My elder brother was back from the east side and he called my younger brother and I to bring Lucky down to meet him. While we were on the way to the prata shop, my mum was back with her friends but we continued as planned. Since we had to sit outside with Lucky and that there were smokers around, we changed our plan and decided to take away the order.
I worked till 3am before going to sleep and Mike woke me up at around 9am. I thought he was already at the office and that the person doing the QP was arriving, and thus I rushed down to the office at 10am without taking breakfast though my mum had offered to buy.
I spent my time updating my blog and Mike came an hour later. Since he had taken lunch, I went over to our neighbour to get some bread. The workers came over at around 1pm. There were four to five Indian foreigners to fix up the exit and emergency light, together with a drilling a hook to the wall for the fire extinguisher.
I finally to finish and article on Singapore Education, which was the greatest achievement of the day somehow. After that, I tried to spin the article and the software failed me after I finished the job, which was a hindrance to my SEO tactic for the tuition agency.
We had early dinner at Yan Kit Road, ordering two plates of dishes from the seafood store. I tried on my article again and I gave up after it failed me the second time, wasting a lot of my time and effort. I started looking at Mike’s Starcraft 2 game before we went home.
After going home, I continued to work on my article again.
I started my day by working on Tze Khit’s website before moving on to my tuition agency website and my blog. After talking to David in Facebook to tell him about Mike’s need for an office space, I went to sleep at 9am.
I woke up a couple of times and eventually got up at 4pm. My elder brother had fixed up the new fitting keyboard protector for me. After a while, I did a random chat on my phone and realised there was a message from David to inform me of three office locations. I aliased with Mike and he was more than satisfied to view the one at Raeburn Park, which I supposed was the previous Gan Eng Seng School’s campus.
I had a chat with Mike to share our excitements and plans before I continued with my tuition agency site, adding new pages regarding the top four popular tuition subjects – Maths, Science, English and Chinese.
Kachua dated me out for roti prata and I had quite a long chat with him over the Indian shop.
I went for supper with my younger brother and mum at the prata shop. After that, I had a fruitful morning working on my tuition agency website with a new page. I took the contents from my portfolio property site and made amendments to list Singapore’s District with Postal Code. I did some work for my Facebook marketing before I continued with the tuition agency website to include random educational quotes at the bottom of every page. I was too worn off and eased my work at 8am.
I woke up at 1pm to continue with the boring job of gathering quotes. I moved back to the living room by afternoon to speed up on my work for lying down on the mattress restricted me from typing properly; moreover, the more than a week of improper working posture had worsened my back condition.
By evening, I moved the “Edit Profile” feature to live but there were feedbacks from the server’s PHP server, which issued warnings for some not very well coded lines. It was a tough fight to solve the problem.
My family went to the prata shop with Lucky. We wanted to packet some prata home but we managed to find an empty table at the outside, and thus we changed our minds. At first, everyone wanted to take a single prata because of the heatiness but we ended up taking two slices each. We went to the ATM machines after the supper. While we were going home, we played catching with Lucky.
I went to bed at 2.30am but could not doze off. The last time I checked my clock was 4am.
I woke up at around 10am and started packing up for the kayak course. My younger brother and I took bus 70 to the stop after Nicoll Highway and walked to Stadium MRT station. It was our virgin visit. I went to the toilet and was shocked that the lock was spoilt, which was too soon for a new MRT station.
After meeting up with most of the people for the kayak course, we walked towards our destination along the highway. The kayak course was beyond my expectation. I thought it would be a short theory before we would get to kayak around, but it was meant to be a more professional one. Since everyone, including the coach, Kelvin, were nice people, my brother and I enjoyed a lot. We started off with some theory before moving off. I met Caiping who was with a group of youngsters and I supposed it was her church event.
I was happy to get to kayak again after many years and it reminded me of the past when my volleyball gang and I went to Sentosa in a huge group. The kayak course included capsizing drill and simple swim test. We got to learn about technique to paddle well. Apart from them, I could never recall all the terms used. The toughest thing was to carry the kayaks. The course ended before 6pm. my brother and I did not shower. We walked to the bus-stop and took bus 196 home.
