i’ve become annoying and used the ubiquitous @ xxx that government bodies and organizations seem to love these days. the spelling proficiency of our nation has a strange inverse relationship to literacy rates. just think of smartass “convergent” names like “skindulgence” which i saw the other day and the like. anyway.

PR a bit… haha

i’ve survived my first week of work and i actually think i may have chanced upon a happy niche for myself! things have been great, largely thanks to a team of “same wavelength” colleagues. to illustrate, our office is now known affectionately as “base camp” and sabrina, one of the managers, refers to the stickiness of problems in terms of climbing lingo: “i think that’s a 6b+ problem ah; wa lau! this one 8a man!”. here, people actually exemplify the oft-touted but less practised “work-life balance”. training is encouraged and everyone went play floorball before lunch today (i’m sat this one out to rest for my 20km run after work–it’s not an excuse to nuah btw. jane isn’t superhuman! =P). it’s totally cool that everyone’s passionate about the outdoors, physically fit, into sports and has a particular “pet” adventure sport where their expertise runs! it’s such a far cry from my last job, where i felt uncomfortable not doing voluntary O.T like everyone else and left on time instead to go for training. it’s great to no longer be the weird odd one out. =)

introducing…

pringles!

this is pringles, my rp bear. he resides permanently in my harness bag and he doesn’t tend to do very much except stare pensively into space, through his little mesh peep holes. in the forseeable future, he’ll make a good fish tank algae scrubber for the office. i’m sure he’s pretty absorbent.

assorted fishies!

the office pets! there’s the tank of angel fish that just stay motionless alot, sort of like pringles, plus 1 x sucker fish that was seconded from a tank in the pantry to do the job of eating the tank algae. so far, it has been rather inefficient, which is why pringles may have to be activated very soon. there’s also a landscaped tank of teeny fish that no one can see, or pays any attention to.

seung!

seung joined rp at the same time as me, but as you can tell, for some inexplicable reason, he’s experiencing some preliminary work stress. it could be because he’s the honorary office “receptionist”, since the open door literally bangs smack into his desk. i’m not too sure if it’s the work stress, or if he’s manifesting some sort of disturbing psychotic tendency. he’s actually an avid biker. both the engine type and the manual huff-and-puff kind, hence explaining the weirdass bike part he’s holding. i’m sure load-testing on parts has achieved a measure of technological advancement, so he’s still a little old school here.

sab!

this is sabrina, who deserves special mention as the FIRST BUYER OF THE TEAM’S 2008 FUNDRAISING CALENDAR (btw, if you should require a super gorgeous wall calendar replete with awesome climbing shots taken by the team, which we ALL do, since calendars are such an important staple of life, contact us to purchase a copy and contribute to the everest expedition! more shameless PR. =D) since she was the VERY FIRST BUYER, sabrina received a totally cute yellow “hug me” teddy bear wall hook. she’s into collecting wall hooks. people have all sorts of collecting hobbies these days: stamps, antique toys, college degrees, random bed partners, and now, wall hooks. so i thought cute bear wall hook was really sweet, until the warped recesses of sabrina’s mind popped to the fore and she had to remark:

“eh the bear like a bit obscene hor?”

said offending bear.

and that, from the person who has been asking people rather coquettishly: “do you want my buns? they’re sticky and sweet”…

wall hooks aside, sab is the culprit behind all the dive gear clogging my work space, but since she’s also a contact rugby player, i try not to whine too loudly about that fact:

fortunately, i thrive in mess, sort of like log moss and leaf litter insects, so i’ve pretty much settled into our storeroom of an office.

dinosaur!

this is david, better known as “giant david”. others get lazy and abbreviate that to “GD”, which is rather unfortunate, since that acronym has been misinterpreted before as “GoonDu”. he’s also my reporting officer, so i try not to be too blunt about the fact that huge people should not wear size S t-shirts for the sake of everyone else’s optical comfort. david’s the antarctica man, having skiied to the south pole in 2000, but his “waaaaa” factor is severely downgraded by his obsession with the “salted egg superman”. i guess too many years in OBS instills a sort of strange ultraman idolatry.

michael!

this is michael. he’s the damn zai rock climber in the dept. in real life, he’s pretty hamsum and lean (0% fat content! don’t play play…), but he has ruined his image here by choosing to take the “sensitive new age guy” thing one step too far. i maintain that guys and cuddly bears don’t go together. those cuddly bears should join pringles in the tank algae cleaning brigade. one might even mistake michael for a hongkong superstar, especially since he insists on speaking in a faux hongkee accent, ala glenn ong’s long dead and gone honky-tonk man.

xinyi!

this is xinyi. see what i mean by guys and cuddly toys don’t go together? and notice that the office is filled with an incongruous mix of outdoor equipment, fish and stuffed toys. xinyi is my carbo-junkie partner in crime, but it’s less bad for her than it is for me, since she’s about the size of yihui divided by three. together, xinyi, michael, david and sab make up the “lim” family, cuz they’re all of the same surname. xinyi is the younglim, sab is the old lim, david is the dinosaur lim and michael’s the punklim, all for rather obvious reasons. haha

the fallen comrade!

then there’s jean, the adventure racer of the group and i haven’t seen her yet cuz she’s on mc from a burn! aieeeee… i hope she recuperates soon and comes back to work before my image of her gets increasingly distorted… for now, she will have to be represented by her bike!

the boss man…

finally, there’s wilson, the boss man. he’s the owner of all the fish in the office. i should hold my peace about him, for fear of future repurcussions. well, but if door decorations make the man, then he is damn cartoon. hurhur.

so that’s more or less my dept and no office can be complete without it’s very own, totally out of point, banana-shaped door sign:

=)