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!

Etude.

Yes yes, it's been long. But better late than never isn't it? And no the ironic thing is I've not been bogged down with work, well not just yet. I prefer to call it creative inertia, you have things to blog about but by the time you get back from work, wash up and realise there's only a precious few hours left before it's time to head to bed and well.. you just end up doing other things. I haven't even watched the past 3 episodes of Bleach.

And it doesn't help that after a year long hiatus, I restarted World of Warcraft after succumbing to my cousin's relentless tempting. His logging on Errath and getting an instant guild invite back to my old guild as well as a slew of OMG! Is that the real Errath Errath? was the final straw that broke this camel's back. So yes, I have been a happy noob exploring the new lands of Burning Crusade on both the mage and priest a whole year after it was received, only to see erstwhile proteges all decked out in Tier 4 and Tier 5 gear while I still run about in my Tier 2. ^^

Somethings however remain constant and immutable like porn, sex and the fact that you'll always find some piece of work sitting on your desk or lurking in your inbox like a rabid fury warrior in WSG. Back to work. All remaining 25 mins of it. Muhahahaha.

Melange.

Everyone knows that the best way of dealing with a mish mash of relatively unrelated issues is to checklist them and address it in point form. If you didn't, shame on you. It's certainly the best way if one is feeling/is lazy and not in the mood to write in coherent prose. As yours truly currently is.

Happy 6th Anniversary.

1. Even though, it's three days past now, the actual day went by with nary a whimper due to the fact we both had work and I failed to call him before midnight on the actual day.
   
2. Sean's still a real chum, thanks for having endured (and still enduring) my shit these past six years. I honestly doubt if it were anyone else, I'd still be attached. Play hard, work hard, love hard.
   
3. In my defense to the seemingly callous behaviour in point 1, I did sms him in the morning on the way to work, though I realise it does not detract from the fact that I didn't call. Yes yes, I suck.

Saturdays

1. Are bloody precious now.

2. Ironically, we seem to spend the major part of it engaging in our favourite S activities: sex and sleep. But I have no qualms sleeping for three hours plus after sex. Come on afternoon naps are a luxury now.
   
3. Also mean there's just one more day before Monday.

Donuts

1. Alright I still have a sweet tooth. I've had it ever since young when having dinner/lunch was often viewed as an annoying necessity but had no problems polishing off an entire box of after eight mints with great gusto. If I were a girl, I'd probably starve myself and stuff my self with salads just to spend those dreaded calories on desserts or anything sweet. Like the Sister does. But I'm not, so I still enjoy my meals with great gusto AND my desserts/sweets.

2. D is for Desserts. D is also for Donuts. Which may or may not be a subset of desserts. You can have a donut anytime of the day. But then again I've never been particularly constrained by the societal restrictions of having desserts after a meal or for tea. I could have them for breakfast if I felt like it. Which I do. Well, sometimes.
   
3. So anyway, I'd always seen/ heard about the horrendous queues which form for donuts, particularly those made by Donut Factory at Raffles City Shopping Center and decided to get some myself after a double scoop of New Zealand's Natural Ice Cream's very yummy Honey Hokey Pokey ice cream, just to see if it was really like all it was hyped up to be.

4. I'd never really been one for fancy donuts when I was a kid. The plain old sugared donut was more than enough to keep me satisfied and for some strange peculiar reason I never ever ate one of those chocolate rice sprinkled donuts. For one, the chocolate looked cheap (more butter than actual chocolate) and second, I just like the crunch of the sugar crystals when biting into a good old fashioned donut.
   
   
5. I bought a box of 12 donuts on impulse. Which like Sean commented loudly, is probably quite crazy considering there' s just my Dad and I left at home, the Sister and Mother having a whale of a time somewhere in Vietnam. And unlike me, my Dad doesn't have a sweet tooth. "At the rate you're eating, you're going to turn into a lard ball soon." The amicable Other Half pointed out. Which has some merit to it I guess, thin genes and a healthy metabolic rate won't last forever. But when the sweet tooth acts up, it must be satisfied. At all costs.

Reached home. Dad had 1. I polished off 4. I have to admit these donuts are addictive.

