The firstfruits of those rambutans from the neighbour's tree have ripened, and are now sitting pretty, the bunch of them, in our kitchen. I like the idea of neighbourliness: this whole sharing the produce of your garden shebang, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Most of the times, my family shares only with our neighbour to the left, because on the other side? There are awkward nods, exchanges of waves and hellos amidst furtive glances towards the doors before we beat a hasty retreat back behind our walls - we've been that way for a long time, and have grown accustomed, even comfortable with this.

Guess what? IKEA has an entire system worked out for themselves on how to name their furniture. More stuff I never knew. I mean, I did a very short Industry-based learning attachment there about a decade ago, and I don't recall my immediate manager bringing up these points to me. My favourite IVAR bookshelves are named after some kind of profession in Swedish? How cool is that!

Apparently, Ivar comes from an old Norse word for archer-soldier. So, kinda like a non-pretty version of Legolas, I'd imagine? Yay to my shelves.

Also, I sucked big time at this game. Based almost completely on guesswork, I got an embarrassing 2 out of 10. I wonder how many IKEA employees score above the 70% mark. I used to think IKEA was pretty cool. Now? It's just a moniker for affordable and functional, though hardly long-lasting. A sobering thought.

I worked there, at the Alexandra branch, over the end of year vacation. Good times. One of my happiest work experiences. Before the store opened everyday at 10am, there were trolleys and trolleys of misplaced items we had to re-shelve - this being the peak of all peak furnishing and lifestyle retail periods: when Christmas and Hari Raya coincide. And I liked very much that the activity of re-shelving was undertaken by everyone - not just the floor staff in yellow shirts. I was in the Design Department, so I never had to be on my feet for hours. But this shared experience of re-shelving, together with the common pantry area, were great levellers. Many friends were made, and readily too, then. Some days, like today, I wish for those times.

Half an hour ago, I cleared 7.46GB worth of old work from Wilmot's Trash. They have finally been saved, and archived (sort of) in my external hard disk drive. Wish I could say proudly that I've also toasted DVDs out of them - sadly, no. But still, 3 years worth of work and grime and junk: purged. The cleansing feels good. I feel ready to move on.

The rambutans? More of them are slowly ripening on the tree.