Nitty Gritty Stuff ..... Grrrr

Today's briefing/meeting.... was ... tedious.... I like my occasional colleagues in general because they are nice, normal, well-meaning people, but boy... they sure can talk..... for 3 straight hours :(

I am a strong advocate of short meetings. I notice they never get anything done in the marathon sessions.

And well, when I got to Da Bear's later, I found out that they had taken out the entire ceiling! Da Bear's shop is located in a building that was built in the same year I was born. Now that's really really old in Singapore where they are always tearing down and building stuff before its even a decade old. Unfortunately, due to bad bad mismanagement, the building is dark, extrudes a very very funky smell.... (F wrinkled up her nose when she passed by)... and has a constant source of giant flies.... (they have never ever located the source of these flies. I have swatted a few myself... You need to hit them a few times before they stop moving :P)....

I have this theory that they probably walled up some corpse when the building was first constructed. I mean, it explains the smell and giant flies. .... Of course, the other explanation is that the building has poor ventilation and according to the reflexologist on the same floor, the sewege pipe burst and was badly repaired... more than once. And I thought that the smell came from the Chinese herbal people downstairs....:(

I really really wonder why they put up with the place. I suppose there is no where along Orchard Road that is so decrepit that rental is at minimum level.

The dust from workmen ripping out bits of the old aircon really irritated me. Seeing I could not get anything done painting wise I left..... Hopefully, they would have gotten the place cleaned up by tomorrow.

However, my most immediate irritation comes from dealing with..... vendors.....:(

As a semi-employed person of variable income.... I've had to resort to peddling all sorts of stuff over the years to pay the bills and make my life a little more comfortable. I work with a friend in the local crystal and stone business... to get the certain rare items from contacts overseas.

The big big problem with some of the contacts is that they are terrible when it comes to simple customer service... You'd think that a person running a business would at least establish certain protocol like a proper system of answering emails and invoicing.... or even a proper payment system......:P Dammit.... some people just don't have any of that.... I really really hate it when people give me incomplete or 1-word answers to questions I've spent time to properly phrase in the email. I mean..... I didn't even get an order number for tracking! So HOW do they know who I am or what I'm talking about!

Grrrrrrrrr......

I'm really feeling a lot like.... NOT getting this latest order filled....:( Thanks to Doreen Virtue and the current fascination with angels, I'm now on the hunt for some "angel stones".... :( The problem is that these specific stones are pretty rare... the people that have access to them..... I swear..... they must be country hicks or something 'cos they are NOT running a modern business!....:P

Well.... I guess I'm feeling awfully grouchy... usually I don't talk about my businesses.... but really...... It's kinda getting to me I guess... :(

The Official Bumming Period Is Almost Over :P

My official annual bumming period is almost over... :P I actually have other bumming periods as well, but I'm being recalled back to "work" next week :(

Well, this means I'm gonna have less contact with the people I wanna avoid at Da Bear's. Hopefully this also means I'm gonna meet new people.

I'm actually feeling a bit of anxiety regarding the big meeting tomorrow. And I'm not too sure why I'm feeling this. The "company" has called a large briefing of all "team leaders" .....:P I hate the meetings, so very long...its gonna be a 4 to 5 hour snooze session. :( I really really do not feel like going tomorrow....

Although it has its perks, sometimes this "job" can be really really onerous. I dunno how much more of it I can take before I decide to do something else. However, I am told that this is a job that suits me in a certain way.....:P After all, one HAS to do SOMETHING to survive..... and honestly, most people who do "magic" for a living do not earn much... unless they are total frauds who also don't mind milking people for every single dollar. The new age industry is full of those.

I mean, I demand a high degree of proof from practitioners, and personally I feel compelled to hold myself against my own metre of evaluation. I think that is the only responsible thing to do.

At this point I recall James Randi's million dollar challenge, found on < http://www.randi.org/ >. The challenge is simple actually, to claim the prize money a person making a supernatural or paranormal claim has to reproduce that supernatural claim/incident/ability 2 times in front of a panel of credible evaluaters. This test can also be done in public in a program aired by a major international network.

Despite having been around for years. No one has ever been able to claim the money. It saddens me because some very sincere people have tried this challenge. So far, no one can prove the existance of the supernatural or of a paranormal or psychic ability. It also really does not help that a lot of obviously fake psychics have also attempted this challenge.

