Weird Dream - The Big Green Scaly Thing and Michael Jackson

I had this dream last Monday night after watching an episode of "The Fringe". This was one of the weirdest dreams I’ve had for 2009 so far. In this dream I was preparing to go to work in the morning. As I was putting on my shoes, I noticed a huge green scaly thing walking past our window but I didn't give it much thought and left the house. Then when I took the lift down and got to the void deck, I noticed a few people standing around looking very worried. They were starring fixedly at the car park. One of them appeared startled when he turned around to face me. He then placed his finger on his lips to indicate that I should not make a sound. I looked out and saw a huge dinosaur, the size of Godzilla, walking around the car park! He was taller than all the HDB flats in the neighbourhood and he looked really mean. Surprisingly, he didn't knock any buildings down or smash any cars. Godzilla didn't sense our presence at the void deck so we appeared to be safe from him.

As I recall, since I could not get to work, I decided to take the lift back up to our apartment to rest. It was Monday and the dinosaur saved me from facing the Monday blues. Hooray! My mother was waiting for me at the door when I emerged from the lift. "Thank goodness you haven't left!" she said. "You could have been eaten by that frightening dinosaur!" Now that wasn't the kind of thing your mother would say to you every morning. (Ha Ha!) Everything seemed so exciting that morning. I turned on the news and learnt that a science experiment had gone horribly wrong at the National University of Singapore and we now have a few dangerous extinct creatures roaming around the island! The government refused to comment further as this is a top secret experiment and everyone is to stay indoors while the Singapore Army and Civil Defense Force try their best to put these creatures down. At that moment a cave man filled the whole TV screen. I couldn't remember what happened in the rest of the dream. In fact when I woke up, I had forgotten all about this dream. It was only when I saw the janitor pushing her cart of cleaning detergents near the loo that I had a partial recollection of this funny dream. Weird huh?

In another dream, Michael Jackson was still alive. I had this dream a few months ago right after his death. In this dream, Michael Jackson was in a wheel chair. I was at some family gathering but I've never seen those relatives before. They all looked so much like me! We were all sitting at this long table having a meal together and Michael was our guest. He looked very Indian with curly hair, slightly darker skin (like his younger photo) and he had some shades on. He was also wearing a black shiny leather jacket and those famous white gloves. Some uncles who were sitting opposite me were trying to impress Michael with all sorts of stories but Michael appeared very shy and soft spoken. Later after the meal, I joined some cousins who were sitting around the garden. Michael wanted to compliment the person who cooked our meal so he asked me to hold his bag while he rolled into the kitchen. The bag he handed me was a 'Cold Storage' plastic bag with a picnic mat inside. I thought what a strange thing to bring along at a party like this. I couldn’t remember the rest of this dream either. Maybe I was thinking of him after his death ….that's it for weird dreams for now. See ya!

Life is a journey and not a destination

This week we received lots of shocking news at work. That brought me to reflect on a PowerPoint slide that I received sometime back and found rather meaningful. I couldn't find that file now but I do remember that it goes something like this:

Life is like a journey on a train. And along this journey we will meet people who will come and go in our lives. Some of these people may board this train and accompany us on our journey along the way. Some may just alight half way through to board another train. Sometimes, we ourselves have to leave this train and board a different one to get on with life. That's life and it has to go on, no matter what.

Many people will come and go in our lives. There'll be those that we may be reluctant to part with and there may be those that we feel relieve to never see again. There may be those who taught us something new and there may those who changed our lives forever. Nevertheless, all these people usually leave us a memory of them and shape our lives. Likewise, we ourselves may do the same for the other people who is travelling along the same route too. Time is irreversible. We should make the most of what we have and what we got before its gone. As Tommy Page once sang, all the bits and pieces of images that we have are like paintings in our minds, faded memories of another place in time. It's something worth reflecting upon…

The Announcement

It was the week after the latest secret office party. The boss wanted to give us an announcement and he planned to do it with a department lunch. A few days before this announcement, there was a lot of buzzing going around the office. There were many meetings and closed door discussions taking place. I sensed that there was something wrong with the mood around the office but I didn't know what it was. The boss's calendar showed that he was meeting a few people for lunch separately. Lots of people were curious about the upcoming announcement. There was even speculation that he just wanted to celebrate his birthday with us but I ruled that out because he was the sort of person who didn't like attention. Some people appeared to know what it was but didn't want to share. "Just wait for the lunch and we'll soon know what it's all about", declared someone who didn't care what was going on. She didn't think it was anything serious.

