January 6, 2009

massive dolt

My 2.5 year old daughter was minding her own business, when I decided that it was high time for her to brush up her cognitive skills. I looked around and I spotted a baby bottle cap lying near where she was sitting, so I decided to ask her if she could spot the partially camouflaged cap (it was a yellow cap lying on a floral patterned bed sheet). It was an attempt to gauge both her language comprehension and observation skill…

“Regine, the baby bottle cap is missing. Can you help daddy to look for it?”

She understood my question and then looked around for the cap, and easily spotted it. But instead of picking it up to give it to me, she was kind of giving me this look which I do not know how to describe. Thinking that she might have missed the cap, I asked her again about the cap…

“Regine, daddy still could not find the cap. Can you help to look around some more?”

After pausing for a while, she finally pointed at the cap with her little index finger and said this to me,

“OPEN YOUR EYES LAH!”

I’ve never felt so much like a massive dolt before…

michaelooi  | 3-of-us  | 185 views  | 11 Comments
January 5, 2009

chaos on the final days of work

It was the final 2 weeks of December, and all the managers were either on vacation, or on their scheduled ‘medical leave’. Our technician, Milkboy, was ranting about how stucked up his situation was, because he couldn’t find anyone to approve his forms…

Milkboy: “Fuck man, all the managers are out of office. Now how am I suppose to get these forms approved?? Sheesh”

Me: “Just get that XX department ‘Dickhead’ to approve your fucking forms. Don’t give yourself a bad excuse to shirk, you lazy bum.”

Milkboy: “This is so inconvenient.”

Me: “Well, you can propose to the management to give me the authorization to approve your forms. I reckon that would be convenient enough for you. But it wouldn’t be free though, for I’ll be charging 5 bucks per approval… the convenience comes at a price needless to say…”

Milkboy: “…” [dove into his pile of paperwork and STFU-ed]

Hell, 5 bucks per approval… that’s going to be convenient, for me. Come to think of it, this can be some idea to start a subcontract business for myself to the corporates. You know, everything is ’subbed’ nowadays, why not a manager? For a much cheaper price of course. I’m going to sit in for managers to do their taxing paperwork (approvals, reviews, shits, you know… just mouse clicks anyway), while those assholes can go ahead to socialize with their ilks at golf courses to forge businesses, synergize or whatever… And of course, with the rising demand and orders pouring in, I can probably subcontract a second tier cheaper labor to cope with all the mounting work. Like, if I charge 2 bucks per approval for a form, I can subcontract to a Bangla to do it for 25% of the cost per job. In no time, I will be owning an empire of services that does all your asshole bosses’ seemingly brainless work, how about that? (yeah, you guys can then call me up for a drink if you need to get anything approved…)

And oh, I’ll name the subcontract company as ‘Perineum Inc.’ if that happens… (you know, perineum? an asshole’s best friend? Yeah. Classic.)

michaelooi  | innovation  | 141 views  | 2 Comments
December 12, 2008

2008 roll up

As most of you have known, it has been a customary of me to write a summary of my year as the final post every year. In case you’re wondering if this is coming too soon - yes, I decided to bring this forward to take a short hiatus from blogging till January.

Alright, so how has it been for me (2008)? It was alright I guess. At least nothing bad happened. As I have mentioned in my previous roll up, I wanted to have my job stabilize over, you know, settling down and stuff. And that’s pretty much what has been going on for me. I have not been very productive (though by the common standard, it was still above average) and have not done jack shit. I was just going with the flow. Get the job done and go home. For the first time ever, my only motivation was for that paycheck at the end of the month.

Like 2007, I haven’t had much life outside my family and work. I had very little outings (got drunk only twice), and once a while, only went drinking at a friend’s house on weekends, and that’s about it. At times, I did feel like a zombie programmed to sleep and work, eat and crap, toggle between a husband/dad and engineer mode, and have just the sufficient cognitive ability to not make an ass out of myself. It was as if I am trapped in this stage of life like a nasty fold on a vast piece of carpet… you know, those banal moments in life that are meant to be wasted and not worth remembering? I think I’m going through that right now.

And then there’s the economy downturn which everyone has been getting anal about. Despite it being a blight to everyone, I am fortunate to say that it has little effect on me to date. In fact, it kinda translated to slightly better livelihood for people like me. How? You see, I get my paycheck in a constant manner. If the economic slump has been causing everything to be less expensive, then the advantage is definitely on people like me, you get what I mean? The only worry for me is to lose my fucking job. And I know that’s not likely going to happen anytime soon… (even if that were to happen, I’d take that as a cue for me to move on to a new organization and life… which I have been reluctant on doing all these while. So, it’s still ok for me). So, both my social and work life can be best described as unchanged, mundane, boring and everything else in between.

