2021 turns out to be worse than 2020

Today is a rare occasion when I can post my year end reflection within the same year, instead of a few days later into the new year. While Cinderella has to rush before the midnight before fairy godmother's magic disappears, I have to rush before the midnight before my vaccinated status get downgraded. I do not know my downgrade will happen tomorrow or after another one month of grace period. I am preparing for the worst and thank God that I received my new passport yesterday. Thus this morning I went to print my new re-entry permit and vaccination certificate which I will need for my flight home.

On a similar note, I went for the Thanksgiving Mass earlier just in case I really get downgraded and I would not be able to book for Sunday Mass as frequently as before. I have never attended any end of the year Mass so I was quite surprised that it is actually the sunset Mass for the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. Honestly, I was quite lazy to go and I prayed that it would continue raining since it had been raining since this morning. The rain stopped so I had no excuse not to go. It then rained again. I was contemplating of final cup of bubble tea of the year before the Mass. While the rain irritated me, I suppose God wanted me to have the bubble tea. Haha.. If it did not rain, I would just walk back home as usual. But since it was raining, I walked through the MRT underpass and I might as well drop by to Thomson Plaza. Well that final cup of bubble tea was not satisfying but at least I am fully confident with my promise to start with a fresh diet from tomorrow. Alright, I have babbled too much about today.

2021 was certainly not better than 2020. Perhaps 2021 was even worse since it did not meet the expectations that COVID situation would improve as compared to 2020. I am driven crazy with all the vaccination discrimination especially during the second half of the years. I feel better recently after deciding to give up and to run away to Jakarta first for many months. Thank God that my boss has not decided to sack me (yet) and my landlady allows me to pay rent for an empty room while I am away.

I feel less passively suicidal this year. The thoughts will still come and go but they are not as frequent as previously which is surprising considering my stress in 2021. I think it is because spiritually I do not feel as detached from God as previously. I am happy that I did not miss any of the daily rosary and any of the obligated Mass for this year. I also had memorable and meaningful confessions this year. I really thank God for this grace since I had a lot of shit with human relationship this year.

Looking back this year, I learn that being too patient and too kind towards others are being abusive and stupid for myself. I am surprised that I had been tolerating the fucking maid since the start of the year and I only told her off in November. After that, she stopped cooking and my life has been more peaceful with cleaner kitchen. Similarly with my landlady, I had been very patient to the point that she treated me like her maid. Previously I did not mind helping her once a week or so but recently she keeps falling down almost daily. She has a fucking maid and yet she lets her to always go up while she frequently disturbed to help her get up, buy her food, move her wheelchair and all that shit. Not to mention that she does even ask the maid to clean the house and kitchen frequently. I had enough and this week I told her not to expect me to help her if she falls down again. I am not going to sacrifice my back to help her get up if she falls down everyday. 

Similarly at work, I thank God that the fucking bitch left earlier this year. Things improved after she left and work has not been as shitty as previously. After the upset over the bonus and increment this year, I let go of any expectations about work which is very liberating. As long as I can earn some money and people do not irritate me, I am happy.

I worry of going overboard with this self-preservation and if I will end up being an asshole to others. For example, after my volunteering during the Catholic200SG Festival, I decided to complain about the abusive chef. I do not know if there is any follow-up action taken but at least there is a chance that something is done as compared to no chance if I did not even speak up. Not gonna lie that it gave me a peace of mind since I perceived it as I had taken my revenge. Similarly with my Landings involvement, there are people whom I find very selfish and irritating. I just have to be patient during those few occasions of limited interactions. I hope that for next year, God will grant me the wisdom to balance these needs.

Health-wise... Haiz.. I do not even feel like talking about health. I think my diet and exercise this year are completely fucked up. There were few months that I could be disciplined but I lost control in the last few months of the year. Nonetheless, things are somewhat better after realising cheaper self-pick up options via Grab since now I no longer overeat on weekends and I am forced to walk to collect the food from the restaurant. Potato chips are less of a concern with my favourite Kettle potato chips price increase and now they will not be $4 per pack anymore even during offers. Since the price exceeds my limit, it is easy to skip.

I also had a health scare earlier this year which resulted me having to undergo gastroscopy and colonoscopy. Thank God that nothing was wrong. The whole bowel prep experience was terrible and just thinking having to repeat this in 10 years time is eeew... Anyway 10 years is the recommended screening frequency since there was no finding with my scopes. If subsequently there is anything, then the frequency may increase. I also stopped going for my acne consultation this year. Haha.. I pretend that I am not in town due to COVID.  I am glad that my face is still relatively okay -provided that I can control my diet- and it does not regress to the state when I started seeing the dermatologist few years ago.

