Back to work

I started the day relatively early today, I must've been primed still from the 7am starts of the past fortnight. 11am is not early by ordinary standards but I've been known to sleep till 1pm since I don't leave for work till past 3.30pm.

Which meant that there was time to enjoy a leisurely lunch of sausage (leftover from yesterday's all-day breakfast) and fresh crusty bread still warm from the oven (from frozen Delifrance dough -- I had time but not that much time to make bread from scratch. Anyway, L was the cook today).

That was when it occurred to me -- last week's enjoyment of leisurely home-cooked dinners wasn't so much the home-cooking. On a work day, my dinners are home-cooked anyway. I bring dinner in to work as I tend to eat late, after the canteen closes at 8pm. There are a few kopi tiams (coffee shops -- not the Starbucks type but the Singaporean type which is more like a mini food court but minus the airconditioned mall setting) within walking distance from the office but I don't always have the time to pop out for a bite by that time of the night when the work starts coming in fast and furious. Nope, what made dinner at home so enjoyable that past fortnight was that it was eaten not at a desk but at a table, off a pretty Noritake plate with proper cutlery. As opposed to from a Tupperware with a disposable plastic spoon. One of my colleagues keeps a microwavable Corningware plate and a set of stainless steel cutlery in his drawer. Perhaps I should do the same. At least there would be some semblance of a "proper" dinner.

I may turn out to be a foodie yet. I'm now reading Bill Buford's Heat, on the heels of the new Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl. There must be a reason why I'm stuck in the food genre at the moment.

Anyway, it wasn't so hard going back to work today after two weeks of slacking off. It's always quite pleasant to work on a Sunday -- even if it is a Sunday. The workload is less and you get to call it a night by 11pm when most nights you're kept busy till past midnight, even 12.30am on a busy mid-week night. Today, I processed my last copy shortly after 9.30pm. It seemed churlish to leave at 10pm so I started surfing at my desk till 11pm -- when the first staff transport of the night starts running.

I'm trying to console myself that this week will be a doozie, despite it being a Sunday to Friday six-day week because there're a couple of holidays in it. Yesterday (Saturday) was Deepavali and a press holiday, Tuesday will be another holiday -- Hari Raya Puasa -- so most companies are enjoying a long weekend especially as many people are taking Monday off. That means less advertising and less pagination. Not good for the marketing department but great for editorial, a thinner paper means less work for us. Ad dollars be damned, I just want to go home to the furkids.