Wedding planning update

It's already September and our wedding is in 4 weeks!

By now I should be either really excited or anxious right now since the day is drawing nearer.. Well, I am excited. I am happy. I am elated. I am marrying the man of my dreams who is perfect for me and I can finally have a family which I always wanted. A beautiful relationship with Le bf which is blessed by God and envied by so many.

However..... I am really tired and frustrated too. 

My workload in the office is increasing at an exponential rate and I've been stuck in the midnight shift for longer than I want to. I did not choose to work in the overnight shift. It's by a bidding system and it's difficult to have good stats to bid for a shift of your choice because of many factors.

It's like.. once you are in poverty you are trapped in poverty and it's a damn hard process to break out of that cycle. You work like crazy, you do everything you can, but it seems like you are stuck in the rut. Same concept applies to the night shift. I shall not comment much on what's happening, but the main issue is lack of manpower cos we have a few colleagues moving to different departments and a few senior colleagues left the company. Lots of time is needed to train the new hires and the bulk of the work gets distributed to the remaining staff (like me).

I've been staying back longer and longer and it has stretched from 1hr up to 5hrs on certain days. We don't get paid for overtime, nor do we get time off in lieu. My afternoon shift colleagues are also staying back because of the workload and we have already highlighted to our bosses that we can't manage.. but it is what it is..

I'm learning to push back work and not be Ms Nice anymore cos what's the point of doing other people's work out of helpfulness while they get to go off work on time and collect their salary every month while we work like slaves and have such a hard time managing the work on time of our own workload.

I don't mind staying back once or twice a week to finish up the work but it's been a permanent thing to stayback after my official hours, rushing to finish the work because I am so fucking tired and need to go back to sleep before coming back to work again that night. My life now is work, sleep, eat, work. There's no "life" at all, not to mention "work-life balance". Fuck work-life balance. If the situation don't improve at work after I get married, I will have to leave and get another job with proper office hours, as much as I love my job here. I can't leave my husband to sleep alone at night. Moreover Mama Chew has been nagging at me non-stop about my midnight shift because she is worried about my health.

Sigh.

And there's so many things to do for the wedding preparations yet so little time left! I can delegate duties to others to do it for me but I guess I am too anal about getting things done properly and efficiently according to my standards that I just cannot let others do it. 

You may think I am being crazy, selfish or overloading myself.. But let me put it to you in another way. For example you know how to cook a particular dish and you can cook it very well. If you have a limited time to produce the dish for a very important person/event, will you:

1) Cook it yourself 

2) Delegate someone else to do it

The answer is a no-brainer right? You will definitely cook it yourself because you can trust that you will do a good job since you know how to cook the dish. Why would you risk it and delegate to someone else to do it when you only have a limited time frame? Moreover you have to waste time to supervise, guide & teach that person to do it and the end result may not be as good as what you can produce! There's always an opportunity to share your knowledge with others, but not when time is of the essence. 

Honestly I don't like to talk on the phone and prefer emails or messaging because I have to talk non-stop during work (I work in a call centre) and I don't like to talk after work.. well, at least not over the phone. I don't mind face to face conversations, because talking on the phone feels like work to me!! 

This is how I feel everyday after work.

After work I don't want to think about work anymore until I have to come back to the office again. Which is another reason why I never answer phonecalls from my office, regardless of who is calling. My off time is my off time and my working time is my paid time. I document everything I do properly and there's no reason to call and disturb me during my off time. What can I do when I am out of office? Will the sky fall without me? If I can settle something for another colleague who is not in the office, why can't they do the same for me? I never ever call a colleague who is off duty for anything that is work related because I understand and respect that off duty means it's their personal time. We are not in a role or job that expects 24hrs on call duty. If I am a doctor then yes, I am expected to be on call. 

I am sleeping during the day since I work overnight, so I can't possibly wake up just to take a phone call and go back to sleep. I am not a machine that can be switched on and off so easily. It takes me longer to fall asleep because the human body is designed to sleep during the NIGHT not DAY. Try staying awake at night for consecutively more than 6 months and you will see a huge change in your health. We are just not designed to function at night. 

Yes, some people might say "Talking is so much faster", well..whatever. Talk to someone else.

I turn off my phone during the day because that's my sleeping time and people who cannot fathom or understand that can just fuck off. I am so sick and tired of explaining and justifying to imbeciles why I cannot answer my phone during the day. Hey, why don't I call you at 3am? It's an unearthly hour? Well, 3pm is an unearthly hour to me because I start work at 9.30PM. Yes, read it carefully, it's PM - POST MERIDIEM. Fucking idiots.

Also, I prefer emails.. especially for our wedding vendors because I want everything in black and white. I am not comfortable with verbal agreements or promises because people are full of empty promises nowadays. At least with black and white I can always refer back. 

People are mostly forgetful or have selective memory. I remember things quite well but not as good as I used to anymore. Maybe I am old now and my brain is degenerating? But I think the main reason is because I am being overloaded at work and I have to juggle it with planning for the wedding since I am doing the bulk of it. Most of all, the lack of sleep is just messing up my memory capacity. That's why all these emails serves as reminder and a record for me and also for them. 

