I went to bed at 2am and woke up at 7am for my haircut. The auntie had some conversation with me after the haircut as she advised me to speak up more.
I went home to take my shower and rest before leaving my house for MediaCorp. I reached at around 11.30am and went to the Annex building to do re-profiling. It started raining heavily and I went over to the wardrobe department. After opening the windows, there were three or four staffs inside and all of them were looking at me. I did not know which one was intending to entertain me and thus I stared in blank for some moment feeling very lost. The guy started reprimanding me for not following their instructions stick on the windows even though I was going there to show them my own clothes and not borrowing any clothe from them. It was merely out of professionalism that I bothered to do it and I did not expect them to be so rude. I assumed they had undergone some stress earlier on but it was definitely not right to take it on others. Due to this incident, I would reconsider over the future project.
I waited outside the makeup room with my laptop for the first time not wasting my time waiting over there. Since I did not borrow any clothe from MediaCorp, I could have left the filming place straight away without going back. I sent Huiying, the AP of the show, an SMS and she called me back to tell me not to return the MediaCorp pass because she did not want the bus driver to pick up everyone at different places. It was purely bullshit because every part-time actor had been doing that and there was no issue to return the pass and wait right at the gate which was less than twenty metres away from the stairs where the bus would be picking up everyone; there was no detouring to be made and all the veteran mini-bus drivers were definitely used to it.
The bus sent us all the way to Toa Payoh Central. The rain delayed everyone and we were waiting for so long. Since the filming crews were ready to shoot any time and there was no place to sit, I did not use my laptop. I spent the time chatting with the part-timers. It was probably due to the delay that things did not go totally like the script. We almost thought we would not be involved until we were called to become super redundant in the background running after the “robber”.
The bus sent some of the crews to Yio Chu Kang before heading back to MediaCorp. However, one of them forgot to bring a prop out and we made a U-turn, which further delayed the time. By the time we got back to MediaCorp, it was around 6pm. I was famished and took dinner there with two other guys including Timothy. After that, Timothy and I went to the same bus-stop and I took bus 167 home. Along the journey, I took out my laptop and continued with my work. I was not sure if it was due to the tiredness or shaky journey that my head started to spin. I reached home after 8pm and dozed off with the headache.
It was a totally disastrous day and I regretted badly to take up the filming assignment. I would rather help someone to maintain the website and I would earn eight times more the money. Apart from the money, it was really a bad experience. It was probably why fewer people wanted to go back to MediaCorp.
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 had feedbacks from Yuqing, Yaozhong, Yingying and Jianwei regarding the design of my tuition agency website and all of them had different opinions on both the original and new formal looking design. The hesitation was killing me. I continued working on the website on its contents without making any major changes.
I started forwarding some interesting emails and blogged before I went to sleep at around 8am.
I woke up at 4pm in a shock for I had missed my haircut appointment, which was supposed to be at 3pm. My mum was busy packing the living room and had totally forgotten that I had instructed her to wake me up. Luckily, the auntie was available but I interrupted her from packing her house for it was going to be her flat’s HDB renovation soon.
I went to bed near 6am again and woke up before 12pm. Lunch was at the market, or rather, Tanjong Pagar food centre with my mum and elder brother as my younger brother was in school.
I had my haircut after 5.30pm. I was telling the auntie to trim my hair a little to keep it neat but she thought I wanted to keep it short like previously. My plan to keep a longer hair before my reservist during November had failed and I had not even taken a photo for memorial.
My elder brother wanted to go for a jog but due to my late haircut and he wanted to steam the fish fillet for dinner, we called it off. I went to the gym instead near 8pm, thinking that I might not be available for the next few days.
Junze was around and I was glad to see Shaohui there as well. This time round, I tried putting weights near my ankles and the first 4.6kg reduced my chin-ups to 15 times, whereas the 6.1kg combined weights further reduced the remaining sets to 12, 8 and 8 times. After the gym session, Bobby told me to try out the protein powder with the cookies and cream flavour and it tasted quite nice. I brought a box home and the 5.1kg weight was torturing to my hand after the gym session.
