After another lesson of DIY HTML, my news site undergoes a revamp and takes on a whole new image. I have also found another toy to add to the page in the form of a tagboard – what fun. Hopefully this will encourage some feedback from more of my readers that will not only help with my motivation levels, but hopefully get me some constructive criticism on how I can make the site better with my limited resources… maybe I should start recruiting for contributors soon. One step at a time though.

Another job interview is added to my list of experiences today. I don’t even seem to get nervous for them any more. Is that an indication of my immunity to the recruitment processes and what rewards they may or may not bring or just that I don’t care any more about what happens? Oh well, hopefully they will put me out of my misery soon. Did get some good news though – I passed my first accounting exam and got a great 82% mark on my last assignment, so if all else fails, I can go and make myself a bookkeeper and number crunch for the rest of my days!

I’ve started writing “Em’s Shorts” – a collection of short stories. After being accused of being a boring TVB-esque writer recently, I think it’s about time I injected a bit of life into my writing so I am currently dreaming about these scenes and how I can add a bit of spice, mystery and action into my stories. Not sure if I will post them here yet, maybe when it’s complete. In the meantime, you can read the work in progress for the first story “Eighteen Hours” over at SPCNET.

Another achievement – I drove a car again for the first time in months on Friday. All in preparation for a possible project I may have to do at one of the other offices. My boss is still looking after me, even though I only have a couple more weeks with her. Funny how you never forget the motions for things like driving and riding a bike, just becomes second nature. WATCH OUT BRITAIN’S MOTORISTS…. Em is back on the roads! Hahahahaha….

Finally gotten round to adding some links to this page... this html lark isn't that bad, well nothing that a bit of strategic cutting and pasting can't fix.

Spent the evening looking for car and house insurance quotes. What an arduous task, and like my brother says it's totally random number generation. How I can plug all my details into an online quoting site and get quotes that range from £400 to £800 for the same people and the same car is totally beyond me. Looks like it's down to the same old candidates again - I really wonder how those companies that charge twice as much manage to get away with it. I guess there must be suckers out there who still just go for the first quote that they come across. They're smart in that they don't need to waste hours sifting through all these sites answering the same questions over and over again. Cars... too expensive. Why can't we just have a decent public transport system like Hong Kong and then we wouldn't have to waste so much time, money and energy on these rustbuckets.

Talking of Hong Kong, it was officially declared free from SARS by the WHO today after 20 days without any new cases. Yay... hope things pick up for them, but I really hope they don't let their hygiene standards slip again. It would be tragic if it all started again because of a fall back to the old ways.

Labels: hong kong

For some reason my eyes are really sore today (the reason is hay fever + boredom + demotivation), so it’s affecting my concentration levels. Lacking direction in my life doesn’t help either as I’m having another of my “slipping” days….

It’s like I’ve been living some sort of double life lately as I really empathise with Superman. My day job is pretty mundane as I don’t have any opportunities at the moment to get in and do some real work. I shouldn’t really be complaining as it pays the bills, but sometimes I do want to end the day thinking that I have done a REALLY FULFILLING day’s work instead of coming in, doing some stuff that no-one really cares about and then going home again. Thing is, no-one wants to let me do that, even though I have applied for every job under the sun that I know I can handle. (Start rant….) Jeez, it’s not as though I am out of my depth, I have the intelligence, I have the sense, I have a degree, I got the top grading in my appraisal, I’m prepared to try anything…(sigh) I just hope my yellow skin has nothing to do with my failure. I know life is about waiting for opportunities and maybe they will never come along, but too much waiting about with absolutely nothing I can do about it just frustrates me wildly.

My “night job” with my news translations and site-building and being an unpaid ambassador for the world of TVB and Hong Kong entertainment has taken a bit of a leap lately with my news site getting some three to four hundred hits a day. It’s quite encouraging and some nice feedback as ever is giving me the greatest of motivation to keep doing it. My ultimate wish would be for some news agency to come across it and to offer me a full time job as a translator – I could quite happily sit and translate news articles all day and get paid for it. Unfortunately jobs like that are few and far between and probably don’t pay that well. Okay, I’ll dream all about it later on tonight when I’m sleeping…

I’ve teamed up with a fellow site-building-TVB-fanatic MetalAZNWarrior who has helped me in our first co-produced website for the new show “The W Files”. He did most of the work really, I just did a load of translations and summaries and the like, but it’s turned out very well and we’re both pretty pleased with it. I’ve been keeping up with my writing as well, with Different Worlds coming along well and someone reviving the other Round Robin fanfiction that has been written over on SPCNET. I think that my own story “Curse of the Blade” will be shelved indefinitely as I really don’t think anyone cares about it and even though the plot is there, it isn’t that great. Maybe I should start on “Stardust Daydreams” or “Stardust Dreams 2” instead as that seemed to have had a better reception and I’m a little more comfortable with writing modern stuff. Hmm… then there’s the Pak Family mysteries as well… my brain just churns out far too much stuff that I really can’t keep up with.

Maybe I’ll start writing some short stories to put up here and liven this page up a little bit for those people who do actually read this blog…

AACHOOO!!!
snif snif...
*blow nose hard*
rub rub
itch itch....
flit flit flit
Woo hoo... the sun comes out and my two worst fears come out to get me with a vengeance - hay fever and moths.
Fantastic.
Roll on Winter...

My boss is such a lovely lady... shame I won't be on her team for much longer.
Anyway...

