Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Empty vessels...

...make the most noise.

And so the saying goes.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the case here.

I feel uninspired.

Maybe it's because I don't read the paper much now.

Maybe it's because I do read the paper and refuse to get inflamed by the irritating daftness that defines much of our local press.

Maybe because typing with one hand doesn't work all that well for me.

Maybe my brain's really turned to mush.

Maybe I'm just totally knackered.

But whatever it is, I'm at a loss for words and intelligent thought.

Damn it.

Ondine tossed this thought in at 07:47

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Monday, October 22, 2007

Paper Chase

Once again, I am convinced I shouldn't read the Straits Times but this time, to be fair to them, I'd just be shooting the messenger. Apparently there has been a dip in the number of people wanting to adopt kids. Some cite the stringent checks for their reason not to do so. I think that's silly because it's a necessary thing to be stringent with those who want to adopt. You do want to make sure that the people adopting the kid will be suitable parents for the kid and even then, I have heard of adoptive parents who ignore and neglect the adopted kid after they actually succeed in having one for themselves.

What got to me was the type of questions they asked during the Home Study which wouldn't prevent or sieve out the aforementioned type of parents. According to the article, though one should probably take it with a pinch of salt, one of the questions asked was what child rearing books they had read and had they gone for any parenting courses. This was where I rolled my eyes and got annoyed. Especially because this came after my experience of having to provide inconsequential certification for a job application.

What is it with this society and book based qualification? From my limited experience, book based information about child or in my case baby rearing isn't all that helpful. It serves to do nothing but force you to think that this is the only way to do things. It's rigid and it makes one feel like a total failure for not being able follow it to a T. And parenting courses? Once again, most of the time worthy of all the eye rolling one could probably muster. So why insist? If one is going to spend 6 weeks doing a Home Study with them, wouldn't just speaking to them and getting a feel of who they really are be a better measure? I'm guessing the interviewer is trained and has enough human intuitiveness to actually judge the worthiness of potential parents. I would trust a worthy person's gut instinct and intuition more than the fact that the potential parents had attended all the courses and read all the parenting books under the sun.

That's the problem with our society I think. The inherent lack of trust at anything intangible and intrinsic. Everything needs to be measurable and everything needs to be quantifiable. The problem is most things that matter aren't. Whether I'm worthy for a job doesn't depend on the fact that I've had impeccable results since I started taking board and national exams. Whether a couple is worthy of adopting a child has very little to do with whether they read and attend the right courses. Like I see in my work place and like I've seen by merely obsserving the world, the best qualified people in the world to do a job half the time aren't the ones that do the job best.

When will our society ever learn that?

Sigh.

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 08:14

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Sunday, October 21, 2007

Rugby World Cup

Sometimes, I really hate office politics but sometimes I really miss the pranks.

Office has been caught up with the Rugby World Cup. One colleague has the All Blacks doing the Haka as her wall paper. A Scotsman in my department plays this video to anyone who mentions rugby in his presence. Then there was the great upset when the French Les Bleus beat the All Blacks. While we didn't have any French in the department, we had enough people who wanted to gloat that the Blacks had lost. And we did have a Kiwi.

So, in order to blow raspberries at the Kiwi, early the next morning, a gloaty English Rose fan came into the office bearing a Delifrance baguette that he oh so smugly laid on the Kiwi's desk. Racial slurs, with food, the rugby way.

What fun.

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 23:11

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Sunday, October 07, 2007

My dream vacation

The one way I cope with being in Purgatory is to dream and fantasise about the world out there and all the things I could conceivably do. This morning, I opened a credit card brochure and there it was, calling out to me.

New York City Shopping Spree (6D/4N)

Day 1- Arrive at JFK with warm welcome by personal shopper.

Day 2- Shopping at Fifth Avenue

Day 3- Shopping at Macy's, Columbus Circle and 47th St, Diamond Centre

Day 4- Refresh and rejuvenate

Day 5- Outlet shopping at Woodbury

Day 6- Outlet shopping at Tanger

Heavenly.

When I told Packrat this, his response was the most amusing of Freudian slips- "Sounds like the whole Sex and the City nightmare, ooops! I meant dream". I just laughed because it would be dream for me and rightly so, nightmare for him.

And then I read in the papers how the US dollar is at its lowest yet. And I ask myself, why aren't I going?

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Ondine tossed this thought in at 11:48

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Friday, October 05, 2007

Purgatory

Purgatory is defined as a temporary state of punishment, suffering, expiation, or the like.

Purgatory is also supposed to be a place between heaven and hell, where things are just in a state of nothingness, which somewhat describes where I am in my life where you scream but no one hears, you cry but no one feels, where you live in a separate but same plane. Where you are not your own free person and there are markers, both visible and invisible that keep you confined and trapped in a space. Where air is running out and you know this because there is constantly a vise like grip on your throat which makes you want to wheeze and thrash and struggle. Only that when you do, it is of no use and no one will notice it. So you flail and then you give up and just stare with eyes that see nothing. You will yourself not to feel because feelings give rise to that lump in the throat and in the pit of the stomach and because the next thing you know, you're gulping for air trying not to sob.

It is a state of nothingness. Of no permanence. Of a lack of control. Of no joy. Of just trying to get through the day into the next. Where the days span endlessly into one another. Of not knowing what day of the week it is or what date it is, of what the day will entail and what the next day will bring.

The only glimmer of hope is the word temporary. That it is only a temporary state of affairs. That one day, the rain will stop, the dove will fly by with an olive branch, the sun will come out from behind the storm clouds and there will be a rainbow, with a pot of gold at the end of it. And all will be right in the world again.



Ondine tossed this thought in at 20:32

1 thoughts...

" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"