Once upon a time...

This is a story about a young executive working in one of the MNCs in Singapore.

It was the start of a new week. Despite the lack of rest during the weekend, *Mary woke up bright and cheery, all ready for the challenges that laid ahead in work.

Everything was like usual. She woke up on usual, she rushed to catch her bus on usual, she got her bus on usual and she got to the office safely as usual. Just as she stepped into her office building, she suddenly realises she had forgotten to bring her laptop to work! Well, in the MNC she works in, there were no personal computers. Everyone uses a laptop, in other words, her laptop is her life. Making a trip back home seemed like the logical and only solution. After all, she had an important report due before noon today.

She took the risk of possible mockery and left a message for her boss about this, in case she wondered what happened to Mary. The way back was smooth, except that the first cab that Mary had boarded refused to take her because the cab driver "accidentally" took a booking, just 3 seconds after Mary settled in.

Luckily, Mary managed to get into another cab just after she alighted from the first one. This cab driver was really nice, because he agreed to wait downstairs while Mary went home for her laptop. Fortunately, Mary's mother was home and agreed to bring the laptop down for her, this means that the cab driver will not have to wait too long. It's gonna be just take and go. Nice cab driver and nice mother. Of course, Mary got a earful from her mother, but, she felt dat she totally deserved it.

The entire to and fro took approximately 30 mins. And soon, Mary was all settled down in her office, working hard on her report.

All went as usual, the hassle and tussle of preparing the report. There was the usual careless mistakes, but everything still went alright.

It seemed like everything had gone back to normal when, at 5.30pm, something cropped up in her previous report. Settling it took some time, and when Mary sat down to get started on another report, her watch showed 6.30pm already.

She quickly proceeded to start on this other report, and had targetted to get it done as soon as possible. Today was usually tiring and she had planned an early night's rest. Things did not turn out as planned. There was a problem with the programming fo the report and she had to call the IT guy, who had knocked off already to fix it. She needed to send this report out by today. Mary hesitated about calling the IT guy, previous experiences with him was disasterous and this resulted in a lot of hostility between them. A heated argument followed, between Mary's boss and the IT guy. The IT guy refused help. There was no way he would agree to help after office hours. Almost an hour had passed and finally, the two parties came to an agreement. Mary's boss would grant the IT overtime hours, thus he would not be working for nothing. All these doesn't matter to Mary actually. She just wanted to get her report done.

Trouble shooting took another 2 hours. Finally! The program worked! Mary was elated. Everything just seemed to be over.

She took a toilet break and wanted to refresh herself at the same time so she could get into doing her report. This moment, catastrophe struck again.

She had used too much force on the zipper on her pants that it gave way! Goodness... Lightning flashed and thunder roared. What could be worse? She had no safety pins or any "rescue" gimmicks for this! Luckily, she found a pin in her drawer and had wore a shirt long enough to cover up watever not to be seen.

At this instant, she wanted to just go home. It was devastating to know how God would allow such a thing to happen to her. She felt totally pathetic and suicidal.

She was even more determined to get her report done in the shortest possible time. Obviously, it was a "black" day for her and she wanted to end it quick.

More problems cropped up with her report and by the time she was done, it was already 10.30pm. Phew. Was she glad this day was over.

Tomorrow will be better. She's keeping her fingers crossed.

*Name has been changed to protect the identity of the victim.