Seriously, the cringe factor in Twilight (and its sequels) are so maxed out that I can look at a picture of Bai Ling / Lindsay Lohan and continue sipping my coffee without choking. The whole thing about Edward Cullen being “protective” of Bella as if she is some helpless wallflower, that is just camp and is a blatant attempt to appeal to weakling females. Because teenage girls (and some women) have yet to outgrow the phase where the ideal man behaves like their all-protective father instead of their equal. Talk about an Electra complex.

Oh and the fact that the one single thing that Bella Swan manages to get over herself / her obsession over Edward enough to do, is to fall in like with Jacob. Come on! “I’m going to take my own worthless life just to hear Edward’s voice (wonderful idea to convey to teenage girls)… but wait! I think I can scrounge up some feelings for Jacob in my little blonde heart”.

This story and its author, there are so many layers of sad that my face contorts in confusion over whether to roll my eyes, sob in horror, or laugh.

Kristen Stewart.. Not a fan. There are some actresses that are just lovely, like Rachel Weisz. Kristen isn’t one of them. Somehow I think “bratty” everytime I look at a picture of her.

Except for Robert Pattinson, that one is a resounding yay. Just for looks. I would go on a date with him, provided he shuts up and just eats his food.

Seriously, I get it. People will always think that their offspring is the greatest thing since sliced bread, the most special, better than all the rest. And they somewhat expect us onlookers to drop to our knees and start foaming at the mouth about the little alienface’s greatness.

The truth is, I don’t melt when I see babies, and for sure I’m not one of those who resolutely believe that all babies are beautiful and special. Some are gorgeous, absolute darlings, but some look like little trolls. And sure as hell they aren’t special because they do exactly what the next baby does. Special no, different yes.

With Facebook and about a hundred of social networks out there, one can be constantly bombarded with (fugly) baby pictures, besotted parents cooing about their (fugly) offspring, twittering about the earth-shattering dilemma of going 100% organic or not. Kill me already. Look people, most of us didn’t grow up on organic and we are fine. Our parents didn’t feel the need to sterilise the floor and every inch of the furniture, and we are fine. Your (possibly fugly) baby will be fine. Oh and organic food can’t cure fugliness either.

I hate it, resent it when a friend has a baby, and suddenly her entire world, her entire being and personality disappears into an abyss, never to surface again. ALL her conversations and thoughts are about baby-related topics, they want to discuss every minute detail of their latest development… like how they managed to flip over, hold up their head, how they are potty trained by x months but the “normal” baby only manages to be potty trained by x+y months. Okay. A) When was the last time you saw an adult who was not potty trained? B) I’m just beside myself with excitement, someone hold me down.

My dearest friends, didn’t you used to have hobbies, dreams, ambitions, independent thoughts and opinions? I would like to have you back please.

God forbid putting two or more mothers together. Beneath the smiley enthusiastic exterior, you can nearly smell the undercurrent of trying to one-up each other with their offspring’s achievements and greatness. Some mothers try to do it masked in very fake humility, some do it in your face.  ”Mine started speaking at two days… at two months he can spell onomatopoeia and compose poetry… what can yours do?” I’d love to say ” mine is pretty boring, he beats up nerdy kids who can spell useless words”. (I haven’t got any kids… I don’t think I have a maternal instinct but that’s another post altogether).

Yes truly, I get it. You can say “oh you will be the same when you have a kid”. I highly doubt it. You can say “having a kid is a 24 hour job, you can’t help but focus everything you have on the kid”. I hear the same thing when people get obsessed about their relationships, and kind of just become carpets to their other halves. STOP BEING SO BLOODY OVERWHELMED BY EVERYTHING! Grow a backbone. This especially applies to formerly strong independent women who become annoying earth mothers who goes “ommm” at passers-by.

Speaking of earth mothers, I just cannot stand those who proudly and snidely proclaim how they gave birth without an epidural. That is just plain masochistic. Not to mention, horribly vain.

1. I don’t honestly think a baby is impeded for life because their mothers had an epidural during birth.

2. I think it’s disgustingly self-serving to want the bragging right of going without an epidural.

3. I cannot abide the reasoning that one has to feel the pain to embrace the process of bringing a child into the world. I do not think that more pain = more love and bonding and you cherish the child more. In fact, it is immensely insulting and immature to imply that mothers who have epidurals or *gasp*, a c-section, cherish their kids less.

4. In this day and age, medical advances enables birthing pain management. Because birthing pain is not desirable and unneccessary. If women can give birth without pain or with pain, they achieve the same goal post anyway.

I find the whole “I’m better than you and yours” thinking just distasteful and competitive in a very meaningless yet vicious way. It serves no purpose other than making yourself feel better by making someone else look worse. It  starts from the pregnancy process – do you do pre-natal yoga? Does your husband massage you everyday? Did you give birth without an epidural? Do you feed your baby with organic food? Did you enrol your fetus / child in ballet/piano/gymnastics/baby genius maths school? What school / university does your kid go to? What subjects are they taking? What is their GPA? What job do they do? How much do they earn? What is their rank in the company?

