A theoretically really really horrible morning

I don't even want to begin to explain why, but I have two pairs of glasses with vastly different prescriptions. I can say vastly because my eyes are THAT bad.

Neither pair is correct. One is significantly better than the other and enables me to get through life okay, but it unfailingly slips down my nose and is therefore very annoying.

So I got new ones, but they haven't arrived yet.

This morning, I was really really really sleepy (background information: yesterday was my birthday so I took the day off despite having started only a week before, blissfully enjoying life. I walked through the whole day though, and plus 'that time of the month' began, which generally makes one more achy and tired). I was wearing the bad glasses, the pair with prescription way off, probably by 400 degrees. My world was blurry.

More importantly though is that my mind was fuzzy. I could have fallen asleep standing up. As I dragged my feet (which was in a bit of pain due to too much walking the previous day) to the elevator this morning, I heard the wind howl outside, reverberated and amplified in the elevator corridor. At that point I wondered, could music possibly replicate this kind of mood? I mean, there is music about breakups, loneliness, sadness, anger, tiredness, death, regret... anything for this dead-as-a-zombie, I-don't-want-to-go-to-work, it's-cold-and-windy kind of mood?

Out I went, and the wind continued to howl. People of Hong Kong clutched their scarves, mittens and hats as they waited for the bus. (It was actually like 16 degrees.)

I don't know how, but I made it to work without missing some stop in the middle of my 1.5 hr commute.

I sat down in front of my computer, bewildered.

"Meeting." I heard somewhere.

Just one word and that sent me hurtling like a torpedo through the hall and down the stairs. It was 8:55 am and I realized that I was supposed to set up the room and projector for a ginormous 2.5 hour meeting at 9 am.

It was a maze downstairs but I found the projector. I hurtled back upstairs with the projector and luckily had got it set up in time. I had to pee, but no time...

2 hours later I still had to go pee...

My manager sat next to me.... so I had to look like I wasn't hungry, sleepy (was in REAL danger of dropping off any time by then), and needed to pee.

He also introduced me to everyone, but my world was blurry so I couldn't be sure who was who...

Good thing my weekend was good, and diluted out this whole experience.

I will upload pictures of the cutest things I saw on my birthday later (namely decorations in malls, to summarize, but no really! They're REALLY cute!)

First Day of Work

WOOHOO, I got hair extensions!! (will replace pic once I have a picture of myself with it)

Here's where I live and that's where I work... across HK.

I think it's time I uploaded a picture of myself to let you all know that I don't look any fobbier... except maybe, indirectly, the scarf, since it's not cold at all and I'm wearing one like the rest of the HK population, who cower in frozen fear at the slightest drop in temperature...that is not to say I don't mind the cold; I am very much afraid of the cold but I've gotten used to this kind of discomfort back in the harsh heater-less, bus-awaiting days at Waterloo...

My piano and English student (9 years old, but way more intelligent than your average 9 year old) thinks I'm his best friend or something and actually looked betrayed when I got a real job and couldn't come play with him as much anymore. It would have been cute if he wasn't so annoying and kept whining in person and in bold caps through my email "COME TO MY HOUSE EVERYDAY AND QUIT YOUR JOB." So I used this opportunity to teach him new words: "demanding" and "unfortunately". I told him that I was doing something meaningful, like helping people research bacteria from the Red Sea. He was like, "Red Sea? Like Moses in the Bible? I'll remove all the bacteria from the Red Sea so there's nothing to research." Viscous...

I think he's an attention whore, like most kids, especially HK kids. Back in high school, I liked using the word 'beady' to describe little kids' eyes, but I don't think I understood what that word meant until getting here... I don't know why, but kids' eyes in HK are really beady. Maybe it's the intelligence that is brimming in them, due to the steady diet of EPA and DHA, Mozart and other gross music, 'flash card training' and 'swimming and piano and violin and mandarin and math lessons' their parents fed them. But then, they grow up and it's not like they're any smarter because 'double loss' youth seems to be a real problem in HK. Double loss youth is a term that refers to youth who refuse to work because the real world is too harsh (low income, lack of job search skills, no goals, long hours and under-appreciation) and can't study anymore.

It's like, life is full of ironies. I ate a few soggy fries today for example. I didn't eat them while they were hot and crunchy, because they were oily and bad for the skin, but ended up hungry eventually to the point of accepting soggy fries.

So in conclusion, be happy with what you have right now because things could be worse.

Oh, I just realized that the title of this post is "first day at work" but I haven't talked about it... and I'm too tired to. So maybe later if I'm ever in the mood (Probably never).

AH BUT I did go to the cat cafe again! SO CUTE!