Be glad if you are able to celebrate Father's Day with your dad. I do not have the chance and not anymore.
He was a drinker, gambler and smoker. My dad had numerous bad habits but nothing could beat his love for the family. He and my mum gave me what I had today.
I started my life in a very poor family. At least, I did not have to starve, except for a certain period of time when he was already not around. He took us out for dinner during weekends despite losing money in his gamble sessions and he had never failed to give us money for school stuffs. He got drunk but he did not abuse. He smoked but he kept the cigarette smoke away from us.
The most unforgettable recollection of him was when he was on his hospital bed, asking me if my elder brother and I had pocket money. Would you be worried like him over such little thing when you are suffering badly and about to lose your last breath?
Although he may not be the best dad on earth, he has certainly done his part.
It has been more than ten years since my dad has passed away. None of us has ever forgotten him. We do not cry and in fact we joke using him. A simple teasing of “Are you missing lao ba (father)?” can be heard occasionally. None of us would admit it.
It seems like pretending to stay strong is not the best way to handle things because the tears of saddest can multiple, such that sometimes when nobody is watching, drops of them can overwhelm the eyes.
If you still have a dad, be really happy about it.
Life has become more unpredictable than ever since the beginning of this year.
My younger brother and I were always at loggerheads when we were young. He has, however, grown up to become a very sensible person and we become very close.
As I have been putting stress on myself without taking much rest, I am prepared to die of brain cancer or similar illness at a young age. I used to think that I can depend on him to take care of my mum when I am gone.
When he notified me that his body was acting weird, I was lost.
A few days later, when he returned from Bali, we went straight to the Accident and Emergency (A&E) department of Singapore General Hospital (SGH). It was one of my most hated places. Scenes over there were nasty, especially when I had to witness foreigners crying over to the lost of their friend.
Half of my brother’s body was experiencing numbness on the right side and it seemed like needles were poking him. Doctors and nurses began to get worried after they conducted X-ray and CT scan. Initial finding was either brain bleeding or blood clot, as we were told different stories by the staffs.
I had to lie to my gullible mum that my brother went over purposely just because he had bought travel insurance and wanted to make full use of it. My acting skill excelled as I remained calm in front of my mum even when my brother was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Perhaps, his condition was not so critical at the moment but it happened that the high dependency (HD) ward was full and he had to be admitted inside the more critical ward.
When my relatives started to find out about my brother’s condition, I had to answer them on the phone besides my mum, pausing for a few seconds to suppress the urge to burst out, before explaining in a relaxing tone. That was what grown-ups had to learn to do.
There was no feeling of festive season. I was glad enough that we could get time-off for him to go out for our reunion dinner. My brother was hospitalized until the second day of Chinese New Year. We did not manage to see the doctor in charge to ask about his condition. We were also disappointed with the management of the hospital.
My brother needs no medication at the moment and we are all clueless about what will happen next. His illness is likely to be “Post Thalamic Syndrome” as researched online. I cannot imagine myself feeling the numbness over half of my body symmetrically and boiling over my leg occasionally.
I’m beginning to feel numb as well. Staying alive is mainly to face hardship. My work alone has already taken away half of my smiles.
Year 2011 was one of the worst years in my life.
It was a year of isolation that I hardly met up with anyone. Most friends were busy with their own lives and work, and all the outing that some of my ex colleagues had promised to organise vanished with time. I was, in fact, too busy to meet up with old friends individually. One of the ex polytechnic class outing turned out to be disaster when all, except Wenchang, dropped out at the tick of the clock. The lack of communication with people offline made me a duller guy.
There was no romance like the previous year, which marked another two years of single life for me. I was not really in a hurry to get a girlfriend since I was not financially stable yet. Sometimes I did turn lonely but work had kept me well occupied. I also knew well that my time was too tight, but on another note, a girl could actually spice up my life and make me push myself harder in my work, which could be a positive effect. It was all about fate after all.
