Another suitcase in another hall?

Its a rainy Sunday afternoon here in Brussels.

I am sitting in my living room here, with 4 open suitcases in the hallway, and trying to sort out my clothes and come to some order to how I organise my wardrobe. With the frequent travelling, I have now resorted to shifting from one suitcase to another, and then some more of my clothes are still hanging out to dry on the clothes dryer. You may ask - why so many suitcases? well, I have been commuting almost on a weekly basis between London and Brussels. While I am trying to keep my stuff to the minimum in my London flat, still there are many `extra' sets of materials which I have no use of here in Brussels, and of which I am slowly bringing over to adorn my almost empty London flat. These go along of those placemats, throw for the sofa, etc. I just don't see the point of why I should spend my funds in getting another new set in London, when it is just a temporary accommodation for those days when I am there. It helps to declutter around my Brussels apartment as well, so why not?

Second suitcase is a larger case, which carried my belongings for my last trip to Malaysia and China. Going on a longer trip usually requires more items to be carried, and a larger case also allows more shopping to be done and carried back. I do find that of late, I am buying less and less stuff from Asia to carry back, guess I am now much more settled in here, and basically either learnt to live without some stuff, or already acquired the knowledge of where to find those items (particularly food items) if so needed.

Third + fourth suitcases are more of the "changing of the season", and of which the in-between-season/sizes/I-can't-decide-if-I-still-want-them clothes. I just stuffed them all into these suitcases, and hopefully one day soon, I would know what I am to do with them. periodically, as of now, I am trying to see what are some of the clothes which i could perhaps give away.

In conclusion, I definitely have too many clothes and too many shoes. Travelling all the time is a way of life for me now and that is certainly adding to all this massive clutter. I really wished for those good old days when I am more `grounded", and my life is not shifting from one place to another. I guess basically I am a pretty homely person, and would be happy to just be in my cosy little apartment, with a good company or two.... someday soon, I hope to have my own little cottage in the countryside and a place called home, and no more travelling !

Nearly 11 months have passed....

...since my last blog entry!!

Not that nothing exciting has been happening, in fact it was the contrary. However, me being me, I am always so lazy to be thinking of what to say, and write in my blog, and the ideas are quite a few. And then I will be bitten by the lazy bug again, plus be so embroiled with the rest of the activities of the week that I hardly have the chance to be sitting behind my laptop at home.

I suppose I could be more laissez-faire about all this, and just write and shoot ahead. Sometimes I believe I do think too much, cos end of the day, I think I only have at most 2 readers (and you know who you are!!). No one else really reads this blog..hahah...

I have thought about closing this blog down, but then felt that whatever entries for the past years would then be lost, and that would really be a shame. After all, all these blog entries, while not my diaries but they do chronicle how I have been living my life, snippets of it here and there. I do think I might be able to look back all these scarce entries with much joy and sweet reminiscence, when I am an old lady rocking in a chair, waiting for the sunset in an old folks home.

So, I will keep on writing/blogging as much as I can - and try to preserve these whimsicals, and whatnots of my life for the `older me' in future.

The night when there was almost no tomorrow....Part 1

I have often being asked of what really happened when I mentioned I have had a bad allergic attack previously. Thought I'd better start writing that before memories start to fade, since it had been such a significant event in my life. And no, till now, though it happened last year, my memories on this had surprisingly been very intact and I remember every detail vividly....so...flashback.... 13 months ago....

One night in mid July 2012.. I went for dinner with bella after having an extremely tough and emotional day at work. I ordered a very commonly available seafood noodle soup, which wasnt spectacular and didint taste nice but I finished it off nevertheless. In the midst of dinner, I started to get discomfort in the stomach, with a growing bloated feeling, and hence, ended dinner early to go home. Thats when things started going weird. I felt flushed when I reached home, and then started to feel itchy here and there. Thought to myself, its probably my usual reaction to food, nothing to worry myself about. then the "avalanche" started...
* Felt itch starting from the base of my feet and moving up quickly like a swarm of ants climbing up my legs..
* weals started appearing on my legs, and trunk...
* my face looked very red and flushed
* my eyes looked bloodshot..which was scary
Thats when I decided to drive to the nearby clinic, and then another scary symptom - I started to get blurred and distorted vision. I thanked my lucky stars that night that I was able to get my friend staying upstairs my apartment to fetch me to the hospital on time!

