Saturday, March 29, 2008

Ugh. I've got a pounding headache. Probably the result of sleeping from 5pm yesterday to about 8am this morning, and then sleeping again in the afternoon. Can't help it though, I'm damam :( And my mom's been giving me this cough syrup for my hacking cough, and it obviously isn't one of those non-drowsy fomulas cause I'm out like a light within 20 minutes of taking it. Guess who's not eligible to operate heavy machinery right about now :P

Have a good weekend all!

xoxoxoxoxoxox

Thursday, March 27, 2008

....and then there were two. PEs, that is. Today S and I sent a friend, A, over to the heliport to start off her first shift offshore. It was weird saying goodbye; ever since we started work in November, 4 of us, including N who started his shift on Tuesday, were hardly ever separated. We did courses together, we had offices/rooms next to each other, we did breakfast and lunch pretty much every work day. But now that we've started our individual shifts, we'll hardly see each other!! Well, for the next year at least...It'll be weird. But hopefully we'll be able to still do things together, me and A are hopefully going on holiday together in May. Fingers crossed that plan will come through.

Today's been one of those days. Got told off early in the morning for something I didn't really have any control over, and then when I tried to start my car to go home in the evening, the bloody thing wouldn't start! I've been having issues with turning the key in the ignition for the past week or so, but was going to just leave it til the weekend. Well, I think it may need to be sorted out a bit sooner than that, seeing as how I couldn't start the car and had to leave it in the office parking lot. Times like this I'm glad I don't live far from the office, had to ring my dad up and get him to pick me up.

Had the worst experience at Pizza Hut in Sg. Liang yesterday. First off, they got 2 orders completely wrong, and then S found a piece of pasta in her baked lasagne!! And then, when we complained, the waiter actually said "If you want, you can not pay for the meal." IF she wants?? Surely that should be a given? And then he went off to the kitchen to do god knows what and then he came back 3 minutes later, and said to S "If you want, we'll give you a discount." We were speechless. What is *with* the "If you want..." business and how come his offer was downgraded from a free meal to a discount?? Not going back there again anytime soon, and neither should anyone else.

My grandmother's finally been discharged from hospital after an 8 week stay. I wasn't here when she was in the ICU but I was here for most of the time when she was in the normal wards and I don't know, I wasn't impressed with some of the nurses on duty. Every patient who came into my grandmother's ward had a maid with her, and if they didn't have one, the patient's family would be asked over and over whether the patient would have anyone to take care of them. Um.. correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what the nurses are meant to be doing?? And once, a patient asked to be moved from one bed to another, but because the new bed had no sheets, the patient's family asked for sheets from the nurses in charge. And she did give them the sheets, she dumped them onto the new bed and left. The patient's family had to make the bed up themselves! And even with certain meds, they passed the meds on either to the family or the maid, instead of giving them to the patient themselves! I've seen one of the patient's maids grinding up some pills for her charge, but again isn't this something the nurses should be taking care of? I didn't want to be any trouble though, because at the end of the day, these women were still the ones taking care of my grandmother and it wouldn't have been a good idea to be anything but supernice to them.

Currently ill. There must be a big going about; either that or the extremely changeable weather has finally got to me. Let's hope tomorrow's a better day.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Monday, March 24, 2008

It's raining cats and dogs outside, yet I'm sitting here scarfing down a tub of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough icecream. PMSing much? Lol! I must've looked like a right cow when I went shopping in Supasave after work today, I went and got my ice-cream, a box of oreos, a packet of cookies, some kebabs and chocolates :S Oh well haha I'm sure I'll sweat everything out when I start work outside next week *fingerscrossed* lol!

My weekend was very very uneventful, spent Saturday in the hospital with my grandmother, and yesterday curled up in front of the telly. Towards the end of the night though, I got a really pleasant surprise through Facebook : My ex housemate, Katie, has been proposed to by her long-term boyfriend Drew last week. And she accepted, obviously! I'm so happy for them both, and Drew, bless him, did it the proper way too. Asked her dad for her hand in marriage, before finally dropping down to one knee in the gardens at the Tower of London! SO sweet :) Makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Friday, March 21, 2008

On the last day of the course, our course director put together a 20 minute video of all the photos she had taken of us over the past month; from the time we first met each other, all the way through to the final presentation day. It's weird to see how the photos change over the 4 weeks; from the first few photos when we were too shy to really be ourselves, and then to the last photos when we had grown close as a group :) Part of the video had Elton John's "Your Song" as a backing track, and I got all teary eyed while listening to it. Sigh.. I know I know, it's been 2 weeks, get over it and everything already, right? Lol! Sorry guys, I think I'll be course centred for a while.Map showing photos of everyone on the course, as well as the part of the world they're from. As you guys can see, loads of Asians, but also a few more nationalities scattered here and there. Total number of nationalities - 15

