i love to travel

the title has nothing to do with this entire post, it's just that i'm chatting on the phone with a friend about how many times we leave this tiny dot of an island country singapore every year, and how many countries/cities we've visited in our lives so far (excluding those when we were in mummy's womb), and blabbing about our favorite holiday places and the not-ever-going-back-in-near-future ones unless you drag us there or it's for work stuff (china and hong kong... don't even ask us why haha).... yes, i'm multi-tasking, typing this out as well :p

and yes, the title is misleading, because what's to come does not evoke any positive emotions of anything remotely close to what travelling does.

first of all, my sincere apologies for the previous angsty post, i totally got over it after my yummy taiwan porridge supper, haha. it's nothing really, just customer service shit, yep. so am unable to talk about it here. no cause for worry ya all, really appreciate your text messages and phone calls. thank goodness it's all just emails and stuff, not face to face, i can only imagine how many times i would have thrown super acidic killer sarcasm at those..... (can't think of a better word than stupid. stupid, the forbidden "s" word haha) people.

i seem to be losing my acquired skill of being "nice", recently. it was like i had attained the highest level of this skill (along with my "being patient" skill, although thankfully i haven't lost that, yet), and then suddenly, i just couldn't be bothered to use it anymore. i've been mean to people i don't like. i just couldn't care less and suddenly became intolerant to all types of situations i would categories as stupid and nonsense. i seem to have suddenly thrown away my ability to be "patronising" and "pleasing", skills that took me so many years to acquire, and now just couldn't be bothered to use. i'm just not very nice at all anymore. it gives me such great kick to make the deserving "s" people feel "s".

everyone seems to want a piece of me, my time, my energy, my mind. so yeah, my current life philosophy (which, by the way, changes like the weather) is, if you bring me no joy, or worse, make me sick, i ain't hanging out with you no more.

so many things irk me recently.

our government websites.
who the hell designed those???? don't we pay enough taxes for you to find better and more expensive designers to do them??? didn't they get someone else outside of their team to navigate through the entire site? who was the dope who approved the job?? a technical person cannot do a creative's job, unless he studied design, is good at it, or something along those lines.
fuck.
couldn't you intelligent civil servants employed by our intelligent government even get this simple logic right??
i hate it when you can't fucking find the correct navigational link to click.
there's always a sub-link and sub-sub-link in a sub-sub-sub link page somewhere.
then after taking more than an hour to have finally found what i was looking for, it brings me to a dead non-functional link.
dead.
i need to download a pdf application form, and all it says is "the page cannot be found".
what the fuck.
so now i've to make the dreaded phone call.
dreaded because it's the dreaded government talking machine customer service, that just goes on and on just like the website.
this is exactly what the 80-20 rule prescribes that i should not be wasting time on.
and the 80-20 to me is like the bible is to my dad.
and yet.
just kill me.

ignorant people.
only when they choose to bother me.
i got to know many people and made many friends and acquaintances in my years in chicago, the majority being americans, and i regret to say that at least a quarter of them know squat about the world. outside of america. but that's cool with me, because i know them personally, as a person, and i know them for who they are, and they know me for who i am. so we're cool. what's not cool - those whom i don't know and who don't know me, but yet, chose to bark up the wrong fucking tree. my tree. me.
how dare you drop me email via etsy, saying that i come from a country of factories, china, and that the origin of my handmade products are thus dubious. i don't see the need to defend my products as being handmade, because all my customers and the real world know better.
but china????
fuck you.
i'm from SINGAPORE. IT IS NOT A CITY IN CHINA. OR THAILAND, since i'm on this.
google it, fucker.
so i guess the entire great big country of america has not a single factory.
so i guess the biggest customers of china factories are not americans.
since i'm on a roll, and i'm no fan of china, but hey...
so i guess the entire population in china are either factory workers, slave-workers, exploited sweatshop workers, cruel factory owners, factory supervisors, and the few farmers here and there? and there are no colleges to speak of, not even art colleges, and the young people there, upon graduation, just goes straight to work in a factory. god forbid they have dreams of designing and creating some handmade wares on their own, and hopefully make some american friends online, even if they aren't able to make any sales.
is there like a chinese etsy website? if there isn't, i propose that you should do up one! the biggest dough rollers now are afterall the chinese from china.
i quote kishore mahbubani, author of can asians think?, dean of the lee kuan yew school of public policy. "Unfortunately, even as the world is becoming more predictable, America is becoming less so. It has one of the least informed populations on the planet, and the quality of the presidential debates on global issues has been appalling."
as claire, my dearie pal who just recently moved to toronto, canada, said in our msn chat yesterday - "sorry that our world is only as big as America is, was glad when I got to move out to chitown, meet "the world", then realized that world was only so big"

kids.
kids who scream at their maids.
kids who beat, slap, kick, and pinch their maids.
apparently, when you live in a neighborhood with many young families and their children, the incidence of meeting such an annoyance just jumps high up.
i held a boy by his collar this morning, told him to keep quiet, and told him i was going to bring him to the police for abusing his maid, in my most pissed off manner.
this brat was screaming orders at his maid to cook his favorite gawd knows what (i couldn't decipher from that high-pitched shrieky tone), but obviously something not what his mother had instructed, and so after his poor maid repeatedly told him in the softest possible tone that she couldn't cook that for him, he started pinching and kicking her.
an 8 year old school boy (i asked him his age, just like a policeman... hhahahahha) in school uniform, kicking his maid. in public.
i'm sorry to come to this conclusion, but he must have an awesome upbringing.
after a very brief "why you shouldn't do that to your maid" blah blah blah, i was already late for my appointment, i forced him apologise to her (she almost pissed me off too, by saying nevermind, nevermind, nevermind, non-stop.....). i told him i wasn't going to let him go until he said sorry for doing what he did. so he muttered a reluctant one amidst sobbing, and being me, i said
"i can't hear you. you have such a loud voice, and that's all you can give me now?"
and he mustered up a decent one whilst crying loudly.
"if i see you again, and see you doing this to your maid again, i'll make sure you'll regret it."

irritatingly delusional dog-owners with spoilt rotten dogs that are not properly trained, who think their little yelpy "children" are the loveliest cutest babies, and think everyone else must think so too, and let them run amok on public beaches, and then when their beloved dog pee-pees on someone else's beach bag, and then all they can coo out is "oohh bad boy, bad boy.. i'm so sorry... so sorry.... oohh baby, come to mummy, why are you such a bad boy? hummm.. hummmm... ooohh naughty babyy"
WTF.
i bet their dog's pee smell heavenly to them as well.
i love both dogs and cats. but i'm not mad.
i do not find it cute when a dog comes and sniff my arse and refuses to budge while i'm laying down at the beach.
"ooohhh baby (apparently her dog's disgusting name is baby) loves you!"
shoo. go away.
i leave the city to escape human madness. and i come to this mad place. sheesh.

oh man, i can't wait for the chinese new year holidays and my multiple trips abroad.... need to leave this country.... no such thing as traveling to other states here! pasir ris to jurong?? i don't even like going across the causeway..... the nearest i can tolerate is bintan. phuket.... bangkok....... japan........ excitement has driven the angst away temporarily.

happy monday, peeps