A Requiem for The Sad

Yay, school's in!

2006-01-10T16:40:00.000+08:00

Its that time of the year again. No, I'm not referring to CNY that's just around the corner, though I'm looking forward to it with much anticipation, one can never have enough money. Rather, its the start of a new semester once again. There's probably nothing I hate more fervently than the opening of a new school term, maybe besides the continual existence of cockroaches.

Why, you may ask, after a whole month of rotting and indolence, a month of pure boredom and placid monotony, I'm not looking forward to a new school term? Simple. One word: CORS. Ok, so it might not be one word, but still, it doesn't mitigate the fact that CORS is the root of all evil...I mean problems. While the insane server blockage and overflooding issues of the last semester were over, you can always count on CORS to spit out new crap faster than you can even say 'Retractable baton'. And so, yours truly was left 2 modules short by the end of round 2 of the bidding. The culprits? A bunch of year 4s who are apparently desperate to graduate; who have 109760186596120 points in their accounts to spare; and who don't give a damn which module they can take simply because they can use their trump card, the ultimate culmination of academic indifference: the almighty S/U. Add all these up, and you get a whole swarm of other students bereft of suitable modules to take, because of timetable clashes, lack of interest in certain modules, lack of S/Us, and ridiculously high bids by said year 4 desperados. I mean, who the fuck bids 3000 points for a goddamn GEM? Huh? By the end of my academic years in NUS, I seriously doubt I would even have accumulated 2/3 that amount. When all bids are outbidded for every single module, only these words can describe how the affected party must feel: OMGWTFSMLJKNNBCCBSONGBOHAPPYNEWYEARTHANKSVERYMUCHSEEYOUINHELL.

And to compound my misery, I've taken ill at the very first day of the term. No thanks to the stupid cocked-up weather we are experiencing nowadays. I mean, heavy rains that don't let up for days on end, let alone time enough to dry your undies? Sad, isn't it. As luck would have it, I got caught in the rain THRICE in 3 days. And now, besides nursing a cold, cough, fever and a throat so sore I feel as though a horse just banged me in the mouth, I can barely move without suffering from bodyaches and dizzy spells. Hell, I think a bout of pneumonia is even in the making. Pui. Stay tuned to further updates, if I'm still alive. *cough wheeze*

Happy 2006!

2006-01-02T21:11:00.000+08:00

Happy New Year peeps, its a new year and a new beginning. May all your dreams and wishes come true, and if they do, please don't forget yours truly. Heh. Had great fun on New Year's Eve, thanks guys, for letting me start off the new year by winning your money in mahjong. Woot. Here's a list of new year resolutions that I intend (and hope) to accomplish:

1)Find a girlfriend
2)Get out of bed earlier
3)Grow fat
4)Get rich
5)More mugging, less mahjong and DOTA
6)More frequent updates here

You see, I've not forgotten about all you loyal fans, so I've resolved to TRY MY BEST in keeping more regular updates. Lol. So remember to come back often, even if there might not be any new posts. It just makes me feel good. Enjoy the new year!

Happy holidays, one and all~

2005-12-13T20:14:00.000+08:00

Season's greetings, loyal fans, if there are even any of you left. It has been an extremely hectic semester and schoolwork has the annoying habit of leaving me drained, hence the dismal lack of updates. I'm sure you people aren't interested in what essay topics I wrote, or which lecture I attended, so I'll just skip the school bit and get on with the good stuff.

In case you didn't know, I just returned from a well-deserved week long getaway in the shopper's paradise, Hong Kong. It is funny that, I've been to the place quite a number of times when I was young, but it has never left a lasting impression on me, and yet, after my recent sojourn there, I just can't wait to go back. Maybe it is because I was too young back then to truly enjoy the trip, what with nagging parents and assorted other issues one faces when travelling together as a family. Maybe it is because of the multitude of gorgeous babes with a better dress sense than that of their female counterparts here. In either case, it was a very interesting and memorable trip, to say the least.

Another high point of my vacation was the amount of shopping I did there, and the budget I had to work with. Since my air ticket and accoms were FOC, thanks to my dad's Flyer Miles, and Steven and his family respectively, it meant that I had more to spend. As if this wasn't enough, my meals there were so kindly paid for by Steven's mum and grandmother, both of whom incidentally, have the inclination to order loads of food and then expect poor Steven and I to polish off every last bit. I have a healthy phobia of dim sum and pasta now. Apart from the fact that I felt like I was being fattened up every meal like a turkey awaiting the Thanksgiving slaughter, Steven and his family were wonderful hosts, kudos to them.

Being the lazy bugger that I am, I will end off this entry with a Merry Christmas in advance. Below are some of the photos I took during my trip. Enjoy your hols people.

CORS = Cocked up, Obselete, Retarded System

2005-08-18T20:18:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was the start of tutorials balloting. It was a nightmare. I've always thought CORS to be a stupid system before, but now I absolutely loathe it. Yes, I was one of those suckers up at 9am trying to log into CORS. I know its not done on a first come first serve basis, but hey, I wanted to get it out of the way so that I could spend the rest of the day on other more productive activities instead of clicking on the damn mouse button. Sadly, but not unexpectedly, it didn't turn out the way I had hoped. Sigh, the best laid plans of mice and men.

Its kinda amazing really, how kiasuism is an integral part of Singaporean culture. I assumed that by logging in at 9, I could beat the crowds and finish my balloting in a jiffy. I was horribly wrong. Evidently, every single bloody person in NUS had the same idea. I was stuck at the log in page for close to 45mins, and when I finally did access the ranking page, the fucking server crashed. 'You've reached this page because your session has timed out.' Hallelujah KNNBCCB. And after that, the server slowed to a pathetic crawl so slow my grandma could outrun it. The reason? Overly kiasu freshies camping beside their computers the night before, waiting for the stroke of 9am, screaming 'YEAH!! I'm gonna log in and get my slots before all you suckers out there! I r0x0rs!!' as they jab the log in button 10000000 times. Morons. Its like having a 100 people making a run for the door in the event of a fire, and everyone gets clusterfucked and stuck and fried to a crisp in the end. Someone needs to tell those noobs, ITS NOT FIRST COME FIRST SERVE YOU RETARDS! Grr......

Then again, its not entirely their fault. The system is just plain fucked up. I mean, bidding for modules and balloting for tutorials? WTF? Why can't NUS adopt other institutes' model of choosing your mods, and having a fixed timetable allocated? It sure as hell saves us alot of trouble, time wasted sitting in front of the computer and energy spent clicking the mouse. And that's not all. Our wonderful 'world-class' institute has the moolah to build a spanking new campus in Bukit Timah, but none left to upgrade the bloody CORS servers. Its just like spending money to buy a condom when you don't have a girl to screw. And the way bidding and balloting are done is so inefficient. I mean, what's the point of having deadline extensions when everyone's just trying to log in all at once? You could extend it right up to Christmas and it would still be jammed. They should just implement a bloody queue and impose a strict time limit of 3mins for everyone to settle their stuff in CORS before they get logged out automatically. But nooo, what do the CORS admins do? They sip their coffees in their centennial mugs, press the server reset button, and lean back in their comfy chairs sniggering at our pathetic plight. Damnit, we students are paying through our noses each semester, and what do we get in return? A stupid retarded online system that fails on all counts.

I finally got my balloting done after like 13hrs of pressing F5, thanks to Steven. And the best part is, I didn't get the slots I wanted. Right now, I'm seriously comtemplating hunting down those slackers at the Com Centre and stuffing a cactus up their asses. Have I mentioned that I hate CORS?

Happy Birthday Singapore

2005-08-10T00:13:00.000+08:00

You know, birthdays are really special and wonderful events. The crowds that more often than not come uninvited, the garish and corny looking decorations, the expensive looking and disgustingly sweet cakes that usually end up on people's faces rather than in their tummies...yeah, it is a memorable time indeed. So it is with great pleasure and enthusiasm, as I wish Singapore a very happy 40th birthday. Pardon me if I don't seem to be waving my flag too vigorously, I sprained my wrist while brushing my teeth this morning.

With the nation having its great birthday bash, how could I not join in? I don't wish to be seen as being unpatriotic and a wet blanket. Besides, I had nothing to do at home anyway besides counting the number of comics and textbooks lining my shelves and talking to my bolster. So, when Yufen and Yanxiang suggested that we head down to Marina South to have a look at the carnival, I didn't need much convincing. Heh.

As per routine, I arrived late, thanks to my little afternoon nap. I was amazed at the huge number of mindless drones brainwashed into attending the event at various locations throughout the island. I mean, I missed 3 trains because it was so packed, I doubt even Wenjie could have found enough room to stand. Disgusting. And what's with all the red shirts everyone seems to be wearing? Patriotism comes from the heart and is expressed by actions like voting for the PAP, hanging the national flags, serving NS...but definately not through a retarded fashion sense. That is just being plain spastic.

Yes they are watching you from up there too. If you don't vote for them, they will bomb you into smithereens.

Met up with Yanxiang, Yufen and Xiu Ting after fighting my way through 50000 people at Marina Bay. Being the garang patriots that we are, we opted to walk to the carnival instead of catching the bus like what most sane people would do. By the time we arrived at the big open field where the live telecast was being shown, I was half dead with exhaustion. Yanxiang said I was weak. Indeed I was, weak with hunger that is. Besides, I didn't have training like they do in the form of recreational shopping walkathons. While watching the flypasts, we helped ourselves to Yufen's homemade gourmet tiramisu. It was nice and creamy, and would probably cause me a heart attack sooner or later, but hey, I live for the present. The cake barely lined our stomachs, so we decided to hop down to Marina Square to catch the fireworks before heading to dinner there. Sadly, it was not to be. The bus back to the MRT was packed, the train to City Hall was bloody packed, and Raffles City itself was OMGWTFBBQ packed to the brim with people dying to catch a glimpse of the impending pyrotechnics extravaganza. Now, the thing is, when the masses were brainwashed into showing up for the event, evidently the process was an overkill and resulted in the death of their mental faculties for common sense. We went up from City Hall MRT to Raffles City, and was promptly sucked into the human tide. It would have been all well and good if the crowd had kept moving, but it came to a halt after we had barely moved 3m. Apparently, some fucking retards right at the front had decided that they would wait for the fireworks where they stood, and thus effectively killing the traffic and jamming the place up. We were stuck just outside Cafe Cartel, where the view sucked balls and the air was stifling. To make matters worse, 50% of the crowd was made up of banglas. Its funny really, how they seem to flock to every single fucking event that comes with nation wide celebrations, like National Day, Christmas or New Year's Eve. Idiots.

When the pyrotechnics started, I couldn't see shit, what with lampposts, buildings and trees obscuring my view. My shots of the display were pathetic, and I gave up after some bangla jostled me and nearly made me drop my camera. Sigh. I was disappointed, but not more than Yufen and Yanxiang, who were practically hopping with excitement the whole evening at the thought of watching the sky go boom boom. In the end, we squeezed our way to the Esplanade, where we were caught in yet another jam. By this time, I was so hungry, I was seriously starting to consider eating the tree in front of us. After 20mins of indecision and procrastination, during which I was having visions of ba chor mee, char kway teow and fried carrot cake, we finally wound up in Thai Express where we had a rather unspectacular and expensive dinner. My shrimp paste rice was ok, but watching the 3 girls choke down their food was kinda hilarious. No wonder Yanxiang said she still wanted her ba chor mee after we left the place. Lol. Next time, we should just settle for the nearest hawker centre, or dial 62353535.

The opposition goes boom!

With the nation's big day over, it means school's about to begin for real. Sigh. Maybe they ought to consider declaring the birthdays of senior PAP members public holidays too. Whee. That's patriotism for you.

P.S: I'm sick again, this time with tonsilitis and a fever resulting from the infection plus diarrhea resulting from the fever, if any of you even care. Wonderful isn't it?

Freshies - the pussies, the garang and the retards

2005-08-02T20:41:00.000+08:00

Ok firstly, I'm neither dead nor incapacitated. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your point of view, I plan to live a long life. The reason for the dismal dearth of updates this past month? I have to admit, I totally forgot about my blog. You know, its like brushing your teeth, performing a routine gets really boring, and you tend to avoid doing it. After some time, it completely slips off your mind as though greased by KY jelly. Ok ok, I'm sorry for not updating, depriving all you loyal fans out there of your weekly blog-ertainment. I hope none of you are in rehab for withdrawal symptoms.

Now that the troublesome stuff is out of the way, let's get down to the actual update itself. The thing is, I can't really recall what occurred during this period of extended absence. Sorry, but my memory's been kinda hazy lately. One thing I do remember though, is the wonderful little debacle in the local charity scene. Yes, I'm referring to the clash between SPH and T.T Durian..I mean Durai. No, I'm not gonna talk about it, since every other bloody blog out there has undoubtedly covered the issue in detail, but suffice to say, I'm still laughing. Alot. Hey, now this could be the reason why my memory's been so poor, I've been laughing so much my brain's deprived of oxygen. Heh. Moral of the story: Don't fuck with SPH, not unless you want your golden tap stuffed up your ass.

Let's start with something I remember, like last Friday's Fright Night. Yes, you heard it right. Fright Night. Sometime 2 weeks ago, Zaobao, Joshua's friend from his OG, 'invited' us to join Fright Night as actors. Since we were sitting on our asses doing nothing most of the time, we agreed quite readily. I figured that, I could probably scare me some numbers out of the cute girls in the FOW. Heh. Being good boys, we followed the instructions sent to us by the coordinator and arrived at 2pm on Friday for our make-up session. Makes me sound really like a professional actor, doesn't it? Sadly though, the make-up artists weren't really good at the job. I had to endure 30mins of boredom and the disgusting feeling akin to applying sunscreen as the make-up artist swabbed my face in white. My hair certainly didn't help make matters much better, since it kept getting in the way, and I ended up with a white fringe and sideburns ala Yang Guo. To top it off, despite the prodigious amount of face paint that got slathered on me, the end result was uneven and kinda blotchy. And smiling makes the layer of paint crack. Ouch.

Dinner was served at 6pm, and was a real pain in the arse, since I had to maneuver my utensils with the precision of a surgeon to avoid messing up my make-up. Once that was done with, we left for our separate stations. Now, here's the interesting bit. I was posted to the S3 female's toilet on the 5th floor. I have to say, it has always been on my list of things-to-do-before-I-die, to actually visit the women's toilet. Heh. Sadly, it didn't live up to my expectations. No, I didn't get to see anything or anyone, so you people can stop probing. Another 45min was spent decorating the place to add to the atmosphere, which meant bloody words had to be painted on the mirror with poster paint, positioning of the baby doll in the cubicle so that it looks hidden instead of dead and being dumped, deciding on our hiding spots etc etc. So it was with much trepidation and anxiety, as we awaited our first prey of the night. Hey, you think only the freshies are scared? I was pissing myself at the thought of not pulling the scare off properly, and the prospect of an overly-gungho freshie using me as a punching bag.

Why the worry? Firstly, the script given to us was so corny, I had to keep myself from sniggering as I read it. Next, I was assigned the role of being the ghost of a little boy. Now, tell me, do I remotely resemble a little boy? Huh? More about the story: apparently a pregnant woman was involved in an accident that left her horribly disfigured. Needless to say, her baby was lost as well. Her husband abandoned her because of her looks, and unable to take it anymore, she decided to kill her son in a fit of brainless despair before taking her own life. Yours truly was the innocent boy whose life ended so suddenly. Corny isn't it? As such, my role required me to dress up like an adolescent. The plain white shirt and shorts were ok, but my hair was ruining my image of a little kid. Instead, according to me 'ghostly' female partner, I looked more like an Ah Beng more than anything. That hurt. Lol. So I had to resort to using a cap to cover my shock of blond hair, to not much avail. First disaster of the night.

As the freshies took their turns to enter in pairs, I was supposed to be hiding behind the toilet door, squatting down and looking eerie. I was then to drop the marbles I'm holding and proceed to pester the freshies to pick them up in the dark. Sounds quite a feat eh? Well, things didn't proceed the way we had planned. The first pair practically barged into the toilet in a show of bravado, with the guy kicking the door like it was his arch enemy or something. It doesn't require much to figure out what happened to me, who was squatting like an idiot all the while behind the door. After getting my bearings again, I realised the freshies were staring at me, waiting for me to utter some ghostly ululation. So, I dropped my marbles on cue, all the while holding their gaze. Then I realised that it was practically impossible to locate the marbles in the dark. Sigh. Nonetheless, I requested they find my marbles in a low voice. Here's the next problem. Apparently, the freshies must have hearing impediments after going through days of cheering and whatnot, since more than 50% of the pairs that night mistook 'marbles' for 'mother'. So much for my efforts.

That's not to say it ended in failure though. We did manage to make a few girls scared enough to cry, and to our credit, we managed to squeeze out terrified yelps and squeals from the guys as well. There was this pair of girls who looked almost ready to faint when they entered, and our team of dedicated ghosties freaked them out so much, they were cowering in fear and succeeded in backing into the hand dryer machine, which promptly came to life, thus scaring them even more. Heh. Some of the guys were really pussies too, there was this portly chap that looked pretty nervous as I fixed my rigid stare on him. As he bent down to hand me my marbles, I made a sudden grab at his hand, and he literally went 'Eeeeeek'. Bwahahaha. Then, there are the idiots and morons who spoil the whole act too. One genius couple, actually switched the lights on before entering the toilet. Our storyteller outside was so shocked, they were almost over the threshold into the toilet before she could stop them. Idiots. And then there was the 'Counterstrike' guy, who had to ensure every crook and cranny was free of spooks before he and his partner would enter. That meant he had to kick the door open, and then use his leg to flush out any ghosties that might be hiding behind the door. That also meant he nearly succeeded in kicking me in the head. Hey if you are reading this you mentally retarded asshole, I hope a tree falls on you. And you better hope you are dead before I get there, because I won't be as merciful as the tree. Finally, there was this couple of fucktards who were screaming even before they reached the toilet. They screamed as the storyteller told them the instructions, they screamed as they opened the door. Heck they even screamed when I was halfway through asking them to find my marbles. It would have been great if they were actually screaming out of fear, but apparently they were doing it just to show the girl with them they had balls bigger than their heads. Morons. How about I shove a couple of umbrellas up your asses, that would make you scream. Grr....