I lost my dad in 2020. In 2021, I lost an uncle and an aunt. I am still not used to the fact that I am at the age when losing someone will be more and more common. When thinking about this kind of thing then I always pray that I can die earlier so that I do not have to deal with losing loved ones and I do not have to deal with more illness. See.. the passive suicidal tendency will never go away from me.

I saw a meme that the year 2022 sounds like 2020 + too, rather than 2020 + two. Looking at how COVID is being managed, I think that meme is going to be a reality. The vaccines have been proven to be quite useless since things are worse this year than last year before all the vaccines. Yet ironically, everyone is just incessantly nagging about this useless measure. I personally hope that the WFH will continue like 2020 too but COVID please go away. Haha.. Anyway for now, I am solid about flying home sometime in January to escape the vaccine discrimination measures. I do not know what the future will be with this decision but thinking about it is not as stressful as these past few months following all the non-sensical discriminatory measures. May 2022 be better and may God exercise His judgement on those who have been abusing their authorities to force people to be guinea pigs to the experimental vaccines with questionable efficacy.

Journey to the moon

If only I were into crypto the first time I heard about it (ehem.. that was in my university days), I would be a millionaire now. It is very late now but it is better late than never. I only started to check about crypto when my friend introduced to a pay-to-earn game. With all the complexity (have to register for this and that to be able to convert to this and that and with certain platforms are banned in Singapore), I already lost early 'investor' lead for the game. With everything set up, I end up trading crypto as it is right now.

I only properly bought in early December after the drop from all time high (ATH) in November in hope that things would go up again. Unfortunately, market continues to drop huhuhu. I know I have to be patient since based on past history, those x00%-xx00% profit also took several months or even years. I registered with Binance.sg and to make things worse, they announced their plan of pulling out of Singapore barely a week after I bought. 13 January 2022 will be the last day to trade. That is the reason why I am actively monitoring the prices. Otherwise, I would not even pay attention or be bothered with the recent price fluctuations since my plan is more for long term investment. Oh well...

I have gained $100ish so far with my attempt to transfer my tradings to Crypto.com. I still have $3000 worth of BTC and ETH at Binance and I am praying for their prices to miraculously improve. Selling them back to cash (fiat money) and then buying again should be better than spending the transfer fee for BTC (approximately $20+) and ETH (approximately $50+).

Whatever it will be, I consider it as a learning journey. I am too lazy to research and so late into crypto because I thought it was something like shares. With BTC price of few thousand dollars, I thought that it is the mininum amount to purchase 1 coin like a minimum to purchase 1 share. I am completely wrong since cryptocurrency allows fraction of the coins so any amount can be invested. Currently I am learning to restrain myself not to add more money to this crypto investment since it is tempting to buy more with the current price drops. Haiz.. I hope I am not too late for the rocket to the moon and I do not end up going underground :(

On a separate note, I usually reject marketing calls from banks. However, I agreed to one since I am only clearing my leave for this week. Lucky for me that the fund offered to me is already something I am investing with my personal financial advisor. In addition, my current investment product is flexible and I can add or withdraw amount anytime so I do not have to lock in certain amount for certain period. I spent more than an hour talking but I think it was a useful time investment. Now I know that my financial advisor is not selling me rubbish. More importantly, I can confidently reject any future marketing calls since there are no better products from the banks. Why would I want anything with lock in period when I have something flexible. Hehe...

Another COVID Christmas

It feels awkward with Christmas falls on a Saturday this year. I keep thinking that today is already Sunday and I have to remind myself that I still need to go for Sunday mass tomorrow. Certainly I did not expect last year that it would be another COVID Christmas this year. I suppose at least it is better this year since I managed to book a Christmas mass.

I still do not have any Christmas spirit. This year I keep telling myself that Christmas is Jesus' birthday so I just want to spend time with him and I do not want to be bothered by humans. I feel so irritated and sian about replying Christmas messages. Thank goodness there were fewer people messaging me this year and I only selectively replied in some of the whatsapp group. Do I really spend time with Jesus though? Nope..

Even when people did not welcome him and He had to be born in a barn, at least Jesus was still surrounded by the love of St Joseph and Mother Mary and still had the angels, animals and shepherd accompanying him. I feel alone with no love and I do not even have cute animals to accompany me. Haiz.. yeah I don't know why but this is my weird Christmas thought for this year.

