In lieu of a real post...

I give you an email I wrote to a friend this morning. I've only recycled email as a blog post once before, so you can't accuse me of being too lazy.

" ... How's everything? Hope work wasn't too crazed [...] though I find it hard to believe it wouldn't be. My work is crazed everyday now, even without my having to go on vacation. The pace has become so frantic, it's damn sian already. I mean, there's good stress, which keeps you on your toes and keeps things exciting, and then there's bad stress, when you spend your day running around like a headless chicken because of too many demands from too many different bosses. My days have, of late, unfortunately resembled the latter more than the former. It's really sad, but I think it wasn't this bad even during the SARS period.

"Okay, enough grumbling, cannot be so Singaporean about things.

"On to good news: T got into the Shooting Home course at Objectifs (a local photographers' organisation) which puts him under the mentorship of a professional photographer, plus he gets a one-week exhibition out of it too. I'm so happy for him! We were really nervous the week after he sent off his portfolio with the application, because they only take in ten people a year. Now he's puzzling over what theme his exhibition will be focused on. He has to take the photos during the period of the course, so for better or for worse, it'll have to be something Singapore-oriented. I'll let you know when the exhibition's up --- maybe they'll have an online version, but if not, he'll probably post the images on his website anyway.

"Other than doing the photography thing, he's also relief teaching [...] (which he was doing when you guys were back) and that's probably going to last until June. He's been duly warned by myself and all other teacher friends about the dangers of becoming a permanent relief teacher. :) But it's nice for him to have steady money with little obligations, so I can totally see the value of it. Maybe it's something I can do eventually, so that I can work on writing, etc. in my free time.

"Er ... what else is going on. Not much. The government's trying to get people to have babies again. *snort* Good luck with that. Nothing like watching insipid news items about diaper-changing competitions for fathers to turn you completely off the idea of having a baby. (Seriously, that was on the news last night. Even for Singapore, that's a painfully slow news day.)

"Blogging has caught on in a relatively big way with some of my friends. Did you know I had a blog? http://toomanythoughts.org/blog/

"It's not very exciting, but if you ever want to hear my random mutterings, that's the place to go. I think it's actually very bad for my writing because it's all short and unfocused stuff. Makes it harder when I try to sit down and compose a longer piece. Of course, the first problem whenever I want to write is actually finding dedicated time when my brain isn't already flatlined by work to focus and actually get out the good stuff.

"Uh, I'm drifting into whining again. Clearly, a sign that I should shoot off this e-mail before it becomes any more painful to read. Hope you're settling well into married life (not that different from living-together life, right?) and that New York is having a pleasant winter. The other thing I saw on the news last night was about some weird South Korean highway that got blocked by a snowstorm (except the snow didn't look that deep in the footage) and they were actually making airdrops of food and supplies to the cars stranded on the highway. Very bizarre."

Wow, that email was really angsty. I sound like those teenagers I used to teach.