my condolences and commiserations to the families and survivors of sunday's tragedy. i myself can't imagine having to walk away alive from a disaster like this and living with the memory for the rest of my life, so, may the families be reunited soon and find peace and closure.

peiwenl.diaryland.com is a year old today, or yesterday. hmmm, i am not too sure. the only date that's as clear as daylight in my brain is the day i started blogging -- 30th november 2002. may i remember future wedding anniversaries and birthdays with such alacrity too. =)

anyways, everyone does this rounding up of their year during this period, i shall be no different. haha, what were you expecting?

2004 has been an ok year for me. some changes in the way i've felt about things - relationships, friends, life, work. i think i'm slowly, and against my will, becoming more jaded. no thanks to the people in my life, huh. 2004 has opened my eyes to the most unfair things, like undeserving folks clinching undeserved accolades, and me pushing away the hands of a relationship due to hesitance and, well, fear (i think).

of couse, who could forget the good things like trying green curry for the first time and liking it, the many embarrassments garnered during work, the numerous laughs i've shared with cutsix and the seveners (haha), scratching my dad's car and putting the blame on ikea, winning 2nd prize for my fyp...

should i do a list of favourite movies/music? something to make my entry more commonplace than it already is? i haven't had the chance to listen to and discover much music this year, kazaa has been excavated by my dad. sigh.

anyways, do look out for more (hopefully hilarious) entries to come, i'm tooting my own horn here, haha. happy new year, guys.

when we were at sijori perr brought up the subject of pet peeves. well i've got a couple more to add to my list. lol, it is not exhaustive, after all.

1. unisex toilets

what were the creators of ally mcbeal thinking? do they not know one of the worst things to happen to womenfolk is to have to share toilets with men? do they not realize men are one of the worst toilet users in the world? oh wait, there're only two types of toilet users - men and women. so you can only go good or bad, and men have certainly gone quite bad with their toilet ways!

for one thing, i don't see how their stuff can go all over the place when the toilet bowl is just about as large as the biggest head around. i'm saying this after an unfortunate opportunity at having to use the loo after a male customer's turn (oh, squirm).

so you can be sure that any future workplace of mine will have separate toilets. sorry ally.

2. seeded grapes
this may sound pretty off but i love grapes, just not those with seeds. really an irony in itself because seedless grapes are in fact modified grapes so they can't really be counted as natural grapes. lol.

my mother loves grapes. to her, oranges are not the only fruit (pardon the pun) so we always get stuff like kiwis, pineapples, grapefruits, dragonfruits... etc around the house. we eat a lot of fruit, including seeded grapes (ARGH!).

more pet peeves to come! i'll be away til sunday, so don't fret about the no-update. ;)

and here's what my mum had to say about my results (which were released today), "finally".

filipino, oh sorry, domestic maids are the world's biggest flirts (agree with me, dammit). they giggle, act silly and vulnerable in front of men - both young, old and handicapped. now it seems like women, too, are not spared.

a shared lift with one of them househelp evidently showed me their competency at the flirting game.

when i entered the elevator after ms. domestic and her handicapped male charge, i told abovementioned maid to "please press number eight, thank you."

so, the filipino/indonesian/wherever maids hail from was searching frantically for my floor -- usually people have a hard time because the lift buttons in my apartment follow an unexplanable order bound by undecipherable logic, sigh. when she couldn't find "eight", she giggled, like, "hehehehehehehehehe".

then when i directed her to the right place, she went, "hehehehehehehehehe, oh i see, hehehehehehehehehehe. sorry, hehehehehehehehehehe."

i felt like she saw me as some sex-starved bangladeshi construction worker with a "is that a hammer in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?" jesus christ. sorry for the association, btw.

in fact, she was such giggly bits that she accidently rolled her charge's wheelchair over my foot (OUCH) and then, "hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe".

(HOW ABOUT AN APOLOGY?!?)

i was at Esprit last week and to my amusement, i was served by a malay cashier with a somewhat authentic london accent.

no, the accent was not amusing, but what happened in between waiting for my receipt was.

the cashier turned to her colleague, who had asked her a question (rhetorical, imho), and answered her in complete singapore-accented english.

i was a hundred percent flabbergasted.

if you could put yourself in my position, wouldn't that have totally tickled you?

it's absurd how she puts on a faux accent to serve us customers and drops it during normal conversations with other people. i seriously don't see the logic.

my other encounter of this sort was with my ex-editor at HOT Magazine (the saddest excuse for a monthly singapore has ever seen). siti wears her posher-than-Queen E accent like a second skin - to the extent of me imagining myself to be working for ang mohs when i had a phone interview with her.

i wish those faux-accent folks could speak like that all the time, well those who do it well of course. it is delightful to hear if you ignore the slight poseur-ism.

we were accompanied by hitz fm on our drive up to genting last week. listening to the dedication bits just got really amusing.

i don't know what you guys are thinking, but when i dedicate a song to my friends on national radio, i'd pick a song that means something for that particular occasion or sentiment, like a birthday song for the birthday girl or a get married song for my boyfriend.

some listeners dedicate songs they want to hear over the radio, which really is a sad reason because you can download any song anywhere and hear it as many times as you want, til you get so sick of it.

but perhaps hitz fm's listeners do not have access to kazaa or any other program that lets you rip songs off other users' hard drives (i don't believe in paying for downloaded music), so hitz fm has got girlfriends dedicating the song that goes

"get out / right now / it's the end of you and me / it's too late / blah blah"

to their boyfriends. this is just totally weird, i mean, you just told the dj to say "i love you daniel" and the next thing you're telling your boyfriend "it's the end"? is this another of love's unanswerable questions? très complicated, eh?

remember when i dedicated britney's lucky back in sec 3? and when i got dedication of the day? the gift was a titanic book and 2 tickets to "on the line", that movie starring 'nsync's lance bass. i never went to collect it, i mean, who wants to have a titanic book?

we caught the incredibles yesterday! it was incredible, excuse the lack of vocabulary. lol. pixar has outdone themselves.

anyways, i got caught in a if-looks-could-kill situation again, this time on bus 14 which i took after work to meet the late people (coughcough).

i was just descending from the upper deck where two girls, very teenaged and jolin tsai fans type, y'know, they were discussing where to go for dinner, and their conversation went something like this:

"you want rice or noodles?"

"anything lor."

"you want slow or fast food?"

"anything lor."

"you want to eat at orchard or somerset?"

"anywhere lor."

i was standing by their side, in clear view of the conversation and its participants, and i couldn't help displaying my response.

i rolled my eyes. semi-conspicuously.

they caught the rude gesture of course. one would have been completely blind not to.

i got a glare in return, and shot off a pointed glance of my own. haha. 'twas fun. they were making meaningless chatter anyway.