The day and moment finally arrived. Minutes before the gathering, I had seen him pacing up and down the office nervously. Something wasn't right. We gathered at the staff lounge and waited. There was a huge birthday cake in the middle of the room with the words "Happy Birthday BOSS" on it. Something told me that the cake wasn't part of the announcement. The boss appeared surprised and touched when he saw the cake. As we sang him a birthday song, I felt the uncomfortable mood in the air. He thanked everyone with a shaky voice and began his awkward and strange presentation. That was so unlike of him. His voice appeared shaky and cracking. He showed us a slide with some words all jumbled up and told us about how the brain is still able to interpret jumbled words after some try. Then he spoke about mountains and how fascinated he was about them. He told all of us that we all have our own mountains to climb and we should all find our own mountains to climb if we didn't have one. I wasn't sure what he was getting at. All through the years that we have worked with him, he was known for talking in codes and analogies to us. He was never direct. Most of the time, we could never quite figure out what he was saying because they were always ambiguous. At the end of the presentation, he finally dropped the bomb. He was leaving us and Mr. Suck-the-boss's-ass has been promoted to be his successor. The room was heavy with silence. At that moment, we just simply froze. He tried to sound cheerful as he quickly changed the subject that we should all began our lunch but nobody moved. He seemed surprised that we were surprised. He assumed that everyone already knew about his plans to leave.

Finally but slowly, some of us started heading toward the buffet table. Some people started to approach him. There were people who broke down to cry. I walked toward the buffet queue in a trance. I couldn't believe what just happened. So that explained the buzzing and the many closed door meetings. How on earth did Mr. Suck-the-boss's-ass get promoted? He is one of the members of the group that partied whenever the boss was out of the office. He seemed like a slimy guy. Can we trust him? Will he be a fair boss? His gang was of course happy for him. They've got one of their own who will be sitting at the top. He will be the guy who will determine our bonuses, salary increments and happiness with this work environment. I hope that he doesn't comprise his management role with his personal friendship toward his gang. I really hope he will play fair and not show any favoritism.

The week had too many surprises. Just too many for me to accept.

Secret Office Parties

I was feeling hungry one afternoon as my lunch was already digested by then. I was planning to get a snack from the pantry when my fellow hungry colleague called my extension.
"Psssst! Do you notice that a party is about to take place in the staff lounge?"
"Yeah," I replied. "I sure did."

We had both seen a big cake, probably a birthday cake of some sort, and some boxes of food neatly stacked on the table in there. There was a few people busy laying out the food nicely on the table. The boss had forbidden food to be brought into the lounge but certain people had the privilege to flout the rules. I saw that one guy was busy taking pictures of his colleagues and another lighting the candles on the cake. It was also the umpteenth time that month that a party was being celebrated there. It’s usually the same group of people.

"Do you think it's for the boss?" My colleague was curious because the boss's birthday was indeed coming soon.

"I don't know. But even if it was, I don't think we would be invited." I told her. Most of the people in that room were of the same gang. They're the ones who kissed the boss's ass whenever he was around but took long breaks whenever the boss was out for a meeting. In this office, there was such thing being in or out of that group. Those who were out, didn't like them. Those who were in were proud to be one of them. Being in or out of a group has its privileges, especially when the group has certain people who feel rich with power and use it to gain popularity. There'll always be people who will get away with murder. That's life in this organization.

"Let's not go to the pantry so soon," replied my ever hopeful colleague. "If this was the boss's birthday, I'm sure they would invite us. They have a lot of food in there." As she spoke those words, the group in that room broke into a birthday song. The walls in the office were very thin and we could hear the song loud and clear. However, we couldn't quite make out whose name it was.
"Did you hear the name?"
"Nope"
"Do you think it was for the boss?" I looked up and saw the boss leaving his room and heading for the lobby. He had returned to his room to grab something and leave again. The lounge was totally out of his sight. He had no idea there was a secret party behind one of those walls. "Nope, I just saw him leaving the office. He didn't seem to notice."
"Dang!"
"Yeah, let's get some pantry food."
Life is never fair.

The Proposal

Verdict of the cinema
I watched this show at The Cathay Cinema (theatre 2) on 30th August 2009 at 3.20pm. The movie theatre's great. It has lots of leg room and the seats are very comfortable. The toilets also come with a hand dryer that allows you to watch movie trailers as you dry your hands. I have a good feeling about the place whenever I go there. J You can buy your tickets either at the ground floor, basement or on the 5th floor.

Verdict of the show
The movie was directed and produced by a woman. (Yay!) Overall, the story left me a lasting impression. It was the sort of show that I kept thinking about and reflecting upon for days after the movie ended. The show is very funny and very interesting. It has a similar story line to "The Green Card" but only better.

The main character is a slave-driver lady boss (played by Sandra Bullock) whom nobody likes in the office. Margaret is the chief editor in a publishing company and she has a 'secretary', Andrew (played by Ryan Reynolds) who is supposedly an assistant editor to her. When Margaret's visa expires, she cooks up a plan to blackmail Andrew into marrying her so that she wouldn't have to be deported back to Canada.

The plot has a lot of surprises and twists, a hook factor. At the beginning of the story, Margaret is seen as a slave driver and fearsome boss who is always throwing orders around. As the story progresses, we see a more human side of her and learn to feel sorry for her. Her parents died when she was young and she has forgotten what it was like to be around a family and be loved. So that is why she has turned into a cold person over the years.

