Tuesday 8 December 2009

New
I have a new desk on another floor, and there are also new biscuits in the office - Khong Guan biscuits, to be exact, of an unidentifiable (cream? The round ones with little frilly edges?), the fake Oreo and the lemon puff variety.

Suffice to say, all this is very pleasing except for the fact that the lemon puff variety (which happens to be the only variety I'm partial to out of all three) appear to only be stocked in the pantry of my old floor, so I've got to nick some whenever I'm down there discussing the NECESSARY with my colleagues or make my NICE colleagues bring some up to me whenever they come up to discuss the NECESSARY with me.

***
Today I went to the Family Court, and I came back with a mini short story in my head. However, I tried to type it out just now and failed miserably because I couldn't help feeling somewhere in the back of my mind that I was being pretentious and rather poseurish, so I scrapped it.

It had something to do with a man and his wonderings at how he'd felt more disappointed at discovering that a song he liked was actually Jay Chou's 最长的电影 (because Jay Chou isn't exactly the epitome of manly music) than with the end state of his marriage, and how dispassionate he felt sitting in court waiting for his turn to take the witness stand at his own divorce hearing.

And about how he'd felt more amused than anything else at what was supposed to be one of the most crucial turning points in his life, snickering softly along with the pupil (Guess Who!) from the law firm he'd hired at the things he observed and heard as he waited.

Like the two Ah Bengs sitting behind him, who seemed to be acquainted but didn't know the other would be there -

What are you doing here? (in Hokkien)
Divorce lor, what else? (in Hokkien)
(String of Hokkien words)

Which unfortunately, I - I mean, our protaganist - was unable to understand.

You're starting to see why I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being Rather Pretentious, don't you?

The best line (in my opinion) of the short story which I managed to churn out before I gave it up as a bad job was:

How can people bear to live apart after all that (courtship, struggling through years of heartache in the hope that there was something better beyond that, etc.), even though they can't bear to live together anymore?

Does that even make sense? I used to love writing things like that.

In a warped way I guess it does make sense, but who wants to live like that in the real world? Isn't it very tiring? Isn't life just so much simpler where there's God and no God, cake and no cake, ice-cream and no ice-cream? And don't I sound like an annoying three year old? (Gotcha!)

***
I miss Aunti L, but on the brighter side, at least we'll (hopefully) be more efficient now that we're sitting apart, and can thus go home earlier.

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