All in all, it was a pretty fun night, but it tended to get a little boring at times. Hey, you would be bored too if you had to act out the same shit 50 times in a row. So it was a relief when the coordinator signalled the end of the exercise, and we cleaned up the place before dragging ourselves back to LT25. Joshua's station had ended earlier, and he was already cleaned up and ready to go when I got there. Talk about chop chop. We had agreed earlier that we won't be spending the night over with the others, since the freshies would be in for a whole day of cheering again on Saturday. Ughh. Joshua left while I was washing up, and I left soon after, heading over to YIH to meet Darryl and his guitar club chum for a night of jamming. Heh. The benefits of knowing people in power. Darryl suggested I try auditioning for his club's drummer position, and I'm tempted to. But sadly, my skills are probably gonna get me kicked out on my butt even before I'm through with my first song. Oh well, I could probably try scaring the judges, I've had enough practice anyway. Lol.

SCUBA stands for Self Confessed Underwater Blundering Ass

2005-06-27T20:10:00.000+08:00

I'm back! Did you guys miss me? Hehheh...I didn't drown or anything, sorry to dash some of you buggers' hopes, but I sure did come close to it. So here I am, still alive and kicking and entertaining you folks after surviving my repeated underwater sojourns. Wanna know more about my little trip? Then read on. But if you are inconsolably upset about my return, maybe you should take a breather. Here, have a tissue.

Pre-trip preparations are always a pain. It took me half a day to finalise the list of stuff to bring, and another day to get whatever I'm missing. The problem with me is I tend to overpack. I packed for this 2 days 1 night trip as if I was going on some week long vacation. And after I got all my stuff, I realised that my bag wasn't big enough to accomodate everything. Sigh. So in the end, I had to resort to throwing some crap out and folding everything else over and over again. Just like packing my fieldpack back in good old BMT. But seriously, one thing I've learnt from the army, is that almost everything can be folded and compressed to fit into your sadly inadequate bag. Things like toilet paper, toothpaste, and even packets of instant noodles. Amazing isn't it?

Met up with the guys on Friday evening at 7pm outside Scubanaut's office. It was then did I realise how big our group actually was. I mean, we had 7 guys from 4th platoon, plus Weifeng's classmates and church friends, Waikeong's hall friends...we numbered 18 in total if my memory serves me well. And so, I was kinda expecting to be making the trip over to Mersing in a coach. I was sadly disappointed by our mode of transport. We were to make our trip in... 3 sad looking, beaten-up mini buses. Wonderful ain't it? We departed the office at about 8pm, arrived at the Woodlands checkpoint at 8.30pm, and got stuck in the usual weekend jam for an hour. Vehicles were practically crawling, about 5m every 15mins. Traffic was so fucked up, I saw people alighting from buses to walk the last 1km to the checkpoint. We, on the other hand, were stuck in a puny, overcrowded mini bus with a faulty air conditioning system that made us sweat like pigs (no offence, Stuart..heh). After clearing the causeway, it was then another 2 hrs of insane F1 style driving by our driver Raymond before we finally reached Mersing. He takes curves and bends like Jay Chou in the Initial D movie, cuts into lanes by squeezing into single car-length spaces, and travels on the opposite lane more often then he does on the rightful lane. I'm still pretty amazed that we managed to reach our destination in one piece. Lionel was practically shitting himself beside me during the ride. Lol.

Grabbed me an authentic Ramly burger before boarding the boat. When I got a glimpse of the boat, my mind started screaming in gibberish. It was a tiny little bum boat not more than 5m in length and 3m in width, and it was supposed to take us all the way to Tioman? A big wave could probably have capsized it. And so, despite my misgivings, we all boarded it, while I managed to secure myself a position just next to the railings since there weren't enough seats. Its all about preemption, I was starting to feel a little seasick from the rocking. At least I was in position to spew my guts over the side when I needed to. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we transferred to a bigger ferry after 30min out to sea. Fortunate, because I finally had a seat. Unfortunate, because the ferry was rocking from side to side like a cradle on steroids. My face must have turned greener than my no.4 uniform, since everyone knew on sight I was about to puke. All 3 hrs of the ride, I was cold, damp, miserable and fighting to keep my Ramly burger from exiting. Despite attempts by some of the guys to distract me from my suffering, I was positively indisposed as the boat chugged its way to Tioman. I've never been good on long rides out at sea, even the 15min journey on the fastcraft to Tekong makes me queasy. One lesson learnt, never eat before taking a boat ride.

We finally arrived at Tioman approximately around 4.30am Saturday morning. We were all dirty and tired, and obviously looking forward to a nice warm bath and a good sleep. But the day's shocks weren't over. In fact, the most stunning discovery came when we opened the door to our room. Inside, the room was perhaps 8m by 4m, with 3 single beds and a double decked bed that looked like they might break anytime. Lighting was provided by one miserable bulb, while the air conditioner looked like it belonged to the scrapyard. And the horror of horrors, the toilet was small, primitive and filthy by my standards. Thankfully they had a working heater. I can't imagine what I would have done if it was out of order, maybe attempt to swim back to Singapore. Anyway, the room looked so pathetic, all of us referred to it as a 'bunk' synonymously. Yiwei looked particularly devastated by the sadly antediluvian facilities. I can't blame him, I was pretty upset as well. Sigh. But fatigue got the better of us all, we took our showers and promptly slept like the dead.

Our 'bunk'..lol

Sleep was not a luxury we had however. We had to drag ourselves out of bed at 8.30am to breakfast at the wonderfully rustic 'restoran' with an equally ironic name: 'Salang Dream' or something along that line. The food however, was surprisingly tasty. It wasn't a 5 star
gastronomic experience of course, but hey, it sure tasted better then the junk they served us back in NS. After breakfast, we proceeded with our confined water dives, during which we learnt drills, drills and more drills enough to send a RSM bonkers. Not that they weren't important, but theory and real life are worlds apart, and drills can't guarantee one's safety for sure, as shown by my little misadventure the following day, more on that later. But shallow as the confined dives were, at about 5-8m at most, we still managed to catch a few glimpses of corals and marine life, though it was far from what postcards and internet pictures would have you believe. Still it was a rather enjoyable experience being able to drift about in the water and looking down upon the marine ecology. Feels rather like flying. The water at Tioman was really clear, unlike the seas off Singapore, where you can't see your own hand even if you were to wave it in front of your face.

Some of the marine life in Tioman

One thing about scuba diving, is that the pre dive preparations and equipment checks are really irritating. Lugging an air tank that probably weighs more than I do, along with the BCD on my back, sure isn't my idea of fun. Slipping into the wet suit isn't something I particularly look forward too either. Well at least I have it better then Stuart, the closest analogy to him putting on a wetsuit, would be the wrapping of a rice dumpling. The process of getting him into his suit requires lots of tugging, pulling and squeezing, along with 2 assistants. Lol.

Mingjun, Weifeng, Lionel and me

We ended Saturday with 3 confined water dives, before heading back to shore for some chow at the same old 'restoran'. The instructors told us to get a shower first before having dinner, but being ravenous guys that we are, we waited for Yiwei to take his beauty bath before we decided to skip the showers and grab some food first. Surprise surprise, we arrived at the 'restoran' only to find that we were the only people around. Turned out that the others were still bathing or chatting in their rooms, the main culprits being the girls. For the sake of integrity, us guys decided to wait for everyone to arrive before starting dinner, despite the growls our stomachs were making. Waikeong looked hungry enough to eat Stuart. And so it was with a sigh of relief we greeted the others when they finally deigned to show up. After dinner, we left the table early so that we could get the salt off our skin. Back in bunk, while waiting for each other to take his bath, Yiwei suggested we head out for a Ramly and some pratas later, followed by a couple of drinks at the bar. We all fell asleep before the 2nd one among us was done bathing. And it was not even 10pm. Lionel managed to bug us awake after everyone's done showering though, and we dragged our sorry asses out to find most of the stalls closed for the night. Wonderful. In the end, the other guys grabbed a Ramly each, and Yiwei and Mingjun purchased a couple of beers, before we all headed back to our bunk for some shut-eye. The girls in the room next to ours were still up chatting at this point, while Weifeng and Stuart were busy trying to 'cheehong' the bunch of girls who were Waikeong's friends. Haha. Its kinda funny, seeing that they were Waikeong's friends, but Stuart was the one entertaining them most of the time, while Waikeong was slacking his ass off with the bunch of us guys. Stuart is da ponner cheehong lah. Heh.

Sunday got off with a better start, since I did managed to get at least 7 hrs of sleep. Started our first open water dive after breakfast. We boarded the dive boat and headed out to Coral Island, just 15mins away from Salang Beach. The dive went on as normal, there was much more to see compared to the earlier dives: sea fans, scorpion fishes, sting rays...it was at the bottom of Sea Fan Canyon, when I met my accident. Akil, our dive instructor, had halted in front of me, and I did the same. The others in my group started joining us from all directions. One genius, I didn't manage to identify him or her, descended right on top on me, and succeeded in kicking my regulator out of my mouth just as I was taking a breath in. Needless to say, I ended up swallowing a mouthful of seawater. In my haste to regain my breath, I must have forgotten to purge the regulator after I put it back into my mouth, since I recalled sucking in more water instead of air. At the thought of a faulty regulator, my mind went into panic overdrive. I obeyed my mind's first instinct: surface and get air. I frantically clawed and kicked my way upwards to the surface 25m away, and though 25m might seem a short distance when you are on land, it sure isn't when you are underwater and ascending vertically. All the way up, I was fighting to get some air into my impoverished lungs, and all I got was more seawater. The only thought running through my mind was 'This is it, I'm dead'. At some point, I must have been close to losing consciousness. Then I saw some lights ahead of me, and thought: 'Wow, so its true, you do see lights when you die.' Actually, I was just 2m from the surface. My natural buoyancy brought me back up, and I've never tasted such sweet air in my whole life. My lungs felt like they were on fire, and my throat was raw. Raihan, the divemaster, surfaced beside me, and asked me what happened. I explained to him in between laboured gasps, and he immediately towed me back to the boat some 50m away. It wasn't an easy swim. The current was pretty strong, and even with our BCDs on, and Raihan's excellent physical condition, it took us quite awhile before I was safely back on the deck. There, I rested for 45min, as the others surfaced awhile after I did. Lionel realised I was missing after my ascent, and sounded out to Akil. But noone seemed overly concerned that I just had a close brush with death, in fact most seemed pretty jolly about the whole incident. Sigh. Next time, I'm cutting their regulator hoses. Buggers. Haha.

Went on the 2nd dive later without incident, and finally fnished using up all the shots on my underwater cam. Headed back to shore for a quick shower, and lunch, before loading all our gear back onto the boat for our return trip to Mersing. This time I learnt my lesson. I managed to obtain some pills for seasickness from Rosemary before the ride. Amazingly, I didnt feel the least bit nauseous during the trip back. Either the pill must have worked, or I must have become immune to the effects of the constant rocking and rolling after 2 days of diving. Anyway, the journey back to Mersing was rather uneventful, besides some chatting and picture taking sessions, I spent the rest of the ride dozing. I would have spent the time trying to get to know the girls better, but Stuart was doing the 'cheehong-ing' and I didn't wish to interrupt while he's on a roll. Heh. Upon reaching Mersing, we had another 3 hrs on the road ahead of us, though it was reduced somewhat by Raymond's driving. Lol. This time, he took the Tuas link instead, the Woodlands causeway was probably more congested than the intestine of a patient with constipation. Got a call from Weida informing me that the BBQ was ending, and seeing that I was still in Tuas, I had to make a hard decision by telling him I wouldn't be joining them after all. Haha. I did suggest meeting in town for a drink, but apparently Mushroom was dead drunk, and needed to get home before she passes out like a log. Sigh... girls. If you can't hold your liqour well, then don't drink lah. I usually can't walk straight after 3 tequila shots, that's why I avoid alcoholic beverages. But now that I know Mush can't drink for nuts, next time I'm getting her a jug of beer, and then robbing her blind while she's out cold. Whee. Back to my trip, we arrived at Scubanaut's office at 10pm, unloaded the gear, had a brief AAR, and headed to Forum's Macs for dinner. Over dinner, Weifeng suggested we join him for the Advanced Open Water Course in July. Given what just happened to me in the day, I'd sooner go bungee without a bungee cord. The only way to get me back into the water, is to get a chiobu to dive along with me. At least if I do drown, she will be the first to render CPR. Hehheh.

Group shot on the ride home

P.S: More photos to come soon...I think. Heh.

The sea is not meant for Man

2005-06-21T20:18:00.000+08:00

First of all, in case any of you are wondering why the update is late, its not because I've given in to my laziness, rather, its because yours truly is down with the flu. Yes, its true, I'm not immortal, and I'm just as susceptible to diseases as the average joe. I have my brother to thank chiefly for my cold, that idiot caught it last week, but he simply refuses to take his medications and be cured. Maybe I should just force the whole packet of capsules down his throat. If it doesn't cure him, well, at least he won't be bothering me anymore. Heh.

Been kinda depressed this week. First of all, my workload's been increased, no thanks to those uber slackers in my office. Apparently they haven't been meeting their quotas, but they are chalking up a great deal of half days and full day offs. As expected, the manager is pissed, she screws my supervisor, my supervisor is pissed, and she screws us. So now, I have to work harder and faster to meet the increased quota everyday. This really sucks. Its not like they are paying me enough to slog my ass off anyway. I'm really tempted to pack up and go... as Weifeng put it, I'm no better off from working in MacDonald's. But then again, at least my job isn't as degrading. Been hunting for better job opportunities, but sadly to no avail. And that dick Darryl just managed to get hired as a shop assistant with a pay of $5.50 per hour, and the best part is, there is NO CPF deduction. WTF....he brings home close to 1k a month because of that, while what do I get? A measly 600 bucks. Damnation. Plus the fact that he is cheating my neighbour blind by giving 'tuition' to her daughter, his monthly income is somewhere near to 1.5k. Sigh. Some people get all the luck. Ah well, Heaven is fair. Maybe he will get hit by a car or break his legs or something. Heh.

The chiobu in my office isn't much help either. I do not believe I've seen someone more 'dao'. Well, maybe I have, but that's beside the point. I approached her for her number, and its not like I have any ulterior motives, its just an exchange of numbers between friends, you know. And after posing my question, she immediately asked what I wanted her number for. So, in my attempt to avoid an unpleasant and embarassing scene, I gave her a lame excuse: so that in case I should decide to skip work, I could get her to inform my supervisor. Hey, it was a pretty valid reason. But, she must have faced situations like this before, for she ended up giving me the office's number. Talk about being outsmarted. Sigh.

The weekend was slightly better. I spent Saturday afternoon being cooped up in Scubanaut's office in Ming Arcade in Orchad, watching 4 hrs worth of scuba techniques, drills, information, propaganda and blatant advertising on VCD. Its all Lionel's fault for not passing us the VCDs earlier before. Then again, its just as well, since I doubt any of us could be bothered watching through all that crap. We had a really long knowledge review and quiz session after the video, and the day ended with a final exam. Man I've never answered so many questions in a single day, this feels just like taking the SAT all over again. Thankfully, even with my bad memory, I managed to score pretty well for the exam. Lionel fared the worst among us though, serves him right, haha. We had our first taste of scuba on Sunday morning, when we headed to Outram Secondary for our pool dive. Its quite amazing to see a secondary school equipped with a dive pool of its own. Ok it might not be really big, but still, you don't see many schools with their own pool anyway. Spent the first hour moving the equipment and going through a swimming assessment. The bloody compressed air tank was ridiculously heavy, I felt like I was going to break my back anytime during the short trip between the equipment room and the pool. The swimming assessment was pretty ok, if not for the number of people in the pool. We were constantly trying to avoid colliding with others while doing our laps, the pool was really that packed. I nearly died during the 10mins water treading segment though, thanks to a cramp in my right calf from not stretching before jumping in. We then went up for an equipment orientation and fitting, it was really funny watching the others squeeze into their wetsuits. Especially Stuart. Haha. Not everyone is blessed with a body like mine. Lol. Speaking of bodies, Yanxiang and Yufen, friends of Weifeng, have pretty good figures. Its lucky that the trip wouldn't only consist of a bunch of testosterone loaded and horny guys. Heh. The drills underwater were a killer though. I'm not used to breathing with my mouth only, and when the instructor took off my mask to initiate the mask replacement drill, I panicked. I couldn't see, there was nothing to stop water from entering my nose, and thus I ended up inhaling lots of pool water. If you have never experienced such an incident before, pray that you never do. It sucks. And so, amidst my alarm and thoughts of imminent death in the 1.2m end of the pool, I did the only thing my panicked mind could think of: I surfaced. And of course, I was roundly screwed by the instructor. "When you are 10m underwater, you can't just surface anytime you want when shit happens, so you gotta learn to fix the problems underwater" were his words. I shudder at the very thought. If shit does happen 10m underwater, seriously, I think I'd probably go 'Fuck the drills', jettison all my equipment, and attempt to swim for the surface before I end up as fish food. Sigh. Scuba is hard indeed. And partly because I inhaled water in my panic, I caught the cold bug from my brother. Isn't it just wonderful? A flu or cold is one of the most serious contraindications of scuba diving, and now that I'm indisposed, my 400 bucks for the trip is probably wasted. I just hope my medications can cure me before the weekend, if not, I will be paying 400 bucks for a sightseeing tour to Tioman. A little on the expensive side, if you ask me. Ah well, if I can't dive, I think I'm gonna go irritate the others on the trip. First thing on my list: cut Lionel's regulator hose. Hehheh.

