Jinx This

What has been going on with me lately? Well you heard what I said about packing up to a new workplace? Well I did it again. Certainly no chance to wallow in a rut.

So far though I've got to say things haven't been going well.

Seem to have brought along my infamous jinx. Never considered myself all that lucky. In fact, I would consider myself one of those unfortunate fellas who - though through no fault of theirs - seem to attract minor calamities at work.

It's practically a mutant power.

Crazy lil misadventures happen when I'm around. Reason enough that I've seen most everything written in the medical textbook! I just have to mention some rare isolated disease only to have it falling magically into my lap just the next morning. Almost uncanny how such pretenatural events occur! Hoped and prayed that particular hoodoo would leave me as I hastily decamped from my old hunting grounds but that jinx seems to have stuck.


Dammit. Why am I always the unlucky one found hanging outside the train!?
Of course I've gained no little notoriety. Talk about instant celeb fame as word of my latest mishaps have spread like wildfire through the workforce. Relative strangers are even coming to offer their condolences over my magical double whammy.

Wait. I haven't even started talking about the horrible hours at work yet! Think 12-hour slaveworking days. Deja vu? Seems like my long-forgotten days of sweatshop internship are making a comeback.

Working hard as hell - and all for my pitifully meagre wages that's shrinking considerably with rising economic costs. Soon I'd be lucky to be able to afford a grain of rice per week.

Gotta look on the bright side. Guess I'll lose weight that way.

Obviously have far too many things nagging on my mind recently to bother about the recent fuel increase. So you can imagine how pissed I was to have finished work late again yesterday only to run into penny-pinching city folk who caused massive bumper-bumper traffic jams just to save a coupla bucks on fuel. Definitely no patience to line up in the rolling thunderstorm just to get 20 dollars worth of gas.

Of course if I had a huge four-wheeler truck that could crush minute tinkertoy cars, there might have been less of a traffic jam and more of a pile-up.

Little Men

They say behind every hardened cynic is a disappointed idealist.

And I've come to believe that it is true.

Before my long-ago disillusionment with love, I believe that my annual subscription with Romantics Anonymous was quite alive and well - as was my subtly rose-tinted glasses. Don't know when it happened but it probably began with the discovery of that treasure trove in my mother's old library. No diamonds nor pearls but novels and essays well beyond price, tattered and worn with years of inattention.

Though the pages were creased with age - and riddled with silverfish, they seemed like newly minted friends. And so they have remained to this day cloistered in my own library now.

Started with the regular books boys are handed at a certain age - almost a rite of passage actually. Spent hours with David Balfour on the seas in Kidnapped, ran through the streets of revolutionary Paris with Sydney Carton in the Tale of Two Cities - and of course seeking cold revenge diabolically plotted with the Count of Monte Cristo.


Did someone call?
But the books that have remained with me till now isn't regularly read by boys of all ages. Little Women. Even Little Men. What Katy Did. And of course our Anne of Green Gables.

Though suspense and intrigue, spies and kidnappers might interest me, I've always preferred books with family and friends, home and hearth at heart. Deep down, I've always been a homebody after all. So the tales of the March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy - have remained close at heart. Can almost recite by heart every line from the first chapter right from their complaint about Christmas not being Christmas without presents.

Of course I've always thought that Jo should have ended up with Laurie - though a contrary M. Alcott determinedly switched her suitors halfway ( despite the expectations of her loyal readers ) to have her ending up with a hitherto unknown german professor.

But some characters are always meant to be together - finding personalities and words of their own - they rebel openly against the wishes of the author sometimes. Have to say fortunately not every author purposely prevents a happy ending for her star-crossed lovers. After all our red-headed orphan Anne Shirley managed to find her perfect match in childhood rival Gilbert Blythe forsaking sunbursts and marble halls for a love to last with the boy she once smashed her slate over.


Romantic ideals. In her childish fantasies, Anne once wished for a dark, dashing, thoroughly wicked suitor not realizing that her heart actually lay with the patient sweet man who sacrificed so much for her - and waited long enough for her to finally come to her senses. Reason enough that I just spent a day or two reading through my old copy of Green Gables.

And yes, don't tell anyone but I am a closet romantic still.

Ruts

I like ruts.

Given a chance I'd probably wallow happily in a deep-old rut for decades.

Yet I have changed my place of work almost four times in that many years. Hardly have time to really settle in before I'm packing it up again. All for the sake of career advancement.

Damn. I hate the wandering nomadic life. I hate living out of what amounts to a suitcase for months. I hate not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. I hate picking up the threads of a new life in a fuckin foreign land with perfect strangers I don't know.

After all I don't enjoy change. Seriously never liked them. Unlike my mother who relishes challenges and deplores ruts, I don't need excitement and change in my life once every little while.


