Lost and Found

Today around three, while everyone was gainfully occupied in the office, I was at Orchard Road. Granted, I was just passing by in a cab but still the feeling of being in town on a normal day during working hours was pleasantly surreal. The sight of a largely empty street, your odd foreigner or bunch of still-on-holiday varsity people strolling along, unhurried and carefree, brought back an inexplicable warm fuzzy feeling. Attendant with the short sharp tang of vinegary jealousy.

Those certainly were the days, when gallivanting around town at any hour was a choice we were free to make and did so with great frequency. Or the blissful choice of choosing whether to attend lectures like a good student or sleep in for the day. Which as far as I was concerned, really wasn't much of a choice I needed to make at all. One that alas remains a dream now, well at least for the next 35 years or so.

A fact that I am woefully reminded of from time to time, the most recent occasion, just this morning when the incessant thrilling of the alarm clock got me up at 6.45 am and bleary eyed after a night of grinding quests on the mage; I peeped at the clock, turned it off and went back to bed. Thinking as I did so, I'll just sleep in today, the lecture can be skipped. Before some subliminal subconscious scream rudely jolted me back to the wonderful world of reality where the hours are long and the money never enough that yes lectures can be skipped but there was something else called work. Ah the joys of sleeping in, cherish it while you can, those of you who can still do so.

I digress. If you were wondering what I was doing in a cab zipping through town on a wet, lazy Tuesday afternoon, no, I'm neither rich nor suicidal enough to hop on a cab for a joy ride around town even if I do feel the occasional pang of wistful longing. I was on my way down to the NUS law library to zap some obscure version of the ISA standard form building contract that was needed before proper advice could be dispensed to the clients. Incidentally, I only discovered today pursuant to a conversation over the phone with the librarian, that the library has three levels, not two. To Aileen's strident cries of horror and disgust. Which shows you how avid a user of the library I was.

Anyway now, you know why legal fees aren't cheap, disbursements for taxi fares, meetings, phone conversations, meals for all the meetings, overtime spent on the case, etc add up to a tidy sum. Which naturally is still nothing compared to the professional fees and court fees. But what the Client wants ( to be done, not the result), the Client usually gets (within reason and with our considered opinion). Hence your request for our advice on a certain matter would necessarily indemnify us for all reasonable and incidental costs incurred in and attendant to preparing the aforementioned advice as per your instructions.

And if you can write something like the previous sentence for 75% of the letter, it's apparently considered professional, sufficiently legal and usually enough to keep the clients happy. Though why people would want to read letters with more 'ins' in a paragraph than an entire newspaper article confounds me sometimes. Sean says "Well, people still want it to sound a little legalistic, they pay for it. And if they get a letter that sounds like something your average junior college kid would write, why the hell would they pay you?" Um for our expertise? Ah never mind, for now I am slowly mastering the art of archaic legalistic gobbledygook.

The client got a discount anyway, I lost the receipt for the taxi fare trip to the library. It's probably still lodged somewhere in the Institute of Singapore Architect's Conditions and Terms for Contract between the Main Contractor and Developer book that I planted between the pages as a bookmark prior to photocopying and merrily forgot about.

On the WoW front, I should hit 70 by the end of the month with a little luck and some focused questing. Today looks like it's going to be a wasted evening and just a couple of days ago, someone was telling me weekly maintenance down times are a thing of the past. Really ah Kate? Then why are the servers down for maintenance now? Which explains why I'm blogging. ^^

We did Naxxramas the other day just for kicks, Errath the level 64 mage tagging along with a bunch of 70s. It's sad to see how fast a level 60 elite 40 man instance gets cleared by about 25 or so 70s. Still I had fun tagging along in my tier 2 mage. I even got a Malice Stone Pendant drop. Cheap thrill but it was nice to see an instance that remained largely elusive when we were still peonic 60s. For now, the grind goes on. Both in game and out.


I'll stab you with my stick! Heeyaaahh!