Tuesday morning, I finally played LANs game together with my elder brother again. After that, we caught the world cup match of Italy against Paraguay.
In the afternoon, when I was going to the gym, I forgot to bring my keys and water bottle along. Luckily, my elder brother’s girlfriend was at home. I started doing gym with Weisheng and his friend.
At night, the IMM’s free bag arrived at my door. It was a double side handbag, with zebra and pink design on either side.
On Thursday, just as I was considering over how to resolve the matter of the bad incident at IMM, their staff called me and offered to send their delivery man over. I could see that they were doing something about their negligence and thus I did not want to pursue about the matter anymore and accepted their offer. My complain letter was a victory, though the result was not the most satisfying one.
The most fruitful thing I did for the day was a little tidying up of my house in preparation for the next day’s air-conditioner installation. There was nothing much I could do for the bedroom since I did not want to start moving the furniture alone and end up worsening my back’s condition; moreover, I needed my family’s consent in the placement of the furniture. Therefore after finishing the living room’s area near my work area, I merely tried to unplug all the power cables to make sure the items were easier to be moved when necessary.
The main goal of the day was to go down to IMM to redeem our free gift for purchasing the air-conditioner.
I focused well in the afternoon to update Tze Khit’s websites but it was tough to change another person’s work. The solid two plus hours saw me doing great but amount of work was too much.
I set off with my mum at 6pm to meet my brother and his girlfriend at Tanjong Pagar MRT station. We transited to the IMM shuttle bus at Jurong East. The worst thing that could happen simply fell on us and after queuing up at the Customer Service counter, the lady told us the shipment for the gift was delayed. We tried to ask for the beach chair instead of the bag but the lady refused for it was meant for purchasing after 4th and we bought the air-conditioner much earlier. The thought of returning to the place again specially for the gift pissed everyone off. I was the most furious of all since I could not tolerate such crap from a big company who did not inform us earlier.
We had a bad dinner at the food court. The food was really nasty and I had the worse sweet and sour pork meat ever.
After that, we went back to the All Best shop to see if they could reissue the receipt for us but the boss’ mum was busy and the guy at the counter rejected us. We went to the management office at level 4 but it was empty. We decided to drop them an email then.
I had gaming till 5pm and it was difficult to wake up even at 10am. I made it to Tiong Bahru before 12pm but shifu was late for quite long. She introduced me to her friend, Jeremy, and Jeremy’s student. They went separately for lunch while shifu explained to me about Jeremy’s websites.
After lunch, I went straight to Tze Khit’s gym. He told me of additional amendments for his websites and I started working on it. It was difficult to edit another person’s work and I had problems searching for the exact files.
While working, I was distracted by the noisy gym. Then, Jeremy started asking me questions and soon, Kachua called and visited the gym. Since I had my sports gear with me, I skipped doing gym and joined Kachua for volleyball instead.
We went to Clementi ITE and I was quite surprised to see many ex colleagues’ cars around. We went to IMM since the hall was empty and I grabbed a Mc chicken burger.
Upon returning to the hall, we heard about story of Mingfa’ student fell and was injured by the hook of the volleyball pole near the private part. Everyone was disgusted. Mingfa was not around and I accompanied coach to chat. I joined in only at the third game and could see myself rust like as if I was a newbie. I was strengthless, or rather, having phobia with my hurting left should and foot. I even missed two serving, which was crappy.
Luckily, Weitat asked me over to the side to warm-up and I got more used to controlling the ball – usually, we had too many people playing with a ball by the side and I would not want to join in. However, the hurt on my left shoulder was too unbearable each time when I exerted it.
I played as setter in my third and last game, and turned the table around after being thrashed in the previous games without Mingfa.
After the game, we went for supper near NUS, next to the prata shop.
I was quite lazy to leave my house in the late afternoon. As usual, I was more determined and inspired every time when I was rushing to leave the house, but too bad I had to proceed on.
This time, Elvin asked me out for dinner and since I was always not free for the past two years, I did not want to reject his offer. We were arranging to meet up at IMM and I decided to go back to ITE Clementi to meet him, which was more convenient.
I went to the PosBank ATM to withdraw some for my UOB account since I used some when purchasing the air-conditioner. However, the machine gave me all ten dollar notes and when I went to the UOB cash deposit machine, there was a queue and an uncle even cut my queue when I was able to give up.
