Kiss And Make Up Day
2005-08-25 @ 8:08 p.m.

You remember the haiku competition I mentioned a few entries back? Well, in a strange turn of events, all the eight entries I submitted have been shortlisted for voting. That's either a reflection of their absolute or relative quality, if you catch my drift. Anyway, after consulting Eugene, I've decided to go with entry 98. If you must know which are my other seven entries, ask me online. They're all from my older poems anyway. In fact, all of the entries were truncated from tanka. I would have submitted three entries culled from Of Light And Darkness, but since that's been published already, I didn't think it qualified. Anyway, I'm quite annoyed at the inefficiency of Singaporean institutions. Today, I had to report to Alexandra Hospital for my echocardiogram at 9.50 am. So I did, albeit about 15 minutes late. Then I waited for an hour to be seen for half a minute by a doctor, who asked if I exercised but didn't really seem to be listening to my answer or to care about it. The clincher? I was told to come back at 3 pm, because the technician wasn't in yet. It's apparently quite a common occurrence, if what I overheard the nurse telling other guys over the telephone is representative of the situation. Headed over to Ikea for lunch, where I stayed until it got too cold for PE-attire-clad me. Wound up at the bus-stop outside the hospital. The technician was a nice person though. Her voice reminded me of Ms Ho, except nicer. There you have it. How my entire day was wasted by an inefficient allocation of resources. That said, yesterday's workshop at the GIC was quite instructive. Why do government buildings have the effect of shushing people? Kelly, Ruth and I felt obliged to speak in carefully subdued voices once we stepped into the GIC offices, which are really nice. Not too keen on the view of the port from the 37th floor though, which is a bit too industrial for my tastes.