Panthera Sapiens Ellipsis: The Blog

[Monday, May 21] I have finally got some good news regarding the job--it's over. My parents have decided that a month in China with them would be vastly more therapeutic than living with the Brats. (It's also something to do with me going off to Singapore soon and being further separated, and with their impeding move of house, which will require spring-cleaning of the new house and arrangement of various possessions.) So they told me, by email and via the Empress, to get my visa ready and my passport and to get a ticket to the Big S, as soon as I can. The Coconut said not to worry about her while I'm gone. So far I've got two travel agents' numbers to call and compare prices and visa preparation durations. I do hope everything goes OK, or else I'm going to have to get a ticket to Wuhan, which might be more expensive than to the Big S and might require a transit flight into the bargain (I dislike transits). But at least I'm going to be merrily jobless after t...

[Monday, April 30] I wonder if I should sign up for this year's Copa di IBA. It's not like I'm going to do much good if I join anyhow, though--Claus has already told me that the way I play, I'm a liability to the team. Apparently because of the way I jump, people behind me are liable to have their eyes damaged... so unless I have a sudden improvement in style or technique or whatever it's called, I guess I'm not going to be on our delegation to the competition. Not that I mind. Sweat and sore limbs are not my cup of tea anyway--if possible, I'll probably just find a nice steeple hat somewhere and wear it there to keep the sun outta my face. I might even want to try and buy a (hooded!) trenchcoat or something in case it rains. It's a pity there aren't many shops selling ankle-length cloaks--I've always thought those looked kinda nice. Still, one has to make do with what one has... Things are definitely getting stressful around the office. With all...

[Monday, April 16] CS Lewis wrote somewhere that God, if we may say so, is very unscrupulous. And I don't know whether I want to nod in agreement or start drafting legal agreements for God to sign... Well, I can't take God to court--He is perfectly just, after all, which makes my chances of winning that argument pretty slim--so I'm stuck with nodding madly and sighing. Actually I think God has been dropping those hints for awhile now, but He only chose this past week or so to start in on the nagging. Well, if you've been reading and you didn't doze off halfway through or click that handy little red X in the top right corner, you probably know I've been ranting a bit about the Brat. (Even the name I chose for him shows that.) And I've been ranting a bit about my uncle and his tendency to fly off the handle at what seems to be the merest of jolts... Yesterday in church, a song about thanking God for trials came up, and I found myself wondering what exactly I w...

[Monday, April 9] I'm wet. I'm in an air-conditioned room. The air conditioner is on Oscillate, so it sometimes blows me and sometimes blows other places. I'm cold. I don't like being cold. It's my own fault anyway for running in the rain... OK, maybe I should explain. Remember a few posts ago when I mentioned one of my tasks being fetching cousins from tuition or school? Well, I just ran one of those errands. Now cast your mind back to the last post, where I mention the weather being unpredictable. Now you probably get the picture: I went out of the building and it was cloudy. (Fortunately my colleagues insisted on me bringing a little pink umbrella along.) By the time I got to my cousin's school (where she was waiting because she'd finished school), it was drizzling lightly. We went twenty paces away from school, and the wind and rain increased exponentially. I do declare the rain was almost horizontal by the time we had gone one hundred meters--and do rem...

[Monday, March 26] Over the last weekend, two deaths came to my knowledge, both due to cancer. One was of a 3-year-old kid, succumbing to some form of cancer that tends to strike infants; one was a 67-year-old man, succumbing to skin cancer. Both were Christians. I found out about both through SMS. Both were prayed for, but both, obviously, died. I was one degree apart from each, connected to the child through the Gorilla and to the man through one of the teachers from RBS. I attended neither's funeral or wake, though I hope both went well... What I'm trying to say here is that all deaths seem to be very much the same. The manner in which they occur vary slightly, but in all cases the result is identical: a hunk of meat... Well, people have been dying for thousands of years in all sorts of ways, and I expect fully to follow in the tradition. Except I don't think my own will be too conventional... well, if I must be remembered then I might as well be remembered for having a ...

Wednesday, 7 March I wonder why everybody wants to know what I've been learning from my work. At least, everybody around me who is adult. (And right now, since I'm in an office, that means everybody.) So far I've been saying inane stuff like "Don't forget the paperwork when you use a cheque" or "The KTM sends its trains 'round once every fifteen minutes and still charges exorbitantly" or other weird little things. [edit: Meow just asked me that too. /edit] At any rate the job is going well, far better than that horrible experience at the Mart anyway. For one thing, here I'm in an office with working air-conditioning, and for another I've got a computer in front of me. Granted, it's a laptop whose useful life expired three years ago, and will need another RM600 or so worth of spare parts before it will be anything like what I really want, and the "i" key on the keyboard has lost a lot of its sensitivity and sometimes needs to...