The lines have officially been blurred.
More specifically, the demarcations are no longer valid.
What's once the bedroom, what's once the kitchen, what's once the balcony lounge area are no longer what they were meant for.
They've been invaded, I say to the group that Thursday evening over dinner at Old Airport Road hawker centre.
Carl the dense one who never gets the memo is officially lost in space.
He nods at my remark, shoves a forkful of Rojak in his mouth and nods at his dinner.
Stanley the sex bunny on the other hand, who always gets the memo -- but always issued by the Sluts Department -- dribbles his left eyebrow at my remark.
"Darling, every inch of a house -- living room, dinning room, storeroom, bathroom -- I have invaded and marked those territories with my juices. And yes, sex shouldn't be confined only to certain areas so yes, demarcations and lines shouldn't be valid," Stanley said.
Lost in the infinite, vast space that's a world of his own, Carl is beyond redemption, so he made no attempt to catch up on the conversation and instead paid intense attention to the oily char kway teow.
Stanley of course knows what I'm talking about -- the concept of working from home.
This post is really inspired by a feature article I read in the Sunday Times last week, where people talked about why they love working from home.
I, for one, am not one of them.
And I cannot understand why people would love working from home.
What happened to waking up in the morning, getting dressed in your tailored shirts and pants and suits and navigating the morning traffic to a beautiful office where we can spend one-quarter of our paid working hours at the pantry gossiping and getting some work done after lunch?
Very early on in my life, I had been wired to think of the home as a home.
When I was younger, I could never study at home. I always found excuses to lug my bag pack of books and laptop to MacDonalds (Tea Garden along Farrer Road is my favourite studying spot), Starbucks at Raffles Place on a Sunday morning, the viewing gallery of the then-World Trade Centre, Changi Airport, you name it.
"National Library, Bukit Timah Shopping Centre, East Coast chalet, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and a secluded car park off Dairy Farm," Stanley offered helpfully, adding "these are some of my all-time favourite memories of my outdoors list.
I was scared to ask further.
"What's happening? What are we talking about?" Carl finally wanted to know after polishing off one-third of the char kway teow.
For me, the concept of working from home had been introduced quite early on in my career.
My boss had allowed us to do that but I have never found it productive. There were way too many distractions. There's always some cooking to be done. Or plants that needed watering. Or the TV required turning on to fill the house with some ambient noise. The bedsheets looked too inviting.
But in recent months, nearly all of us were forced to think -- and work -- out of the confinements of the box.
These days, I've rewired my life to survive this new trend.
The first half of my day would always start on a good note.
I would, as usual, wake up at 6am on weekdays. By 7am, I'd be sitting by the balcony with my black coffee, staring into the beautiful skyline and not doing anything: My precious 15 minutes of me-time before I start my day proper.
By 7.30am, I would get some work done before my morning run (either at the gym or outdoors).
By 10am, armed with my second cup of coffee, I'd be ready for work.
And I would really work -- throwing myself into it until lunch beckons at around 12:30pm.
Usually, I'd cook and watch Netflix during lunch until.... 2pm.
And that's when it all goes downhill. Nothing ever gets done from 2pm on days when I am not rushing for deadlines.
Sasa my university classmate suffers the same fate as I do.
Though her designer apartment is large enough for her to plonk her laptop anywhere to work, she finds it extremely unproductive to work from home.
We've since decided on a strategy that would optimise our productivity levels: Post-lunch, we would get out of the house for a refreshing change of environment (Sasa would go down to her condo poolside and me, the outdoor garden near the gym).
Stanley agrees that a change in environment would always boost productivity levels because, in his words, "doing it outdoors is always exciting, and I never fail to produce".
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