wonderment

Oh my poor little neglected blog.

So many things have happened over the past month or so but let me just do a quick sum-up while I wait for my hair to dry and have to go to bed.

1. I had a seriously bad bout of flu which deteriorated into tonsilitis the week my Perth trip

2. I nearly faint after taking an antibiotic jab to get well

3. 2 days after I’m well enough and I’ve been to Perth for Amanda’s wedding, being her bridesmaid and now I’m back!

4. Aquina Patina is coming together. The postman came knocking at 930pm! I didn’t know VPost operated till so late. I thought I lost some purchases, but they’re all coming. I can set up shop soon!

5. With the setting up of Aquina Patina, I have to be more organized in my personal life, work and the shop. Organization is very tedious but will be immensely useful in the long run. The first thing I have to do? Answer all emails and SMSes within 24 hours - just like any good service person.

There’s more to this sketchy little blog post, especially about the wedding, but I have to go sleep now. I hear my dad outside my door grumbling that I’m still awake.

I plan to blog more often. I always say that, but let’s see how I can keep this up. Part of my organizational plan!

Wow it’s been a while since I last updated huh?

I guess I stopped writing for a while to get my life back on track after the dengue scare and having to catch up with 2 weeks’ worth of work. February passed by rather quickly didn’t it? Before you know it, July will be here already! I’m looking forward to many highlights over the next few months, so time will pass even faster. There’s my Perth trip for Amanda’s wedding in April, my sister returning home in May, my driving test in June (which I want to pass on the first attempt!!) and my first year on the job in July. I love it; they give everyday a little something to look forward to.

Well, before I get started on my work, I actually dropped by to share something that caught me unawares this morning. When I realized how much it affected me, it was a huge reality check.

I just found out that a close friend I hadn’t spoken much to in the last 2-3 months had gotten a job in the industry and company that I’ve been secretly wishing to get into. My first thought was, “Dang! I wish I was the one who got the job in XX Company. Man, I’m so jealous!” And the more I thought about it, the more resentful I got. The more resentful I got, the more disgusting I felt.

Can you believe it? Today started as a beautifully cool morning, I was feeling rested and I unplugged my earphones so that I could focus on God more. So while I was feeling all holy and near God, an email comes and BAM! Just an innocent one liner, and I’m feeling like such a loser.

I quickly took myself outside of the impending self-pitying funk. From previous experience, if I let my thoughts spiral out of control, I’d probably have a stinking bad day and a horrible self-esteem to boot. To be honest, there’s really no point regretting that I didn’t score with XX Company, I didn’t even try hard enough to apply for a job there! But I know the power of envy is ever present and real.

On that note, I’m still with my present job but mindsets have changed and I will stay as long as God keeps me here. When it’s time to go, I will know it.

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies…. It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.  ~Albert Einstein (What an absolutely brilliant quote!)

Yes, that’s me … many many years ago… like 5 years ago? I say many because I definitely look like I belonged to another era. Hehe! This picture was taken in 2003 at West Coast Park (I think?) It was the third year graduation outing and for some reason all the boys in our batch weren’t there! Ahh… the memories of yesteryear. I remember that I was so involved in Campus Crusade that I’d always go to the CCC room after class, above Canteen One, on the third level, in Ngee Ann Poly, to find someone to talk to, or just chill.

I’ve just had dinner with some of those people in the picture. There was Eileen on the far left, Lijing (second from left) who joined us at the last minute, Calyn (next to me) and Cheryl who didn’t come. Likai, my ex Campus Director and Sharon my senior also joined us.

Felt really nice to catch up with people I hadn’t seen in ages. I miss being able to talk about our ministries, and share the hard parts as well as the rewards. It really made today, a day that began rather badly, end off well.

Happy Lunar New Year to all!

I’m now enjoying the last bits of my sudden 2-week hiatus from work and I’m very reluctant to go back on Monday.

I keep reminding myself that work is not all about my personal satisfaction, there are a lot of factors that make up job satisfaction.  I remember being asked the same question at the Mass Comm interview and  I said, “Nothing can be totally fun and glam, there’ll be the boring bits and  you have to take them both. I’m sure I can learn something in the boring lessons to help enhance my total Mass Comm experience.”

That may have sounded rather glib, but I kid you not, I really believe it. I honestly don’t mind the boring mundane bits when I’m doing anything  because there will be the bits where it makes it fun and worth my while. Just as long as the boring mundane bits don’t become more than the fun worthwhile bits. Or the depressing disillusioned bits are tougher to bear than the emotionally satisfying bits.

I’ve held off  talking about it publicly but I think I trust my blog readers to empathise and sympathise than to question my choices. I’m glad there are just the few of you who know this blog and know the position I’m in. I’ve chosen to talk about it here and now because the “older people” I’ve chosen to talk to have made it more stressful than helped elevate my anxieties. I’ve prayed about it, cried about it - I’m tired of feeling like an emotional wreck for the last couple of months and I want to do something about it.