After reaching home, we hurried to open the toilet’s door as my mum had left Lucky inside after he vomited, peed and pooed continuously to cause dizziness to my mum. She even puked. My younger brother took his shower first and left the house to pick up his friend at the MRT station before he bought Burger King’s meal for my dinner. Together with his friend, we took Lucky down for a walk.
At 11pm, I was dead beat but the channel 8’s Andy Lau’s show about the warring states kept me alive.
I spent the morning blogging and surfing the net for the prices of iPhone and BlackBerry phone. I tried sleeping after 4am but could not doze off. I finally got up at 7am and started preparing myself for the Johor Bahru trip.
We went to the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station and bought the tickets for the train at 8.45am together with my aunt. It was the first time I used my new passport. We reached City Square before 10am and went to the MacDonald’s for breakfast while waiting for Anthony. He finally replied my younger brother’s SMS and told us that he would be late and thus we went shopping.
After we met up with Anthony, we went shopping for mooncake at the bazaar before having lunch at Kim Gary. We were surprised when Anthony bid us goodbye right after the lunch. We did more shopping after that and my mum also bought more mooncake. We took train back to Singapore.
We started enjoying the three slices of cake we got from Secret Recipe at Johor, together with bailey with milk. My younger brother forbade me from taking a nap since he did not want me to stay awake at night.
Our dinner at around 9pm was at the Muslim prata shop for the first time as we were too tired to travel farther away.
The day began like usual, as I was doing my usual stuffs such as blogging and web building. I finally finished up the tiny bottle of weird tasting herbal liquor that my younger brother bought from Europe, followed by filling my stomach with some cornflake. I thought I could sleep early after that.
I continued on the new page for SmokeForWhat when my elder brother gave me an url of a job. As I was trying to send my resume to the company, Guoxin responded fast in Facebook and we decided to meet up. He reached my place very soon and I was stunned by the speed. We travelled to Bukit Timah Shopping Centre and I could feel the danger in his car. When we were about to reach, he did not look at the traffic light and we could be killed if the road was not empty.
We started playing pool. Our skill differed too much and I made it too easy for him to thrash me. We were the noisiest among the three tables. We changed topics fast somehow since we had too much to catch up. We were missing the old times where the big group of us would go out together.
After that, we went for breakfast at the Prata shop near my place where we continued to chat until around 7am. I did not sleep immediately after that and instead, I uploaded the new quiz for SmokeForWhat. Eventually I went to bed at around 9am after Guoxin gave me feedbacks about SmokeForWhat.
After waking up at around 3pm, I was slacking throughout the day, surfing the net, chatting with brothers and trying out new Command and Conquer maps alone.
My brothers and I went to the prata shop for supper. I was disgusted by a Chinese old and plump uncle who held onto his lighted cigarette while walking into the toilet and then standing in front of the stall to order his food. I was totally disgusted with the laws in Singapore because minor offences were simply included just for the sake of displaying.
When we were near home, my mum called and we waited for her before going home. Even though my younger brother did not have school, he wanted to sleep early. My elder brother and I started playing Command and Conquer together, and later, we went to search for more maps. Eventually, we played an uncommon map together, following by taking some mee hoon cooked by my mum.
Before I could doze off, the sickening construction started again. The drilling sound pissed all of us off and it happened to start so early in the morning for the second day, and yet afternoons were all quiet.
I woke up at around 3pm. I was surprised that my younger brother had gone swimming without me because I asked him to swim together before he went to bed. After checking my phone, I realised both Tze Khit and Bobby had called me. They told me it was regarding the NETS payment for the gym. Before I could eat anything, my mum wanted me to accompany her down to carry stuffs. I was having a little gastric pain but I did not want to displease her. We met up with my younger brother at level one and collected the stuffs.
I spent lots of time going through my new article for SmokeForWhat. It took me months to start into it and almost a week to complete it because of all the distractions and other undesired commitments. After Hazel went through it once, I was finally confident enough to upload it.