I am happy tonight, even though I still have most of my assignment left to do and not very much time left to do it. Probably because I've met some really nice people online recently and finally got to chat to some of the 'names' from SPCNET whose posts I read every day but never really got to know them. Oh, and it might have something to do with this "legendary" status that some of them seem to have raised me to. Hee hee... pretty mad! What's even more mad about them is that they aren't ordinary people either - some of them aren't even people... there is a cheesecake, a cow, a spirit possessed by a certain Miss Hong Kong, some moogles, a donkey and some TV fans.... before you send for the men in white coats (again) take a look here ---> Spcnet Fight Club and things may become a little bit clearer. Okay, maybe not...

I really need to get fit... I look down at my belly and really think that I might be pregnant sometimes (for those who know me - don't start panicking, I am NOT PREGNANT yet.....). I've started drinking apple juice again, in the hope it will once again put me in the frame of mind (okay, it's healthier than Fanta) to move my heavy butt and go swimming or jogging or something. And Tesco were doing three packs for £2 had something to do with it as well... but the chocolate machine getting stuck at work and forcing me to buy TWO packs of Maltesers when I only wanted one doesn't help. (Any excuse for more chocolate, but better get it in before the government start taxing it.)

Hoorah, we don't join the Euro just yet. It was announced today that the UK "isn't ready". For some reason I'm a staunch anti-Euro supporter. Something about the British Identity maybe, even if it means I end up paying twice as much interest on our mortgage than our European neighbours. Or maybe I don't like the idea of some guy in Belgium telling me how much money I should be paying them. At least back here, we voted these guys in so we can't complain. Why am I talking politics?

Oh well, this site is about to go into maintenance so better save and publish this. I must resist the urge to procrastinate further and type more junk and get my head down to this essay about costing.... *yawn* I'm feeling sleepy already...

My way out seems a little clearer now because after writing my little frog extract yesterday, as if by magic an opportunity seems to have sprung from nowhere for this little frogette to take the next step up the wall. Well, if all goes well that is (no pun intended). As usual I am not pinning any hopes on this again just in case it happens to be another hollow promise. I’ve had so many of them now it is becoming the norm.

In the meantime, I sit and wait for the next task if any to be tossed my way and try to work out more creative ways of justifying my existence here.
Tum te tum...

Labels: frog

I am stewing.
I don’t have anyone here to voice off at so I voice off at a word document. Well at least this way it seems like I am doing some work , seeing as there is nothing else for me to do at the moment and if I am sitting here typing away then I am giving people the impression that this is actually constructive.

It appears that once again, everything I have done has been wasted. I am seriously beginning to wonder if I really have reached my limit in this company and the three year cycle has come round again when it is time to fall back to the bottom of the well and start climbing again. Like the frog – the top of the well seems to get closer, but the slippery walls full of spiny toads eager to stop me or push me back down again are too hard and I can only take so many setbacks before I decide to let go and start again. This has been my third attempt to regain my life and my career, but time ticks away and one day this over-zealous frog will run out of time or lose hope altogether of ever leaving this well and just adapt to the simple, adequate but lowly life at the bottom of the well. This frog started off so well in life, things were great in the lily pond where she was born, but the day she lost her way and fell into the well is to haunt her for the rest of her life… or until she gets out.

Maybe the frog can be more devious, like other frogs before her and risked being eaten or injured in exchange for befriending the spiny toads and riding up to the top on their backs. Or perhaps follow the paths of other lucky frogs who find a rough ridge that can take them directly up without slipping down again. This frog is too careful, too principled, too stubborn… and this leads to only one thing… her downfall – literally, back to the bottom of the smelly well.

There are other frogs at the bottom of the well. Many are happy to live there and stay there in comfort and security without the need to waste energy trying to scale the walls of the well. I try to talk to the other frogs, but they listen and understand, but can’t help. Some frogs higher up the wall try to help, or at least make out that they are trying to help, but they fear that I will climb above them or they favour other frogs on the wall who they help up. Their help is often flawed, or lead to yet another slippery path back to where I started from. Maybe I should start saving energy.

I am looking for other routes, exchanging some of my possessions for an alternative way out, a route to another well, another tunnel or another hole that may be easier to climb out of. However, the alternative routes are hard and slower than the progress on the route I know. Yet there are no guarantees that they will lead to a way out. If I choose another well, how do I know that it may not be an even taller, more slippery well that I will tunnel to. Anyway, frogs aren’t born to tunnel and this will just cause injury and pain. Is this worth the effort to another uncertain future?

This frog doesn’t know what to do…

Labels: frog

Wow! What a lovely weekend it has been, lovely warm sunshine and hot hot hot... almost feels like I am back in Hong Kong again! Haven't had much time to go out and get myself browned off, but the warm weather still helps to put me in a pleasant mood. Hope it lasts, but knowing how changeable the great British weather is, then I'm sure the heavens will start opening pretty soon!

With our every last penny ploughed into that UPVC structure boldly standing behind our house, it doesn't look like we'll be jetting off anywhere this year. Trust good old TVB to come up with just the thing to keep me occupied over the long summer evenings. With quality productions like "Greed Mask" and "The W files", I'll be making sure I don't do any work (hmm... maybe I shouldn't put that on the agenda) and hiding from the midsummer sunshine (or should that be midsummer showers?). Then there's all that updating to do on my website as well... yay! A summer of entertainment starts here!! Who needs holidays? (Em attempts to console herself...)

Despite the hot weather, my hay fever hasn't been too bad, which is pretty cool. The odd sneeze here and there, but nothing as bad as I used to get. Maybe what they say about hayfever is right - maybe its effects do wear off after a while... hope so!
The other bain of summer is here to haunt me as I encountered my first 'moth in my room' for the year.
I hate them so much.... ugh!
So as soon as it goes dark, even if it is still sweltering in my room, the window is shut! I will not run the risk of those horrible things flitting around in my room, I'd rather boil or drown in a pool of my own sweat. Just treat it like a sauna! Better than facing the prospect of a stupid flitty moth in my room when I am trying to sleep...