Hmmmmm……..

The EU elections were held last week – this is where citizens of EU countries come together and vote for their MEP (Member of European Parliament). These MEP then gets to attend European Parliament discussions in Brussels so they can pass mostly silly regulations, i.e. bananas cannot curve above a certain degree. As a citizen of a commonwealth country, I have been on the electrol roll for some time now – I feel strongly that all citizens should vote, legislation permitting. I always ensure that I cast my vote, irregardless of whether I actually know the candidates.

So it is with trepidation that this morning I woke up to the news that the BNP has won one seat out of Yorkshire’s 6; not because more people voted for them, but due to the proportionate voting practise. What this means that even though the people who voted for them are actually LESS compared to previously, they are getting seats due to the fragmanted voting stemming from Labour’s absolute failure in keeping it together.

What will this now mean to me?

The British National Party (BNP) is a far-right white nationalism political party. According to its constitution, the BNP is “committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948 (there was a large influx of Jamaican & Indian immigrants post-1948) .” The BNP also proposes “firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home.”

Get the drift?

What was even scarier was in the last elections, the BNP came within FIVE votes of winning the local councillor seat of where I am. And the BNP is actually in power in Morley, where we lived when I first moved to the UK. I am now questioning my voting practices – should I vote for the party that I believe in, or should I just vote for the party that is most likely to win, as long as it keeps those racist out of the main seat? Is it due to me (and others with my mindset) that the BNP are now being sent to the European Parliament to represent the UK? Should I even vote for a party that I do not agree with, just so another party that I dislike even more is prevented from representing the people?

I think it’s now come to a point where I wonder why I even vote, as every step I take seems to be pushing the country closer to being run by a triumphant band of facists. Should I just not bother, that way it wouldn’t be my fault when the racists comes into power? Are we doomed anyway, irregardless of who we vote?

And bacon wonders why I want to move. Why I will never feel 100% comfortable in the area that we live in. I have managed to bury my slight distaste for the people of where I live with overwhelming enthusiasm on discovering new things…but for how long more? Bacon denies that we are living in one of the most racist area in the whole county – but that is probably out of love for the place that he grew up in rather than with his eyes wide open. He always says its ok, ‘they mean no harm’ . No it’s not funny, and it’s really not ok. It is easy to ignore things when you look like a poster boy for the aryans.

I honestly don’t know how long more can I continue to ignore the blatantly sneering racist politics of where I live.

Disclaimer: I must add that I do not experience racism on a daily basis (i.e. not being served in shops ect) and people that I work with and communicate with on a daily basis are not racist as far as I’m aware. Most of the people in Leeds are very nice actually, if sometimes slightly grumpy .

It is pathetic, but day 3 at home and I am feeling progressively depressed. Maybe its the weather, maybe its the non-occuring of anyhting exordinary, but this is probably the one trip I sort of wished that I was back in the UK. I kinda knew coming here that I’m going to be slightly depressed, maybe it’s a self-fufilling prophecy. The economic downturn have really reared its ugly head, and there are just so many people who are sorely affected by this. Companies retrenching, clients not paying back their money, all hiring frozen…the list goes on. It doesn’t look like anyone are even able to leave their jobs (if they have one) as there are just no new jobs going.

When the going gets tough, it gets really really tough. Unlike the social security world of western societies, the government here couldn’t be bothered less if you are penniless, jobless and homeless. So there. This just increases the level of criminal behaviour…everywhere I look, the suburbs are now graced with security guard huts and huge barriers to add as a deterrent to the opportunistic robbers in these times of turnmoil. The funny part is that the people’s representative even commented that because of all this mini-securityland blossoming, robbers are going to target those that have yet to fork out to have their area guarded 24 hours- namely, the house that I grew up in.

So many thoughts floating inside my messed up head that I really should sieve through before even trying to put them into context.

