I went to bed at 4am but I could not doze off as usual. Eventually I fell asleep but woke up as many as ten times, before finally getting up after 12 noon.
I met down to meet Mike near the usual “cai fan” but the place was crowded. We went around the hawker centre but we decided to have our lunch at the second storey where we lost and found our “emperor seal” previously. We took noodle. After a quick shopping at the NTUC, we took a cab to office.
I continued with my SEO work until dinner time. We walked to Pinnacle Duxton’s Kopi Tiam and had our “cai fan” with Mike’s herbal soup. He was a great eater for the evening. We strolled back to office and had ice-cream from the mama shop besides.
Mike was ready to train me with some nailing job but the wall above the door was harder than he had expected. I had some difficulties with the small hammer and nail, and Mike took over to show me that he was well-trained. We finally hung up the motion sensor air-freshener.
I continued with scripting for the tuition agency’s administration pages.
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.
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 made some amendment for the tuition agency website’s design. Then, I continued with SEO until 5am.
Mike woke me up after 10am to tell me that he had forgotten to bring his office keys along. I rushed down to the office at 11am and we dined at the canteen. We had the Chinese mixed vegetable rice for the second time. However, we were the first customer this time. The food was much more expensive than other places.
I continued with SEO and we also exchanged ideas on it. I started working on the new article Private Tutor Singapore when Mike suggested going to IKEA for early dinner. We called for a cab and alighted at Anchor Point before crossing over to IKEA. Mike changed his mind after seeing the menu and we went back to Anchor Point and had a feast at the Hong Kong café. Mike ordered extra side dish and I felt sinned because I could hardly finish my plate of chicken chop.
We went back to IKEA to walk around. Mike bought his new lighting for his house before we started eating the famous IKEA ice-cream. The DJs from FM 97.2 were there to conduct a game and they tried to find topics using Mike’s lighting. After a while, we decided to take bus back to office. The taste of ice-cream was bad for I was having a stomachache. Eventually, we flagged for a cab.
After releasing my waste, I started working till after 11pm. We walked back to Tanjong Pagar while Mike went to Amara hotel’s taxi stand to get a cab home.
I woke up after 11am and set off to the office at noon. The property agent in representing LHN group came over and we had a long chat from the office to the canteen. We tried the leftover dishes from the new Chinese chef.
After writing a new blog at Smart Tuition Singapore Blog about Sophie, I continued with some amendments for the admin side. Then, I proceeded to do SEO.
Mike and I took cab over to Vivocity in the rain to take a walk and have our dinner. We went back to Challenger and were quite disappointed that the Xbox showcase area was filled with products and I supposed the charismatic Xbox girl had finished her holiday job.
We went over to Harbourfront Centre and I was impressed with the shop next to the food court that sold very creative and cool household products. Then, we had western food at the first level for our dinner before heading back to the office by bus to Kampong Bahru Road.
I worked on the Singapore Schools page and began my crazy SEO journey for the night. We were both excited to see the results weeks later. We left the office at 11pm and I continued with work right after reaching home.
I had some nasty hours working on the tuition agency website, trying to do a more presentable way to stop duplicate tutor registration. It was after 4am and I went to bed.
At noon, I woke up and started clearing my desktop and Gmail task list. I took some time to blog and it started to rain. Mike came over to Tanjong Pagar and we packeted Burger King before taking a cab over to the office. Before I could start eat my burger, I saw a missed call from Tze Khit and he told me he would be dropping by with Bobby in a while. We had some chat before they left. I was glad that they were impressed with our office’s design.
It took me hours to continue with my work that I had stopped before going to bed. It did not turn out good for the script seemed to be undergoing frequent mood swing more than anyone could expect. In the end, I took the easy way out.
Mike started his Starcraft 2 again while I worked on SEO after he gave me a list of websites that could help to draw myself nearer to Google. We left the office at 10pm and I continued with work at home.
I started my day working on the new "Personal Tutors Needed" page for the tuition agency. I dozed off many times on the bed and went to sleep at 4.30am.
I woke up after 10am and took the noodle cooked by my mum. I continued working on the tuition agency website while chatting with my younger brother.