I could barely walked straight when I got to the ER dept, and the scariest part was that my vision had by then lost all elements of colours, and suddenly what I could see was just black and white (like those days of black and white TV). Everything felt so surreal..I remember being directed to the treatment room, and thats what i could feel the slow motion of me falling to the ground as my brain and my limb motions seemed to have become disconnected...and it was at this moment, that a question suddenly hit me...."Is this...it (i.e. the end)?? as I felt darkness was about to engulf me, and I was about to lose consciousness..

No! I hear an inner voice telling me firmly..."don't give in..this shouldn't be `it'...this isnt my time yet"... I willed myself not to give in and to continue to fight...the main thing at that time was that I didnt want to lose consciousness, and hence fought to stay conscious and awake... as a part of me was really afraid that should I become unconscious, what if i don't wake up anymore??... I then remembered being helped up from the floor and then put on the hospital bed...all this time I had my eyes closed as it was really difficult to see properly and it was really exhausting... a flurried of activities as the medics started giving me injections and setting up IV lines...the beeping of the machines in ER, always a sound in the background..

Last one standing?

(This was an old unpublished post - written 2 years ago- sometime in late May 2011)

I should be working. Its `that time of the year' again (for those uninitiated, its `brand plans' period).

However, this evening, saw a post on facebook and found out that one of my ex has just gotten married a few days ago and somehow that kinda impacted my evening.

Not that I still harbour any feelings for him. It was like really eons and eons of years ago! He is not in my immediate circle of friends anymore and in between the years, we have but met up only a few times, probably still countable with the fingers of one hand.

However, I still can't explain this strange and weird feeling that I am having. No, I don't know the bride and no, am also not jealous. I am just trying to decipher and analyse this weird potpouri of feelings that I am having.

Its a sense of loss somewhere, but wait, hold on, what `loss' am I actually referring to? when I don't `have' whatever it is to `lose'? Perhaps its the feeling of being the last one who is still `standing' in the land of singlehood, while everyone else seems to be entering matrimony by now... how fate and destiny and bad choices of men I've made in this life had collided and now this is my path...

Certainly not Vidal Sassoon

Today I finally mustered up the courage and walked into a neighbourhood hair saloon for a hair cut. Been postponing this for quite a while, making it not high up on my priority list. However as i would be going for a big meeting next week, having messy hair wouldnt really do much to help my professional image, so its now a matter of `when push comes to shove', which finally saw me out of the door to look for the next Vidal Sassoon.

Till now i don't really know the name of the saloon! anyway, I guess purple being my favourite colour, I was attracted by their exterior enough to want to walk in. And was very pleasantly surprised when the hairstylist, a young lady can actually speak English to me.

So, it began one of my bizarre hair cutting experience! I was asked to stand when she was trimming my hair! and this went on for a good 10-15 minutes... before I was finally allowed to sit. When she was done with layering my hair, she asked me if I wanted mousse, which I said `yes' and the next thing is, she pumped out a whole big glob onto a towel and proceeded to spoon off these to a comb and actually combed through my whole head! i think I have never used so much mousse before..

At the end of it, the price of the total hair do - 53 Euros! which I think is pretty expensive since I know a colleague of mine does her usual haircut at only 25 Euros...and I asked the lady..her answer, `yeah, but you agreed to use the good shampoo..and you wanted a conditioner..and then also the mousse"...waah..that means that every little bit of material used on my hair is at a cost to me, welcome to Belgium!

And how was the look? honestly, I think nothing much as changed..she just trimmed 1-2 cm off the length..my hair still looks very much pretty similar as before, only probably tidier.

