Elevator angst

I'm not generally a judgemental person. I try hard not to judge people and I think I'm getting better at it.

I'm sorry but I can't help judging you when...

You are THAT person who waits for a good five minutes at the lift lobby and braves the crowded lift only to ride up to the second floor.

Or THAT person who gets into the elevator on the 7th floor and then gets off on the 8th. It is still just one floor, you know!

And you do this EVERY single day!

And I know for a fact that you are absolutely in the pink of your health.

And you talk about running marathons and sustainability issues!

Seriously!

I want to scream "Take the stairs!" every time I see you!

Darn! I really need to work harder at this!

A lemmings story

So, we were on vacation (I had a great time. Thank  you for asking!) in Bintan, Indonesia. It is a short ferry ride away from Singapore. But the fact that it is in a different country makes things more complicated than they should be. Although the ferry ride from point A to B was only 45 minutes long, the actually journey took us more than 3-4 hours, thanks to the immigration formalities and the wait associated. Although Pickles was a darling during the entire trip, the journey was another matter. I had taken tons of things to keep him distracted and busy. It also helps that he is now curious about the things around him and pointing things out to him when we are outdoors is one of the things he enjoys. But, I digress.

On our way back home from Bintan, we were stuck at the immigration for a while with nothing much to do. There were a good number of people sitting around in the lounge, waiting for  the ferry to show up. Pickles was already done reading his books multiple times and running around the ferry  terminal. It was his nap time and so he was beginning to get slightly cranky. I picked him up and went close to the gate and was showing him the sea and birds and whatever I could think of. In a while, the ferry arrived and the people who arrived on it were disembarking. This was of course of considerable interest to my little one. So, he was watching with interest, all the proceedings at the harbour. Slowly, I began rocking him as he started to drift off to la-la land. In about 5 minutes, he was fast asleep in my arms. Relieved, I turned around, looking for R and a place to sit down. I was in for a shock.

There was a long queue of people behind me. Turns out that people had assumed that I was at the gate first and was queueing to board the ferry. So, they had all followed me blindly and there was now a queue to board, even before the boarding announcement was made. I stood there stunned, and as I looked around in confusion, I caught R's eye. He had seen what was happening and was sitting back and enjoying the drama. When he saw the shock on my face, he was almost laughing out loud. But then, he coolly came up to me and joined me in 'my place in the queue'.

Shortly, the boarding announcement was made and needless to say, we were among the first to board the ferry. And all, thanks to Pickles!

N is for No

'No', sounds pretty simple, right. How hard can it be to say it?

Well, it turns out that for some people (like me), this can be pretty hard. It's not like I'm a yes-man and I can disagree. But I find it very hard to say no to other people.

If at work, someone asks me for help, I always oblige. But sometimes, I find that I am running around, stressed and doing things for some people when they are actually relaxing with a cup of coffee. It pisses me off no end, but I just try to be nice. When they ask, I think they really need help but at times, I feel I am being taken advantage of. I'm trying now to draw the line.

Take another instance, I can never say I can't make it to a party. Or worse, if someone invites themselves to our home, I still can't say no. Due to this, I find that our weekend schedules are always full, even if I want to spend some quiet time with my family. R always complains that I over plan our weekends, when the truth is it just gets planned. I almost have nothing to do with it. Except that sometimes, I want to say no but I can't.

It's not like I'm the nicest person around and neither do I want to be. But I don't want to change the way I am just because some people take advantage of it (some without even realising it). But if you think, I'm a pushover, well I'm not. I can stand up for myself when the need arises. But it all boils down to this simple thing, I can't say no. I try but the words just get stuck on my tongue and I just can't spit them out. I admire people who can say no without any guilt whatsoever, even at the cost of hurting the other person involved. But that's not me. Neither do I want to be that person. I'm just saying that I want to be able to say no when nobody stands to get hurt and that will maybe buy me some peace.

So, what's your take? Can you say no? How do you do it?