I like to think of myself as an optimist, someone  who goes at something with gung and ho and regrets nothing. I still don’t regret what I’ve chosen to do, but I am quite surprised that only 7 months on, I’m feeling like it’s time for a job switch.

If there’s one more thing I believe, it’s that anything can be too good to be true. My dream career that literally dropped onto my lap is becoming more of a chore and a burden to me than something I really want to do for the rest of my life. On top of that, there are the depressing, disillusioning bits that are harder for me to bear.

I am not suffering excessively at work, the Em isn’t maliciously evil or anything, my colleagues are sweet and all, but my gut tells me that this just isn’t right for me. It’s the same fear that I felt just a month before I came home from Melbourne and I was standing at the crossroads between this and another job I applied for because I knew I’d love it. The only problem? I worked for an NPO before and this was another NPO.  In terms of career advancement, I wasn’t about to go anywhere.

This, on the other hand, would give me a leg up. Never mind that it was just a tiny company, even tinier than my old company, but I would be exposed to the real corporate life, I would have the opportunity to know and rub shoulders with real corporate people.

However, 7 months on, I feel like a caged bird. I have never known to sit still in one place for 8 hours on end and just type away at my computer. I’m infamously bad at administration and yet I’m assuming a job scope that is all just about administration. I am supposed to develop programs, but I pretty much do everything else from data entry to IT support. I have no contact with the outside world, apparently phone contact is supposed to suffice, but who yer kiddin’?

More so, what hurts me most is when I know nothing I do ever pleases the boss (the perfectionist) or me (the bigger perfectionist). I cried in front of the boss during my performance appraisal because I believed I didn’t contribute as much as my boss said I did.

Sigh … it’s not a pretty picture. With so much complaints, it should be easy to go isn’t it?  But I’m finding it so hard to scrape up enough courage to do anything!

She’s invested a lot of her time in grooming me, training, explaining to me why things work the way they do. She’s given me a lot of say in what goes and what doesn’t and criticizes me constructively for what I do wrong.

She’s not evil like I said … but she’s not everything I hyped her out to be.

I’m very tired about the whole thing. Very very tired about thinking so much about it. But this is my first biggest challenge in my work history … I wonder how it’ll pan out? Can I last till July when I have fulfilled my verbal commitment of staying for 1 year? Shall I just submit my letter in May and give her the required two months notice without any prior negotiation for anything else? Or shall I speak to her about a career development and salary review even before the review comes in July?

Should I find a job now and submit my letter as soon as possible, disregarding the fact that I’d promised her I’d work a year?

URGHHHHHH

Thank you for your kind prayers for me.

I seriously have gotten the blessed end of the stick, God has been kind. I escaped the rough bits of the disease, no rashes, no bleeding, no terrible nausea … I have been chirpy and can handle most daily functions and the best thing of all - my platelets are on the way up! Today, after a not-so-nice run in with the doctor I went to (after my own doctor made me go to the polyclinic for the weekend) I finally found out my results and I’m back in the healthy range -152!

I’m still not back in my pre-dengue count of 244 (Nov’07) but I just have to go for one more blood test to certify that it’s going up up up!

I’m tremendously grateful for the long rest. Has helped me consider quite a few things that have been getting me down … well, I can’t reveal too much now because of the sensitivity and uncertainty of the issues but once they become official, then I’ll share.

For now, to bask in the joy of finally being able to clean up my room!!

My blood platelets are up! It’s 126, just 14 points more and I’ll be back in the healthy range. Oh I can’t wait for the day when I don’t have to take another blood test. I don’t go hysterical at blood tests like I used to, but if I can, I’d like to stay far far away from them for a long long time …

Just one more thing to go … the bodyaches! I don’t think I need to feel like I’ve done a gazillion crunches and then when I get well, the truth sets in!

It’s Day 3 since I found out I had dengue …

No one knows for sure when I got bitten, where I got bitten. With my hectic schedule, I could have gotten it anywhere.

This is a real strange disease. There are no predictable patterns, another person’s experience doesn’t necessarily translate to yours and even the doctor can’t predict how far along you are.

She tells me its the critical phase, these few days, but I’m fortunate that I haven’t got it so bad. I’ve got a healthy appetite, even though I can’t eat my regular portions or what I’m used to eating. I’m still pretty cheery and chirpy, the only thing that gets me down is looking out of the window and thinking about how I used to run to the MRT next door to catch the train to work and now if I even think of walking downstairs, I’ll probably be so out of breath I’ll blank out for real. So near yet so far.

The bodyaches are bothersome but not overly painful. I just feel like  I’ve run the 15km marathon I did last year, 5 more times. 