Why guys hate shopping

2005-06-13T21:36:00.000+08:00

Weekly update's here. Was tempted to put it off til tomorrow, but some of you guys out there can't seem to get enough of my crap, so I decided to be a nice guy. I live to serve, whether it be my fans or the government. Sigh, oh well.

Its been a pretty boring week, and work is boring as hell. Its the same old routine, wake up in the morning, fight with other kiasu Singaporeans for places on the train, get nagged at by my supervisor for careless mistakes, get pissed off by the uber slack mats, get depressed looking at the unattainable chiobu, and get yelled at for falling asleep at the dinner table. Who ever said familiarity breeds comfort, needs to spend a day in my place. Well, its not all that bad, I did managed to increase my output by 50%, and the food around Novena is pretty good. Lunchtime is the highlight of the day. It so reminds me of the days I spent in NS, when the only way to quell those depressing and suicidal thoughts that run through my mind ever so often, was to count the days to book out. Sad, isn't it?

Parents decided to go on a vacation to Bangkok over the weekend, thankfully they remembered to take my irritating brother along. And with my other brother out attending some kind of school camp, I'm more or less alone at home. The dream of every guy who has a girlfriend. Heh. Sadly, my Single and Desperate Club membership hasn't expired, so I have to be content with spending 5 days in the company of my dogs. Not that I'm complaining, but sometimes they just drive me mad. Especially my husky and cocker spaniel. The husky is annoyingly active and seems derive its kicks from irritating me, while the cocker spaniel is just plain spastic. Despite being neutered, it is still one aggressive S.O.B. Makes me feel like doping its food with a bottle of sleeping pills. Sigh. Dumb mutts.

Took a day's leave today from work, to escape death from work stress and boredom, only to succumb to boredom at home. Thankfully, Chingying needed a chaperone for her shopping trip, and so I gladly offered my services. Apparently she was looking for a Star Wars model kit for her boyfriend's birthday present, and since she has totally no clue about model building and such, who else can she turn to but the expert? Haha. Spent the afternoon walking around town looking for the elusive item, but we didn't manage to find any shops retailing it, so we decided on a change of plans. It involved a costly dessert at BakerzIn that made my wallet go into spasms, which wasn't particularly spectacular; followed by more aimless wandering aka window shopping, before calling it a day. I'm not against shopping or anything, but like most guys I believe, I hate to wander about, finally seeing something that catches your eye, and discovering that you can't afford the purchase. The feeling just sucks. Girls, on the other hand, don't seem to mind that fact and are content to settle for staring and drooling at such items through the glass windows. Neither do they particularly care that the prices for the aforementioned items are crazily exorbitant, since their wallets are usually funded by those of their boyfriends. The moral of the story? Don't ask a guy out for shopping unless you are certain he has enough moolah. Keep this advice in mind, girls, if you don't wish to hear your boyfriends' griping and grumbling while you are engaging in your favourite pasttime. Speaking of boyfriends, I ran into the cute girl from office today, she was with a guy with a suspiciously short haircut that resembled a toilet brush. I assumed it was her boyfriend. Sadly, I didn't manage to see his face and Chingying completely missed the girl. Haha, talk about being blind. My guess is they were probably shopping. For a moment, I felt a pang of pity for the guy, being dragged along by his girlfriend to accompany her while she shops at the expense of his wallet, and providing free manual labour isn't a very productive way to spend his post-POP leave. Heh. Poor sucker.

Karma

2005-06-06T21:51:00.000+08:00

Stop grumbling people, here's the update. What is it about my mundane life and everyday affairs that is so appealing to my fans? Don't you people have your own lives to lead? Oh wait, I take that back. People who are bored enough to read my blog obviously don't have much of a life now do they? Hehheh. Seriously, instead of bugging me to update every minute, you guys should probably go start your own blog. Then I can laugh at someone else instead for a change. Lol.

People used to tell me that I don't do enough charity work, you know, helping the unfortunate and the disabled etc etc....but hey, I'm an unfortunate soul too, where are the volunteers that are supposed to shower me with tender loving care? Haha..well, here's the surprise, I actually did volunteer work last Saturday. Please, take a few minutes to calm yourself, I'm not responsible for any deaths resulting from heart attacks or shocks. Mushroom and the gang managed to convince me to help out at the National Boccia Tournament at the Chua Chu Kang sports stadium. Even I myself am still amazed by their persuasive skills, I usually refuse to do anything that is earlier than 12pm without a second thought. How they managed to get my to agree to it is still a mystery. I suspect someone's using Jedi Mind Tricks on me. But all in all, it was still a pretty eye opening event. Boccia is actually a combination of bowling, golf, pool and 'goli'. Pretty spiffy eh? There are actually tactics and techniques to the game, despite my impression that most of the players were really relying on pure luck. Weida and I were the timekeepers of one court, and man it was a boring job. I mean, how exciting can pressing a stopwatch, looking at balls and recording scores be? I nearly dozed off a couple of times myself, the only thing that kept me partially awake was the fact that an irate player might decide to throw a ball at me or something. Ah well, for all my hardwork, I did get a free T shirt and lunch. Not a bad deal, I must say.

Headed to Expo for the PC Fair after the boccia event with Weida, Thomas, Xing En and another girl whose name I just can't seem to get into my head. Blame it on the lack of sleep. It ended up as a wasted trip though, I didnt find my iRiver booth and my spare batts, but I did see a couple of skimpily clad models strutting their stuff. Kinda tempted to sample their 'goods', but you never know what they could do. I sure as hell don't fancy getting a mp3 player or a digital cam shoved down my throat or somewhere else. Heh. But it sure is amazing to see the number of people turning up for the fair, I never knew Singapore had such a huge population of nerds and geeks. And people still wonder why we have one of the lowest 'woohoo' counts around, when many of us would rather look at a naked graphics card than at a naked woman. Sheesh. Yes, I'm one of those losers too, but hey, I'd never turn down a naked woman. Unless she is RuHua. In that case, I'm turning celibate or probably gay.

Speaking of females, over the past few days, I managed to glean some stuff out of the cute girl that works in my office. No, I won't be disclosing her name here, 'cos I don't trust some of you people out there. Suffice to say, I learned quite alot, but not nearly as much as I would like. But the most important nugget of info didn't come to my notice until today, during lunch when I managed to catch a glimpse of her handphone's background picture. Surprise surprise, its a shot of her and some other guy hugging. 5 minutes later, she asked me about the directions to Tekong, so she could attend her boyfriend's POP parade tomorrow. Needless to say, I was devastated, all my hopes utterly, hopelessly crushed. I mean, a cute girl like her, and some bloody chao recruit who leads a better life and earns more than I ever did during my BMT? What is the world coming to? Cheryl said my charity stint probably gained me enough karma points to get me a 'cute' girlfriend, though the definition of cute is rather subjective. But it seems that I've probably done too much bad deeds in the past, even Saturday's points were not enough to redeem myself. Sigh. At that point, I was really tempted to give her wrong directions, to send her in circles and make her arrive on Tekong hours after the parade is over, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. After all, I've been through the same shit, and I'd probably understand how important it must be to have your girlfriend looking on in the grandstand as you sweat, gripe and fidget about on the parade square, trying to look as macho as possible while not fainting from fatigue, boredom and heatstroke. Whoever that guy is, you'd better be grateful for having such a devoted girlfriend who would stick with you even though you are the lowest lifeform in the army now. Cheryl asked me why I am so bent on getting attached, and what if the experience isn't what I make it all out to be? Well, there's this saying, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Anyway, in the end, I gave her the directions and some advice on how to beat the crowd. Sometimes I wonder if my occasional good deeds go noticed or appreciated. I'd better get a raise or something for this.

Cheekwang just went for his jaw op today, and is now probably so full of drugs he won't feel a rectal thermometer probing him. Its incredible seeing the lengths people would go to for the sake of vanity. I know this firsthand, my braces are a constant reminder of my folly. Managed to link up with Weili to go visit him tomorrow when he's awake. Weili suggested we buy him a box of chicken's essence since he won't be able to eat. I suggested we keep the chicken's essence for ourselves, get him a cheapo card, and eat our dinner in front of him. Muahahahaha. Oops, there goes my positive karma points. DANG.

Typity typety type...data entry sure is boring alright..

2005-06-01T19:57:00.000+08:00

Well, here's the long awaited update. To start if off, I've officially joined the work force, albeit on a temporary basis, and today was my very first day at work. Here's a brief outline of my day as a greenhorn:

0700 - Dragged my sorry ass out of bed after alot of hounding by my dad.
0730 - Left house for Buona Vista Mrt station in dad's car.
0815 - Train disgorged me along with a horde of mindless drones and peons heading for work at Novena.
0830 - Met up with the coordinator who brought us up to the 22nd storey for a long boring briefing.
0915 - Department head brought a bunch of us down the dungeon, err I mean basement, to our stations. Another long and boring briefing.
1000 - Split into teams, team leader introduced our job scope to us, along with yet another super long briefing on how to input data using the program provided. At this point, I was fighting to keep myself from yawning for the 249th time and picking up the team leader's mug and bashing her head in.
1100 - Finally got to try my hands on keying in the data from the forms. The very first form had a load of errors. Singaporeans really need a lesson on how to fill up their tax forms properly. After getting my 5th incomplete form, I was this close to committing arson.
1230 - Lunch break, skipped the first 30min in order to finish my work, before heading up to the canteen. The place was packed to the brim, gave up waiting for a seat, grabbed a sandwich and headed back down to work.
1730 - Time to knock off. I didn't even realise it was time to go until I saw everyone else packing up and heading out. Saved my work, switched off the computer and went to sign out, only to discover that my attendance sheet was AWOL. Gave up searching after awhile when it looked like I might be locked in the office by myself, and went home.

What a day eh? Makes me wonder why do I even bother finding a job anyway. The pay sucks balls, I'm onli getting $4.50 an hour, can you believe it, a person of my qualifications getting a measly $4.50 an hour for a job? Sheesh. Talk about exploitation. And the great irony is that, I worked harder than most of the people there today. I even gave lunch a miss so that I could meet my quota, while others snuck out of the office early to have their canteen / smoking break. The coup de grace came when one of the more senior temp staff there commented 'Why are you working so hard? They pay me $6.50 an hour, and I still do less than you.' I wonder how many blood vessels I burst at that point. The work environment leaves much to be desired too, the bloody computers I had to use looked older than I am, and I'm pretty damn old by normal standards. I was half expecting the damn thing to die on me halfway through my work. The amount of RAM, or rather the lack of it, made the whole system more laggy than playing CS on a 56k dialup connection. And most importantly, there was a great dearth of chiobus in the whole place. Sure the female to male ratio was probably a 10:1, but out of 10 females, 9 were malays, and 8 were fat. Sad, isn't it? The only saving grace of the whole day was, I had this cute Chinese girl sitting opposite my table. She was the most senior temp staff there from the look of things, though she's only been with IRAS since April. From the little amount of conversation that transpired, I gathered that she was from TJC, and was currently waiting to enrol in NUS. Her first choice was food sciences, she used to be in the tae kwan do club in JC, and she's probably attached. Heh. I would have bugged her more, if not for the fact that everyone else was doing the same with questions about work. Ah well, she didn't seem quite interested in talking either. Sigh. Why do I always get the difficulty level set on 'Hell'? Lol..

On another note, results are out tomorrow! Gosh, could this be the cause for the impending sense of doom I've been feeling all week? Or it could be due to an oncoming AMI from eating too much grease and lard these holidays...either way its not a good feeling. Maybe I shlould follow Mush and Weida in their Operation Karma Redemption. Volunteer work can't be worse than waiting for results, can it? Haha. Speaking of results, Mush seemed quite depressed about hers yesterday. I don't know if my consoling helped, but I hope she does the same for me when tomorrow comes. Lol.

Happiest day of the week: Last Friday. I won my allowance for this week from those buggers in mahjong. Heh. Victory has never tasted so sweet. In fact, Darryl still owes me 10 bucks. Stingy ass. If you are reading this Darryl, you'd better pay up soon, or else I'm hanging Wenda's head outside your door. But alas, my winnings were shortlived. I spent it all on Sunday when we went over to give May a birthday 'surprise'. I've gained an insight from this though, money is transient. No matter how much you have now, it will be gone sooner or later. Damn now that's a scary thought. But well, the food we had over at ECP on Sunday night was worth the money. We bought lots of food that was shared round the table, and I unabashedly took more than my share. Heh. Hey I'm still growing ok? Horizontally, that is. The whole event was made so hilarious when we had to sneak into May's home with the help of Kenneth, and then proceeded to ensconce ourselves in the pich dark and stuffy kitchen. I had to top it off by sitting on Joey's water bowl. Haha. Joey gave us away with her incessant barking, and May came to investigate the kitchen when we sprang the 'surprise' on her. It was all over in 3min, after the customary singing of the birthday song, blowing of the candle and hoarding the cake in the fridge in the case of a nuclear winter. Wonderful isn't it? So much planning for such a shortlived event. And noone took any pictures either. And here I was, all dressed up and ready to get my mug shot taken so that I can have something to amuse you loyal fans out there. I try my best to brighten up your sadly mundane lives, but it seems that the Force is working against me here. Oh well, no pics for you people at the moment. Perhaps if some of you considered donating some moolah, I might actually have a camera phone with which to get some snapshots. Lol.

Caution: Major spoilers for those who have not watched Star Wars ahead

2005-05-23T00:38:00.000+08:00

Yes, you are not dreaming or hallucinating, here's another update from yours truly. You know, taking the initiative to do something regularly is hard, with the exceptions of slacking, sleeping, playing games... you know, things of that sort. So it was with tremendous effort that I managed to overcome my laziness and present to all you loyal fans this update. Applause at this point would be most appropriate, thank you. Heh.

Highlights of the week included catching Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith on its opening day, with Darryl and Alfred. We watched the movie at Cineleisure; which, thank goodness, is the only cinema that isn't taking part in the insane price wars started by good ol' Golden Village. Stupid buggers. At $10.50 a ticket on weekends and public holidays, they must think that the average Singaporean owns a bungalow, drives a Rolls Royce to work and commands a 5 digits salary. And to think that in my parents' days, movie tickets cost about as much as what it would cost to get you a plate of poorly cooked chicken rice today. Sheesh. With such ridiculous price hikes being implemented, is it any wonder that movie and music piracy is on the rise? And media companies blame the layman for being a cheapskate.

Episode 3 wasn't bad, but it wasn't spectacular either. The special effects were great, the plot was pretty good; but the script, wooden acting by some of the characters, and the weird little green dude kinda ruined the experience. Scripts don't come any cheesier than this, with Wenjie quoting a good example from the show. In the last 20mins, Natalie Portman learns that Anakin has fallen to the dark side, and tearfully exclaims: "Anakin, you are breaking my heart." Sigh, even her beauty isn't enough to save her this time. And since we are talking about Amidala here, I thought it amusing that the fall of Anakin could rob her of the will to live. I mean, dying in childbirth, with technology capable of producing starships that could blast a planet to smithereens all around her, and a perfectly healthy constitution, seems to border on the ridiculous. It seems to me that George is plain eager to get rid of poor Amidala. Sad isn't it? Hayden Christensen, on the other hand, gets to live on, even after suffering amputation of his limbs and immolation by fire. I mean, sure Darth Vader is in the later, or should I say earlier, episodes, but if bad acting was a criteria for killing off people, he would have been the first candidate. Well, I'm not saying his performance as Anakin Skywalker was horrible, but it sure would have been better for us movie goers not having to see him putting on the same 'Me-Anakin, me-don't-know-what-is-going-on-but-I-won't-show-it' expression in every situation. And was it George Lucas' intention to portray him as a dunce? Because for all his prowess and power in the Force, he still seems to be manipulated by Palpatine with incredulous ease. Not to mention, he managed to get Mace Windu fried by Sith lightning too. Sigh. And finally, we have the little green guy, affectionately known to all as Yoda. Sure he is cute for a Jedi master and all, but his habit of making sentences backwards gets kinda irritating after awhile. Still, it was fun watching him bounce, somersault and flip around in his battle with Sidious. Makes you wonder if age is a factor when performing acrobatics. Lol.

Had the Spastic Clan over at my place for mahjong on Saturday. The original plan was to play overnight, but that idiot Zhiguang had to sign up for the Big Walk on Sunday. Not only that, he adamantly refused to stay over and leave early the following morning. Nooo, instead, he had to go home on Saturday to get his stuff. What a spoiler. Well, in the end, we played 2 rounds before calling it a day. I managed to break even, while Darryl and Wenda sucked Zhiguang dry. Serves him right. Heh. Still, it was a miracle that I even managed to cut my losses to 0 with Wenda playing. Man that dick's luck is incredible. I can start with 3 tiles to winning the game, and he will still end up beating me to it first no matter what cards he drew at the start. Grr...though I have to admit, I never had any luck in gambling before. Never had, and never will, I suppose. Ah well, that reduces my options of making money to legitimate choices that involves hard work. Man that sucks. Haha.

