My Short Period of Unemployment

Dear Diary,

The sun is beating down fiercely. Not sure if I should go for an evening run later. Today is the last day of my short period of just 6 days of unemployment. Tomorrow, I will be reporting to my new company for work. I spent much of today kinda mentally preparing for it. Dad accompanied me as I drove around to familiarise how to go to that company and back home with my car, haha… Then I spent most of the afternoon clearing my desks, drawers and shelves of those junk letters, papers, receipts, information leaflets and magazines that were accumulated all over. Cleaning up can be very time consuming but it kinda brought me into the past. I actually still had the “$2000 agreement for the computer loan at NUS” which I signed as a year 1 student in 2001. Incredible… It was so coincidental that last night while I was waiting for a friend to come to my house, I accidentally typed my email log-in too quickly and instead of typing onto the log-in page of the website, I typed the log-in ID over at the google search. It ended up searching my log-in online. Lo and behold, I saw that I actually put a comment in a particular girl’s website on 10 Dec 2001. Incredible! Those were the days that blogging was still not too popular yet but people were putting up information of their lives on websites and they always attached a guestbook for people to sign there. This girl, I remembered, said hi to me in NUS because we were taking the same module “Physiology”. Yes, she was a dental student. Still kinda remembered vaguely that she is a Catholic and studied in River Valley High and RJC. Think she should be married by now… her website was like since 1996 to 2001. Quite surprised that it is still online. It sure felt like just not too long ago actually.

Anyway, on Sunday 27 July, we had a belated buffet lunch celebration for my youngest sister at the HaiXiang restaurant at the Park Royal Hotel. Can’t imagine that my youngest sister is already 24 years old! Geesshhh… On Monday 28 July, I spent most of the day reading a book “Managing for Excellence” by Robert Heller et al. The book was a good introduction on business and corporate relations but I soon realised that I have little interest for accounting and related fields. Those fixed assets, balance sheets… blah blah… Yucks! Think I won’t enjoy that should I go on to study a postgraduate degree on business. Oh well… the HR department of my ex-company is making a mess of my encashment of leaves. I am slightly resigned to being short-changed in the process despite my assertiveness. =(

On Tuesday, I actually went to Johor Bahru (JB) with Dad. We had a pretty good time except for the part where Dad forgot his ATM card password for withdrawal of cash. So, we had to get that Malaysian bank to change the password and… boy, are they inefficient, haha… Maybe our Singaporean lives are too hectic. I was wondering why such a simple procedure took so long! ;-) We took lots of cab around, visiting “the Store” at Sentosa which was quite boring, and later we went to the Kotaraya complex. There, I took up a list of medications to buy at the pharmacy. Well, it felt good to be able to buy prescription medicines. Lots of my friends were telling me their medical problems like alopecia androgenetica (prescribing ¼ proscar tablet every morning and ketoconazole shampoo twice a week for him), obesity due to love for fried noodles (acarbose to be consumed before carbohydrate-rich meals or orlistat to be consumed when taking oily food), blah blah… spent almost a thousand ringgit in that pharmacy. Couldn’t get the loceryl nail lacquer in the pharmacies at JB. Was surprised that the pharmacist recommended some clotrimazole lotion for onycomycosis… that’s so weak! I am sticking to amorolfine. Anyway, it will be P-Medicine in Singapore by 1st August. I actually also bought a Balmain coat and two polyester neckties. They were a steal indeed! Value for money! Haha… ;-) In the evening, an ex-colleague called me up and I had a long 2-hour chat with her on the phone. Sometimes, I really wonder what were the outcomes of all those “logical” advices I gave to people in tackling relationship problems. I hope they work although I am not such a good testimony for my own advices, hee…

As for yesterday, Wednesday. Went back to the ex-company’s HQ to return my two white coats, employee pass, airport transit pass and name tag. A HR personnel smiled at me as she walked off for lunch and I smiled back. That was about how my relationship with this company ended. Speechless, haha… Popped into my church for a short prayer before proceeding to Orchard Road. I visited one of my ex-colleagues and was surprised to see two students with her including the “enthu” girl and the “bugis” girl, haha… I left shortly to meet up with a pen pal whom I never met in my life. She had asked to meet up recently. We no longer communicate through letters these days. I think we communicated through the good old snail mails since 1998? I think it probably faded away as I went on to the university in 2001. So it was kinda a “blockbuster kind” of reunion. Caught the movie “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” at Lido in Shaw House. It was a good movie and I bought her some ice-cream at an Italian ice-cream parlour nearby after that. It was nice catching up with her actually and I was quite surprised that the expected uneasiness did not occur. Went home for dinner and met up with an ex-college classmate at the bus-stop near my house late at night. We sat at the bus-stop for about an hour and chatted on the phone for another hour after he left at 11.30pm on a bus. Kinda empathised with him for the long working hours (leaving the office at 9.45pm and that was considered early!) in his civil service job. He is resurrecting that Duke-GMS dream once again since the intake may now be 100 next year. Personally, I am steadfast in the decision I made in June 2007. Studying Medicine will remain a childhood dream which is not part of my destiny. I am not pursuing it anymore and that is because I know that there is more in life than pursuing my ideals. Please pray for me as I conquer the meadows of a totally new field from tomorrow onwards! ;-)

Leave you with this nice sweet love song, haha… Yup… “Love Story” by Andy Williams.

Where do i begin
To tell the story
Of how greatful love can be
The sweet love story
That is older than the sea
That sings the truth about the love she brings to me
Where do i start

With the first hello
She gave the meaning
To this empty world of mine
That never did
Another love another time
She came into my life
And made a living fine
She fills my heart

She fills my heart
With very special things
With angel songs
With wild imaginings
She fills my soul
With soo much love
That anywhere i go
Im never lonely
With her along who could b lonely
I reach for her hand
Its always there

How long does it last
Can love be measured by the hours in a day
I have no answers no
But this much i can say
I know ill need her till this love song burn away
And she;ll b there...
How long does it last
Can love b measured by the hours in a day
I have no answers no
But this much i can say
I know ill need her till this love song burn away
And she'll be there...

God Bless,

Andrew