I was physically weakened for the minimal number workout sessions I had. I went back to ITE College West for volleyball for about twice and hardly did any jogging. The most tedious workout I did was when I went to Fitness First with Gilbert, but just for at most once per week, and I was mostly lazing about there. There were times when we skipped the outing for more than a month. All gym sessions were accompanied by big feast.
I was very annoyed by numerous major incidents that happened in Singapore. The unfairness and deception caused by the greed of rich people were unbearable. There were plentiful of sad news such as public transportation prices were raised to make the rich people richer, while the trains and tracks were discovered to be unmaintained for ten years, only after major breakdown incidents with the service provider taking inhuman actions and responses. I realised I had to live with the great injustice in this society because there was nothing much I could do when I could not even fend for my own life.
My family got into a major conflict once when things started to explode between my younger brother and my elder brother’s girlfriend after years of toleration. When everyone started to speak up, there were great improvements although many friends still felt sorry for the house owner and two brothers had to squeeze inside a bedroom so as to allow the elder brother to have a bedroom with his girlfriend who stayed overnight regularly in the same house. By then, my elder brother’s girlfriend had grown fonder of our dog and bought him more food and goodies than she bought for the rest of us, and thus my elder brother’s life got better. However, I found it a great insult when his girlfriend banned me from using her pillow whenever I went over to that bedroom, even though the dog was using it like nobody’s business every day. It reminded me of Bruce Lee’s movies that “Chinese and dogs are not allowed into the foreigners’ restaurant”, but I was worse than a dog. Things were still going well after all, in fact, it was much better.
My mum’s super ultimate regular visits to the hospital and polyclinic for check-ups and follow-ups caused great problems as she expected companion. Each trip would waste two to four hours of time because of the inefficient system that required patients to wait for long. I hated the idea of my mum expecting us to foot the bill for her because it was totally unnecessary at the moment and that any excess money with her could be cheated off easily. The time wasted could help me to relax at home.
I did not join my mum and younger brother for their overseas trips. Even though there was once when my mum’s friend’s husband had things on, I did not take up the free ticket. Apart from being thrifty, my work did not allow me to have any holiday. Work would only pile up.
Finance was sustainable for me somehow although I only started earning my first cent from my tuition agency in February. However, I soon started to feel frustrated when the amount of effort and hard work I put in did not produce good results for me. I was in fact earning much lesser than I was working in ITE as a lecturer. The increasingly pressure on the expenses for both family and business caused frustration in me. Overall, after striving hard for a year, I was not rich but at least I did not starve. My elder brother was jobless most of the time, which added weights to my brain since I had to pay for most of the stuffs together with my younger brother, partly due to my mum’s constant nagging in front of me.
I spent quite a sum of money on a double decker bed frame with a pull-out bed at the bottom to house my younger brother, my mum and I inside the small bedroom. It was due to my mum’s complaints of not able to get up from the mattress we initially placed on the floor easily and that she often knocked her head onto the old bed frame due to the height. Next was the changing of lighting in my house as to reduce electricity bill, which did not show results due to the increasing electricity cost. The old lighting had two tubes of round light-bulb each and the inner smaller light-bulb’s electricity consume alone was crazy enough. The third expensive item I had bought was a Fujifilm camera recommended by my elder brother due to his read-up of internet reviews during the IT show, which turned out to be a total waste of money. We lost trust in forum’s reviews. Anyway, I knew I should have spent more money to get a cheap DSLR camera instead, which I had wished for donkey years, even though my younger brother preferred a more compact one.
Besides not able to catch up with friends, I was dealt deadly blows twice in this very lousy year. I was initially into planning with Tze Khit’s friends for a new business venture when I was already too tight with my tuition agency. I decided to drop out in the end and somehow, someone backstabbed me, which caused Andrew to confront me. As I thought things were fine, I realised I had lost a good friend when I was deleted away from his Facebook friends list. The lost of a friend, including the fact that I was being falsely accused, dwelled in my brain for months.
