Into the Valley of Selegie

A few good friends of mine commented that I have come to a full circle when I told them that (1) I’ve moved to a “new” office that isn’t new and (2) year 2000 I worked at the same building for the same employer.  The difference is: I was a consultant to them back then and am one of their gazillion employees now.  I have no idea what a full circle means.  Year 2000 was perhaps a mini-peak of my career.  And then kind of crashed and burned for a while.  Recently, things started to look up and then I am working in the same building as I was nine years ago.  Now, is that a full circle?  What is a full circle?

Back in the beginning of this millennium, the surrounding area of my office was awesome.  Vast area of greenery right in the middle of the city.  And then the unthinkable happened: our government has decided to build a university that spans across adjacent plots of beautiful parks.  I was much saddened, kind of upset.  Today, Singapore Management University (SMU) looks pretty awesome, architect in a way that blends in well with the surrounding.  But I still prefer the parks to a set of buildings that mean nothing to me, personally.

I still prefer the newer looking old office to my older looking new office.  One friend at work said to me: Once it gets into your system, you’ll be fine with it.  My desk space has shrunk at least 4 times; I no longer have my own desk; there are junks, empty water bottles, half drank water bottles left behind from the previous occupants; dust everywhere; I now look up and see tons of faces staring at me; and there are even more staring at the back of my head.  These two days, I have this hallucination that I am working inside a cube farm.  I know what I am producing each day.  I wonder what everyone else are producing each passing moment.  Time to get plugged in.  I need a phone line.

I am a natural when it comes to making myself happy creatively and realistically.  So I took the opportunity to explore the area during my lunch hours.  It turned out so fun that I am going to set up a plan to explore this strange neighborhood systematically.  Day one after my brief lunch, I took a walk into the area of Selegie, discovered quite a number of eating places, old fashioned shops that sell interesting stuffs, new shops that are opening soon, quite a number of night clubs, and I came face-to-face with the awesome looking building called LASALLE College of the Arts.  I took some pictures with my phone.  I wish I had my dSLR with me.

I took a picture of LASALLE in year 1996 when the construction was started and another one in 1997 when it was completed (see my previous blog entry).  Perhaps life is as such: At times we go through changes in life and some are dusty, some are messy, and through all these unpleasantness, inconvenience, something good, something beautiful may blossom.