inspired by the blog of impossible things, I’ve decided to make my own bucket list of seemingly unreachable goals. I’ll try to challenge myself and cross them off one at a time until I’ve proven myself otherwise.

I’m writing again.. this must mean I will be wandering off soon..

On a recent interview for work, I was asked this question: “Do you have the heart to fire people?”

Me, being typically over analytical, gave it a second to churn in my head before I processed a response. In that tiny slice of time, I actually conjured several answers at the top of my mind:

v0.1 heart? what heart? I don’t have a heart. period.
v1.0 how can you put heart and fire people in the same sentene? that’s so cruel..
v1.1 harharhar of course, I love firing people, off with his head!
v1.2 you mean like burn them? literally?
v1.3 *insert wild laughter here* uhm what was the question?
v1.4 sure, why not? can I do it now? can I? can I?

But of course, thanks to the neatly tied up strings that keep everything in place in my psyche, I said this instead:

Me: Have you seen that movie “Up in the Air” ?

Interviewer: No

Me: Well, it’s about this guy whose job is to go fly to different places to fire people. Basically the management in the companies that hire him don’t have the courage to deliver the bad news to their employees so they had to outsource someone else to do it.

So to answer your question, yes, it’s easy to fire people, I can do it if necessary. But more importantly, I can deliver what seems like bad news and turn it into something that could well be the best move for their career at that time.

So today my favorite brown wedge shoes finally retired. The stitches on one side was so worn out that I could actually see my big toe peeking out like a cartoon character playing peek-a-boo. It was over two years ago when I bought this pair that one summer day in BC, and it has been through a lot since then. It endured the endless rainy days of Vancouver, that freak winter storm in ’08, and it even survived a sip-lining expedition in Montreal after crossing half a dozen tree top obstacles. I guess I could say it was well worth its price and has served its purpose, after all, not all shoes can outlast jobs, friendships and even relationships – well done Aldo. But then again, this can’t really compare to my favorite Hush Puppies back in University – now that pair really weathered a lot of storms and a lot of soles. It even went up and down mountain tops in one piece – quite a great feat for a pair of high heeled dress shoes.

Some people put a lot of value in abstract stuff like time, commitment, affection, attention – and I must say it is wise for them to do so – after all aren’t the essential elements of life the ones our naked eyes can’t see? But in the daily intricasies of living, we often get sidetracked by the lack or loss of these invisible things that we tend to forget the little miracles that exist right in front of us – like an ant carrying a heavy grain of rice, a butterfly struggling out of a cocoon, a homeless kid taking the hand of another, a pair of worn out shoes telling stories of lives lived and forgotten – they look so commonplace that we overlook them or they seem so distant that we can’t relate.

Any which way, today I’m breaking in new shoes and I can feel blisters hurting my feet, I could whine and complain just because I can but then again I know a lot who have always dreamed of walking – so I’m thankful for the hurt because that means I can feel, and I’m thankful for these shoes that I can use to walk and hop and jump and run and at the end of the day, when all else fails,

…I know I can always get a new pair.

I’ve used writing as a tool to forget, a way to get things off my mind. Like a phone number that will stick in your subconscious until you find a pen and put it on paper or in this day and age, a mobile phone where you can punch the keys and save it on your address book, thoughts and ideas have a way of infecting the psyche like a virus – this reminds me of a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream sequence from Inception, whatever. Anyway, these days have no reason to be forgotten, or I’m just too lazy to find an excuse to string words together and wait for meaning to come. But the thing is, I don’t really need to have a point before I can go log into anonymity and ramble on. I can just start now.

The news about the calamities plaguing Japan right now took me back to a place where everything was so different. It reminded me of the times when I was there and how it felt so safe – a contained bubble where everything moves like clockwork and nothing falls out of place. It’s sad that it’s almost brewing to be another Kobe mishap but what’s more heartbreaking is that there are 50 or so workers who chose to stay at the Fukushima plant to try and fix the issue – talk about dedication to the job. Knowing Nihon, they will surely bounce back but even giants need help in picking up tiny flowers from the ground so it’s great that many countries are organizing efforts to aid the land of the rising sun.

It’s been a crazy year thus far, and we’re only on the third month – a quarter of the year done and three quarters more to go – I wonder what’s in store for the rest of us. There’s been floods, civil and political unrest, earthquakes, tidal waves and nuclear meltdown – at times like these, we can only pray that the world will still be there when we wake up. But even it doesn’t, if the world breaks apart and fades into oblivion, at least we’ll know how the afterlife is like.

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” [Matthew 24:6-8]