I began the year in Mike’s office as a freeloader to work on my own business. I was too greedy as a perfectionist but I set my priority quite right to increase credibility and efficiency of coordinators by adding and editing useful features. I started from scratch without any knowledge of the business, whereby it required real life experience to further explore, and thus I had to make changes to the website’s features very often. Nobody could understand the amount of work I had put in when I was the sole person in charge of the researching, designing, coding, debugging, content writing, internet marketing and administrating etc. I had to choose between less prioritised tasks that would require more effort if I did not finish them earlier and important tasks that were more critical but could be more tedious. There were immediate tasks, such as to approve tutors’ profile, verifying of their documents and SEO, which was extremely time-consuming, leaving little energy for me to work on other tasks. There were also times, which I had to help the coordinators to even “debug” Gmail or bugless feature on my website. It could be a very good business many years ago but it was already too saturated and that the levy was actually very low.
I learned many tricks regarding Search Engine Optimization from Mike. However, he got impatient with the progress of my work as a mentor. He expected more results from me even though he could not understand clearly the thousands of problems I was facing for operating a partially offline business without experience in business - both online and offline. Every month, he would also raise issues and talk to me in a very irritated tone. The pressure on me started driving me crazy and massacring my confidence when everything I did with my greatest effort seemed to be wrong. I became moody like a zombie with my existing struggles with everything and had phobia going to the office. There was a major communication breakdown somehow and I started to fear talking to him. I could not live up to his expectation even as a normal human as I became weary of everything, not knowing how to show him any slight of appreciation while I was almost breaking down mentally.
In the end, he told me he had observed me for over ten months and that I had failed him, and we would revert back to good friends instead of mentor-student status. The thing that hurt me most was my misunderstanding that we had always trusted each other fully since the army days and that was why he had been guiding me along. I ended the last few months of the year with worsened sleepless nights tossing around my bed. I hated myself for not being capable enough to prove my worth so that many things would not have happened and refusing to become a person who could suck up to people. I could have borrowed some of his time from his girlfriend to give him a treat or get him a present even though I was suffering from fatigue all the while to even think of these.
Year 2011 was yet another scar in my life.
I become more stress whenever my younger brother goes overseas for holidays. Yes, “more” stress because I am already very stress.
There are various projects I need to accomplish and there are boring daily tasks that I have to finish without much delay. I am battling against time everyday. The worst thing is the weakening drive that is slowing down my pace.
From the beginning until business has started to pick up, I am losing time increasingly to work on my initial areas of interest. When everyone is thinking that it is perfect, I can see tiny holes all over, including major security issues.
It has been proven that my effort can make things so much better but it is often beyond normal eyes to judge.
I am a person who can dedicate endless time to a task. When more things pile up, sacrifices offer insufficient help to perfection. Things are all left hanging around while I try to babysit them one by one and bit by bit, and I am beginning to lose confidence due to my incapability.
Friends who are more aware of my situation may be admiring my determination for I have managed to persist for so long.
I am already stressed to the extent that I can be agitated easily. I am losing patience for people who do not follow proper procedure and thus causing problems.
My brother’s departure for holidays always put additional workload on me. Although checking of account does not take up too much time, but it is definitely distracting and often kills my momentum.
When friends ask me to take a break and have a short trip overseas to relax, I know it is almost impossible, at least not at the moment. I do not want to risk getting more enquiries and for sure, my daily work will only pile up, leaving important tasks pending longer. I do not want to risk the brand’s name.
Nobody is ready to take a break when many things have not settled down.
My younger brother has endless trips from Thailand to Pulau Ubin and Sentosa, and currently Bali. Just when I am getting used to abandon tasks during this peak period, he drops a bomb to inform me that half of his body is getting numbness. I am left helpless as I know little about other countries, having staying in a rather safe country throughout my life.
I am feeling very lost.
One of my favourite Chinese drama shows, which had just ended recently, was Rosy Business. I was quite surprised that Gilbert did catch it as well.
The story was based on the olden days of China during the Qing dynasty and I expected not many people would be interested in it. It was mainly about the family of the major rice seller in Wuxi, China. To them, it was not only about profit but the essential of lives of the people, and thus they had to fight against thugs and their evil family members to keep the business going and the price of rice low.
