Be glad if you are able to celebrate Father's Day with your dad. I do not have the chance and not anymore.
He was a drinker, gambler and smoker. My dad had numerous bad habits but nothing could beat his love for the family. He and my mum gave me what I had today.
I started my life in a very poor family. At least, I did not have to starve, except for a certain period of time when he was already not around. He took us out for dinner during weekends despite losing money in his gamble sessions and he had never failed to give us money for school stuffs. He got drunk but he did not abuse. He smoked but he kept the cigarette smoke away from us.
The most unforgettable recollection of him was when he was on his hospital bed, asking me if my elder brother and I had pocket money. Would you be worried like him over such little thing when you are suffering badly and about to lose your last breath?
Although he may not be the best dad on earth, he has certainly done his part.
It has been more than ten years since my dad has passed away. None of us has ever forgotten him. We do not cry and in fact we joke using him. A simple teasing of “Are you missing lao ba (father)?” can be heard occasionally. None of us would admit it.
It seems like pretending to stay strong is not the best way to handle things because the tears of saddest can multiple, such that sometimes when nobody is watching, drops of them can overwhelm the eyes.
If you still have a dad, be really happy about it.
My brothers and my elder brother’s girlfriend started playing monopoly deal game in the room. Lucky joined us but he was moving around to change his sleeping position, unlike my mum could sleep throughout at the corner. Lucky, however, refused to stop farting. After the game, I continued with SEO work for the quit smoking site and went to bed after 7.30am.
My mum woke me up before 11am to get ready for movie. We went to Great World City to catch the movie “It’s a Great Great World”. Since we were in a rush, we did not take breakfast before that. It was a good movie and I enjoyed the pieces of stories inside. It was filmed in a humorous and touching way.
We went home after dropping by the pet shop. We had steamboat at home for our first meal of the day. I started dozing off and by the late afternoon, everyone was out of the house. I continued sleeping with Lucky using my chest as his pillow as usual unless 7pm.
I started playing a game in Command and Conquer before watching my favourite show on channel 8 – Zheng He Xia Xi Yang.
I began the day blogging while doing SEO for the quit smoking site. It had been quite long since I started neglecting it. I went to bed at 5am.
My aunt woke me up at around 11am when she came over with our breakfast. However, she added chilli and we could not finish the spicy noodle. We took bus 75 to the home at Bukit Panjang to visit our uncle.
After the long trip, it was one of the worst moments I would ever want to be in – looking at my uncle nearly made my tears fall. He was one of the best guys on earth and it really hurt to see him in such state that he could not even think. Sitting on the wheel chair, he was tied to it and saliva continued to drip.
After leaving the home, we went to Bukit Panjang Plaza for a quick bite at the MacDonald’s. We shared two Mac Nugget and one filet-o-fish meal. Then, we went to Daiso to shop. We went to the bus-interchange and a cute wild dog caught our attention.
I continued with the SEO work for my tuition agency site. In the late evening, I caught the movie “Zombie Land” at on a SCV channel.
It was a totally different Chinese New Year Day 2 this year because my uncle on my dad’s side went overseas with his family and thus there was no gathering. My main stream of ang bao money was eliminated and it was my poorest Chinese New Year ever.
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 was busy typing emails and later on, I tried to finish the article Home Tuition in Singapore before going to bed at 5am. Lucky woke me up near 11am as he sniffed my ear to cause irritation with the loud and air pressure.
I took MRT with my elder brother and mum and met up my elder brother’s girlfriend at Kranji station. Then, we took bus 170 over to Woodlands Checkpoint and then to Johor Bahru. The queue at Woodlands CheckPoint’s bus interchange was totally screwed up. Bastards had started cutting queue and forming a third queue in between the actual two ones. It was beyond control and none of the officials had attempted to clear the mess.
My mum went for haircut, treatment and dyeing of hair at the old shopping centre next to City Square. I had chicken rice with the couple while waiting. We went back to check on my mum and realised the salon allowed smoking inside and I was angered by such illegal act. We went shopping for a while before going back to find my mum again. The couple left to meet up with my younger brother and his gangs at the MacDonald’s while I stayed behind to wait. After my mum was done with her hair, she told me us she had purchased a bottle of lotion from the hairdresser. I was disgusted that she was cheated again as my elder brother told us that the hairdresser earned very high commission for such sales, which meant that we could get the lotion at much cheaper price elsewhere.
