Test 2

Haha. 10 posts and it's the end of September already! Time to close shop? File for bankruptcy ala Lehman Brothers to save my ass. Start afresh. That would be nice too.

* * *

Why I'm resuscicating resusiscating resuscitating (wow I haven't written for so long I can't even spell anymore!) the blog is simple actually: I realise I like to talk to myself. A lot. I even call myself "Jose" when I do that. Haha I remember this phase sometime last year, thanks to my English Literature class, when I had this incredible fascination with the notion of "othering of the self". As if the concept of "self" and "other" isn't fascinating by itself. :) Anyway for a few months I was referring to myself in the third person, even when I blogged. It was fun la -- cheap thrills.:)

I know, I know it's not the best idea to talk to self in public, so I try not to. But at work, in the stillness of cold airconditioned afternoons, I find myself suddenly just blurting, a little above a whisper, words to myself. Like, "Ano ba yan, Jose?", or "Come on think", or "Where'd you put it, Jose?" or "Galing mo ah." (Haha) Then I catch myself, look around if anybody heard me, and begin to wonder: how do people manage to keep very quiet while working? Really.

* * *

And the work part. That's the big difference between the Joseph of late and the Joseph ten weeks back. What can I say, I think I'm lovin' it. Haha, really. Interesting things to learn, check. Use for my skills, both quantitative (mostly this!) and qualitative, check. Making use of too-academic-seeming degree (Statistics) to practical purpose (Risk/Credit/Finance), check. Pay OK, check. Fantastic team, check. What more could I ask for right?

And it's the people too. Really, I think I hit the jackpot with my team. They're too jolly for a bunch of bankers. Haha. They're the type who play hard, but you know work hard too. My VP whose supervising me is an NUS Stats alumnus like me, and boy, he knows a lot of things, I'm impressed. He jokes and laughs half the time too, so I'm glad that after I semi-berate Jose for not matching the speed of the VP, I share a good reassuring laugh with him. Our boss is an Aussie chap, who has to be one of the most admired people I know (I'm a fan myself). He's the type who everyone loves, for his sense of humour, for his general vibe, but he's one tough cookie too. He is able to tackle all the issues head-on, has a thing for materiality and relevance and proactivity, and knows how to make sense of numbers and issues in a way that's understandable (his analogies are both illuminating and witty), and always reminds us of legacy and integrity. The rest of the team are terrific too. There's this warmth and laughter lah -- the kind I assume to be familiar to our Filipino culture -- but when it's crunchtime, they deliver.

I didn't think this was the right entry to post this, but since I've already rambled on above, here's me with my bosses:

Haha. Angmoh boss was told by my other VP to wear her pink scarf cos it was raining.

Test

But really, that happens to be my favourite question, or a variant of it. In a particular quiet time, I go ask the nearest person, "So.. what are you thinking?"

And I mean it, it's fascinating. I love to know what's on people's minds. Some minds I can't particularly read, and so I ask. Some minds I can read a bit and make a guess, but I want to confirm. Some minds I know what's going on at a particular time, but ask anyway, because I like to hear it spoken aloud, and it feels better that way sometimes for kaypoh (busybody) little me, and for the other party I hope. And lest you think I'm being intrusive, I only ask this question to people I'm close to, who I know wouldn't mind sharing.:) I happen to like asking the question, and being asked it.

* * *

And since I like talking to myself (Don't admit this in public, I was once advised), I ask myself too what's on my mind, for the simple reason that I'm not sure myself. It's all a load of mush right now, and I wouldn't know where to start.

All I know that something's going on in there, and I'm affected. Sometimes I think too that what's in the head is separate from what's in the (pardon me while I cringe at my own cheesiness) heart and what's in the other head (haha oops), but I think from my high school biology lessons it's really all in the brain. All in the head.

And the past two weeks especially, of goodbyes and long-distance calls and new changes, of dinners and suppers and meeting my favorite ex-colleague and good friends, of long walks by my lonesome and and the realization of too much/too little 'me' time, of stuff of the I-can't-believe-I'm-saying-this and I-can't believe-you-said-that kind, of more emo 'oh-shit-I-remember-this-feeling' moments, of waking up randomly at 4AM OR sleeping at 4AM, of being dazed and spacing out randomly at work, of SAS codes and correlation and reliability of parameter estimates, of birthday parties and beer and tequila and Japanese whiskey and Michael Jackson(!), of music and choir and harmonies and China, of tagged photos and videos and Facebook (I'm not flirting!) and Mafia wars, of lousy lousy Windows Live Messenger screwing up my conversations with at least three different people, of Holy Week and Easter reflections (or lack of) and of supreme love regardless, of little surprises that make me feel like I'm valuable, that I'm missed, that I'm loved, even if I'm feeling sloppy and insecure and slightly stoopid.

