Write Affair

Sleepless At Home

One would think that one is more comfortable at home and will be able to sleep well at home than at other places. Unfortunately for Nancy, she could never fall asleep no matter what. She tried to block out the noises to no avail. For months, her new neighbour had been blasting the TV set loud enough for her to hear.

Calling the police twice brought no relief. Her neighbour continued the practice from 10pm to 3am everyday. When Nancy was finally up at 7am despite sleeping for just 4 hours, the neighbour was already blasting the TV set at 7am.

Working at home had become a pain and Nancy resorted to using the public library’s resources. Her work suffered a little and she wanted the source of the noise removed. Being sleepless meant that she wouldn’t perform well for her freelancing gigs and she didn’t want to lose any of her clients during this recession.

Being surrounded by 3 units next to her bedroom, she was unable to deduce the source since the noise seemed be loud enough just for her ears alone. Knocking on doors on the pretense of borrowing sugar brought her no closer to the culprit.

Each time she heard the noises from the neighbour’s TV set, she cursed. She cursed that the culprit will be deaf soon, TV set to be spoilt every time a certain volume was reached, no electronic product will last long in the hands of such inconsiderate person and may the person go blind.

Until now, her curses didn’t seem to work and the noise continued throughout every night. Sometimes, she wanted to smash the source of the noise into little pieces. At other times, her lost of sleep made her irritated and short tempered more easily.

Unable to take the torture any more, Nancy took out her trusty Nikon with 20x optical zoom and went across her building to the one opposite hers. Once there, she set up the tripod, adjusted the aperture and shutter speed.

Zooming towards her apartment, she scanned the windows near hers and found only one with the lights on. Zooming in, she found her source. The girl was in her teens and munching on her potato chips watching some idol drama.

Nancy took a few shots with incriminating evidence before packing for home. Sleepless at home was the worst thing since she had always loved being at home doing her stuff. With the evidence in hand, Nancy printed a few black and white copies.

She wanted to ask the girl to lower down the volume however, the girl sneered at her before slamming the door in her face. Fuming, Nancy pasted the photo of her with the words, “She keeps you awake at 3am daily.” in front of the lifts.

It was evil but it solved the noise problem as she saw the girl moving out a few days later.

A Cold Day

The day started out as warm and humid. She perspired profusely and when the wind blew, she smiled. The day was turning out to be good after all. Sleepy, she took a nap and woke up when she heard thunder. The sky had turned grey too.

Stuck, she turned to concentrate on her jewellery making since going out in the heavy rain would induce coldness to her body; something that she didn’t care for. After completing 3 pairs of earrings and 2 necklaces, the rain wasn’t letting up.

Since her inspirations were used for the jewellery, she went on to check if there was anything online that was interesting enough. Noticing that a granny was fit enough to give chase to her snatch thieves, she was amused. the granny was a former cross-country champion and was still swimming and jogging regularly.

Checking the weather site, she realised that the rain was going to stay for the rest of the day. Sighing, her bills would have to wait for another day. However, she was glad that she completed writing 2 stories and her jewellery for sale on such a wet day.

Calista Teo

[Author's Note: Character for National Novel Writing Month.]

A pretty lady with a successful career. She is often sought after by men for her grace and beauty while women hate her for her looks. Once mistaken for a mistress of a rich businessman, the wife sent her a threatening letter to stay away from her husband.

This led to a period of depression as Calista was facing pressure from work for a promotion that she wanted to get desperately. She went through it with help from her close friends. She has since become stronger and is known to be cold towards men whom she doesn’t know very well.

Despite her cool exterior towards men, she yearns for someone who can let her cry on his shoulders and just be with her when she needs someone to lean on. She hopes to find him one day.

Kylynn Wu

[Author's Note: This is a character for the National Novel Writing Month.]

Kylynn is a woman who has been searching for what she wanted to do all her life. She is often changing companies while keeping to the same job scope. The routine has been carrying on for 5 years when she realised that she doesn’t want the same thing.

She just wants to do something that she has been wanting to do in life. However, her parents are unable to understand why she would give up the high pay and do nothing at home. They try various means such as telling her to try the MLM that they believe in due to its length in business while she resists against the idea as she doesn’t feel comfortable talking to some stranger about the benefits of any products.

She feels that MLM is about sales and quotas that she hates to the core. She just wants to try something out by herself and has a her little business startup online while doing a few other things at the same time. Her experience with the Internet has helped her in setting up a few websites that she likes to focus on. Those websites have been done before she left her job.