We went for lunch at the Hong Kong café because it was my younger brother’s birthday and we could get a big container of tea for free. We did not order a lot of food. After lunch, we separated into two groups. My younger brother stayed with his friends. It was a very boring afternoon for me. Sometimes I had to wait outside the crowded shops that my mum shopped in. I was sleepy and had many better things to do and it was a really big torment for me.
The two groups of us met up at 6pm and hopped on to the cabs that we had booked before we proceeded to a faraway seafood restaurant called “TKK” or “Ti Kong Kia” or “Son of Heaven”. It was by the side of the sea, facing Sembawang. Other than the good scenery, the service was excellence. It was too bad that I was not a seafood fanatic.
We went back to City Square after that and did a little shopping. Luckily, this time round, my mum was quick and we joined up with the rest soon. When we were crossing over the custom, we realised the design for arrival and departure were symmetrical after some confusion. We were waiting for CW2 bus to go straight to Bugis and my younger brother saw the Resort World bus. We left the queue and boarded our new discovery at the price of ringgit five bucks each. The bus left us at Keppel Road before it went towards Sentosa.
After reaching home, we saw that Lucky had messed up the entire place. My elder brother arrived almost at the same time and he was stunned to see that Lucky had destroyed his girlfriend’s new slippers.
I spent some time replying Wanling and Gilbert through Facebook about the upcoming outing.
I took a long time to blog and went to bed at around 5.30am.
I woke up at noon and went to Ah Moy Street with my family for lunch. After that, I continued my beauty sleep.
Our dinner was at Swis Ling Restaurant, an outdoor seafood stall at 1 Teo Hong Road. We were telling the waitress that we did not want to sit near any smoking area and suddenly, two young Chinese guys came over and one was holding a lighted cigarette. They took the table next to us, which was stationed in the non-smoking area. We changed table. When the waitress came over, I questioned her about allowing her customers to smoke at inappropriate places, and she claimed that her customers would be fined two hundred bucks. From what we knew, the stall owner, or probably the person in charge would be fined as well for allowing that.
We ordered some mee hoon, fried rice, satays and a plate of pork ribs. The pork ribs were expensive with a few miserable pieces at ten bucks, but they tasted extremely nice. The homemade honey lemon was fantastic as well. However, my younger brother got bitten badly by mosquitoes and when the bill came, we were stunned by the price of the drinks.
Before we left, a China lady came over and took the big table besides ours, and started lighting up cigarette stick as well. I was very disappointed at how people could break the laws and harm other people’s health. I wondered how she would react if someone were to keep farting besides her while she was eating. Anyway, the waitress did not do anything as well, probably because she did not want to offend her customers and lose the businesses.
After reaching home, I got myself a photo of a smoker for an article in SmokeForWhat from a net friend.
I tried to sleep as early as before 5am and I woke up before 9am. I did not go back to sleep for I remembered my younger brother told me that he could go for a swim before his school. My mum bought breakfast for us from the coffee shop at the second level on its last day of business.
I went to the toilet twice before setting off. The noodle seemed to be a curse. Then, we took bus 145 to Mount Faber Safra and the ticket selling machine failed on us again. I hesitated for a while before visiting the toilet again. I joined my brother in the swim soon but my left shoulder caused me enough pain to slow down but I eventually got used to it. After taking down ten laps using my zip-zap swimming style to avoid the crowd, I stopped for my stomach to digest properly for a while before my chest was choked. It certainly described how bad the problem with my stomach had become. Anyway, I swam another ten laps before the problem relapsed and that summed up my day.
We went up to the second storey to look around after taking our bath, into the E-Mart and then bowling alley. Then, my brother set off to school while I went home alone with my wet nose. I regretted badly not bringing along tissue paper.
The running nose worsened soon and I started sneezing as well. I tried to rest but could not doze off. I posted question in Facebook to discuss about how to solve the problem to smoking in public housing and a smoker posted an idiotic comment to piss me off.