Yep, I confirm that lingering suspicion that it's all soup in my head right now. No surprise there.

(I realize the paragraph before the previous is so incredibly long and incoherent and random and painful haha and I'm sorry. That's the closest I can get to telling my current state of affairs.)

What's on your mind?

Ahh, the perennial Facebook question: What's on your mind?

Or, if it were the early 90's, it would have been, 'In your heeeead, in your heeeaaad, what's in your heeeeeeaaaad?' Hehe hello Cranberries.

But really, that happens to be my favourite question, or a variant of it. In a particular quiet time, I go ask the nearest person, "So.. what are you thinking?"

And I mean it, it's fascinating. I love to know what's on people's minds. Some minds I can't particularly read, and so I ask. Some minds I can read a bit and make a guess, but I want to confirm. Some minds I know what's going on at a particular time, but ask anyway, because I like to hear it spoken aloud, and it feels better that way sometimes for kaypoh (busybody) little me, and for the other party I hope. And lest you think I'm being intrusive, I only ask this question to people I'm close to, who I know wouldn't mind sharing.:) I happen to like asking the question, and being asked it.

* * *

And since I like talking to myself (Don't admit this in public, I was once advised), I ask myself too what's on my mind, for the simple reason that I'm not sure myself. It's all a load of mush right now, and I wouldn't know where to start.

All I know that something's going on in there, and I'm affected. Sometimes I think too that what's in the head is separate from what's in the (pardon me while I cringe at my own cheesiness) heart and what's in the other head (haha oops), but I think from my high school biology lessons it's really all in the brain. All in the head.

And the past two weeks especially, of goodbyes and long-distance calls and new changes, of dinners and suppers and meeting my favorite ex-colleague and good friends, of long walks by my lonesome and and the realization of too much/too little 'me' time, of stuff of the I-can't-believe-I'm-saying-this and I-can't believe-you-said-that kind, of more emo 'oh-shit-I-remember-this-feeling' moments, of waking up randomly at 4AM OR sleeping at 4AM, of being dazed and spacing out randomly at work, of SAS codes and correlation and reliability of parameter estimates, of birthday parties and beer and tequila and Japanese whiskey and Michael Jackson(!), of music and choir and harmonies and China, of tagged photos and videos and Facebook (I'm not flirting!) and Mafia wars, of lousy lousy Windows Live Messenger screwing up my conversations with at least three different people, of Holy Week and Easter reflections (or lack of) and of supreme love regardless, of little surprises that make me feel like I'm valuable, that I'm missed, that I'm loved, even if I'm feeling sloppy and insecure and slightly stoopid.

Yep, I confirm that lingering suspicion that it's all soup in my head right now. No surprise there.

(I realize the paragraph before the previous is so incredibly long and incoherent and random and painful haha and I'm sorry. That's the closest I can get to telling my current state of affairs.)

* * *

But going by my Facebook status, I'm quite sad I did not get to watch Rachael Yamagata's concert last night. Not that I wanted to go badly enough ($98 ticket and no definite companion to come with me -- I just rationalize and think that I spent the money for the Nike running shoes I bought the other day), but it would have been very nice. Maybe because she's one of the artists who makes me feel funny, you know, the type who just strikes a chord somewhere.

Whether it's her gritty Worn Me Down or the happy lovey 1963 or her dreamy Be Be Your Love, I just melt. But this song Reason Why below is what gets to me, it makes me so incredibly sad. I like. (Zach Braff of Scrubs introduces her too, two of my favorite people in the same video clip!)





Have a nice day everyone. 8:04AM and it's time to shower and get ready for work.

Waters of March

It's a March thing I think. Must be the March weather or something and my genetic make-up not compatible with the workings of the cosmos at this time of the year. Yeah, whatever right. 

Relax, relax, relax Joe. Chill. But dunno, know the feeling where there's something stuck in your back and you can't shake it off? I was thinking maybe a massage or a jog or a swim will do the trick. 