I know it's crummy, stinky and dirty but I love my rut!
Do I really have to move?
Dull doldrums are for me. Seriously, the duller the better. Guess I was made out to be what used to be the typical Japanese salaryman - that efficient lil cog in the monstrously large machine working 9 to 5 clocking in with the same dull routine every day from womb to tomb. Staying in the same town for decades while bringing up a multi-generational family - becoming almost a permanent fixture in the community.

That's for me. I like digging deep solid roots into a place.

Would be cool to hear of people talking of the old Dr Paul pottering about in his dignified brownstone decades from now.

Hell, that old coot, he's been living there for years. Looks damned serious but wouldn't you know, he actually trips the mischievious vandals who skate by with his cane!

Yeah, that old man :)

Miss Whatever

This afternoon I had the most interesting late lunch verging on tea. Seriously. There has to be a term for that... tench? Lea? I'm sure some brilliant wordsmith will soon come up with a funky neologism.

But I digress. What made the bland Earl Grey and scones I was having far more intriguing was the fact that I sat right next to a couple of girls on the table next to me. Little miss fashionistas from their perfectly coiffed socialite curls to the tip of their Manolo Blahniks. Designer clothes, matching handbags and strictly la-di-da manners all around.


Gossip Girls!
Lean closer and you'd hear this though.

Socialite #1 : Good fucking God. That Fee is such a bitch. Could you imagine she wouldn't let me sit near her in class?
Socialite #2 : Can't see what Hafiz sees in her! Saw him asking her out for a movie. Is he blind?
Socialite #1 : Eeeww. Fee is so not my friend, you know or not. She is so uninvited to my party next week.

Guess we have the dubious honour of hosting our very own Gossip Girls in the city. You'd have expected such a conversation coming from the sultry singletons of Sex and the City chattering like magpies over their men over cosmos.

The sad thing is the girls with their curled-lip sneers and bitchy attitude were all of 13. If even that.

Shocking, I know. Guess what they warn me about all-girl schools could be true. I had this sudden horrible vision of the future with my niece Chatty Carmen - and even my imaginary daughter Blair - emulating such snotty grown-up behaviour at that premature age!

The idea of any daughter of mine acting in such a manner at 13 had me suffering a keen spasm! Not that they are entirely to blame.

Exposed to the ever-exploitative media at such an early age, can we really blame the terrible tweens for growing up that fast? Fed on a diet of mean girls, diva costumes and labeled handbags ( much more suited for ladies twice their age ), they can't help but fall heedlessly into the consumerist trap. Morphing into mini-socialites toting Pradas and piercing sarcasm.

I can't help but wish they'd spend more time enjoying their playful childhood rather than be thrust into a nasty world of cliques, cats and cads! Why the mindless rush to grow up? There's time enough to be concerned with guys, girlfriends and gossip. Certainly don't hope for a naive innocent but there has to be a nice balance between a country Pollyanna - and the horrific Miss Whatevers I saw.

Shouldn't there be enough time yet to play with the dolls rather than the boys?

The Relationship Ultimatum

Sometimes when I watch couples fight, I have a rotten - though unbidden - tendency to eavesdrop. Raucous public altercations in parking lots inevitably draw the eye - and the ears - though you try to resist the urge. Yes, call me a snoop if you wish but admit it, bet most of you guys do it too.

But when you have two guys almost coming to fisticuffs while yelling tearful endearments interspersed with angry accusations, you know you simply can't help but look.


Dammit I saw you cheat on me with that guy!
There is a shameless little voyeur in all of us that delights in that bit of schadenfreude - kinda like errant motorists who disregard moving traffic to stop and stare at horrific accidents ( while busy taking down numbers for their next lottery ). Easy enough to see how those tattle-tale tabloids with the misfortunes of the rich & famous can sell so well.

Some watch these unfolding calamities with a sense of dread hoping that it'll never occur in their lives. A futile attempt since I think most of us are prone to making just the same foolish mistakes. And to have others stare agog from the sidelines as we fall clumsily into the same trap.

Me, I even get to attend the painful aftermath - after one or the other ends up in the hospital with black bruises over their eyes. If not worse. Think multi-storey bungee jump without the rope cord. Makes for an interesting clerking that's for sure.

What I find most irksome ( and commonplace! ) though is the fact that overwrought lovers tend to toss out dramatic ultimatums like gauntlets in the fiery midst of battle.

Suicidal Gal : If you leave me, I'll end my life. I'll take a leap off this lover's balcony! I swear I will.

Of course the usual reply to such unprecedented hysteria would be an admonish, some cajolery and a heartfelt plea for her return to sanity. Usually delivered with a nervous stutter. Maybe an apology or two lest she end up a juicy red roadkill splat on the unforgiving stone sidewalk below.

Fortunate though that she doesn't have a beau with a nasty practical bent like me. Else she would have received a far different answer - especially since I simply can't abide ultimatums.

Suicidal Gal : If you leave me, I'll end my life. I'll take a leap off this lover's balcony! I swear I will.
Paul : Let me move my car first.
Suicidal Gal : My death will be on your conscience!
Paul : Will you just go ahead and jump?

Merciless, I know.