It’s been really hectic at work these past 2 weeks. Most of my days (off-duty days included) have been spent packing and cleaning the office in preparation for GSI, which is essentially some safety audit. The performance for the last GSI 2 year ago was abysmal to say the least, and coupled with the fact that we have a newly installed safety officer in our camp, there has been a greater push from the upper echelons here to do a better job, which translates to a shitload of stuff for us underlings to do.

Tidying up my office is no easy task – there have been tonnes of malfunctioning equipment (read: garbage) accumulated over the years in the dusty corners of my office. For some inexplicable reason (probably laziness and sheer lack of initiative from my predecessors), these have not been returned to the logistics department for disposal, so Sam and I had to lug all these antediluvian relics – some of the stuff are probably half my age – out to one corner, account for them in our inventory, and push our RQMS (I’ve no idea what that acronym means to this day, but in non-SAF parlance, he is essentially the Deputy Head of the Logistics Department) to collect them. Then, I also had to sort out all the old documents that have been left lying around collecting dust, and sieve out those that can be trashed for good, instead of just leaving them in KIV for eternity. Everything was still manageable until we came to our notice board. We had to do an extreme makeover on the board – everything had to be torn down. All the notices that needed updating had to be updated, and those that needn’t be updated have to be re-typed so as to standardize the font in our revamped notice board, and new safety notices (like the fire evacuation route in my office) have to be created and pinned up. This is actually pretty idiot-proof, but the sheer volume of typing that has to be done is really a pain in the ass. My notice board is roughly 4m by 2m, and littered with a smorgasbord of notices, so go figure. At this moment of typing, it’s still a work in progress. The aesthetics of the board are complete more or less, so we’re just left with the crappy typing, which is frankly self-inflicted in the sense that font-standardization wasn’t mandated by the powers that be. But oh well, since we have to revamp the whole board, we might as well just do a good job. No point doing a crappy one.

All this nonsense comes on top of my regular work in the office as well, which explains my protracted absence from blogging, and my less frequent logons to the net. Spring cleaning can really be exhausting. Nevertheless, it hasn’t just been all work and no play. I’ve been playing pool rather often these days, which is also one of the reasons why I’ve not been going online. And yeah, I’ll admit that my piqued interest is partly due to that lame Taiwanese drama serial. Anyway, the pool table in my mess is in a wretched state. The carpet (if that’s what they call it) is torn and the tips of the cues have been chopped off, which sets the tone for the most unique pool playing experience you’ll ever get. There was once when I was shooting a ball, when the object ball somehow got wrapped up by part of the carpet that was torn and was stopped in its tracks; maybe it was the spin of my cue ball or some quirk in the space-time continuum. In any case, it’s actually quite funny seeing the ball engulfed by the carpet, but not when it could have been the precursor to my clearing of a few balls and averting my subsequent ignominious defeat. Bleah.

On a more somber note, my grandma was hospitalized recently for pneumonia. I freaked out when my mum called to inform me. I guess it’s because I take my grandma’s health for granted. Minor ailments associated with old age notwithstanding, she just seems so robust it’s hard to imagine her being frail – much less hospitalized. After all, she is the sprightly octogenarian who goes marketing on her own, and plays mahjong on a regular basis. Thankfully, her condition has stabilized and she has been discharged from the hospital for a few days already. She also sounded fine when I spoke to her last weekend albeit still a little weak, so I guess the worst should be over.

I hope everyone is still healthy and well in Singapore. It just seems to be so disease-ridden there lately – especially with the raging dengue epidemic.