Oh well. Things should perk up abit as I head off for some much needed R&R next week, and the week after we’ll probably be heading up towards Singapore…I feel the need to get bacon out of the country, even though he did say that he didn’t mind staying inland as long as we get to F1 this weekend. He’s now sat outside with the ipod Touch on sudoku with a beer in his hands, waiting for me to snap out of it.Bless..

Being on the jobhunting trail for the tail-end of 2008, the amount of jobs that are dissapearing from the market became blatantly obvious to me. A couple of interviews that I went to has had the jobs pulled after I’ve been interviewed, and the amount of new jobs coming into the market have shrunk significantly from July. Denial is no longer an option, as those who have been made redundant will tell you. Any pay rises are now viewed with shock rather than blatant expectation. Every week another retailer collapses and another couple of hundred joins the queues for dole. I have had friends made redundant with only one week’s notice and one week’s pay, which in this climate amounts to nothing.

I was reading a BBC article over the weekend, highlighting the ‘plight’ of the jobless graduates who are unable to find roles in the field that they majored in. One of their ‘advise’ to current students was to gain as much experience as possible before graduation. My first reaction was what sort of dumb-asses graduate from UK universities anyway? Isn’t this what you’re supposed to do irregardless, credit crunch or not? Just to gain experience, in my senior year I worked for free as an syst admin , before getting a paid role as a syst admin….at well above minimum wage, which was shocking. My view is that you need to be willing to take a step backwards or sidewards to get forward. Working for no-pay meant I was essentially making a loss as I still have to slot time to work and also petrol to take me there and back. However, the experience that I gained got me my paid role , where I proceeded to sit in the server room and just mess around basically.

In my short spaced career (or lack of it!) I have done numerous roles that on the face of it looks completely irrelevant to each other. From admin to compliance, audit, purchasing, market intelligence, product management – I have now come a full circle and am staring at database programming again, something that I never thought I would ever come back to when I left California five years ago (gasp!). It just seems that I am just depending on whatever skills (rusty or not) I can to get along, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I apparently know SQL, I wouldn’t be here. I thank all the people that took a chance on me and hired me based on my willingness to learn rather than concrete skills that ‘should’ already come with the job. For me life is a learning process, and moving sideways or backwards is ok as long as you are still learning.

On the other hand, I also know of many people that are hell-bent on practising what they majored in. This meant remaining in an industry that no longer excite them, or even worse, not having a job at all due to the economy or the downward spiral in their chosen field. And yet they continue waiting – blaming everyone else but themselves for not making themself marketable and being inflexible with their careers. There are always things to learn from even jobs that you hate, and unless you learn to embrace it and enjoy things whilst it last,

Maybe I believe in fate, but I have always treated life like a game of cause and effect, a bit like dominoes if you like. If I did not do this, that would not have happened ect. and therefore there are very few regrets in my life. For example, If I did not get made redundant, I would be still doing something that I have started to lose all interest in…and in this economic climate, would probably have hung on to the job that I had started to hate for the next few years. I would not have gotten off my ass to do something ,be offered the secondment job, which in turn got me this current role. I was reluctant to apply for the initial role advertised as well, as I did not feel I ticked all the boxes, especially the programming box. In turn, that job that I got interviewed for got canned, and I was offered this role instead. And this, I believe, is fate.

In the few years before I met bacon and moved across the world, I had on occasions questioned my sanity in canning my move to Paris, after being accepted at one of the best universities in Paris for language studies and not having to worry about money. A good life for a bum…stress-free student lifestyle compared to the maniac life that I carved out for myself overworking in KL. And then it all became clear. If I went, I wouldn’t have met the friends that continues to enrich my life today, worked the hard life that gave me financial independence nor met bacon.

So go out there and take a chance on yourself and fate.

Like nearly everyone else on earth – today’s my first day back at work. Coupled with first day jitters and negative temperatures it wasn’t the best of start. And the worse was the fact that my bus was late by 50 minutes this morning, which means I didn’t get to work until 9.50am, on my first day in my new job. Excellent start.

