Clueless Diva

How hectic an office can get 2 days before Chinese New Year?

19/01/2004
0820: People starts milling in and shares unforgettable angpow moments. I personally think it is pretty pathetic to discuss about this sort of thing. They were swapping horror stories on children opening up their ang pow and screamed, 'Ma, it is only 2 dollars!'

0840: I am still listening to the horror stories with my brekky at hand.

0900: Boss came and screamed the whole place down. I remembered I still owed him some work. Damn.

0930: I handed in some sketchy work and endured some earful from him. His scoldings were paler than usual, and I gathered it must be from the impending Chinese New Year that he is laxing in his pitch and stress level.

1000: Colleague sitting next to me asked me about mandarin orange sizes and I told her I dun give a damn. I informed her that there are no positive relation between the size of the mandarin orange and the size of the 'meat' inside an ang pow.

1100: Rushing to hand in the pricelist for our company products for 2004 and was hugely distracted chatting on ICQ and finalising the menu for Annual Dinner 2004.

1130: Boss screamed again and refused to open a Muslim table for our 2 Muslim staff for the Annual Dinner. Ok, have to make do. Contigency plans to takeaway premium Muslim cuisine from the hawker centre. Informed the Muslim staff and they seemed to understand my English. Great! :)

1200: Colleagues informed me that there will be an informal Chinese New Year gathering lunch at the conference room later. They are ordering in KFC, Canadian pizza and some other goodies. Cursed politely and softly as I have brought my lunch. I marched to stuff my lunch into the fridge and continued on my pricelist. Reminded myself not to spend too much time on the pricelist as it would look highly suspicious why I need to take 2 hours to update one freaking list. Had a chat with T on ICQ as she just shifted house.

1330: After a high fat lunch, I decided to change my things-to-do. I chased Boss for his confirmation on advertisements and rushed to confirm artwork. Lotsa paperwork. ICQ encountered technical difficulties.

1400: Office fax machine ran out of toner and they just informed me,' Oops, Eliss, I forgot to inform you that we have ran out of toner totally.' Great. Grabbed another fax machine which was hardly in use and plugged it in while nagging them to inform me early next time. Am I really working in an office or babysitting a bunch of children?

1500: ICQ really went down and I pointed my little finger at the PC. Grabbed my notepad and went to arrange for lucky draw for all sponsored presents to be used on the Annual Dinner. First prize is a mini Sanyo fridge. Hope I dun get it. I have got my eyes on the mini personal fridge which can hold 6 cans of drinks. It would be nice to stash it in my room and be cut off from my family forever.

1630: Somehow or rather, I have been ordered to oversee the decoration of the office. Hangings up. Checked. Ying liu flowered and decorations up. Checked. All other miscellaneous stuff done. Checked.

1730: Punch card machine sang and I am ready to go Orchard for my pedicure. Yeh!!!!!