Went for a haircut earlier this morning and I knew the store was only going to open at 11am, so I headed out and walked over to the mall from my home about 15 minutes before they were slated to open, reaching there with about 2 minutes to spare.
Upon reaching the location, I notice there wasn't a queue, however, there was a lone boy sitting at one of the public benches a few meters away from the store and as I was making my way to the store front, there was another middle aged guy who was also headed towards it in the opposite direction. I stood on the left side of the door and the middle aged guy stood on the right, fiddling with his phone. As the hairdresser begins to unlock the door to open it for us, the lone boy got up from the bench and started walking over, but since I was closest to the entrance, I ended up stepping into the door first and became first in line, followed by the middle aged uncle and then the lone boy.
As I was about to make payment to get a ticket, I looked over at the lone boy who was behind the middle aged uncle and said to him ...
"Do you want to go first?"
... since it was obvious he was technically first in the non-existent line. Sadly, he wasn't paying much attention and this was when the middle aged uncle looked up from his phone and replied...
... and proceeded to buy the first ticket. He had a bit of an accent and that was when my xenophobia kicked in and in my head, I just immediately thought to myself...
"Typical Chinese immigrant."
... of course he would shamelessly take the first spot when I had never intended it to be for him. I wouldn't mind letting him go before me to be honest, it's just the immediate assumption that I was giving the first spot to him instead of the boy behind him that irked me, because I am pretty sure he is also aware the boy had been waiting way before the both of us arrived.
I guess this is also something that the older generation of Singaporeans will do, the whole kiasu-ness of it all, I see it all the time when I am at the bus interchange waiting for a bus, there will always be a small handful of old folks completely ignoring the snaking queue that has formed and just park themselves right beside the automatic glass doors, and the moment the bus driver gives us the green light for us to board, these old folks will just shamelessly cut the line and join the people at the front of the queue into the bus. Sometimes you want to say something, but then it's old folks, it's not very nice to ask them to fuck off to the back of the line like everyone else, so we end up just letting them get away with it and they just get more and more brazen about it.
I digress.
The haircut took me a total of 40 minutes because I had allowed 2 people to go ahead of me, and after the haircut, I suddenly realized how much older I am starting to look, my sideburns are now 40% white hair, so it really enhances the middle age uncle vibes I was not going for. Honestly, it was a bit depressing because I wasn't expecting to look even older after the haircut.
Sigh. Mid thirties is when I star to show my age, gone are the days when people would mistake me for a 20 year old and call me Ah Boy.
Anyways, today was a relatively busy day because right after my haircut, I had a 2.30pm dental appointment. I really don't like scheduling my appointments at such late timings, would have rather gotten it over and done with in the morning, but alas, I hadn't thought too far because the timing today was made due to a last minute reschedule last week. I didn't feel like going during work then and letting the appointment eat into my lunch hour, thus the switch to today when I actually have my CNY off.
The appointment itself was pretty fast, it was only for the regular check up and cleaning, which is rare because most of the time, the dentist would always find a new decay somewhere and I would have to do fillings, but today, everything as great. Just a quick clean and I was done within 15-20 minutes.
After my dental appointment, I had a pretty long catch-up session with my ex-Manager and a few ex-colleagues from my last job. The meet-up was at 4.00pm and we were meeting up at Minds Cafe for dinner and board games.
I was done with my dental at around 3.10pm, so I headed over to Dhoby Ghuat since the cafe was within walking distance from Plaza Singapura and took a walk around the mall to kill some time. Got a facial serum from Innisfree and then loitered in Sephora for a while to just smell the perfumes they had available. I was mainly smelling the Jo Malone range because there wasn't any Tom Ford in the Plaza Singapura outlet, which was disappointing.
The Jo Malone scents were all alright, wasn't particularly drawn to any of the scents I had sprayed on the tester, they were nice but not nice enough for me to want to get one, that was until I decided to pump a bit of the tester handcream because who am I to deny a free pump of a $120 handcream. I walked out of the store after lotion-ing my hand and as I was on the escalator to the upper levels, I gave my hands a whiff and it smelled really good.
Headed over to Hooga and I couldn't stop smelling my hands.
Over at Hooga, I started smelling more stuff again and honestly, my goal at Hooga was to smell a bunch of their diffusers and then leave without getting anything, but then I smelled one particular scent and I was suddenly reminded of hotel lobbies, it was really random but I was immediately attracted to it.
The scent is called Earl Grey and Angelica.
It's such an unassuming scent based on it's name because those 2 are fragrance notes that I really don't care too much about, but after smelling it, it is really something else.
I saw the price of the room spray because they had it in that scent and it was only $13. That is cheap compared to the room spray that I had gotten from a Tik Tok Shop small business that was $26, and is probably half the size. I ended up getting the room spray and after a surprise discount, it ended up being only $9. I have paid $40 for 5ml of perfume so this room spray feels like a really good deal.