Some psychics have excused their failure claiming that the unbelief of the people they are exhibiting their ability to has caused it to fail. While I think that the energetic intentions of people are powerful enough to cause or prevent stuff from happening, I personally think that the failure to show a paranormal or supernatural ability is more tied into the fact that if there is any psychic power at all, it is very very diluted in this day and age. And that, those who do have the ability and are strong enough are well... mostly living in third world countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and some parts of South America ... to name a few places.

I have heard more than once from different individuals that if you want to look for a strong spellcaster the best countries to find them are Tibet, Thailand and Indonesia... I even got comments that western magic on the whole is "too weak". Personally, I don't disagree with the comments made. I mean, if you are an Asian, ask yourself honestly, who do you fear more.... an Asian bohmoh/witchdoctor from the jungles of Borneo or a western witch living in the States.

And unfortunately, well, guess who has greater access to http://www.randi.org/? No wonder the culture of spirits and magic is weak in "developed" countries.

I think I may have mentioned this before on the blog. Once, some years ago, in a state of mental exhaustion over my own personal demons, I asked F if she knew where to find a real spellcaster, who is "strong enough". Now F knows enough new age people on two continents to fill up just about every category of new age practitioner.... heck she even knows Doreen Virtue....:P has this to say....

"There isn't any around.... your best chance of finding one is to go to traditional lands and just start walking into the desert or forest and hope to bump into one..."

:P

Needless to say, that was one of the lowest points in my spiritual path.... I remember spending nights sleeping curled up in a tight corner on a cold tiled floor simply because I was frozen in fear and it was too hard to overcome some of the stuff I was experiencing, and I had problems understanding what I was encountering.... I had felt if I spoke to someone like me, I could come to terms with my own issues......

But there you have it..... there wasn't anyone else at that time.

Since then, I've been looking for people like me... and sadly.... if they are "strong enough" or if their gift manifests itself sufficiently.... they end up in the loony bin talking to unbelieving doctors. Well, I did recently meet someone like that..... I wonder what I will learn from the interaction...

I guess only time will tell.... :)

I live in hope.

Bad Start To The New Year...

Went back to work today after the long Christmas break. Things really sucked on the first day of the working year. No one was in the working mood and well, it was really hard to get my instructions understood. Was in the office talking to some of the other team leads, one of them told me a pretty depressing story of how one of the team leads lost two members of his team to suicide in one project cycle (usually a few weeks). He never saw it coming...

"I mean, how could he know..." she was saying. "We can't read minds..."

A very sobering thought. But he could not have known. It's strange, but its always the people who need help the most who say nothing about their situation. There was this lady in my teams once who certainly was a loner and said nothing to the others. However, it was clear that she had a definite problem. At first, I thought it was a case of some kind of anti-social behaviour or shyness.

As it turned out, through a rather convoluted series of events, I found out that she had a potentially life-threatening physical conditioning. I mean, I understand that there are those who desire privacy above all, and those who want to be regarded the same as everyone else, but surely something like this should be voiced out. I mean, if she had fainted while we were on the job, I wouldn't know what to do, except call for an ambulance.

The preceeding weekend was crappy too. Had a bout of tummy trouble on Sunday that felt like hell and which is caused in part by some kind of very hard mini rice-flour creations I had on Saturday at an experimental cooking party and the fact that on Sunday, I didn't have breakfast and a heavy lunch.:P It was like stomache flu and food poisoning rolled into one. I had a fever and chills most of the night. Couldn't do anything much except lie around and grouch.

Lately too I've had some very strange dreams. I tend to forget most dreams because they are usually not very vivid and pretty mundane. Stuff like running around in Singapore and seeing everyday people down at the commercial district. Recently however in the early morning hours, I've been having dreams about unquiet spirits, strange alien-looking body parts and some organ that looked like it had been preserved too long in formaldehyde or had been sitting in a rotting corpse too long. It was certainly some reproductive organ but it er..... did not look human. I got the feeling it was a female body for some reason.

Today I had another weird bunch of dreams. I dreamt I was in a place that looked Arabic in design and some lady with a large family was at the hotel counter trying to order breakfast for all of them.... presumably to have in the room. Since there was no one around, I helped to take the order... she was a Singaporean Indian lady and wanted 3 different breakfasts.

