I am drowning here. The dam opened and the floodwaters poured out last Friday. What is wrong with me? I will survive. Even if it means going to work early and leaving late. Even if it means working at home after my shower instead of indulging in ridiculous time wasters. Even if it means feeling stupid because I took more than an hour to do something that my predecessor did in ten minutes. I cannot give up, not after I have come such a long way. The way ahead is a long and rough one but so is the way back to where I started from.

Indian tennis player marries a Pakistan cricket player. This is called a peace treaty.

This morning I fucked up big time. In a bid of nervousness and uncertainty, I must have pissed off at least 2 people. As the saying goes, karma will always come and bite you back in the ass. Maybe my treatment of a certain Stephanie (Poptart!) has resulted in all this crappiness. Do unto others what you want others to do unto you.

I am not coping well in this new beginning. Maybe with the departure of youthful foolishness, I feel that every single thing I do that is not up to par will have very serious consequences.

Today is my first day of work. I never have been so relieved to receive my own worker bee pass. Now I can go to the toilet after 1800 hours. I should have many things to say. But now all I need to do is sleep. The road ahead is long and winding and treacherous. But I jumped through hoops for it. I never managed to get something that I worked so hard for (baiting boys do not count and my attempts always failed anyway). Now I am afraid to fail in this.

Tomorrow marks my last day as Fashion Intern. Though for the past week or two, I have been doing 2 jobs and unpaid. Did I mention my new boss is a doll? She is a vulgarity sprouting doll. But I like. Another person to Fling Fucks with. Apparently Xiu Ru and I only trade fucks with each other. Indeed the world is a civilised place. But no! Poptart too, one less person that is a lady.

The road ahead is hard. As Karen Carpenter sang, ‘We only just begun, to live. White lace and promises, a kiss for luck and we’ll on our way..’. All typed out from memory. Everyone plays this song at their wedding. But this is apt for the beginning of my new ‘career’. Except no white lace but hard hard work. The learning curve is a 90 degree straight learning vertical curve. When they throw you in, you trap (lazy to find whether correct spelling) water. When the waves go above you, you smile and hold your breath. Hopefully you can stay afloat. If not, the other option is drowning. But honey, drowning is a horrible way to go.

There is a probation. I have never been under probation. Maybe they will find out I am an imposter and toss me out after three months.

The madness continues. Her Royal Highness decreed I iron my T-shirts today. As I wondered whether I should invest in a steamer (easier since I have been trained by work) to ‘iron’ my clothes, I cannot wait for the day when my T-shirts can just be not ironed. Though of course Debbie Harry looks much better ironed flat, I will try to live with abit of a crumpled flair.

I have a crick in my neck. Massive migrane. Tension headache some people (The Laney) calls it. I started watching another Ella show with Wu Chun and Jiro Wang. Ella rocks. I think I am going through proper teeny boppy puberty right now.

After so many years, I am at exactly the place I wanted to be all along. Except I am four years too late. But better late than never.

I saw my name in print today. It was a glorious moment as I sneaked a copy of the latest issue into the little room to find it. I always wanted to see my name up in lights. Even though I could not figure which part of what I wrote was in the article. Heh. I feel giddy like a teenager.

Sometimes, the closer you are to the sun, the harder you fall when you do not reach your goal. Cue: silly boy with wax wings who flew to close to the sun. When faced with the girls so much younger and so much more go getting and competitive than me, I feel childish and extremely old at the same time. Sometimes I do not think I take it seriously and seem to have not prepared enough. But preparation will not put me in competition with those girls who have been creative all their lives, who have a Mac for artistic reasons instead of just surfing the net and various bo liao stuff. I want it as bad as the other girls maybe more because my time is running out faster than theirs. Apart from being willing to go on my knees, I have no idea how to go about standing out from the rest.

All the years of working in the bee hive seem to have vanished into the mist, I absolutely cannot recall how it was like to be a employed worker bee. I feel like the intern I was five years ago when Auntie Shufang secured her first job. I am shy, uncertain and thin skinned again. I stutter and revert back to uncertainty. Tonight, I finally got the courage to view that silly less than 10 second video clip that I had to do for them. I looked like the cartoon person that Jackie says I am. I move with jerks and constantly. But that is the way I am, as idiotic as I look.

I tried on the toga dress Siew Lu says is too long for her. It is jersey and heavy and falls nicely over my knees. Part of old age is gravitating towards longer dresses. As I twirled around in it and wondered whether to wear it for the Friday before Chinese New Year, my mother being wet blanket says it is too fancy and weird for Ahma’s house. Tomorrow is the reunion dinner instead of Saturday. My Ahma is less conservative than my mother, really how is that possible but it is. But maybe I will not wear the dress after all. Strapless bras make me uncomfortable and I have not taken the dress out for a test run for pit stains.

As the money depletes before my very eyes, I have to learn how to live cheaper and cheaply. Which is hard of course. Economics (the layman sort) works in a very queer way. When you were young and living off a fixed allowance that you saved to buy the perfect pair of sneakers (insert other adolescent wishlist) and a top that costs more than fifty bucks was very hard to purchase. Then you started earning money as an adult, thousand by thousand until you lose track of everything and a 200 dollar dress seems like a reasonable deal. Which is what I realised when I was speaking to another intern (of intern age) and she was admiring this shirt that I told her to get because it was seventy bucks. She then told me seventy bucks is not affordable. Hence, I have to change my mindset. I am poor.

