Upgraded to Wordpress 2.6. Here’s a rundown of what’s new.
For those of you whom I’ve told about what I’ve been up to, I didn’t get selected. I am, however, involved in certain aspects of running the show.
Time to take a step back, find out what/where I need to do better, and move on.
So there.
4am in the morning is when sappy inspirational stories and quotes make sense.
I just got off the phone with someone I’ve always felt a very fundamental attraction to. She laughs too much (at my jokes, so it’s not altogether a bad thing considering how almost no one else does…), is too short, a little too plump (but full figured). But I always feel ‘just right’ when I am with her.
We spoke for 3 hours.
She said that ever since she broke up with her boyfriend last year, she’s been leading a decadent lifestyle. She’s slept with married men and boyfriends of other women. She told me her fear is that her choices would someday hurt those she loves and love her.
She also said that she’s an attention whore, that she doesn’t love herself, and that she doesn’t know what she wants.
She said she’s good at reading people, but it tires her. She said it’d be good if everyone just spoke what they meant and she was able to take everyone at face value.
She told that her previous boyfriends became boyfriends because they persisted. I conveniently forgot why they didn’t work out in the end.
She told me that she’s not happy, that she gets depressed, that she laughs so much because it’s an easier way to deal with things (she did say that my jokes were genuinely funny though).
I told her it’d be easier to for me to love her if I knew everything about her, warts and all, than it would be for me to love her veneer of perfection.
I think I might’ve been lying.
Sold the replacement lappie Apple gave me (It took no more than ONE call. Thanks Apple!) and got myself a new iMac. Still pretty amazed at this machine; the thought that went into it, the sleekness of it all, and incredible sound from the built-in speakers.
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Called Singnet awhile back with regards to retrieving the login password that I lost. Their solution? Go online and change the password. The guy who proposed this solution got well and truly fucked and I believe he deserved every single bit of it.
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Got me a brand new N82 at no charge courtesy of m1. Allow me to say here once more that I love m1!
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On m1, they’re going to bring in Avenue Q! *hyperventilates*. I’ve not been so excited about about a musical since the days of Phantom and Miss Saigon.
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iPhone comes to Singapore in September and Singtel’s gonna get first dibs. Much as I would like to get my hands on one, it’s definitely not enough to make me give Singtel any more of my money than I already am.
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I’m back. Should be back to posting soon. Really, this time.
From The Editing Room,
“HARRISON FORD
Alright, the walkthrough for the movie says that our next clue is in a spooky graveyard. We should probably save our game here.”
Hhahaha,
I should be sleeping, but I have already started dreaming.
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2:04:55 AM me: it feels damn good to be able to go wherever my feet can take me
2:05:48 AM him: yeah, follow ur dreams man
Only that I’m walking with it, not reaching had it been in front of me, nor looking back as if I had left it behind.
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I got my laptop back but the issue was not resolved. Am looking to either sell it for a desktop, or to try to live with it. At any rate, I should start posting again regularly soon.
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USD$3,000 to work on a ship for a year might not be too bad an idea if not for the fact that there’s probably no internet access out in the open seas. But I did manage to go more or less internet-free when I was in Thailand last month, so that might work out after all. Hmm.
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In another attempt to be anywhere but here, I am somewhat enticed by openings at the newly opened Applestore in Sydney. With any luck I’ll meet a hot and intelligent chick of European descent (raven haired, preferably) and we’ll move in together, have 2 and a half kids and the B&W Zeppelin.
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Firefox 3’s ‘back’ button is damn ugly.
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Awhile back, I posted a photo with the caption ‘Contradiction’. I did so because the subject was pretty much nothing like how she looked in the photo. Someone in some local enthusiast (note the deliberate avoidance of the use of the word ‘photography’) forum accused me of being an ‘artist’ and defending my badly taken photo in the name of ‘art’ (It was rather pleasant, actually. I had never wanted to describe myself as one), and it happened again recently, albeit under more flattering circumstances.
