Caught a few glimpses of the Olympics closing ceremony on TV just now. I finally saw Rain prancing around! Thank goodness he got a new haircut. Spiffy! He looks about ten thousand times better than with that mophead previously.

Beijing 2008 will be remembered as

- The one where Singapore finally got a medal after 48 years of waiting
- The one where Michael Phelps demonstrated that he is 神 by winning 8 gold medals and becoming the most celebrated Olympian ever
- The one where Usain Bolt ran crazily fast
- The one where Tao Li became the first Singaporean to get into a swim final

I am looking forward to London 2012 already!!! :) Arggghhh another 4 more years.

Aiyah crap I realized I forgot to record CelebriTea Break! :(

Our Hyesungie has a new album out! I really like his title track. Love the piano intro and the electric guitar bridge - it's a refreshing departure from his usual ballads!

At first when I put the song on repeat mode at work, I kept hearing this line in the song: "All the tears, all the sex, all the lies, all the hurt, all the pains, all the past..."

Well that's about the only English line in the song and the only thing I understand. :D So naturally I paid more attention to it.
I went, hmmm, is Hyesung trying to become more liberal by singing about sex? Part of his new image? Because I never ever hear sex popping up in the Korean songs I listen to. Or maybe I'm listening to the wrong stuff. But of course, they could be singing about sex in Korean for all I know and I wouldn't understand a word. LOL.

Then later I watched his comeback performance (with lyrics) and the actual lyrics are: "All the tears, all the SADS, all the lies, all the hurts, ...."
Hahaha what the hell. I was like, OH! it's SADS not SEX hahaha.

Listen to the song! It really sounds like "All the sex"! HAHAHAHA.

Regarding the logic and the grammar, I have long learnt that it is best to accept their kooky sense of the language the way it is, LOL. I think English to them is merely decorative. I mean, SADS? XD LOL!


He's a little out of tune at some parts in this comeback performance.
But Hyesung has a spiffy new haircut yo! :D

I am liking F.T Island's 2nd album a lot too! :)

I'm actually a closet Xiaxue reader hahaha and I know whatever she says can't be taken seriously most of the time... haha but I think I can identify with this:

"... people in bad relationships LOVE it.

They love the drama, the mind games, the breaking and patching, the abuse, the shouting matches, the suicide attempts."

Eh, reminds you of people you know? :p

And since we're on a related topic, I've been following the recent news about the have-a-baby! perks and the government's anxiousness to get singles hitched of late. Our sad, sad birth rate. I think I am one of those "I refuse to have kids" people and I think I fit the profile of a typical single that PM Lee described in his rally last week. But do all you singles out there think that because the government says we must go out and mix around in order to meet someone, we will do that? I don't think so. Meet someone, commit to that relationship, decide he's the one, get married, and subsequently produce babies for our country... They make it sound so easy. Haha, PM Lee even gave the example of parents in China engaging in a little modern version of matchmaking. I think if we do that in Singapore, many people will be quite unhappy.

I even read a letter in the papers saying that all singles should join at least one activity organized by SDU. I think the letter writer even said something about making it mandatory. HA HA. Yes you do that, and you will just get a bunch of grumpy and unhappy singles who will complain about the absurdity of it all.

I dunno lah, maybe I am still too young to feel the need to be all active about finding a life partner. Maybe when I am 30 and still single, I will join SDU. LOL but by then it'll probably be too late, coz all those men in their 30s will only have eyes for 20-something hot young chicks. Hmmm, spinsterhood doesn't look all that bad actually.

SHOCKING.

Lee Eon, most remembered for his role as the blundering Min Yub in Coffee Prince, died in a motorcycle accident early this morning.

I was just reading news about them (him, Eric) wrapping up filming for Strongest Chil-Woo last night and this morning he's dead?!

Such a tragedy!!! He's so young and has a great career ahead of him! :( Oh man. :'(

I'm so shocked by this sudden terrible news that I'm making an exception to blog at work.

Read it from Dramabeans.

I went for a health screening at work a few weeks ago, and the results are out. Apparently I have borderline high cholesterol! And a "fatty liver". Wah not even 23 yet and I have a fat liver. I also need to lose some weight. Okay that I know and I have been painfully aware, because I can't fit into pants that I bought during CNY. That's how much weight put on in a span of 6 months! :(

So my mom is saying that I should cut down on all the yummilicious but unhealthy food, fried food, eat more soupy stuff, and not eat out and feast on food so frequently. Not that I have much choice during lunch - canteen food at The Hill is boring. Anyway, with almost everyone working or soon-to-be starting work, I am hoping that everybody will want to nua at home on weekends so that I can hibernate, stop pigging out and save money!

