Valentines Day
received my pressie a few days in advance. darling had sacrificed his lunch break to search for it :: ring from citigems :: *beams* that's my new love now. wearing it everyday but so afraid that i might lose it knowing how unfated i am with rings. i'm still upset over the blink blink that went missing 2 years back. *pouts* i'll take very good care of this purple stone. went to work earlier than usual as darling had promised to bring me out for dinner. he's been tight-lipped about where he's gonna bring me to. *anticipation* it was yet another boring day at work, same old questions and same old problems. juz so sick of it. i'm glad i have darling's dinner date to look forward to. was standing at the door when i saw a girl holding a bouquet of flowers walking in the shop's direction. juz as i was wondering who the flowers were meant for, the girl asked me for catherine. *surprised* happily acknowledged the receipt. lovely red roses. shouldn't have spent the money. but i really love them. *smiles* happiness is the only word when the clock turned 1800. finally time to knock off. the only hiccup of the day was probably the stupid jam. waited almost an hour for darling and when i got onto the car, he still didn't wanna tell me where we're heading. however, as he's unsure of the route, he had no choice but to tell me our destination :: SENTOSA :: due to the heavy traffic, we took about 45 mins to get from tampines to sentosa. by the time we reached the place, we had only an hour left for dinner. nevertheless, i loved the arrangement. had our dinner at sea village restaurant, a restaurant by the sea. though the food wasn't great, i loved the ambience and beautiful scenery. went for a short walk at the rhymes of blooms. need to digest the huge amount of food i took. *grins* the decorations were pretty. the last surprise of the day was the mahjong session that darling had arranged with issac and steven. as brendan couldn't make it, we had joseph to make up the last leg. though we lost in the end, i enjoyed my valentines day with darling. he' s juz so sweet. knowing what i want all the time.

Chinese New Year
had a pre-CNY mahjong session with brendan, issac and steven on the eve of CNY eve. as all of us (minus issac) doesn't have to work on the eve, we played all the way till 8 in the morning. poor issac had to go to work straight after the session. *grins* we're juz so evil. headed back to darling's place for a short rest and went down town to meet my NTU NBS friends at noon. as expected, many couldn't make it at the last minute. had our lunch at orchard cineleisure's pasta mania. 1st topic over lunch was of coz gracie's upcoming wedding next year. others include complaints of work, discussion on future plans and reminiscing the past. really miss those days in school. went to adrian's place for another mahjong session with xuanru after lunch. darling went off to play billard with his friends. been a long time since i stepped into adrian's place. played till around 6 in the evening and adrian sent me home for my reunion dinner. rest of the evening was spent on prayers, watching new year variety on TV and steamboat.
1st day of CNY: went to gu-ma's place to bai-nian. nothing interesting. cousins were asking when i'm getting married and my older nephews are forever trying to get on my nerves by calling me auntie. stayed there for around an hour and headed home to offer prayers. darling came over to fetch us to yew ting cousin's place at holland. nice 2 and 1/2 storey house. love the architecture but somehow, i feel that alot of space were not utilised. spent the whole evening there chit-chatting and munching on goodies. can't imagine how much weight i'm gonna put on. went home with my parents around 8 plus and darling picked me up from home at around 9 plus. lots of changes in plans all cause of steven and finally we set it to be gamble session at his place. started really late (around midnight), all thanks to steven who made us waited for him to leave his other "gamble den" for almost an hour. played blackjack from midnight till 7 in the morning. really amazed by how gambling brings people together. mark, kenneth and me from nokia, darling, issac and carey from singtel and steven (plus girlfriend) from active8. darling and steven were really crazy. placing stakes of up to 400 bucks on every hand. *madness* at one point in time, darling had a deficit of 2.3k. was really quite worried for him. really glad when he broke even and in the end he even won. *smiles* great luck to start the new year. sent the rest of the guys back (except for carey who went off on his own).
2nd day of CNY: slept for a few hours and i had to wake up to go visiting. took a cab down to darling's place. uncle sent me to crescent when i told him to go avenue 2 and ended up having to make a detour. the fare came up to be more than 20 bucks! but nice uncle knew that it was his mistake and ask for only 16. gave him 18 for good luck. stayed at darling's house for a while and we headed to his ah-ma's place. ate lots of cashew nuts (my favourite) and gummies! *fat fat* left the place around 4 and we went to pick up issac to go to steven's chalet at east coast. bought fries from mac to munch and issac got himself a sundae. refrained from getting one for myself as i know i'm so gonna get fat. played a few rounds of blackjack with steven and his colleagues. this time, they were more sane. stakes were kept at a maximum of 30 bucks. left the place around 8 plus with darling and issac to go visiting at huimin's (one of darling's managers) house. met up with the rest of the staff at her place. simply couldn't resist the temptation of those CNY goodies, same goes for darling. *laughs* they told me to keep an eye on him as he has put on alot of weight already. poor boy. kept being picked on for eating non-stop. left the place around 9 plus and we headed back to east coast. packed our dinner from burger king drive through. *yum yum* darling's luck was really good this new year. he won yet again for the night. as darling had to work the next day, we left the place at around 1 in the morning.
3rd day of CNY: rotted at home the whole day. did nothing except watching TV and filling my stomach with goodies. took a short nap and went down town to pick darling up from work. after getting the car from home, we went to jurong east's NTUC to pick up some groceries. headed home and prepared ai xin dinner for darling. *beams* food wasn't fantastic but it's the thought that counts. borrowed que sheng 3 dvd from steven and we caught it that night. wasn't that nice as compared to the previous 2 episodes. time really flies. 4 days of holidays juz passed in the blink of the eye. really dread going back to work but am glad that my 1st day will be at parkway, makes life a little happier.