I was a heavier eater after the workout even though I had filled my stomach with lots of water just before I got home. Later on, my younger brother made a cup of vanilla and honey flavoured tea and he left it long in the living room, such that I thought it was for me and I struggled to finish it up.
I slept after 3am and was woke up by my elder brother and his girlfriend who got home from fishing. It was before 9am and they were speaking loudly in the living room and I could not get back to sleep after that. I gave the hairdresser some calls but she did not pick up and all of them seemed to be diverted to mobile phone. Alas, she called me back and I made an appointment with her at 1pm.
The achievement of the day was to complete a complaint letter regarding dumping of cigarette butts through HDB windows. It was a very long intended work and I was quite surprised that none of my neighbours had spoken up on the inconsiderate act since years ago.
I went to meet Irwin in the mid afternoon at Funnan Centre. After walking around for some time, I finally got myself a new mouse. The brand was Dexs and it was a laser gaming mouse costing around $14. The clicking was good and the shape was just right; I felt the price was worth it. I did not get an expensive mouse since my fingers were probably too strong and I did not want to waste the fund since I would be changing it more often than a normal user would.
Next, we proceeded to Sim Lim Square in Irwin’s brother’s car but we did not get anything. In the end, we went to West Coast Park but it was already quite late and we did not stay there for long before he sent me to Tanjong Pagar MRT. I dozed off a few times on his car and the sleepiness kept me quiet. Irwin was being very sarcastic to me all along since he got to know about my dinner appointment.
In my sleepy head, I went to Tampiness to meet Miss Beautiful. It was a long awaited meal with her. She chose to go to the foodcourt and buy food separately so that I could not give her a treat. It was a pity that it was late and we could not chat for long. Nevertheless, I was too sleepy that I was not as crappy as usual. Even though it was a very long and tiring trip just to have a quick dinner, I did not mind about it.
I cherish friendship more than others, especially when it comes to friendship with people of excellence character. How many friends can make real sacrifice for others in these days?
My mum started playing cards, which distracted me. I slept after 4am again, knowing I had to start sleeping early before my graduation ceremony.
I gave my hairdresser a call and she told me to call her back at 2pm. Then, she made me wait for another hour. I got the same short haircut.
I spent the entire afternoon and evening working on my portfolio, including of insertion of keywords and description to the HTML Meta tags. It was a very tedious job. I almost finished the portfolio, except that I was too tired and bored to add in descriptions for all the print-screens.
I was much relieved on the Friday morning for the three hectic days were over. The approaching of the weekends delighted me.
It was the last day of school for the year 2 students and I joined Alex and Kumar in their movie – Saving Private Ryan. For as much as I wanted to catch it, it had been donkey years and I finally finished it after missing the first part and having interruption. I managed to help Joey to debug her website; however, she did not seem to understand the reason Mr Baey did not want to spoon feed the class.
I picked up the call from Jingkun during lunch time and I went down with Daniel to meet him. We took two cars to IMM and securing a place in the open air carpark, we realised Dorothy and Mei Hoe had changed their minds to go down to Jack’s Place at Clementi Recreational Centre. We made the way down. I would really prefer the food from Swenson and Fish & Co. after that, since Dorothy hurried Mei Hoe back to office. Jingkun went off by himself and I followed Daniel to settle some bills at the Hong Leung bank.
I met boss after 2pm when I was hurrying back for my haircut appointment. He gave me a lift since he was on his way to the headquarter. I requested him to drop me at Dover instead of Clementi because it was a good chance to chat with him even though he was already late for a meeting for around twenty-five minutes.
My mum’s false news caused me to make a wrong detour before I had my hair trimmed. Before that, Jasmine promised me to get back to me before 4.30pm regarding the time to meet for dinner. It was 4.45pm and I messaged her that I was going to take a nap. An hour later, I woke up to tell her to meet another time since she was too busy having fun with her friends.
At around 10pm, she pissed me off furthermore by asking me out for dinner together with her stalking desperate friend who had been irritating me on my phone. I had enough of friends who did not show respect to me.
On Saturday, I started the morning earlier than usual. Just as I was enjoying myself in the C&C game, my mum asked me if I wanted to go and visit the doctor. I went alone to the Chinese physician for the first time, having a long queue outside.