Until then, I can't help myself, whine begins now. It's just that everything's happening so fast and suddenly this and that and I'm mentally and physically and emotionally exhausted. It's the work piling up and my team still being understaffed despite efforts to hire, it's my colleague leaving and making me feel sad (though thanks for the doughnuts and for being very nice to me and taking my crap :D), it's another colleague getting PMS-y about office politics, it's conversations that momentarily stirred me up into a fit (but thank God it's over and peacefully settled), it's a money thing, it's a little personal problem thing, it's a good intentions thing, and even my good friend being retrenched and another feeling emo and another who feels disgusted with self and yet another who's not too happy with the outcomes of the world. (I don't know why other people affect me so much, I think it comes with my Superman Syndrome, and that's not quite a good thing sometimes.)

* * *

So strange. I was perfectly fine Friday and Saturday. Went Harry's, went clubbing even and had lunches and dinners and movie with friends and even met guests from home and got my favourite chunk of cheese from home. Hmm. 

I think it's the build-up of stuff over the weeks. For the past month I've been having restless nights and strange dreams about me getting beaten up, about death in general, about my own death, about church, about hook-ups, about road trips, about the beach, about people dear to me, about people I haven't met in a while, about chance encounters and beautiful strangers, about credit cards modeling even. 

* * *

Oh man, maybe it's the lack of sleep and physical fatigue. Hopefully it's just that. And what was going through my head as I experience all this is -- this is very much like last year. When my honours year project got me into an emo phase, and I got worked up perhaps more than I should have.

But we learn right. We learn from the past and make things better. Sometimes no way to learn but to just take the plunge and get smacked and whacked hard. 

Anyway here's a happy song to cheer anyone else with the March blues.

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
It's the joy in your heart

Night. 

Restless times

5:54AM and I'm already up! I've been up for more than hour now. Who wakes up at 4:30AM in Singapore? Apparently the restless ones like me. But hey, good morning!

My brain's pretty much fried from work actually so, as per recent plan, let's not overthink this blog post and just get crunching.

* * *

What can I say, work is getting exciting! Exciting times man, the type that makes me want to sneak in on Sunday mornings or afternoons, just to get my code up and running so I can perform my analysis on what I fondly call my monster dataset on credit cards.

My Singaporean boss, or my other half in the 'retail' sub-team, was out for compulsory reservist training with the army for most of last week, so it was pretty much alone time for me at the office while the rest of the team (including big boss Aussie) went for their 'wholesale' sub-team meetings, which lasted for most afternoons in the week.

Aussie boss would come out from their meetings and teasingly sing to me that only cheery sad song "Alone Again (Naturally)," while I was at my workstation doing my work by my lonesome. Haha. Fine. As long as I have my music fix, thanks to imeem (and it's autoplay of related songs) or my MP3 player, I'm good to go. Alone time notwithstanding.

And besides, I've got more than enough work to last me all March. It's quite painful especially since we're understaffed right now, but I feel quite empowered too. Analyses can get screwed up because of me, since I've got both hands all dirty digging into the data in every way imaginable.

But it's just nice. At least now I have a legitimate answer to that age-old question, "Why are you still single?" "Focus on career muna." Haha.

* * *

But yeah, it's taking its toll on me leh, work stuff. Sometimes I whack myself in the head trying to figure things out, make sense of numbers, make sense of business words, send emails to another team to bug them about the information I need, and now I even hijack at least two other laptops from my teammates so I can run my codes. Okay Joe, stop whining now. Haha.

I had a good weekend though. And it's actually been a series of good weekends, so yay to that. Haaay nakow I'm so cheap I get off on simple thrills. Lunches and dinners with friends, Magic Singing with Karen and the housemates, helping Aaron with his final-year project poster (YES finally you're getting as insufferably fussy as me haha -- there's a reason why The Ridge layout team was quite annoyed with me oops), and yay I learned how to play "Anyone Else But You" from the Juno movie on the guitar! Haha and before anyone points out yes it's only two chords for the whole song. But it's damn cute, I like.

* * *

Oh and one more disturbing thing. I'm turning fat. Haha. Yes I still jog about two or three times a week, yes, and I'm not fat fat, just err.. tummy-ing. I knew it lah, I shouldn't have agreed with my housemate Clint to embark on this 'Race to 75'. Haha that's race to 75kg for you, me going up from 65kg some months back, and him from 80something. Currently I'm toggling between 69 and 70kg depending on the time of day haha. I think Clint's winning. Must go work out somehow la Jose.

