play

A play I wrote is coming up.

Sure I don’t get paid for it.
Sure it’s only 10 minutes.

But maybe like a mother who thinks her hideous child is actually lookable, I can’t help but feel a little proud that I’ve managed to get selected. Having checked out the competition yesterday, I can’t help but compare. And feel rather left behind.

Well the day of reckoning has yet to come so I won’t be filling this page with 50-cent words, but I just hope it all goes well.

I wonder, really… why do I keep on writing when I see no end nor reason.

Then I pick up a pen. And the mad, mad scribbles and incessant scrawls that flood the page, they somehow convince me that reason isn’t necessary.

And they’re right.

happiness index 100

(out of an approximate 10,000)

it’s been a while. much has happened, and i’ve once again taken a plunge.

i freelance now. initially it seemed like a pretty good idea. finally over-time will not be without its rewards. finally i will have time to sit down and do what i’ve always wanted to do. finally i can go and get that elusive degree.

well it’s all gone to the dogs now. bills are piling up, i sleep in more so i don’t have to starve, and my bank account has a grand total of three digits – two of them after the decimal point.

i’m getting things done, but somehow i’m getting nowhere.

maybe i asked for it. and maybe that’s how people grow old, having taken shots. some hits, some misses, and then the final admittance that it wasn’t meant to be.

well. tomorrow is another day. perhaps i should count my blessings and not just those glaring circumstance.

another week gone by

It’s Friday and another week whooshed by. I’ve never been the type who’s big on resolutions, but I’m determined to make sure that I accomplish something every week.

It can be that groundbreaking idea, updating my portfolio, writing a good article, bring my nephew out, trying something I’ve never tried. Something.

This week:
I’ve came up with an idea which I think will really fly. By next week I’ll have gathered the necessary contacts to do a decent visualisation.

If you happen to read this, drop me a comment or something. Challenge me. I might take it up.

back to write

Hey I’m back, having recovered sufficiently to type a decent paragraph without wondering if I’ll do an inelegant face plant at the next punctuation.

Recently I heard something about the ABCs of parenting. While I don’t have kids, I thought that these pointers were pretty interesting and memorable. It’s been nearly a week since I heard the excerpt, and I still remember some parts today. Pretty impressive for a goldfish, eh?

Anyway, I won’t regurgitate the lock, stock and non-smoking barrel, but will just share a little of what I think it could be applied to you and me. (We have all been kids. Most of us still are.)

Stay tuned for the next post.

where are your morales?

within this week alone, someone who worked here for a week quit. (can’t really blame her since on her third day she had to stay till 7am into the next day). two new folks came in, one of who is holding a manager role (which was supposed to be filled by another colleague).

and then there is that ridiculous ‘anonymous survey’ which is supposed to gauge our work-life/personal-life satisfaction. other than the glaring grammatical errors and pathetic attempts at using lofty words, the survey also asked critical questions like “How likely are you going to be in this company for the next 12 months?” and “Are the management doing equitably” etc etc.

you’ll notice that ‘anonymous survey’ is in (sarcastic) quotes because the final section, we are supposed to enter our demographic data in the combination that is extremely easy to derive who wrote negative comments.

naturally, there was a lot of unhappiness and unkind words flying around. for me, it was kind of fun just pointing out the fallacy of it all. in all these madness, humour makes it a little better for us all.
well. the week’s almost gone. i was down and almost out for the count yesterday when a migraine half-killed me, and here i am for work today. waiting for a long postponed meeting with uninterested colleague and ever shrinking deadlines, ennui seems like the best route to it all.

enjoy your weekend.

what box?

many a times we hear the term ‘out of the box’.

ironically, the more one uses it, the less effective the meaning.

i remember doing many a presentation on this topic, with classic quotables like ‘we often think out of our box, into the bosses box’ and ‘think within the box, that’s what it’s there for’ (a part of the Systematic Inventive Thinking methodology).

for me, i love and loathe boxes (or order) at the same time. ‘boxes’ can make things more efficient, and working within them means that you are doing something that is feasible. then again, i often ignore it to begin with, and tweak according to necessity AFTER the idea has been conceived. or perhaps like many people i never knew i was in one to begin with.

we make and break boxes all the time. each time we do something everyone else has done before, we reinforce the box. each time we do something unusual, we make a new box. in fact, there’s even a great big box these days for making boxes.