After that, I went to the POSBank and was punished by the extremely long and slow queue. When it was my turn, I told the lady I wanted to change my ATM card and she claimed that I had to foot $5 for it. immediately, I asked her to upgrade my card to the “Go!” card and thus, the fee was waived off. I wanted to do it since long ago but I did not have a more complicated signature. On the spot, I had to come out with a new one, which I could have forgotten how I would sign it in future.
Before I went home, I went to find my hairdresser to book a schedule at 5.30pm. I had some naps before I went down to get my hair trimmed neatly again.
In the evening, I went for a jog towards my favourite place under the dark sky. I was probably insane to proceed in my body and the weather’s condition. I dragged on my injured right thigh and ankle, struggling since the start of the trip; the past few days of working-out had almost drained my energy completely. One of the greatest problems was that the Chinese medicine seemed to create stomachache for me to release all the toxic inside my body and I felt so uncomfortable throughout.
It started drizzling when I reached the place where there were many coaches around to fetch tourists. Though I took 31 minutes from Shenton Way to reach there, the sun had almost set off since I started off late. Kite-flying was as usual, together with large groups of people. There was a birthday celebration among a group of people, girls wearing gorgeous dresses and the guys seemed very fortunate. There were families and couples but no lonely soul except me.
The journey back took me even longer, increasing the timing by another three minutes. Luckily, the rain did not pour heavily on me. I was famine on the way but there was nothing much I could do. The jog was a test to my limit and I knew I should continue to push myself in all aspects of life. I could do it.
After reaching home, my mum was the only person around and she started nagging that my brothers and my elder brother’s girlfriend had gone out for dinner despite she had cooked porridge with lots of extra ingredients such as bean curd and mushroom.
I had my hair trimmed on Saturday evening. I was preparing to book the appointment for the next day but the auntie told me to go down immediately before she locked up the place.
My mum went to find me and we crossed over the road to Amara hotel to dine at the food court at level four. I went straight to the western food stall and happily ordered the fish and chips set. Later, the lady stared at me for money and I handed over the five bucks but she told me it was five-fifty.
I was not surprised of them increasing the price and thus I looked at the signboard’s pictures again and looked for the price, which clearly stated five bucks only. I smiled and asked politely whether did they update the price, she simply pointed at an A4 size paper on the table for me. I was stunned for I did not notice it at all as I thought it was just a menu.
I felt very offended with the attitude of the lady because she made it sound like it was entirely my fault for not knowing the price change. If I were her, I would have apologised before pointing to the A4 sized paper, which sat on the “crowded” table.
Anyway, the paper read that from 7th August onwards, the prices of all the sets would be adjusted up for fifty cents. Why were the prices on the signboards not amended until this day, after four months?
I wondered how many people were conned like me, ordering the food and then only realised about the change of price later. What if I had only brought five bucks along with me and that I thought it was enough to enjoy a plate of western food, ordered and realised I was lack of fifty cents?
I was further astonished by the proportion of the food; everything had shrunk. Since I had chosen not to have rice, the usual practice was to change the proportion to French fries; however, the amount of French fries was unreasonably little.
To be fair, the fish tasted good and I would not mind the price, but I was too disgusted by their dishonesty and bad attitude that I would condemn the stall.
The weekend passed fast with expected work unfinished. My two days were totally burnt out by web design and programming. Database structure stole a big portion of my time, especially when new amendments were made over and over again during programming. At least I knew I had to make changes as early as possible before more work was created and more amendments had to be improvised.
Programming bugs told me my skill to the basic coding was still far from perfection. The punishment was long hours of debugging with lots of time wastage, which almost killed my perseverance. At times, I went to the room to lie down just for a couple of minutes and I believed my younger brother would find me irritating since his work station was inside the room.
My appointment with the hairdresser early at eight AM on Sunday morning proved to be a wrong decision. Initially I was afraid that I might have to go out at other timing, which was on the other hand, a wise move. Since I struggled till five AM in the morning, I almost could not get up and I had to keep chatting with the auntie to keep myself awake. I had my hair trimmed much shorter than usual.
