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.