update.
written: 4:21 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005

God, I'm rambling. It's been a week since I last wrote anything, and no one screws with a one-week writing dry spell and expect that person not to...do this thing that I'm doing.

All right, let's get to the point.

One.

I hate Far East Plaza. I can never, for the life of me, understand why people even go there. Nine days of going there every day for seven hours to do nothing but stand around and offer 'help' to insipid customers whose English and/or Chinese are undoubtedly worse than mine have pretty much cultivated in me a life-long hatred for Far East Plaza, and for sales jobs.

Never again. After my 9-day stint ended on Tuesday, the manager asked me if I wanted to continue working there after Chinese New Year; my reply was an unthinking, affirmative 'no'.

First of all, the toilet at Far East Plaza is absolutely disgusting. Not only does it only have two freaking pathetic toilet bowls on which one can sit and pee like a civilised person, it also just so happens that both cubicles are almost always extremely filthy. That, or one of them is occupied (and the person inside always takes ten freaking million years to do her stupid business) and the other has some shit-looking substance splattered all over the seat. How disgusting. Whenever that happens, I make my tired legs walk all the way to the other toilet, which always has this weird smell that is a cross between the smell of meat and the smell of shit permeating through every single damn air molecule of the place.

Like I said, absolutely disgusting.

Second of all, the people that frequent Far East Plaza...you know what? Don't even get me started. I hereby announce that I officially do not like smokers. Sometimes an okay-looking chap would walk into the store, and I'd be like, "Well, isn't that interesting", and then he'd walk out and I'd see him smoking right outside the automatic doors that separate the air-conditioned area from the not air-conditioned area. Yeah. My point is, a cigarette ruins a person's appearance and I don't care if I'm being biased; I'm fucking sick to death of inhaling something as filthy as cigarette smoke anyway, and I believe that I have as much of a right not to subject myself to that vile substance as a smoker has to smoke, thank you very much. So the point is: yes, I belong to that group of people who assume that all smokers are gangsters and useless ah bengs, but you know what, you really cannot blame me, because that's how it freaking looks like. Even the manager smokes and it really annoys me.

No, I don't like smokers, and I don't care for being politically correct anyway so fuck off.

To be honest, I've been so bored the past week that I'm getting the urge to do something drastic all over again. I hate working; it's mind-numbingly boring and nothing ever happens. Whatever happened to intellectual pursuits? Oh wait, I'm sorry, I forgot that not everyone has the intellectual capacity for such things. I can't imagine being stuck working as a salesgirl for the rest of my life. Nine days of it, and I've had enough. And to think that one of the girls who work there has been working there for over a year.

As shallow and superficial as I am, if a day ever came that I'm forced to choose between my looks and my brains, I'd choose my brains. Anytime, anyday.

Anyway, to sum up the 9-day stint: it sucked horribly and I didn't make friends. I came close, but that girl left the job on my second day there. And then there's the gay person who's really nice (she gave everyone a twenty-dollar hongbao on CNY Eve) but then, the perennial problem of Having Shit-All To Talk About Due To A Lack Of Affinity And That Thing Which Us Chinese Call Mo Qi (�Ҍ_) persisted anyway. In fact, it was precisely because of that eternal problem that prevented me from making friends. I mean, they were nice girls and all but...no.

Needless to even mention, the standing-for-seven-hours killed me. And it didn't help that bus 171 was always freaking crowded whenever I tried to get home which prevented me from getting a seat immediately. On some days, I was lucky enough to be standing beside a person who got off like two stops after the Orchard stop, but on others, I had to wait until I was somewhere along Bukit Timah before I could get a seat. And on those days...suffice to say that I am still amazed how I haven't died.

Oh well. A few memorable events:

1. My first customer, a guy who was looking for a pure white long-sleeved shirt. I was just standing around on my first day, feeling extremely baffled and fish-out-of-water-like, and then all of a sudden I noticed some guy standing beside me and he was like, "Hi, I'm looking for a white long sleeves shirt." Long story cut short (because I've forgotten the details anyway), I pretended to know where the stuff are displayed when in fact I had no idea what the hell I was doing since it was my freaking first day, showed him the stuff, directed him to the fitting room, and in the end, he bought it.

2. Another customer, this PRC-Chinese man. He was looking for a formal shirt. He's memorable because I helped him pick out a shirt and he eventually bought it. It's funny, because the shirt that he bought was one which I randomly picked off the rack; it was a green-ish striped shirt, and it was between that one and a grey-ish striped one that he picked out. At first I was like, "Hui de bi jiao hao kan" (the grey looks better), and when he was like, "Zhe jian yan se bi jiao an le yi dian" (the colour's a bit dull), I immediately changed my stance and went, "Ru guo ni yao yan se bi jiao xian yan de hua, jiu mai na jian lu de" (if you prefer brighter colours then you should get the green one). As soon as I said that I waited for him to rebuke me for being so overtly fickle-minded, but he never did. Haha. Yeah.