Return

I haven't been blogging lately I know, just a little something called work and getting intimately acquainted with the growing stacks of files that would probably pose a health hazard if I attempt to stack them all together. It's sad when you come back the following morning and remember exactly which tea-smudged tab in a particular file you left off at the previous night. It's sadder when staying till eight in the office feels normal.

It's been a week and returning to an activity that once seemed to be an aspect of daily life, seems strange and stilted. If only because every time I sit down now, all that comes to mind is how to draft a particular affidavit or summons. The task of attempting to give expression to the vacuous thoughts that flit about the recesses of the mind, strained and artificial. Much like flogging the proverbial dead horse if you will. As if by flogging it harder, through focusing ones concentration on the matter at hand some miraculous creative spark would restore the carcass to its former glory.

There is much to be said of the expression that disuse prevents reuse. Some cobwebs can be cleared away, others leave their insidious mark, little infractions that draw ones focus and attention from an area of interest and corrode the attention it once commanded. So whether this spirited return is for good remains to be seen for it is subject to whimsical fancies as fickle as a summer storm.

Who? What? Why? Where? Perennial questions that mark long lazy afternoons over coffee or a prelude to a stormy showdown. Or perhaps just tactful manipulation, as we divert attention away from greyer areas and stir up eddies of intrigue to conceal what it is we so desperately want to hide. And you wonder how people wolf it down, behind those plastic smiles as they pass by, mobile mannequins, their minds a veritable hornet's nest of activity as they process and pick apart the information received from the daily discourse.

But can you stand apart, to look down with disdain at the crowd from your exalted pedestal and say with utmost confidence and not a shred of reservation that you've never partaken in such activities? If so you must either be totally deranged with delusions of self-grandeur or be a saint in which this earthly plane is the wrong one for you. But for the rest of us mere mortals, this is a game that plays us as much as we play it. For by purporting to disseminate information to our advantage, we need to continue its propagation and the interaction with our counterparts' efforts is something we are often unable to predict, much less control.

But still we carry on this charade, this endless riposte, this need for self gratification, uncaring of the consequences that may follow. For as it has been said, deception is the sweetest mockery.

The Price of.

Because it's 11.35 PM, I've just returned from a wedding dinner, the Sis is hogging the toilet and I have 20 more mins before I call it a night, including the time to be spent showering; everything shall be short snappy and concise. Like the standard research opinion on implied statutory easements to pass my shit over your land or any other issue for which research is required. Don't like it? Write your fucking blog.

Lunch with the Year 1- 3 L. Associates today.

Assoc 1 (Upon learning that next year's batch would be paid the prevailing market rate of $2000 for pupillage and $500 for PLC (if there's still going to be a plc for next year)):
What??! That's so unfair. We had to survive without money for ours.

Me: Yep, well we are the last batch who don't get paid for PLC and most firms already pay that amount. They should pay, we're quite broke.

Assoc 2: Well but it does make sense that they don't pay during PLC, you don't work, you don't get paid. Simple.

Assoc 1: Which is why it makes it so unfair that the next batch will be paid.

Assoc 3: They haven't been paying PLC allowances all this while and Pupillage allowance has always been [sum lower than 2k]. Where do you think they'll get the money from? Ah I think we can deduct this sum from this year's bonuses. *Makes shaving action with finger*

Assoc 2: No, you know what's really unfair? It's if the current pay structure remains the same and when you (points at Assoc 1) go to court for some summons or PTC and come up against some newly called rookie from BXB firm who knows almost nothing but who's being paid more than you. That's unfair.

Well but like I told the Blog Master after undergoing his enlightening 'career analysis' test, Big Bucks isn't the top priority, the working environment and people are to me, the most important consideration in a job. And in this regard, I think the Firm does well. Heck, I even have a nice spacious as of yet undecorated room (without a view but I'm not picky) that I share with A.

The work's still heavy, not unbearably so but certainly enough to keep one gainfully occupied for the official working hours if not for more. But it's really Own time own target for now, though I foresee spending more time in the office in the near future. Smell that bracing office air. Ahhrgh. Time to get a decent fan for proper ventilation past 8pm.