人文激流 家春秋

itunes：古内東子，Cashmere Music （2005）



花了近三个月看完巴金的激流三部曲：家、春、秋。这算是我一个小小的成就吧！一向来都喜欢以大时代为背景的书或电影，如中国民国时代和五十年代的美国。而家春秋就清楚描述了中华民国时期，一个旧家庭的崩溃和青年一代对封建制度叛逆反抗的故事。

虽然我不是生长在这半个世纪前动荡的年代，可是巴金文字的艺术力量却震撼我的心，让我感到有一股莫名的激动。置身其境，犹如高家的兄弟觉民和觉慧一样，真挚、激烈、为正义而向那旧礼教声声呐喊：解封建，破迷信，讲自由！同时也为被这吃人制度压迫的淑贞（因长年累月被母亲埋怨自己不是男孩而成了出气筒，然而投井自尽）、瑞珏 （因众人迷信难产失救而死）、梅表妹 （虽是觉新的青梅竹马，却因媒妁之言，无法与觉新结合而忧郁病死）、鸣凤 （因不肯嫁给冯老爷当小姨太，怨屈自殺）等的委屈而痛苦落泪，不解为何他们都如此绝望认命，眼睁睁看他们一步一步地走向灭亡。

我开始喜爱巴金，更爱家春秋。人生在世，束缚虽多，但若能活得像觉民，觉慧一样真实，认真面对生活，讲自己心里话，讲忠于自己的话。这何尝不是一种幸福。

Really Simple Thoughts

itunes: Kelly Rowland, Simply Deep (2002)

Franking speaking, I really do not have the mood to blog anything this week. I know once I start to write something here, it will be tons of whining and sour notes, which I think I should avoid being so negative about my current life. Maybe I just list out the pleasant things that I encountered the whole of this week:

My dotted line French boss from Hong Kong was in town for 4 days, sitting in front of me, teaching and guiding of how my work suppose to be and not forgetting to mention Paris HQ and his expectations on my performance. Well, all I can say is I will try my best to meet the deadline, even though I'm currently ACTIVELY looking for alternative to jump out of this shithole. The good thing is, he resembles Orlando Bloom and the girls in my office went crazy over him, and of cos envy me as he spend the entire 4 days sitting in front of me. So it doesl feel good to have a young energtic star look alike boss sitting in front of me than having a old Napoleon look alike boss right?

Yesterday morning, while at work (YES! this damn job is on alternate Sat), my boss PA and I sneaked out to buy ToTo (it's my hope for better life haha) and I stepped into the convenience store to buy sweets. While paying it, I told the cashier that I do not need a bag. Out of curiosity, the cashier asked me how this act helps in the green movement. I explained to her that plastic is an man-made organic compound which takes 100 - 200 hundred years to be fully broken down (or decay, in lay-men terms). Hence the more plastic we use, the higher the rubbish heap at the dumping ground and in order to get rid of our rubbish, we either burn it (which lets out harmful gases into the atmosphere) or bury them underground (which pollutes our underground water source) until they are fully decayed in one two centuries later. She is pleased that she learnt something good and I'm glad that I have helped in passing the awareness of importance of being environmental friendly. :O) We should strive to reduce our carbon footprint on this earth. Hmm dunno what is carbon footprint? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint

Went to watch Over the Hedge yesterday evening. It's a fantastic cartoon movie, dun miss it. The movie shows us simply on how are the animal habitats and food source being affected by human urbanisation. Homo-sapiens has won the evolution war on earth and thus we are given the power to protect the other members in the animal kingdom and not acting like a parasite which destroy everything whenever it goes. Sounds a bit bittersweet here, but this movie definitely cheer me up a lot. Just hope it creates the awareness of people being eco-friendly.

Lastly. guess what I discovered at Marina Square? A new ice cream outlet!!!! Apparently, it's from Hokkaido, Japan. I bought a cup of Green Tea Red Bean flavour (S$3.50 only). Yum Yum, it was good! A ultra-strong and rich green tea taste that no other ice creams in town can match and it complements the sweet red bean bits found in the ice cream. What a heavenly match! I shall return haha!!!

That's all for this week. Tomorrow it will be a brand new day and it will be great week ahead, hopefully......