I am also physically tired since I was out for the whole day yesterday. I went to the embassy in the morning to renew my passport. I spent 1.5 hours there although I was glad that the embassy is in the midst of major renovation. Although it is not completed yet, it is much more modern and the aircon is cooling so the 1.5 hours were not so terrible. I think my photo will be quite ugly again because I have a pimple on my left cheek thanks to the mask. Bleah..

In the evening, I went to my cousin's place to have a Christmas dinner with my aunt. As what I wrote two paragraphs above, I was actually very lazy to socialise this Christmas and I pretended not to see her message earlier this week. However, she kept calling me on subsequent days so I had no choice but to entertain. That is why I am still feeling tired today since I only reached home around 1130pm last night and I went for 7am mass this morning.

Just to end this Christmas post with something Christmas-y, I am happy that recently I managed to win some battles in Final Fantasy 7 First Soldier game. Hehe... I stopped playing for 2 weeks because of busyness but with the ongoing Christmas event, I got hooked again. Although I do not have the Santa skin, at least the Red XIII skin can pass as a Christmas look. I won my first match a few days ago and that was after 161 games played. Yeah I am that lousy hehe.. After winning my second match, I decided to remove the mask skin so that I can see the handsome face if I win a gain. That happened today and this screenshot should be a merry enough for Christmas. Lol.

Lucky I have the Santa hat hahaha...

Christmas in the air

I could smell Christmas in the air when I went and returned from the gym yesterday. Or perhaps it was simply because I do not need to work anymore for the rest of this year. I am starting to clear my annual leave from today. I was supposed to have a dental appointment this morning but it was rescheduled to Monday instead.

I feel more relaxed now after completing Landings bulletin and all the year end reviews at work. I can finally play my games and start to pack some of my toys to their boxes. I will be renewing my passport tomorrow and having decided to fly home, even if the hotel quarantine duration is extended, really puts me at peace from all the vaccination nonsense here. Thank God that my boss still allows me to keep my job and my landlord still allows me to pay rent for my room when I am away.

My team had a virtual Christmas party last week and it was one of the rare occasion when I won the lucky draw of $30. I was the second last name to be drawn and sadly this lucky draw had equal prizes. When lucky draws have increasing prizes and the bigger ones are called towards the end, I would not even win any. Haiz.. have to remind myself to be grateful. I also won $30 from the game. My internet was lagging or else I could won $50 if I volunteered earlier to be the drawer for one of the games. Again I was still lucky to come out 5th because I scored zero in the first game haha...

I finished my own year end review and it felt relaxing not to have any expectations. I learnt my lessons from last year. There was no point of putting higher self-rating and then get higher rating during the appraisal itself when the actual performance bonus and increment were as shit as usual. So for this year I just anyhow put all the average and let whatever my boss wanted to say. It is nice to find that I have been helpful to her bla bla bla but to me everything is just a lip-service if it is not translated to higher performance bonus and increment.

A part of me is still upset about the lack of recognition for my output. Things were falling apart during mid-year because I was held up with things. I could not help to boost the so called "team goals" while others could only complain so much about work although not really doing  the work. At the end, all the goals were met and I carried a lot of the "team goals" but the credits went to the team. When things fail, I get the blame. When things succeed, others get the credit. Luckily that is just a part of me. Generally I am not too upset about this because I learn from St Therese of Lisieux of serving God in little ways. Work comes from God and by thinking that what I do is for God and not for humans, human recognition is no longer the purpose. One thing that made me very happy was to tell my boss that things improved after the bitch left the team earlier this year. I do not usually bad mouth colleague but the bitch is an ex-colleague so I can hehe.. I am glad that my boss agreed with what I said because she could see how little that bitch contributed.

Begone all toxicities! I shall think about how I am going to spend the next 10 days just stuck in my shithole, especially with my gym is also taking a 1 week break next week. Grrr...

Catholic200SG

Perhaps the most worthwhile thing from being vaccinated is being able to volunteer for the recently concluded Catholic200SG Festival. I almost did not get to volunteer because they preferred volunteers who could commit for at least 3 sessions and the third session offered to me was at regular working hours. After initially replying to KIV me first, I contacted the volunteer manager again few hours later after I decided to use my annual leave.