I planned to set off early to for photography before meeting up my ex-colleagues but my weak body refused me. In the end, the bus 75 played trick on me and the bad traffic jam worsened the situation. I alighted a bus-stop earlier and finally reached Rail Mall half an hour late. My gang, consisting of Hirman, Christine, Joei and Eunice had finished their dinner and left a potato for me. I was surprisingly bloated after taking it. Since I was sick, they ordered a bowl of pumpkin soup for me. It was never a boring outing with Hirman around.
As they were calculating the bill of nearly $140, they excluded me for I took very little stuffs and that I was jobless. I felt like taking free lodging. Hirman dropped me at Keppel Road before he sent Joei for her next appointment at East Coast. I felt the urge to get my civilian driving license and car so that I could do friends favours as well.
After reaching home, my younger brother made a cup of tea for me upon knowing that I was having a bad flu.
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.
I waited with Regina for the bus number 2 from the interchange and it did not leave sharp at midnight. Since it was late, I had to send her home no matter what. For almost the whole journey, she was showing me Facebook status of her crush through her iPhone, which was boring. We were, however, being entertained by an Indian who could not keep his voice down at the top of the double-decker bus. An old man who was sleeping at the back “sheesh” at the blackie but his skin was too thick.
I took a cab to Hirman’s house after sending Regina home and it cost me over six bucks for the short distance, but it was much better than travelling home directly. I felt the need to own a car. Anyway, I was so unlucky to go into the lift that an old man came out with a lighted cigarette. Smoking was not only a problem in my area.
Hirman started teasing me as he thought I had a girlfriend. Jeremy was at Hirman’s house and since I was exchanging SMSes with Regina, I decided to sleep in the living room in order not to interrupt their sleep; I preferred to sleep without the air-conditioner anyway. I was hungry but Hirman was too tired that he had changed his mind about going for supper.
Regina called me to check my location. I felt quite bad for not talking to the host more because I was on phone while he prepared the sofa bed for me. We put down the phone soon as she was going to read her book. I could not get to sleep and the last time I replied her slow SMS was after 3am.
Jeremy and Hirman got up after 7am. We went to the airport together to send Jeremy’s friend off, followed by having breakfast at Killiney. The set of breakfast inclusive of tea, half boiled egg and bread cost $4.05, which was much more expensive than any coffee shop in Singapore. I supposed the extra two bucks were for breaking the eggs or probably, the extra tiny piece of egg shell left inside.
After the meal, I walked both of them to the entrance and bid them goodbye since they were going to somewhere near Regina’s house to play tennis while I did not bring any gear again, and was still in my jeans. I went straight to the toilet to settle my stomach issue before taking the train, suffering the long journey standing alone. It was around 11am when I reached home. I uploaded the photos into Facebook and dozed off while the videos took ages to kiss Facebook.
I went for lunch with my brothers. I was craving for the lor mee at Ah Moy Street which my younger brother suggested but it was closed for the day without any notification. We ended up going to Maxwell Food Centre and had Chinese mixed rice at the “Tiong Bahru” curry rice stall. The pork chop was quite impressively done.
My younger brother and I started dozing off soon after reaching home. Regina called me in a harsh tone to get me to remove the video from Facebook and thus my sleep was interrupted again.
My video was packet fried rice. I started installing the old Adobe Premier and Aftereffect software to edit the video before I uploaded it again. Huiting suddenly messaged me in Facebook as she had a new task for me.
The copyrighting of the FAQ page for SmokeForWhat.com was done and it took longer than anyone could expect to put them nicely in place with all the keywords highlighted or hyperlinked.
I got so excited with the basic layout of SmokeForWhat.com up and I pushed the files to live immediately without testing it using other browsers, especially Internet Explorer.
Vanessa was the first person to test the live site after the changes and it looked totally disastrous in her Mac’s Safari. It reminded me of my mistake of not testing it in other browsers before uploading the files. I got her to do a refresh of the browser and it helped, and everything appeared as designed in Safari.
However, when I tested the site using Internet Explorer, the new implemented dropdown menu’s alignment went berserk. At 3am, it was the most horrifying thing to happen to a live site. Internet Explorer was a problematic internet browser for it did not strictly follow the W3C rules and thus, some pages might appear differently; and it came free with all Windows installation.