My Office

itunes: Lamb, Best Kept Sounds (2004)

My aquarium-type office. Every move I made seems to be watched by colleagues sitting outside. Can't even take out my shoes, let alone digging my nose hehe. Just lift the blinds up, the city view is awesome.

My New Job

itunes: Kyoto Jazz Massive, Spirit Of The Sun (2002)

Today maybe I should talk about my 1-week old new job. Let’s look on the good side of it first:

1) A managerial position in Finance, with an attractive yearly package.
2) A prestigious French MNC, with a male French boss. This is my ideal working format. It’s not that I’m being potato but I’m really sick of working in a Chinese company environment where your voice is drowned in their centralized kind of management. Even if you manage to raise your opinion out and loud, Chinese bosses will deem that you are a troublemaker. On the contrary, a westerner boss will be better in the sense that they listen and respect what you are going to say even though they may not agreeable. I guess this is the basic human rights that most Asian failed to have. Also, a male boss is definitely better. Lady bosses are mostly petty and they have forgotten what materiality is. I simply do not understand why she would want you to show the numbers right up to 0.01 decimals when we are looking at numbers in thousands. The most important is that I do not have to face an emotion rollercoaster whom you do not even know if she is on the high or low, especially those days in a month.
3) A understanding boss (I mean so far so good) who is willing to provide enough training and support just for me to settle down in my work fast. I heard that as long as one completes his tasks, he does not really bother and care how you behave in the office.
4) The company located in a beautiful modern building in the heart of town, which is I need to take 20mins to reach. Let me show you the breakdown:
Leaving house, doorsteps to platform in MRT stations: 8 mins
Wait for train during rush hour: 2 mins
Travelling time to the station nearest to office: 6mins
From station to my office: 4mins
5) A nice room to me, with a 90 degree full view of the city. It really nice to look out of the windows to see the bustling downstairs once in a while.

Does it sound perfect as an ideal job? But it seems I have been feeling disturb about the prospect of this job/position.

Now let’s look at the negative side:
1) A managerial position in Finance, with 4 assistants outsourced! What kind of arrangement is this? I was not told that all my assistants, so called report to me but they belong to the outsourced company which located a unit next to my office. Looks like I do not have control over their work processes, performance to simple things like leave applications. That would mean I would be at their mercy all the time.
2) A prestigious French MNC, which has been taken over by a fellow bigger French rival group 6 months ago. As much as the new parent company claimed that there will be no change for the time being, as a Finance guy, it’s hard not to think that a consolidation of resources (restructuring) is imminent. The in-thing in the corporate world is being cost efficient. Till then, what are the chances of my position surviving when my team is outsourced?
3) Another piece of not-so-nice-to-know piece of information that I managed to gather is that this year happens to be worst performance of this company in the 10 years that it was established in Singapore. 2 reasons constitute to this phenomenon:

a) Singapore’s strategic hub role in this industry has been slowly eroded by the surrounding cheaper economies. As much as Singapore can play the efficiency card, cost still matters. In general, Singapore cost 40% more than these developing economies. The world’s No. 1 & 2 players has moved the main bulk of activities out of Singapore and my parent company, being the world’s No. 3 after being taken over my company group, has already long pulled out of Singapore, leaving a small representative office here only.
b) Our new parent office has taken over some of our most profitable activities in the act of so-called consolidation of operations to achieve cost efficiency so that the activities of the 2 groups do not conflict. I heard that our brand name is big for the African markets so I can strongly believe that they just want to retain our brand name and yet, slowly take over our African operations.

4) Indeed, my office and my room are beautiful and conducive for work. The bad news is once the lease of this office expires next June, we will have to pack and move into our parent rep office in the other side of town.
5) I was told that the books has been messy and leaving outsourced accountant did not respond to any queries made on the numbers by the HQ in Paris, let alone solving the problems. It’s already May and yet the audit report for FY05 is still not out, shows very much the concerns the auditors have on the issues. Well, I guess the clearing of messy will be my immediate responsibilities.

I understand I should take the best out of it and be happy about it, but with my career prospect at stake (even though I’m safe for the time being), the feeling is just not good at all. I was very upset for the fact the outsourced Finance arrangement, the messy books and takeover has not made known to me during the job interview. Of cos, they are not stupid to disclose these; else I would not have accepted the job offer at all. Bluntly speaking, I feel so cheated and the idea of having to stay here in this office for another second just irks me a lot.