After 1pm, I went to the office under the dripping sky water. I was extremely unmotivated by the weather. I did some Facebook marketing before Mike wanted to leave at 4pm to try our luck for the “Dou Hua You Tiao” stall again. It was, however, closed as usual.
We took our meal at Burger King at the Amara Hotel, which was my lunch in fact. Mike went for his dental appointment while I went home. Upon putting down my bag, I realised my umbrella was missing and I went straight to the Burger King but despite the short interval, I could not find it. The staff was helpful but not useful enough.
I was gloomy for the umbrella was from my ex colleagues in the web solution company and it had accompanied me for years.
I spent the rest of the night working on SEO for the tuition agency.
I worked on the tuition agency website until 4am. I woke up after 9am and reach office by 10.30am. I rushed to do the flyer for recruiting tutors. Soon after Mike came, which was around noon, the man for doing QP came to evaluate.
We had lunch at Everton Park and we tried the chicken chop, which was very normal.
After going back to office, I worked on the page for tutor to edit their profiles. My younger brother’s SMS to ask me to email a parent caught me in a bad situation as I knew nothing about the tuition assignment and thus was quite worried that I might make a mistake. After that, I made amendments to a number of pages.
Mike and I had dinner at the $4 nasi lemak shop around Kampong Bahru Road. The ikan billis tasted very special in a good way. We continued working in the office until 10pm.
Eng Teck was at my house and both my younger brother and I thought it would be good if he was not leaving Singapore for half a year so that we could have worked on the tuition agency together.
I spent the rest of the night working on the tuition agency site.
I had some discussion with my younger brother and eventually I went to sleep at 2.30am. Failing to doze off, I joined my elder brother. I woke up after 10am and went to the office.
Mike and I had our lunch at the second storey of Tanjong Pagar. He was then harassed by the car company Eazi Car Rental because they insisted him to pay the money for the wear and tear car battery. He got pissed off for the first time in front of me but I thought his temper was much better than mine.
We walked back to office and discussed over how Singapore’s review website had sided companies, probably because they were paying money for advertisements all that. There was no honest review site that allowed users to post bad reviews without being moderated by the companies. Therefore, a nasty company could easily get lots of fake good reviews on Singapore review websites. We even suspected that most of the so-called good reviews were written by the product or service companies themselves.
I had a chat with Vanessa finally after she commented on my Facebook. She thought I was doing great with an office space but I debated with her that it was Mike’s success because I did not get to contribute any amount of money. However, the conversation was short lived as usual because she was busier than me.
Mike left the office earlier to settle stuffs. I left during the evening to The Cathay’s Starbucks. Along the way, I saw that most of the shops at MacDonald’s House building were closed. Though the days when I was rushing projects with Soon Siong and the university gang at Starbucks was tough but I really missed them a lot. I had a cup of frappuccino while I tried to rush some work for the tuition agency, working on a new page regarding facebook.
It was not long before I went over to Plaza Singapura to meet up with Jenrine at the Long John’s Silver for dinner. I had quite a long chat with her over there, telling her the situation of my site. We went over to The Cathay to meet up with her boyfriend and I treated them for the movie.
Back at home, I continued with my work and at times when I wanted to ask my younger brother stuffs, he was too busy.
I blogged while catching the last episode of the repeated Hong Kong show “Yi Wu Fang Gu” and went to bed at 1.30am. Lucky was in deep sleep that he did not notice everyone had gone into the room. However, I could not doze off.
Mike woke me up after 8am by SMS and I reached office at around 10am. It rained. During lunch time, I met up with Mike near Kampong Bahru Road. His rented car was spoiled and thus we walked over to Everton Park for the Chinese mixed vegetable rice. We were disappointed again for the rice was too dry and sticky. We went back to the office to continue with work before we started spring cleaning at around 6pm before going off an hour later. We had dinner at one of the Chinese mixed vegetable rice stall near 7-11.
After reaching home, I continued working on the tuition agency site and also had discussion with my brother to engage part-timer to do the job. I messaged Jenrine to see if she could afford any help.
I had a lazy morning doing work while chatting with Carmen until 7am.
Huiting messaged me to delay the meet-up time and later, she decided to go for a movie instead of cycling since it was far. I met up with her at Vivocity’s cinema ticket booth near 3pm. After we bought the tickets to “Meet the Focker”, we went to Long John’s Silver for lunch.