sometimes i ask myself. what do i really want from the company? promotion? recognition? honestly, if the promotion means little monetary returns (pathetic would be more appropriate) and more shit jobs, i would rather stay at where i am. i'm pretty much happy with what i have right now, getting along well with colleagues from the retail side and on top of that nice bosses. what more can i ask for? not that i would reject a promotion, but i'm looking forward to a higher post than SSC. say i'm greedy, but who's not? i really hate pretenders. people who keeps saying that they do not care about such promotion but their actions prove otherwise. little actions and words to the superior. i hate that. if you really don't care then don't try to earn credits at the expense of others. observation one: claiming all the credits during training, trying hard to prove oneself's capability. obeservation two: hinting to superiors that him/herself should get the recognition award. so what if you had lost out to someone last year due to your sales though you were supposed to get it for your performance? admit it, you're juz not as good. somehow, i juz feel that it's pretty unfair. does it mean that if your superior is more aggressive, you'll be able to get the award? i definitely feel he's not worthy to clinch the title. well, if i'm the one who's gonna take it, there're people who's gonna say the same thing. everyone has got different working environment. how do you judge his performance? by attendance? by what the managers say? for sales, it's a concrete thing. target says everything. but for performance wise, there's always a grey area, what the superior doesn't see or know is not taken into account. so does it mean that if you do enough "performance" during monthly meeting and trainings, you'll get the award? i'm probably too comfortable in the comfort zone that i tend to resist any slight changes, not to mention major changes. what shall my next step be?

mambo jumbo at zouk on CNY eve! i wanna go! it's been a really long time since i've been there. will i be able to make it? i wonder... in a really bad shape now. down with flu, cough and sorethroat. wanna get well before the festive season starts. hopefully i'll get a chance to go clubbing. sometimes i really wonder what the upper management is thinking about. yes, i'm gonna complain about work again. honestly, if you're looking for long term staff, would you hire a bunch of 'O' level grads? at a time like this, i don't think this group of young girls would be satisfied with juz a 'O' level cert. give them half a year, i'm quite sure they'll resign and move on with further studies. what's the point then? waste a huge sum of money to train them, put them through courses and after 6 months they leave. the cycle goes on. i understand that the company is rich but that's not the way to waste resources. even if you wanna to widen the age group of staff, you hafta search for suitable candidates and not juz pick any ah hua or ah lian. in addition, there seems to be double standard towards the new girls. so what if you're on probation? so what if you hadn't got the proper attire? isn't it the norm to get yourself proper attire and not to say that coz you're still on probation and it's okie not to follow the rules? sounds ridiculous? i really wish to see things from the company's point of view. i'm trying hard to. the consolation is, there's 1 out of 3 of the new girls who's positive towards learning and better in attitude. maybe it's generation gap. can't seem to communicate with them. catherine is getting old.