The Gift

Last year, I wanted a Magical Christmas. As I spent the countdown to Christmas in London, where the weather was turning to a freezing temperature and the days were shorter, my heart was glowing with the feeling of warmth and giddiness. There was a huge Christmas Tree that benefits Trafalgar Sqaure every Christmas as a gift from Norway, Regent Street and Oxford Street was literally a flooded with participants of the national sport during this season, a.k.a.Shopping, and what is Christmas without the stunning twinkling myriad of lights that adorn the Streets of London, painting London town with a vibrancy of light and colour during the bleak winter.

Christmas is a time of beauty from the inside out. For a brief period, we seem to give ourselves permission to let go of all the little stressors that constraint us, and we open our hearts to love, to giving and receiving. It is a time when hearts are filled with joy, and minds are filled with caring thoughts much more than at any other time. It is a time we regale in our childhood dreams and believe that Santa comes riding in his sleigh drawn by reindeers from Lapland with presents for the children who have been so good for the year. I think Santa is a desolated man who often overstuff himself with leftover turkeys and rapsberrys sauce from Christmasses before, growing so fat, that every year when he makes his Seasonal round to deliver presents, he gets stuck in Chimneys. Or rather, no one wrote to Santa to inform him that frontdoors were invented to welcome people into your house. Then again, not everyone welcomes santa into their house. Especially if you have been a bad kid.

I wonder if Santa really hears me and know that I have been real good this year. If Santa needed a model child, I would have been that child. I pledge my Organs to the needy (e.g.gave my kidney to Royal Mail), Donated to the needy (e.g.made a small contribution to my Disneyland Fund) and shared my love with the needy (e.g. generously bought myself a pair of shoes every month). This Christmas, I do not want Prada, I do not want Goldiva, nor do I want a spanking holiday. I know what exactly I want this year, Santa. Send me someone to love in a big red bow. That special someone who will stand under the misletoe and snog me crazy. Just kidding. Send me a cause to give. Give me a reason to believe that with all the schmaltzy Christmas specials on, Christmas isn't just about the frantic tearing a multi-coloured expensive wrappers just to discover we have gotten what we asked for this year. Rather I want to give away a gift from my heart, a little gift that is called Forgiveness.

To me, Christmas is a time for giving, a season to share and a reason to gather with family and friends to drink free champagne celebrate the birth of Christ. And even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, odds are that someone you love does. Bear with me while I put on my holy cloak and preach. Christmas is the greatest celebration of the year because everything is on sale, the message of Christmas is all encompassing. It's the season of giving because God on the first day, gave His only Son, Christ to us, as our saviour. Giving, keep in mind, is love in action. Christmas however, represents giving the infinite. To put others before us and to give something that is beyond our mind to grasp that our earthly nature can never comprehend or understand.

This gift of Forgiveness will not burn a hole in my pocket but rather something money cannot buy. Coming from the bottomest sincerest pit of my heart, I want my gift to be felt. This Christmas, I am giving away a fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. I think no matter how far off the pedestal the character fell, it always deserve a 2nd chance. I am opening my heart to love, opening my eyes to the colours and opening my arms to forgive.

This year, is there someone you would very much like to say, I forgive you? Forgiveness is a funny thing, it cools the sting and warms the heart.

You've got No Mail

Royal Mail when is it not on strike, is cheap and on time. Sending parcels and letters are convenient and easy. You buy one of those sticker stamps of Queen E, paste it on your envelope and within the next 2 days, said letter or parcel will arrive at recipient's doorstep with little fuss. Last month, after inquiring for the correct address of the lucky recipient of my parcel, wrapped the parcel, drove to the post office, wrote the address on the parcel, weighed the parcel and paid a kidney for it, I waved goodbye to it at the port for it to be shipped off to England. Upon arrival on English shores, the Royal Mail decided to take an early annual holiday and went on strike. Without having to say, my precious parcel did not arrive at the doorstep of my lucky recipient causing such profound grief and sorrow.

I do not mind if my parcel had arrived with a dent in its box. I would also not mind if my parcel arrived one month later than scheduled. I would also not give two hoots if Royal Mail felt that my oddly shaped parcel was a threat to national security and refused it entry to England and hence delivered it back to me. What I cannot abide is that after spending a fortune to send my bottled lingerie, only to have Royal Mail lose them in the midst of their strike. Which hare brained lunatic had sanctioned that strike?

What is the strike about I have no idea. It could be another case of wanting pay rise, less working hours, more paternal leaves, or requiring redundancy letters to be more interesting, "Dear Me, I have three young children to feed but I am afraid I can no longer stay a day here...". Honestly, these Royal Mail employees should have just threaten to threw stones at their employers and eat their pet poddles rather than just completely stop working and sip skinny lattes.