The sad thing is I can’t act on impulse and resign straight away and return to the kind of nervous stay-at-home-wait-for-job kind of life. This is not an intelligent decision to make for the second time. Guess I have to wait for the next job alternative to arrive. Sigh, just because money beckons, I’m stuck in the quicksand. That’s life, really. We are work hard for our money, is not it?

只爱陌生人

itunes: 林憶蓮, 本色 (2005）

突然想起一个人。。。。好久以前的一个人。我很努力地去想当时关于我和他的一切。没想到大部分都记不起来了。

“彼”指的是“对方”。 这里我写的是他，“彼”也是我用来称呼他的简称。

在面对你爱的人和爱你的人,在不被接受与去拒绝的同时；产生了一种带有讽刺的三角事件。

你笑说：“我想这是我的报应吧！。。。”
我心想：“我说这是我们应有的报应！因为我们都太专注做个好人，默默不想惹谁伤心。在迫在眉梢逼不得已得说出真心话时，就难免要承受打击了。”

有时候我想，倘若我们只是两个初识的陌生人, 也许会更好。
偶然之间，在某唱片行的一个小角落，彼此遇见，片刻彼此分享音乐。
不必改变原有生活的路线，不必关心你的事情，更不用期待下一的约定。
同时相遇又分离，然后又再相遇又同时分离，永远有着无限的可能。

而不像现在，记忆只留下你所喜爱的音乐和对你逐渐模糊的印象。还有我当时的努力，挣扎和欠缺的运气，我们相爱的运气。

The War of 2 Mop-Fetish Cats

itunes: Greatest Hits, Al Green (1975)

Cute cats are not they? I wonder what's so great about this mop that 2 cats have to fight over it? Well, sometimes we do notice some pretty girls fought over an ugly man. Perhaps these girls can answer why the 2 cats did the same over a mop? Look at the last photo on the right, I was snapping pictures of them until one of them noticed my existence and stared at me so hard as if it was going to pound on me hehe. Cats are heavenly creatures.

大会, 05052006

itunes：今井美樹，20051211IVORY （2006）

今晚的大会是这沸沸揚揚的竞选期的最后一场。台上的演讲者，不论是老是少，都滔滔不绝地畅谈他们的胸怀，不仅是吐露胸怀，他们还要贡献出他们的年轻人的热诚，和他们的青春活力，来为他们的唯一的目的服务。

我与许多未曾见面的人聚集在这拥挤动弹不得的体育场里。每个人都注意地听着，仿佛这是从我们自己的心里吐出来的。大家听得亢奋，为他们的主张欢呼，顿时似乎也认为他们能在这一瞬间推翻现今所有不合理的政策。显然他们的话点燃了众人的热情，而且给我们带来更多的希望。不但让人心情舒畅，也让人情绪高昂！

我惊觉自己被捆绑在这所谓的美丽花园里。一朝政治苏醒，身子被解开后，发现原来美丽的花园是一个难分方向的封建体系迷宫。我是该往那个方向行，才能找到出口？夹着汗水和炽热的身躯，我仿佛变成一位巴金小说里的热血青年；披肝沥胆地对事情，制度提出质问、挑战。这样才能把这迷宫的一道道围墙拆除，寻找到出路。

我要唤醒所有沉睡中无知、贪心、胆小害怕、懦弱的可怜虫们！你们虽帮不上什么忙去推翻这些烂东西，至少也不应该盲目跟着它们走。为了一时的好处却不晓得即将失去更多。还有一些鸵鸟心态的家伙，以为不闻不问的回避心态就能相安无事，得过且过地过他们的好日子。这一类的废物不就是间接有意无意地拥护这个制度了吗？我呸！

明天手中的选票，将是我向这制度提出质疑的一个小小抗御。
突然之间，我好爱这片土地！

Dogbert's Barge City Metaphor 2

itunes: 平井堅, 歌バカ (2005)



Final part on Barge City.
Singaporeans, wake up from the fake paradise to see the reality!

I just love Dilbert
Think harder again.