After being sick until the 30th of Dec, I was glad that I was fine when an old friend visited from London from NYE. Would not have otherwise been able to chat nonstop for 4 days . And hey, officially my first friend from KL to pay me a visit!! How great is that! After all the fong fei kei (literally translated from Cantones to ‘letting go of the aeroplane’; better described as promises broken) from lots of friends from KL, the curse have been broken! True, she had not lived in KL for many years now and has just actually moved permanently to London, but am just pretty pleased that the curse of no visitors have been broken! Yay!! We did loads of shopping and just mainly lots of chatting and catching up – after 5 years of living in different countries and only sporadic contact.

I will get over my depression and be back soon to tell you more about egypt, the land of shitholes.

(maybe new year’s resolution should be to stop swearing – can’t really help it with Egypt)

Leaving you with some pixs…

The nativity scene set inside a pineapple in the hotel. Don’t know what’s up with the handbag and the cow – and what looks like a goat. Thought it was sheeps??

The corn-on-cob that was so dried out (gone bad) that it actually popped like pop corn when grilled. Looks like what I used to offer the hamster.

The fab chandelier inside Muhammad Ali Mosque.

Carved watermelons

I have refrained from blogging this for a long, long time. So you are probably not aware that I am surrounded by pregnant woman and baby lovin people. My current desk? I took it over from someone who went off on maternity and delivered a bouncing baby boy.She, in turn, took it over from someone else who left for 1 year’s maternity leave. The chair I’m sitting on is some special pregnant woman’s chair..it has an air pump thingymajig (you know, like the rubber pump on the thingymajig that the doctor uses to check your blood pressure) attached to the back of the chair. And hand rests as well – none of the other chairs have that.

Then a few weeks ago, the woman that sits opposite me announced that she is 12 weeks pregnant (we shall call her pregnant1). Two days later, we had someone else join the team and was sat next to me. She, is also……suprise, suprise, pregnant(we shall call her pregnant2). Not sure if this is the right word, but she is more pregnant than the one that sits in front of me. Then today, our friends in Penang welcome a cutie bouncing baby girl named Cerys.

Yesterday me and pregnant2 was up at the starbucks counter getting tea and some food to feed the one eating for two. She’s developing a taste for toast spread thickly with peanut butter, chocolate spread and butter, you see. One of our mutual acquantaince came up to us and announced that she too, is pregnant. Pregnant2′s little babe was tumbling around her tummy during lunch time and she asked me to feel it….and I realised it was really the first time I am feeling a baby in someone’s stomach for a very very long time – I think the last time I remember doing this was probably when my brother was in the womb!! I must admit tho, feels quite cool! The baby is just like…floating. No idea what I thought it would feel like to be honest. Today, pregnant2 found out that someone else she knows is pregnant. When I was out at lunch with my other, thankfully not family inclined friends, they told me that someone that we used to work with is also, PREGNANT. Oh, what a suprise.

Back to pregnant1. Her stepdaughter (!!! I know…so weird, but I swear pregnant1 is under 35 yr old !!!) gave birth to baby twins a few months ago. Further down our bank of desk, someone’s wife gave birth about 6 months ago. When I first joined the team less than 3 months ago, one of the guys were off with paternity.

Closer to home, bacon’s brother’s wife is also pregnant. Her best friend is also due to give birth in a few days/weeks time I think. Bacon’s friend’s wife is also pregnant again – they already have 3 very very annoying boys. So is my loyal reader Mrs Arskey. Pregnant I mean, not ready to deliver nor have 3 annoying boys..hehe.

OMG OMG OMG OMG. PLEASE tell me what on earth is happening to the world!!!! I am at the point now where I just go..sigh…not another one with a bun in the oven. So if any one of you is pregnant…please break the news to me now…whilst I can still take it. Not much longer..I reckon I am going to just work with single men from now onwards. Unfortunately, I also know that my soon-to-be boss has just came back from her year long maternity a few months ago.

This all is either going to make me feel broody or just turned off from having kids ever. EVER.

Still think my new god son is a cutie pie tho…stolen off his mommy’s blog