Ever since Remus had explained what cancer was, James had insisted on claiming everything from mosquito bites to the common cold was rooted in it. Despite Remus’ subsequent attempts to impress upon him the seriousness of the condition, James persisted, and everybody else ignored him. Except for Lily, who occasionally slapped him across the back of the head and said that if anybody at Hogwarts has a cancerous growth, it was James, who had taught it to talk and wear its hair badly.

SOURCE

ON EMPLOYMENT

Everybody IS dispensable so never let an affected attitude get the best of you.

The opportunity to learn loads may compensate for a small paycheck.

Trite, but it will always be in your favour to take things positively. Learn to enjoy, love and thrive on the things you must come to expect – rushing deadlines, rejected ideas, mornings, people and rules – taking them in your stride like a habit will give your productivity a wonderful momentum.

Suss a company out before any formal commitments are made during the interview – think of it as a demilitarised zone slightly skewed in the employer’s favour. Making an amicable impression should not take precedence over exercising good judgement. Is the workplace bursting with creative energy? Can you hang out with the crowd? Is your potential boss rude and stupid and old and SMELLY?? Does he, horrors, BORE you? Turn tail politely but immediately!

It is essential to assimilate (yes, conform. never expect to mould a workplace to your whims.) well into the office, but do not allow anything or anyone to make you feel uncomfortable in a personal way. If your superior being needlessly condescending and impolite gits at yer, leave. Uncomfortable with an employer keeping cctv tabs on you from his pervert private room? Leave. The last resort is the only resort. Your work and psyche will be affected if you are constantly surly and petulant.

Be receptive to new ideas, suggestions and advice, even the seemingly dubious. Never take criticism personally. Be mindlessly experimental but after that, discerning enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Try strange things, so that you may always be in wonder. Beware merely hoarding through. inspiration is only precious when passed through the filters of your processes and thoughts, and crystallised into something original.

Be visionary. Creative groundwork can be foolish and fearless but it should birth a vision, grounded in a flawless concept (am i waxing too abstract?) plan the skeleton of your execution meticulously, but keep its tendrils fluid because you will have to improvise to changing contexts.

WORK. YOUR. ASS. OFF. And some more. Working smart does not mean working less, just means you milk each second you have for what it’s worth.

Allow for the fact that however eager-to-please, competent and tolerant you may be, there exist labyrinths of stupidity too dense to penetrate, too complex to navigate. Owners of these intellectual cesspools will give you much shit and frustration, so flee or forever hold your peace.

Try to love your job and colleagues.

PS: I never want to grow up T_T

HOME ALONE AGAIN

The flu is here again, particularly infectious strain it seems. Jeremy’s just started burning up while I’m on my second box of Panadol and zillionth favour from Shirley at work. It’s been a lonely mid-week, can’t wait for the parents to get back from the casino tomorrow.

In their absence I am putting Silas through his first working diet. As we’re properly dysfunctional, there is no agreed-upon schedule for feeding the cat. Everyone tops the food bowl up when they wake/before sleeping/during dinnertime and owing to our huge variety of body clocks, Silas eats about ten meals daily. Until tomorrow, however, all his ration are monopolise by me.

You don’t need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, simply wait. Don’t even wait. Be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

~ Franz Kafka

I return perpetually to this paragraph when I am helpless and frustrated (thankfully rarely) ; it is luminescent.

MURPHY’S LAW

Dad brings home lovely stacks of notepads all the time and I am keeping at least three journals running concurrently but these random tons of paper lying around never seem to lie around when you really need them, and you end up buying more or (in a fit of miserly pique) using your palms in exasperation.

MP2007

Going through an old playlist, getting struck by two years of memories so vivid, so pertinent and visceral, they are almost tactile. I can feel them as if they have textures, textures rubbing against against my calloused fingertips. Pervasive memories like lucid dreams. Entering Lasalle and making friends with Agri. Tim – rain, white sheets and riding horses. Starbucks Liat. Painting the school at night with Hazel and Sheryl and getting busted the day after. Joe and excesses. Sheena and mister tea afternoons. Holding on to Jinesh as he goes down the other fork in our crossroads.

In case you were wondering, it is 周杰倫 (duh!)

Life hasn’t had a soundtrack lately, which is just as well. I want to forget this terrible stasis.

Much empty love!

“Tell me how you could say such a thing,” Naoko said, staring at the ground beneath her feet. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ‘Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.’ What’s the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I’d fall apart. I’ve always lived like this, and it’s the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I’d never find my way back. I’d go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can’t you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can’t see that?”

-Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

TERM BREAK

First week away from school and I have been… unproductive – Silas in the day, frappas in the afternoon, and beers all night, talking to Adam who tells me too much fun will kill me. “If this is fun for you, you need to stop having so much of it”, sniffed Jinesh as we drove to spend a Holland Village Sunday, throwing our cares into the weekend air.

In the Marmalade Pantry he sniffs again abstrusely at my “unadventurous” taste, judging and dismissing my brownie from beyond a sticky red date toffee pudding. All this pomp and circumstance, yet I was sitting on a plastic Ikea chair (and also I don’t like cake). Sunday afternoon sullenness.

Moderation and self-discipline. What are they? How can one achieve these qualities/elevated states of being/enlightened modes of thinking?