The carpark of my ex company was very deserted. I met Jonathan Cheong who was inside the car and he told me it was “family day” and everyone was allowed to leave at 5pm, and that explained why it was so quiet. Hirman and Mrs Grace Cheong were leaving the campus then. I met others like Jonathan Siah and Alamelu, and I decided to go up to the staffs room to wait for Elvin.
It was just nice that I met Joei at the door and I remembered I owed Hirman money, and I passed them to her. I tried to ask Mei Hoe along for the dinner but she refused to join in. When Elvin called me, I walked down with Diana to the carpark to find him.
We went IMM and he gave me a treat. Then, he taught me a bit about watches. In the end, we went to West Coast Park to walk around to digest the heavy food and I was quite amazed with the scenery after the construction work was finished by the side of the sea. After that, he dropped me at Clementi MRT station and I took the train home.
I had two games of Command and Conquer with my brother. We played three versus five in a different and harder map and we managed to secure our area properly before launching an attack to tear down the enemies fast.
I was woke up by a person who was given the wrong number and she even dropped me an SMS. I hated to reply to unknown number and I hoped that person would realise she had made a mistake soon.
In the afternoon, I continued with my project, creating new SQL table for new criteria. However, before I could do many things, it was 4pm and I set off with my brother and mum to IMM to search for air-conditioner. We took the shuttle bus over and I realised the “bus-stop” was relocated. There were three shops side by side, inclusive of Gain City. We went to the first shop and learned more about the prices before we tried the “All Best” shop and thought the auntie was more comfortable.
Since my elder brother told me that he would return me his share by installation, I dumped $2,138 on the new system-2 Mitsubishi air-conditioner and I probably needed to fork out another $150 on the fixing day itself for a new frame to fit the new condenser.
I could actually withstand the heat of the bad weather more than anyone, except for the sweating part that would irritate me from working during the day. I was very irritated by the wastage of electricity in my house as well, for the extra fridge in the living room, air plump filtering the big fish tank, the forgetting of switching off lights in the morning, the 24-hours alive computer, and the excess usage of old non-inverter air-conditioner. All these bundled up to big electricity bill for the 3-room HDB flat that nobody would ever expect. Since the bill would eventually come to me in the end, I would rather get a new air-conditioner to reduce the monthly electricity bill.
No doubt, it was a gigantic blow to my long “holidays” plan to build up my websites, which seemed to take forever.
We took the shuttle bus back to Jurong East MRT station. My elder brother squeezed into the train at the centre platform to go and find his girlfriend first. Both of them boarded into “my train” at Woodlands and the four of us headed towards Bishan MRT, where we transited to the Circle Line. Our virgin trip on the Circle Line was towards Payar Lebar station where we switched over to the Green Line to Aljunied station. We proceeded to the You Tiao Da Wang stall but I was torn down by the long boring train journey that I felt so sick to eat. In the end, we took a cab home.
I finally got to dine together with my Shi Fu, Josephine. We went to IMM’s Fish and Co and she gave me very good guidance on my resume while waiting for the food. The meal was on me since she last treated me at New York New York the previous time at Jurong Point. I supposed we hit off well because both of us were very direct-to-point people.
The gathering of the MTRCs was never a smooth job; it was the last task I would be helping my boss with. I spent the afternoon updating my resume.
It was perhaps, one of the greatest mistakes I made, to join in the volleyball game at night. I knew there would not be many chances that I would play so often in future and thus, I gave up the dinner date with Irwin and Eugene.
The pain on my left shoulder was deadly. Even receiving a light ball would cause me cold sweat and I gave up soon knowing that the condition had worsened and that I would not be able to do well in the game.
Perhaps, the bad feeling was already back and the game was never as joyful as the previous week.
Instead of having Monday blue, I settled a for a Monday black. It was one of the rare occasions that I would forget to bring my wallet along. The waiting time for the lift was more than ten minutes with weird people boarding it to waste extra time.
Lunch was together with Weitat and Joy at IMM. After going to both Starhub and M1 shops, we went back to the office. I was wondering if I should get an iPhone since the price had dropped a lot. However, the short battery lifespan and instability continued to bug me.
I did not pay careful attention to the time and just nice, Joy offered to give me a lift to the MRT station. We met Zaki on the way down and he offered to drop me at somewhere near his place, which I turned down since the journey would be longer than taking a train; I would not want to carry a heavy bag over my injured shoulders to walk towards Dhoby Ghaut MRT and having to cross over to change train at Raffles Place.
Soon, I regretted since he would be going over to Bishan soon and that I would not have such chance to chat with him again after that.
I started off my morning with the mosquito bites, waking up earlier than usual.