I first caught it when I happened to have my dinner at home instead of dining out on a weekend. My curiosity was spiked by the great plot. It was a pity that I had missed out some of the exciting parts where the main characters applied intelligence to overcome problems.
The show was not anything like “Huang Fei Hong” or Tom Cruise in “mission impossible”. The hero was not a saint; he made big mistakes and grew mature over times. His loyalty, courage and intelligence were impressive.
The usual quote by the hero was “how many ten-years do we have in our lives?” and it clearly reminded everyone not to waste our lives.
I know I have been ill-treating myself for the past twenty-plus years. Though I have not produced much result, I have clearly spent most of my entire life racing. I’m been trained not to have lust on food or travelling. I’m losing myself as days go by and soon becoming a zombie.
I’m not a smart worker and I’m definitely bad at priority management. I have clearly disappointed many people.
I’m never in need of money not because my family is rich but I rarely spend on myself. I’m used to mess around with hunger since polytechnic days. My dad’s last payslip wrote around $1300 before he passed away and my mum spent quite a sum of my dad’s leftovers (CPF and insurance) on renovation of the rundown house, insurance plans that she could not afford, crappy health magnetic mattresses and she even lent a big portion of it to her boss who had been abusing her verbally. One year before I went to the army for national service, I had to start skipping meals after volleyball games.
Nobody can understand how much I have been through and thus no one is in the position to judge me. I have to work extra hard because I’m neither a genius nor apple-polisher. There are also some risks that I’m not able to take.
I need to do something for my next ten years of life if I can live on.
Long ago, I heard encouragements to the persistence of doing my own business. Flexibility of time and working location were great buy. I could do my work at any time of the day at anywhere with my laptop, which meant that I could merry around during normal people’s working hours. Apart from the extra hard effort required and income instability, everything was supposed to be sweet.
I, however, am never a cut to become someone who can really enjoy myself. There are many things I wish to do but have given up. There are also many things I hesitate or hate to do but I’m doing them for the sake of accommodating my loved ones and friends. I’m definitely living a bitter life for now.
I have free tickets and accommodation for overseas trips, but I cannot and do not have the mood to leave Singapore for more than a day.
I also have job temptations from numerous kind friends. I know I should not give up halfway.
I have done my best to struggle alone on various required job roles. I see myself as a researcher, content writer, designer, programmer, tester, blogger, website administration, administrator, marketer, IT support and probably others. The numerous tasks waiting for me to accomplish everyday have killed my creativity since long ago. It is a hectic life for me.
I never have understanding from people surrounding me and not even those whom I get to see numerous times per week. Most friends do not know what I’m working as and those who know do not know what I have been doing. Overall, most people have impression that I’m an idler, although they are very kind to persuade me to get a job.
While most people know about my flexibility of time, they are neglecting the fact that there are huge amount of work for me to finish. So often that I’m neglecting my family for work, especially when we are so bonded together, and I’m always feeling the guilt of turning them down.
I have to deal with changing climates monthly. Even the loudest voice to support my business venture has turned against the flexibilities while I’m being sandwiched by people. I should be feeling great that many kind people are trying to help me but I cannot stop feeling being torn into pieces. I’m still far from meeting their expectations.
My mum's health has once again placed everyone in worries.
When people get older, they tend to have more problems and this creates the anxiety far worse than playing stock whenever my mum complains about new problems regarding her health.
So far, her previous experiences in visiting to the accident and emergency department at the hospital have turned out quite well. We were more than happy each time to know that she was alright after the big issues despite the troubles and worries.
This time, she complains about her eyes and I hope it is just because of her obsession with her games on the phone that may have given her the signal to rest her eyes more. She is basically lacking of sleep everyday and yet she can spend her time gaming before going to sleep.
I was glad that my brothers had kept my mum entertained with her cell phone earlier on so that I could concentrate on my work.
I was some kept breathless worse than ever with the amount of work piling up.
I remained in my usual contradiating self after all these years, having problems with my priority. I failed to reject friends over and over again.
I could never forget when I was struck with the old Nokia phone that could not read half of my contacts for more than three months, Mike told me he actually planned to buy me an iPhone 4. Even though I did not want him to spend on non-essential items on me, his words had strike me badly.