A Dim Sum Adventure

2005-05-16T23:32:00.000+08:00

I'm being bugged incessantly by hordes of fans for consistent updates. Sheesh. Keep your pants on people, I'm a busy man. Busy slacking, sleeping the day away or daydreaming. Heh. While I'm bowled over by the fact that some people out there suffer unimaginably hideous withdrawal symptoms without a daily dose of my blog, do keep in mind that I'm still human too, despite what some fanatics might claim. That is, I'm prone to all kinds of human foibles, indolence being the prime sin. So, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you guys, but updates will only come as and when I feel like getting off my arse and entertaining you lot. Hey, for all that I'm doing, you people should be on the ground kissing my feet and thanking me. Instead, I'm content to settle for your continuous adulation and fawning. Lol.

Alright, enough crap, on to the updates. Today's been really special, I was part of a gastronomic adventure that comprised of Mushroom, Carrot, May, Da Jie and a couple of others (Contrary to what some might think, Carrot and Mushroom were part of the adventurers, not the dishes). We had decided to go try out the famous Hotel Miramar dim sum buffet sometime last week. This bright idea was contributed by yours truly, since my last outing at the same restaurant with some of the platoon guys last year was a rather memorable one. After all, we did consume over 100 servings of the various dishes. I just hope they haven't pasted my mugshot on the doors and included my name in the 'To Kill' list. Lol. No matter what grudges the management might harbour against me (and the platoon guys), I guess my dismal performance today kinda redeemed myself. The grand total after today's adventure, was a measly 46. Sad isn't it? Not that I ate particularly alot, but I think bringing girls along for buffets is tantamount to giving money to the restaurant. Carrot hardly ate anything, apart from a couple of peanuts. Ok so i exaggerate, but she is really a fussy eater. And I thought my brother was bad. Well, on hindsight, I can't really say its totally her fault. Some dishes we ordered sure tasted weird, like the 'siu mai', they had a kinda raw taste to them. And the crab sticks thingamagic were the ultimate, thank god I didn't touch those, but it sure was a sight seeing Weida choking down that stuff. Hehheh.

The post-lunch event was something that is so typical when you go out with a bunch of girls, and one that I hate - shopping. We made our way down to Orchad, where we spent an hour walking around Cineleisure. Sure walking might help with the digestion, but hours of aimless drifting sure as hell doesn't help with the boredom bit. The girls were practically hopping with joy at the mention of the 's' word though, so I'd guess I should just humour them. Met Kok Leng with a bunch of friends on their way to the LAN shop, man I was soooo tempted to abandon the girls and join Kok Leng in a frag fest, but hey, I wouldn't be a gentleman if I did that, right? Haha. The sacrifices I make just to keep people happy. After more window shopping over at the Heeren, Weida apparently got bored too, and made his escape, and was soon followed by May and Kenneth. So, I though it was a good time for my liberation too. I bade the left-overs farewell, hopped on to the next bus for home, managing to catch a nap on the way. Now this is an activity that I enjoy. Hehheh.

Still no news whatsoever from the various job agencies and companies that I've sent my applications to, and I'm getting pissed waiting. Seems that they aren't too interested in hiring temp staff at the moment. Damn, this has to happen just when my cash reserves are running low. Furthermore, I've been placed in a quandary. My mum told me to cut down on my jaunts to town and to spend less. But staying at home only leaves me with the options of playing computer games and my PS2, watching tv, talking to the walls or sleeping. My dad's been complaining that the electricity bill is skyrocketing, and if nothing is done soon, he's gonna start rationing our monthly electricitiy. At this rate, my entertainment choices might end up with drawing a PS2 on paper and imagining myself playing it. Sigh. The only way out of this is to get a job. But those inefficient buggers out there sure aren't helping. That's it, if I can't find a job by next week, I might be going over to the nearest Macdonald's and offering my services as their toilet cleaner. Hey everyone has to start somewhere, and the bottom of the corporate ladder isn't such a bad place. Mind over matter, that's my motto.

Of eternal boredom, application forms designed by idiots and words of wisdom

2005-05-10T21:17:00.000+08:00

Okok, I know some of you out there are dying for the next update, so I decided to get off my ass and regale you people with more excerpts of my extraordinarily boring and mundane life. Did I just hear ecstatic screams of joy? Lol.

Now that exams are a thing of the past and the holidays are here to stay, two words sum up these few days nicely: f**king boring. I get more sleep in one day than I did over 2 days during the exams period, and I'm more or less permanently stuck to my chair in front of my monitor, or to my soft and comfy bed. And I thought the holidays would give me plenty of time to get out of the sedentary lifestyle I've been leading. Looks like its not gonna happen anytime soon. Lol. Ok I'm a lazy bastard, so sue me.

Slacking around is all good and well, but the curse of eternal boredom is driving me up the wall literally. In fact, I'm so bored, I'd just stare at my Bittorrent download meters, willing it to speed up, wondering why the hell are my downloads taking ages to complete, for hours. Or, I'd lie in wait in front of my monitor for some unsuspecting sucker...I mean friend, to come online, so I can bug him or her to death. Sheesh. I need to get a life. Or a job. Or a girlfriend. I don't know.

Speaking about jobs, I sent in my application to the Singapore Department of Statistics last week, and to date, I've not heard a single word from them. It seems that the army isn't the only organization cursed with inefficiency, apparently this problem is widespread. I got hold of some numbers for enquiries about the temp jobs from Joshua and off the web, but all 5 out of 5 attempts to get through to someone on the other end failed miserably. I mean, what the heck, even the line for their main office goes unanswered. Talk about slack. And I thought I was bad. Sigh. Steven managed to source another temp job offer with the IRA, which looked quite promising. $4.50-$6.50 per hour, depending on qualifications, didn't sound so bad. But, the online application form was an absolute nightmare. I filled up one page full of questions asking for loads of unnecessary details and crap, to find out that it was just the first page out of 3. Stuff like my CCA records had to be filled in, they wanted to know the names and IC numbers of my family members, and I was half expecting them to ask me what was the size of my underwear. To top it all off, upon reaching the 3rd page, I realised I'd just filled in Chinese under my nationality, and no, the form didn't have a 'Back' button for you to edit any errors that you might have made. So, I had to redo the whole wonderful little form AGAIN. Man, I was this close to biting my monitor in frustration.

Weiyee just left on a mountain climbing trip to Kinabalu in Sabah on Sunday. She don't seem to have done this before, since she asked for my help in packing the stuff that she needed. Of course, being the experienced traveller and globe trotter that I am, I offered her some tips and advice, most of which were seriously common sense really. Drink lots of water, bring medicine for emergencies, pack your stuff in ziplock bags for easier storage and removal, don't talk to strangers, don't eat anything that doesn't look like it can be eaten, don't disturb the monkeys and other wildlife yada yada....words of wisdom in general. Heh. I even lent her my backpack, sleeping bag and cap for her trip. I hope my help has increased my 'Stead-ometer' readings by a notch. If not...sigh. Well, its not like my 'Stead-ometer' reading can go any lower than its current position now, can it? Lol.

Killing is my business, and business is good

2005-04-29T20:27:00.000+08:00

What a week. Haven't been doing much besides sleeping, sleeping and more sleeping. Oh, I forgot about the gaming part. Oops. Lol. Given that Stats is next Thursday, I just can't seem to find the motivation to start mugging. Every morning I wake up telling myself 'Today shall be the day I start mugging for stats'. Sadly, it has not come true. Sigh, oh well there's always tomorrow.

So today's update will be a review by yours truly on some of the games I've been digging this week. Ain't that cool, game reviews on a blog? Hehheh. First off, we have Star Wars Republic Commandos. An insanely addictive, and fun FPS, it serves to link the plots of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of The Sith, seen from the perspective of the Republic's elite Commandos. Its damn fun killing bugs, lizards and droids in the Star Wars universe, which is rendered almost seamlessly by the ingame engine and my wonderful 6600GT Gfx card. Lizard blood and gore on your visor after knifing one of those suckers in the face, ahhhh now that paints a perfect picture. Hohoho. Next game is Midnight Club 3 on the PS2. Wonderful little racing game that lets you buy most of the latest wheels on the market and customize them to suit your own fantasies. It feels really good driving over curbs, on sidewalks, crashing into traffic, and generally doing all kinds of shit while beating people to the finish line. Things that you can't normally do in real life, especially not in Singapore. Lol. There are some people I would so dearly love to run over.

Ah, enough with the games, I think I'm turning into a compulsive gamer, if I already haven't. Lol. Now, some of you have been persistently bugging me about details, sordid or not, of my 'love life'. Take a hint, I'm not telling, so you guys can go to your corners and suck your thumbs, or you can attempt to stalk me as I go about my daily activities in school. In that case, I'd be most happy to knife you in your head just like I did to those scaly Trandoshan weaklings. You have been warned. Muahahaha....

Exam blues

2005-04-25T22:35:00.000+08:00

Hello hello hello loyal readers and ardent fans, contrary to what you might believe, I'm not dead. But, I'm well on my way to being so. Since I've been away for so long, here's an update for you guys.

The reason I've been MIA for so long? Blame it on the tons of tutorials and projects we had to do. Work never seemed to end, its like the more I do, the more it gets. If you asked me, homework breeds like rabbits in heat. Sigh. Thankfully its all over now, with the impending closure of the semester. Surprisingly, we managed to not only save our asses for the SS project, but we actually outshone ourselves and secured an A+. Woohoo. Damn I'm good. What, it was a team effort? Oops...hehheh. Mushroom and the others were bugging me for a treat that I apparently owed them and of which I have totally no recollection of saying so, for the A+. Sigh, such is the curse of excellence. Luckily, heaven is fair and I'm not blessed with overwhelming intelligence. After all, I did get a B for my stupid GEM term paper. Ok I admit, I still feel pissed about it. Why couldn't Harry give me a better grade? After all the weeks of effort put into my family tree, I thought I was looking at a B+ at least. Sigh. It makes no sense. And Cheryl got herself a B+. Damnation. There's something in Arts students that automatically puts them ahead in the race compared to other suckers from Science or Engine etc...maybe its genetic. Or maybe I'm just stupid. Oh well.

Exams are here. And I'm going nuts from the stress. The best part about my exam schedule is, I had 2 papers on my very first day, both of which had essays as a component. Sigh. My brain literally blanked out halfway through the 2nd paper, everything I've read and memorised just got formatted off my neural harddrive in an instant. And so, it was time for me to use the age old skill of 'smoking'. Haha. Well I can't say I managed to smoke my way out of the woods, but thinking back, I'm quite proud of myself for my efforts. Hey, it was a brave attempt ok? Don't rub it in, I already feel kinda suicidal as it is. Today's SS paper was an experience and eye opener at the same time. I don't believe I've written more than what I've written today in the same amount of time given. Man, my hand suffered a cramp from all the scribbling during the paper itself. Worse, my handwriting looked like chicken scratchings. I just hope Kamal is able to decipher my words, maybe she will appreciate the challenge, she seems bored often anyway. Lol. Another noteworthy incident: while I was doing my question 1 of the paper, I caught a glimpse of this girl sitting 2 seats diagonally to my right. She was staring blankly at her questions paper, and after a couple of minutes, she picked up her pen, scribbled something on her answer booklet, before staring into space again. This continued for 15minutes or so, before she apparently decided to call it quits, laid down her pen and her head on the table, and promptly went to sleep. Lol. She is the champion. I take my hat off to her. As things are, I've still got one more paper left sometime next week. Stupid statistics module simply cannot arrange a proper exam date. I mean, 5 May? Wtf? I've got myself 10 days to rot and to goad myself back into the mugger lifestyle again. Why can't my agony end earlier? I so look forward to finding a part time job, I'm really quite broke. Anymore expenditures, and I will be living Joshua's lifestyle of eating bread and drinking plain water. Sigh.

My love life hasn't seen much progress since I last left off either. Just 2 weeks ago or so, on my way to school, I got a glimpse of Grace and her boyfriend at the Kent Ridge bus stop. Just when I thought I've finally rid myself of unwanted emotional attachments, they all surfaced again in an instant. Sigh. I confess, I did feel a twinge of jealousy seeing them being so happy together. But its all in the past now, and I suppose the best I could do is to wish them both all the best. That or actually finding myself a girlfriend. Heh. Speaking of old flames, I met my old 'flame' from secondary school a couple of times these few weeks. Old 'Flame' as in I-like-her-but-she-thinks-I'm-a-retard kind of relationship. Point is, I've gotten over her long ago, but it makes no sense not to part as friends, but somehow she just doesn't seem keen on befriending me again. Oh well, its her loss by not making friends with such a suave and ahem..outstanding person like me. Lol. That's the exam stress talking. On another note, I did find out from Jingyao's intelligence services that Weiyee was leaving for Malaysia on the 15th, but upon confirmation, she told me she was actually going to Sabah first from the 8th to the 13th. Damn that doesn't give me any time to ask her out at all. Besides, she won't be back until term starts. Things never seem to go my way especially in the love department. Well, I offered my services to help her clear her room before she leaves, now the ball is in her court. Sigh.

That's all for today, updates will come as and when I'm free, i.e when I'm not sleeping my time away or mugging. Stay tuned folks, to my wonderfully sad life.

My teeth feel like they might fall off any moment

2005-04-02T23:23:00.000+08:00

Lazy weekend. Hauled my ass out of bed in the morning for my dental appointment all the way in Ubi. Luckily my dad was around to give me a lift, allowing me the luxury of another hour of sleep. Lol. I wished I'd gone to a dental clinic nearer home, the journey is pure boredom of more than an hour.

Since my dad had so kindly given me a lift, I arrived 40mins early for my appointment. Thus, I was stoning the the waiting area and flipping through the stack of magazines, when I came across this interesting article on LASIK surgery. After reading it, I was tempted to go for it, since I hated wearing specs and contacts are a chore to put on. Then, I saw this line: recommended for patients with degrees of 150 and less. WTF. I thought people who rely heavily on visual aid like specs and contacts are the ones who have a greater need for the surgery. Weird eh? My mother, who was half-blind before her surgery, had a degree of 950 in both eyes. Now she probably has better vision than I do. Maybe I should just heck the consequences and go for it once I'd saved up anyway.

After a boring wait, it was my turn at last. My dentist is a wonderful man, everytime I visit, he gives me a new contraption to put on. Today's torture: a modification made to the plastic piece I wear behind my upper teeth, and a tightening of the braces with some kind of rubber band. The best part is, the pain doesn't kick in immediately. I left the clinic thinking maybe I'd gotten off lightly today, but noooo, when I got home and had lunch, I nearly jumped out of my seat from the pain when I tried to chew on a spoonful of rice. Sigh. Dinner was worse, I had to mash up my food with the spoon and swallow with minimum chewing. Sometimes I wonder why did I put myself through this torture anyway. The price of vanity.

Messaged my mei and the others about Weida's birthday celebration tomorrow. Seems like they are having lunch at Suntec's Marche at 1330. Sigh, not only is the timing too rushed for me, the place is quite some distance from Plaza Singapura too. Lessons begin at 2pm, so I guess I won't be joining them for lunch. With my teeth in such shape, I doubt I'd be eating much anyway. I wish they would go catch a movie after lunch, but noone seems particularly interested. Instead they all want to go shopping. Girls. Sigh. Haven't decided on what to get for Weida, ah well, my presence tomorrow should be enough of a gift. Lol. Am I a cheapo bastard or what?

Happy April Fool

2005-04-02T01:06:00.000+08:00

Haven't been blogging for the past couple of days, tests were killing me literally. Now that its all over, I bring to all you happy fans and followers out there...an update. Lol. Let's make it short shall we? Wednesday - boring day. Skipped French lecture to go mug for stats test in Central library with Mushroom and the others. One thing I like about Central library is the 'scenery'. Close to 1 out of every 10 persons in the library is a skimpily clad chiobu. Not bad eh? I should hang out in Arts more often, the number of cute girls in Science is atrociously low. I often wonder how those girls can tolerate the freezer-like temperatures in the Central library when the amount of cloth on their bodies is almost negligible. Maybe chiobus have a 100% resistance to cold.

Wee Heng messaged me my score for the previous French written test during my mugging stint in the library. Apparently, I got 18/20 for comprehension and 11/15 for the grammar section. Wow. Sometimes I even amaze myself. Now I feel as though I'd S/Ued the wrong module. If only I can be as lucky as this for my GEM and SS. Sigh. The GEM exam is like 3 weeks away, and I've got a ton of readings that are not even printed. I'm praying for a sudden stroke of inspiration and genius on the day of examination.

Yesterday was pretty much a blur. I woke up close to noon, did a couple of questions for stats, and went to school for French tutorial. Was tempted to skip tutorial as well, but having to fabricate another excuse letter is a pain in the arse, so I dragged my sorry ass to class, which was surprisingly entertaining, light-hearted and educational at the same time. Man, this is how lessons should be like. Haha. Stats test was pretty easy, but I made a mistake in the 2nd section when I used a tree diagram instead of the bloody Law of Total Probability. Sigh. There goes my perfect score. In fact, I'm kinda worried by the fact that I won't be getting full marks, while everyone else seems so cocksure that they will. Damnation.

