Woman In Irish Linen Shirt - Chapter 152
At the end of November, Singapore has fully entered the rainy season. The word “extraordinarily heavy rain” in the weather forecast has not changed at all, occasionally giving people the illusion of repeating the same day every day.
The situation in the company is changing with each passing day, and my schedule is colorful, reminding me of the changes in the date line—of course, for the good side.
Kevin and I tore our faces completely.
I have secretly handed over the sorting and sorting of the previous recordings to Jocelyn, and this long lurking has finally come to light. The COO, as a direct line of the group, didn’t make a difference. I felt something was wrong. I specially prepared an anonymous channel. When the dust settled, I would give him a big gift.
As long as it doesn’t fall into the black and white, then it’s all impossible to say. Now our plan is being implemented step by step, and the dark arrow that has always been guarded against has not seen a trace after it comes to me, but I can’t overcome this paradox, and I can’t persuade myself that it’s just a shadow of a bow and a snake. To take a step back, even if we win a complete victory, the group still has a considerable degree of say in important matters to our company, and external forces cannot be driven away. If we want to achieve a balance, we have to stay behind as early as possible.
The evidence I have is very hard. As long as the big boss wants to move Kevin, he will have to peel off even if he doesn’t get into the game.
The problem is that although Kevin is not a direct line of the group, he has a close relationship with the imperial “prince” and has an unclear relationship with BCG. If he doesn’t leave the field, the situation after the autumn is settled, even if I just imagine it, I feel that my back is cold.
However, Kevin did not take advantage of COO less. If the big boss really does a heavy ear and “forgets” me, the meson who worked hard for him, and handed it to the COO, I would have at least one more enemy in the dark.
The enemy of the enemy is the friend. Truth is unbreakable.
The last day of November was an unremarkable Monday.
I took a day off.
Today I am thirty-one years old.
Ten years later, I was 31 years old and received a red envelope from my mother again. She was generous, shot four sixes, I returned a bigger one, and she sent another five-figure. Repeated this three times, I got tired and accepted her money to satisfy her guilt.
I did not thank her for giving birth to me, nor did she wish me a happy birthday.
Only after about half an hour, my mother sent a sentence: “If it is safe next year, you can bring your friends to Tokyo to play. I invite you to watch the women’s volleyball match.”
I replied yes.
This lazy sleep makes me very comfortable. Miss Pande’s bed is harder than my family’s. Maybe it’s because of the pillow? It’s just that I prefer the bed to be placed in the middle of the room, and hers is placed against the wall. I woke up once in the middle of the room when I accidentally kicked it against the wall, which scared me up.
She had gone to work long ago, and left me the semi-finished breakfast in the refrigerator before she left—now it was “brunch”. I didn’t dare to live up to this intention, turned on the speaker and fried chicken breasts, and then sat at the bar to use up the food one by one. The owner of the house really enjoys life much more than I do, but the taste of listening to music is really…old school. There are even a few Queen’s vinyl records in Miss Pande’s CD cabinet, but none of them have been opened, and there is no vinyl machine at home. It should be just her collection.
Contrary to her, let alone music albums, the physical books in my family are quite limited. Reluctantly found “StickyFingers” by Zhang Shangneng, I moved my shoulders to warm up, and started a day’s exercise in front of the window.
The phone shook wildly on the table, and the report and handover of the new week have entered a white-hot state. I turn a deaf ear to these things. I have to worry about these things, and those who celebrate their birthdays should enjoy life happily.
Of course, the main reason is that Miss Pan De gave me a death order. If the situation is not urgent today, I will not be able to work.
I looked at the collections in her bookcase, scanned and browsed repeatedly.
She seems to still maintain the reading habits she had in school, covering a wide range of subjects, and obviously there are few non-fictional works. Most of them are monographs or reference books that can be used in work now. There were a few novels, and the spine of the books looked very old. After pulling them out, I found obvious traces of flipping through them. Her literary taste is similar to mine, but after all she specializes in this, there are naturally unknown and unpopular writers on the bookshelf.
I took one of them and flipped through two pages, then put it back. Serious literary works seem to be hard to become my pastime. I just scan the spine line by line, new or old: the thoughts of the book owner cannot be captured, but that period of time can still be imagined.
Finally, I turned up the children’s version of “Easily Learn Chinese”.
There are a lot of notes in Miss Pan De’s workbook. Her Chinese handwriting is much better than I thought. Her strokes are extremely neat, but it is also obvious that some characters are “painted” instead of written. Yes, the order of the strokes must be a mess. Originally, I was just flipping to play, and by the way, I helped her to check the correctness and error. I never thought that she could see her practicing calligraphy in the blank spaces of each unit.