My dread started again. Early in the morning, I set up everything at Bukit Batok while Weitat was back in Clementi to monitor his students’ examination. It was a good morning somehow since the teachers from Hillgrove who brought their students over were doing their jobs extremely well. I had an enjoyable morning crapping around with the well mannered students.
We went to IMM to meet up with Mei Hoe, Dorothy and Magdalene for lunch at Red Ginger.
In the afternoon, I went to set up two courts for badminton but initially only Joy came down, followed by Mr Baey who had forgotten to bring his short. I had a long warming up with Joy before Mei Hoe arrived to play doubles. Joy left before Deon came in to continue the game. In the end, Mei Hoe stayed behind to accompany me since I had to wait for the volleyball game. We met Daniel on our way to the office to keep my racket and he joined us at the MPH.
Mingfa bought my dinner over. The small packet of chicken rice fitted perfectly into my stomach and the chocolate milkshake from Sweet Talk was another sweet thing Mingfa bought over for me. I forgot to return him the money. Finally, I got to chat with him while waiting for pretty girls to pass by at the canteen but we were both disappointed.
The volleyball game was nice in my struggle with my injured left shoulder. The joint gave me pain whenever I received or set the ball. Nevertheless, it was a good night. Weitat came down to the campus to join us after the game and he sent me home.
The first day of work after the long reservist and festival break was better than any other day. Due to the cancellation of the morning lesson at Bukit Batok, I was pardoned from official work. Magdalene was cute in her cheongsam and I made her take photos with me.
I handed over the Polar watch to Mr Neo and I knew it would affect me quite badly in my future jogs.
Having lunch together with my usual clings was more cherished than before for I knew there was not many chances in future after March. We went to IMM's Red Ginger and after that, Meihoe and I gave the fruit stall a second chance.
Weitat's idea to get a "Choco Exotic" cake from the Four Leaves cake shop for Joy kept me entertained in the afternoon. It was great to make friends happy.
The downturn of the day was the cancellation of Bukit Timah Walk. Basically, most people had either forgotten or changed their minds.
It was a rare morning sleeping throughout the silence till after sunrise. Thursday morning, I woke up feeling tired still after the long rest since I did not catch enough sleep the days before. I went to visit the Chinese physician and got myself eight days of medicine before going to work.
Jingkun and I wanted to give Mei Hoe a belated birthday treat and thus we proceeded to IMM’s Swenson. Daniel joined in. We had great chats as usual.
I stayed inside the office until 7.30pm before proceeding down to the MPH for volleyball. Everyone seemed to play well. Somehow, my team had the upper hand. My legs were wrecked at my third game playing the centre position with other people. I was very amazed by my wrist power. Later part of the night was dull, but I made sure I did my duty defending given no other role.
We left at around 10pm. Kachua gave me a ride home. I realised I had sprained my index finger on the right hand and also over-exerted the wrist.
On Wednesday, Jingkun, Weitat and I went to IMM to meet Dorothy for lunch. We settled on the Banquet food court. Daniel arrived with his students while Mei Hoe and Vivien joined us.
I targeted the western food stall for a plate of fish and chips and the stall holders were two China ladies. Her English was very frequent but her pronounce was worse than mine. It was the first time I was being asked whether I wanted mashed potato or fries for my fish and chips and she pronounced it totally way off that she had to use Chinese instead. It was not my fault for the next customer faced the same problem.
It was not a peaceful meal as usual, having to chew on the nasty fish, and hearing debates and people trying to battle each other on volume and ideas. Sometimes I really wondered if they had understood each other’s intentions after each conversation since they did not want to give way. At least, I knew Mei Hoe would not get the main point most of the time.
From Weitat’s car accident, we talked about car insurance and then human’s insurance, but it seemed to stretch further away. There were times when I tried to ask something, none of them heard me as usual. I was never interested in competing because it would only make things worse.
After lunch, a few of them were going to Giant to get stuffs for the next day’s teambuilding event and luckily Jingkun wanted to go back to the office to do work and thus I could follow his car back together with Mei Hoe and Vivien. If only I did not have any project on hand, I would have enjoyed the shopping with the rest of them.
Back to the office, I did a final touch-up of a design for PowerPoint and also helped Jingkun to solve some programming problems. Then, I joined Bernard’s car to Dover MRT station.
Monday was a total different day. It was the first working day after my studies finished. However, I did not feel much after being stressed for the entire year for my brain seemed to be numbed and my body had yet to recuperate.
