The Pieces No Longer Fit

by Jerome Kugan

Sometimes we change.
And the pieces we thought
we could glue back together
no longer fit.

We look at the pieces
in puzzlement;
so sure in our knowledge
of how things should be.

But people are not pieces
of a broken jar.
When people break,
the pieces don’t come apart.

They just no longer fit.

Is it weird...

That I want to go to work every day?

...I really miss my mum and sis...

Hey there, Delilah!

Was randomly Wikipedia-ing when I came across an article about Delilah cutting off Samson's hair.

I have to say I totally sympathise with her.

She was sleeping with this man, for God's sake. I imagine that they didn't have nice smelling shampoos because Fekkai is soooo a new millennium thing. Plus Samson, being the macho he-man he is made out to be, wouldn't have washed that often anyway.

Whats a girl to do?

Chop off his locks, obviously.

Especially if he'd gone hunting and carried a dead creature on his back. Needless to say fleas, flies, matted blood, and other ghastly gories does NOT an attractive man make. I'm sure you get the picture.

I feel for her because I've recently found myself in her position.

Only in my case, the offending matter is my husband's toenails.

Oh how they get my gall!

They snag the embroidery on our best sheets, and sometimes they scratch me.

Most of the time they just look offensive.

Is it worth bringing it up to his attention and waste what little valuable time we have together discussing toenails? I don't think so. We've got better things to do.

So I do exactly as Delilah does. Brandish the toenail clippers and then file happily away while he's fast asleep. The trick is not to cut too much and file away the edges so he doesn't notice. Not once has he ever woken from his slumber while I'm happily snipping away.

He's happily oblivious, I'm happily not offended.

And so we live happily ever after.

=)

Have A Break? Never!

Whilst some people live to work I think I actually work to live.

Today I started my new job as Campaign Manager at Unruly Media. I work in Shoreditch, near Brick Lane, in an old converted brewery, which is really cool. The atmosphere is amazing, and the people are really nice and relaxed. Happy and shiiiiiiiiiiny. Quite Zen.

As I walk to work from Liverpool Street Station in the morning, I pass shopkeepers setting up shop at Spitalfields Market. Photographs, paintings, handmade jewelry, painted glass lamps, quilts galore... it was almost like a treasure trove of wonderful exotic things. It reminded me of Pasar Malam in Malaysia. The area seems to buzz with energy and high spirits.

Starting work again felt good.

I don't think I ever felt this excited about working before, I thought I would be quite happy being the stay-at-home wife. They gave me the option of working from home as well, but I told them I'd be more than happy to go into the office. I can get quite lonesome at home and for some reason I work better when there are people around me, even if we don't talk. Their very presence gives me motivation to work harder because I feel like we're all in it together so I have to contribute what I can.

And I think the job role suits me well. I am an internet junkie and spend hours and hours online reading blogs and randomly surfing. I like to look at websites and figure out how it's put together, especially now that I am also working on developing my husband's business website and teaching myself HTML.

I even enjoyed the tube ride. Oh how I missed The London Paper and Lite. Not so much Metro because I think Metro interact as much with readers. I love the daily guest columnist section on the London Paper, it's so refreshing to hear the perspectives of other commuters and sometimes in the tube I try to imagine what kind what the person next me in the tube would write about from their facial expressions.

Things have a way of working out perfectly, I find. I don't think I would have recovered from my operation in a week to be well enough to go back to work. So being made redundant was a good thing. It gave me a chance to recuperate, recharge and really reflect on what I really want.

At the end of the day I just want a working environment where creativity is encouraged, hard work is rewarded and people treat others the way they want to be treated. That would be work Nirvana for me.

I heart my job.

A promise made

Earlier this year I had a cancer scare.

Having to face my own mortality made me re-evaluate my life. I look back and I think of all the things that I did with the future in mind. Of how the times I wasn't present in the moment. How I sometimes did things just to get through the day and my half hearted endeavours.

I made a pact with God.

I asked God to please don't let me go with regrets. I promised that from now on I will live my moments. I give my all in the present and trust in the future.

Most of all, I asked that I be given a chance to leave this world a little better that I lived.

I'm trying.

Making 2009 better

2008 was absolutely amazing, but this year has been rather rough for me.

I think back to the beginning of the year and all I remember is the crying, the hatefulness and bitterness, the pain.

I want to change all that.