It was a humorous movie that caused laughers inside the theatre. After that, I sent Huiting to work before going home and dozing off in the early evening.
My mum ordered delivery from the Golden Café for dinner. I spent the night working on the tuition agency site and also had some discussion with my brother again.
I could not doze off at 2am probably due to the air-conditioner. It had been a great problem for me to sleep early all these years. For the past week, I did not have this problem since my mum and younger brother were not around and thus I could sleep with only the fan on.
I went to join my elder brother after some hours since he had not switched on the air-conditioner. However, my nose was already blocked and I had problem dozing off. Knowing about this, my elder brother did not switch on the air-conditioner even though he was about to do it before I joined him.
I went to the office after waking up at 11am and started doing networking stuff for Smart Tuition Singapore. Mike and I had lunch at Pinnacle Duxton. He bought herbal soup and plain rice, carrot cake and chay kway teow. We were rather disappointed with the latter.
After going back to the office, I continued with my work and also did some coordination work for Smart Tuition Singapore.
At night, we went to Vivocity and had dinner at Super Dog for the first time. It was rather expensive for the standard of food. We went to the Challenger and saw a stuff selling the Xbox 360 Kinect. She was stylish. After she ended her job, she got changed into her home clothes and looked even more attractive.
Mike and I left for the office before the crowd became worse with the New Year countdown. We met the security guard, Kirstna, and he told us his story for almost half an hour while I was having a bad stomach. In order not to give him the wrong impression, I waited for him to end the conversation before I rushed to the toilet. We continued with our work and Mike released his stress by playing Starcraft 2 online.
Working on the New Year Eve was nothing unusual but working inside the office during New Year Eve was quite special.
I worked a bit on the tuition agency website and went to sleep after 2am.
Lucky refused to sleep and he woke me up a few times. I went to office after 9am. During lunch time, Mike and I went to Tanjong Pagar to collect the company stamp and we became arrogant and crapped a lot about it. We had lunch at the second storey’s coffee shop and the noodle with wantan and char siew at $4 was nice.
We shopped at NTUC and bought detergent to wipe off the white board. Then, we went to Watson at Amara Hotel. After reaching the office, we realised there was really a transparent cover on the white boards and that was why we could not clean the markers’ ink away.
We enjoyed some grape fruit juice without alcohol. Suddenly, we realised we had lost the company stamp.
In the evening, we drove over to Pinnacle at Duxton and parked the car there for the first time. We changed our mind and decided to go to Tanjong Pagar for dinner at Mike’s favourite Chinese mixed vegetable rice stall. After that, we went up to the second level and saw our company stamp there. Someone had tied the plastic bag to the wall. We went back to the office to continue with work.
I went to sleep at 3am. After my alarm clock sounded, I went off to sleep since I thought Mike would message me. I woke up at 11am and went to the office. We went to Everton Park but decided to cross over to Pinnacle at Duxton’s Kopi Tiam. We had two sets of chicken rice.
After that, we picked up the car and went over to Tanjong Pagar. I was checking my email on iPad when I saw an email for a new message from Andrew in Facebook and I was taken back because it seemed that someone had told him things that were twisted, making me a backstabber. The incident kept up with me for the entire day.
Mike and I went to make the company stamp and we checked out the price for the namecards as well. After going back to office, I spent a very long time typing a reply for Andrew instead of working on my tuition agency website. This issue further discouraged me from going down to the gym apart from I had to concentrate on my websites.
I received enquiries about tuition and it sucked that I could not continue working on the tuition agency’s website since I had to do the coordination. I knew well if I could not proceed on with my work, the business would be stagnant soon, and coordination would continue to be tedious.
Mike and I had a quick dinner at Everton Park. The mixed vegetable rice was quite nice. After going back to the office, I saw a bug in the tuition agency website and it took me quite some time to realise it was just because of the string of encoding text I placed inside the Meta.
After reaching home at 10 plus, I spent my time look through the website.
I was trying hard to solve an issue on Smart Tuition’s CMS that caused auto reload on completion of the first load. I walked through my coding and saw nothing that would trigger it. I was suspecting the server side but I failed to solve the problem. I went to sleep at 3am.
I was not sure if I did doze off but I got up at around 5am. Before 7am, I set off to the office.