It might be time to give up all hope of short-term commercial viability.
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My order is confirmed and my stock is coming in. The first act of le commerce de la photographie begins.
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I ordered The Devil’s Larder from eBay and it came in the mail a few days back. Paypal makes it waaaay too easy to shop online.
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Any woman with any modicum of charm learns to read/send signals to/from guys pretty much pretty soon after they reach puberty (though in this day and age, sometimes before). So when you,
1) Ask a guy to be your sole travel companion,
2) Proceed to sleep on the same bed with him for the first few days of the trip,
3) Cry molest when he makes his move on the last day,
I guess it’s quite safe to say that you’re probably quite ugly. And the way you shamed the guy? Shame on you.
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The night is wasted sleeping.
Following a run through of a shoot I did yesterday, I realised my keep rate was slightly over 50%. Which is to say, for every 2 pictures I shot, I deemed 1 enough to be good enough for presentation.
Either I’m getting better, or my standards are dropping. 8D
p.s. The laptop goes in for the screen replacement op tomorrow as the part arrived over the weekend. More outage to follow.
Like Leopard, but cooler. (save the sychronized groan *grin*)
The laptop is in the workshop. With any luck, it should come back with the banding issue fixed. Am writing this from a free terminal somewhere in the airport.
Just came out from the interview (yes, the spotty employment history came up). The position was apparently not for the principal as the recruiter made it out to be, but just another SI, which is even further down the food chain after taking into account the distributors. Pay would’ve come up to 5k with commission and incentives, but I came out of the interview with massive cognitive dissonance.
Having held a position of similar responsibilities in the past, I understood that if you’re not the principal, it almost always comes down to price when winning the account or closing the deal. I asked if the SI I was interviewing with had any pricing advantage when it comes to beating down the competition, and effectively, the response I got was that the pricing advantage would come when you rub the distributors the right way, feed them well, and make them feel special. I think this is what most people mean when they talked about being a corporate whore.
The amusing part came after the first interviewer saw me. He was arranging for a second interviewer to come in when he gave me some ‘tips’ on how to handle the second interviewer.
“Just tell her that your sales target in the previous company was 1mil.”, he said.
It wasn’t, but the question didn’t come up with the second interviewer. I think I impressed her enough though, since she said she’ll arrange for a third interview with the CEO of the company.
But I don’t think I’ll take it up. The choice is now between being nice and telling them I don’t want the job, or being a bastard letting them offer first then turn it down. The difference, of course, being the fact that I get to find out how much I’m worth in the current job market.
But no matter how much, not 5K, not 10K, will be enough to make me accept that anything else other than objective value is par for trade. Not favours, not lies.
Not ever.
update: turned it down.
Quick update.
Was approached a few days back by a recruitment firm (does this count as being headhunted?) hiring on behalf of a major software company. Did a quick search on the Ministry of Manpower website and found that the going rate for the position they were looking to fill was $5,000, which sounded like a reasonable sum to get me to part with my current way of life.
It could’ve possibly been that I put that as my expected salary, or that my employment history was unusually spotty, but I’ve not heard from the recruiter since I sent in my CV. Either way, I found that I wasn’t too particularly bothered. Truth be told, it felt alot like being given a scratchy - nice if something good came out of it, but it’s ok too if all you get is a “Thank you for playing”.
It does feel fine though, to not be held at the mercy of a bigger paycheck. The quality of life that I currently enjoy has become the most important factor that I take into consideration when contemplating any engagement or endeavor. The tragedy is that there are far too many who are caught in the humdrum of the slow corporate march to death because it is what they have convinced themselves to accept, because it is what they are told (and eventually, tell themselves) that it is the only thing they are good for.
I’m gonna get my Macbook fixed, then start planning for my third trip this year, hopefully to a european country (I’m thinking Moscow, Russia. Any suggestions?).
Unless, of course, someone decides to clip my wings. $5k/mth’s not alot to ask, is it? Any taker? Hahaha.