What goes around REALLY comes around

So, last week I found this wallet on a bus on campus. It was wedged in the space between two seats. The student card in the wallet indicated that it belonged to a student of the same university but from a different department. The wallet had plenty of cash, his IC, some credit/debit cards and other miscellaneous stuff that people usually put in a wallet. My first thought was to call and hand it over to the campus security or the lost and found section in the university. But then I realized if I did that, it would probably take a long time for it to get to the owner. He must be frantically looking for his wallet. So I plumaged through his wallet and found this receipt for a badminton court booking, and in that I found his telephone number. I called the guy and told him that I had found his wallet. He said he would come to my lab and pick it up.

After a while, the guy turned up at my lab. He told me that he had in fact lost his wallet a week ago and he had decided that he would not get it back. It was lying in that bus for a week. Since it was stuck in between the seats, no body had noticed it. He thanked me profusely for returning his wallet and left. After that, my day was really busy and I forgot all about the incident.

That day evening after I left the lab, R and I went out for dinner.  Since it had been a long day at work, I came home and went straight to bed. At 11:30 p.m., my phone rang. The guy on the phone introduced himself and asked me if I had lost a laptop, a Mac book pro. It was then that I realized that I had left it in the restaurant after dinner. I had not even realized that it was missing. At that moment, I had a panic-attack. He told me he had found my laptop at the restaurant and he did not want to give it to the police, as he was not sure if I would get it back. He asked me to come and pick it up whenever I could. I left immediately and went to get it. On my way to meet him, it struck me, how had the guy found my number? When I asked him, he said he had used my computer to log in to my face-book account (it doesn’t need a password as I am the only one who uses it). He had instant messaged one of my friends who was in Australia to get my number and called me. Later my friend messaged me to tell me “ I can’t believe you lost your computer and a weird guy just asked me for your number”. It seems that the guy had pretended to be me, to ask for my number and only later admitted to being someone else.  God bless that guy for returning my laptop. I shudder every time I think of the consequences if I had not got my Mac back. So much of my work would have been at stake among other things (I don’t back up very frequently).

Lessons learnt at the end of an eventful day:

Be more careful with your stuff

Back up your computer more regularly

What you give is definitely what you get in return!

What goes around comes around

I’m having trouble waking up in the mornings these days, which means I’m always late to work. I should have known this day would come.

You see, I was on vacation in India for the last couple of weeks. It was almost an evil pleasure to watch people hurry to work in the mornings (especially on Monday mornings) when I could choose to stay in bed or laze around. And I reminded everybody I met that “You have to go to work and I’m on vacation!!” It was such a sweet feeling. I could see the jealousy in their eyes and hear them quietly hurling curses my way.

And now Karma is biting me in the ass.

Bizarre

It so happened that a colleague of mine came back after a long vacation and she looked  (lets just say) different. She originally had non-existent eyebrows and today, there was this nice design on her forehead. Turns out that she had eyebrows tattooed onto her forehead. “Nice plan’, I said, smiling at her. I wish it had stopped at that.

When I complimented her on her nice eye-make-up, she coolly told me, “No, it’s actually a tattoo too and it’s permanent. Now I don’t have to wear eye makeup everyday and still look pretty.” She had actually gotten even her eyeliner tattooed on her eyelids. That had my eyes popping out of their sockets.  Though she did admit that the process was extremely painful, I’m not sure she mentioned it was worth it. She told me it was so painful that later that night she had to be taken to the hospital for pain medication.

I know I have a tattoo too. So, I can’t really be the one to be commenting on my friend’s tattoo, so what if it is in a “sensitive” place. I guess it is a personal choice to decide what is “ok” for you and what is “extreme”.

I know it was her choice and her suffering but I was really shocked. What if the person doing it missed or had a shaky moment? The lesser risk would be that you would have bad eye make-up for the rest of your life and worst case your eyes could get damaged. I am really glad that it didn’t happen to my friend but I couldn’t help but wonder, where is the line? Just how far are you willing to go to look good?