The writing next to the female character is not very good, but the upper and lower structure of “Li” is very good.
She practiced my name.
It was pouring rain outside the window.
There is an unstoppable warmth overflowing in my heart.
After three o’clock, Miss Pan De informed me that she could be back before six o’clock. I didn’t expect her to end so early, she hurriedly took out the ingredients from the refrigerator and began to prepare. It was my idea to let me cook today. Maybe it was my confidence that calmed her down—or maybe Miss Pan De simply couldn’t bear to blow my enthusiasm—she symbolically encouraged me and said no matter what She will eat them all.
I checked the recipe in advance, at least I won’t be busy looking at my phone at the moment. The staple food is very simple. You can cook steaks. I have cleaned up the blood and oiled them and put them back in the fresh-keeping room for later use. Soups and desserts are readily available. The hard part is cold dishes.
Shrimp, after having used lunch at noon, I cooked and peeled the shrimp one by one. As for the seasoning, it is a bit difficult. I have decided to trust the recipe found on the Internet, the ingredients are accurate to 0.1 gram, and the kitchen scale is used for mixing.
The hard part is vegetables.
To be precise, the hard part is washing vegetables.
I have rubbed this broccoli for more than 20 minutes, but it hasn’t been washed away at all, except for the buds falling off uninterruptedly. If you ask me, I think this broccoli has a very bad working attitude and should be sent back to the trash can for a revision of “how to make a vegetable”-but it doesn’t work. I have no spare ingredients.
I took a group photo of the three kinds of vegetables “washed, probably washed, I think it’s not very clean” to Miss Pan De, with the text saying: “Do you think they look clean enough?”
After sending the message, I switched to the chat interface with my dad again. The last message still stayed a few days ago. He replied to me that he would be free after 6 o’clock in the afternoon next Monday and he could video with me. It is speculated from the situation in the circle of friends that he is indeed very busy and has several big orders to sign. I think it’s a little bit funny, after all, even if I talk to my mother, I don’t need to make an appointment in advance: but I didn’t bother with it.
The deceased can’t be chased. I really can’t say how close to him.
The news from Miss Pande came in: “I can’t judge with the naked eye. Maybe you can try to touch its skin to make sure the wax is clean.”
Miss Pan De: “Don’t touch that broccoli again.”
The second sentence is all capitals.
I didn’t refute anything, she was much more experienced than me in this kind of thing. After checking the fruits, there was another vibration on the table.
I clicked: “By the way, no matter how long you wash, if you touch them directly after using your phone…”
Miss Pan De: “You know.”
…I dare say she is laughing with her phone now.
When the rain stopped, I just handled the cold cuts. The sauce was prepared on the sidelines, it was close to 5:50 in the afternoon. Miss Pan De was about to return home. I was nervous for no reason, but I couldn’t tell what I was nervous about. It was the dinner homework I had to check, it was her, or the “package” I tried to unpack.
I really should talk to my dad. We haven’t spoken since the last time my mother wanted to pay back the money.
Our contacts in recent years have been really limited. Before that, he had to pay me at least once every few months. At that time, MSN was in full swing. At any rate, we could still talk a few words through the insurmountable network delay. After applying for the doctorate, because of the teaching assistant scholarship, even This kind of money exchange was simply saved. He was brief and concise, and I kept silent.
Later, before and after the defense, I was especially busy. After arriving in Singapore, I once returned to China to pay homage to my grandparents, but the main purpose was to pay back my uncle’s money. My dad also followed to Suzhou, and only got the sticks of incense. I don’t even know why he went. We didn’t even say more than ten words in those few days.
From about that time, the contact between us became numbered. It is clear that we have entered the era of mobile Internet, and the connection between people has never been more convenient. You can look through our chat records, and the content is almost only when I give him New Year greetings during the New Year. I intentionally didn’t send a message to him during the Spring Festival this year, but he did not send any message to me: it should be that he hadn’t considered that aspect at all.
Looking back at the beginning of the year, due to accidental contact due to the epidemic, and because of my mother’s affairs, I said a few more words. At the end of the year, can we really have a heart-to-heart talk?
The balcony was still carrying heavy rain, so I opened the door, facing the city, and turned away from the phone.
The heavy bronze sculpture held up my right arm. The sleeves were soaked all of a sudden, and the metal took away my body temperature, starting from the ignorant elbow.
The smart lock behind me rang, and my phone swayed twice on the desktop at the right time, like a fish out of the water.
I did not look back.
He shouldn’t remember that today is my birthday.