Around three weeks ago, I realised that I still had 1.5 days of remaining annual leave even after taking leave from 23 Dec until the New Year. That is a good 10 days of just doing nothing at home and I was not really keen on extending another 1.5 days. Thus on the pre-festival week, I decided to be thick skin to inform the volunteer managers that I had some leave to burn if they needed help for any preparation. That led to helping out with some arts and craft as well as one additional volunteering slot last week. Yay! At least I managed to use my remaining annual leave more meaningfully.

I actually received 2 shirts and 2 masks since my first two duties were on consecutive days

Pre-festival: helping out for Family Church Build

I could only help out on the Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon before the festival. Honestly I did not help much. When I came on Tuesday, the church models were already built. I only helped out with detailing some of the windows (of Sts Peter and Paul) and pillars (Cathedral) and that was very little. I mostly spent time settling the base and anything hidden underneath to support the main exhibit. Nevertheless, I found it quite therapeutic to do some arts and crafts since it has been ages since the last time I had to cut paper, cut styrofoam, use glue and scissors etc.

The progress of things when I left on Wednesday

The volunteer manager was also nice with some refreshment. I finally got to try Mr Coconut which I was previously curious about the hype. After trying, I will not buy for myself. The fresh one only had 2 pieces of the coconut meat and if that is about $4-5ish, it is totally not worth it. The following day she bought Auntie Anne's pretzels and Koi.

Day 1

My first session was on the morning of the first day. I was assigned at the cafe's takeaway counter. I only helped with the preparation work (e.g. arranging where to put the utensils, sauces, boxes and heat bags) because when the takeaway counter started to operate at 11am, I moved to set up a drink booth at the Cathedral. It was relatively quiet as there were not many events in that morning.  There were more volunteers than visitors and I counted less than 15 visitors walking towards the annex building from the time the counter was ready until the end of my shift at 130pm.

One interesting thing was to see the Archbishop's entourage in the morning. As it was the opening day, he passed by the cafe's takeaway counter on his way from the Cathedral to the Catholic Centre. Later on I saw the entourage again when they returned to the Cathedral.

Day 2

I was given logistics duty at night shift from 5 to 930pm. It was really a waste of time as it was literally just sitting down doing nothing for 3 hours. We only worked at the last half an hour after the closing time to do disinfection. There were only two things going on during this time (the festival shop and the art exhibition) and that was why there was nothing much for us to do.

I felt so miserable on this day as I had to listen to a haolian girl, a typical irrating church auntie, a chinese speaking bimbo. Bleah.. basically I enjoyed my time with the other volunteers at my slot on the previous day.

Day 5

I decided to come earlier to utilise my voucher to get lunch from the cafe's takeaway counter. Although the voucher expiry is until Dec 2022, I doubt I will go to this place in the future just to use the voucher. I chose fish and chips. The fish was still good but the chips were soggy and tasteless while the coleslaw was mostly sour and missing the sweetness. I frankly think it was bad for a $15 meal. I also managed to pop by to the Family Church Build to see the final product.

Err.. not exactly what I expected based on how the artist described his visual. Glad that they made the base on the east side nicer since I highlighted to take care of that spot before I left on Wednesday.

This day was an additional slot for me because at the start, I was only assigned to 3 sessions. I was happy to finally experience working at F&B as I was helping to do dishwashing for the cafe. Now I feel quite turned off to do dine in seeing how the dishes are handled. Haha but I do not really know the 'industrial' dishwasher works so maybe it indeed cleans better than manual washing or the domestic dishwasher. After all, it works very fast (~2 minutes per cycle) and it uses ~90 degrees water to clean.

On the second half of the shift, I went to bring more prawn crackers for the booth at Cathedral. It was nice to see that now the booth there was mainly selling cookies and prawn crackers which definitely were more sell-able than 100+ and Coke. I decided to stay there because the volunteer stationed there was much more friendly and pleasant to talk to. In addition, I know how boring to be there alone.

I was emo because Jesus plushie at the Cathedral shop were sold out. I checked online the day before and it was available so I was thinking of buying it :( I am lazy if I order online and then have to make a special trip after the festival just to collect. Perhaps I am just not fated to buy. I already missed out the Jesus plushie from the festival shop which I knew was already sold out when I checked the shop on Sunday.

I went to the book shop but nothing caught my interest to buy. The Bethlehem Village was really interesting and nice. It was really a huge animatronics exhibit stretching up to almost the whole length of the book shop. The lighting effect would be even more impactful if it was located further away from the bright book shop. Sadly I did not take any photo on it because the area was quite squuezy with other people taking photos too. Not to mention that my mood was already downhill since I could not get Jesus plushie or found any interesting book to buy.  