Today was the best. Woke up early with an intention to mug for microbiology quiz later, but the notes totally sucked ass, and I had no idea what else was to be read. I ended up reading the newspaper, watching tv and downloading music before I left for school. What a productive morning. Sigh. Microbio lab 2 was just as confusing and riotous as the first session, but the experiments, if you could call them that, were a piece of cake. We only had to record our observations and results of the cultures we made last session; the rest of the time was spent looking at 'demonstrations', which consisted mostly of us copying what was written at each station, while the TAs stood by looking at us looking at the culture plates. Isn't it wonderful to be a TA? Haha.

The quiz was a stunner. Ho Bow can't give instructions for nuts. Apparently, each MCQ question in the quiz might possibly have more than one answer, and we were supposed to identify most, if not all, of them. Of course, at first glance, there seemed to be a loophole in this system, I could have just simply shaded every single option available. But noooo, Ho Bow had a trick or two up his sleeve. For every wrong option we chose, we get a mark deducted, and for every correct asnwer we picked, we get one mark. BUT, each MCQ question was only worth 1 mark. And for a question, the lowest you can get is 0, meaning there's no negative marking. Confusing, ain't it? And I thought it was some sick April Fool's joke on Ho Bow's part. Ho Bow made matters worse with his half-fucked instructions that stretched a good part of 20mins, after which I was totally lost. Ah well, I just resolved to shading every option that looked correct. You can't go wrong with that. I hope.

Left the place with Jingyao, Ian and Weiyee after the quiz. Jingyao was pestering the old man about the question on the least evolved domain. I was pretty sure the answer is Archaea, but Jingyao simply refuses to admit he got it wrong, and insists that Bacteria meant Eubacteria, and he was not wrong. Haha. And Ho Bow upon being questioned, didn't deign to give us a direct answer. He had to beat around the bush, asking us questions in turn, and finally disappearing without telling us which was the correct option. Haha. Jingyao's persistance didnt pay off after all. I was happily chatting with Weiyee when those 2 conveniently 'disappeared' on the way to the bus stop. Lol. At least they knew how to take a hint. Haha. Our chat lasted all the way from Science to her stop, during which she confessed that she had also thought of changing over to Medicine. Everyone's thinking of that, it seems. Hmm. I wonder if I should, given the dismal job prospects of a life science graduate. I'd be lucky to land a job operating a machine that washes test-tubes in labs. Sigh. Oh well, after the bus ride with her, I'm already content. Haha. Life's pleasures come from the simplest things.

She knows?

2005-03-30T00:12:00.000+08:00

Man, work and tests are driving me up the wall. The lack of an update yesterday is but one evidence of my preoccupation with all these crap. Sheesh, I'm bushed. Really can't wait for exams to arrive, I just want to get it over and done with.

Brief update of yesterday and today: Boring French lecture. Interesting GEM tutorial. Boring stats lecture. Short and sweet. Lol. Sadly, the GEM tutorial was the last of the semester, which means I probably won't be seeing the cute junior from my secondary school again. Sigh. Partings are never happy.

Supposed to meet Wenjie for a swim this morning, but the sky was a darker shade of grey than my NJC uniform. Wenjie had apparently decided to give the swim a miss too, so I slept in late. Woke up just before noon, dressed and rushed to school for stats tutorial. Found out that most of my workings were wrong because of a silly mistake. Sigh. I'm really bad at stats. Had lunch with Wenjie, Jingyao and Xiong Ge in Science canteen. According to intel from Jingyao, he had apparently hinted to Weiyee that someone amongst our group likes her. You can't make it more obvious than that. To her credit, she guessed that it was me on the first try, and subsequently she spent the next 20min trying to justify her argument why I could not be interested in her. Reasons quoted: she feels that I'm just treating her like a friend; she sees me talking to other girls more than I do to her etc etc. Now, since when did I become such a Casanova? Apart from my mei and her gang, and WeeHeng, I almost never talk to anyone else of the opposite sex. Weird ain't it? Maybe its like what Xiong Ge said, she's just trying to deny the truth herself. Haha. Is that good or bad? Hmm....Jingyao and Ian's analysis: the problem now isn't with her, but me. They think I'm too reticent and 'stoned' in front of her. Haha. Am I more talkative when in front of others? I don't think so. Its just my nature to keep my mouth shut and hide in the background. Its a wonderful way of avoiding trouble and unnecessary work. Too bad its working too well in this case. Lol. Oh well, as the saying goes ' Empty vessels make the most noise'. Cheryl, read the previous sentence again. Muahahaha. Ok that's all for today, time to hit the books again.

Basketball in the rain

2005-03-27T23:39:00.000+08:00

Last day of the weekend. Woke up after 12pm as usual, ate a hasty meal and took off for drums class. Lesson was boring compared to the previous few, we only played a couple of new rhythms and beats, instead of playing to songs. Sigh. And I took my seat at the practice pads today. I need to play on real drums to curb my addiction, which is getting worse by the day. Lol. Yesterday I saw a set of drums going for 500 bucks on Yahoo, was so tempted to get it straight away. Too bad my wallet is deader than a door knob.

Went to play basketball in Chinese High with Wenjie and his church friends after lessons. I wasn't too keen on the idea at first, the sky looked as though it might start dumping the sea on our heads any moment, and I still had some mugging to do. But Wenjie was right, I've been neglecting my physical fitness for too long, its time to get back in shape. So in the end, we took a bus down to Chinese High, only to find out that some of his friends decided to go catch a movie due to the impending rain. Lol. The courts were super tough to find, we had to navigate our way through a maze of classrooms and corridors before finally reaching the place. If Wenjie wasn't with me, I bet I would still be wandering the endless maze that is Chinese High. Why on earth do secondary school students need such a large compound for anyway? Sheesh.

Made more friends today. Most of them were really good basketball players, especially Danny. He's probably around 1.8m in height, towering over most of us, and he's insanely good at getting rebounds. After a few futile attempts by our team, we totally gave up and left him to his devices under the net. Haha. It rained halfway through the game though, someone remarked that it was just a passing shower. Yeah right. The 'passing shower' managed to drench all of us to the skin. Surprisingly noone quit the game though. The girls joined in after the shower had stopped, man they were good too. Better than me at least. Its time to buck up, when even girls are kicking my ass in the court. Lol.

But I don't wanna convert.....

2005-03-27T01:04:00.000+08:00

Late start today. Crawled out of bed at noon, ate a breakfast-cum-lunch consisting of a Macdonald's Hotcakes meal and a cup of coffee, and I was hitting the books. There's so much crap to mug for stats, I wonder if I will be able to complete my revision on time. Still have a Microbio quiz on Friday which I have totally not touched at all, and after seeing my grades for the previous quizzes and essay, I desperately need to get back in the upper tail of the bell curve. Stress stress stress.

Left home at 5pm to attend Joshua's church Easter Day function. The journey was really long, and the weekend crowd didn't help make my trip more comfortable. Missed a train because there was no space in the carriages left, and I got to Ang Mo Kio station 10min late. Sigh. Some people are really the limit. There's space in the centre of the carriages, but they are either blind or too stupid to move inwards, depriving others like me the opportunity to board the train. Morons. Those marshals on the trains should come equipped with cattle prods or tazers, and apply them appropriately to those inconsiderate idiots. Hehheh.

The function was pretty enjoyable I must say. Joshua led the ice-breaker games, and man, he's a really funny MC. The food was excellent too, I managed to get my second helping before anyone else. Woohoo. What can I say, nothing stands between me and my stomach when I'm hungry. Lol. Made a couple of new friends this evening, they all seem like nice people. One girl, who I find vaguely familiar, was called Charlene and used to be from NJC, the same batch as us 3. Apparently she knows more about me than I do about her, weird eh? Maybe I have a stalker. Haha. But as with most Christian functions, the event had to end off with a speech that 'encourages' non-believers to convert. Sigh. This is the part I hate most about such functions. I mean, if I want to convert, I will do it on my own time.Noone should put pressure on another person, either deliberately or unintentionally, when it regards religion. I don't know about the other non-believers present tonight, but somehow I felt like its kinda bad on my part if I didn't end up converting after enjoying a night with them and getting a free meal in the process. But, I resisted to the end, and I still remain a happy Buddhist, or so it states on my IC. Frankly, religion isn't one of my priorities in life now, and I don't see the need to convert since I'm happy with the way I am. I'm sure Joshua had good intentions at heart, but I'm sorry to say that I don't see myself turning religiously devout in the near future. Ah well, I've survived another attempt to convert me, just like I did so many others. I'm beginning to suspect I'm impervious to religious indoctrination of any sort, must be the company I keep. (Hint: Darryl) Lol.

The Eye 10: comedy or horror flick?

2005-03-26T00:20:00.000+08:00

Its a holiday today. Whee! Went for a swim with Darryl at Queenstown in the afternoon, and I managed to cover 30 laps without dying. I think I'm getting the hang of this. Lol. Something spoiled my mood though: a bunch of kids were playing in the pool, and generally making asses out of themselves. Its ok with me if they want to embarass themselves in public, but they had the nerve to play in the lane I was swimming, and time and again I had to swim around them to avoid collision. And when I changed to another lane, they went over as well, its almost as though those little pricks are purposely trying to play punk with me.

Went to Lido to catch The Eye 10 after the swim. Word of caution: Don't watch this movie. Another warning: IF you do watch it, sit far far away from females, bring earplugs and a baseball bat. Why? Because, the movie itself is pretty mild, amusing even I would say, for Darryl and I were laughing our asses off through the whole show. But there were a few scary moments as well. What were they? Its when the females in the theatre give voice to their irrational fear of everything, their shrieks were 10 times more terrifying than the spooks on screen. I tell you, when the girl next to me screamed for no apparent reason, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Sigh. Girls. The crowd today in Lido was disgustingly huge. The ticket queue stretched from the box office right up to the glass doors in front of the KFC outlets. Seems that everyone one is out on Good Friday. Makes you wonder why eh? Another thing I noticed was the amazingly large number of mats in the theatre with us. The Eye 10 is a Chinese film, but I bet 40% of the audience was made up of malays. Horror knows no boundaries it seems. My movie experience was further spoiled by them for they can't seem to keep their bloody mouths shut during the show. Irritating. And people ask me why I'm racist. Next time they should make signs outside cinemas that go 'No retards allowed'.

Be careful, I bite

2005-03-24T23:21:00.000+08:00

Tiring day today. Went for the first actual SS tutorial since the beginning of the semester. It seemed that Kamal posted up the question for today's tutorial up on IVLE, but somehow I couldn't find it anywhere. Its kinda amusing when Kamal asked if anyone came for tutorial without preparation, and nobody raised their hands. Buncha liars. Lol.

Had lunch with Weida and my mei at Arts canteen. As usual, Mushroom got her indispensable companion, Mr Fish, to join us. Haha. So 'fishy' sia. After they decided to abandon me in Arts, I headed over to the Central Library to try to do some reading up for next week's stats test. Sadly, I fell into a coma which lasted an hour before I was 3 pages into my notes. Sigh. My attempts to mug have always been thwarted by the Zzz demon. Sad isn't it?

French tutorial was pretty interesting for a change. Anna set us a story-telling exercise, in which one person starts with a sentence and the next person carries on. Of course, I had lots of ideas for developing the story, but I couldn't articulate my thoughts. Hey, my French sucks, I know. As for stats lecture, I managed to keep myself awake throughout the whole session, and I even surprised myself by actually understanding what was being taught today. Amazing isn't it?

Joshua, Xiong Ge and I went to catch a movie after lecture, after weeks of being bogged down by school work and crap, we decided that it was time for a well-deserved break. Haha. Sounds like I've been taking lotsa breaks lately. The movie we caught: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I know I know, its not exactly a movie that 3 guys should be watching together, but what the heck, there aren't any good movies now. The baby girl Sunny in the show is super cute. She has a penchant for biting stuff, kinda like me. Lol.

Corn, corn and more corn

2005-03-23T23:37:00.000+08:00

Man, Ho Bow is really the limit. That dick has bloody poor time management, he spent the first 40min of lecture going through what we have already covered last lecture, and after that, he went on to talk about unimportant stuff and showing us pictures after pictures of bacteria. Why can't he just get to the damn point? He effectively held us up for 2 hrs, and he didn't even finish what he was supposed to cover. As a result, I was late for my Cultures lecture AGAIN. Stupid old fart. Should have skipped his lecture this morning.

Cultures lecture was better. Ananda was discussing about religion today, and for once I was able to keep myself awake for most of the session. Funny thing about Ananda, is that he seems to have this perpetual problem that makes him cough like he's trying to get rid of his lungs through his mouth. Someone please tell him to go see a doctor. Sigh. The film we watched during the 2nd half of lecture was interesting to say the least. It documents the traditions and culture of the Hopi indians in North America. Their staple diet: corn. Their religion: corn. Their language: corny. Lol. Well, everything about the Hopi indians revolve about corn, of all shapes and sizes, blue, yellow, red or white. Amazing isn't it? I've never seen so much corn in my whole life ever, and those people stock up corn by the tonnes in their houses. Even the bread they make comes from grounded corn. Man, I never want to see another ear of corn after watching the film.

French test, or should I say quiz, was both a breeze and a disaster. First part of the quiz was basic stuff, vocabulary, grammar blah blah blah....luckily I've got a good memory. Things I just read like 10min before, I just threw it all back at Sylvie. Haha. Thanks to WeeHeng who spotted a question, I'm quite confident of passing the first part. The second part however, was another matter entirely. Sylvie had us do a written comprehension, the passage was something about regionalisation and de-centralisation in France, and the best part was, I could barely understand what the questions were asking for. In the end, it was a mass 'cut and paste' exercise. I just hope I cut and pasted from the right sections of the text. Sigh.

Cheryl just got arrowed by CFA and NUSSU to do a write up on her dance club's event for the matric pack. Lol. She seems helpless and totally lost. Apparently, NUSSU decided to give her a ring last night at 9pm telling her to get off her ass and complete the article by tomorrow, or else. Now she's probably running about her house like a headless chicken. Somehow the thought of that just tickles me. Haha. I volunteered my services to help vet her work, before it is vetted by CFA and NUSSU. Too bad she didnt manage to complete it yet, I'm turning in soon, stupid French test's been keeping me up for the past 2 nights. She says if she isn't around during next tutorial, it means NUSSU and CFA had probably silenced her for her blunder. Lol. Now isn't that a cheerful thought? Muahahaha.

Project handed in...ORD loh!

2005-03-22T23:37:00.000+08:00

Was supposed to join Wenjie and Joshua for a swim at SRC this morning, but when I opened my eyes it was already 1030. Sigh. Shouldn't have stayed up so late the night before, I swear the lack of sleep is gonna kill me one day. Others can function with minimal rest, but I need at least 8-9 solid hours of sound sleep to be able to last through a day. I confess, I'm a sleep junkie.

Arrived in school around 1130, and met the group in the canteen at their favourite hangout, the pink round tables near Dily's Creation. If you ever need to find one of them, you can be sure they can be found at the same spot anytime, anyday. Lol. Stats tutorial was packed, since Friday's a publib holiday, people who have their lesson affected crashed our tutorial today. Joshua and Ian were 2 of them. I was quite amazed that the classroom could hold so many withour people having to go out and beg, borrow or steal extra seats. I was expecting to see last week's fiasco repeat itself. Lol.

Handed up our SS project to Kamal in her office before lecture. When we arrived, there were other groups staking out her office already. We joined in the fun. But when a poor sod was sent out of the room with his project still in hand, that sure got us pissed scared. When it came to our turn to hand in our work, I went in half expecting to be thrown out on my butt along with our project. Thankfully, all the references and citations were in place, there were no extra persons listed in our work, Kamal was not having her time of the month and I was oozing charm as usual. In the end, everything went smoothly. As we left, I couldn't help commenting aloud that I got her to finally accept our work with a bribe of murtabak and mutton curry. That sure scared the other groups shitless. I'm evil, no? Muahahaha.

Went over to Ginza after lecture to get my supply of contacts. As usual, the place was filled with loafers from the nearby schools, at their routine activities of eyeing and whistling at passing girls, smoking and spitting, and skateboarding. Seriously, the authorities of these schools should take some time off one day and come down to Ginza themselves to have a look. As a student, albeit an old one, I feel ashamed at their behavior. If I were the principal of the school, I'd have all of them hauled up on stage for a public whipping, and that's probably the most humane punishment I can think of. Hmm...is it a wonder that I myself feel that teaching isn't my cup of tea? Haha.

Gripe of the day: my stupid LCD monitor's adaptor blew again while I was downloading notes. WTF man...I just had it changed less than 2 weeks ago. Sigh. Everything I touch turns to dust, or blows up in my face in this case.

Secret hideout not secret anymore

2005-03-22T00:36:00.000+08:00

I learnt a new verb in French lecture today. Sylvie is really the best, our test is on Wednesday, and she just covered one of the topics that's to be tested. I got a bad premonition for the coming test. Earlier today, I stepped into a drain by accident. Is that a bad omen or what?

Met Weida for the final stage of the project: binding. Haha. He wanted me to go witness the event which marks the end of our gruelling efforts for the past month. I feel so honoured. I paid the bill for the binding though. Sigh. And the printing of the report just cost us 8 bucks. I wonder if the school has gold hidden somewhere in the paper they use. 8 bucks for 20 odd pages, that's daylight robbery sia. Went up to LT31 to do my tutorial with Josh and Xiong Ge after that, when we got there, we were not the only ones who had the idea of camping in an air-conditioned area. Damn. To think our secret hideout was discovered by others. They must be silenced. Next time remind me to bring a shotgun.