As I took my lunch and dinner together in the late afternoon, I started starving soon. I went to the prata shop with my mum and elder brother for supper. After that, I continued to work on Bianhong’s photo for printing a puzzle for his girlfriend’s birthday present with distraction from the internet. I went to sleep after 7am.
I woke up at around 2pm. the nasi lemak my mum bought was cold. She added extra ingredients to my packet as she probably could not finish hers. The chicken wings were awful as the meat was difficult to chew on.
The backache I had since days ago was bothering me a lot. I did not have the mood to work but still, I managed to complete Bianhong’s picture and pending his acknowledgement. Since his girlfriend was besides him, he could not give me a reply to see if any amendment was needed.
Since Tengy finally replied me after she filtered my message in MSN the day before, and she was easily agreeable to let me use her photo for my new Facebook group, I went ahead to work on it. I also peeked into the latest article I wrote for SmokeForWhat, but my brain was not working well enough for a conclusion yet.
In the late evening, I was totally out of mood to do anything. I spent the time lying on the bed and playing Condition Zero. It was a noisy night for my family started cooking prawns and had beer. Then, they decided to go to the beach the next day.
The day started with me scrubbing the table hard together with my brother and mum after we removed the big three feet fish tank. The stains left behind were more than just years of algae, pink and green in colours. It took almost every effort I could but not more than ten percents of the disgusting colours was removed. We sprayed liquids to soak the table before we left for supper at the prata shop.
After the meal, my brother went to clear up the bathroom while he took his bath and I continued to scrub the table with my mum’s new weapons. I began to see results in my exhaustion and at the risk of direct contacting with the mixed chemicals. I went to bed after 4am.
Andy woke me up at 9+am with his SMS. I continued with my website but dozed off a few times in the day. I was plagued with lots of dreams throughout my sleep.
Gilbert and I finally went out again on Wednesday morning. The main destination was Wild Wild Wet at Downtown East but he planned to go to Changi Point Boardwalk before that since Wild Wild Wet’s operation hours started in the afternoon.
I met him up at Cityhall MRT where he hopped onto the train to go to Tampiness MRT together. After which, we took bus 29 to Changi. The walk was quite nice except that some parts of it was not completed yet, especially the Kellong Walk. I had some problems using my old Olympus D-750 camera after abandoning it for some time. The torching sun almost burned me.
After the walk, which we ended at the Changi Ferry Terminal, we went to the hawker centre to have nasi lemak. We gave the most popular stall a miss since the queue was long. After which, we took bus 29 to a bus-stop near Tampiness Junior College, crossed over to transit to bus 3. We alighted at the bus-stop opposite Downtown East and quickly went to the MacDonald’s to find Gilbert’s friend, Rachel.
Soon, we proceeded to Wild Wild Wet with the two free tickets Gilbert was holding while Rachel had a discount voucher. It was a fun afternoon but I realised I had a bad sunburn after that.
Reaching home, I started checking my email and it took me a couple of hours to reply to those regarding my farewell message. I finished a blog entry before going down to the prata shop to join Kachua for supper.
Saturday morning, I woke up late. It was not long before I started dozing off again and a dream terrorized me. My elder brother brought many drunk friends home to house them in the middle of the night and I was furious. I woke up with my chest feeling uncomfortable.
I went to see the Chinese physician at around 2.30pm. I was amazed when she told me the details of my tongue was more visible and thus she could see that my stomach’s issue was recovering. She warned me not to take too much of the plum product even though it could help my stomach a lot, because it was too salty.
I went to Zaki’s place at Parc Emily, reaching there at 3.40pm. Nobody else had reached. Zaki vacuumed his place before we went down to set up the barbecue stuffs. I went for a swim with Elvin later but he was not ready for a long swim. I finished seventeen laps inside the very well maintained pool, and had to stop in the next lap due to the heavy meal I took before that.
Joy’s son, Jerome, was my delight of the night. Magdalene managed to heat up his enthusiasm. Weitat could have kidnapped him if only he was confident enough to carry little kids.
I went for a last dip into the pool, completing another two laps with Zaki before ending the party. Carrying the leftover stuffs up to the studio apartment strained myself more. The remaining of them had a few rounds of Wii game. The night ended earlier than I had expected. I was exhausted. I stay behind a little longer than the rest with Zaki and Siti. After that, Zaki sent me home on his way to his friend’s house.