Luckily, I managed to fix, or rather, recode the dropdown menu within the next hour, such that it looked perfect for all browsers.
It was another day which I bathed really late.
I was woke up by shifu’s SMS but I went back to sleep at around noon. It was supposed to be an eventful day for Meihoe had organised badminton game in the new ITE CCK campus, which I was very excited in for I did not get to see the sports hall previously. However, she did not reply my SMS to confirm the game and Weitat told me that he did not see her for the entire day. I decided not to risk making a wasted trip down.
It was also Wanling’s off day and we were supposed to go out in the morning but she told me on Sunday that she had to accompany her mum for medical checkup in the early afternoon. After dropping her a message in the late afternoon, she replied that she could not make it anymore.
I spent quite some time on blogging and also playing with the yellow bird that my mum released from the cage.
It was a very slacking day for me after putting up the new design for SmokeForWhat.com. My effort in getting original pictures for the site to spice the boring words up went in vain.
I basically spent my entire Saturday working on the new design of SmokeForWhat.com after scribbling the layout on my recycled paper days ago. It was nothing fantastic but the new design was more formal compared to the draft design I did on the live site.
I was lack of images that owners would not forbid me from using due to copyright problem. Although it was a non-profit site and such issue could be more relaxed but I did not want to create issues in future.
I was very surprised when dear chio Vanessa hit me up in MSN to tell me about her recent impression on a website that reminded her of SmokeForWhat.com. It was so coincident that I was sticking my butts on the bed for the entire day to do something about it and she came to tell me to do it as well.
I was too focused on my work to do anything else. The greatest problem was the dropdown menu, which I had not touched for long. I basically used the same technique as my personal website to do it.
Nevertheless, it was a better web design experience this time when I was not totally alone.
I had uploaded the files for the new design of http://smokeforwhat.com in the morning, as early as 3+am when most people were still asleep.
The previous design was more of a draft work to get my features up during the development. For as hard as I had been telling myself to come up with a more formal design that would draw attentions of the younger generation, I finally did it.
What I was lacking of were original pictures and more contents. Obviously it was not advisable to talk to Google and strip down all the nice pictures in case of copyright issue. I had to go around asking for help and the response was not really good, or rather, nobody really bothered.
My initial plan was to visit the TCM at 8am and go to Tze Khit’s gym to continue the work for him before meeting Irwin to work together. I was too tired to drag myself up and thus I gave up visiting the doctor.
I received replies from all the relevant departments regarding the dumping of cigarette butts issue. One of them even told me they had monitored the suspected units but could not find any trace of illegal dumping. I really doubted their commitment since the inconsiderate smoker usually did it after midnight and which government sector would really send their men to monitor it at such hour? The town council men came with letter to urge residents not to commit the crime. I was very impressed with their promptness but the letter was too friendly to scare any unkind smoker off.
Irwin had a sudden change of plan and told me to meet him up in the early afternoon. I went to the Post Office to pay my income tax before going to the gym to get the picture files from Tze Khit so that I could help him to work on the poster. However, when I reached the gym, Irwin changed his plan again and told me that he would contact me later. I continued working on Tze Khit’s websites at the gym in my jeans. I was prepared to get Irwin’s call and thus I did not change into sports gear.
I made a grave mistake when the laptop’s battery died off. As I had placed the adapter into a different compartment in my lively bag, I thought I had forgotten to bring it along. After reaching home, I saw my empty table and the memory flashed through my brain. I went back to continue with the work until nearly 8pm when I finished off the important updates, I went home for dinner. It was a draining afternoon for I hated researching for products, which was in fact beyond my duty.
Then I contacted Irwin but he seemed too busy to meet up.
After having a bad dinner hours ago, my family and I were strike with famine. We decided to go to the Maxwell Food Centre for our supper. It was drizzling but the sky was very stingy with the raindrops.
The first thing that stunned me was a table of guys smoking right in the centre of the food centre. There were rules in the country but how often people tried to defiance broadly? It happened in Chinatown Complex as well. I supposed these inconsiderate law-breakers were thinking policemen would never drop by at the late hour.