It was quite a productive morning. I finished an article on deep breathing for the tuition agency website to help people to relax themselves. Then, I did SEO for it, together with the stress management article. After that, I started to work on Tze Khit’s website.
I had lunch with Mike at Everton Park. The standard of the fish and chips from the western food stall was a little below average. After taking lunch, I continued with Tze Khit’s website and it gave me quite a big headache since almost every link is targeted at the live site. When I was almost done with all the tasks on the piece of paper, he dropped me an SMS to let me know that he would get Daoxiong to update the site since he knew I was very busy. I felt it was really right since Daoxiong was the original person who started his two websites. I finally put a burden off my mind and started working on SEO for Smart Tuition.
I had dinner with Mike at Kampong Bahru at the Muslim prata shop near the bus-stop. We ordered Maggie goreng, laksa and mutton soup. None of them tasted good. After going back to the office, I was exhausted soon with the lack of sleep.
My elder brother had reached home before me. We went down to walk Lucky together. I got two packets of milks and some heat reducing drinks at the NTUC before we went home.
I continued with my programming work on Smart Tuition Singapore and then blogged. I went to sleep after 4am.
I woke up at around 10am and started hand-washing my clothes. After that, I dozed off.
I had my first instant noodle ever since my family was away, for my lunch. I continued with my programming work for the entire day and I was being rewarded well with the success. I was quite proud of myself for Lucky was disturbing me throughout and I could still finish it.
I called for delivery for the second time and I ordered the normal fried rice instead.
Eileen messaged me in MSN to solve her Microsoft Word issue and thus I did not go to bed early as planned. My giddiness worsened and I went to bed at 3.30am eventually.
Mike woke me up a few times with his SMSes and I finally got up after 1pm. It was low productive day for me at home in my illness. I spent the most efficient time on photo editing. I heated up the “tang yuan” from the fridge as my late lunch.
I started working in the late afternoon and rewarded myself with a meal from Burger King near 8pm. A few minutes after I started eating, Lucky had finished his dinner and emptied his waste in the kitchen for me to clear.
After the movie on channel 5, Transporter 3, ended, I brought Lucky down for a walk before I started blogging.
I went to sleep at 4am and by 9am, everyone was gone and I knew they were on the way to Malaysia for holidays. I felt weak somehow and I knew I was going to fall sick soon.
I went to the office alone and did not take my breakfast. I started tidying up a bit while waiting for the SingNet guy. Given the time range of 10am to 2pm, he came after 12pm. He did not sound happy for it was his second trip down to my office. I saw the voucher and realised I had rushed down to the office two days ago for nothing since the stated date was the day before.
I bought a “mai gai” from the canteen and started doing a bit of my work. Mike came over and after some time, we went to Vivocity for movie, catching Tron. It was the only time I could sit down properly to relax after so many weeks. It was in fact the first 3D movie I had watched but somehow it was not very impressive to me. Mike complained that the movie was too dark.
After going home to feed Lucky, I went down to the gym to join the guys in the Christmas celebration. Tze Khit passed me a list of tasks to do for his website but the place was too crowded for me to do anything when my head was spinning. When there were fewer people, I went home to bring Lucky to play with the kids but they left soon.
I was busy with the tuition blog and eventually I updated the website with Google Map. The display refused to show the new location and I wasted a lot of time trying out. I also finished up some minor amendments for the tuition’s flyer. Lastly, I updated email and password for a tutor who got it wrong. I went to bed at 5am and I had problems dozing off again.
I was woke up by the drilling noise after 9am. My younger brother went Johor for his eyes check-up and he left some minor tuition assignment tasks for me to follow up. Since I did not handle it before, I took very long to figure things out.
I went down to have lunch with Mike before buying some stuff such as mop for the office. Then, I brought him up to my house so that I could finish up the work. He finally saw clearly why I needed a better working space.
We touched up the painting work in the office before starting to fix up the IKEA furniture. I was exhausted. Mike’s watch was slow for forty-five minutes and I was shocked when I checked the time with my lousy phone and his car’s clock. After he sent me home, I got changed and rushed off to Expo.
