I really miss my blog.

I miss sitting down in the early-afternoon with the windows open and writing down the highlight or humiliating lowlight of my previous day and sharing it with all my friends. I miss comments. I miss email.

Dammit, I miss being unemployed. 

And I miss eating right. The whole point of working to start with was so that I could have some cash and live out my fantasy of walking into a different restaurant every other night and without a wince, order a flourish of delish apetizers and entrees. Kitchen minions would scatter and grovel at my feet while I gleefully gorge myself on some organic puree of exotic vegetables laced over some delish piece of meat that's spent it's entire life attended by a hundred virgin artisan maid in some lush field far far away. Or sushi. Lots and lots of sushi. Either way, I imagined my meals consisting of more than canteen lunch boxes or olivers sandwiches. I hate lunch hour now. It's always a mad rush to grab something and get back to the bloody office in bitch heels during that half hour window. I miss being relaxed when I eat. I miss tasting my food. I miss eating without a moniter in my face.

To top it all off, apparently they stopped selling Durian at my supermarket. Apparently Robinson Road doesn't appreciate God's erotic gift to humankind. Mofos. Where else am I going to get durian on my way home? I haven't even had a chance to eat any and it's already over a month into the season. I've decided to dedicate the next two weekends entirely to eating the wonderful lush and creamy fruit while I still can. I will not let working deprive me of that. I will go out into the netherlands of northpoint....or the wanchai market....erm....hmm...or maybe just central on the way home....unless it's wet. BUT I WILL GET THE BLOODY FRUIT.  I realise that this prob means sacrificing all my friends and I probably will never get let into a club again once it starts sweating out of my pores....not to mention the fact that our maid hates the stuff so I can count on going back to living like a pig but whehey, it's worth it... 

....Maybe I'll even get to blog about it.

Currently Watching Office Space (Widescreen Edition) By Ron Livingston, Jennifer Aniston see related

The first week of work is always frustrating. You sit there, you don't know what you're doing, everyone knows you don't know what you're doing, and you haven't passed that point of work etiquette where you can mindlessly surf the net and write emails all day. "Enjoy it while it last" they say. Enjoy it while it lasts?! I've been wasting time for the past eight months, what makes you think I enjoy staring at my monitor pretending to make sense of the stock ticket for 4 hours straight untill i take my half hour lunch break only to come back to more staring at the mon? Give me something to do dammit. ANYTHING.

So they did. Boy oh boy. I suddenly discovered why I am overpaid. Don't get me wrong, I love the people I work with - they are all really intelligent, relaxed and supercool people with just the right amount of nosiness to make you feel at home. They've all been incrediably patient with re-educating me about the ops side of Portfolio Trading and assuring me that the millions of mistakes that I anticipate happening are simply inevitable. But it's still madness. There's just so much to be done, so quickly and with accuracy - all of which are my serious weaknesses. It's like sitting there with your finger flying over a million buttons but with someone saying to you, "Don't touch the red button." But there's a big red button in between all the other buttons and you are sitting in closet padded with these buttons just waiting to flinch and accidentally press one red, blinking, horrendous, mistake-ridden button....or two or three or a dozen at once.

On the upside, there are some funny things you learn about yourself when placed under pressure. Like the fact that you might actually like it. That the natural endorphins rushing through you after those tense 27 mins before the next bunch of orders can drive you through the 10 hour day and make the time fly by. It's all the novelty of a new job I'm sure but for such a risk-averse person such as myself it's a pretty intriguing concept.

Now if I can just learn not to fuck up millions of dollars in the first place we might actually be on to something here...

Oh my god. Crazy suit lady actually got a job. Crazy suit lady got a offer for a temp job (3 months) at Merrill in operations and now has to wake up before 11, sleep before 4, be productive for more than 12 minutes/day and take mass transport during peak hours. Ononononononononononononononono, what have I done?!?!?!? 

Currently Watching How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying see related

It's been a week and I'm parasite free. Woooohooo! Well now that I know I have a somewhat higher tolerance for dodgy food, maybe I'll have the confidence to go around town checking out some questionable sushi places in hopes of finding something good. What's a little bit of cholera? I mean really?? Now, who to recruit to join me?....