Ed de Bono and his Six Thinking Boxes. Stephen Covey and his The 7 Boxes of Highly Effective People. Richard Templar and his Boxes of Life. Perhaps you’ve watched the Oprah Winfrey Box, or had a OOBE (Out Of Box Experience), we’re all cornered in some way whereever we turn.

so tell me now, when was the last time you got ‘out of the box’?

p/s: Italics mine

death and taxes

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

and good ol’ stupidity.

ran into some issues with taxes recently, so basically i owe some 7,000 buckaroos in taxes, which in the span of two weeks somehow inflated into 15,000, then dropping back to 7,000 like the stock market.

the tax is meant to be 5%, which means i’m supposed to have made 140,000 within the first half of the year or so. well. they tell me Big Brother isn’t watching, but that’s way-too-coincidentally the transaction amount of one of my bank accounts over the many years i’ve had it on.

for the particular taxation of 7,000 shenanigans, the beautiful thing is that i’ve not even made the amount of money they are charging me for, let alone be liable to be charged that much. and that’s before all the late penalties.
after a few days of distress and a sick day filling in forms, i’ve decided to just let them send me my red bills and stuff and ignore all court summons until the men in black come knocking on my door. i went for my trip, came back, more ignored hullabaloos and i set a timeframe.

today, if i should reach home and they have not sent me a reply, i will send them a reply from somewhere higher up the rungs, rolls and reams of red tape.

and then a call.

while it is overall a relief, it was also kind of an experience you can develop a few healthy kidney stones with. here’s a rough transcript:

Me: “They don’t allow me to deregister.”
Tax: “Why?”
Me: “Because there is some (dumb) policy that once I’m in, I have to be in for at least 2 years before I can opt out.”
Tax: “Okay, all you have to do is just to file in zero returns every three months.”
Me: “Tell you what, to save the hassle, I will just close down the company account.”
Tax: “No you don’t need to do that. It’s useless.”
Me: (incredulous) “What? Why?”
Tax: “Because you’ll still have to file zero returns.”
Me: “…”

Enter tumbleweed. Exit tumbleweed with cobwebs.

Me: “You mean to tell me that I have to file in zero returns every three months for a NON-EXISTING COMPANY?”
Tax: “Yes. You see, it’s…”
Me: “No I don’t see. Frankly, it’s just plain dumb! How can a closed down company officially earn money or charge taxes to begin with?”
Tax: “I’m afraid you’ll still have to do it. It’s written clearly (in point 6 font or smaller) in the blah-blah form when you first signed in etc etc… I’m just trying to explain to you the blah blah blah.“
Me: “No matter how you explain it, it doesn’t make it any less dumb. I appreciate your help, and will put up with the procedure. Thanks anyway.”

the lady on the other line is doing her job, i’ve got nothing against her (other than that she’s a cog in the machine), and she’s helping me out here. what is rather unsettling is that they apparently have well structured and documented procedures to advance dumbhood, exponentially increase the job market for redundant paperworkers, and effectively channel a sizable share of the nation’s income to shrinks.

making a move

it was over real quick.

friday they were toying with the idea. monday they set it rolling. come today (tuesday) and i’m sitting in a new place, moved my comp, set up my ’shop’ and jobs are done like nothing changed.

short of the fact that one of the guys can see my screen this very moment and I wouldn’t even know, it’s actually a refreshing change to have more open space shared within two teams. less cosy now, but being too cosy can lead to future discomfort anyway.

i think creative folks, just like how all those old guys tout, tend to be ‘a little unhappy’. it doesn’t mean you have to go goth-metal to be creative (actually i think it is definitely expressive, not necessarily creative, but i do digress).

being creative is such an open concept that defies any concrete definition. short of dissecting the root word ‘create’, it has taken on so many meanings (subtly yet exponentially different) and soon integrated into business speak.

they say change is good. they say change is the only constant. if both these statements are true, we should see progress no matter what we do.

i wonder how true is that then. comments, anyone?

the friday muse – from journal to bloghood

i’ve always wanted to do so many things.

design. write. draw. basically, create. and it seems like the fastest way to create (not necessarily the worse either) is to write.

writing was once a necessary ‘evil’ for me. i used to keep a journal/diary or whatchamacallit, which basically tracked my life and its less-than-encouraging cycle. back then, books like that were handwritten (couldn’t afford a comp), and not meant to be read.

i have always wondered what’s the point of writing so when there is no one else to read it.

and then came the internet – or more importantly – blogs. i even had my own site back before the even called it a blog, and it was a heck load more tedious.

now typing from a browser (as opposed to the trusty MicroSoft Notepad – their most reliable software to date right after Minesweeper), with a blog entry interface which even has an autosave feature is quite, well, refreshing.

so there. a few less reasons to get my butt up and do pro-bono stuff for myself.

later.