Unfortunately couldn't find a photo of the whole team, but this is part of Team Optimised abseilling down a 22 feet rock face. And I was all for abseilling, completely forgetting that before you can go down, you have to climb up. Not impressed with the climbing, totally loved the ride down though


Team SkyPilots - This is within the first couple of hours of meeting each other for the first time ever

Team SkyPilots - Arriving at the Outdoor Centre after having spent the past 24 hours together, crossing from one country to another, invading expensive hotels for a bath, ending up in a random hostel, with one of us sleeping under a teepee constructed out of a shower curtain, and finally arriving at the centre after having woken up at 5am to catch a train, and then searching for ages for the place :P

Team Dynamis - See?? We did work too! This was the team I worked in for the past 3 weeks with our project

Me on the Pamperpole, see how small the platform is in relation to everything else???


I think this must've been taken just before I jumped off the Flyingfox platform


And finally, me on the Flyingfox :D

Thursday, March 20, 2008

I've lost my voice! :( That sore throat I'd been nursing since I got back eventually turned into a proper husky, 6 pack a day type voice. I thought it'd got within a day, but it's been around for over 2 days now, and it's quite frustrating cause I sound like a pre-pubescent boy whose voice has just broken, except with a lower pitch. Makes singing along to anything a bitch too, cause I can't reach any of the semi high notes boo. Although my friends are probably glad they're spared from my warbling for a while lol! Are there actually any remedies I could take to sort my voice out faster?? It's not a dry throat, even when I've drunk loads of water, it didn't help at all. Hmm...

Hope everyone's had a good day off; I've been vegetating as usual, re-discovered my season 2 Heroes dvd and been catching up with that today, helps to pass the time. I've got no plans for the weekend either, will probably spend time in the hospital with my grandmother to be honest. So, the doctors've said that there isn't anything medically wrong with my grandmother, but she just needs to build herself back up to her usual stamina. Which was very heartening to hear, let me tell you. At the moment though, it's hard to push her to try and do things for herself, I think the past 7 or so weeks has built up her dependance on us doing things for her. Guess the thing to do now would be to try and slowly get her to do more and more things for herself. No talks of discharge yet, I hope it's soon though.

I made a couple of quick introductory presentations to some future scholars a couple of days ago; I felt my age when I was doing it too, has it really been 5 years since I was in their positions, unsure what course to take, and being very nervous about making the choice because it would determine my whole life? Time definitely flies by...

I've finally got my work schedule sorted out, I start my rig assignment on the 1st of April, on a week on week off basis, which is exciting! Very much looking forward to it; also, I'm looking forward to all the time off I'll be getting lol! But the annoying thing is, I have absolutely nothing to do between now and the 1st, I've got stuff to read, and things to familiarise myself with, but come on a whole 2 weeks of that?? Time passes by excruciatingly slowly at the office; especially since we've not got as many visits and attachments to do as we did before the course. Next week we have a couple of visits to do so that's good; because at the moment, I swear I could be going stir crazy in my little office for lack of things to do! But the good thing is, I get to catch up with my course friends from about 1pm onwards, which is when they start work in their part of the world...

Enjoy the weekend everyone! xoxoxoxoxoxo


Sha - I'm not actually in Milan at the moment hun, I went a couple of weeks ago when I was still on my course. Didn't actually do much shopping there can you believe it?? I was only there for a night, so I spent my 24 hours there walking around the town with my friends, with frequent capuccino and gelato stops lol :) xxx

Monday, March 17, 2008

On top of the Duomo in Milan, enjoying the only sun I had the whole 6 weeks I was away :P


Top photo : Schematic stick figures of the guys on my table group, and the second photo shows the people I sat with in class for the whole month. Had a lot of fun, specially with the 2 guys next to me :)
Akon performing at the Arctic Snowboard Challenge, Norway!

Me and the girls in Oslo :)

Taken at our first social at a bowling alley; was meant to be a girls' only photo, but as the case always is, one of the guys always has to jump in :)

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Been trying to upload some photos from my trip but blogger's being weird. Will try again in a bit. I've had such a lazy weekend; I definitely caught up on my sleep, I had 12 hours on Friday night and just over 10 hours last night, plus I had an afternoon nap too! Let's hope I'm over my jetlag now, I've not really had time to recover after starting work the day after getting back.