I could not even fare for myself to help others. The number of times I refused to take a break at the verge of breaking down laughed at me. There were plans for creative as well as critical jobs but I was ransacked totally off my time.
Yes, it was true that I had spent so much time helping others instead of trying to get out of my own poverty, I did not deserve any gift from people who cared so much for my success in life.
I knew my situation well but it was my born character to help others, especially the kind ones. Everytime I stabbed myself to lend my hands to friends, I felt guilty to myself and people who cared for me.
Nobody could understand my woes and few could realize the supposed-to-be little amount of time they could squeeze out from me for their convenience's sake had stalled the progress of my cumulative result.
I often have to draw myself away from people to avoid more entanglements. Sometimes I mock to myself having to reject freelance jobs that can raise my personal portfolio.
I went to sleep at 2am with Lucky. I dozed off faster than usual because I was too tired.
My mum woke me up after 9am just because Lucky shit on the floor. My stomach was not well again and I had noodle for late breakfast.
I went to the office at 1pm. I was too lazy to do chin-up since the weather was too hot and I did not want to sweat more. It was not long after I booted up the laptop when the first blackout happened. I started going outside to crap with the aunties. I realised it had happened a few times before and it only affected our block – block B.
My eyes were tired again but I struggled on with the tuition agency’s administration page. I started blogging after that and reached home by 7.30pm because my mum wanted to have steamboat on the fifteen day of lunar calendar.
It was a tiring night for me as I continued with the planning of the tuition agency website for tutors to apply with tuition assignments.
I went to bed after 2am and woke u by noon. I was doing SEO for the tuition agency site before bringing Lucky out for his nail trimming session at River Valley.
After that, we went up to Fort Canning Park to feed the mosquitoes but I was enjoying photography all along. It could be a good place to bring girlfriend along if not for the involuntary donation of blood.
We went to Maxwell Food Centre for dinner and waited for my mum to go over.
Back at home, I worked on the links page for Smart Tuition.
I was working on the tuition agency site until 1am before taking a tablet of melatonin. I managed to doze off only after 2am. Melatonin caused drowsiness in me and made my entire body weak. I felt tired but it did not put me to sleep as quickly as expected.
Lucky woke me up after 8am when my mum left the door opened. He was standing by the block of board and crying for me. I went to the office at 10am and continued with my programming work for Smart Tuition. I did some SEO work after that. Zaki called me to invite me to catch Chingay together.
It was pouring heavily and since I had to pass by my house to take the train, I decided to go home to get changed because I hated wearing wet socks. In the end, I decided to take bus instead. Bus 97 took me to near Millennium Walk and I tried my luck and managed to reach MacDonald’s at Marina Square to meet up with Zaki. He was sick and I offered to get him the dinner, which was a rare chance I could get to give him a small treat. However, I was famished due to not taking lunch and I upsized the two meals without thinking that he was coughing. We could not finish the second packet of French fries.
We walked towards the Singapore Flyer at the F1 racing track. It was muddy along the path before we could get up to the audience stand. It was one of the rare times I did not charge my camera’s battery and also not bringing the spare battery along. Anyway, the lighting was too dim for a lousy camera using freehand on moving objects.
The Chingay performance was fantastic. I did not even bother to look at the television for the broadcast all the past years and I knew the reason well – the live performance beat everything.
After the amazing event, Zaki had fun laughing at my feet because the mud looked like shit. I met Warrant Twang and we exchanged numbers. I was quite disappointed that he was still holding my old number and that was probably the reason why many friends had lost contact with me.
I went to Maxwell Food Centre to meet my family for supper. After that, they went to the NTUC for a while as I accompanied Lucky outside, trying to hurry home to catch my Bao Qing Tian (Justice Bao) on channel 8 at midnight.
I woke up after 11am and started playing with Lucky. After that, I set off to Hougang to meet up with Mike. By 2.10pm, I reached there and walked around for a while while waiting for him. We had lunch at Aston at a coffee shop. The grilled fish was quite normal. After taking lunch, we went shopping at Hougang Mall where he bought a fan.