3. A couple of crazy Caucasian tourists. They came in with their Chinese American friend and made a huge racket. One of them was hitting on this other salesgirl, and when I walked past, he started to hit on me too. Talk about hitting on anything that moves. And when they were outside waiting for their friend, the guy who was hitting on everyone decided to talk to me somemore (I was standing by the entrance; I like that spot). He was like, "Tell your boss I said thanks, even though you didn't have shirts in my size." Then he stepped towards me, and continued, "Is it because I'm fat?"

Well, duh. Take a look in the mirror and the answer's freaking obvious. I was like, "Maybe it's the American diet." He went, "Awwww!" and then left me alone. Annoying as it was, it was about the only interesting thing that happened that day so I'll just take the good with the bad.

4. This other Caucasian tourist with a gorgeous smile. Enough said.

5. A couple of days or so back, three American tourists came into the store. There's nothing particularly exciting or different or special about seeing American tourists; I saw a lot of them while I was there. So I was just standing there, bored out of my skull, when I noticed that one of them was Chinese. And not only was he Chinese, he was, unlike the other Chinese American I mentioned, cute. He had that typical American build, you know, beefy and big and things like that, which didn't really go with his Chinese face, but nevertheless, he was still cute. His companions went off to look for shirts to buy, and I even directed one of them to the fitting room (god was he fat!). Initially, the cute Chinese American was waiting outside, casually slumped against the wall; but a few minutes later, he shuffled in. As usual, I was standing by the entrance, and since there was nobody around my area then, I was standing around, waiting for something to do. Simultaneously, the cute Chinese American stood around too, shifting his feet, waiting for his friends to be done with their stuff, and I think I kind of wanted to say something to him but of course, as per always, my brains fucking died on me. But all was not lost; in the middle of my sweet agony he suddenly asked me, "Hey, do you know where I can get a baseball cap around here?"

I had no idea, of course; Far East Plaza isn't exactly my territory, nor will it ever be. So I kinda smiled and said, "I don't know." He was like, "You don't know? Oh okay." Then I remembered that Sports Link was just next door! So I pointed to it and went, "Or you could try Sports Link." (Or whatever the hell it's called.) He glanced at it and replied, "Yeah they have Nike and Addidas but I'm looking for a baseball cap, you know what I mean?"

Honestly, I didn't; I thought baseball caps were just baseball caps, but whatever. I feigned understanding though; I went, "Well, you could try Isetan." At the word 'Isetan', the cute Chinese American went, "What's that?"

"It's across the street," I said. "Just cross the road and...yeah, you'll see it." I don't know what in the world possessed me to promote Isetan either; it was the first thing to come to mind and hence I just blurted it out. By that time though, his friends were already done and they'd already joined him. I asked the really fat one about his shirt (he took a size three! I just knew that it was way too small; in fact, I took one look at him and knew that he'd leave empty-handed) and he was like, "Nah, it's too small."

"Wanna try a bigger size?" I asked, because I really gave a shit and everything.

The really fat dude was like, "You only have a size four right?", to which I nodded, to which he answered, "Still too small", or something along those lines.

With that, the three of them uttered some 'bye's, I said 'bye' too, and they left.

And hence, Yelen's imbecility struck again: a few seconds after the cute Chinese American left forever, my brains decided to resurrect itself and started bombarding me with lots and lots of things to say to the cute Chinese American - all in vain, of course; it was too late. And that was it, really.

Sigh. How often do you see a Chinese face that sprouts good, precise English? I mean, yes, he had to have good, precise English (read: not Singaporean English) since he was American, but still.

Okay, this entry has taken me over an hour to compose, and I'm not remotely done. Let's just move on.

Two.

Chinese New Year. Yay. I collected $530 this year, excluding the money I got from the manager. The company gave $50 to everyone, which immediately had me blowing $26.90 on Jielun's Incomparable Live DVD, despite the fact that I already had his Incomparable Live VCD. But hello, the quality was so bad! You could see the pixels, for crying out loud! I only bought the VCD for the poster and the 48-page pictorial, and I knew all along that I'd buy the DVD anyway. And hey, it plays on my cranky DVD player! Yay!

But I digress. Strangely, yesterday was...I don't know. I was at my grandma's, watching some lousy Hong Kong movie on Channel 8, and it was only until my uncle's wife gave me a hongbao that I remembered that I was supposed to be anticipating the giving out of hongbao. That was me anyway, all the years before this one: I'd be secretly wondering when the hell would my relatives finally give out the awesome hongbao, and even secretly keep track of who has given out and who hasn't, but not yesterday. I was just like, oh, a hongbao, lovely!

The times. How they have changed.

Oh I don't know.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010