Thank *four-letter swear word* it's friday

Ladies and gentlemen, have a good weekend. May you be able to rest, play with your loved ones, do some yoga or your other choice of exercise, watch a good film, read a good book, listen to good music, imbibe good alcohol (not some cheap fizz that will give you a hangover) so that you may:

1. Forget that you have an annoying boss.
2. Forget that you feel that you have a job not worth doing. Heck, at least you still have a job.
3. Think of all the starving children in Africa (dunno what the relevance of this is, but I thought I'd better throw it in).
4. Refuse to worry about the state of the world today (Rumsfeld/al Quaida/Hamas et. al can do what they want as long as they do not interfere with your moment of joy for the weekend).
5. Forget that you just found out that someone else in a law firm is getting interviews at nice places in New York, but you aren't, and you probably never will be.
6. Forget that your colleagues are on medication because of stress.
7. Feel free to talk about clubbing and clubgear without upsetting some over-sensitive secretary.

What a *four-letter swear word* of a week this has been. They say when things hit rock bottom, it can only get better. Well, you know what? It had better get better sharp-ish.

Peace to all monkeys, platypi (is this the right plural?), strawberries and mankind. Over and out.

Achtung: this post was written on an all time record breaking sugar-low

I don't do well with sugar-lows. In fact I have considered attaching to my curriculum vitae the following paragraph:

"Warning: If you want me to work, you must feed me. If you do not feed me, but you expect me to work early in the morning/late afternoon/past dinnertime, you will find that the office will become Dante's Inferno in no time. I will go on a rampage. I will tear down secretaries who make one mistake. I will swear at my computer. I will terrify trainees who may pee in their pretty trousers. I will yell at my Dad over the phone (if you have heard the average Kim family phone conversation sans yelling, you will tremble at this idea). Feed me, and you will find work done on time. Don't feed me, and God Help You."

My stomach is grumbling so loudly it sounds like a dam in the Niagara Falls bursting (if they had a dam, and if it were to burst, this is what it would sound like), and it is shamelessly plugging for carbs. I have never posted on a sugar-low before so I thought I'd try it. A record for posterity's sake, you know?

You can't be happy all the time. You know that as a human being there are peaks and troughs in the emotions you experience. Right now I am in a trough. Make that a pig's trough. I feel tired, depressed, anxious and miserable as sin. I reckon this partly has to do with the sugar-low, and also the fact that I am at work, it is raining outside, my boss is refusing to work anymore for the client until we come to an interim agreement on fees, we don't have nice biscuits in the pantry, my mum and dad yelled at me last night ("What? You are thinking of moving to New York because of M.? Are you mad? What about your career? Why not just marry and live in Seoul?"), I only had a carton of youghurt for breakfast, M. refusing to rise to the bait and have an argument with me ("If you want me to fight with you, I'm hanging up, so you'd better find someone else to pick a fight with"), I couldn't pronounce "Vus titzuch?" without making everyone else in the office laugh, my boss just came in to ask me to write an email response to a clueless client (I hate dealing with clueless clients), I feel like I need a hug but M. is eight thousand miles away and sleeping (not that this is his fault), and I want to know if anyone anywhere else is feeling as dire as I am today because right now it feels like it's just me and my sky falling down. I know it's not, but I become prone to melodramatic swooning fits when I am on a sugar-low. So there.

I think my ranting makes me worthy of at least one slice of chocolate cake. I'm going off to Starbucks now.

You wanna know the truth about e-commerce? It's here in blogworld, baby

For example (and what a fine example):

You can get Bleu's t-shirts and cute mugs here. Dare someone to defy your request to be taken to Paris.

You can read Mig's "The Bug" strip here. I have 'Bug' buttons. Ha. Bet you're jealous. You can also get Bug t-shirts and mugs here and there.

Lottery fever

Chinese Sad Associate is running off to play the lottery. Apparently the jackpot this week is HK$50,000,000. That's approximately US$6,426,735.
"Think of all the things you could do with fifty million!" she practically yelled at me, in her efforts to convince me to go punt with her at the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
"Think of the lunch you can buy with twenty dollars!" I retorted. "You know, when the National Lottery started up in London, millions of people found out that if 'it could be you', it could be someone else, too!" (The National Lottery's slogan used to be 'It could be you').

