Anti-Cold

I still can't believe that with such horridly warm weather I could have came down with a cold once more over the weekends, marking the 3rd time this year.

Starting from today, I shall start on a Vitamin C supplement routine. It's about time I put a stop to it once and for all (hopefully).

Suck Up

“In tough times, more suck up to the boss”. This article from today’s My Paper somewhat provides an explanation.

At first, this young colleague of mine was producing promising results on the closing reports. He was professional, eloquent and more importantly genuinely enthusiastic in his work. Only a couple months into the job, he has already gotten a few senior staff singing his praises.

Of late, his movement starts displaying signs of ingratiation. Not that I bother to notice, it’s just that I so happen sit outside my boss’s office. His selection of words, the packaging of sentences, the body language and the effort made to walk some 20 metres across the room to reach here simply irks me.

In modern workplace, I don’t deny that some effort is at least needed to PR with your boss. He or she ultimately decides your fate in the company. But what disgusts me is when the person overdoes it to the point of obvious differential personality.

“It becomes a mentality of ‘I not only want to do a good job, but I want to be seen as doing a good job’.”

An Old Friend

I was on my way to work this morning taking the same path everyday to reach my bus stop. I took notice of a lady from afar dressed in casual red. She was seated on a porch by the void deck which was usually vacant most part of time.

As I was about to pass her by with hurried foot steps, I caught a quick glance of her face and find it oddly familiar. She looked very young but the features on her face were distorted - signs of facial paresis. I halted to take a closer look.

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When I was about 7 years old, I had quite a few playmates from around the neighbourhood. Almost everyday after school, we would gather at the playground to do what we do best - hide-and-seek.

One of the closest I've got in the gang were three siblings, one brother and two elder sisters, who lived a couple floors above with their grandmother. 4 years later one day, they moved suddenly and I never saw them again.

That very day, their parents had yet another huge quarrel. They had been quarrelling almost everyday but this time they were on the brink of divorce. In frustration and anguish, the elder sister threw herself head-first over the window.

The plunge did not take her life. She recovered eventually from her injury but the damage to her brain was irreversible. She became permanently impaired in her speech and psychomotor movement with paresis to her face and limbs.

15 years later, her divorced mother decided that her disability was too huge a burden to carry. She was forced to move back to her grandmother's place, back to where it was a couple of floors above mine.

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I recognise her.