When mixed blessings turn into absolute curses

You know things can't be right when you find yourself sobbing in the office in front of just about everybody (including the cute boy sitting right next to you.) EVERYDAY. Like you were born with hyperactive tear ducts that can't afford to rest.

I've never thought work can fill me with so much dread and despair: it ate away my social life, my family time, even time to see my dog. It sucked away everything that meant being alive to me. The mere thought of my now-ex-boss churned up one big blackhole, swallowing up my existence as a sane individual, the way Dementors in Harry Potter feed on other people's pain, fear and misery.

So when she pronounced that she was letting me go today, (because of my "intolerable attitude problem" - ahem... this coming from the Queen of Verbal Abuse, Ripped Paper Trajectories and Office Stationery Dodgeball) I wasn't exactly sad. The shock of being fired for the first time still hasn't passed, but I am 100% certain I won't miss living in such terror and hypocrisy. Stuff this US$1000 a month job, a big "up-yours" to that silly woman, that extra hour I spent in Taipei with my family, eating xiao-lung-bao's at Din Tai Fung or bathing in hot springs was definitely worth more than this crappy job. So I won't be going to Morocco / the Sahara Desert next April, but that doesn't mean I'm never gonna make it there in this lifetime.

Thanks to this stint, I've had the pleasure of working with a larger-than-life bloke who's got a bigger heart than Biggie Smalls + the genie from Aladdin put together, and a fabber-than-fabulous drag-queen-by-night. My squeaky voice has been heard by tens of thousands HKers over the radio, and I'm happy with that 15 seconds of mass appeal fame. Now, it's time to move onto a smaller, but more appreciative audience.

Checkpoint

Just looked back at the entry on my 23rd b'day -

older.... and not a bit wiser (not even a leetle beet):

arg. 23. aaaaarrrrrgh. *in denial*

Judging by conventional measures of success for a person in their early 20's, here's a brief summary of how I measure up:

Degrees earned: none
Long-term Jobs held: nil
Significant other: nope
Driving License: nope
Automobiles owned: nil
Properties: nil
Offsprings: none - my mum HAD me when she was 23. *shivers*

Hmm... falling into the faux-pas category of - Underachiever.

Things to change / add to the I've-grown-older-but-not-wiser list:

Degrees earned: 1
Number of times fired: 1

Resistance is futile

for me when I read the back cover of THIS BOOK -

:: Seeking ::

Qualified applicants looking to build their careers on sand.
Requirements: a bachelor's degree worth a fraction of the debt you've incurred.
One to two years of clerical experience working for a harridan who has sucked your very life force.
Fluency in at least two major jargons.
Primary responsabilities include: figuring out just what we've hired you to do; working closely with no one for clients we'll never identify.

Don't you love trashy pop-lit half based on your life?

I'd like to apologize if this blog degrades into a humdrummy rant about life as a lowly radio programme asst. in the near future - ie. the rest of 2004 and 2005.
1.5 weeks and already it's getting to a point where work = life. Hmm.

How Teddy Ruxpin ruined my so-called life

Funny how one of my fav toys from when I was 6 or 7 can ruin my beautiful breezy Saturday morning as a fully-grown adult. Ever since I started my new job as a programme assistant at HK Commercial Radio, I've been needing to dig up long forgotten Hongkie culture trivia for the "Street Smart" game segment of the show. On Friday, the boss said we needed more questions for kids who phone-in, and told us on a whim to look up Cantonese nursery rhymes. Of bloody course no one on the research team remembers any of them in whole. It's easy to say,"Why don't you Google it then?" But we've been verbally banned from using the web - apparently that makes our pea-brains retarded (anyway that's another story)

So at 7 am, Saturday morning finds me (I now work Saturdays too damn it) rummaging through my bro's drawer filled with antique cassettes from the 80's. Ha! I thought... treasure trove filled with nursery rhymes. Off to the cassette deck at home. I open the cassette cases. Teddy Ruxpin on the air balloon. Teddy Ruxpin rescues Grubby the catepillar from the mud monsters. Teddy Ruxpin does this and that. ARRRR! All but two were actually nursery rhymes, but the cassette wheels just refused to move inside the tape deck. Screw my college degree, I now need to dig out lyrics from nursery rhymes.

So, if you happen to live in HK, and are even vaguely curious about what is that I now do (tho not at all well) for a living, tune into FM 88.1 every Mon - Fri 3-5pm for "Yau Yee Banzai" (sort of translates to "Friendship Forever") For those who don't live here, they stream it on the web... sorry, Cantonese only. You might even hear me on air as a super-irrelevant cameo type.

There's bad, but here's worse

They ain't telling tall tales when they say you gotta be careful what you wish for, 'cos you might just get it. A few weeks ago I babbled something to my mum about becoming an apprentice cook to a friend of her friend, a well-known local DJ / food critic / celeb chef / columnist; then all of a sudden, I magically find myself working as a programme assistant at a major HK radio station this morning. Little did I realise how I walked away from a mildly frustrating Office Space type situation at Christie's, straight into radio production hell.

I got myself into this mess, and I can't blame anyone but myself for it. Let's see how, or if, I'd ever get myself out of it. The silver lining to this cloud is that I might, if I'm still alive (not skinned and boiled alive) by April, get to go report about my boss's insane attempt at the Marathon des Sables, a 250 km crosscountry marathon in the Sahara desert. Moral of the story? Blessings almost ALWAYS come mixed.