I had a plate of noodle while the rest of them shared two bowls of porridge together with some pig’s organs. Before we left, another old man was lighting his stick.
After reaching home, I kept myself awake to type a complain letter to IMM regarding the matter of making go down a waste trip. My persistence to fight against sleeping late had failed again.
In the afternoon, I went to the gym again but I was working on Tze Khit’s websites throughout the day. I joined them in the takeaway from The Rice Experience again and the teriyaki chicken rice tasted quite nice but was definitely not very filling.
A cute girl went to the gym with her aunt and we were all stunned by her age because she looked much more matured. I had my gym workout for a while before Tze Khit looked at his websites and asked me for more amendments. It took quite some time for me to work out how the web submission forms were coded. Bobby was very hungry and we ordered two pizzas and bread.
After reaching home, I quickly submitted my complain email to the IMM’s web submission.
1000 fans! (won't be announcing the figure often in future)
Thanks to all the great hearts, especially people who have been helping to invite your friends over.
Remember that we are not discriminating smokers, but trying to help them instead.
If you think the website has somehow assisted or inspired you, please kindly continue to spread it via online and through words of mouth.
Your inputs and suggestions are valuable. Give us new contents if you come across any. Make great contributions to the society by just making a little bit of efforts.
I woke up after 2pm on Sunday. It was due to the fact that I left Dorothy’s house late in Daniel’s car and I refused to sleep before working on my website. I missed my favourite show - Plan A - on channel 8 again.
It was quite a productive Sunday. I gave gaming a miss with my endurance and finally, I pushed my new website - SmokeForWhat - to live after more than two years of delay.
EIP, my dread, finally started on Tuesday morning. Going down all the way to Bukit Batok ITE was killing half of my days that I was unable to do any other stuff. It was a test of my luck to see which secondary school students were going down in order to judge how tiring I would be by the end of each session. I was lucky that the Westwood Secondary school kids were very adorable. However, I made a great communication mistake and Zaki reached at 8am.
Zaki sent me back to campus to attend my department meeting, which started forty-five minutes earlier and the meeting was over soon upon reaching. Nevertheless, I got to enjoy the nasi lemak from my boss.
I had a payback of my lack of sleep due to gaming before I went to bed. Throughout the afternoon, I was never productive by nodding in front of my laptop. The worst thing was when I discovered that my smoking site did not work properly on my webhost even though everything was fine on both laptops I was using. It was disastrous to work with AJAX when debugging was needed.
Sometimes I did doubt my own principle. I always did my best to attend to all my friends but somehow it made me very unfocused. I had been observing friends who did not even glance at me when I stood beside them during their conversation with others, and indeed they were more successful than me.
I reached home at around 6pm. I slacked for some time and finally left my house for a jog after taking my medicine. It was another challenge to my limit for I could easily sleep like a bear at that moment. I started off weak and felt like sleeping at certain points of time. By the time I reached the big T-junction separating Marina Barrage and Marina South Pier, I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I was impressed with my final timing.
On the Tuesday evening, the place was not even half as crowded as the weekends. There were more groups of youngsters around. The usual huge green snake kite departed soon before darkness embarked. I started lying down to rest. The time tickled fast and before I could doze off, it was near 8pm. I made my way down and did some stretching longer than ever, distracted by a mini bus which I suspected was from MediaCorp.
When I started to take off, I was glad to see bus 400 stopping at the bus-stop. My second race against the bus was granted but I was not given advance start off as long as the previous time. Before I reached the T-junction, the bus had already beaten me. I did not give up and kept my pace constant at the exhausting speed. My effort had a payoff for I managed to overtake the alighted passengers inside the small tunnel as they were walking towards the MRT station. I was quite proud of myself.
I could not keep up with the pace after turning away from the entrance to MRT, but managed to push myself furthermore. In the end, I checked my timing and was very amazed with myself for I broke my own record by taking less than 19 minutes.
On Sunday, I met up with Irwin at Paragon. We had our late long lunch at Sushi Tei before proceeding to Cineleisure for a few games of pool. We took bus 167 together and he alighted at Shenton Way.
Upon reaching home, I was hardworking and somehow, I managed to accomplish big tasks for my upcoming smoking website.
