bel

Last day at the job today. I have learned to:

- keep up with deadlines
- work under pressure
- talk a lot more rubbish
- write equity research reports minus the difficult financial substance seeing as how I have no prior knowledge of stocks
- stay focused while chatting on MSN, tweeting and blogging simultaneously. I am the mother of all multitaskers although my boss doesn't think so.
- how to quickly snap MSN shut when the boss rolls around
- get my boss two drinks in 2 seconds

After 1.5 months of having to wake up at ungodly hours, I will finally get to sleep in for another two weeks. Damn, I miss my bed.

I am not maudlin about packing up and leaving; I am overly used to the fact that almost everybody who enters my life is but an ephemeral presence. In due time, most will become erstwhile entities, if not faded memories trapped at the back of my head. Long ago, when I was 13, a much older friend of about 20 told me (I was so much more mature when I was 13) this in all her sagaciousness. That is, however, not to say that I don't treasure what friendships and relationships I've had and have. People forget; out of sight, out of mind.

Yet, I still cling to the naive idea that if someone is meant to come back into your life, whether you meet him or her while shopping for painkillers in the pharmacy, having dinner with your children some 13 years from now or walking down a busy street tomorrow, then he or she will. It is, indeed, sort of like saying, "let's leave it up to fate" and wistfully hope for a film noir star-crossed ending to a certain chapter of your life. Most days, I challenge that in a caustic tone: "your fate is entirely up to you!" But on moonlit nights I wonder who gazes upon the same glowing orb that I do, and I think of everyone who has ever come into my life, and what has become of them. And there in my mind they will remain. Until some 13 years from now, perhaps.