My run of bad luck continued in stats lecture. My good ol' "buddy" from French last semester, Boon Hian, spotted me and decided to hop over for a chat. A really extended one. Sigh. I tried dropping subtle hints that I wanted him to get out of my face, but apparently he doesn't understand subtle. I'd have to beat him over the head to get him to notice something when he's on one of his usual monologues about how "bad" he's doing in school. No wonder Ian seemed so surprised that not only do I know Boon Hian, I seem to get along well with him. Oh well, it must be my charm and charisma. Noone can resist it. Muahahaha.

Bored of the rings

2005-03-21T00:10:00.000+08:00

Its my little brother's birthday today. Though I find him extremely irritating and a royal pain in the arse, I guess I was a little nicer to him today. Oh well, my mum said I was just as bad as he was in the past, so I can't really blame him now can I? My dad drove us all to Plaza Singapura where we had lunch at Swensen's. I ate mine realli hurriedly of course, drumming starts at 2pm, and we arrived at PS at close to 1330. I love their chicken baked rice. Melted cheese that just dissolves in your mouth, now that's heavenly. Ah what the heck, I'm just a cheese junkie.

Drumming today was really fun. Richard got us to play this really retro love song that I guess my mum listened to when she was my age. It was simple enough, but the new patterns taught after that were a killer. They required me to use both feet in coordinating the hi-hats and the bass drum, and since I'm psychomotorically retarded, I ended up playing something that sounded like a mixture between a plane crash and a major automobile accident. Sigh. That irritating little bugger in class was at it again. Richard told those who were always hogging the drumsets at the beginning of class to let others have the chance. That stupid asshole had the nerve to sit there looking nonchalant and innocent. Man I really feel like slapping him sometimes. There's this poor kid in class who's forever on the pads, I kinda feel sorry for him. The next time I see that prick on the drumsets again, I'm sticking my drumstick up his nose.

Project's finally completed. Finished. The end. What a relief. I've never felt so burden-free since the end of the exams last semester. Lol. Everyone in the group seems amazed by the amount of energy I devote to this stupid assignment. Of course, they were the ones who had S/Ued the module, while poor me didn't. So is it a wonder why I'm so worried about the project? Haha. I can feel my A coming...*crosses fingers*

Was watching LOTR just now on Channel 5. Its my 6th time already, and somehow the novelty of the movies has worn off. I nearly fell asleep half way through the screening just now, and I can practically predict what will happen and when; the dialogues are probably burned into my mind already. To think I was still considering to get the extended version DVD edition of the trilogy for 180 SGD....man I must be spastic or something. If you give me a bunch of ugly people like Darryl, I could probably shoot a few of the battle scenes myself. Lol.

I need more money

2005-03-19T23:59:00.000+08:00

Its a weekend, and what am I doing? I'm stuck at home finishing up my stupid project and tutorials, when I should be out having fun. Sigh. At least the project is near completion. I'm actually kinda proud of it, considering the way it has turned out. Not bad I must say. Heh. I hope I get an A for this.

Fei Ge seemed so surprised by the changes we made in the project, especially for his section. He could hardly believe we managed to turn his work into something so different. Haha. That's the benefits of having a good language foundation. You can get away with plagiarism with just a few tweaks and modifications here and there. Heh.

Took a look through the Tibet Tourism website just now. I'm amazed. I've always thought of the country as a poor, back-water place without modern amenities, but the website portrayed the place as otherwise. Lhasa has its own airport, there are highways linking Tibet and parts of mainland China, and there are banks in various towns too. Credit cards are accepted in some establishments, and there's even a Holiday Inn in Lhasa. The scenery is absolutely stunning too. I thought New Zealand was awesome, but from the pictures on the site, Tibet looks particularly spectacular. Damn. Now I'm tempted to visit the place. But then again, the tour packages offered are insanely exorbitant. A 16 day package costs roughly 2.6k USD. Is that crazy or what? Sigh. Money is always a factor. Not for the first time, I wish I had more moolah. Plans for this coming holidays: work my ass off and save up, so that I can travel to Greece next year. Knowing myself, I'll probably be broke before the end of the holidays though.

Skipping tutorials

2005-03-19T00:51:00.000+08:00

Went down to SRC early today to be Wenjie's guarantor. One thing I hate about NUS' notebook centre, is that to buy a laptop or to take a loan, you've gotta fill up thousands and thousands of forms. If you make a single mistake, they will badger you into filling up a brand new one all over again. It seems that the admin staff over there enjoyslooking at paperwork. Bloody paper-pushers. If only their efficiency was half their enthusiasm.

Microbiology lab today was quite useless. Most of the stuff we did today were taught to us last semester, and Ho Bow didn't help by standing at his desk and nagging us throughout the session to hurry up. Bugger. My stainings were a disaster, instead of staining bacteria inside the marked areas, I managed to get my stains on the outside of the drawn circles. What a genius. Another thing I hate is staring into microscopes. I don't understand how people could tolerate squinting into those contraptions for hours on end, my eyes hurt just after 10mins of usage. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a microbiologist. Heh.

After the lab session, we were supposed to head downstairs for a video. The best part was, noone knew the venue for the film. As such, everyone was milling about in the corridors of MD4 waiting for someone to lead the way. Brave souls that rose to the challenge ended up heading in all directions, and not finding the correct location. Talk about the blind leading the blind. Wonderful ain't it? Well, after awhile we managed to find the seminar room, but it was so small and cramped, half of us had to stand at the back to view the screening. I didn't manage to glimpse the screen, but I sure saw the back of alot of heads. Daniel and I decided to 'smoke out' at the end of the first film, intending to head back for tutorial later. After getting ourselves some drinks in the canteen, we totally forgot about the time and when we realised it, it was past 5pm. To make matters worse, we hadn't the foggiest idea where the tutorial was to be held. Our messages and calls to others in our group went unanswered. So, we decided to skip the session altogether. Hey, it wasn't really our fault. Blame it on their poor organisation and execution of the lab. Sigh. I've been skipping lots of tutorials lately, luckily there are no points for participation for these modules. Its kinda dumb to award marks for speaking in class, anyone could spout crap and get good points under this system. Then again, I've seen dumber stuff in NUS. Think awarding points for forum contributions. Heh.

The end is finally in sight

2005-03-18T01:10:00.000+08:00

Finally, after weeks of work, our SS project is almost completed. We met in school in the morning and worked our asses off up til 6.30pm to hammer out the final details, compile all the different sections and correct the mistakes in the main body of the report. I even skipped French tutorial just to be able to finish this pain in the arse once and for all. Sigh. Now I've gotta write an excuse letter the next time I see Anna. Something interesting, we discovered that Fei Ge had apparently copied some parts of his brief background of Chinatown from various websites. Now I've no problems with plagiarism, but its gotta be done skilfully. Kinda defeats the purpose when you are caught eh? Well Fei Ge's work was pretty obvious to all that he didn't come up with some parts himself, so we had to paraphrase a pretty large chunk. I just hope Kamal isn't the author of the websites he copied from.

Weiyee was sitting all by herself today during stats lecture. I noticed her only half-way through the period though. Tried to get her to sit beside me, but she was pretty comfy where she was. Sigh. I need to work on my charm a little more. But my futile attempts were noticed by others. Ian and Jingyao were giving me knowing grins at the end of lecture. Man, was I so obvious? Lol.

Now that Wenjie's laptop is dead, he's buying an i Book tomorrow. The best part is, he's asking me to be his guarantor. I've no problems about that, but he's going down to school at 12.45pm. Damnit, I want to sleep in somemore. The SS project was not done without a cost you know. For all the trouble, I hope he won't run when it comes to the payment. If he does, I'd have to sell my ass many times over to cover the penalty. Ouch.

Microbiology sucks

2005-03-16T23:05:00.000+08:00

I just love the efficiency of NUS staff sometimes. I waited up til 9.30am this morning for the lecturer to post the missing notes for the 10am microbiology lecture. It didn't show up. Not only was I played out, I was also late for the lecture by 30min. Pfft. Lecturer was so screwed up, I plan to sleep in next Thursday morning. He has this annoying habit of incorporating dumbass sound effects into his powerpoint slides, and at high volume, they annoy us to death. Sound effects might have been cute and all in the 1990s, but it sure as hell damn bloody irritating today.

As a result of his poor time management, that bugger kept us back until 11.50am. I missed 4 buses to Arts, and I arrived for Cultures lecture 20mins late. Seems like a lack of punctuality is becoming a habit. The topic of discussion for Cultures today was really interesting. Even food has its connotations of culture, and hybridization and fusion of food from different places are seen as a cross culture kind of event, whatever that is. As such, I spent 2 hrs of torture listening to Ananda describe in great detail about various local dishes, and watching a film about food and religion in Singapore. My stomach was growling like an angry truck each time he talked about braised duck, ngo hiang etc. I was never so thankful for the bell that signified the end of lecture.

Lunch again with Wee Heng. I had 'dan dan mian', or noodles with minced beef served with chilli. One thing I noticed about the store's noodle dishes is that they seem to breed in the bowl. The amount in my bowl at the start of my meal and after 10mins into my meal looked about the same. Oh well, at least its value for money. French passed slowly as usual, with Shi Ann attempting to teach Sylvie the words 'pang kang liao', meaning its time to knock off, towards the end of the lecture. Now I don't know which was more amusing, the words themselves or the fact that he was teaching Hokkien to a French. Maybe next time I'll be seeing Chinese speaking banglas. Now that's a scary thought.

Resurrection

2005-03-15T23:28:00.000+08:00

Went down to SLS to exchange my iriver player this morning. Got there at around 10.15am, and for the first time in my life, I saw SLS devoid of the usual crowds. There couldn't have been more than 4 shops open when I arrived. I waited 30mins before the shop I was looking for finally opened. Immediately I barged in, grabbed the nearest salesman and demanded that he fix my player. He ttok one look at me, and hollered for another guy at the back to take the customer. Talk about pushing responsibilities. Luckily the guy who came out was the same one who sold me the player. I explained to him the problem, and it took less than 10min for him to confirm that the player was FUBAR, and get me a new set. Pretty efficient service I must say. Now that my player is working again I'm a happy man. Lol.

Had a great time looking for the venue of stats tutorial today. When I got to the place, there was an indian scholar pacing outside the classroom and a PRC girl peering at something on the door. I went on ahead and found this little piece of paper stuck onto the door:' The venue for stats tutorial has been changed to S4A' Wonderful. I had no idea where S4A was, and judging from the looks on the 2 other lost souls, they don't have the foggiest idea either. Luckily Wenjie messaged me the location and kind ol' me relayed the information to the 2 of them. When we got to the classroom, another surprise awaited us. There wasn't enough seats. I managed to secure one beside Wenjie, but the poor bastards who didnt have a seat had to hop over to the next classroom and grab some chairs over. It was so comical to see them pushing and dragging their chairs along the corridor, I couldn't stop sniggering at their plight. Ah well, I'm evil. Whee.

Wenjie's laptop kicked the bucket during lunch. Not only did it die on him, it also killed his adaptor when he plugged it in. Lol. Not that he seemed terribly upset by the loss. In fact he looked rather pleased. Apparently now he can pester his dad for a brand new laptop. A blessing in disguise? Maybe his new laptop will blow up too. Haha.

I gave Carrot her birthday card I so kindly made, during SS lecture. From the look on her face, I couldn't tell if she was shocked, traumatised or constipated. Maybe all 3. After all, the card was made from corrugated plastic and a slip of paper stuck onto it. Wenjie's trademark of cheapo cards. I got the idea from him since it was so cheapo, and the required resources were readily available. Though now he keeps bugging me about copyrights infringement. Next time he utters the words again, I'm gonna slap him.

Misfortune comes in bucketfuls

2005-03-14T22:53:00.000+08:00

Forgot to update yesterday, was too busy doing reports and stats tutorial. My memory's getting from bad to worse.

Major bad luck today. Was about to leave for school when I accidentally dropped my H10 on the floor. I tell you, when I heard the impact, my heart almost stopped. After turning the player on, an error message telling me that system files were missing from the player. WTF. So i followed the instructions and connected it to my PC to restore the files. Surprise surprise. My PC doesn't register the H10 anymore. It refuses to display the player under My Computer, and no matter what I did, the software can't access it either. WTF WTF WTF. A $470 contraption which is supposed to be the leading mp3 player in the market right now, can't even withstand a minor jolt like that? Sigh. Guess I'll be bringing it down to SLS for a checkup tomorrow.

In school today, there was a rather intriguing tutorial on ethnicity and gender. The latter discussion focused on the fact that sex refers to biological differneces between males and females and that gender was a social construct regarding the behavioral patterns of both sexes. Of course, what discourse on gender would be complete without the addition of hidden genders? I reserve no comments on gays, save for the fact that I think they are a bunch of faggots. Such freaks of nature should be exterminated with extreme prejudice.

I've got a new toy

2005-03-13T00:32:00.000+08:00

Boring start to the day. Kinda bored at home, so I asked Steven and Joshua out for a movie. Joshua couldn't make it since he's going to church at 5, so the movie was called off. Sigh. Everyone else is either busy mugging or simply too lazy to get their asses out of their houses. I guess I'm the only one still taking it easy. Heh.

Was waiting for the guy at the Iriver booth in the fair at the Forum to give me a call. By noon, I was sick of waiting and decided to try my luck at Sim Lim Square. Met up with Honxi at SLS, where I scouted around for the best price for the Iriver H10. Went to this shop located outside the main lobby area at first where I was quoted a 'best price' of 450 bucks. Dissatisfied, I headed in to look around somemore. It was worse. It seems that the shop keepers in SLS were all out to suck my money dry. All prices quoted were in the 460-470 range. Of course I tried haggling with them, but I don't posses the skill of my mum, and my attempts failed miserably. One retailer even complained that at the price of 460 he was hardly making any profits. Yeah right. So in the end, I went back to the first shop and asked for a set. The interesting part follows just after I placed my order. The sales person came back with a new set, placed it in front of me, and announced that the total cost would be 472.25 bucks including GST. I was like WTF, now the asshole tells me. I should have gone down to the IT show to get the player instead with the price he was selling me, at least at the show I could get some freebies. In fact the player only costs like 468 at the show. Damn. I feel so cheated. Since I've already asked for a set, I couldn't very well refuse it now could I? So I had to swallow my ire and paid for my purchase. Word of advice to everyone who goes to SLS for their shopping, remember to ask about the prices CLEARLY. Especially ask if the price quoted includes GST. Damn I'm still kinda pissed now. I keep seeing the smug look on the salesman's face as he collected my cash. Grr...

A point of consolation is that the player is so damn cool, I just couldn't stop playing with it. Sound quality's excellent, user interface simple and easy to use, and the bundled software appears to have been written by intelligent beings for once. My only gripe is that the player has a weird habit of playing songs according to alphabetical order, regardless of the numbering I allocated to each track. Also I wish they had provided me with a protective cover for the LCD screen, I'm kinda careless sometimes. Wouldn't want my 472.25 to go down the drain now would I? If you are looking for a perfect mp3 player with a reasonably large capacity and other functions, or if you simply have too much money to burn, this gadget fits the bill. I'm off to play with my new toy. Woohoo.

I'm cursed?

2005-03-12T01:06:00.000+08:00

I'm cursed. I'm pretty sure of it. It seems that I attract clouds whenever I attempt to swim. This morning I made an effort to get out of bed early so that I could have a swim before lunch. I've finally decided to do something about my long neglected physical condition, lately I noticed I've been gaining unwanted mass around the tummy. Sigh. The concequences of a sedentary lifestyle. Well it was pretty bright and sunny when I made a trip down to the Forum to place my order for the Iriver H10, but when I reached Queenstown simming pool, there was a massive cloud bank on the horizon. Fortunately the wind kept it from approaching while I swam 20 laps. But just as I got out of the water and decided to enjoy a tan, the wind changed direction and brought the mass of slate grey clouds right over my head. To think I've even applied my tanning lotion. Grr....Next time I'm staying at home to work on my tan, I believe 5 UV lamps should do the job.

I hate oral tests

2005-03-11T00:20:00.000+08:00

Boring day. Woke up earlier than I should to meet up with the group for project meeting just before we go consult Kamal. May brought a bag of cocoa coated peanuts, and I ate the most among everyone. Yum yum. Hohoho. Now I gotta think of some way to get her to bring the rest of her stash. Kamal's consultation took us less than 10mins, she basically ok-ed everything we had written down in the outline. Now I just hope we have enough time to flesh out the actual report. Deadline's less than 2 weeks away, and everyone's busy. Sigh.

French oral test today quite nearly caused a heart attack relapse. I interpreted the instructions as describing a day in the life of someone, when I was supposed to do the description in past tense. My tutor pointed out my error in the middle of my recitation. Luckily she gave me another chance. Sigh. *Recites 'S/U S/U S/U liao'* Muahahaha.

Flirt up your life

2005-03-09T23:21:00.000+08:00

Woke up late this morning, luckily the army trained me well for hurried dressing. Managed to get to lecture on time with Joshua. If I'd known how dry and abstract the lecture was gonna be, I would have skipped it happily and stayed in bed all morning. At this rate, biochiminoversity is gonna kill me. I better go get a textbook soon. Before the exams, I'm burning the book, so I can mix its ashes in water and drink the whole concoction in hope of attaining sudden enlightenment or a really bad case of diarrhea that would let me skip the whole ordeal altogether. Heh. Xiong-ge didnt show up today though, it seems that he's come down with a case of UTI. For those who don't have a clue what that is, go ask your friends who were medics. I just hope Xiong wasn't catheterized, just the thought of it pains me. Ouch.