Cotton On is fabulous for cheapie buys. They are affordable with their normal prices but I live for their sales. Like could it get any cheaper? Case in point, cotton shorts for sleeping in. The sign said $10 which was very agreeable until I noticed the orange sticker that said $5. Totally of course going to get it. Then when I was at the cashier very pleased with my almost buy, the boy at the counter was ‘If you buy a second one, it is half price.’ I could not hide my disbelief. ‘You mean the second one will be $2.50?’ He did not blink his eyes. ‘Yes if it’s the same.’ Hell yeah. So that is how I walked away with two grey cotton shorts, both for $7.50. Amazing cheapie-ness.

After this transpired, I went to cut my hair for $10 at EC House. I know, it is like I am reverting to when I was in secondary school and JC and I cut my hair at this place in the housing estate behind Holland Village for Seven bucks. Now I go to this place near Cambridge Market when a Taiwanese boy band look-a-like gives me hair cuts for $14. Apart from the language barrier, though this is greatly aided with the help of magazine pictures and my mother translating (when it comes to descriptions, my Mandarin just fails me as it did during my AO levels, hence that F9), he is pretty great. However, even the cheapest hair places have to increase their prices before Chinese New Year and because I am cheap due to above mentioned unemployment, I refused to pay the hike in prices to have my lovely boy band hairstylist to trim my hair and headed to the ten dollar hair cuts establishment. It was really great though it was longer than the advertised ten minutes. Except for the exposed feeling I had as I had my hair cut whilst people were walking along side the shop very near me. It was disconcerting.

Speaking of which, I had the Popcorn chicken Snackers meal at KFC four times since last week for ‘lunch’. It is $2.90. I feel very happy after eating it every time.

Won’t you come along to be cheap with me?

A fashion intern’s responsibility is the clothes that you borrow from shops. You have to make sure nothing (absolutely nothing) happens to the clothes. Not a single tiny anything. Now when I look at clothes, I feel absolutely sick to the stomach. In fact, I have to handle the clothes with so much care that I take it out on my own clothes and treat my clothes horribly. Because I have to take it out somewhere. Heh. Well, it really does not matter if these clothes are treated with the utmost royal reverence when no one else does. It is difficult but when makeup gets on the clothes, something gets snagged, stained, smelly, it is my responsibility no matter what.

Whenever I see the piles of clothes lying there, I feel the bile coming up my throat. I have to keep on checking the pricetag to see whether I can afford to pay for it.

of the intern Awful.

I have read and watched enough about interns to be prepared for my internship. Or so I thought. I know it ain’t all like The Hills (where Whitney and L.C. just do nothing but chat at their iMacs and make faces). The Teen Vogue interns blog about their internships and flats are an essential on their work outfit lists. Which makes sense. But pray not to be like The Devil Wears Prada which I watched the movie but did not read the book.

Loaning and returning clothes. Walking up and down town with heavy heavy bags. That is how clothes in the shops make their ways onto the pages of magazines. As much as samples do get sent to the editor to be featured in the magazine, most of the time, I have to make my rounds to see what the tiny shops at Far East and Haji Lane have to offer for a shoe string. Style is subjective and sometimes what I bring back may not be what the boss is looking for. That is where the bags of clothes come in. You have to look through every single rack to make sure you do not miss anything. That is what I have trouble with because when I do my own shopping, whatever jumps out at me from the hanging clothes is what I pick out. But when you are desperate and there are no _______ (insert trend here) pieces that you have found and it is close to five o’clock, I have to start digging.

But of course you suddenly find all these totally you clothes that are just there ripe for the picking and your savings seem to not be able to tide you through ‘unemployment’ as long as you thought it would.

Today I paid my dues for this job. Besides long due unreimbursed taxi claims, I had to pay for this ‘destroyed’ article of clothing. It was my over sight. Though it did cost a pretty penny considering I am not paid. No matter how careful you are, it does seem that when things that will go wrong will go wrong. It is a different environment and I am just trapping water. Somehow, I do not know whether this will pay off. Perhaps being lazy is easier? I have to keep reminding my self that dreams do not always come true. Fairy tales only exist in story books and they belong there. The same with all romantic whimsies.

On the train home from yoga, I saw a girl and her boyfriend look at the latest issue of the Magazine. I felt really proud, like a sense of accomplishment even though I did not contribute much to the February issue. I am silly like that, little things make me happy.

News about Haiti is very heartbreaking. BBC covers the situation all the time and I watched the looting on teevee. I always need reminding that my life does not suck half as bad as these poor people and I count my blessings. I wonder what I would do in that situation. Looting is for survival. Maybe dream chasing is irrelevant when people are already poor and dealing with earthquake consequences.

When you say I am brave, are you mocking me? Heh, not you Addy. I will not be mad, I understand from your point of view. My point of view… does it matter? When they knock you down like that song, I bounce back again. Always. But if I just lie there and not get up again, what does that say about me?