Watched There Will Be Blood today, it was a struggle trying to finish it, I've never been one for movies like that, but cause it had something to do with the oil industry I thought I should give it a go. I never really get the hype of Oscar films, I think it may be a case of them mostly being too intellectual for me? But anyways, this film really got me thinking that I'm so glad that I'm working now, as opposed to a hundred years before. As bad as the conditions may be on sites now, it's nothing compared to what the early drillers have had to go through =S But oil was found SOOO much easier then than it is now pft.

There's been a trio of baby monkeys visiting my house recently; a patch of jungle near my house has recently been cleared to make space for a house I think, and these 3 monkeys must've been displaced or something. They keep coming around and scavenging the food we leave out for the cats and birds. On one hand I feel sorry for them, but on the other, these monkeys are usually vicious creatures, and I'm scared that they'll hurt our cats. On more than one occasion, a monkey's come by and taken our kittens, to do what with, I don't know.

New week ahead, here's hoping it's a good one! :)

Tag replies : (very very overdue I realise, sorry guys!)

Sha - Thanks for the well-wishes, and I travelled so much while I was there because I might as well make full use of being there right? Otherwise it'd cost me an absolute fortune to see my friends from this part of the world :S Hope you're well babe xxxx

War186 - Lol! I enjoyed the travelling and I really wanted to see my friends, but by the end of it I really really wanted to just stay in and have a weekend all to myself, just vegetating and watching telly and reading magazines, y'know? I think I did that once over the past month, atupun self enforced, and then a friend came over for a chat and that plan went out the window lol :P xxxx

Tina - I couldn't find that chocolate fountain when I went back to the shop! Boo I is tres upset :( I made space and all in my luggage skali they tried offering me a cocktail fountain instead. Pft, not exactly the same thing! Did you get your set eventually? I think I may order the fountain on the internet this time and then just pick it up when I get there. I amd etermined to have a chocolate fountain for office makans damnit lol! xxxx

jai.aji.jiren - Lol! Well the last trip wasn't a holiday, though it may have seemed like it from my posts, actually had to do work y'know! :P lol! This next trip pun is because I'm going for my graduation. Honestly, I feel like I'm earning money in order to fund my next trip to wherever at the moment, it's even taking precedence over me needing to get a car lol! xxxx

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Not to sound like a misery guts or anything, but I think I may be slightly depressed here.

I feel exactly the same way I felt when I left uni for good; the first month and a half or so I felt completely lost being back, I didn't know what to do with myself. I had left my closest friends behind, I had to readjust to a completely different life, and this time, it wasn't a matter of being back for a few months over the summer, it was permanent. I felt like I had lost touch with all of my friends back in Brunei, they'd all moved on with their own lives which didn't really seem to include me. But slowly, slowly, I settled back into it all; work and training kept me busy through the week, and I was too tired over the weekends to really want to do anything but chill out at home. I made new friends, and reconnected with old friends, and most of my nights I was out and about hanging out with these guys. Then I went on my course for 6 weeks and had the time of my life with everyone. It felt like I had never left; meeting up with my ex housemates, my coursemates, and meeting new people, not to mention seeing P after 4 months :)

Coming back to Brunei after that was... hard let's just say. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Brunei, I'm not planning on emigrating to another country or anything like that. I feel like I've gone back to November all over again, feeling lost and lonely and with no idea what to do with myself. At work, and with everyone I'm always super cheery, because, honestly, who wants to hang out with some miserable girl? It's just I need to settle back into Brunei life all over again. And it'll take some time. But it'll happen. I can't continue living my days just constantly looking forward to next trip abroad, I know that. Just, at the moment, I'm feeling upset and need to write it all out y'know?

There may be more depressing posts ahead, just to pre-warn everyone;... but I'll snap out of it soon I'm sure! Also, 7 weeks til May :)

Have a good weekend all

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Friday, March 14, 2008

My lovely, lovely coursemates. I've missed them loads since I've left, and I know I'm not the only one missing everyone. Apologies for the geeky photo, it's very difficult to find a photo of all 28 of us together lol!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

I'm back! The flight was uneventful; watched both Enchanted and Sydney White, neither of which made me feel any better about leaving P behind :( The flight was uneventful, but the events leading up to the flight were not so uneventful. Got to the airport 2.5 hours before the departure time, like any good passenger, except when we were changing trolleys froom the bottom of an escalator to the top, we managed to misplace S's handbag, with her passport, tickets, wallet, phones and pretty much everything in it. Cue 2 hours of panicking. The RBA staff in London were amazing, because they managed to get her ticket reprinted, and they also contacted the Brunei embassy to try and persuade them to let S travel with no documents whatsoever lol! Looking back on it now, it was quite funny, but it sure as hell didn't feel funny at the time. Something to tell the grandkids I'm sure lol..The only bad thing was that I didn't get to say a proper goodbye to P cause we were all running around like headless chickens :( But, May isn't too long away. Will hopefully be going back for graduation, and also to see friends in the Uk, and maybe in Dubai too, if things go to plan. OH! Rihanna was in the security checkin, like 5 people ahead of me! I was super starstruck but was too malu to ask for a photo. She's as pretty as she looks in her videos and photos. Also saw Prince William and Kate Middleton wandering about Selfridges on the Sunday, although I have to admit that I didn't recognise him at first, P noticed them. London is SO good for celeb spotting lol!