Weitat was sick. I had lunch with Jingkun and Dorothy at West Coast and after that, we went to fetch Mei Hoe for dessert. The famous “Daily Scoop” at Sunsetway was closed and thus we moved on to IMM. I was not very interested for I had work to do in the office but did not want to dampen their mood. We went to Ajisen Japanese restaurant but switched over to Fish&Co.
Back to the office was a stressful time for me since I was supposed to touch up on a PowerPoint presentation, which some of the slides had the contents merged together, probably by external software, such that I could not edit.
On Tuesday morning when I reached my desk, I saw the driving basic theory book. Kevin remembered it well and spent extra efforts to even place it there, which made me very touched.
It was not an easy morning when there was invigilation to do, especially having to arrange the messed up tables and seats in the normal classroom. Luckily, I was seeing my favourite class.
I had one of the weirdest lunching team. Since Mei Hoe had work to do, Vivian joined Daniel and I at the “Dead end”. I took a plate of wantan mee while both of them had fish soup. The stall was ridiculous to charge Daniel an extra forty cents for changing the noodle to rice, but Daniel claimed that the bowl of soup had more ingredients.
We had half an hour lunch, one of the fastest ever. After sending Vivian back, I accompanied Daniel to IMM’s Giants to get apples. I wanted to get some for Mei Hoe but the expensive and big ones did not have very good skin. After choosing for very long, I gave up.
I was studying for my driving test all the way inside the car on both trips. However, on the returning trip, I almost dozed off completely a couple of times.
I stayed for longer than usual again in the late afternoon before walking alone to the MRT station. I went to Long John Silver’s at Plaza Singapura for dinner and Stephen joined me after that. We moved to The Cathay’s Starbucks to meet up with Soon Siong and later, we did some testing and I was quite amazed by both the programmers’ work. Andy did not go down due to work. We stayed until around 10.30pm before we called it a day.
Yesterday, I had lunch with Xiao Mei at IMM where I received my belated birthday treat. We chose Ajisen for the reasonable set meal price. It was quite okay but I would prefer western food. After finishing our meals, we shopped at one of the baby shops and followed by Daiso.
In the evening, Bernard dropped Mdm Seet and me at Dover MRT station. Mdm Seet accompanied me for dinner at Plaza Singapura’s food court and treated me a cup of milk tea at the Xin Wang café at the basement level.
It was not long before I would not have time to meet up with all the great people.
I made a wrong choice of getting a venti size Dark Mocha frappuccino at The Cathay Starbucks during the FYP meeting, which was so sweet that I could not finish.
I finally got to play volleyball again, missing the previous week’s session due to my FYP meeting.
I was utterly wrecked even before the game because of the ultimate lack of sleep and my two continuous days of chin-ups before reporting to the office in the morning. I totally sucked at chin-ups already, being only able to struggle to get the count of ten with the laptop inside my bag.
Mingfa came down earlier to meet Weitat and I. After we went to Weitat’s house to get his stuffs, we went to IMM to join up with Kachua. Dinner was the Ah Mei café’s roti prata with their iced milk tea. We walked around for a while before going back to the campus for the game.
We had another team, Sports Right, coming down and thus it was more crowded than usual. We had to take turns to play and I could only get to play four sets in total. I was totally exhausted after my first game. When the ball went very high, my head was spinning. My entire body was weak and both my shoulders were aching. My leg almost cramped. But at least, I was quite satisfied with my overall performance. My team played calmly until the last game. Wilson did extremely well.
I was lucky that Kachua was around and he sent me home.
I had my phone sent to the service centre besides IMM during Wednesday’s lunchtime.
Jingkun and I took Daniel’s car over and waited quite long for our turn. The rest reached IMM soon and met up with Daniel and Jingkun told them to go ahead with their meals first while the two of us could take bus back to office after that.
The fact that upgrading the software to solve the lagging problem would take around three hours wrote a little disappointment on my face. I felt stupid for not bringing an extra phone with me since I would have to leave my phone with them. Nevertheless, I did not know I would have the chance to go over on that day since we were supposed to go the week before since I mentioned about the lagging problem.
We were quite fortunate that we managed to catch up with the rest afterwards, or otherwise, I would feel guilty towards Jingkun and probably Weitat for making them to take bus with me.
As they wanted to queue up for lottery, Weitat, Jingkun and I had a tour around the Challenger shop where I bought a headset for eight bucks. It was the first time I had ever bought one for myself. I needed it to reduce the distraction from all the “hoo-ha” around the office.