1. Winter Melon (just the melon, nothing else... yucks)
2. Ampala with curry (I don't know what Ampala was, but apparently she meant some kinda dough bread. I checked it on google. Ampala is either a place in Honduras... :P or some mango-like fruit they use in a drink that is popular now in Penang, Malaysia.)
3. Porridge (I think it was the Chinese kind. Not congee, but more Teochew style where you can see the grains of rice)

Well... i gave the order to the hotel staff, but they thought I had interfered and screwed up the order so they called the lady's mobile for confirmation. :(

I wonder what all of these dreams mean. I don't think I have ever been anywhere like in the dreams, and certainly that whole Ampala thing was new to me.

So Much To Do But...

'Tis the season to make merry, but it's also the time of the year where I make sure that most of my side projects get accomplished. Work with the teams has slowed down so I should have more time right?

There's quite a bit to do, but I'm too lazy to do it :P It could be the cough I'm still having but I kinda doubt it. I really just don't feel like doing anything and I'm not too sure why I feel this way. I mean there's tons of little things to catch up with financially, socially... spiritually... but I'm really just not feeling the urge to do it.

Anyways, currently as I'm here updating this blog I'm also wrapping up some of the work I'm doing with the teams. I really hate the paperwork. I wish people would just get over the need to have lots of documentation flying around. Today is not a good day. Woke up late today and argued with my younger sister, we mostly wake up in the afternoon because we keep late hours and she works the graveyard shift. I guess she isn't in a good mood today since she has to work tonight. Since the day started off with a sour note, I was prompted to get some of my work done :P

Funny, we only get hardworking when things get bad.... well, it could just be me :( That's really a pattern I have to work on this Christmas.

The weekend was pretty good. Had a great night out on Friday, loads of laughs. Saturady was also interesting. Woke up at 4 because I was out all night. But met an old friend who invited me to the opening of his new company... something in events management. Was great, I never knew that Singapore actually had male models and potentials that look good. I guess the younger kids these days have more potential than the guys in my generation.

After that, had "coffee" (we were at starbucks, but never drank any coffee... my old friend is the keep fit type) and I found out quite a few interesting things about him. Speaking with him, I'm reminded of that fact that sometimes the ordinary Joe/Jane that walks down the street might be something that steps out of a fantasy novel.

Heck, I should know this, but sometimes I forget and need to be reminded. I often lament to friends when meeting them, that there is nothing exceptional or special existing in our modern urbanised world, often forgetting that I myself am supposedly something that does not exist. Talking to my old friend I am reminded that once not too long ago, I used to live in a reality where people got possessed, kids (usually kids... sheesh.... why they do it I don't understand) summoned up ghosts and "demons" and some poor sucker found out that he had entered into a contract many many lifetimes ago with undesirable entities and those same beings were now coming to collect...

How soon we humans forget.

I guess once something falls out of our reality for a few years, it also falls out of our mind. I have to remind myself not to forget the reality that once was, because even though I might not be living in it as much anymore, it does not mean that that reality does not exist.

Back To Work Tomorrow... And I Don't Feel Like Going...

I really don't feel like going back to work tomorrow... I mean I am really lucky to have the "job" that I have but... there's just some things about it I don't like :(

For one thing, I'm expected to be a "role model" for my troops :P That's real great, considering I'm wearing a stupid mask when I'm working. I have never asked the powers-that-be in the establishment, but I don't think they'd take too nicely to the idea of what I do after hours. Anyways, I think that being responsible for guiding 100+ people sometimes really gets to me. At this point in time, I don't really want to stand up in front of them and do the whole motivational thing...:( Especially since not that many of them are in the whole "I wanna be motivated" frame of mind.

And what's worse, I can't really pretend I'm somewhere else and that the people I'm supposed to watch over are in a different situation. I might just say something stupid and out of place... Sometimes, when I'm talking to them, I kinda wonder if my own magical roots are starting to show. Like suddenly weird shadows will appear and I'll turn into a black-robed maniac.

I managed once to catch my own reflection when I was having a past life flashback, in the ghostly image on the glass was an expression I have never seen before. It wasn't creepy because at the back of my mind, I know what is happening, but still, I was breathing a sigh of relief that no one I knew saw it.

It could also be that, after having a break for so long, I'm not really in the working groove. Whatever it is, I am really feeling reluctant... Also I have to get back to sleeping normal hours. Haiz...