Of course, I cannot sympathize with these people who lick stamps and weigh parcels for a living. Its like how I cannot stop envying those Prada People with work in skyscrapers glass buildings where the pantry serves Starbucks and M & S cookies and the receptionist look drop dead gorgeous. Royal Mail employees should be grateful their lungs are not turning into diseased walnuts digging coal to power my Electrolux. There is no genuine grievance to understand and such strike can not be properly effective and this has resulted in the lost of my parcel.

Then again, what do I know about mails delivery? I am not Royal nor do I look like I qualify to work in a post office. I cannot lick my stamps. I have a phobia that some cockroach or lizard has laid its eggs on those stamps and if I lick it and my tongue has a cut on it, baby creatures would hatch in my mouth. So no, I cannot work in a post office. Yes, the Royal Mailers should be respected for their bravado in licking egg laden stamps and I should just be wiser next time to insure my parcels. Period.

Love Bites

I used to think that if I stop talking to a person, we have ran pass the line of fate and that our season has passed. It's always hard to let go, to move on and to cut ties. Above all else, to feel the lost, to weep in grief, to experience that heart wrenching pain of knowing that that person will no longer and can no longer be a part of your life, to be the one left behind and to be the one who is staying, it's hard. Everything feels simple, feels easy until you think of it and go through it. Love is intensified by the absence. We sometimes hope and wait. Like the women of fishermen who have gone to sea. We stand at the edge of the waters, scanning the vastness of the sea and into the horizon for that tiny ship. Praying that our men will return to us.

How does it feel to be the one waiting?

Each passing moment, each waiting moment is as transparent as glass. You go to sleep alone, you walk alone. You work until you are tired, you watch the children play and you hear the patters of rain. Everything resonates loudly. On some days, you wake up and feel like you are in a dream. One of those dreams you realize you forget to study for an exam you are taking and you are wearing you pyjamas out on the streets. And you have no money with you. The saddest thing is that this dream doesn't go away.

There will no longer be someone to catch your tears, someone to hear your rattles, someone to pick up your calls at wee hours in the morning, and someone to call your own. They may still be there, but they are no longer there when you need them. It is not their place to be anymore. It is not their number you should dial anymore, not their hands to hold when you fall and not their ears to whisper to.

Love is a strange and funny thing. Love is an invisible string that ties two heart together. It is the conductor that orchestrate a symphony in your hearts. Love is a verb. It is an "action" word. Not just a proclaimation or a declaration of affection but rather as a promise that will be put to actions. Love as a commitment. "All you need is love." "Love hurts." "Love is a many splendored thing." "Love is a dog from hell." The clichés and jabberwocky of love spill forth from even the most skeptical poets. We always buy into the experience because, like age and death, it's the one damned thing that nearly everyone will suffer in our lifetimes. It's never easy.

In an unflinching honesty through an uneven concoction of nostalgia, sorrow and terrible insights, love makes you wait. You do not know how great those feelings can be until it hits you with a ton of bricks. Someone says to you, steal a car and drive it off the cliff and you asked, automatic or manual. That's the trouble in waiting for somebody special. You become numb. You might even suggest to set the car on fire before driving it off the cliff.

There is no one defined feeling. Neither can it be articulated into words. Others simply refuse to acknowledge that the lost can be consuming. They figure if they cannot see it, maybe it will just vanish, like a scary ghost. But that is like giving up on our dreams and ourselves. We just do not hear the tiny sobs that echo in those empty hearts. Even if we, how long can we live with it for? We should never give up on ourselves. Even if others do, we don't. If we care enough, we will talk about it. Why have we stopped doing so? I now realised, the reason I stop talking to a person, the silence, is because I have given up on that person.

Perhaps I was too willing to believe that every relationship had a shot no matter how bleak it look on the surface. We believe that by standing at the shores, we were being good women. Faithful. Resileient. Stupid. Strong. Those damned details bites you where it hurts. When your life is no longer such a dream, reality bites and sinks its teeth into you flesh, promising to get the best of you. The best of you should be left for the best person for you. Don't let it go. Forgetting someone may be impossible, but ignoring someone isn't. Time waits for no men, so should every women.

So Long, farewell!

All my favourite people in the world are scattered around the globe. The Earth is make more spacious with them all over at a distance. These people make the latitudes and the longtitudes. Even with today's modern technology of msn,twitter and facebook, nothing beats having them around to sit and laugh over with while having tea and scones. Why can't I get all the people together in the world that I really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos.