After work, Jingkun dropped me at the entrance of the same building. I waited for quite some time before getting back my phone. I walked alone towards Jurong East MRT station to take train home.
Meijun dropped me a bomb in MSN in the early morning to help her print her resume out. Since my younger brother was asleep, I would ask him to log into his computer to use his printer for the job when he was awaken; or otherwise, I would go to the office early to do it but it would be a black-and-white printout instead.
I woke up at seven AM and lazed on the bed and before eight, I woke up to realise the fact that my younger brother was already gone. I quickly made a call to him and he told me the password to his laptop. Meijun was lucky that my younger brother did not bring his laptop to school and that he did not set the laptop to force thumbprint identification.
Lunch was set on Tiong Bahru market on a last minute decision. We made two extra touring and I got so confused and was so ashamed since I stayed quite near. Luckily, both of them managed to find the way.
Of all food, I chose chicken chop again but this time round it was the hot plate style. It actually came with a soup at the price of five bucks, but the latter was not of a pleasant taste. The chicken was not very cooked at first but it seemed like the long lasting heat of the plate had continued to cook the meat while it was on my table.
Weitat and Jingkun decided to go for a haircut at IMM after that. I took a toilet break while waiting for them and finally, went up to Daiso to fish for cheap goodies. However, it was not long before they called me to tell me that they were ready to set off and I could not get anything.
Both of them decided to go for hair washing near Jingkun's house. I probably should tell them to drop me back to office to continue with my stuffs first since I did not accomplish much things in the morning.
In the late afternoon, Jingkun left to pick his girlfriend up. I decided to join Weitat at Vivocity since I was totally in no mood to do anything after being drained during idling earlier on. In fact, it seemed very stupid since dinner was already near and we had to get back to Clementi to meet up with the rest soon.
Knowing that it was pointless to stop Weitat from spending money, I kept quiet to avoid irritating him. I had a tough time struggling to keep myself conscious.
I had a short moment of luck and happiness during the trip.
Jingkun met us up later and we continued a short walk around before departing the place. I took Jingkun's car to join the rest while Weitat went to fetch Mingli. Upon landing at the same expressway the second time, I woke up my half asleep brain to help lookout for the tiny entrance to the Sakura at Clementi Woods.
We met up with Weitat and Mingli at the car park. Most of them arrived soon and without further ado, we proceeded to start the feast while waiting for the rest. I was quite guilty when I heard from Jingkun that the budget set for the department dinner actually did not include temporary staffs and our bosses shared the cost to foot the bill. I had a great time stuffing the food into my stomach, and leaving my stomach empty for two bowls of ice-cream in the end. This opportunity allowed us to interact more with some colleagues.
Since my camera was inside Weitat's car boot, the effort that I used to charge the batteries the night before had gone into waste.
The Teachers' Day Celebration was dull. I received a couple of presents and cards from students eventually. I was overjoyed not for receiving presents but was more pleased with the fact that some of them had shown appreciation.
What is most important about education is morale after all.
We had our dinner at IMM. Jingkun's car did us lots of time and energy saving. We met up with Mingfa there and I finally had my Long John Silver's meal after missing it for a couple of time. This time, I was greedy and had three pieces of chicken instead of the usual cheapo-yet-cost-effective combo one.
Before the volleyball game started, I fell into concussion once again for I had only around two hours of sleep before that.
The few of us seemed to be reluctant to strive hard like usual because of the Rip Curl beach volleyball game the next day. Apart from trying not to wear myself off, I was basically strengthless and my performance declined soon.
It was one of the rare times that I would leave the place early right after nine PM. eventually I got a little frustrated of myself for forgetting to bring my formal wear home after leaving them on the side bench.
Last Thursday, my gang decided to go for dinner together. Jingkun initiated it but since he left earlier than Weitat and I, we had some problems communicating with him.
In the end, we decided to go to IMM. We met up with Mingli first and walked around to search for her printer. Mingfa and Jingkun later merged into the group and we decided to go to Chinatown to have sting ray. Jingkun was the driver and we parked the car at Maxwell Food Centre before crossing the road over to Chinatown Complex.
The colourful fruit juices
Tableful of food
Mingfa and Jingkun
Weitat and Mingli
We ordered two plates of sting rays and an individual plate for octopus and vegetable each. Mingfa ordered a plate of Hokkien noodle whereas Weitat bought three bowls of soup, which we felt it was waste of money.
I finally fulfilled one of my wishes to give them a treat on the food which my entire family had been enjoying since my dad was around. They were good and cheap food.