Anyway, there were still some joyous episodes left for me to salvage amidst the mundanity:
I finally cleared the installment for Lorraine. That spells ‘financial freedom’. But then, it was a short lived liberation, for I used the money to buy a new car to replace my mom’s rickety junk (I guess it was more like HER joyous moment more than mine…). And then of course, the joy of parenting. Seeing my Regine growing into a talkative and an increasingly evil little girl is - sadistically - the most exhilarating experience for Emily and I. Our baby, despite being quite a nuisance, has been making our life nothing short of being ‘livelier’. For every shitty day that we have in office, she would make it up by just being around. She’s like, the absorber for our potholes in life. She makes our problems look trivial with her shenanigans, and therefore, makes everything wretched more bearable. It is a blessing to have her around.

2009, I reckon, will be a bad time to have plans and aspirations. Company X, like many multinational corporations, will definitely be in limbo when the world economic slump goes into full force. It will be more of a question whether I’m able to retain my fucking job, or is there going to be a change of things. It is very hard to be certain. There have been whispers and rumors, that Company X is soon going to be bought over by some Taiwanese firm, and we’re all going to be turned into their sex slaves. So, 2009 for me, will be more about how to sustain the life, to be prudent in all expenditures and hopefully, get over the drought soon. You know, aim low and hit higher.

And that’s about it. Like I said, this will be my last post for 2008, and I will be taking a break from blogging/work for the rest of December. I am not going for a vacation so, I will still be hanging around; probably will use up the time to clear my backlog of movies and TV shows that has been hogging my hard drive…

Merry Christmas people, and have a happy bad economy New Year.

tags:

michaelooi  | misc  | 573 views  | 18 Comments
December 8, 2008

diaper

My wife Emily was caught in some situation last night - my 2 year old daughter spotted her holding a piece of sanitary napkin (if you need to know, it was an unused pad) and asked her what was that on her hand. Not wanting to complicate things, Emily told Regine that it was ‘mommy’s diaper’. That’s the closest thing that makes sense to a 2 year old, Emily said. Astonished by the shape of that thing, my Regine took the piece of sanitary napkin, ran to me and said:

“Daddy daddy! See this? This is mommy’s diaper… SO UGLY!!”

I laughed till I almost died. I wonder what makes her think that her diaper looks better than a goddamn sanitary napkin…

michaelooi  | 3-of-us  | 398 views  | 12 Comments
December 6, 2008

encounter with kids that need serious tranquilizing

I had to yell at a bunch of kids at a KFC joint today.

It happened at the indoor playground area, when I was looking after Regine. It was all good at the playground until that bunch of obnoxious kids came and started to wreak havoc upon mankind. For the record here, the indoor playground was meant for kids under 10, but those kids that came were like 10 - 12 years old. There were 5 of them in a gang, brought over by this middle aged Chinese housewife in a revolting spaghetti string attire.

They came into the playground and played ‘chase’ - which I didn’t really mind at first, albeit I was a little bit annoyed with the screaming and all. But when they pushed my Regine and made her almost tip over a 4 feet high platform, I snapped (I managed to grab her in time). I mean, can you imagine that? Seeing a 10 year old imp push my 2 year old angel like nobody’s business? Man, I could have tossed that little shit half way across the restaurant. But of course I didn’t do that (I would if it isn’t a crime). Instead, I hissed at the bunch of kids in my best impression of a mean fucker - “HEY! If you guys want to play, play properly, ok??”

A harmless warning with a hint of violence in it. Simple enough for the kids to understand that if they don’t heed my warning, they’re going to have to see the doctor to have chicken bones removed from their rectum. They immediately toned down right after I issued the threat. The spaghetti string housewife was around when I did the hissing, and she didn’t like that a bit. I thought she’d come over to confront me, but she didn’t. She’s probably scared of me or something. Whatever.

But I happened to spot her glowering at me from outside the window pane when she left the premise with her bunch of devil spawns, with the kind of expression like I was a pedophile who almost got a piece off one of them. She then muttered something vulgar (while still glowering at me) and then did what it seemed like she was reassuring her kids that I was just another terrible man from out of town. Not wanting to be left out, I reciprocated her hostility by lip syncing the word ‘BITCH’ and ‘CHEEBYE‘ back at her, which riled her even more… and then she fucking disappeared.

I swear, had she confronted me verbally when she was in the restaurant, I would have taken the liberty to say something really mean to her (since I needed to de-stress very badly lately anyway…), like how she ought to sheath her tits with those black garbage plastic bags to match the sag contour, and how rustic people like her shouldn’t reproduce, lest she would make the human species look bad to the animals. There’s a popular Malay word to describe the kind of people she is - Kurang ajar. Neither she nor any of her kids attempted to apologize for shoving my Regine.

Maybe some of you might say that they’re just kids being kids, but hell, there was actually another group of kids of about the same age before the little devils came. In contrast to the devil kids, the earlier group knew how to be considerate and share, and waited for their turn to play. Most important thing was, they knew how to cut my Regine some slack knowing she’s little and all. They didn’t scream like they’ve lost their fucking mind. And they didn’t run around like the building’s on fire. That’s what I would deem a normal, well taught, regular kid is. And when the little devils came, the first group automatically left. (unfortunately, except my Regine because she’s too little to realize that the hot soup’s pouring over and I couldn’t make her leave).

All in all, it’s just fucking sad to have people like her living amongst us.

michaelooi  | happenings  | 301 views  | 12 Comments
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