We went to his house and I got the biggest ang bao money of the year from his dad. I got to see his newly painted room but it reminded me of the purple dragon fruit.
After that, we went to NEX at Serangoon to shop around. I was quite pleased to see a dog café at the top storey. There was a wet children playground as well. The King and King Wong shop impressed us with the gorgeous European furniture but they were rather costly. We got four wall paintings there. While we were inside the V-Hive shop, Mike’s dream girl came with her friends. Soon, I left the party.
I went to Chinatown to meet up with my family. We had dinner at the chicken rice shop opposite CK. After that, we went over to shop a while before going home.
My brothers and my elder brother’s girlfriend started playing monopoly deal game in the room. Lucky joined us but he was moving around to change his sleeping position, unlike my mum could sleep throughout at the corner. Lucky, however, refused to stop farting. After the game, I continued with SEO work for the quit smoking site and went to bed after 7.30am.
My mum woke me up before 11am to get ready for movie. We went to Great World City to catch the movie “It’s a Great Great World”. Since we were in a rush, we did not take breakfast before that. It was a good movie and I enjoyed the pieces of stories inside. It was filmed in a humorous and touching way.
We went home after dropping by the pet shop. We had steamboat at home for our first meal of the day. I started dozing off and by the late afternoon, everyone was out of the house. I continued sleeping with Lucky using my chest as his pillow as usual unless 7pm.
I started playing a game in Command and Conquer before watching my favourite show on channel 8 – Zheng He Xia Xi Yang.
I began the day blogging while doing SEO for the quit smoking site. It had been quite long since I started neglecting it. I went to bed at 5am.
My aunt woke me up at around 11am when she came over with our breakfast. However, she added chilli and we could not finish the spicy noodle. We took bus 75 to the home at Bukit Panjang to visit our uncle.
After the long trip, it was one of the worst moments I would ever want to be in – looking at my uncle nearly made my tears fall. He was one of the best guys on earth and it really hurt to see him in such state that he could not even think. Sitting on the wheel chair, he was tied to it and saliva continued to drip.
After leaving the home, we went to Bukit Panjang Plaza for a quick bite at the MacDonald’s. We shared two Mac Nugget and one filet-o-fish meal. Then, we went to Daiso to shop. We went to the bus-interchange and a cute wild dog caught our attention.
I continued with the SEO work for my tuition agency site. In the late evening, I caught the movie “Zombie Land” at on a SCV channel.
It was a totally different Chinese New Year Day 2 this year because my uncle on my dad’s side went overseas with his family and thus there was no gathering. My main stream of ang bao money was eliminated and it was my poorest Chinese New Year ever.
I spent some time blogging for the tuition agency and went to sleep after 3am.
I woke up at 9am to get ready for movie with my family. We caught “Ghosts must be Crazy” at Tiong Bahru Plaza at 11am. It was one of the lamest shows I had ever caught. It had two stories and the last one was really sick. I regretted catching it.
We had lunch at the food court. The four of us had kaya toast with eggs. The tea was diluted. My younger brother went straight for his tuition assignment. We went to the M1 shop for a while. After taking the train back, we went to the NTUC for a while and my mum went missing.
While I was trying to blog and do my work, Joanna messaged me and I was very stressed by her because I could no longer afford more hours to help her do her programming assignment. I started on a new article on teenage dating.
My aunt came over with my youngest uncle and we had reunion dinner at the Kopitiam at Pinnacle Duxton. It was the first time we dined out on the Chinese New Year Eve night.
After that, my youngest uncle went to Chinatown by himself to walk around. My mum and I walked my aunt to the bus-stop at Everton Park.
After reaching home, I continued with my work. There was some discussion regarding the tuition agency.
I started the morning blogging, working on the tuition agency website and chatting with Mike. Eventually, I started editing the admin side of the tuition agency website and included a loading popup for the Ajax script, which was I quite impressed. I went to sleep at around 5am.