I felt relax when I called Caiping and realised I was even earlier than her. I grabbed myself a sandwich at 7-11 and started chewing, while I prayed hard that the Magic Show she invited me to was not a conspiracy. I had a taste of being conned to a church event by a male friend and a MLM one by another female friend many years back. Furthermore, I was so busy and exhausted, and yet I made myself available for her. I had interrogated her before accepting the invitation from her and I really hoped my intuition was wrong.
Caiping arrived with her friends and some of them were distributing Christmas presents. I felt uneasy and it was the first step towards unveiling the ugly truth. However, since she was a very religious person, I assumed her closed friends should be of the same religion as well, and thus I gave her the benefit of doubt. As we moved towards the exhibition hall, I saw big banners of City Harvest Church. Since the church could have booked a large number of tickets, I skipped it. After meeting other friends of hers, the guy let out clues by asking me if I were from her group and she tried to stop him. Later on, he asked me if it was the first time I went for a church event. Everything was clear.
In order not to make things look bad, I swallowed up my anger and played on to test my patience. The crowded place was a big turn off. We moved in and took up the seat. When she told me the magician was her pastor, it was nothing shocking to me anymore. As the show began, I felt quite boring since I did watch Taiwanese magic shows on television that were much more impressive. The dances made me sleepier for I was just expecting for “magic” shows.
The worst thing that I had expected did happen. It was a conspiracy to get non-member to join them. They tried to intimidate every non member indirectly by using the mass power - taking account that most of the viewers were their members, they instructed everyone to put their heads down. I was not sure how many strong willed smarties with integrity had refused them like me since I tried at least not to show disrespect and thus I did not turn back, but some people had walked off. It was one of the most disgusting moments that I had witnessed in my entire life when twisted words of nonsense were pushed into everyone’s ears.
Anyone could have started a religion and claim himself as the appointed one, which the special someone had instructed him to spread the religion through his dream. As accordingly to the tales I had heard, since there was no evidence to prove that the dream was a fake one, everyone should believe the guy. I was proud that I was clear that I would only believe if there was evidence. A sane person should not believe something just because there was no evidence to show that it was a crooked up story. It required a really good speaker to do a good job though.
When Caiping asked me about the “message”, I gave no comment since I was too tired and never wanted to waste my time to debate. I did not want to turn friendship sour as well just because of some craps. I could not blame her since she was just one of the victims.
It was one of my greatest hobbies to take photos with pretty girls but I avoided being included in any of the photos. I was quite worried that through Facebook, I would be located and I would see or hear things that I was very annoyed with. We took MRT off and I took a different direction at Tanah since they were going to Bedok 85 for supper.
This incident, together with the previous two, would definitely put me on guard in future when any old friend tried to ask me out.
My younger brother’s friends were at my time. The bedroom was probably too squeezy for them that they had to sit in the living room. I was with them for a while before I went inside the room and dozed off near midnight.
After the exhausting day, I was finally home. Due to lack of sleep and extreme long hours of physical and mental endurance, I was on the verge of breaking down. I was helpless because I was jobless and needed the time to do up my website in order to get it popular faster, but, there were too many things that were hindering me. The delay of office setup and the countless requests from friends summed up my frustration. Spending more than half of my life trying to learn how to reject friends, I had failed badly.
It was not long after I sat down to check my emails, Lucky did his business on the floor next to the newspapers again. I could no longer control my emotion and shouted at him angrily. My world seemed to be glowing with darkness. I knew well Lucky was too adorable for anyone of us to let go anymore, especially me, but it was beyond my ability to hold another liability. I was at one of the toughest times of my life and I could not afford to have my time being eaten up.
I went to bed at 2.30am with my heavy head. I was too tired to care about anything anymore.
I was woke up by my mum’s phone call at 2pm. Soon, Mike SMSed me to prepare for some tools. My mum finally returned with my lunch and I asked her for the rug, pail and vacuum cleaner before I went down to meet Mike. We walked to his rented car.
After reaching the office, Mike went to take his lunch while I started pushing all the furniture to the centre. Then, we started painting for the green wall. After that, we went to get extra rollers for the white paint. Mike tried to fix up the curtain but his drill failed him on the hard wall.
After Mike sent me home, I started looking through the brochure that I took from the office’s letterbox. I took instant noodle and started crapping with him in MSN while I updated the tuition agency address to the new address - 10 Raeburn Park.