Everytime I find myself at airports, bus terminals, and train stations sending someone away or leaving someone I hold dear in my heart, I can hear my soul whimpering, begging me to make it all alright so that it will not hurt that bad. At the hour of seperation only then I discover the depths of my affection for another, at the minute of saying goodbye only then I know its too late. The best things, the sweetest words, the warmest hugs and the saddest tears come last. It's been a year now since I have left, it's been 12 months of venturing alone in the wilderness and 365 days of wandering without my beacon of light, those words that came rushing out of your heart as we lingered, clinging desperately to the last hour - it still resonates in my me. I am paying the pangs of absence, this much I can bear, only this much I have and I pray that my debt is no more for I cannot go on with this burden. Sweet is the memory of you, my distant friends, like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly on the heart.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Absence does what the wind does to love. It diminish the weak and increases the great. As the wind extinguish the candles and fans a fire.

When will my next hello be?

3 in 1

The pantry lady at work is a 3 in 1. She takes the order, makes the drinks and delivers them. 3 in 1 woman. After gentle rejecting her offer to make me coffee for 2 days, she finally caught me in the lift yesterday, just me and her, two woman riding up to Planet Workplace when she casually mentioned that my no-coffee-binging-habit for a lawyer is eccentric to her. I smiled shyly and threw in a line to edify her that I am allergic to the caffeine in coffee. In our 60 seconds ride up, she elucidated that I would not mind tea instead and would brew me a cup later.

Fast forward an hour after said lift ride, said pantry lady came in with said order. A steaming cup of tea with its tea leaves swimming at the surface. I was too polite to tell her I enjoy drinking tea but not eating tea leaves. I spent the next 3 hours sipping tea and using my teeth as sieve. Like a whale. Clenching my teeth together so only the tea glides through the tiny gaps between my teeth while the tea leaves are blocked out like sewage. I became a 3 in 1 during those 3 hours. I order, I drink and I sieve.

Because I am at work

15 minutes before lunchtime. Counting, I have been sitting on my ass for 4 hours and my back is showing signs of osteoporosis. If I were to report to mother ship of my progress in invading this little planet called, Workplace, I guess there is not much of a discovery YET. As far as I can tell, the Worklings dwelling in Planet Workplace are people who tries to stretch as little work as possible over a period of a few hours. A little piece of fact to support my above observation - the office clerk sitting next to me is still on the same page she has been typing since 9am this morning. Since the occupant of my designated room has yet to move out for the new resident evil, I am stuck sitting next to said workling who at the time of typing this sentence is taking orders from other worklings to purchase shoes and handbags. How are these two items related to law, I am baffled myself. There are still some mysteries surrounding this Planet Workplace that I have yet to have answers to.

Like most things new, this place feels raw. Little things can awe you and the tiniest act of kindness can make you pledge your kidney away. I am treading with caution and like most newbies, I want to be liked so I can blend in and be one of them. However there is a thin line to be drawn between desperately wanting to fit in and being a pushover. Sometimes, this line can be blurred and as friendly as every new kid on the block should be, I try not to come out as whimpsy, soft and set my boundaries clear. Play nice in the playground but do not let the other kids put sand in your buttcrack and still say nothing.

This is what I do for a living. No, not being a pineapple head, but defending a pineapple head.

Planet workplace is filled with people from crossgeneration. It ranges from those as youthful as Nie here to those who are just starting families and to those who has reach menopause. Each generation brings their own sets of values, principles, life experiences and a myriad of personalities. I think it is a battle alone to gain acceptance but it is a war to behave like an adult among a seas of OLDER adults. The older generations like to be asked, not be told. The younger ones have to push and sometimes dragged along. A friend once told me that you should have two faces to put on at work. One that reads, "I don't bite" or one that reads, "I am jaws".

Every job depends on us BEING nice. I like my current name and I don't intend to have it changed to Miss Meanie at work. The old days of office politics as a means of backstabbing are dead -- young people are bringing their team-player, I'm-competing-against-my-best-self mentality from their self-esteem-centric homes into the workplace, and there's nothing you can do except be nice back. So, I will try my very best to be peaches and cream!

Here's amongst the nicest advice and words I have heard before and since I started work:

Daddy Dearest                        : Be humble and don't tell everyone everything

Roomie from Planet workplace: Just do your work and act serious

Brazillian Chick                       : Don't be bitchy and don't gossip

Plan Bee                                 : Don't worry, everything will work out just fine (thank you for calling all the 

                                                way from Istana Baru to comfort me the night before)

Suavest Maximus                    : Will ice-cream take your stress away?

This is just the beginning of exploration of Planet Workplace, the rest is still unwritten and unexplored. Wish me Luck people..I am off to pacify my growling tummy.