Day 7

Going for confession is the main purpose for me to volunteer for Catholic200SG festival. I did not even notice that the parish-based booking for Advent penitential rite was already opened and fully booked when announced at last week Mass. Thus I made the correct decision to participate in this event. I took leave for the whole of the day so I was considering between going for confession before vs after my duty today. Thank God I decided to go before my duty since it was raining after my duty. I also cancelled my plan to check out the Luminary Lit and the bookshop at Sts Peter and Paul.

I was rather disappointed with Journey of Grace. It was being listed as a separate 'event' from the confession but it turned out to be more of a the queue management strategy before and after the confession. Instead of just sitting down doing nothing while waiting for confession, we waited at the Main Church in front of the exposed Blessed Sacrament. After the confession, we went to the chapel for Adoration to do our penance and reflection. Anyway, this arrangement was definitely better than just waiting around doing nothing or finding our own quiet spot for penance. It is just that I was expecting that there was something more special from the Journey of Grace. I am usually stressed about what to say before the confession and the Act of Contrition so I really appreciated the handout on how to prepare for the confession and the Act of Contrition printed on the table in the confession room.

The handout to prepare for the confession

I just did confession last month so this was the shortest period in between my confession. I was so tempted to skip but in the end I decided to be obedient to the minimum Lenten and Advent confessions yearly. This time my penance was to read from Psalms 32, 51 and 86. As part of the whole Journey of Grace, I went to the Adoration Room as the last stop but I was super distracted as the room becoming more crowded. Thus I decided to just quickly go to allow others to have the space.

I was on logistics duty again and luckily this time, my partners were nicer and we actually had things to do. We helped to transfer queue poles to the Cathedral. It was a right decision for me to go back up to take umbrellas because it started raining heavily by the time I took them. The rest was already stuck somewhere along the way to shelter themselves from the rain. Anyway the rain was too heavy and even with the umbrella, my pants and shoes were soak. Since the shoes were already wet, there was no worry about walking through the water ponding at the intersections to cross over to Cathedral. The best part was the rain sort of stopped on our way back after delivering the queue poles. After that, I went to wash dishes again for about an hour and that wrapped up my volunteering experience. One of the volunteer managers gave me some Christmas cookies at the end. Thank you. Hehe..

Day 8/Last Day

Today marks the end of the Festival. Initially I did not plan to go and I just wanted to rest and do nothing at home today. Somehow when considering between self-collection vs delivery for lunch, I decided to just drop by to the Festival to check the Luminary Lit and the bookshop at Sts Peter and Paul Church and to take photos of the Bethlehem Village.

Thank God for the prompting as I enjoyed my visit today. I think Luminary Lit is one of the bigger exhibits in this whole festival. I did not intend to take photo with myself but the volunteer on duty offered me. Since at that time I was alone in the hall, I could even take off my mask for the photo. Haha.. but because I had no intention to take photo today, I was underdressed with sandals.

At the entrance which is shaped like the Bible

I also took some photos of Bethlehem Village. Unfortunately there were several other visitors in the area so I could not remove my mask for a photo.

This is only 2/3 of the exhibit as there was not enough space to distance myself from the exhibit to take the whole length

I browsed through the books at the bookshop there again but decided not to buy anything since I overheard that the payment was only through Paynow. The most interesting finding was The Glories of Mary, which I am currently reading at home, at $6.50. That is exactly the same price as the copy which I bought more than a decade ago.

I really find the pricing of religious books to be rather random. Some smaller and thinner books can be more expensive (e.g. $20+)  than other bigger and thicker book (e.g. less than $10). I had similar observations at the bookshop at Sts Peter and Paul too. I suppose God listened to my cries for Jesus plushie because the bookshop also has its own version of Jesus plushie ($19.90). There is also Holy Family plushie (Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus) at $49.90 which I find expensive. Joseph and Mary are of the same size as the Jesus' plushie which means the baby Jesus is ~$10. Anyway I decided to buy all as early Christmas presents for myself. I also bought two books but I will only write more about them after reading.

I attended the concurrent Mass which conclude all the Catholic200SG celebrations. All the parishes were ringing their church bells at the same time at 6pm. Unfortunately from inside the church, I could not hear my own church bell because at the same time they were showing the video broadcast from the Cathedral. I was surprised that the homily was a recording from the Archbishop because that really meant everyone listened to same homily. Of course it would be even more true to the spirit of concurrence if they broadcasted the homily live from the Cathedral but I suppose it is not easy to handle the timing.

