Thursday, April 19, 2007

Life's certainties

They say the only thing certain in life are death and taxes. That doesn't become apparently clear to you until they happen almost simultaneously, and at that moment you wonder, all those things, those insignificant things I've thought about, actually are somewhat insignificant.

A couple of days ago my grandma called me in the office, this was one of those routine 'How are you doing' calls that happen monthly. Except this time I spoken to her a little longer since I had time, its one of those moments in the office when things are working out and I'm not overwhelmed with work. So she asked me about work, life, and what she'll be doing over the next two weeks, and perhaps after that she'd come visit.

She'd never make that visit.

At the funeral a few things happened, I met with relatives I hadn't seen in years, the guy leading the wake seemed like he was recruiting all of us into Christianity, and the first day I brought KFC but wasn't in an eating mood. There was water, nuts and boredom. It felt wrong, but I felt bored sitting outside having nuts and water 2 days in a row. Then I decided that next time, I will prepare my own posthumous speech. I don't understand why a daft punk can pretend to know who she was, and that she would want us all to be Christians? That is wrong, but then again he was just working, I guess.

My own speech would probably be 'Dear family and friends, thank you all for coming today. I hope you are dressed up because I don't die everyday. If you are in a t-shirt and/or shorts, please go home and change, have some respect, eh? Also please turn off your mobile for the entire duration of my wake/burial service because that's just rude.'

I did my taxes today as well, finally. The e-filing system is surprisingly easy to use, and I don't have to drive all the way to the tax offices to submit it, so that's perfect. With e-filing, I was done in a jiffy. A jiffy was like 20 minutes. Which is the time it'd take to just drive to Pandan Indah before lunchtime.

Also I renewed my passport the other day as well, and the people are surprisingly courteous. Dare I say professional? Yes they were, considering we're at least RM300 a pop, I think they're making pretty good money, its the least they can do. I was done in about an hour and a half, and at a pleasantville scale of 9. 10 if they spruced up the deco a little. The whole teal-greenish government building theme with the assorted longkang-fish in the aquarium doesn't quite cut it.

But I guess that'll be fixed once they have a online system for that. I do love it when you merge government offices with zero interaction, everything's suddenly so pleasant.