Feeling that she is unable to make her parents understand, she tries to endure the constant nagging about finding a job while the economy isn’t stable. Her failures in 12 interviews have led her to despair that nobody wants to hire a woman who is reaching her 30s. They either feel she is too young for a supervisory role due to her lack of experience or she is too old for the same job level.

Edna Yong

[Author's Note: This is a character for an upcoming novel for the National Novel Writing Month.]

Edna Yong, a woman who had never had any intimate relationships with anyone. She loves to party and had a few meetings with potential men without further progress except just for drinks. She isn’t one to worry about whether she would settle down eventually.

Her parents are worried for her and have tried to match-make her with friends’ sons without success either. Edna loves life and finds the men too nerdy for her tastes. She would often entertain her parents by attending the sessions but the conversations never progress further than ‘hi’ and ‘bye’.

She hates her working life as it is too routine and often dreams of traveling to Europe and America just to get away from it. She wishes that life is more interesting than just working hard to pay the bills and rising fares. She wishes that there is something more than just working hard to travel and live.

As she approaches the 3rd decade of her life, she feels miserable that there isn’t more to life.

The Taxi Ride

The table shook violently. It was suffering from the abuse of constant slamming of heavy files from its owner. The chair creaked from being sat at heavily. Nobody attempted to talk to the angry owner. The office was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop.

The papers were heard being sorted and everyone got back to work again. How dare he do that to me! She fumed as she typed her report. Joanne had been working for 5 years in the company and the recently appointed manager had set certain standards that all reports were to be of a certain format in order to meet the audit requirements.

The keyboard was being abused as she typed furiously. By the time the report was amended, Joanne had cooled down but she didn’t feel like submitting it when he was still in the office. She didn’t want to face a manager who just insulted her that she couldn’t get a man to notice her even if she had flashed her assets.

Thinking about it got her riled up again and she hate him more. She wished that the chairman had hired someone else who was more objective. Kelvin, the new manager, didn’t know how to handle people and just insult them whenever he deemed fit. Lisa was seen crying the other time she came out of his office. She was scolded for not covering her pimples.

Tired of waiting for him to leave his room, Joanne marched up to his door, knocked three times, opened the door and placed the report on his desk without a word. She didn’t wait for his response and left the room. He didn’t talk to her for the rest of the week either which was fine with her.

It was raining heavily on a Wednesday morning and Gerald was late for work. Looking at his watch, a taxi would get him to the office faster and he hailed a passing taxi. En route, he saw a figure at the side of the road. It was a lady and she seemed to be in pain.

Image via Wikipedia

Gerald asked the driver to stop while he got out in the heavy rain to help her. “Lady? Are you alright?” he shouted against the rain. She shook her head. He helped her into the taxi and turned to her. It was Joanne. The silence was broken by the taxi driver, “Oi! Where you want to go now?”

“Hospital.” The both of them said at the same time. The driver started the car. Awkward, Joanne sat in silence nursing her injured ankle. Gerald fiddle his thumbs. It was mortifying that he had rescued his staff whom he had insulted last week. Her clothes were wet and he could now see her shapely assets that he had insulted. He was so wrong. She was hiding them as she wanted to be known for her skills instead of them.

He cursed himself. Why did he always say the wrong things at the wrong time? Joanne was cursing herself. Running in heels was a bad idea and spraining her ankle was the result. The worse was that she was in the same taxi as the person she hated the most. Her clothes were wet and she was showing off her body to the very man she didn’t want to see elsewhere besides the office.

“Joanne?” he was so soft what she didn’t notice at first. When she turned to look at him reluctantly, he was looking so worried that it threw her off guard. “I’m sorry about what I said that day.”

She stared at him.

“Words come out from my mouth when I am angry and I started sprouting nonsense.” He looked down to observe his shoes when she didn’t answer.

“You are telling me because of what just happened? That’s so typical.” He cringed at her tone. Knowing that this was the wrong time, he kept quiet till they reached the hospital. He helped her out of the taxi after paying the driver and accompanied her to the registration counter.

While she was in the doctor’s room, Gerald called his manager to inform him that he was on urgent leave while Joanne was on medical leave. He ended the call after updating the progress. Turning around, he saw Joanne was in new set of dry clothes. Her ankle was bandaged while she favoured it. He went over to help her to a chair.

After paying for her medical fees, he hailed a taxi to get her home. Worried about her safety, he decided to escort her home. In the taxi, they were both silent as Gerald didn’t know what to say after she had stated her destination. Joanne was trying to ignore his presence but he had been polite to her since they met in the morning that she felt comfortable.

“Thanks,” was all she mumbled midway through their ride. He smiled. They rode the rest of the way to her home in comfortable silence.