My brothers and my elder brother’s girlfriend wanted to go for supper and I accompanied them without my mum since she had already taken some food. I had my usual two plain roti prata and 100plus to hydrate myself.
Last Saturday morning, right after midnight, my family went to the prata shop for supper. I loved suppering with them more than any other meals for everyone’s mood would be better at the late hour. Apart from that, we would only go to nearby places such as the prata shop or MacDonald’s to spend quality time together.
I woke up late. I was back to the very ridiculous sleeping habit since reservist period when I was trying hard to rush work at home until early morning.
The afternoon was tiring and my work efficiency was low. I dragged on until late evening before leaving the house for my jog. It was not a good day for any activity for my stomach gave me lots of problems. Sitting down too long on the chair had also weakened my knees. I began the jog in my half dying body but I was very amazed of myself for no matter how many problems I had before each jog, I would make it to my destination.
I did not have much rest at Marina Barrage this time for the sky was already dark upon reaching. The place was completely dark as well and I could hardly see any person with fair skin. I went to the toilet again and missed the bus to give it a head start. Knowing that in my condition, I was never able to complete with it but I even fell behind the next bus which arrived less than three minutes later.
My timing for the to and fro trips was longer than the previous time for around a minute. I felt uncomfortable to jog without the Polar watch to keep track of all my time, duration and heart rate.
It was time to say goodbye to the days of playing pool, table tennis and table soccer for free. After moving to another building, seven of us were stuck in a small room with poor reception.
I needed much more privacy in order to do my planning for my future and also, new websites.
I was lucky except for the travelling part. The gentleman offered to send us out but he was a workaholic who stayed behind for an extra half an hour. I would not have minded if it was a normal day, but I intended to go back to my office to feel the air before the start of the volleyball game – I could not make it on time.
The games were awesome in the absence of someone. After sleeping in different positions over the past few days, my right arm was numbed and thus, injured, such that I could not really perform. We played till late and I had my dinner just before midnight with Kachua at the prata shop near my house.
Tuesday evening, I stayed in the office until quite late to attend volleyball, not very confirm whether it was on or not since Jingkun and Weitat were not going down and I was too lazy to ask Mingfa. It turned out that only Mingfa, Kok Chiang and Wilson from my side went down. I was more than happy to play with uncle Jiaming and we basically imported a player for each game. I was too sick to do much. We left quite early.
Wednesday morning, I went to visit the Chinese physician again for my cough, flu and sore throat. I had lunch together with Jingkun and Daniel and I was quite stunned when they mentioned going to Mr Prata shop but I did not want to foil their plan. It was quite a tiring afternoon staying inside the administration office. I was very impressed by Mr Baey’s enthusiasm and performance, volunteering himself extra hours to contribute his talent. I stayed a little bit later to check out what Hirman might need but there was too little I could help.
Staying over at Zaki’s place, at Parc Emily, over Friday night was great. Basically, he made me realized true friends were always there to help no matter what. He was not even scare of me puking all over his place like how Hirman did the previous time.
I slept early on his bed. My head was spinning with pain and my mood was unstable. I woke up around twice at nine plus and three plus due to my phone. Other than that, it was one of the longest duration I had slept for the past few years.
He walked me to the coffee shop nearby to have roti prata together. Afterwards, he cleaned up the house while I played with his cat. Then, we walked from his place to Funnan Centre and I finally got to know how centralized his place was. I was tempted by an Acer laptop Aspire 4736 at the price of $1200.
Next, we went to Raffles’ City to do his groceries, where I picked up a few skills from him in selecting food and fruits.
I probably needed a few weekends of staying over there in order to recuperate from all these years’ fatigue, especially the recent stress. The tranquility was tempting.
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 FYP meeting on Sunday afternoon at Plaza Singapura. Everyone was either on time or earlier. The discussion seemed to be more fruitful than other project meetings. We began at around 2.30pm and nobody had expected the meeting to end as late as 6pm.