Andrew is the good guy who has been taking all her phone calls, doing her errands and even buying coffee for her in the mornings. As Margaret follows him home to celebrate his grandmother's ninetieth birthday, we learn that he is actually a rich man's son who owns several business empires in Alaska. His father wants him to take over the family businesses but he only wants to go to New York to be a writer. As the story progresses, power is transferred to him and suddenly, he is the one who calls the shots at his boss during the weekend stay.

There'll be hilarious moments as they have to lie to his family that they are in love and want to get married. They have no choice but to share the same room and kiss passionately in front of the family. Watch for Ramon, the guy who seems to do almost everything on the island. He's a waiter, exotic dancer, shop assistant and even minister.

The story will have a nice Cinderella ending style. He does actually love her and really want to marry her. I love everything about the story and it's a really, really good show to watch. The story left me reflecting on the plot for several days.

The Skiver

The Monday morning blues were getting heavier. Most of us had to battle the peak hour crowd and drag ourselves to work. Starting the week is never easy. It is so much different from ending the week on a Friday. For some reason, most of us are more productive toward the end of the work week rather than the beginning.

I glanced around the stillness of the office as I turned on my computer. Most people were late as usual. I saw the boss making his usual rounds as he headed out to take the lift down. God knows where he heads to every morning at 8.30am. I wonder what is usually on his mind when he's walking around the office in the morning. Does he make a mental note of the early birds and the latecomers every day? Does he count the number of cups at the sink before tossing them into the bin? Lately he's been having this fetish for trying to make the cups disappear from the sink that's been left around for too long. No matter how many cups he threw away, they just kept reappearing the next morning.

By 9.00am, the row of desks near me slowly came to life with keyboards clacking, CPUs beeping and phones ringing - an indication that work had finally started. At 9.15am I walked past the front desk and noticed that it was still in another time zone. Perhaps that area was an hour behind our local time. The place was still in darkness. It was still Sunday in this part of the office. A dispatch guy impatiently dumped a parcel on that desk and strode off.

At 9.15am, I could finally hear the whirling of the PC behind me. The sound of the flask and the smell of bread and coffee told me that the person behind was having breakfast. Ah, the luxurious smell of someone having breakfast at this hour. The email finally came at 9.30am. It was from the one who had just finished her breakfast. The lady in front was not coming in for the day - again. It was either Laura or Hardy who had to help out and they had done so many times already. They were fed up. The bitching and complaining would come shortly. It was dreadful but there was no running away and there was nothing much I could do. 'Why couldn't Flip-flop lady be in the rotation?', they would ask. They had seen her taking frequent naps, surfing the net, looking at photos and watching videos while claiming to be extremely busy. They simply detested the Flip flop lady. The breakfast lady always turned a deaf ear. Flip Flop lady and Sour faced slob (a.k.a. lady in the front) were her best friends. She would never betray them. Never. This was work not kindergarten, she ran the team like the latter.

Reluctantly I got up to present the problem to her. It wasn't the first time and it would not be the last. It was going to be a waste of energy but Laura and Hardy wanted me to something badly. I saw the look on her face. It didn't look good. She would avoid me if she could. I could tell that she wished that the floor boards below us would swallow her up whenever I came to her with a real life problem of what was happening. "Could you put Flip Flop at the front desk today instead? The others feel they could use another hand." I asked her the forbidden question again. She didn't seem to know the answer to that one though.

"I will look into it," was the famous reply. She needed some time to think as always. (Translation: I hope to escape this one again. Well, I just like to sit on problems and wait for them to vaporize into thin air. Why, is there a problem with that? )
"When would that be?" I asked.
"Maybe I'll let you know next month." (Translation : I'm waiting for the cows to come home. As you know they have four stomachs and they need to eat grass like forever. So that would be like never and then I wouldn’t have to come back to you at all. )
"Can we not wait too long?" (Translation : Is that a cobweb that I see on your face? Oh, there's even a fly caught on it. Eww!)
"I'll get back to you. I'm busy" (Translation : Scram!)

This scene would always be like another ground hog day whenever Sour faced disappeared from work. It was frustrating. Do you know that we actually have people who do not work 47% of the year on the payroll of our organization? I bet you wouldn't believe it but I actually did the math and worked it all out. No kidding! Sour faced lady only worked 53% of the year. Just add the total annual leave, unpaid leave, medical leave, public holidays and weekends and you'll know what I mean. *
Does the boss know? If I told on her, would he believe me? There could be bigger problems with her later too. What about Laura and Hardy? We can't go on like this forever. I'm in a tough situation here. Help me pray for a miracle. God, please show me the way. I really don't know what to do.

* The calculations:
1) Number of days during weekends = 52 weeks x 2 = 104 days
2) Public holidays = 10 days
3) Annual Leave = 14 days
4) Medical Leave ( yes, she actually consumes all of it for the whole year.) = 30 days
5) Unpaid leave = 15 days
Total = 173 days
To work out the % , take 173/365 x 100% and you'll have 47% or thereabouts.