When I was in New York in February there was a big brouhaha about the state lottery jackpot reaching up to some crazy number - I can't remember it but I think it was around US$150,000,000 or something because it was a rollover. M. went off to buy tickets. We had dinner and then he got the numbers off the telly.
"I got ten dollars," he announced. Sadly, since he had spent twenty dollars buying the tickets, that meant that he had made a net loss of ten dollars.

Chinese Sad Associate is making up her spending list already. I think charities for elderly people are somewhere on her list ("They'll get five million," she pledged). But maybe I'm being too cynical. I wouldn't say no to a windfall, afterall. And then there is this story that Sad Associate told me:

A man prayed every day for a lottery win:
"Dear God, please let me win the lottery."
Weeks passed, then months, without him winning the lottery. A year later, as he was praying the same prayer, God came to him and said:
....
....

"For crying out loud, young man, can't you at least buy a lottery ticket first?"

Marriage, abandonment issues and breakfast a la Seoul, Kim family style

The Kim family are having breakfast on a Saturday morning. Thanks to the ferocious lobbying of their unions, bankers are allowed to take Saturdays off in Korea. It is expected that large conglomerates such as Samsung will follow suit at some point, when their big ferocious unions get their act together. Mrs. Kim has put in tremendous effort into the food for her visiting daughter.

Mr. Kim: "So, when do you think you will get married?"
Miss Kim: "Oh gawd. Dad, you've already asked me about four times and I've only been here since last night. Isn't there anything else we can talk about?"
Mr. Kim: "Maybe you should think about moving back to Korea. The young girl working for me in the office is getting married this year."
Miss Kim: "So what? I don't see the relevance of her getting married to my situation."
Mr. Kim: "She's your age."
Miss Kim: "So? There are millions of Korean girls out there who are my age. Not all of them are getting married."
Mr. Kim: "Well then, that means you'll join the ranks of those left on the shelf. I'll bet all your high school friends are married."
Miss Kim: "That's not true. Out of the fifty, only ten of them are married."
Mr. Kim: "Why is that? What are they doing wasting their time?"
Mrs. Kim: "I think we've had enough of this topic, don't you?"

They eat in silence.

Mr. Kim: "So how many children do you think you'll have?"
Miss Kim: "God help me."
Mrs. Kim: "What are you going on about? She hasn't got married yet, do you want her to have children now?!"
Mr. Kim: "She should think about it. I mean, the Korean population is small. It's your duty."
Miss Kim: "Whatever. Mum, HY interviewed with LSE. Isn't that so cool? I felt really jealous of her."
Mr. Kim: "Isn't she going to have a baby?"
Miss Kim: "She's looking for a job. She has to finish her PhD."
Mr. Kim: "But her husband is working, isn't he? She should just have lots of babies."

Miss Kim chucks her spoon down on the place mat. The place mat is from Sri Lanka, where her younger sister travelled to last year. It's a nice place mat.

Miss Kim: "Dad, no one thinks like you these days. Just accept the generation gap, OK? Not everyone has the luxury of relying on their husbands and actually most people want to have their own identity while working. If you live in London it's almost an economic necessity to have both the husband and the wife working."
Mr. Kim: "Well people work after marriage in Korea too. The young girl who got married last year, she leaves her kid with her mother so she sees the child on the weekends."
Miss Kim: "So you're saying I should do that too? I mean, how awful for the child!"
Mrs. Kim: "Don't worry about the child. I'm sure the mother will write a book about how to be a superwoman and the children will probably grow up thinking their mother is a hero for having managed to juggle work and family. That's what seems to be the trend these days, anyway."
Miss Kim: "Oh great. So are you saying I need to become superwoman?"
Mr. Kim: "No, I'm just saying you need to think about getting married."
Miss Kim: "I'll bet those kids have abandonment issues."

Mrs. Kim brings out strawberries from the fridge.