Even Le bf sometimes forget what he says to me in whatsapp and I will go back and print-screen and show it to him as proof and he will apologize to me. Sometimes I seem quite confrontational but I always have facts to back me up. I get annoyed when people misread (either on purpose or due to laziness) and cannot comprehend what I want to get across. 

Le bf says most people just skim through without reading everything (I believe he's referring to himself too) and sometimes I am too long-winded. 

The level of stupidity in some people is just too high

I vehemently disagree. I am not long-winded. I am being detailed. I told him that the most people lack basic comprehension skills and I blame it on their teachers for being lousy educators and themselves for not reading enough. 

How many people you know actually reads storybooks for leisure? How many people actually owns more than 10 storybooks? When was the last time they read from an actual book? FYI, Facebook is not considered a book.

Most of the people I know only read storybooks when they are forced to do so - for example, during Literature class in school. Some people only read the books which are in "fashion" - for example, Fifty Shades of Grey (which btw is a ultra lame book and poorly written). Some just want to wait for the movies to be released and can't be bothered to read at all - for example, Hunger Games, Harry Potter, etc.

I am not a person with a super powerful knowledge of the English language, but I am definitely better than majority of Singaporeans because I read a lot since I was young and I get good grades in language based subjects like Literature, Social studies and of cos.. English. I got 98/100 for my Social Studies mid year paper because my teacher said they cannot award a student 100% as it's technically impossible so they had to deduct marks "somewhere". And I didn't score A for English because my teachers thought my essays were not good. Well, they expects students to write cookie cutter essays like those 10 year series examples. Whatever.. I usually score full or almost perfect scores for comprehension and summary writing (remember those 160 words limit?). But I did really poorly in subjects which requires mathematics. Maths, Physics, etc.. 

Surprisingly I did very well for Accounts & Economics even though Maths is involved. My lecturer from SIM told me I am strange because I kept failing Business Maths (I failed 2 times and barely scrapped through the 3rd time) yet I scored near perfect marks for Accounts & Economics. Oh well.. the only reason I can think of is my brain cannot process mathematical formulas, especially algebra. Accounts is dealing with money and Economics is also dealing with money and wealth - consumption, demand & supply of resources. 

God blessed me with enough patience just for one person and that is Brendan. I've never been so patient with anyone in my entire life and it's almost effortless for me to do it for him. I think that's by God's grace and also out of the immense amount of love I have for him. I only have lesser patience for him when I am going through PMS cos the hormones just mess up my mood and all and he knows to be extra careful during those few days of the month because I can bite his head off when I get really frustrated. 

And the good thing is he actually knows and appreciates the fact that I have a lot of patience I have for him especially when he sees me dealing with other people. I am sick and tired of incompetent vendors whose life mission is to piss me off to no ends with their stupidity and refusal to READ carefully and replying me on time. If you don't understand, ask. If you want to make sure you understand, para-phrase. Don't act smart and assume because ASSUME = making an ASS out of U and ME, and I don't take kindly to people treating me like an ass.

Luckily I am planning this wedding with only 6 months timeframe because if I left everything to Le bf, we would have gotten married in 2023 instead. #NotJoking

I don't blame him.. he's a guy after all and men are very task-oriented. Women are blessed with the ability to multi-task and that's why I am the person planning the entire thing.

Initially Le bf doesn't know how much work and research I've done because I've always presented the heavily filtered information over to him when it comes down to decision making time. He thought everything was so easy until I let him have a glimpse of what I've done for our hotel banquet search back in April that he was awed and actually apologized to me for thinking that it is easy and he took it all for granted and he's thankful that his girlfriend is so efficient.

I let him be the decision maker because I am a lousy decision maker and he is the man of the household (figuratively speaking).

My job as a good girlfriend/future wife is to make sure that I've done all the proper homework and research so he can make a good decision with the options I present to him because I am good with finding information and he is good at making decisions.

A good example is the purchase of my engagement ring. I always believed that diamonds are overpriced items (see my previous post) but since he insisted in buying me a proper solitaire diamond ring for the proposal, I read up a lot and checked on the market prices and trends.

I went to several jewelry shops in Singapore to check out on the designs and prices before short-listing a few for Le bf to go down with me to choose. I actually anticipated what the salesman was about to say and asked him to spare me the bullshit sales talk and go straight into the specs and prices.

My expression when salesmen pitch their products to me

I've altered my 2 night ballgowns, received our pre-wedding photos from Samuel (who is a genius!), got the diamond ring on my finger (Le bf officially proposed last Sunday! ^_^), confirmed the flowers & decor for church, decided on the songs and music for church, and many more.. I'm too tired to think straight now. I've a few hours of sleep left before I need to wake up for church service at 9am.

There's still a lot of things to reconfirm and finalize and I pray for the strength and endurance to juggle work and wedding prep together. Next Saturday is our Guo Da Li da!