Strange things

Listen: Shu Yuan creatively killing zombies

Had a scare earlier this week - went to Ipoh last Saturday and came back on Sunday with a neck ache, right side only. Didn't think too much about it for the next few days, until the pain gradually wore off, but it was still painful when I sneezed. On Thursday, found that the neck ache was gone, but there was a small lump under my chin that ached whenever I sneezed.

Went to the doctor, young guy he was, who asked me about my symptoms. Told him I didn't have any fever - he came back to the question a few times about whether I had any fever - I said no. He felt the lump on my neck, told me it was probably a swollen lymph node. Infection - antibiotics should clear it up. But, he continued - here I got really worried - if the lump is still there and painful after I finished the antibiotics, then I should go to a hospital for further scan. I'm not scaring you, I'm just preparing you for what could happen.

Thank you...I guess. But I don't smoke and I don't drink much - except for the occasional bottle of cider that I'll share with the bf - so I'm not sure how the lump got there. Wouldn't have known if I hadn't been sneezing in the office. But it made me realise, going to office the next morning, that nobody would really care if I got something serious. I mean they would ask and then nicely, politely, put that sick someone out of their minds.

And all these people asking for things to be done now and today - I told someone that I couldn't give her the thing she wanted on the same day, when she asked me at freaking lunch time. That look on her face - wondered if anyone had told her no before. Glee. If you guys had been planning it properly, you would have seen the giant elephant in the room before you got started, but noooo, you had to make nice pie charts and graphs and tell us we can deliver things we didn't promise within 5 days. When I've worked there for 3 years and we've not finished those things in less than a month. FFS.

Also - had An Encounter with a really rude woman. I mean, I would reasonably expect you to be able to read the red "Staff Only" sign at eye level on the door, but apparently you can't read. You can't even. First she knocked on the door loudly (yeah, the one with the "Staff Only" sign, goddammit). Then when I opened the door a bit to asked her who is she looking for  - lord why did I have to be charitable that day, I should have been a lazy ass and ignored her from my seat - she barged in and demanded to talk to my department head. Wanted to tell her he's not around anyway, but dear Miss Polite cut me off and demanded Where is he?! Told her to please take a seat at the reception; she cut me off again (like I said, she CAN"T EVEN UNDERSTAND MANNERS) and said, "There's no excuse for please."

LIEK OMG I DIDN'T KNOW I NEEDED AN EXCUSE TO SAY PLEASE OHMAIGAAAAWWDDD

Then she walked into the office to go look for the missing department head. Colleagues went to kepoh - I didn't - said she was talking to someone else in senior management.

Seriously - your livelihood depends on a product that people took the time to create and maintain and basically make sure it works, all from the HQ - and you can't even be civil to someone pricing your shit for you? For that matter, what's wrong with being civil to a random stranger anyway? Is your problem more important than being civil? I hope your commission drops and your clients refuse to renew their policies, random stranger!

Like a friend woefully told me once, "The product you price sells well, people praise the agent. Your product sell poorly, it's your fault for pricing wrong".

 That scare on Thursday night made me think (of course it did), and it made me separate the Things that Will Make Me Happy, from the Things that Won't Cause the End of the World if You Didn't Do It. And there were a lot of things.

Things that will make me happy:

1. Coffee
2. Cats
3. Surprising myself - like running 5km non-stop on a treadmill (it's a start!) and not feeling tired
4. Books - like Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
5. Spending time with the people I like
6. Food I like
7. Movies

Also had a morally ambiguous situation of sorts last week - do you do something that you know is wrong, and the people who are supervising you feel that it's wrong, but you had to do it because the instruction was from some Higher Power? It's basically a game of passing the shit around to see who gets it, or as Douglas Adams put it, "Somebody Else's Problem". But I wanted to be out of the situation so badly I did it anyway, because I was so tired of it - it was just a continuation of a situation that had dragged on for months and months. And all because adults - refer to the last post about adults knowing things - didn't know what they wanted. All that misery and wasted hours because some people can't make up their minds. 

I mean, when you were a kid, did your parents get tired of you and just demanded, " You want chocolate or strawberry? If you can't choose then you're not getting any." Felt like someone should be the parent in this tangled situation, but nobody wanted to do it, because it was Somebody Else's Problem.

In the end I had to do it anyway, because, you know, reasons. Not my reasons. Somebody else's. I'm just following orders.

Let me end this super long post with one of my favourite paragraphs from Valente (I'm so so happy I picked up her book with the weird cover):

"At the bottom of philosophy something very true and very desperate whispers: Everyone is hungry all the time.  Everyone is starving. Everyone wants so much, more than they can stomach, but the appetite doesn't converse much with the stomach. Everyone is hungry and not only for food - for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them. Even the mites and mussels. But no one can use you up unless you let them." Almanack gave a great and happy sigh. "The whole point of growing is to get big enough to hold the world you want inside you. But it takes a long time, and you really must eat your vegetables, and most often you have to make the world you want out of yourself."

- pg. 150, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, Valente