Seeking comfort

Am sitting in A&W, wallopinig a gazillion calories in the form of my favourite waffles and a huge double scoop tankard of root beer. Needless to say, this is not a common occurrence. I normally shun the sweet drink, but today, the float is going down pretty smooth...

And why am I risking life and limb ingesting so much bad food? Because I was feeling a little bummed and sought a little comfort from food... Why again?? Sigh...

Was supposed to have Korean with Sali, and I could claim my money too.

Korean lunch was postponed and I dragged myself to a doctor's appt, just to find that the place was closed. What the..???? Check my appt card and discovered that the kindly old auntie had booked me for YESTERDAY afternoon. Urgh... Why??? I just did my labs at 11 a.m. and there was no way the results could have been ready by 2. This is so frustrating.... Added to a list of existing frustrations.

Found that I could not get a housing loan due to several technical issues. But we do have enough money combined in EPF to pay for it cash. BUT, we'll need to pay 20% deposit, so we're scambling to get THAT sorted out. In the meantime...

Abah borrowed my car last week, because his was in the workshop. Then I borrowed Busu's spare Iswara. Glad I did, because I only got my car back yesterday. That car is fine, but I still had to do a minor repair coz something broke off. Now, instead of going home to rest, I'll have to go send Busu's car home.

As for MY jalopy, it reeked of Abah's awful daun pandan smell and there's a strange twanging sound coming from God knows where. Bloody annoying.

Then, the silly tap which has been dripping all this while got a whole lot worse, and the whole top came off. But I can't change the thing because the last plumber cemented the old pipe to the wall, and I don't have the tools to open it up. So now, I need to arrange for the plumber to come in between everything else.

Plus, Dr Kali liked my video so much, he asked me to do another one for Penang... It's still half done, as is a million other things on my plate.

K Ayu still hasn't paid me anything, so I could just save some money when Abah practically demanded I give him as much as possible to pay for his car repairs. As if!! Lucky Abang coughed up the dough, it's just too much to dig out the pittance I managed to put away these few months, ok... Standard Two kids have more saved than me.

I wanted to talk to Inas last week, but I fell asleep and she ended up alone in the restaurant for a full hour. She's understandably pissed with me, but I just don't have the energy to grovel for forgiveness. So yr mom is sick? Well mine was too. Deal with it.

Graham can't be bothered to write lately, so it's even more depressing being single. At least when he was around I could whine to him.

My addiction to games and Korean drama is not helping. Plus weekend work, which I'm forced to do tomorrow. urgh. Hate this nonsense.

C'est la Vie...

Perhaps, it is more normal in life to actually have problems... and possibly, it's important to know what exactly those problems are.

For example, the last few weeks, I'm been in some kind of limbo, not knowing whether I have a problem or not. I go to work, struggle with a million things, then go home, eat whatever crap I threw together, then watch TV or play games until I pass out and wake up the next morning to work again. But at the back of my mind, I was agonising over my housing loan, whether it will be rejected or accepted, knowing that if it falls through, I would be back at square one, looking at houses I don't really want to stay in.

It seems unfair that I have paid all my bills on time, most of the time, but some screw up with my car payments made me ineligible for even a small housing loan. And little did I realise, putting my name in the other house's mortgage could set me back so much in the loan calculations. So even though my actual commitments total less than 40% of my income, the bank calculation comes to a whole lot more.

I have been paying rent, electricity, internet, groceries, cleaners and even giving cash to my sis without getting back my share for months already. I'm thankful I still manage to squirrel away some savings, even though it's less than what I wanted to put away. And I am struggling to pay off my credit card with so many things on my wish list the few months past. Thank God I quit the gym. Couldn't even afford to pay for yoga this month. Right now my plans to hang out in the UK seems a very distant dream :(

Sis has not really looked for a proper job she said she wanted when she quit her previous company, and this temp job only just covers  her car installment, leaving a few hundred for expenses and apparently nothing for me. Her outstanding debt is huge and growing bigger each month. I wanted to help with some, but even the interest is crazy. We wanted to take her to AKPK but she's not exactly cooperating.