My legs also feel like lead coz I went to the gym at The Hill today and the treadmill was taken so I had no choice but to use the cycling thing. Bet my legs will be damn sore tomorrow. :(

And the swim events are over :( Suffering from swim finals withdrawal coz I have nothing else to watch. Track events aren't as exciting as watching 8 people swim 50m up and down, IMO. For the past week I've been diligently checking MediaCorp's Olympic website for updates and news (and hoping that the live feed will stream) but now there's nothing to look forward to!

Unless you have been living under a rock all this while, I'm sure everyone knows that Singapore has finally gotten that coveted Olympic medal - our first since independence and the first in 48 years!

It was a damn exciting match! Really neck-to-neck. By 6pm (nearing the end of the match), a glance around the entire office shows that everyone has abandoned their work and is clustered around the TV sets, following the match intently. It was very amusing to hear cheers and groans erupting periodically from all ends of the office. LOL.

No matter what, I think the women's table tennis team deserves our credit and support for working hard to achieve Singapore's Olympic dream. Lots of people are saying that they will get thrashed by China - might be true, but then success is 99% hard work and 1% luck, does the saying go? Haha maybe that 1% luck is on our side?

And of course Phelps the Great has matched Spitz's record of 7 gold medals at a single Games... I didn't get to watch today's 100m fly final live but Phelps won by 0.01 sec! That is absolute craziness. That proverbial 1% luck is really on his side during this Games. See also: 4x100m freestyle relay. (O.O)

Thorpe, I still think you are a fantabulous swimmer - you had some pretty amazing moments and I have been much enamored by you since 2000, but I gotta admit that Phelps has truly outclassed all competition. He is a LEGEND. He is from another planet. He has gills for lungs and fins for limbs. He will go down as the greatest swimmer in sporting history. Everyone will speak of his name with such reverence! I am very amazed that he has had so many perfect swims - 6 out of 7 resulted in world records.

Okay change topic. Today my sisters and I went to the Singapore Flyer! It was quite crowded. My camera ran out of battery, so most of the time we were trying to coax my camera to work. The view was nothing spectacular. Not worth the $30 odd admission but I paid only $10 so that's okay. Oh and we found a piece of metal in our drink at Popeye's Chicken!!!! @___@ We got a free drink in return for that. Hahaha. :D

Today's one of those nasty days at work. I spent the whole morning scuttling around, settling the deployment of new computers (one of the many shitty things in my job scope - being in charge of the department's "assets" PFFFFT), teaching these pre-stone age people how to back up their documents (@___@), having random people coming up to me with their stupid requests - and the worst thing is how ungrateful they are about it. I wouldn't mind helping out with their selfish requests, complaints and whining if they were nicer and more polite about it, but some of them are acting like it's the most 理所当然 thing to have this and that entitled to them. And then Ms Tortoise was just throwing down orders and making me do all the legwork AGAIN. Typical.

One of them producers still dare to say I look angsty. DAMN RIGHT I AM, MISSUS. Would you like it too if you were the department's Head Slave? Having to settle all these stupid nitty gritty tiny little things and not lifting a finger to help? My colleague (who is leaving - smart girl) says that they keep stepping all over me coz I entertain their stupid requests. My fault for being overly helpful. I am going to make a conscious effort to stop being the Yes-Girl now and give black faces whenever I feel like it. HURMPHHHH.

Oh yes and I also received my confirmation letter today. I am so elated I think I am going to float. Yeah right. It just means I'm a certified slave now. Not that I wasn't a slave before, but I am officially a slave/personal assistant/one-stop information centre now. With it comes no increase in pay, no nothing. Terms and conditions offered remain as per normal. PFFFFFT.
Well at least I survived 6 months (next Monday 18 Aug is the official date) and I have 6 more months to go before I consider greener pastures!

At least I still had some time to watch the 100m men's free and 200m women's fly today. Man, the world records are dropping like dead flies in the Water Cube!!! I can't even remember how many world records have been broken to date. But the Aussies aren't doing too well in the pool this year it seems.

VERY impressive swim by the US 4x100 men's freestyle relay team today. I thought it was going to be bye-bye 8 gold medals for Phelps but Lezak was super fantastic! Coming up by half a body length (or was it more?) to win it! Gosh the look on Phelps' face when the got the gold... was like =O

I was watching the swimming finals at work today. Thought I could watch the live streaming feed from mediacorptv.com/olympics but bloody work computer had a firewall that kept blocking the live feed. As a result all I got were erratic, intermittent images. The Irony. =x

But anyhow we've got TV sets in the office so all's good. :D

Tao Li also deserves special mention for being the first Singaporean to reach an Olympic swim final! Gotta give the girl some credit. She's only 18, stands at 1.6m tall and yet is one of the top 5 swimmers in the world for the 100m fly. Impressive! :)

Expect a whole lot more of Olympics talk... at least till the swimming matches end. :) I just read my archives 4 years ago and I was also gushing about all these swimming finals and Thorpe. I wonder what happened to Pieter van den Hoogenband? And Inge de Bruijn?