But now that I have it, the longevity of the scent is really quite shit, it barely last a minute before the scent completely disappears, I need to spray about 10 sprays of it in my room to smell anything. The $26 one I got from the Tik Tok shop performs like a beast compared to the Hooga one. I guess you do get what you pay for at the end of the day.
It was about 3.50pm when I was done at Hooga, so I decided to make my way over to Minds Cafe, but not before dropping by Sephora again to check out what the scent of the Jo Malone hand cream.
It's called Peony and Blush Suede. It's a fragrance for women, but I am very tempted to get it. Didn't actually get one from Sephora, but I might consider getting a small decant from Shopee just to test it out.
Headed over to Minds Cafe after I got the name of the Jo Malone scent and turns out, there are 2 Minds Cafe located in Prinsep Street, one on the street level and another that is tucked away on the second storey in one of the shophouses. I was at the street level one, which was huge, but my ex-Manager had booked the smaller one.
Ran into her as I was headed over to the smaller one and we went up together. We ordered our dinner set, which was $35, the set came with free flow of snacks, drinks and unlimited play time with any of the board games and card games they had available, it was a really good deal, especially with a bigger group of friends.
Since it was only the 2 of us at the start, we started with a very advanced version of tic-tac-toe game, towards the end of the first round, that was when 2 others arrived, so we moved on to Cards Against Humanity, which would have been really fun had all 4 of us understood how the game worked. One of my ex-colleague was so blur he didn't really know what was going on, so my ex-Manager and I had to ask the staff there for a game that was much simpler to grasp, we found one, played a few rounds of that, and even then, that ex-colleague of mine would occasionally still fuck up the game rules.
By around 7pm, the last one of us arrived and when all 5 of us were there, the focus started to shift towards gossiping about the current happenings with the store. None of us had anything good to say about the company, we just kept talking about how bad the bosses there are, how inadequate Upper Management is because you literally have a group of incompetent individuals sitting at the top making uninformed decisions based on assumptions and not based on experience, and when those decisions ends up turning to shit like they always do, Upper Management will suddenly disappear when the angry customers start to appear, and those angry customers will be left to the people below to placate, this involves becoming a punching bag for the customer to hurl their displeasure at, which is so unfair because the ones who should be getting scolded are the inept individuals who created the whole issue in the first place, but they are always hiding in their office not recognizing their fuck ups. The bosses surrounds themselves with people like those, so it just becomes an echo chamber of them essentially patting themselves on the back for making a bunch of very "good" decisions that is clearly causing a lot of mental distress for everyone else who are actually customer fronting.
It was also brought to my attention that the company didn't even give the employees any Red Packet this year for CNY, and I thought them only giving $10 last year was bad enough. The more I take part in that conversation, the more comfort I found in knowing that I am no longer part of the company.
We also ended up talking about that colleague of mine who will be joining my current company soon as a Project Manager and after listening to what my ex-colleague had to say about her, that was when I suddenly realized I may have really fucked up by introducing her to my boss.
My ex-colleagues were still jokingly telling me that I have made a mistake getting her onboard my current company, and that she will now be my problem to deal with.
Shit.
They were half joking.
Honestly, she wasn't my first choice when my boss had thought of getting a new designer on board, if there was anyone I would have liked to work with again from my old company, it would be my ex-Manager, but unfortunately, she didn't have the qualifications my boss required, and most importantly, she is not interested as well.
The main reason why I introduced my colleague to my boss is because she has the same background as me in Interior Design and I figured she would be able to utilize her skills and knowledge as an Interior Designer to help the company grow, skills and knowledge that I know she has. I only forgot about the most important aspect, her character and working attitude.
She is by no means an unpleasant individual, but she is some who needs to develop a greater sense of responsibility for her job and that is very important as a Project Manager. I really don't know how she will performs as a Project Manager, so I do hope she can prove me wrong and become a very valuable asset to the company. I had my doubts about her longevity with the company, and those doubts came from my prediction that my company will not be able to meet her salary requirements in the future once she becomes accustomed to the whole construction industry again, but now, my new doubt comes from her inability to perform well due to her lack of discipline and responsibility, and that is even worst because if she messes up, it will look bad because I would be indirectly sabotaging my boss's company, which is the last thing I want to do.
Sigh. I guess for I can only wait and see and hope for the best but expect the worst.
Anyways.
My meeting with all my ex-colleague lasted till 11pm. We kept chatting until we were the last group of customers in the café. I would never have expected that we would be able to have such a long catch up session, I spend a total of 7 hours in the café, that's nuts, it's longer than a single round of Guard Duty during my reservist, and the 7 hours felt like it passed quite quickly... and for only $35, with unlimited snacks and drinks refill, it's a steal.
Who knew the most eventful thing that would happen during my CNY break is something that is not related to CNY at all.
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