia, and survived not one but two overnight train rides with it. Good times.

I brought it to the office this morning anyway and charged it up.

I turned it on and it said to me “Every moment has its music.” And then it took my mind on a ride, playing on shuffle songs that I used to listen to when I was serving pupillage in my little office on the 23^rd floor, when I was all screwed up, reminding me of beer and hot chocolate and fudge cake and long conversations, songs that I put in to pep me up during long runs with The Other Half round the neighbourhood at night, songs that I put in to inspire myself to play the piano better, songs that I listened to standing in the train on my swollen feet pregnant with Peanut, songs of love, songs shared while in love…

It’s incredibly amazing.

Now I just need to find the installation disc and fill up the other 4GB of space left with new songs, new moments and new memories.

And find a plug charger for the damn thing in case I ever take it abroad again.

a year of nice things

January

Still on maternity leave but managing on my own at home with work and baby.

February

Started the routine of 3 to 4 day weeks and sending Peanut across the island to my parents’ oh-so-early in the morning and picking her up after work.

March

A very instrospective time being that time of the year when you renew your practising certificate and realise just how long you have been doing this and wonder how long you can continue to do this.

April

 Finding the balance between an overprotective parent and letting Peanut roll off the mattress onto the hard marble floor and running the risk of hitting her head. And guess what? She just instinctively tucks her head when she hits the floor. My smart Peanut!

May

My first mothers’ day as a mommy

June

Peanut becomes more and more mobile. Mommy becomes more and more busy.

July

 The start of the awfully low morale months.

August

And it gets worse, the endless sitting in Court and feeling bored.

September

Peanut falls ill for the first time from teething. The GPs panicked. The Other Half and I roll our eyes at each other.

October

I turned a year older, and found out that I was preggers again.

November

I moved t0 WordPress from Diaryland. I was awfully disappointed with the system. I undertook a crazy-ass trip to KL on a coach with Peanut in which I was awfully pissed off, spent a night in Malacca, and abandoned my other travel companions on Sunday morning and came home.

December

Peanut turns One! We find out that Nut 2 is a really shy little boy. Work slows down to a crawl then picks up again. I finished writing my 2 sets of submissions due on 4 January in good time to sit here at my desk writing this entry, taking a breather before the hell that is January descends upon us all.

And as always, may we all be better people in the coming new year.

working through the holiday season

It’s really frustrating when halfway through writing submissions, you suddenly stumble upon a brilliant argument, much more brilliant than the one you were pursuing, which will help your opponent to win the trial.

But then you need to carry on through your own anyway and hope like hell that your opponent isn’t as smart as you are. And then your head goes into hyperdrive trying trying trying to come up with an even more brilliant argument for yourself to counter the other brilliant argument you made up for your opponent.

Argh. My brain has been working close to non-stop since I stumbled out of work last evening feeling absolutely demoralised. I have since made a fruit salad, attended a Christmas lunch and am about to attend a Christmas dinner but I am somewhere else in my head…and quite unfortunately, I am somewhere else stuck in the middle of the unfriendly terrain of Trust Law.

Merry Christmas to all, in any event.