Afterthoughts

I am really glad and thankful for God's prompting to visit the Festival today since it helped to lift up my mood. I am expecting a spirit-filled experience which unfortunately was destroyed by two people. Ironically, these were from the organisation-side whom we were supposed to help.

I deliberately did not mention the name but it is obvious there is only one cafe. One is the white-haired chef and one is bleached-hair guy. Let's start with the bleached-hair guy first. I don't know what their usual workflow is but it would be extremely helpful if he would just scrape of the food waste to the dustbin (which was just below where the dishes to be washed were placed) before he separated the plates from the cutleries. Fine if he did not do so but at least put things down nicely instead of throwing the crockery and slamming the plates etc.

The white-haired chef is the worst with his toxic behaviour and verbal abuse. He was rude and would just find fault with everything if it was not done according to his way. When I did not rush, he said I was slow but when I did more quickly, he said why kancheong. When one of the service staff told him to speak nicely, not to scold and raise his voice since I was only a volunteer to help and not their staff, he retorted that he was not scolding and it was his normal way of speaking. That proved two things: it is not only myself who finds his way of speaking unacceptable and it is a red flag if this is his daily behaviour. After all, it was not unique to me since other volunteers who ever did dishwashing also shared similar stories. It is really appalling if this is how normally treats the staff since the cafe employs the disadvantaged who may not dare to stand up and protect themselves from such toxic behaviour and verbal abuse. If I want to nasty, I can actually whistleblow to some organisations or to authorities to investigate. Anyway he totally ruined my mood and I am not going to let it slide without doing nothing. At the very least, I decided to raise this as a feedback to the volunteer managers.

Other than that, I generally had God-filled moments with the other volunteers and visitors. Having said that, a part of me feels reluctant to involved in Church-related things anymore because some of the 'old guards' are not reflecting or even destroying the image of God. I need to remind myself not to be too affected because I come/serve/contribute for God, and not for humans. In additions, we are all sinners so perhaps I have hurt others too. That's why I prefer a more backend involvement so that I do not accidentally ruining the image of God considering my own sinful nature.

My biggest regret is that I never enjoyed the evening atmosphere to see how everything looked like with the lighted decorations. My evening duty last Sunday ended after 9pm which was sort of the official end time. The nasty chef ruined my mood on Wednesday while the rain spoilt my plan on Friday. Oh well =x there were mostly light decorations.

Omicron

Last week I was so happy to get an appointment slot for my passport renewal on 24 December but by the end of the week, omicron has arrived and ruined my plan to evacuate to Jakarta next month. The quarantine period has been extended to 7 days from countries without omicron yet. If by next month there are omicron cases here, the quarantine period will be 14 days if I go home. Haiz.. that is going to cost me half of my monthly pay.

There is no point thinking about next month since rules and regulations change so quickly. Yet I cannot help but to feel stressed and worried about this. Not to mention that I have to weigh between paying empty room (if my landlord even allows this) or I should just pack all my stuff and rent a storage space instead. My latest thought today is maybe I can just survive as an unvaccinated person since I can go to mamashop downstairs to get bread for dinner. So it is okay if I cannot go to supermarket to buy bananas. I pray so that God takes away my worries and it is not answered. I pray for the end of all these vaccination discrimination and it is also not answered. I do not know what I need to do anymore.

I am physically tired which in turn makes me rather moody as well. I went to donate blood on Saturday and I can confirm that my blood pressure has increased. In the past, I was borderline hypotensive and at times were at risk not able to donate but my blood pressure has been between 110-120 in the past few donations. Now I have to worry about tachycardia as well since I had to take repeat measurement because of my heart rate above 100.

Perhaps the only thing that I am look forward to is the Catholic200SG festival which will finally begin this Saturday. I am grateful that I am able to utilise my annual leave more meaningfully. I will be taking leave from 23 December to New Year and that still leaves me with another 1.5 days to use. Just thinking about 10 days of doing nothing already pains me and I was not keen to extend that by another 1.5 days. Thus I am very happy to be able to use these 1.5 days for another extra volunteering slot next Wednesday (I think someone backs out at last minute) and to help with some pre-festival preparation in the past two days. I will write my experience in these last two days later on when I blog after the festival ends.