Merry Christmas to All in Blogland...

..and in WorldWideWebland and so on and so forth et cetera ad nauseum!

Yes. Mea Culpa. Me culpable of not posting enough on my miserable blog. But hopefully, the adrenaline rush and frostbite of spending several weeks in Ohio might change all that.

Yes. I hereby resolve to blog my experiences of Ohio and US-on-the-job-training! Within limits, of course, can't very well give away company secrets and be sued for breach of Information Security Policy, now can I? Well, yes I could, but why would I want to? Not quite one of the things I need to do before I die...

About this blog post:

Now what was I supposed to talk about?

Oh yes.


Merry Christmas and Season's Greetings to all!


This auspicious blog entry marks the start of my already faltering resolve to regularly blog experiences and personal impressions of my exciting On-the-Job-training-stint. I'll be enjoying (hopefully) -25 Celcius weather, and finally (after 6 years) be able to use my stupidly warm parka.

We'll see who wins. My parka and my polar bear constitution, or Ohio area-effect snow and wind...

About the people helping to arrange the training:

My Department's Head Cheese (hereafter known as Kind Boss) in the US has been extremely helpful and kind, by co-ordinating efforts to secure resources for me, while I'm there. In addition to Kind Boss, I also have one of two mentors helping Kind Boss out, like fine-tuning my training program, answering stupid questions and generally catering to my every whim and fancy. No, really! I didn't anticipate that US HR would send me a questionnaire, asking me to list my preferences for Stuff After Work (SAW).

So, happy, culturally-starved me, I listed Broadway, early music performances, free music conservatory recitals, gentle hiking and coffee as my preferred passions. Will they really help me experience all that? Read on, over the next several weeks to find out!! Ha! Finally, a good reason to keep on reading my blog! Whoo Hoo!

So, a Big Thank You to Kind Boss and Mentors for your offered help! But, here's a problem:

Being a Person of Oriental Origins (POO) uh..., I'm obliged to make a feeble attempt to try and show my appreciation, other than making them famous by mentioning them on my well-read blog.

So, for Kind Boss, I schlepped over to Chinatown to get a Chinese-Dragon-topped Jade name stamp, with Kind Boss' English name phonetically transmogrified into Mandarin, natch. The two mentors have a Chinese-Lion-topped Jade name stamp. What do you all out there think? Lemme know, by posting comments!

I have a Peranakan heritage, so I also got for Kind Boss a pair of authentic, but not antique Peranakan Intan display spoons. Hopefully, Kind Boss will like them, and think kindly of me during the half-yearly job appraisal (ahem).

During my OJT, my weekends will be sorta free, aside from the free concerts. I'm also thinking of visiting New York at the end of my training, and go see a few Broadway shows - Spamalot and Company come to mind!

Please be kind, and send me suggestions on how to enjoy myself in the US, during January to March (preferably not too far from Ohio, like Hawaii).

Please?

Goaded into Being

... is the raison d'etre for today's posting. Indeed, this particular blog entry has its roots in the recent deluge of comments received from Bridget, Karen and MM. So, without any more beating about the bush, lengthy loquacious introductions featuring half-baked alliteration and words longer than two syllables, I present: My Day So Far (MDSF®).

Picture this.. (if you don't want to, it's O,K, just read on, and I'll pretend that you did).. I've just applied my daily dose of aluminium-free bacteria-odour-suppressing armpit slime, and I shrug on my Polo T of the day. This leaves me half-nekkid, except for a comfy pair of boxers that, from a distance, look like short shorts. I'm talking about the solidly colored kind, not the weird looking white ones with faux lipstick stains, the ones with the XOXOX tattoed on the butt area, or the pyjama-like checks and stripes. Not the ah-pek looking type neither.

Anyway, I've barely done that (remember the Polo T?) when I experience another Morning Ritual (the other being the armpit slime). Imagine a chorus of whiney high-pitched voices raised in disparate, nagging asymphony, a furry duet of demanding calls for Tuna-based munchies, unapologetically and sometimes apoplectically commanding that Breakfast Be Served

"Nnnooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww"
"Mmmmrrrrooooww Nooooowwwwwwwwww"
"[squeak]"

After combing some hair back down, I decide to open the door, resigned to my sub-lot in life: designated naggy cat feeder.

