not entirely pleasant happenings

My intern left. The one who was not interested in most things and caused me some little bit of grief for two weeks or so. He wrote me a really sweet card in spite of the fact that I wasn’t really quite nice to him at some points because these days I tend not to be very kind to people who are evidently disinterested.

And then the person who was assigned to and supposed to be interested to learn what I do for a living turned out to be not in the least bit interested. I only found this out after I invested a little bit of time into teaching him with a view of him learning the ropes as quickly as possible. I sent him an email to express my disappointment. He replied with a rather lame excuse. It’s been more than half a day now and he has yet to speak with me in spite of the fact that he is still holding on to some of my work. I have over lunch decided that I should not be expected to forgive the unforgivable and will withdraw all my work and support from him.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing. Maybe I’ve plunged headfirst into a generation gap given that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone younger with the same work ethics.

Oh well. There is naught to be done. Now that more help is no longer in the horizon, it sure looks like I am condemned to a life of running a pseudo-sole-proprietorship out of my little box of an office.

And it is only Monday. I still have the rest of the week to get through.

I need to remind myself to stop investing so much of myself into things lest I become one of those strangely intense scary women. It’s far easier to go through life caring less about things.

Memories of My Father Watching TV by Curtis White

In short, in this world life is all death because no one recognizes anyone else as human like themselves. Everyone seems to aspire to death. And it’s a veritable Gettysburg of likely candidates.
…
Taken figurally it means SEE WITHOUT TURNING AWAY. DO NOT FORGIVE THE UNFORGIVABLE. STAY ANGRY. IT IS OUR ONLY HOPE.

peanut turns one

And so we ended up having a party for Peanut after all, complete with 11 adults and 2 small children excluding the birthday girl and a pink (!!) beetroot cake. We went for brunch at Melt-The World Cafe at The Oriental and lots of fun was had in spite of the 1-hour traffic jam getting to the hotel by reason of the Stan-Chart marathon road closures.

I must say that although we are not quite sure that she understood we were celebrating her birthday, she seemed awfully pleased and have some kind of recognition that it was a party for her. She smiled, she laughed, she clapped, she ate lots of cream cheese on bagels and sampled mushroom soup. All the GPs in attendance (i.e. GrandParents) were most pleased.

And then she became cranky and took a 2-hour nap once we got home.

Just looking at her happy face in this photo makes me really happy. Heh.

In other news, my screwy tastebuds are back to normal and I have marginally stopped throwing up. Oh, I have also finally managed to clear my maternity leave from Peanut before it gets forfeited. Yayness.

too complicated

And you realise that “factory worker” is not a valid occupation for the purposes of the wage search function on the Ministry of Manpower website.

Neither is “production operator”. Or “construction worker”. Or “road sweeper”. Or for that matter, even “doctor”.

Doesn’t anybody do these jobs anymore?!

the unknown wedding

Some person called N married some other person called D in a beautiful church ceremony on or about 7 November 2009.

I have since learnt that these people are ultra conservative Christians, have known each other for about 15 years 8 months and 1 day before getting married, mostly went to the same schools, prefer the colour aquamarine and own a geriatric golden retriever.

They are nice people. They are much loved by many and their wedding was very well attended.

And I don’t actually know them; I have never met them in my entire life.

They are friends of one of my listed friends on Facebook. So since 8 November 2009 or so, I have been treated with photographs of their wedding lovingly posted by their n number of friends tagging my listed friend, who was a bridesmaid at their wedding.

The first time I saw some of the pictures I thought, oh what a pretty wedding, what a sweet couple.

It is now almost a month on.

A month of seeing repeated photos pop up on your news feed every single morning like being locked in a room with no windows and a television showing re-runs of It’s a Wonderful Life?

The nice feelings fizzle and then evanesced.

I suddenly feel violated by their happiness. All the Colgate smiles and warm fuzziness is really beginning to bother me.

That’s technology for you. In the good old days, all the guests will take home a couple of pictures taken on film each and that will be the end of it. My parents have albums full of 2 or 3 random photos per wedding they had attended in the past distributed after the event all grouped together in a strange sample book by virtue of the fact that they were photos taken at weddings.

Later on, someone will post an album online with the link sent to people in the know and that will be the end of it.

In this day and age of social networking, the celebration never ends even when all the champagne has been drunk and the alcohol long passed out of their collective systems evaporating into naught. Instead of one nice album of a couple of hundred pictures, we have at least 20 digital albums online full of hundreds and hundreds of photos taken by all kinds of budding amateur photographers with expensive cameras. Artistically taken food, watermarked black and white pictures of the smiling faces of friends, laughing children, the kiss…all there out in cyberspace for all and sundry to see. It reaches out its wet, clingy tentacles to a much much wider spread of persons.

Like the ripples of a pebble someone tosses in a stream.

I don’t know if it is because I am such a recluse but this public exhibition of the intensely special and private affair of a wedding really turns me off.

But then again, for a few moments, I, a complete stranger, was actually happy for them and wished them well. So I suppose it is really not such a bad thing, this shared happiness and touching the hearts of more people than you ever intended.