I woke up after 1pm and had wantan mee. I did SEO for the tuition agency site after that. It was another rainy day.
My family and I went out for dinner before 6pm. We went to the renovated hawker centre opposite Queensway Shopping Centre. There was a variety of food. After that, we went to Anchor Point, followed by Queensway Shopping Centre to shop. I bought a 3-quarter pant. Finally, we went to IKEA.
Back at home in time, I was engrossed with the channel 8’s show – Zheng He Xia Xi Yang.
I kept myself busy with SEO for the tuition agency website and also made some planning for the pages. After blogging, I continued with SEO till 6am.
I woke up at 2pm and started working for the entire day. I improved on the FAQ page and continued with SEO.
In the evening, my family and I went to Chinatown’s Swanston to top up household products. I was quite taken aback on the bus because I had told myself not to step into Chinatown before the Chinese New Year because of the crowd. The massive jam along the way irritated me. After purchasing the item, spending near to $50, we went to the KFC for our dinner.
Then, we made the wrong decision to cross over to the pasar malam. Eventually, we could only move less than half a step every second. I realised I was getting very impatient due to the fact that there were too many things pending for me to handle and squeezing with the crowd was definitely waste of time when we could not really look at the stalls. I got a little giddiness from the walk. We left through the street before the Indian temple.
We went to the NTUC for a while before heading home.
I spent hours to blog before going to bed at around 5.30am. I woke up at 3pm to work on the tuition agency website and I managed to improve on the tuition assignments feed.
I had dinner with my family at China's town and I was quite turned off to see the huge crowd due to the pasar malam for Chinese New Year. We ordered a set meal from a seafood stall that offered sting ray, prawn, vegetable and toad’s meat at around $37. I did not really like the food, besides, they were too spicy. My elder brother got some satays and almost got himself into some problems.
I took a little walk around the NTUC with my mum and younger brother. I was busy checking out the coke’s price because I thought Mike could save near 50% money by purchasing large bottle coke instead of can.
I went to bed at 3am. Mike called me after 8am for breakfast. When I reached the void deck, my younger brother and mum arrived. I was finally relieved that they were safe from their Malaysia trip.
Mike bought a loaf of bread and we set off for the office together. I setup WordPress for Money Tactic for the morning.
At around noon time, we went to Tanjong Pagar and I got home to get changed for my haircut. The lift at block one was in the terrible state like when my block was under renovation. Instead of waiting and queuing up with the construction workers, I climbed the stairs up. After having my haircut, I went home to bathe and went down to meet Mike. I bought my lunch at one of the Chinese mixed vegetable rice stall and took it at the office’s canteen.
I spent the afternoon doing coordination for Smart Tuition Singapore. In the evening, we were supposed to go for dinner together but Mike changed his mind. We went home straight away.
I dozed off after reaching home until 10pm. My family and I went to Maxwell food centre for our dinner. The place was crowded with many butches. Some were joining the old uncles to smoke inside the hawker centre. We met my younger brother’s tall German friend. I bought a plate of satay mee hoon and it was terribly disappointing.
While we were on the way home, Lucky was the luckily dog on earth when some pretty butches started playing around with him, trying to pet him. We spent some time downstairs.
I spent the morning blogging. Before going to bed at 3.30am, I collected the clothes from the bamboo sticks to keep them. Lucky disturbed me from my sleep many times.
I woke up at 11am by Mike’s SMS and we met up for breakfast near the 7-11, at one of the mixed vegetable rice stall. Then, we went to the office.
We shopped a while at Vivocity in the afternoon. We covered merely Daiso and Challenger before we went back to the office. The two large whiteboards had arrived the day before and we started fixing them up.
I cracked my head programming in the CMS of my tuition agency site to include AJAX. Mac came over to visit the office and he was very impressed by the design. It started raining heavily in the evening and we were going to Tanjong Pagar Plaza for dinner before the rain became a bit lighter, they decided to have their dinner at City Square instead. I went home alone and called for delivery and I enjoyed my favourite Malay fried rice from the Golden Café.
Lucky never stopped to disturb me from doing my work. I had webcam with my family.