Right now, I just wish the other application will come through, so that I can move to my own place. Tak apalah if I can't afford proper fittings and furniture. I'll gladly camp with tikar mengkuang and hand me downs as long as the house is mine. I've spent enough paying rent for other people's property, it's time to get my own. I hope we manage to sort something out... I really need to move on. 

Lalala...

Dragged my sorry ass to the office because I absolutely CANNOT work at home. I always end up playing some stupid game or watching something online. I have a few things that need immediate attention and I know I'll feel much better tomorrow if I didn't have anything overdue.

Now, as usual dok terfikir benda bukan2 - i.e. food and Chatime instead of focusing on work. Maybe I'll go over to the other side and make myself a mug of Neslo. Coffee seems to help me focus.

Spring Cleaning Fever

Whoo boy! Just spent a large part of my afternoon going through my Inbox and putting emails into their respective folders. Good thing, coz I found forgotten emails which might have gone undetected at the bottom of the long list. It was only 120 emails or so because I NORMALLY file away emails on a regular basis.

Then somehow got sucked into migrating all my odd notes from OneNote to Evernote. I know some people prefer OneNote to the other, but I suppose it all boils down to how you need the software to work. I tried using ON a few years back and somehow it never became a part of my life - too slow to load and notes are just all over the place!! I ended up with 5 notebooks with a gazillion subfolders holding just one or two sentences. Not very efficient, I think. It's not easy to tag and sync, and I didn't get around to syncing them on my multiple computers. Yes, the subfolders and stuff are a great idea, but it just didn't work for me. I guess it could work better if I had organised it differently, but for my filing needs, it didn't fit the bill.

I realised that I just needed to quickly clip the info I want to keep- and I LOVE the Evernote clipper for this purpose. No need to manually cut and paste. The clipper quickly cuts and I can tag them on the spot before moving on to the next item. It's easy to delete junk information and keep the system clean - something very important to me. And I can easily go through my notebooks and find the info that I need - Their tags work perfectly for this. Plus, I can see a picture of my note beside the title, so I can quickly scan for what I want. It works equally well for business (project notes, references) and pleasure (recipes, etc).

Those who like ON actually MAKE notes and run their projects using the software. I, on the other hand, just need to have the info at hand. I do my project planning on scraps of recycled paper and keep everything together in clear folders.

Unfortunately, I still have a mountain of reorganising to do.... My Documents folder need a cleaning up and after that I'd have to back them up both on the project hard drive and server. On top of THAT, the hard drive and server needs a cleanup too!!! ARRRGGGHHH..

PLUS, there are two piles of hardcopy that I moved from the Projects room to my current space in the OPP zone. Urgh... I might need to come in tomorrow to sort out the mess before the new week comes in, there'll be a ton of work to do with the event on Saturday and other projects to plan and execute. In addition to dealing with 3 websites and a few FB pages... Sigh. Will need to teach project teams to layan their own FB so that I don't go crazy.... Wish me luck, peeps! :D 

Bummed :(

It seems my grand plans for the apartment I want has met with a (hopefully) temporary setback... Groan!! Went to check my CCRISS in the pouring rain on Friday, and unfortunately found that my car payments have been lagging the whole of last year. Damn! that can't be good for the loan application...

NOW I wish banks sent out notifications for car loans. Why don't they, I wonder. My due date is the 20th and I usually pay after the 25th, thinking that I'm paying for the following month's installment. Guess I must have missed a payment somewhere and never made up for it. :( The last time I called the bank to find out, everything was A-OK. I even pay a little extra just in case there were any delays, and now it seems all my efforts were not enough.

Last year was a bit insane, work wise, and I was so stressed, hutang puasa pun aku tak bayar! Now baru terhegeh2 nak setel balik, hutang tahun lepas lagi nak buat... K Ayu quit her long-time job and it took her a long while to find even a temporary one, so I took on all the house bills and rent and groceries etc. Thought I can reduce stress once the new house is under way, guess I was wrong, huh?

I was so excited about moving to a new apartment, I even had everything planned out... Now it may never happen ;( Waaahhhh!!! Nak pindah!!! Sob sob!!

Guess the only consolation is that everything happens for a reason, and it may be for the best that this wish of mine was foiled. I still hope that we can work around the problem. Otherwise it will be yet another round of house hunting which I don't have the time for. Urgh. Hope the year gets better, this isn't very nice...