Alex was not there for GEM lecture later, so I had to endure 2 hrs of sitting right in front of Ananda all alone listening to his discourse on race and ethnicity. Now this was a topic I could relate to. In his lecture, he states that racial classification breeds prejudice, racism and maybe even genocide. I guess our multiracial society isn't free from racial branding and stereotyping either. No wonder I'm feeling kinda racist these few days. Then we had to watch a film about people with mixed blood recounting their early life, the prejudice they faced yada yada. I concur with their unspoken notion that people who pester them about their origins are morons. It doesn't matter if a person was a pure bangla or half-bangla, to me, he's still a bangla, and he wouldn't find me within 10 feet of him unless he decides to take a good long bath. Its that simple.

Lunch with WeeHeng was starting to become a weekly affair. And after lecture, I managed to find myself on the same bus with Monica, a cute and bubbly Eurasian girl in my French class. Sadly, she has been mistaking me for another person until the beginning of this semester. I'm crushed. To think that we were even in the same class last sem. Sigh. Oh well, at least I did manage to chat with her a little on the way home. Seems that she's working part time in Chijmes, at Flannigan's. No wonder she's always looking sleepy in class. I reached my stop before I could find out more about her, its the first time that I actually wished that the journey home wasn't so short. Next time, I gotta get her number. Heh. I'm really indulging myself in harmless flirting recently, I've been doing that with almost every girl I've met, except for Plan Alpha of course. I seldom see her anyway. I dunno if my increasing dalliances are a good sign or bad, it either means I'm finally growing some balls or I'm starting to get really desperate.

Caffeine has no effects whatsoever on me

2005-03-08T22:56:00.000+08:00

Was early for once today, I went to school and met up with Wenjie at 11.20am, intending to bug him about my stats tutorial questions. Instead we both ended up eating grilled dory from the Science canteen's western food stall. Lol. The fish was really good, especially when served with some sambal chilli. I'm hungry again.

Stats tutorial was a headache as usual. Our dear PRC tutor, in his assumption that we were all maths gods, took it upon himself to explain to us how the formula for poisson distributions was derived. Of course it was all greek to me, and I really don't give a damn about proving the stupid formula, but Jingyao was chewing on the problem like some stubborn dog on its bone. Sigh. In fact, I got so lost during the tutorial that I had trouble keeping myself awake.

Me, Wenjie and Jingyao went over to Arts after tutorial was over. The Milo van was parked at its usual spot in the Forum, and we each helped ourselves to a cup of the good stuff. I was kinda tempted to fill my bottle with the drink, but I couldn't fit the bottle under the dispenser. Oh well. Free stuff never comes easy.

SS lecture was another bore. I just couldn't sit still, and began tormenting Mushroom through the lecture. Lol. But sadistic kicks wear off fast, and soon I was struggling to overcome the Zzz monster again. Its kinda weird, how sometimes I can drink just a small cup of coffee and not being able to sleep during the night; and sometimes I can down glasses of the stuff and yet doze off the moment the lecturer starts speaking. I had a cup of black coffee this morning for breakfast, terrible stuff that should be used only for torture, and yet I was drifting off to dreamland at every opportunity. Plain weird.

Had project meeting again after SS lecture. We headed to Engine's canteen for our discussion and to grab a bite. Hunger hits me just as frequently as my bouts of sleepiness. Wenjie thinks its delayed puberty. I think I'm just plain greedy. Had a plate of fish and chips recommended by Yifei, surprisingly it was pretty good, considering the fact that I was in Engine's canteen. Engineers who are reading this, get your asses back to your own canteen and stop clogging up Arts. =P Today's meeting was the most productive of all, we finally hammered out most of the details and came up with a preliminary outline for the report, which is to be typed out and printed for Kamal's purveyance on Thursday by yours truly. Sometimes I think I'm too garang for my own good. Next time I'm letting someone else do the dirty work. Lol.

Surprise surprise

2005-03-08T00:06:00.000+08:00

Had a shock of my life this morning. Sylvie returned us our test papers during lecture, and I was kinda expecting to fail spectacularly. Maybe I should rephrase that. I was 101% sure that I would not be getting anything more than a single digit for that test. 101% as in confirm + chop + guarantee. Well, the amazing thing is, not only did I NOT fail the test, I passed every single section of it. Yes, even the listening comprehension. I guess randomly choosing the nicest looking square to tick paid off after all. Damn I'm so good that I scare myself sometimes. LOL. Maybe French isn't as hard as I thought it might be. Heh.

The next surprise came during stats lecture. I took a little trip to Co-op to hunt for the stats textbook and stats tables booklet, but try as I might, I couldn't locate the latter. And I needed it to complete my stupid tutorial which I totally have no idea how to begin. I used to think you could get almost anything from Co-op, eg. from textbooks to tidbits, toilet paper to condoms etc etc...but I guess that myth's now debunked. Sad. Maybe I'll try my luck again tommorow at the Forum.

The thoughts of a sardine among others in a tincan

2005-03-06T23:34:00.000+08:00

Started the day at noon, I just love sleeping in late on weekends. Drum lesson was great, Richard finally allowed us to try playing to our own feelings. Improvisation on the fly isn't easy though, my beats sounded constipated most of the time. Guess I need more practice.

Met up with Steven after drums, and the 3 of us had a short chat in BK before Wenjie left for home to mug. Apparently, Steven got quite a good score for his Colours module's online midterm, the very same quiz that Darryl purportedly screwed up even with 5 other friends beside him in front of the computer. Stupidity has just been brought to a new level. Lol.

Went with Steven to Sim Lim Square to get a set of headphones, my old ones are falling to pieces. And my mp3 player is screwed too, it only plays music through one side of the earphones for some weird reason. Sigh. Walked around the whole place but I could'nt find the model I was looking for, so I had to settle for the 2nd best. The Panasonic RP-HS102's winning feature is its rewindable cord system, my earphones are perpetually entangled in knots. I just hope this model has clear and loud bass, I love thumping music. Heh.

After our little stroll in SLS, we headed to Bugis Junction for a breather and some coffee. We found neither. The whole place was disgustingly crowded, you couldn't walk around without bumping into someone's ass. I wonder what's the occasion, weekend crowds do not even approach the numbers we saw today. Bugis Junction was packed to the brim, we tried our luck in vain at Coffee Bean, Mos Burger, Macs etc, in the end we finally found seats at Yoshinoya. One thing I've never liked about Yoshinoya is the price of the food. They actually charge you 5 bucks for a small bowl of rice and some scraps of meat which hardly fill your stomach. Talk about daylight robbery. There was a bunch of kids next to our table, my guess puts them at secondary school level. One of the girls was a real looker though, I see great potential in her. Hoho. Damn I'm getting deprived. Maybe its time I went Vietnam or something. Lol.

The simple pleasures of life

2005-03-06T01:08:00.000+08:00

The sun was pretty good today, so I decided to go for a swim in the afternoon. My tan was fading and needed touching up, and I've been neglecting physical exercise for a long time. Queenstown swimming pool is a gem, its nice and secluded from the crowd, but its not totally deserted. Weekends are a different matter though, it was pretty packed with people today like most other weekends. I swam 20 laps, which quite nearly killed me, and then I went up and slept in the sun for an hour or so. Luckily I remembered to bring my trusty bottle of suntan lotion, I used to get sunburnt after 30mins of UV exposure if I forgot to apply the lotion. The only gripe I have was the insane number of clouds in the sky. Every 30s or so, a huge piece of cloud would move and obscure the sun, disrupting my tanning process. Irritating. Either its raining cats and dogs, or its a fair day with stupid clouds trying to play punk with me. And people wonder why I don't seem to get a tan.

Spotted a couple of bikini babes at the pool. There was one just two chairs away from me, she looked absolutely hot in her white two-piece swim suit, and her figure was devilishly curvaceous. Woohoo. Too bad she was accompanied by her ah-beng boyfriend. Its a trend I noticed in our society today: most, if not all, chiobus are usually attached; 99% of their boyfriends are ah-bengs, out of which 80% are really ugly. Sigh. Its like some kind of unwritten rule that if you are a pretty babe, you should be together with some ugly guy or an ah-beng. I wouldn't know about good looking guys, but I suspect the same trend applies to all. Maybe opposites do attract. In that case, where's my pretty girlfriend?

Met Darryl at Orchad MRT 1hr late. Hohoho. Do I feel guilty? Not a chance in hell. Heh. We went to HMV where he got a couple of CDs as birthday presents for his friends. I'm amazed that people would even invite him over to their birthday party. The only place that guy deserves to be is either in the mental asylum, or hell. Lol. Dinner was a rather expensive affair at Breeks, but the cajun fish was really good. Damn I'm getting hungry again just typing this. Finally, we stopped over at Kino for awhile, where I purchased 3 novels for 52bucks. Hey, its money well spent. Nothing pleases me more than having a good read while munching my snacks.

Biodiversity is really chim

2005-03-05T00:52:00.000+08:00

Today's biodiversity practical was a tragedy. True, we had lots of interesting specimens to play with, but the things they taught us proved to be an information overload. There was this huge tarantula kept in a fish tank that really intrigued me, I was super tempted to set it free and see what kind of reaction I'm gonna see in the lab. Hehheh. The sad part was the quiz that followed the show and tell session. It was open book, and it was the factor that caused me dearly. The stupid quiz was only 10mins long, and I guess I took too long flipping through the practical manual. By the time I was at the last question, the TAs were collecting the scripts. I only had time to scribble down the letter I liked best as the answer before they took my paper away. Sob. Theses quizzes carry a pretty heavy weightage too, its like 1 mark is 1% of my final grade. Sigh. I'm screwed real good ain't I?

Stupid printer

2005-03-04T01:35:00.000+08:00

A pretty boring day. Had project meeting with the group earlier this morning, but we still haven't reached a conclusion on the final contents of our report. Sigh. So many things still need to be ironed out, and there's so little time left. And I've still got my stats assignment to look through. There's never any rest for the weary. On a brighter note, I've decided to adopt 2 foster siblings today. Xuanjun and Weida are now my god-sister and god-brother respectively. Hohoho. I suddenly feel abusive. Lol.

French tutorial today was freaking irritating. Somehow I got saboh-ed to narrate a passage in the textbook, and I had to read the bloody thing like 5 times through before my tutor would let me go. Apparently, the French link their words together when speaking, you don't pause in between, so a sentence is just like one big continuous word. If you encounter a long sentence, pray that you have good lungs.

Highlight of the day: my printer just died on me again. I seriously suspect there's an evil spirit living inside it, and its the cause of all the problems with the cranky contraption. I was halfway through printing my notes when it just stopped. With the current page being printed stuck inside. Turned out that the belt got jammed somehow, and it took me a good part of the night fixing the damn thing. Not to mention, I had to reprint my notes from scratch. I wouldn't be so pissed if the notes were just a couple of pages long, but the set that's being used for tomorrow's practical is spastically thick. Talk about a waste of paper and ink. Next time, I'm printing my stuff in school.

French people can't seem to speak slowly

2005-03-02T22:48:00.000+08:00

What a day. Woke up late, rushed to school lugging the stupid piece of corrugated plastic that's my family tree around, only to be caught in the rain halfway to the LT. For a moment I thought my project was ruined. Luckily I had the foresight to put it in a large plastic bag. Wenjie took it out for a look during lecture, that's when pieces of the family tree started falling off like leaves. Grr...worse, noone had glue on hand. In the end, I had to resort to the age old method of sticking the fallen pieces back with my precious saliva. Sigh. I hope they stay on during the marking process. I hate to be penalised for missing a bloody symbol.

GEM lecture was as boring as usual. We watched a corny film about Masai manhood, in which we got to see half naked aborigines prancing about laughing, screeching and throwing fits. Entertainment at its best, eh? I was half expecting Ananda to get off his seat, strip himself naked and join in the revelry. Too bad he was coughing like he's got a furball stuck in his throat.

French test today was another killer. They had to increase the difficulty of the listening comprehension. As if listening to people talk like they are on steroids and catching and writing down words and phrases wasn't hard enough, now they had to make those people on steroids read us our questions as well. Its a wonder I even wrote anything on my answer sheet. And in my essay, I utilised the wrong tense along with wrong verbs. Am I going to die or am I going to die? Lol.

Stress, stress, stress

2005-03-01T23:29:00.000+08:00

I've heard that one of the symptoms of stress is an irregular sleep pattern. Well, no matter what I did last night, I simply couldn't get myself to sleep. In between tossing and turning, I only managed to catch a doze here and there, and before I realised, it was time to wake up. Irritating.

Why am I stressed? I'll tell you why. I've got project, essays and tutorials to do, deadlines to meet, lectures to catch up with. The thing that's been bugging me for some time now is my stupid kinship essay and family tree. No matter how I look at the tree, it just seems inadequate. And I can't seem to fit my bloody essay into the requisite page limit. Argh. The best part, its due tomorrow. Oh, did I just mention I have a French mid term tomorrow too? S/U, here I come. Whee. My SS project is another concern. We have not met our quota for surveys, and I simply have no idea how we are going to make up the numbers especially for the retailers part. Hope it doesn't turn out any worse than things already are, I feel kinda guilty the way things are right now. Don't ask me why. Sigh. Oh well, if that moron Darryl can get an A- for his project, I don't see why ours cant make the grade too. Heh.

On a sidenote, someone caused me to spill soup on my shirt today. He stood up from his seat, and while trying to evade him, I accidentally upset the bowl of beef noodles soup. The result? A permanent stain on my brand new white shirt. But it does smell nice though....

School starts again

2005-03-01T00:02:00.000+08:00

First day of school and I'm drifting off during the first lesson of the day. French is getting absurdly difficult, the recorded conversations are so fast its like they are fast forwarding the clip. I hate listening comprehensions. Worse, I've got a test this Wednesday. That's it. I'm S/Uing this module. Woohoo.

GEM tutorial today was quite retarded. We spent the first hour playing some dumb exchange game that reminds me of orientation, and the next 30min attempting to discuss tutorial questions. To think I spent a good part of yesterday trying to cram all the readings. What a waste of time. Well at least the tutorial wasn't wasted, I learned most of my classmates' names from the game, so now I'm on a first name basis with some of the chiobus in class. Whee~

Just picked up The Da Vinci Code today. I must agree its an addictive read. I'm so tempted to go down to Kino on a buying spree, its been ages since I last read anything besides textbooks, journals and articles. No wonder my linguistic capacapability is going to hell.

Term break's over already?

2005-02-27T23:48:00.000+08:00

Wow. It seems only like yesterday when term break just started, and now its almost at an end. Where did all the time go? I guess time's on fast forward when you are bogged down with projects, readings and essays. No wonder I feel so much older ever since stepping into NUS. Given that my whole break was occupied with so much crap, you'd think that the end of break would also mean the completion of all work. Sadly, this isn't the case. Well, I managed to finish my family tree, but it looks like some primary school kid's half-hearted attempt at art; I have not really done much besides that. Tried to go through my GEM readings for tomorrow's discussion, but after 3 pages I still have no idea what the author is trying to get across. Either my grasp of the English language is deteriorating, or I'm turning stupid. Either way, things aren't looking terribly bright for me.

I did enjoy my afternoon today though. Drumming is an excellent way to destress. Banging away at things just takes your mind off all problems. Man I think I should invest in a drumset at home. Then again, I'd probably get screwed by my neighbours. Sigh. The only thing that spoiled my mood somewhat was the irritating kid from drum class. That bugger hogs the drumsets every single week, depriving others (including me) of the joy of banging on actual drums, rather than pathetic rubber drum pads. He also enjoys flaunting his ability to play at a higher tempo and screwing up everyone else's timing. All in all, he's a pest, and I would gladly exterminate him if I could get away with it.

Speaking of pests, I saw my ol' nemesis, Mr Roach, again. I was taking a shower when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was that wretched cockroach again. It was happily camping on the toilet seat looking at me bathe. Somehow I seem to get the impression that its mocking me. After I'd finished, it was gone, probably back to its hole. Damn. I need to find a way to stop these little buggers. Anyone who can offer me a solution gets a free mandarin orange. I have plenty of those left over. So let the ideas flow people.

Death to all projects and cockroaches!!

2005-02-27T00:14:00.000+08:00

I hate projects. I really do. This whole term break, its been nothing but projects, projects and projects. No time to play or slack, heck, there's even no time for studying. You know things are dire when I actually say I need time to mug. Sigh. I'd rather have tests and exams than projects, at least with the former, the marks you get is more or less determined by how much you studied. Projects on the other hand, are really subjective. If your group mates decide to screw you up in the peer appraisal, if your TA doesn't like your face, or if your lecturer is in a bad mood, you're fucked. Man, they should just scrap the idea of having projects anyway.

Spent one whole day cutting and pasting colored paper for my family tree. One whole friggin day. From 10am in the morning to 11.30pm. I would feel a little mollified if my tree had turned out nicer, but somewhere during the process of pasting, I used a tad more glue than I should have, and now my tree feels like fly paper. Damn damn damn. My mum even asked me why was I doing art work even in university. Growl.

To top it all off, a bloody cockroach decided my head was a good place to be. My heart nearly stopped when I reached up to grab the offending thing and discovered its identity. Its the 2nd time in my life this has happened to me, the first leading to my intense dislike for the wretched species. If I had my way, I would have flushed napalm down the drain and set it on fire. What a lovely sight it must be. Fucking cockroaches.