It was not a pleasant evening for somehow I had gastric pain. I went home to have a little rest by sitting down in front of the computer before I started to pack up. I felt weak but decided not to miss out the fun with my friends. I got a bun at the cake shop nearest to Clementi MRT station and they certainly did well in conning customer by cutting the hot dog into half to create a false impression that there were two hot dogs in each bun.
My second time playing at Clementi beach volleyball court was one of the worst beach volleyball games that I had ever played. The lighting under the dark sky was my flaw as usual, and together with my weak body, it was obvious that I should have stayed at home to rest instead.
We went to NUS to clean ourselves up since Ruoci had to attend her project meeting. Then, we had dinner at the nearby nasi lemak shop. I had three pieces of plain roti prata. My guilt strike me again when Jingkun had to send Weitat home to fetch another car in order to send the rest of us home.
Last Saturday after the beach volleyball game, dinner was at Seah Lm food centre. It was a memorable night because I finally made it to the prata shop after 3am.
It was a long awaited night.
Of course, it was unhealthy to take supper, especially just before going to bed.
My mum went on cruise last Friday and thus, my meals were affected badly. Saturday afternoon saw me fill my stomach with cornflake and milk.
I was a lazy bum as usual.
I pinned high hope for Irwin to get back to Singapore early and he returned in the evening as planned, however, he did not want to risk queuing up with the crowd outside any restaurant since it was Valentine's Day.
We went for golfing instead and I bought some finger food at the cafe. The crispy lemon chicken pieces were disastrous. It was not very safe to get such food from small cafe because the food may not be fresh enough. Whatever the case, some parts were not well cooked enough.
I strike many air balls before beginning to do the swinging in more an appropriate way than ever - that was to use the left hand's strength instead of both. I could not get the ball far until I got bored and started to use my waist when I decided I had enough of practice with the "P" instead of "7 Iron".
We went to Bugis to meet up with Eugene before proceeding to TCC. I was right that the waitress, Charlene, was not around. Anyway, the inside seats were all taken and thus we sat at the non air-conditioned place. We asked for ice water while we were looking through the menu but the waiter claimed that it would be served only when we placed our order. It took them some time to attend to us to take our order later and even longer to bring the water over to drench our thirst. We did not like the attitude of the waiter at all. We were interrupted twice in the midst of enjoying our chat for they brought drinks over like as if we would order new ones before finishing ours.
We went over to a pub at Suntec City where we were questioned of our ages. I was not fan of alcohol. Since there was no backrest and the recent relapse of my worsening back problem put me in sweat. I knew I probably looked pale if it was in the daylight.
Eugene took a cab home. Irwin and I walked towards my place but stopped at a prata shop near Clarke Quay to have our dinner. Irwin’s briyani rice turned out to be just plain white rice, whereas my two plain roti pratas were hard. We were served can drinks without ice and cup.
After we reached my place, Irwin took a cab home. It was around four AM when I reached home.
I had never been through a Valentine’s Day with a girl before but it did not affect my mood.
Something caught me when I was about to go to sleep. It was an extremely tiring morning. Lunch was all alone inside the office. When I rushed to the lab to see everyone standing outside, I knew I was somehow being setup accidentally.
I struggled the afternoon nodding a few times inside the office to do work. Jingkun left for his night class whereas Weitat went home because he wanted to meet up with his friend before the volleyball game.
Mingli came over right after her class and I met her at the canteen. Weitat got back with my Burger King’s Chicken sandwich and it tasted very good.
I dozed off for a while and woke up to join in the game with five hours of sleep for the past two days. I was exhausted and thus could not perform to my standard. We had to play five on five in the lack of players and Mingli let me play throughout the games since she knew I could not go down to play often anymore.
Weitat decided to dine at the prata shop near my house. I took a lift in his car together with Mingli while Mingfa took a lift from Wilson. They had employed a China guy to work and the combination was weird since all of the staffs were Indians.
When I asked for new prata, the guy claimed that the pratas were all “new” and Wilson witnessed them reheating the pratas. Weitat was very disgusted with the plastic-like pratas even though the rest of us thought they were not that bad, but was definitely off standard.