A big shout out to all of you for your wonderful support and good wishes on the interviews. Special thanks to Ken and Patricia for letting me pick at their brains on such short notice and my brother for hooking me up with them to start with. Merrill Lynch went ok but to be honnest it wasn't a terribly challenging interview since it was just a temp position in operations. Not exactly ideal to say the least but hey, if they let me through, it might be some work for the next three months. The Goldman interview got post-poned and I'm still waiting for them to get back to me on the new time and position. *fingers crossed that's it's something good* You guys are all seriously great though, THANKS

In the meantime, I've been seriously on edge for the past few days waiting to see when Goldman is going to pull that last minute crap on me. Everytime my cell phone rings I jump up and freak out. I seriously couldn't even bring myself to go to the gym because I was paranoid someone might call. That's two hours that I'm out of touch. Nononoono, that won't do at all. I'll just have to not work out then. I really have no choice. Perhaps I should get voicemail? Nono, still no good. I am actually contemplating going out in a suit everyday so that I'll be ready to interview at any given time. Urgh, look at what's they've already reduced me to. I disgust myself. I'll be one of those people sitting around McDonalds in a suit all day who doesn't actually work and other people will feed me scraps of food out of pity because they think I'm the crazy suit lady and parents will say to their kids, "That's what happens when you eat too much junk food and don't study hard in school. Do you want to grow up like that?" And the kids will look at me with my scary eyes going cross-eyed and my hair out of place and frantically shake their heads.

Wait a minute, crazy, unemployed, hanging around cheap eats during the afternoons, setting bad examples for children - I already AM the crazy suit lady. AHHHHHHH!!!!!

Currently Playing Fight Club: Original Motion Picture Score By The Dust Brothers "Where is my mind?" see related

At first glance, Wuhan don't seem terribly crazy about what they eat. They like to buy their groceries from the French-owned Carrefour, have an aversion to all things sweet and have little interest in keeping fresh produce easily accessible. People just don't seem to be as tyically enthusiastic about their meals as I've come to expect when in China. In fact, when I started writing my xanga entry this morning, i was about to go on about the crappiness of the food I'd had. I'm glad I didn't have time to finish, cuz today the food has been really good. So much so that I'm sad to leave because I haven't had a chance to eat enough.

I asked my dad's secretary, Zhang Han, to take me somewhere where I could get these Wuhan noodles I've heard so much about since getting here. We hopped into the cab and after a 10 minute ride through the city, we ended up at some stand at the side of the road. Lots of people lining up, high turnover - sure it's not the most hygienic of settings and it's a little bit nasty but the noodles are hot and I really wasn't terribly worried. When I got to the front of the line, I watched them pour laddles and laddles of sauce from different vats before topping off the bowl with some minced meat, scallions and nuts. While it all looked very appealing I have to admit, the vats of sauce sitting there wide open next the the old spitting man triggered a tiny alert in my head but then I thought to myself, "a little bit of bacteria never hurt anyone, it's just sauce..." and plus, doesn't chilli have anti-biotic properties or something?? I found a seat in this dark and dingy room behind the stall and sat down. Just as I was getting into the peanutty, chilli, salty noodles, Zhang Han shows up with a suspicious looking bowl of green liquid. "Zheige shi shenme?" She gives me a brief and simple answer that takes me about 10 minutes to translate in my head, "oh! Green Bean water". Sounds innocent enough. Then I make the mistake of looking around to see where it came from. This plastic red bucket sits at the side of the booth, while the shop keeper uses another bucket that closely ressembles the kind they use to flush water in toilets to retrieve the cold liquid drink. Cold liquid? Hmmmm...I look around and notice no refridgeration and something tells me distilled water is not a big factor in the bucket process.

I started to hesitate.

But then I had a flash of inspiration thinking about Anthony Bourdain's chef adventurous spirit. He basically has this show where he goes travelling around eating everything at the expense of his digestive system. "What's the worse that could happen? Spend a little less than quality time on the toilet....but it's worth it." It's true, what's the worse that could happen??? What's a little bit of delhi belly compared to something tasty that you got on a plane to get to?? Don't worry, I didn't go crazy. There were some really really good looking scallion cakes I wanted to get my hands on but I figured it was best not to go overboard. But still, the noodles and green bean soup were good. I dunno how much toilet time they would be worth but so far I'm heathy so it was all well worth it.

Kinda makes me wish I had those scallion cakes.