Depression

2005-02-26T00:37:00.000+08:00

I'm sad. My hi-fi, after years of loyal service, has finally bought the farm. I thought I got a whiff of smoke just as it expired. Sigh. Also, I can't seem to be able to squeeze whatever concepts I need to get across into my kinship essay. The page limit is ridiculous. 5 pages with double spacing for the paragraphs? Its like asking me to summarise the World Wide Web into a floppy disk. Damnation. Finally, Charis refuses to give me Esther's card. Sigh. I guess she doesn't understand the need for me to find a girlfriend before I go nuts from loneliness. Hoho. Maybe I already have. Whee.

My readings are killing me

2005-02-25T00:54:00.000+08:00

Late update for today. Readings are taking up too much time, one discourse on divorce took me 1hr and a half just to skim through it and get its gist. Damn. Its like the authors purposely beat around the bush using lots of big words without getting to the point. Stupid stupid stupid.

Nothing much going on today. Went to catch a movie with Josh and Wenjie at Jurong Point. At first, I thought Finding Neverland was gonna be some dreary low budget film for the bored, but it surprised me. Turned out that it was actually worth the 6.50 I paid, as compared to some movies I've seen recently. Seems that films starring Johnny Depp are always a surprise.

For some odd reason, Jurong Point was packed today. Students from the nearby schools make up most of the crowd. Is it just me, or is the timetable for secondary schools getting more lax? Sigh. Oh well, at least there were a couple of pretty babes around. Chiobus seem to be able to liven up any dull days. Hohoho.

I love Chinatown

2005-02-23T22:58:00.000+08:00

Well today was eventful. Met up with the group at Chinatown MRT at 11am. We then spent 15min gawking at the map inside the station, trying to figure out the boundary of Chinatown. I've never behaved so much like some 'swaku' as compared to that very moment. Even tourists were giving us weird glances.

Had lunch at the hawker centre just behind OG. Food was pretty good. Heavy human traffic in the area too. Tourists seem to make up quite a large portion of the crowd. I caught sight of a couple of Japanese girls in the hawker centre itself. One of them was quite a looker. Hehheh. I was so engrossed staring at them, I didn't notice Xuanjun trying to catch my attention. Oops.

Started our Operation Ambush after lunch. Its kinda sad that none from our group is really outspoken, we spent 1 hr dallying around Pagoda Street before managing to complete one measly survey. Its not the lack of targets that posed a problem, rather, its a lack of courage to just simply go up and bug others. Results of a conservative society? I guess so. Someone once commented that Singaporeans hate opening their 'golden' mouths. I suppose we just proved that fact today. Anyway, we faced alot of rejections before finally securing someone willing enough to spare us some time for the questions. One chinese garment shop, whose owner was surprisingly an Indian, shooed us off when we approached. But according to Weida, they were busy cosying up to the tourists after we had left. Such blatant discrimination. Tsk.

Tourists were great fun to talk to, they are really friendly and obliging. No matter how busy they might be, or if you had caught them out in the hot sun, they would always be more than willing to spare a couple of moments to answer our probings. On the other hand, the locals proved to be much more of a problem. Not only were they reticent and unco-operative, some were outright rude. May, Charis and I were intervewing this owner of a traditional chinese medicinal shop this afternoon. May was halfway through her questions when another man, presumably the owner's son, came out from the back, took a look at us, and told us quite abruptly to direct all our questions at the Heritage Centre. Didnt even gave us much of a chance to explain our situation before re-emphasizing loudly that we should get our asses off to the Heritage Centre. Sigh. And they wonder why is business so bad. Xuanjun and Weida didnt have much luck with their side too. Apparently old folks thought they were trying to sell insurance policies and rejected them even before they could get a word out. Haha. That's the trouble of trying to be too professional. Not. Lol.

The food in Chinatown was pretty much the highlight of our little jaunt in Chinatown. I had me half a dozen of 'Ah Ballings' from the food street, succulent balls of flour with fillings of peanut or red bean. 6 is quite enough to fill the stomach, but I was always ready for more savory cuisine. We went on to interview Erick, the Austrian guy selling german sausages in Chinatown and was featured in the Straits Times some weeks ago. He's one amusing chap, with loads to tell. With other interviewees, probing was the method to get them to talk more, but with Erick, he just seemed to go on and on. Sometimes he just gets so engrossed in making a point that he even neglects potential customers. Haha. Met a cute girl from SMU at his stall too. Esther is a year 2 student over at SMU and she had just finished a 3hr interview with Erick when we met her outside his stall. Really nice girl. Too bad I didn't manage to get her number. Hohoho. Well anyway, we tried the sausages and wow, they sure were good. Especially the ones with cheese in them. With some chilli sauce, its almost like you've reached heaven.

Sadly, we didn't managed to meet our quota today. Oh well, guess we'll have to make up the numbers thorugh email and msn interviews. Our last resort: faking survey results. Its another skill I've picked up during my stint in National Slavery. Lol. Now I just hope Peggy won't see through our phony data. Maybe we should slip a 100 dollars note in together with our report when we are supposed to hand it in.

Of families and punks....

2005-02-22T22:36:00.000+08:00

Term break is starting to bore me. All I did today was to attempt to go through my pile of untouched readings, and of course I failed miserably. I mean, your attention span can only be held so long by an article deliberating the different aspects of kinship and family. Its a wonder that I even managed to stay awake past the 1st page. I seriously don't see a need to dissect the matter so thoroughly, a family is a family; as in a man, his wife and their children. Ok, maybe the grandparents too. Its that simple. Is it so hard a concept to grasp? Why the need to know if a family is a social construct or determined by biological links? It doesn't change the fact that certain individuals make up a family. Anthropologists are a bunch of bored people.

Went to Ginza Plaza to get the survey questions for tomorrow photocopied. On my way, I came across a bunch of secondary school kids loitering outside the plaza. As I walked past, I noticed them staring at me. I was wondering if its the colour of my hair or just simply my good looks that made me the focus of their attention, when I realised that the stares weren't all friendly. And the stares weren't just directed at me, in fact they stare at everyone and anyone who just happen to be in their line of sight. This really pisses me off. Punks nowadays are getting younger, and they don't seem to retain any sense of respect for their elders. If I even so look at my elders the wrong way when I was young, I'd probably get clipped round the ears. Multiple ear piercings were common among the male members, dyed hair among both sexes. Not to mention the hair length for some were absurdly long. Sigh. Whatever happened to short, neat haircuts, properly worn uniforms and the females-only single ear piercing rule? Not that I especially conform to such rules now, but hey, I was a good little boy before. Kinda makes me wonder what's going on with the world. Maybe I'm just old fashioned and cranky. Its the age, babe. Sigh.

Roots...

2005-02-21T22:48:00.000+08:00

Busy busy day. Woke up late as usual, went to duplicate my keys after lunch. Its my 3rd time replacing a lost set of keys. Somehow they have this weird tendency to mysteriously disappear from my pocket. The cost of getting another set? 20 freaking dollars. Damn. A whole week's allowance gone. Looks like I'm gonna be living on bread and water again.

Started on my family tree this afternoon. Man, I never knew it could be so hard to track down relations. I'm stumped with my pathetic tree just reaching back to my grandparents. Can't get any help from my grandma, she doesn't much like to talk about the past and somehow her memory is also kinda foggy. Sigh. I thought the Web might be of some help, but typing in my surname came up with 1937826 pages. I give up. Looks like I'm gonna be pulling names out of the air for some long lost relatives. I wonder if anyone will notice if I 'traced' my roots back to the famous dude in the Opium War, Lin Zhe Xu. Hope I don't get struck by lightning or something. Well, after some pestering and annoying on my part, my mum finally dropped a hint or two about her family's complicated past. It seems that my late grandfather, may he rest in peace, was 'sold' by his natural parents in China to settle some debts. A couple with the same surname Tan brought him into their own family, because they didn't have any male children of their own. After his adoptive father passed away, his adoptive mother remarried. The new guy in the picture took over control of the family and their holdings, and effectively ate up my grandfather's share in the land the family owned. Sadly, my grandfather died really young, probably of lung cancer, leaving my dear grandmother widowed at a young age. With her own brood of children in tow, she tried to fight for a share in the family holdings, but sadly, she failed. Hence she was left to fend for herself and her children, which she did surprisingly well by selling fishballs and other goodies at the market. I never realised how admirable the dear old lady was until now, I always thought her to be slightly annoying, since she's forever trying to stuff food down my throat. Oh well, if only my dad's side was half as interesting. Sadly, his family is just as about intriguing as a doorknob.

Just looked through my worklist for the break. With the pile of crap I've gotta do, my mid-term break is just as good as any other normal school week. Everyone else I know is either slacking or slacking. Man I feel homicidal now. Growl.

Updates?

2005-02-20T21:05:00.000+08:00

Its a Sunday today. You think I'd have an update on a Sunday? I have a life, albeit a very sad one. Go read someone else's blog or watch tv. Heh.

In a world of hurt

2005-02-20T00:16:00.000+08:00

Ok I'm in too much pain to write much. Been to the dentist this morning. He just loves to make me suffer. In addition to the ridiculous plastic plate I have to wear, I now have to attach 2 rubber bands to my braces. Its bad enough the plastic plate makes me appear as though I have some kind of speech impediment, but the rubber bands are killing me. Combined with the brand new thicker-than-my-arm wire (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating), it feels like my teeth are being yanked out by the roots. Ouch. The price I pay for vanity. Sometimes I wish I hadn't done my braces. Oh well, I'm off to bed. If that doesn't stop the pain, maybe a mallet will.

Life's not fair

2005-02-18T20:46:00.000+08:00

Someone up there is having fun watching me squirm. As if I've not had enough to think about this week, I get hit by more bad news. Man sometimes I really think life's a bitch. What's the bad news? Well, firstly...I didn't strike the 10 million Toto prize. DAMN. To think I donated a whole week's allowance to SG Pools and what do I get in return? One stupid matching number. Given that 4 matching numbers entitled you to a prize of 20-30 bucks, I'd say I've won myself...about 20 cents? Measly isn't it? Sigh...

The other news to reach my ears was not really bad in a sense, it was instead shocking. To the core. It seems that a couple of my platoon mates from NS have been busy. Busy with the girls actually. Many of them I've not seen in a long while, and the first thing I hear about them is they are now attached. One lucky bastard supposedly got attached to 4 girls ever since leaving the sorry existence we led in NS. Some of them don't really deserve a girlfriend, but then again, who am I to judge? After all, who's the loser here who is still single and desperate? People tell me that there's always someone meant for a person, but I like to think of this statement as self-consolation. 'You will meet your special someone, eventually.' Phish. The key word here is EVENTUALLY. Its not gonna do me much good if I met her 50 years from now, would it? What makes me so pissed is that some people just seem to get all the luck without even trying, and that somehow I'm cursed with failures no matter how much effort I put in. As I said to a good friend, somehow I feel like I've been left behind by the world. Oh well, enough griping. I'm starting to disgust myself.

On a more cheerful note, I had a rather interesting fieldtrip this afternoon to Changi beach. Sure the sun was blasting us, but the sight of students wading into the sea to catch fish sure brings back memories. I loved to sneak into the large canal behind my old house in the past, it had an awesome variety of fish. I once caught a baby arawana, but I let it go when I couldn't get it into the bottle I was carrying then. Heh. Lotsa intriguing specimens today. I saw crabs big and small, baby squids, shrimps and what have you. Was kinda tempted to sneak home a pufferfish, but sadly noone managed to bag one. Got caught in the rain on my way home, but the bus ride with my plan Alpha wwas worth any drenching. I'm a sentimental fool, ain't I? Love bites, but I just can't seem to get enough of it. Maybe I'm masochistic.

The Coup De Grace

2005-02-17T22:43:00.000+08:00

The horror. Our project proposal was rejected today by the tutor. To think we spent so much time on it. Ok, maybe not alot, but heck it was still efforts gone down the drain. Now we've gotta rethink our research aims and stuff all over again. Angry does not even come close to what I'm feeling now.

Our new focus would be on the impacts of globalisation on heritage, the pros and cons of modernisation yada yada....somehow I feel its all part of the government's increasing efforts to milk money out of everyone else. Tourism is after all a major source of revenue. I expect those old folks to have alot to say, especially about 'the gahment', when we go down on site next week. I know I do. Ah well, I skipped training tonight to do some touching up on the preliminary outline and stuff. Feeling kinda guilty now, its been quite some time since I last went for training. Maybe I will make myself feel better with a chocolate binge later...mm..

Tout le monde parle français!

2005-02-16T21:33:00.000+08:00

Today is not a good day. I'm exhausted. The insufficient amount of sleep over the past few nights is finally catching up, I could barely stay awake during the first lecture of the day. Hell, I nearly dozed off standing in the bus too. Long hours and boring lectures are not helping either. Though the films I watched today were pretty interesting, the first being a documentary on the women-dominated economy of Togo, a tiny country on the African continent; and the second was a cartoon about the adventures of a young African boy named Kirikou. Besides the african theme, another thing the 2 films had in common was...both were in french. People in Togo speak French like its their mother tongue, which it probably is. I was so amazed to hear them yammering on and on in French I missed most of what they were saying. Damn. The cartoon was kinda cute, sadly my growling stomach was a more immediate concern. Anyway, they say hallucinations come with the lack of sleep, could that be the reason for the inexplicable number of chiobus I saw today? Man I really should get some shut-eye early tonight...

(P.S: If I remember correctly, 'togo' means to guzzle alcoholic beverages in Tamil =) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't really much care.)

Its Everybody's Day today!

2005-02-15T20:10:00.000+08:00

Nothing much going on today. Had a tutorial and my SS lecture earlier. Poor attention span and my innate ability to sleep anywhere anytime made the lessons a torture. I suspect I'm suffering from narcolepsy, I don't seem to get enough rest no matter the duration of my sleep the night before. Shucks. That probably explains my love for naps and siestas. Another thing, I've always wondered about A/P Teo's ability to keep talking for a full hour and a half. Its really amazing to see her monologging so long without taking a breather. I suppose she has good lungs. Is it some inborn skill among members of the opposite gender, to be able to yak non-stop for hours and hours? Haha.

Attended the lecture together with my mates from our project group, and dear Xuanjun gave me a little bar of chocolate. Aww how sweet. Too bad it was semi liquid when she passed it to me. Oh well, an hour in the fridge should do the trick. Now I'm feeling a little guilty for not getting gifts for others. Valentine's Day is Friendship Day after all. Not to mention, today's 'Ren Ri', or 'Everybody's Day'. Maybe I will go ransack my fridge for some inspirations later, I believe there's some left-over lasagna somewhere in there.

Project meeting was long and draggy. Everyone's brain seemed to be in hibernation mode, it took us 2 hrs just to tie down the main concepts and work out some preliminary questions for the surveys. Can't wait to actually get down to Chinatown and ambush some suckers...opps I mean tourists, somehow the thought of bugging foreigners with dumb questions, when some of them probably might not even understand English, seems rather appealing. Heh.

Welcome to my life

2005-02-14T21:36:00.000+08:00

Lament of The Rose

I see a rose
in the flower shop,
a sad little thing all by itself.

Its tucked away in a corner
on the topmost shelf.

Away from other roses,
all beautiful and fresh,
wrapped up in dozens and packaged in bouquets.

This little rose is
quite unlike the rest;
its petals are wilted and almost gone,
to the side
its proud head is now tilted,
but most significant are
its thorns,
sticking out like swords;
which it cannot hide.

Weeping red tears,
it cries in solitude
in its little corner
for noone would buy it.
Day after day
watching the rest depart in the hands
of happy people
the loneliness starts to smother.

Often it hears
people who see it:
'Look at the wretched thing'
'Its all wrinkled and dry'
'Its petals are almost gone'
'Put it out of its misery'
'Just let it die'
'Its thorns are too long'
'Its ugly, unlike the others'

Sad rose,
poor rose.
Everyone sees the outside
but never that which is inside.
None has ever
complimented on how its petals
are of the most brilliant crimson hue,
of the most intense shade of vermillion,
of the most lovely undertone of burgundy
ever seen,
that embodies the burning passion
hidden deep within.

Cry not, little rose.
I will take you home
if noone else will.
There's a place for you,
just next to my bed,
upon the window sill.
Where you may feel the kiss
of the gentle wind,
where you may experience
the warmth of the sun's embrace.
I will wait patiently
for the day when you
once again lift up your head.

Well, due to immense peer pressure I've decided to create a blog. Again. I can't seem to find my previous one. It's lost somewhere in the immense wilderness of the World Wide Web. What a bother.

Today is Valentine's Day. Its my 22nd one, and sadly, its also the 22nd time I'm celebrating it by stoning at home. People always ask me why do I bother, its just like any other day. I like to think that, in a stress filled life full of the mundane and the banal, it is special occasions like this that brings joy and meaning to an otherwise boring existence. Too bad I have not found anyone special to enjoy it with. Well not entirely true, I did have dinner with Darryl at Holland Village's Burger King. How much lower can my life get? Not by alot I suppose. Having dinner at a fast food joint on Valentine's with a guy, an unrepentant moron at that, is perhaps one of the lowest point of my short life. Hence the need for an outlet for the pent up frustrations within, in the form of creative writing. Above is my rather poor attempt at poetry, read it if you will, but try not to laugh. I'm sad enough as it is.