There are still many blogs to update and pictures to upload. I suppose I have to give up on some of the work.
It had been quite some time since I stepped into Mediacorp again. During the previous time when I decided to help Jesedy, they called off the filming the night before it.
Undercover again
I had a tough battle against my sleep to wake up four hours after hitting my bed. Taking bus 167 to MacRitchie Reservoir and taking the walk towards Mediacorp Radio gate was a hassle. I reached there right on time. While collecting the uniform at the wardrobe, the auntie was very nice and courteous, which gave me the relief.
Lizard on the floor while waiting
I started waiting at the usual place as hours passed by. More than an hour later at the stated departure time, there was no news from the AP. I received a call some time later, telling me they would be coming soon but would give me another call when they were on their way back; I could tell that they are not returning any soon. I joined another part-timer, Kelvin, inside the make-up room which was air-conditioned.
Awful tasting Fish & Chips
The noon sun waved to us and soon after near three hours of my arrival, the person called me again to ask us to go for lunch first. The other two part-timers joined me for lunch at the canteen. It was my first time dining there and I was glad that the canteen was opened on a Saturday. Many parents, maids and kids joined in to fill their stomachs. I ordered a plate of fish and chips, which cost $4.50 and it was the worse fish and chips I had ever had in my entire life of western food dining expedition. However, I swallowed everything in the end since I did not want to waste money.
We went back at around one and timing was just right that the whole load of them had returned. Then, I realised filming was going to be continued right at the gate. I laughed upon how they transformed the place into a police station. The director was a nice young chap and everyone seemed to be working merrily under the boss.
My hair length was too long for a policeman and thus they asked me to go into the makeup room to get them trimmed. It was the most enjoyable haircut session I ever had in my life because the girl who fought excitedly to do it for me was cute although I did not have my spectacle on. She was new to the place but I trusted that the company would only employ capable people. Anyway, I felt quite awkward. It was the first time after more than ten years of my life that someone else was trimming my hair for me. I was in sweat and had already applied some wax on my hair, which could have made her job difficult.
The bruise
We moved further in where the most exciting part of the filming started at the open air car park. Kelvin and I were holding a criminal, Ya Guang, and he was supposed to struggle to escape in Dawn Yeoh’s daydream during her first day of report to work. I was very excited when they mentioned about having actions. Ya Guang knocked Kelvin using his head and when I bended over to grab him, Ya Guang pushed me away using his back power. I was ready to fall hard to make it look real. My first fall to the ground was so hard that allowed me to roll just like playing volleyball. I had some minor bruises, which was so tiny compared to my usual games. They were too concern about safety however. I really liked involving in action shows.
When it was Dawn Yeoh’s turn to show off her skill to capture Ya Guang, she was too gentle to resist the fit guy. Movements were too weak and thus, we waited for very long before the scenes were over.
At around 4pm, I confessed that my judgement for the length of the filming session was totally way off. I almost thought I could leave before 1pm without all the delays. Suddenly they asked all of us if we could help them with another scene and we agreed since we were already there. We boarded the bus towards Seng Kang.
Michelle Zhuang’s NGs did not piss the director off. The whole load of us had to take extra steps though. The four part-timers from China created some nuisances by wearing the caps while waiting despite repeated warnings from the crews that it might alarm the residents. They even dared to hang out at the playground, talk loudly and smoke. I felt quite embarrassed to be near them for others might simply group us together.
Everything was alright until we went up to one of the units to resume filming, but there was no instruction given. So, all the part-timers were sitting on the stairs. While waiting and not knowing if the director would call for us, I started dozing off. The lacks of sleep at the awkward place, together with the boredom were killing me, adding frustration into me upon I woke up.
They could have sent us back earlier since we were not needed. Anyway, we only got back at around 7pm and I was so anxious to leave that I got everything changed during the journey. I waited for Kelvin to get changed and return his stuffs to the wardrobe before leaving. I dropped by the petrol station to use the toilet and got a cup of Slurpee before the invasion of dehydration.
I missed bus 167 right in front of me while crossing the road but luckily, the next one took less than twenty minutes to arrive.