It's just weird, I've never been fat all my life. Haha. Actually I was a fattish baby, but that's about it:

That's me in the family car where I was born, i.e. unceremoniously popped out. Ahh yes, my tummy looks just like that now, twentyplus years after. Haha.

* * *

Alright, sun's up. Hopefully weather won't be cold and gloomy like yesterday's. For some reason, weather like that makes me feel like those slow and tender Taylor Swift or Jason Mraz songs. Whatever that means, not now okay, Joseph has work to do! Haha have a nice day.

For no apparent reason

Goooood morning blogosphere. Feels good to be back after two months!

This time it will be different; no (empty) promises of sticking around and blogging more regularly, no long journal entries that are overthought and sanitized as if they were articles. Then again, that promise to be 'different' I'm also not sure I can keep. Haha.

Plan for this entry is to for me to let the fingers do the thinking and typing (thanks for the reminder I don't type too slow after all) and click that "Publish Post" button and get a blog entry done and over with. In short, plan is to get some rambling done today, for no apparent reason.

* * *

I want to blog today about how thankful I am with the world I'm in right now. I don't know, it's a feeling that's a mix of serenity, what's left of teenage angst (haha yep and I'm three years into the twenties!), quite a lot of satisfaction with work and that thing that good people that surround you -- family friends colleagues random smiley strangers and aunties (I'm friendly with them lol) -- do to you.

I don't know. Maybe it's the feeling of not having documented my life for a long time. For not marking events and people and places with imaginary mental yellow and red markers (ala The Amazing Race) that are supposed to track the (I hesitate to use the word 'milestones') progress I've made thus far, twenty-three trips around the sun and counting.

Maybe it's the feeling too of having missed what I term my 'new years', and not having been made enough traction on the resolutions I had planned. New Year Number 1 is New Year's Day, and that's supposed to set the stage for the legendary (Hello Barney of How I Met Your Mother) changes I'm supposed to make. Supposed to. I procrastinated and hey, there's New Year Number 2.

That's Chinese New Year, which was sometime in late January. What I realize is it's too incredibly easy to get sucked up with whatever one is doing and there's just not enough time to step back, and take a look back at the tracks. And so there's New Year Number 3, my birthday early February. That again, seemed like a good place to start afresh.

* * *

The thing with me is always go on false starts. But the thought is there, the resolve is there, it's just... lacking perhaps. Start what, exactly? I'm not too sure myself. Haha. It's a lot, actually, and it's the stuff I miss.

I miss writing. I miss reading. The big secret about me being an ex-editor and an English Studies minor is that I am not actually well-read (I mistook Hamlet for Macbeth in my literature class-- now I still think twice which is which). Little me was quite a library boy too. I miss that. I miss making music. I went for the choir concert last week and I remember the sheer beauty of making one incredible chord, never mind if mine occasionally was the shaky one buried beneath 70 other voices. Oh and Cecilia offered to sell me her keyboard. Tempting tempting! I haven't played the piano in the longest time. But if I buy it, can I sustain it? Oh and I miss blogging, if this long-winded aimless entry is any proof.

* * *

Also I want to articulate somehow how thankful I am because I find myself lucky. My boss doesn't hate me for almost dozing off in his team meetings, he even finds it amusing. (Never again boss, I'm sorry) I'm lucky I'm learning a lot of things from my job, including being patient and thorough and how to relate with people. And how different it is at work now, compared to the stress levels I hit last year in school (what with the thesis, level four modules, final semester blues). Oh and I haven't been axed yet, and I still get a bonus too even if I haven't worked for a full year, so yay to that.

And my friends lah. My housemates and Pinoy friends, my MSN and Yahoo! and Facebook buddies (I'm beginning to love chatting online again), choir friends, my colleagues at work. And family, needless to say, I miss you at home. Oh the Titans musta naman kayo jan? Haha. And hmmmm you. When will I find you? Haha hurry up and get here!

* * *

I should jog more often in the morning. These were the thoughts in my head as I was running 5.4km with myself around six in the morning yesterday, along with some older uncles and aunties (the younger jogging crowd opt for evenings if I'm not wrong) and quite a few dogs being walked by their owners.


Exhilarating feeling. Especially when the sun rises to greet you as you end your run, and Stereophonics' Have a Nice Day randomly plays in your earphones.

Have a nice day people, and good night.