Ad Infinitum

They say that two sure-fire barometers of an individual’s personal hygiene (or lack thereof) are his/her feet, and the bathroom. In my personal experience, one’s bathroom habits also tell a lot.

I have this new workmate who’s your typical girl with all the trimmings of vanity and poise: feminine skirts, holds her spoon with the pinkie raised high enough to touch her nose, and strappy sandals that show off her clean, manicured toenails. So my impression of her was fairly okay until the bathroom frights began.

Let’s put it this way. For some obscure reason which could be an aversion to the flush handle, she’s not particularly fond of flushing. The few times that she did, she never tried hard enough, and always left little remembrances of her toilet activities as if to say, –let’s call her A – A was here! So for the past two months that she’s been with the company,her almost daily reliefs have become my sources of disbelief. Now I wonder, knowing that we are the only two members of the office distaff, and also the only two people using the female washroom on our floor at night, does she not care at all that I have been ( and will always be for as long as she stays with the company, unless I quit ) an unwilling witness to her poor toilet manners?  Does she not worry that word of her lack of hygiene would reach the rest of the office population? Because a direct confrontation would be embarrassing, I am very much tempted to resort to a subtler approach by posting this inside all cubicles:

PLEASE FLUSH AFTER USE,

OR BATTLE A LIFELONG CASE OF IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME.

But of course, this is again some wishful thinking that’ll never see reality.

Meanwhile, I have developed a certain kind of wariness when it comes to shaking hands with people, even those who are impeccably-dressed and appear neat and clean to a fault. After all, you can never tell what those hands went through behind the bathroom doors. Thanks to my new officemate, my mistrust on this world and its people has gone one notch higher.

Thanks to Christine’s relentless yet effective persuasion, I have recently renewed my long dormant relationship with the tube and revived my interest in watching Koreanovelas. This has not only turned to an addiction of magnifying proportion that I sometimes fake illness to skip coming to work in order to follow the next episode of a series, I’ve also become affected with a serious case of Korean-food obsession. You know how those dining table scenes are never dispensed with and are shown with such regularity you’re almost sure not one meal is missed out during the whole life span of the series? And each meal is always such a mouth-watering food fest and visual feast where the sight of the staple kimchi along with other assortment of meat and vegetables are enough sinful enticements for the food whore in me. There is also something about their stainless steel chopsticks and usually white-colored dinner-wares that virtually immortalize the food into manna from heaven. Or maybe it’s just me and one of my many quirks.

The situation now is whenever I come across any scene where there’s eating involved, I start having cravings which need to be satisfied immediately or else I’ll go crazy thinking about it the whole day, and the people around me go crazy hearing me crave for it. The other day I was so desperate for kimchi but couldn’t find any in the stores nearby so I ended up buying a pack of fermented vegetable of another variety. And for many weekends now, my poor brother and sister have had to painstakingly put up with me by going to the same Korean barbecue restaurant, and ordering the same food each time!

I know I have to take a break from all this Korean madness and give myself including the people around me a break. But knowing that the cure for my cravings is to always satisfy them till I reach the point of revulsion, I can only say that I am still quite far from it. It might probably help though if I order something new this Sunday! Teehee! Now I hope I don’t get dooced for writing that bit about having malingered to be a couch potato or else where would I get the money for my next set of dvds. Or food cravings for that matter.

I have for quite some time now been trying to lose some unwanted weight which has taken its own comfortable residence in my already thick and unsightly tummy; causing the slow disappearance of that thing called waistline. In a place where women are thin as sticks with not a trace of fat or flab in their bodies, I am what the kinder people here would consider un-skinny, the less(er) kind would call shapeless, and the more brutal and merciless ones would say fat. Add to that the not-so-comforting fact of being told too frequently by store clerks - after quick once-overs at my bloatedness - that I should be wearing a size far bigger than what I asked for, and my self-esteem readily takes its plunge into an all-time low.

The other cons of my present state of semi-plumpness? I avoid shopping like the plague because nothing fits, and the ones that do make me look like a balloon. And then there are the temptations that I need to fight off everyday like the inviting smells of the omnipresent street food; that tempting dessert of the day the waiter recommends; and the craving that wouldn’t go away till I give in by promising myself just one piece, and then end up devouring one whole bag of whatever it is. Not to mention of course its blow to my self confidence especially if every mirror is but a mortifying reflection of my appalling shape and form.

I have been told that regular exercise (something I’ve never done, and which I thought I’d never have to do in this lifetime),and not food deprivation holds the key to my problem. But in as much as I love to complain about its severity, it seems that my bloatedness has not yet really reached that alarming rate, overwhelming enough for me to panic, because I still continue to find ways to bail out of planned workouts and gym enrollments. BAH!!!!! Do I really want to wait when it’s already too late??? Darn, summer is also coming and I can’t forever wrap myself in winter/spring clothes to hide those horrible bulges.

Then I remember how people used to say that I can always eat like a glutton, and never gain a single pound. And I start feeling ten times more frustrated and depressed than I already am…