Back at work tomorrow, not looking forward to it, I think I might just fall asleep at my desk from sheer jetlag and exhaustion. But, new clothes to wear wahey! Lol! Didn't have any money at the end of my 4th year to stock up on a work wardrobe, but I've picked up some basics on this trip. Especially considering that I'll be in coveralls for most of this year now.

Anyways I said I'd put some photos up from my course, but blogger was being weird that day, so I guess it'll have to be Facebook if you guys wanna take a look.

Have a good week guys!

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Is it bad that I've not even left yet and I'm already counting down to my next trip in May? :(

xoxoxoxoxo

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Back in London now, left Holland last night; it was a really emotional goodbye. Well, emotional on my part anyways lol! Never been very good with goodbyes. The past month has been more intense than I thought it was going to be, and EP00 time moves different from real time I think, so even in such a short time, because we had spent so much time with each other, we developed strong bonds anyways. Not sure if that made sense, but it was really upsetting to say goodbye. I really wished I could have stayed an extra night but at the same time I really wanted to come back to London asap. K and D are also in London to visit me and I'll be meeting up with a few of my ex coursemates later tonight so that will be cool. Will be back in Brunei on Tuesday and straight back into the office on Wednesday so will have a proper update by then. Will leave you guys with some photos in the meantime.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Fxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Saturday, March 01, 2008

I should be on my flight to Milan right now, but my flight's been delayed for 3 hours! Can you say kusut?? I think the weather's the main factor, it's been really windy here, but it's just so frustrating! I only have the one night there so I want to make the most out of it. Sigh..At the same time I'm very tempted to just leave it and spend some time in Holland, except for the fact that P's getting to Milan in about 10 minutes, and so's another friend of mine. Guess I should make the most out of my (even shorter now) time there.

The course keeps getting more hectic! The past 2 days were devoted to our group work, which isn't too bad as I've got a really good group, everyone gets along well, so that helps a lot in actually enjoying the work. Although I have to admit one girl in the group just really gets on my nerves. She's not really really bad or anything, compared to some of the guys I've had to work with last year, this girl's a saint, but sometimes...Gah. Lol! One example was yesterday morning; after first of all coming in 30 minutes late(!!) we were dividing up tasks and getting ready to start them all. So I asked her if she could maybe start typing her stuff up for the report we were meant to produce at the end of the day. She looks at me and goes "I don't like the laptops they give us. I only work on Linux." (Linux by the way, being a different operating system). The whole group was a bit dumbstruck at first but we were like, well ok, fair enough, but we still need to get things done so just work on this laptop for now. And she kept on refusing to do so, and said she hates the laptop so much she just leaves it in her hotel room and never takes it out. And when I suggested that maybe she could just grab her laptop from her room which was 2 minutes away from the office, she gave me a death stare and said she'd borrow someone else's instead. What the fuck?? I was already feeling tense from the amount of work we had to do, and then we also had to deal with a team member who wouldn't do any work cause she "doesn't like the laptop". I swear, it's not good for my blood pressure to be at the level it was at yesterday morning. So she eventually used another groupmate's laptop, even though he needed to use it too. Next week is meant to be the hardest phase of the project and I swear me (and probably another friend) will snap if she gives us the same shit as she has been the past 2 phases. :P

It's very interesting to see how people from different parts of the world react to stress. When it came to the crunch time yesterday, I was full out panicking, and so was the Irish girl who's in my group. We had a very rushed lunch, where I couldn't even eat properly cause I kept thinking of things I should be doing. One very quick lunch later, I was all for rushing back to the laptop and these 2 Mediterranean guys (Greek and Lebanese) were all like "No... relaxxx! Let's go for coffee!" And there I was practically jumping up and down because we really did NOT have time for coffee :P But anyways. Love the group anyways. Most of the time. Lol!

Very sad to be leaving the course on Friday, but at the same time I'm quite ready to be done with it all. But I'm not looking forward to starting back in the office the week after. Studying's so much better than working. Already made plans to visit my coursemates at some point in the near future, plus the industry's so small anyways we're probably going to run into each other more than I think.

Internet time's running out now, and I still have an hour and a half to kill. What should I do now???

Have a good weekend all!

xoxoxoxoxooxoxox