Help! Somebody Shot Ah Siong!

So the title is a bit out there - and exaggerated. I didn't get shot. I got arrowed plenty. But that's the boring office shit which I shall spare you till later. No, the title refers to yet another delayed blogcast of "The World According To Ah Siong". Yup. No Mystery Sects again. Now, now, I know what you're thinking, I'm procrastinating again...or maybe I don't have anything... But I assure you, there is plenty to write about and I do have about more than two A4 size worth of material just sitting there in my harddisk at work, but the thing is, more pressing matters abound in the Kingdom of Ah Siong. I've just got to get this off of my chest or I'll start to blow my brains out, bit by bit. Cos you see, I'm having one of those Libran panic attacks again. You know, those paranoia and depression filled types.

About a week has past since I sent out my film via Fed-Ex to Sundance, and as of now at 1.36am in the morning, my olive green spot has still not turned dark green yet. No, I'm not talking about that ripening olive in your martini. It's my Sundance entry. They haven't acknowledged the receipt of my film, hence the status of my application has not turned from a "ready to send olive green" to a "yes, we've received it dark green" on the Sundance Film Fest website. Stricken by panic, I check my email to see if Sundance replied and I checked the FAQs again on their website. That's when I started to lose my mind a little. Seems there's this little section in the FAQ where they answer the question "Will you notify me if you haven't received my film entry?". And their answer? No. They don't send you any reply to tell you if they've received your film. So I won't be getting any email reply from Sundance about whether they've received my film or not. And to add insult to injury, they actually also wrote that the best way to ensure that they receive my entry is to include a self-addressed envelope/postcard with postage attached so that they can write back and tell me that they've received my package. And of course, being the unlucky bastard that I am, I managed to not notice this section of the FAQ and thus did not include any self-addressed postcard of any sort. So I'm fucked. Now all I have to go on is to hope that that little olive green spot in their website turns to dark green so I'll know if they've received my film or not. That stoopid little green dot now determines my fate. That little miserable olive green dot now determines if I've pissed away one year of my life for nothing.

The depressing thing is, its one week today and their instructions say clearly to allow them a week to process the entry. As you can tell by now, I've now totally lost all sense of reasoning and have turned into a babbling, blogging fool. I can't help thinking if I've done something wrong. Did I write the address properly? Did I write the correct film ID number? There's no way of knowing now. This thing is now going to eat at me till I find out for sure if I've fucked myself through my own carelessness or if I've just been subjecting myself to the kind of senseless paranoid mental torture I always put myself through when I discover I've made a stupid mistake that I can't undo.

Things have gone terribly pear shaped these past few days. First off, I find out that one of my colleagues at my macjob at TP quit. She left within five days of me knowing that she's quitting. And I was the last one in the office to know. But that's not what got my goat. Cos its not that she's a good friend or anything. In fact its the opposite. I actually don't know her well enough to even have any knowledge of her. But I digress. See, the thing that got me bent out of shape was that I inherited some of her job duties. Yup. That's all I was hoping for. More civil service jobs to do. Yay!

Now, what job was it that I inherited? Well, I've actually now responsible for answering all emails (complaints, enquiries etc.) addressed to the Corp. Comm Department of TP. Yup. The job is not nuclear science but the thing I hate about it is, first off, its a customer service job. I've to respond to all these complaints in a 'nice' way. That's actually the easy part. The sick thing is there are strict rules to follow as TP being an ISO (international Standards) licensed institution, will be audited. Meaning there can be no mistakes in answering the emails. No emails must go unanswered. All emails within the day. And so on. But still, that's not why I'm pissed at getting this thing. No. Its the fact that I've done this before that gets my goat. See, I used to handle shit like this at Starhub. Ensuring an error free programme schedule. Prompt answering of complaints, etc. And Starhub was much much tougher shit. So why the fuss, you wonder? See, being in charge of all this type of ISO shit again just sends me to a bad place. Cos that was part of the reason why I think I got thyroid at Starhub ...cos of all the stress. And this stupid job was supposed to be easy. Now on top of me hating the reporting part of the job, hating the very fact of being there, I now feel I've inherited more of the same type of meaningless shit I swore I never wanted to be part of any longer when I left Starhub. That kind of inane GIC, civil service bullshit which means absolutely squat in the rest of the industrialised world.

But that's still not what tipped me over the scale. See, to top it all off, I'd forgotten that my boss had said a while back that I would inherit some ISO portfolio from someone else. That's what got my goat. Cos now, on top of writing for the school, I got to do more ISO shit like answering all emails addressed to Corp Comm and this new ISO 400 portfolio. Now don't get me wrong. I don't mind being given extra duties while I'm working at my job. But I do mind being given work that has little to do with what I was hired for. I don't mind being given extra stuff in my area of expertise which I was hired for. But getting meaningless shit which I didn't sign up for, and then being told that the well-being of the entire organisation depends on these extra meaningless shitty new duties is beyond the call of my duty. I mean, I didn't even apply for the freaking job.
Of course, I wouldn't be freaking out now I knew someone in America is looking at my film, wondering if they should select me for their film festival. But then I had to find out that my film might not even be seen if it got lost in the mail or something. That just freaks me out big time. That totally rips the floor from under me. Not seeing that tiny dark green spot totally freaks me out. I feel like I'm just jumped off the precipice of a high mountain with a parachute on my back. And I've been handed a letter telling me that my parachute was packed by an obsessive ex-boyfriend of my wife.

And to top it all off. I now have to start to writing the next issue of the magazine for TP. Yup, the whole process of writing and interviewing people will start again. And this issue is 20pages thicker cos its supposed to be a bumper issue. And now more than ever, a shadow of doubt has crept in. If my film is not at Sundance, does that mean I have to stay here beyond january? Should I get another job now? What if I have to take leave to go to Sundance in January if I get selected? Did I get selected cos I don't even know if my film was received? Doubts, uncertainty, paranoia. Funny how fast you can fall from the fantasy of a dream to a total nightmare of your existence. I do hope I'm just being paranoid. Cos God knows I need my film not to be lost but to be in the safe hands of Sundance. I really do. My sanity depends on it.