The past couple of weeks have been really difficult and I have been in battle.

My emotions have been all over the place and I’ve been withdrawn–much preferring my own boring lonesome company while wallowing happily (an oxymoron I know) like a pig in mud.

I ran across this quote in a book I read, it hit me pretty hard

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
But of respect and joy in each other’s life.
-Richard Bach, author

Just the other day, I had to be out of the office for an entire day. The sequences of events was just plain hilarious

1. Woke up late
2. Forgot my mobile phone (When this happened, I was hit with a realisation that the day would not turn out smoothly)
3. Had a sudden minor crisis and therefore got held up in the office and was late for the appointment outside
4. Couldn’t get to the appointment as it was locked and I couldn’t call a colleague as well, I didn’t have my phone
5. Had to search for a payphone (I’m amazed at the lack of payphones…sheesh just because mobile phones are so everywhere, doesn’t mean that payphones should almost disappear)
6. My batteries and spare batteries died at the most inopportune time
7. Paid $8.50 for two batteries instead of $4.50 for 4 (sigh, why oh why do I get so easily caught up in making sure everything is the best instead of having a stopgap measure)
8. I twisted my ankle and I was in heels
9. For some reason, I was so hungry an hour after I ate lunch… that I ended up being very distracted

I have a confession to make.

I am a serial abuser.

There I’ve said it.

I swear I constantly abuse my shoes so terribly, I am guaranteed to be jailed and caned if they actually breathed.

My shoes tend to be heels; high and fairly thin. Yet I keep running in them. So much so that every so often I would have to pay a visit to my neighbourhood cobbler coz the heels are almost gone thanks to my antics.

I was cooking up a storm for dinner. Ok fine, so not a storm. Just that my tummy was in a funny mood and all I wanted was soup instead of what was really cooked for dinner when I walked over to the other side of the kitchen to get something.

I opened the refrigerator door and bent over to peer inside to look for something. Then I just couldn’t remember what I walked all the way over for. Looking back at the stove, I still couldn’t figure out what I wanted. So I started walking back in hopes that it would come to me soon.

As soon as I reached the stove, I realised why I had walked over previously.

I wanted to get a spoon from the drawer next to the refrigerator!

I was just having a discussion with a friend just the other day. She mentioned to be that a forum she is part of is trying to raise money for the little girl whose toe was ripped off on an escalator. As much as I would like to commend them for their civic minded-ness, I think they have lost perspective of what things should really be.

When wanting to “raise funds for charity or a charity project”, one must be sure that it is such. This is just an unfortunate accident – not a valid charity project, in my humble opinion. If you would just hear me out before throwing raw eggs (or spam in my direction)

There are people writing into The Straits Times’ forum about how the government needs to look into these escalator incidents. As far as I know, there is only a handful that exists in recent time; I probably can count them on one hand.

Every time I go out, I will definitely have at least one run in with kids that are playing in places that they should not. They run amok around shopping malls, in restaurants and many other places and the parents just sit there and do nothing. Or they tell the maid off for not controlling the children. It makes me wonder, who gave birth to those kids.

I’m more likely to believe that the parents were not watching the child when the shoe got caught in the escalator, causing the toe to be ripped off. As my friend said, if that happened to her child, her husband would blame her for not watching the child properly. As it is, we have warning labels on escalators – not to stand too near the sides, to stand within the yellow bar area, to hold the handrail, to not play on the escalator, for adults to hold the child’s hand – all of which are common sense that should be applied regardless.

What else do we need? Every time I see a coffee cup that comes with the warning “Caution, contains hot drink” (or something similar) I just want to roll on the floor laughing. I feel like companies are dumbing me down – but I understand their need to do so, coz others can’t seem to figure it out on their own. Some guy got burnt by his tea or coffee from McDonald’s – he sued McD’s and actually won; which is probably why their cups come with that warning label.

How soon are we going to learn to stop whining and just realize that the Singapore government isn’t here to baby you? It just seems that everyone wants the government or someone to step in when something goes wrong. The snack deli opposite yours didn’t close down and your business is suffering – what do you do, complain to the media in hopes of getting some attention. If you didn’t do enough research before committing to a shop location, your child hurts themselves because you weren’t watching them carefully or you burn yourself when you spilt hot drink on yourself, I say it’s your fault.

Don’t keep finding someone to blame; have the courage to realize that it was your mistake, fix it and move on.

P.S. Another person with a similar take on the situation – tho person has anger towards footwear too as well. The blog post can be found here

For months now, I’ve been telling myself to get off my tush and exercise since I’m fine to start running again. Every time I had an excuse for not starting, most recently it was the haze.

Finally, I took a first step. I went for a swim today. Albeit the fact that my stamina is almost zero – it was a good start. I forgot how refreshing a swim could be, or how happy one can feel after a bout of muscle straining activity.

It’s 11plus as I type this post, and yet I am feeling sleepy. I do hope I don’t wake up with aches tomorrow.

Any one wants to join me for a swim soon?