Otherwise, I’m pretty happy, having the time to relax and catch up on my reading, finishing my essay for my graduate diploma course yesterday and emailing it in. No one’s been calling  my office line and the emails have gotten lesser so I can really cut down my worrying about office work. I called Val today to pass the Em some messages and that was that.

Now, it’s just to wait for the doctor to call me back on my results early this afternoon…

Reality sank in today …

While walking to the clinic some distance away from the car, I suddenly felt breathless,  my breathing became short and choppy. It wasn’t very serious, but I told the doctor and she waved it away saying that I was just imagining things.  After the blood test and I was walking back to the car with Hsien, I suddenly felt my head spinning and my eyes were blanking out, I could barely see in front of me. Hsien had to support me under my arms so I wouldn’t collapse on the road. It was scary!

Once I returned home and sat down, I felt tons better.

But there was a niggling feeling …Had my platelets gone down?

Throughout the day, I continued to take phone calls, send emails (yes, still working from home!) and Hsien who was with me and overheard my conversations said that no one was ever going to believe I had dengue from the way I sounded! So I felt mighty fine … except I couldn’t stand for too long because the breathlessness and dizzyness would come again.

At about 7pm, the doctor calls again to tell me the result of my report and my fears were right. My platelets had dropped down to 90, just 10 shy of the number to get me immediately admitted into hospital. The funny thing was, my temperature was hovering around the 37 range, a very low grade fever. My dad believed that I was getting better already, I didn’t. The doctor already warned me that even though my temperature could drop, it didn’t mean that my platelets were okay.

So now at 10pm, I’m lying on the sofa feeling absolutely wrung out. The bodyache and headache has set in and I’m really ready to retire to bed …

I hope, I hope, I don’t need to go to the hospital after tomorrow’s blood test …

I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to get dengue.

Would you be sick with a scorching fever and blood oozing out of everywhere? Would you be plagued by chills and be near the brink of death? Certainly seems like it. At the rate the government makes dengue such a thing to be reckoned with, it is incredibly serious.

So yesterday, when I sat at home, anxiously waiting for the phone to ring with the results of a blood test I took earlier in the day, I wasn’t REALLY expecting dengue. I thought it was just an extended viral fever that didn’t manifest in the usual flu or inflamed throat and I was a little pissed off that the doctor didn’t want to give me antibiotics!

….. I’ve been  having an unstable temperature since Sunday evening (yes, it came on 2 hours before my birthday party was supposed to start!) but only got to see a doctor the next afternoon. She sent me off with a 2 day MC and a packet of panadol … A packet of PANADOL?? How serious was that?

On one hand, I was happy to get a 2 day MC, on the other, I wondered how serious it was … She did remind me to come back to see her for a blood test if the temperature persisted onto Tuesday. Tuesday came and the temperature was up and down no matter if I’d eaten the panadol or not so  I didn’t plan to see her. Towards the later part of the evening, the temperature seemed to get better but on Wednesday, it was back up to 38 degrees, so it was the blood test and another day off …

When she finally told me I had dengue, I didn’t know what to think. Or maybe I had too many thoughts that it drowned out everything.

I just had to ask - how bad is it? do I need to go to the hospital? What can’t I do? What CAN I do? Is there any medicine I can eat to help me get better?

I momentarily freaked out. But my parents, when I mouthed to them that I had DENGUE, went paranoid.

Turns out, my platelets (the stuff that helps your blood to clot) was lower than a normal person’s (140-400), mine was 110 yesterday, and my white blood cells were showing signs of infection.

When I put the doctor on my phone’s speaker phone, she started getting overly excited and stuttering and stammering that made my family even more nervous. Out of everyone, I was the coolest, asking the questions that were flooding my mind and behaving very professionally, as I’ve always been taught to do.

When the doctor got off the phone, my parents were so stressed out that they started blaming each other about whether it was the plants we keep that caused the problem, or that we had some secret place in the house that was breeding mosquitoes.  They closed all the windows in the house, making the tension more unbearable than it already was.

After a while, they finally gave up and the phone-calling began. Everyone was extremely concerned about my rest and drinking enough water and basically getting well. So nice!

Now, with my platelets (the stuff that makes your blood clot) so low and with the possibility of going even lower, I can’t afford to go out in case I fall down and bruise myself. I’m on indefinite sick leave (at least for 2 weeks) until my platelets climb up to normal levels.

In fact, I was more thrilled that my schedule suddenly got cleared automatically for two whole weeks than worried that I actually got dengue fever.

Reality hadn’t sunk in yet …

Being in airconditioning helps.

The swelling has gone down though I can still feel the bumps  on my skin, but it’s not too obvious.

At least I look normal and not like somebody got whippy-happy with a leather thong.