This clearly ain't Vidal Sassoon...

In Retrospect - Movies Mania of 2008

Just as some people have a cookie jar to keep spare change, I have a tin can that I place my movie ticket stubs into. Not that these little pieces of paper are worth anything, nor are they a collector’s item. Come to think of it, am not sure why I started this practice in the first place. (duh!)

So, now, at the start of 2009, looking back into 2008, I started to count the stubs, which now represents the number of movies I've watched in either GSC, Cineleisure or TGV last year. :)

I know I am a great movie fan, and love to watch at the cinema occasionally (or so I thought) but I’ve never realized that I am such a movie-addict, till I started to count the stubs that I’ve kept for 1 year. All in, there are 32 movies I’ve watched in 2008 in the cinema alone.. (read – not counting those on DVDs yet).

I must stress the cinema part, cos I also have another collection of movie DVDs at home (will blog on that separately). That makes it an average of 2.6 movies a month.

Golly..and 2008 had been an extremely busy year for me, and I myself am amazed at how I managed to do that, considering i don't watch movies during weekends, only week nights!


I guess this is the part of me that is really `spontaneous". Gosh, what a revelation from a bunch of ticket stubs. If only they have bonuslink/loyalty programme for cinema goers.. :P

Decisions, decisions, decisions

Had the priviledge of attending a closed door forum with our company's top brass earlier today. One of the things that I lifted off centred around `decisions'.

"You exists in the company because of the decisions you make. When you make no decisions at all, you cease to exist". Isn't this profound?

This really brings me back to my 1st year with the company, with the MD then. When I went in for a consult with him for a decision to be made on a particular project, his reply was "You are paid to think.. tell me what you want and what you decide..if I find it acceptable, I'd go with it, but first you must think, decide and propose".

That, combined with today's comments are both proving to be very valueable insights for me.

Life is really all about decisions (which are also choices, in guise). Work life or personal life.
Every morning, I can decide to get up and go to work, or call in for an EL if I don't feel like it (ahem, not that I do that..just that its possible, right?).
I can decide to eat the fried noodles, which i love but of which will increase my caloric intake for the day, or choose a healthier breakfast.
I decide what clothes I want to wear today.
I decide what deadlines to prioritise at work, which meeting to pay more attention to.
And at night, I decide what to do after work, and then what time to hit the sack.

Yes, when we cease to make decisions, all the above will not happen...and really, we cease to exists..

Whatever happened to ME?

My long hiatus from my blog is very glaring. I have had friends (`loyal' readers of what little I have wrote) calling me and asking me, `when are you going to update your blog?", "are you ever going to write a new entry?" and lately even my brother (whom i never knew ever read my ramblings) actually posed the same Qs as well.

So the question really is, whatever happened to ME all these months?

Here's the answer:- I `delivered' another new `baby' for the company! and since then had been hecticly busy with 'feedings, burpings and diaper changes'. To those uninitated, I have just launched another product for my company (4th one in 6 years, to be exact), and have been `mothering' this new pink little baby with lots of tender care and attention.

Now, the baby has learnt to crawl.. but nonetheless, things at work has not simmered down like before, rather, its on the contratry. I have since also adopted another portfolio, and some expanded responsibilities.

Whatever happened to ME in my personal life then? nothing much, same ol' same ol'. But as time goes by, I have also realised that we go through phases in life when friends come and go. And as one gets older, and more friends get married (when they become `Smug marrieds') or add more to their brood, they tend to have even less time to socialise with the Singletons.

Do these Singletons unite then? Alas, this is not always the case. Again, with the passing of age, people tend to develop different interests, and likes, and some fixations in the way things are run. Flexibility to embrace and accomodate diversity & differences also starts to wane. In time, one will hang out only with those friends who are least threatening to their established routines.

So, whatever really happened to ME? all of the above! plus procrastination, plus lack of inspiration, plus ......

Whatever-la ! I better get started again on all those blog ideas I have jotted down over the months...waste not!

Behold, the Northern Babe is back.