Please… take a look at your kid. It might be fugly. It is not special. YOU are not better than the rest. And if you insist on making yourself feel so, you are much less of a decent person that you thought.

Ahhh I feel much better now.

This guy would go start off some bit of work, and happily backhand it to another co-worker, like he was the boss. His colleagues, being the mild people that they are, would just continue the piece without telling him off.

This guy would suggest ideas / changes to existing work, and while everyone is discussing the extent of the impact of these ideas /  changes to other parts of the work flow, he would loudly proclaim “what’s so difficult? I can do it in a few hours” in a tone that belied “and I wonder why you guys can’t do the same… too stupid?”. He basically communicates in I’m-better-than-you speak, and acts like he is better than everyone else. He might be bright, but he definitely isn’t doing any favours for team spirit.

Boss Man felt that this guy was being a little obnoxious, and I asked him if an adequately good co-worker could have implemented the same ideas and changes in the same amount of time, he said yes, probably so. But the other person would have said something along the lines of “I can do that in probably a few hours but I won’t bet my life on it”. The difference? One comes across as smart (if annoying), and the other, a normal guy. Work capacity? SAME.

Makes me wonder: if I had a company, would I choose to hire the one genius who pisses everyone off but does incredible work (you probably have to pay him a lot more anyway), or would I choose to hire two good people in his stead who are better team players?

What would you choose?

After graduation, the most exciting thing I’ve done was to say “screw it” to my national standard of jumping into a (bank) job without so much as a break or reflecting thought. The national standard was relentless money/status-chasing, where one’s financial achievements appeared to define the worth and depth of one’s personality. I sniff at you, despicable national standard! The factory line for soulless creatures with as much intellectual and emotional range as my grandmother’s sugar spoon.

I took six months off to try to find a job in country where I spent my glorious university days in and graduated from. Gasp, choke, SACRILEGE! The incredulous looks I got from local HR and local bosses told me plainly that I simply must be lazy, or worse – uncontrollable, unconforming, any usually complimentary adjectives but prefixed with “un”. I was an “un”.  

The job search had, in the end, spectacularly failed. I say spectacularly, because I had applied for jobs diligently, completed application forms with questions like “who is the one leader you admire and why” (that would be… world peace! *miss universe smile* So I win now?), gave employers the impression I didn’t need a work permit (cheeky, I admit), got up at 3am to catch the 5am bus to other cities for a full days of interviews and group presentation torture, stood at the bus station alone feeling worried as I see drunks stumbling past, received an offer letter, had it rescinded because they realized I needed a work permit after two years. I tried hard, I did everything I could, and although I failed, I was glad I took life by the balls and just went for it.

Through my bumbling and stumbling along my first horrible year of work life which consisted of working under she-demon from the darkest depths of hell ever unleashed upon poor sods like me, and an I’m!-gonna!-rule!-the!-world! trader with the strangest business idea bordering on a scam job / Ponzi scheme, I had despaired. I feared that despite my best efforts, I would fail. I would be one of the nameless, forgotten graduates who just fail to become anything. I feared living in contempt of my job, my inability to somehow get where I want to be, of myself. I had great dreams without limitation, anything is possible. Yet 1.5 years after graduation, I was a promising young nothing in danger of losing the “promising” part.

Then I came across a job vacancy. A shaky start, if any. They had already hired someone for the position, but I had received good reviews from the interviewers from my first two interview rounds. I joined the company, the original hiree left within months.

Three years later, I am still here. I love my job, in a human fashion. I don’t dance around whooping in joy every Sunday night in welcome of Monday. I enjoy the projects I get, the intellectual stimulation and breadth to explore and grow. I relish engineering something out of nothing but sheer brain power (mostly my bosses’s) and making things happen. I also wake up some mornings wondering if I should pull a sickie.

But three years on the job and three years from being 30, I can’t help but look back and realize that it was a blur of long workdays that merged into nights and weeks. I’m not complaining, I learnt hell of a lot, but I can see how easy it is to be sucked into the whirl of money-chasing and corporate ladder-climbing. Then maybe on my deathbed, I would realize my life was a blur of late office nights that merged into months and years. Then maybe, I might realize that the deals I helped materialize, the rich that I made richer… maybe my epitaph would read “she was great in the office” and as a final insult, decorate my tombstone with tombstones of my successful deals.

And so, I refuse! I refuse to be a smug powersuited, jargon-touting, name-dropping corporate rat. I’ll take the money and I’ll work hard for it, but this blog is my personal reminder that I have so much more to live for. That life doesn’t revolve around comparing salaries and car models.

Oh wait. It doesn’t mean this blog is full of meaningful reflective thoughts. Too dark, too heavy and besides, I like celebrity gossip.

Say it with me…. WOO HOO!! Let the adventures begin! Rock and roll!