I still remember the match that was dubbed "Match of the Century" 4 years ago... Thorpe vs Phelps vs van den Hoogenband in the 200m free. Thorpe won it of course. Hee :)

I believe a beetle just got decapitated by the fan.

Heard a look "TUK" and then saw some beetle parts on the floor.

Poor beetle, that's definitely not the nicest way to die.

And I saw a cockroach in the living room too. My dad took the mop and smashed it, and then threw it out of the window.

Pity the fella who happened to walk by our unit downstairs (if there's any)... Yucks.

Youtube is scarily efficient in taking down copyrighted materials nowadays. I was trying to search for Michael Phelps and Park Tae Hwan's swims today - our recorder didn't record the swim finals even though I set the timer to record at 10am!!! - and all the videos I found have been taken down by Youtube.

Boo Youtube, I am also very angry that you suspended Coolsmurf's account. GRRRR.
(Coolsmurf is my oasis for most of the delightful Eng-subbed Korean variety shows.)

DANG I missed the golden 08.08.08 date. :(

I sat through the most boring meeting ever today. All 3.5 hours of it. GAH! Such a waste of my time. My boss arrowed me to attend and it was so boring I dozed off more than a couple of times during the meeting. ZZZZ. Anyway half the time I don't even know what the discussion was about. -___-"

Hello Beijing Olympics! I can't wait to watch the swimming matches - no more Thorpe but there's still Phelps who is also a pretty awesome swimmer. And like the rest of the world, I'm waiting to see if Phelps can tie Mark Spitz's record of 8 gold medals at a single Games!

And YAY Ichee has finally acted on our plan to go on a holiday... I'm so happy I have something to look forward to now :) though I think I will be damn sian when my holiday ends - but oh well I shall not feel sad prematurely.

Happy National Day folks, I will have 1 more day credited to my annual leave after 9th Aug! WOOHOO! :D

Don't know why I was so tired this morning, but I just concussed the moment I sat down on the bus and when I woke up, I found myself at Sunset Way. -____-"

Usually I'll reach my bus stop at about 9am, but this morning I woke up at almost 9.30am! So I've been sleeping happily for half an hour, going past many many bus stops...

There goes another $10! At least the peak hour surcharge ended at 9.30am, else my cab fare from Sunset Way to my work place will definitely be a lot more than $10. >___>

Haha maybe I should start a new category called "Oversleeping on Buses". LOL.

And so the drama at work continues. Colleague handed in her resignation letter today. No action from Tortoise. It was like she was expecting colleague to quit. Tortoise hauled colleague into her room after lunch for a talk. Tortoise had an even longer talk with me (why me? I'm not even the one who's quitting). I had another chat with HR coz she wanted to get more info from me on why colleague is quitting. Better still, I intelligently slammed my hand into a cupboard and I am now the proud owner of a nasty looking bruise. Oh yes, and I also have a mouthful of ulcers.

Bah! If it's any consolation, at least it's the weekend.

My morale at work has been quite low this week.

First it was my confirmation review - Ms Tortoise gave me a lower than average grade which I honestly think I do not deserve. Subsequently, HR realized that they presented an outdated review form to Ms Tortoise, so there was a revised form and the revised review was a lot better. The big boss seems pretty okay with my performance thus far and so I think I am most probably a confirmed employee now.

Then today my colleague dropped the news over lunch today - she's resigning, and my morale just dipped even lower. Apparently there has been much unhappiness between my colleague and Ms Tortoise, but I was totally oblivious to it. I must have been really dense not to have realized anything. In recent weeks, Ms Tortoise was just piling more work and responsibilities on me, and totally neglecting my colleague - which I thought was pretty unfair to me. Because why should I end up doing all the shit work while my colleague gets to surf Facebook all day? And I noticed that Ms Tortoise never cc-s my colleague in emails anymore. But still, I didn't think much about it.

I have no idea what the dispute between the both of them was about. I think it might have happened on the day I was attending my convocation and was on leave. According to my colleague, it's partly due to work and partly personal. She also said Ms Tortoise is a very "bitter woman". So well, I didn't probe. But it kind of sucks that she's leaving, coz it means now I have to do EVERYTHING and I hate it. I hate being Ms Tortoise's errand dog. I hate having to obey all her stupid commands. She is the type who would even call me just to ask, "What is XX's number?" >___> EXCUSE ME, can't you just go type the name out in the intranet phone directory and find out yourself? What's so hard about that?!

Plus it's such a waste of my time - on top of the shit work I have to do, I have to train the new comer. It just doesn't feel good to see a colleague leave because of this kind thing. I feel like I can't last longer if everyone who takes on this job just leaves one by one. At least with her around, there's some sort of comfort in numbers. Okay, 2 vs 1 isn't all that great but still, you have a partner standing on your side right?

Sigh. On the bright side, the weekend is coming soon!