I never consider my self as a romantic person. Yes I love pink color. Yes I love flowers. Yes I love Richard Gere’s old move - Pretty Woman. But that’s it. I don’t think I have even a drip of romantic blood in my genes. If you expect me to remember every (suppose to be) memorable dates or occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries…forget it. I am just not really that kind of person. Never was, never is, never will be.

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary. Just on Sunday hubby and I had a long and serious discussion (for the 100th times) on how can we organize our finance more efficiently. In a middle of painfully thorough discussion about things that ‘it’s ok actually not to buy unless it’s sale season’ and the good old ‘wants vs. needs’ paradigme, hubby suddenly said, “Do you think I still should buy you anniversary gift?”. My mind went blank for a while in panic. Gift usually does not corelate with the previously mentioned theory. The practical side of me won and I heard my self saying, “Well as long as you think I need that thing and it is not expensive I think it’s ok”. Hubby laughed his head out.

But what I was panicking about actually was ‘Oh my gosh! How can I forget! I have nothing for him! Even worse, I have not even think about it, do the gift survey and even worse, I have not fish for things that he desired!’ I felt beaten and miserable. Anyhow, considering that the cost cutting budget discussion has just been finished, I was pretty sure that hubby has cancelled his idea to buy me gift.

So this morning, I found my self very surprise when hubby pulled out a small gift from under his table. He bought a small red nike bag for me to travel considering that I’ve been travelling quite frequent recently. Gosh I feel bad that I have nothing but a kiss. I went to the office feeling a bit guilty. And to make things worse, a huge pink roses arrived on my desk this morning with a very sweet note. Now I am doomed forever!

Therefore, I have decided that now it isn’t really the time to do the cost saving. During lunch time, I browsed around the mall next to my office to find something. Gosh, my mind completely blank. I can not think of anything! Fortunately I remember that hubby is planning to buy this. This choice, however, made my girlfriend laughed her head off. She said that my choice is really practical and completely unromantic. Well, if there’s such thing as romance disorder, that’s me. What can I say?

Happy 7th anniversary loved one…thank you for giving me everything I want and I need. Most of all, thank you for your unconditional love, your patience and your strength of going through a marriage with romanticly disabled person like me…

 Please provide knives so your guest can slice the sections into individual own needs…

 Ingredients 

1. The sauce of weak leadership

• Mix a large bowl of indecisiveness with 2-3 tablespoons of personal interest. The best brand of personal interest is the famous WIFM (What’s In It For Me) ketchup available in every heart store in the deepest corner. It contained: big bonus, more perks, promotion and political acceptance. Warning: too many WIFM sauce will cause lost of conscience and could lead to stony heart.
• When the sauce change its color, add a little bit of easily bruised ego and withdraw sympathy (if any).

2. 500 grams of good people who do nothing

• Place 500 grams of good people who see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil in a plate. Saturate them with the fear of unemployment mixed with golden handcuffs program namely long term loan and retention program.
• When you see the critical mind set dissappear, load them with jargons until they are properly brainwashed and ready to be cooked. Remember, things happened because good people do nothing. Repeat this over and over until it became the mantra of your life.

3. 1/2 ounce of discretion

• Select 1/2 ounce of discretion and passed them among the most demanding and not necessarily the best seeds. Don’t forget to by pass several lines to create optimum result.
• Leave it for a while in an open space and heat up room temperature.
• No need to do anything with the quiet seeds until it looks as if they are going to change their nature. Just keep it in the pantry corner within their lines.

4. Serving

• Put discretion on top of 500 grams of good people who do nothing and decorate it with secrecy.
• Moisten with souce of weak leadership on top of it.
• Sprinkle with tension and some corporate bullies.
• Serve it whilst it hot. Shred whatever left to avoid auditor.

Per serving: 720 headaches, 562 ulcers, 382 nervous breakdown and 10 manic depressive.

 Nutritional breakdown: greed, megalomaniac and ignorance.

Reference List:

- Enron

- Arthur Andersen

In regards to promote a more work & life balance, my company provides me with this.

It arrive yesterday right in the middle one of the busiest day in a year, which is the salary increase letter distribution day!! Yay!! So apart from the excitement of knowing that my wallet will be thicker this year, this toy also excited me. I could feel my heart beating fast when I saw the (seemed not so grumpy this time) IT guy walked along the corridor bringing me the medium size box. He then sat in front of my PC, murmuring something, work his magic finger across the keyboard, scratch his head, fiddling with the mouse and voila! It ready to be used! He showed me some tricks on how should I check my e-mails, send SMS, make phone calls, however, knowing that any of my innocence questions would upset him (i.e. what is multi tap? How to pick up a call? Hey, even the way I hold it upset him!), I decided to take the whole package home and learn it by my self? Of course not!! Do I sound like an enthused self learner to you? Thank God I was gifted by an IT-gadget lover husband. By the time I saw my (so much) better half, I passed him the box and he nearly collapsed in excitement. I had to take it back again with the fear of him dropping it in ecstasy. If my salary increase gave him a little bit of jolt, this magic box gave him an orgasm. He had this ecstatic look for a while whilst he run his finger through its smooth surface. It was not long before he started to advise me to advise the company to buy this and that and to install this and that to maximize its uses. Writer note: please don’t ask me what is the this and that. I hardly can’t remember the name. It has something to do with LCD screen (mine is not LCD screen) and to keep the casing smooth.

So last night, whilst I was deeply engulfed reading David Edding’s the Belgariad, hubby busied him self with my new toy. He fiddled around with it, holding it dear as if it was something alive trying to communicate it self to him and I think he slept on it, eager to optimize its capabilities. I was not surprised when today I found my new blackberry has already been set up according to my liking (read: limited ability in IT stuff). It sure was made my self easier to operate it (read: type the e-mail and sms).

Apart from the promised I made to my self that my new toy will not change the way I run my life, I found my self kept on looking at it. Checking whether there are any new e-mails, got annoyed when there are none and excited when I see one (although the content is about work). And when I can’t find any new messages to be read, I browse around it. Trying to see what’s in there, bookmarked my favorite page and checks the contact list. I even do something that I have never done before, which is reading the manual. Well, not really a manual though, it’s more like a quick guide. Fortunately the cheat sheet is very thin and simple. It even got a page that can be torn apart for a complete end user like me to bring around. Whoever invented it must be a genius who can empathize with a civilian like me. Even when I failed to insert the charger cable to the blackberry, I turn it around and lo and behold! There was little word read as UP in its jack. Geez…I can’t stop marvel on the investor. And now if you excuse me, I want to go back and see whether there are any e-mails…