Normally, I'd be greeted by one or more of the following:
a) a mass of two furry bodies pounding each other with small, soft but painfully-sharp claw tipped feet
b) lots of fur on the formerly clean floor
c) hairball
d) wet hairball in a puddle of fluid, appetizingly light-brown (courtesy of the squeaker)
e) Poo-smear-trail, probably from a butt-drag, resulting from some kind of food snarfed during the night
f) two furry expectant and innocent-looking faces looking up at me from two perfectly positioned feline torsos amid the murdered ruins of a dangerous roll of toilet paper.

Today, in this episode of MDSF, we have

g) : bright red blood, splattered in a fancy, Martha Stewart-esque decorative pattern, tastefully surrounding a few bloody pawprints.

AAAAaaaaaaaAAhhhhHHhhhHH!

Bersambung, to be continued.

In the next episode of MDSF, expect to read about:

• my exciting call to the office, applying for half-day's leave to bring the (really) bloody cat to the vet!
• the extremely traumatic taxi-ride with the Amazing Organic Air-Raid Siren!
• the spellbinding Vet examination and double-hypodermic Rapid-Delivery Medication System!
• the doubly traumatic taxi-ride back from the Vet's office, featuring: Feline Panting and bloody smears all over the Carrier Door!
• drawing a double espresso pull from my Proteo Barista, while avoiding overly-grateful body rubs from the snuffling Bloody Cat!
• None of the Above, if I don't get 'round to doing it!

Was this a good day?

I need direction...

Morning.

I sit here, slurping a 4-shot Americano, munching on a corned beef and onion sandwich, smearing my precious laptop with bits of oily onion and greasy salty sodium-laden "corned beef with no cereals" ejected gracelessly from my ever-moving piehole. And I'm wondering... "What shall I have for lunch?"

Oh, and also, "What do I do today?" I'm taking an official leave of absence this morning - woke up with Kura-Okami spitting pontoons of rain at my window. Nice day to sleep in, you'd think, except that the two boys are yowling and spitting and banging on the door with their clawed feet trying to disembowel each other. And yet, here they are, half an hour later, sleeping blissfully side by side on the sofa. Cats are nuts.

So I'm thinking that I should go register at a few job sites, get my job change plan going when I'm distracted by thoughts of visiting Mr Brown and his sometimes-wacky podcasts. And maybe I should go on a few unfinished quests in Oblivion... or download some mods... or think about lunch...

I either need more coffee, or I have the attention span of cat.

Virgin Mindfart

Whoa.


My first four-letter word on the Web! At least, the first that doesn't have anything to do with surveys or order forms...

Hey, if you're reading this, welcome to my little space. I've been thinking and comtemplating and brooding and angst-ing about blogging for years, but something, somehow kicked my butt off the sofa and pulled me by my coffee-stained un-pearly-whites to where I am now.

Confession: This blog, and my next few might be rather shakey. I have no clue where I'm going with this. I might turn it into a daily confessional diary, or I might start going off on a tangent about coffee, cats, Work (OMG, so much fodder there), relationships (the Wifey and the Father-in-Law)... you get the drift. Anyways, if you like what I'm doing, send me a note. If you don't, send me a note, but please be constructive. I have no patience for stupidity or intolerance, unless it's my own! 8-p

Thought for the day: Boy, am I fat. IMHO, I'm now closer than ever to resembling a charsiew pau on legs.[Charsiew pau: Red, sweetened BBQ pork bits in a fluffy white dough thing. Roughly oval shaped. For all you International readers]

Wifey though, is now more than ever, a babe. She spent some serious effort on getting slimmer and fitter. She went to the gym, joined a few mini-marathons and now, she's a beginner triathlete! She's tanned and fit, diametrically opposite me, corpulent slug couch potato hunched over a laptop. Being fit and staying fit is good for almost-middle aged folks like me - definitely don't want to be hobbling around suffering from heart-attacks when I reach 50. But like most unfit people, I'm just having trouble getting started. I'd rather spend my weekends vegging and drinking my personally-pulled espresso shots.

Wifey is starting to hang out with other triathletes from the local community, which is good, because she wants and needs guidance for training, and fitness supplies. Like her most recent acquisition - an Orbea bike - budget-class, but quite serviceable. She would have had a hard time finding it at that price if it weren't for helpful people in the local triathlete support club. She's out biking on 80 kilometer rides and training with buff Supermen.And I'm still a charsiew pau. (sigh)