I don't want to look back to 2009 and only have regrets and anger for not being able to do more; for shortchanging myself by not standing up for what I believed in.

So this is what I want the rest of 2009 to be. A year of enlightenment. A year of counting my blessings. A year to learn and grow into myself a little bit more. Of righting wrongs. This is the year where I will invest in myself and be all I can be.

This year I will:

Wear more skirts and pretty dresses
Let my hair down
Read more
Do more
Cook
Buy organic
Learn a new thing every day
Remind myself how blessed I am daily
Respect myself and on that same note, never ever work for one who doesn't
Appreciate people
Be healthy
Live life

It's only May. There are seven more months to do all these this year. And I have a feeling that this year will be one of the best years of my life yet.

Sometimes you have to let be

My husband shared with me a nightmare he had last night.

His nightmare was that he escaped an evil house, but left a man to die inside the house.

I told him that if that was real life, please don't try to save someone else at the expense of your life. Because I need you.

But deep down I know that he will anyway. Because he will never leave a man behind, even if it means that he dies trying.

And if I made him promise, he would keep his promise to me but never be able to live with himself.

So I think if *touch wood* that ever happens, and he does what he thinks is right, I think I would understand.

But it doesn't make it easier.

The lesson is to be sincere

I've just read some of my old entries and realised how far i've come.

Four years ago, I wondered what it was like to be beautiful and live the high life. I was fortunate enough to have been given a taste of what it's like. I've been driven home in chauffered Rolls Royces and I've jetted off in private planes. I've seen life from the top and I've discovered this:

All these mean nothing you do not have anyone to share it with; if you don't know how to love or be loved. When you have no real family and have to pay to have people be around you and pretend to be your friends. It becomes a curse if is gained through ruthless means of wreaking the lives of others, because though philantrophy and goodwill gestures will make it easier to live with one's guilt, it will never wash it away. It is a very sad and lonely life, with a vacuum that no amount of money can fill.

And it is a very sad state when one always suspect the motives of others just because one knows what one is capable of doing.

~_~


My old boss Jimmy always harped on sincerity. He always said, whatever you do, do it from the heart, and then let go. I never really paid much attention to it because he says all the time. Today I realised that if I never learnt anything else except that, I would still have learnt a lot.

And what a wonderful, lush life he has! Everybody loves him for his generousity of spirit. His humility and kindness. His big heart. There is happiness all around him. The happiest people I know aren't the richest, indeed, some of the happiest people I know are those who share everything they have and find that life gives back to them, a million times over.

It made all the difference. I was so much happier working for minimum wage with him than I was when I was highly paid.

I am so lucky to have an amazing husband to share my life with. I am blessed to have wonderful family and friends. And I wouldn't trade that for all the money in the world.

After all, at the end of the day, real success is intangible, and this life is impermanent.

We come into the world with nothing, and we leave with nothing.

New challenge

Will is starting a new company and he's asked me to design the website.

The last time I did any proper web design was when I designed my school website when I was 11. I think I used Netscape Composer. That was 15 years ago. I don't even know if the program still exists!

I've toyed around with Dreamweaver at college, back when it was still part of Macromedia. Now I discover that it's part of Adobe? My CV is soooo un-up-to-date!

Technology changes so fast it's so difficult to keep track of it.

Ah well.

So, at the risk of sounding geeky (I've rather think geek chic), the new challenge now is to learn Dreamweaver CS4 and brush up on my Photoshop and HTML.

*fingers crossed*

Shifting to first gear

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take?' she asked. 'Where do you want to go?' was his response. 'I don't know,' Alice answered. 'Then,' said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.'
- Lewis Caroll

It's been over a year since I've started my new life in London.

I feel exactly like what Alice must have felt in Wonderland. Lost. Directionless.

Apathetic, thinking that it doesn't matter.

I thought just having a well paying (but dead end) job would make me happy; work to live, so to speak.

But after awhile in the job, I absolutely hated it. Every day I woke up hitting the snooze button over and over again wishing I didn't have to wake up. I had to be a simpering kissass on the job and listen to words that killed my spirit.

I want a career. I want challenge and fulfilment. I want targets to push myself to achieve. I want to learn and grow and make a positive contribution to society.

But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then

I've learnt the hard way that if you stop, you rot.

I've stopped running and fallen off the threadmill. I need to get up and start running again. Harder, harder... harder than any one else.

There's a lot of catching up to do.

But I'll do it.

Promise.