Morning: 0952
I love morning humor. It's dry, sarcastic, sardonically funny and crap to the max. it's one of those "voices in my head" thing which makes me wonder why I'm in such a mode in the morning. Weird ppl all around me:

1. Guys who preen.. A lot. There was this Indian dude at Raffles mrt who whipped out his comb and started combing for the 2 min that it took the train to come. Later on the mrt, this chinese dude next to me was preening.. Big time. What's up with that man? Even the ladies weren't doing it. Narcisstic.

2. This lady tapped her card after the door closed, looking expectedly at the bus driver. I stared at her for a sec, wondering if she was sending psychic waves. Nope. I didn't detect any. *sweatdrop* so I pressed the doorbell. The door open. Voila. The lady didn't even thank me. Nvm. I will kill her with my psychic waves. Nope. She didn't get it. She's not psychic.. Confirmed. Yesh, the morning kills my usual sense of humor and I can get sarcastically unfunny and mean. Btw, the psychic thing is a joke between my younger sis and I. We were innocently standing around the kitchen one day when just as I walked past the table where her cup was, the cup suddenly cracked. Not a hairline crack. But a real split at the mouth of the cup. She screamed and called me names. Typical day at home, really.

3. The morning crowd is hell crazy. Everyone's trying to get in front of everyone else. My pet peeve? People who squeeze to the front of the escalator queue to stand on the right side and not walk, leaving a large gap between them and the people in front who have walked up. The "keep left, walk right" rule doesn't apply here. We should send these Singaporeans to japan. Then it'll be really fun to watch the Japanese give them the evil eye when these Singaporeans don't abide by the social ettiquette rules, esp the part where the japanese queue to even just enter the trains and no one tries to make a dash for the door from the escalator when the door closing alarm is on. Yesh, I've been to Japan. Yesh, all that is true. Japanese teens, adults, elderlys and even children are well-trained in social ettiquette. Even when they cross the roads, they keep left. It was obvious enough at the airport alone and I was seriously impressed. On the other hand, it's scary and almost robotic-like to the state where you feel pressured to follow everyone else. You really have to admire the system there even if you hate them due to the Jap occupation (to 2LT Ng: Sir, are you reading this?)

4. Everyone's a walking dead in the morning. I'm standing at the coffee queue, obviously zombified. All I can hear all the other orders by people in the queue. "Kopi.. Give me 2" "Kopi-O" "Auntie, one.. No. two Kopi-Gao" (I wonder if there's such a thing is Kopi-Gao*3). And you can practically see the faces all light up right after the coffee is delivered to their hands. Wonder if there's a market for coffee bean air freshener. Hallo Coffee Addicts!

5. And ppl like to shit in the office toilet in the morning. Quirk? I don't know. But it's good without a doubt. Get the shit out of your system in the morning (pun intended). Think the lady in the cubicle next to me was doing just that. When I left the toilet, I heard someone in the pantry.. Was wondering if it was the buddy of mine in the toilet but a sound from the men's toilet threw me off. Someone was shaving. An electric shaver. Not an electric toothbrush, I assure you. I know the sound of an electric toothbrush. It was an electric shaver in the office toilet. Nutters. Then when I looked behind me, it was no "buddy from the toilet" but merely Kenny. Ahahahaha.
*****
And that's just part 1 of Morning Quirks. But anywayz, I would want to go back to Japan.. Miss the robotic neatness of the social system.. Even the quirks of the shinjuki night crowds.. Then I want to finally go to harajuku and akihabara. Fashion and electronics. Find Mr Iron Chef's restaurant and have a nice french meal though it's freaking ex.

Btw, my dear friends in america. Just a reminder. Tip your waiters! It's not singapore and waiters in restaurants depend on tips. Be generous. If you get a nice waiter or waitress, tip at least 17%. Norm is 15%, I think. If you can, go for 20%. Bring a smile to someone. If you don't want to tip, I suggest MacDonalds. Wanna know why I'm thinking of this? Read waiter's rant. And trust me, I did tip when in the states as long as it's not fast food. Tony Roma's ribs got 15% from my dad. The 4 mugs of steaming hot choc at the café at victoria's peak in SF got about 20% tip. (the ambience was nice and the waitress even nicer).
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Afternoon stress: 1520 hrs
After 2 hours of formatting, I'm growing white hair.. Nearly saved the document as a temp file and closed it. When I realized what I nearly did, I started laughing and crying. Sign of my stress level. Daryl says his friend is a CFO aka chief filing officer. Doesn't that then make me a CEO, chief editing officer? Yesh, I'm that stressed and hysterical to the point where I'm once again very unfunny but still laughing nevertheless. My hands are shaking now even as I bring the tea to my lips. And I'm just hugging the back of the chair next to me.. It's soft.. I want that big doggie I saw at Cine.. I am sooooo going back to buy it for myself. Mom's sure to scream at me for buying toys but I'm stressed and I want a big doggie.

If there's anything to look forward to, it's shopping this Sunday with mom. Going to get my sch uniform aka plain round-neck tops from Gio. White, black, pink, yellow.. Maybe blue and green too. That'll be $68.40 if I buy all the 6 colors from OG. Then got "Batman Begins" next Thurs with the IT dudes. Robert's paying.. Yay!
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Before end of work: 1700 hrs
Just slacking around for now.. Thinking about stuff that has happened when I suddenly thought of the fight between Teik and i. we fight for fun, ya know, the typical throw a punch around, slapping of heads, headbutting, pushing.. But that previous one was hilarious. I tried to bite him after he kept annoying me with the green light saber. He retaliate with biting as well while grabbing my left arm. Thinking faster, I push his forehead back with my right hand. He then tried to bite my right arm. Without hesitation, my left hand was in the perfect position and I grabbed part of the light saber in his hands, turned my wrist and jammed the green tip into one of his nostrils. We both paused, let go and burst out laughter. You have to imagine all this happening while I sat on the floor next to the 2-seater armchair where he was lying down.

Daryl has a chinese name. xiao hei (little black). Annabel and I are tearing from laughter again. Then he called this caucasian ali baba.. You can imagine how noisy we are.. cy's church jokes were bad enough.. Plus the classic thing that robert pulled off just now. Annabel wanted to go for seconds but was too embarrassed to. So she pulled daryl along, tried to make him take the plate and food for her. Daryl decided against it so he came back to where I was chatting with Robert. When Annabel was walking back, Robert suddenly bellowed, "SECOND HELPINGS??" daryl and I flushed immediately and burst out laughter to the bewilderment of the IT staff standing near us. I guess it's 'cos second helpings are no big deal to the IT staff since it's the norm. they apparantly eat the most. I would think so too.. It's all guys save for nancy and grace.

on a closing note, the consultant they hired recently is quite cute.. But he's malay. We exchanged smiles a couple of times during lunch today. It's one of those see-cannot-touch type. sighz. besides, he'll just leave the bank once his work is done. did i mention that he's a clumsy gentleman? i once held the door for him and when he walked through, he realized what he did. immediately, he came back, took the door over and let me out. cute.. ahahaha.