Still, it’s a really bloody good thing that I probably will never ever meet these people in my reclusive life. I know far far too much about them than I care to, which will render me all shifty and weird should I ever meet them in the flesh.

blip

I have been up since 4:21am from an adrenaline induced un-sleep because Someone went on leave and I had to do a hearing for Someone and I negotiated settlement with Someone’s Opponent all afternoon and Someone’s Opponent only told me at 5pm that the matter cannot be settled and that he would try to talk to his clients and call me back again later that night. So Someone’s Opponent never called and so at 4:21am, I woke up and made up questions and arguments in my head while lying in the dark listening to the syncopated breathing of Peanut and The Other Half on either side of me then showing up at work and then in Court only to have Someone’s Opponent tell me that his clients have agreed to settle the matter without proceeding anyway because they are old and nervous (?!?), thereby wasting all of the highly ingenious questions and arguments I have made up in my head while tossing and turning and tossing and turning when I really ought to be sleeping instead of stressing out Nut 2 and as such, I have been oh so cruelly robbed of my moment in the sun as a sharp and brilliant advocate and upholder of justice.

Bleargh.

I so hate my job sometimes. I think I am going home after lunch to sleep.

English Music by Peter Ackroyd

‘Music is a divine madness, boys,’ he used to say. ‘Don’t you wish you had caught it? Sing! Play! Do something to lift your mediocre little lives!’

we’re three

I agreed to attend The Firm’s D&D tonight only to realise that it’s my wedding anniversary. :S

Then I went to Court this morning and ran into JC and the last time I had a matter with him was on my wedding anniversary last year.

Then I went to lunch with School Marm and ate at the restaurant The Other Half and I had dinner at on our wedding anniversary last year, and where I bought Elmi lunch for her birthday this year.

On my way back from lunch, I ran into Elmi (!!) at the bottom of my building.

Coincidence much?

Memories of My Father Watching TV by Curtis White

…Captain Dan Mathews rubs his jaw speculatively. The moment passes. Thirty-five years later I watch him rub his jaw speculatively. The moment passes. I am writing about Broderick Crawford rubbing his jaw. The moment passes. The moment of the moment passing passes.

A lot of what is ordinarily referred to as mental illness is really just noticing things that pass notice.

…

Murderers take heed: the man you kill may be somebody’s father. Somewhere there is a little boy who needs to kill that father himself in order that he may grow up strong and true.

maksim and an afternoon in court

I’m having two relatively slow weeks at work with no hearings and nothing important going on all round, which I suppose is perfect for me to sit out the fatigue from my hellish KL trip over the last weekend (where I was made to carry one Peanut and another in situ and walk for a total of more than 2 kilometres…don’t ask).

On Wednesday evening, I left work super early to catch Maksim live in Singapore at the Esplanade with Elmi and friend.

It was really lovely. The choice of the programme was a little strange, ranging from the very childlike and popular Alla Turca from Mozart, Brahm’s very serious Piano Sonata No. 3 in F Minor, Op 5, the very cheesy Exodus, the elevator-music-esque Claudine, ending with the very energetic Hall of the Mountain King from Greig: all of these most effortlessly rendered in a neat one and a half hour showcase.

I was a little disappointed that he didn’t play any Rachmaninov (I feel in love with him watching him do a Rachmaninov on a telecast of one of his concerts on TV) and that he only did one Encore (which was some crazy atonal thing which I am not fond of as a rule but was fascinating to watch anyway). But then he made that up by doing a really great Bohemian Rhapsody and a nice Chopin nocturne.

And he does the most lovely cantabile. His tonal shading is perfect. It was such a joy listening to him, even through the unfamiliar pieces. He is really quite the performer.

I will be watching Hamlet the Clown Prince next week before my schedule goes into a blip of trials again. Sigh.

*
I took a rather small intern (with a rather unfortunate name) to Court with me this afternoon. He is about 15 years old and today was his last day at work. We had the following conversations through the afternoon:

Me: Oh, so after this internship you’ve still got about 4 more weeks of holiday fun!
He: Well, I’ll probably spend it hanging around studying.
Me: Studying?!
He: Yes, studying for next year.
Me: *speechless*

Me: So what do your parents do? Are they lawyers?
He: No, they are not.
Me: And they want you to be a lawyer?
He: No.
Me: So why are you interested in being a lawyer?
He: Because of politics…and other things…it’s a really long story…

Random opponent: Do you have a girlfriend?
He: No. I’m too young to have a girlfriend…well, not until university at least…
Random opponent: How old are you?!
He: 15 years old.
Random opponent: You are far too young to want to be a lawyer!! When I was 15, all I wanted to do was play football and go out and play!!

It was good fun. My opponents were quite amused by my very serious and very small intern. They kept asking me whether he was my son (haha). He kept insisting on carrying my court bag and umbrella too. He tried to even carry my handbag while we were entering chambers (you see, I have a nasty habit of leaving my handbag around the waiting area because I figured that if a bunch of lawyers would steal my handbag, then I really deserve it) until I told him that one of the guiding rules in life for men should be that they should never, under any circumstances at all, carry a woman’s handbag.

I do hope that he eventually finds his way in life. Such serious and driven young men are quite rare to come by.