You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2011.
This is a freak historical experiment. I mean, since I’m quite certain that I want to study History, I might as well toy around with some concepts and apply it to personal life. It is 2010 as I type this, but this will only become public in 2011. It’s like declassified archives, or time travel! It’s like I took this event and hurled it into the future by a year. Anyway, because it is probably one of the only few personal posts that involves what I did with my circle of friends, here is a lengthy detailed ramble. The unnecessary details also serve to distract people from the important points and to tire them from reading the whole damn thing 
Last saturday, I was supposed to go jalan jalan in the evening as usual, after spending most of the afternoon at City Hall by myself. To be specific, it was a sushi tei treat at Thompson. Unfortunately, my phone died – ran out of battery – kaploot – and I didn’t know how to get to Thompson by what time. I had no choice but to turn up at Bishan some time later that night.
Or so the story goes. The truth is, I lied — as though the excuse was not ridiculously unbelievable enough. Actually, not really, my internet phone has died off quite quickly even with a spare on several occasions. Blame msn, blame gchat. But I digress. The point is, I turned off my phone. The battery was still half full(or half empty, whatever). I said I was going to turn up just to please, but I really didn’t want to. I was sian. I sat at some corner in CHIJMES, thinking to myself what else I could be doing that night, and who else I could meet.
As I made my way to the station, I ran into celine -not literally, of course- who then had an epic expression of surprise that I would probably remember even a year later. She was going to Bugis, which was really convenient for me, because I was going to Bugis because of my arrangements to go jalan jalan there that night. …or so the second story, which completely contradicts the facts, goes. Bugis is somewhat on the way to Thompson which I am not going to right? The truth is, well, reasonable. People don’t have much more time left before flying off. Oh, and I wanted to eat cake at Food For Thought, which was near the station – it was part of my random wander around by myself day. Plus, i couldn’t have possibly said that I was travelling to eat a piece of cake by myself.
I soon found myself back at the station again. I could still just turn up a bit more than fashionably late for a free sushi tei dinner. free. food. free. jap food. But again, I sent an sms to LC while waiting for the train, to ask if he wanted to go for drinks at our usual place around the area. After some discussion, that didn’t work out either.
I found myself back at city hall, walking in the shopping centre, when I saw Hossan Leong advertising his upcoming show near the level one fountain, by uh, butchering the pledge in a cynical but laughably true manner. Something about regardless of race, language or religion (unless it is opposed to bearing arms for the country) – and I’m quite sure there was mention of foreign talent somewhere. That’s when I loled and smsed gremlin, who then replied that she was at city hall too. Hrm.
I then found myself on the third floor coffee club with gremlin and mag– or was it TCC? I can never tell the two apart, the one which gremlin had vouchers for, whatever. That was when my phone, uh, died. I got some glimpse into the first year local uni student, what with orientation camps and trying to prepare by reading some cheem looking economics books from the library. Gridlock economics or something. I’m guessing she never finished reading it: most people wouldn’t have. The more interesting part was watching gremlin trying to avoid trying to meet her SP (whatever it stands for) who asked her for dinner cos he was in the area cos he was….playing arcade…by himself. If only I wrote better, this could become a literature book, cough.
Soon I found myself eating at citylink’s sakae sushi with gremlin. Funny how instead of taking a free sushi tei dinner, I settled for a simpler (read: lower quality) jap place which involved sharing a mango prawn monster sushi with an assortment of small sides, like chawanmushi and cha soba. Not free of course.
And like how the day was a tapestry of one coincidence after another — it was the exact moment that I went to look for a toilet back at the shopping centre that I saw fireworks. So pretty. (LC would then tell me earlier today that fireworks are for girls -_-)
Of course, I’d tell gremlin about what I saw, who was then very indignant about me not calling her to come see the fireworks. Of which, my response was: “my phone is dead” — that was not a lie…in the figurative sense. although i probably subconciously factored in that if she left the table to look at fireworks, the restaurant might think that we ate and ran.
It was only after all these random events that happened so suddenly that I ended my night in a more peaceful fashion at Bishan to use a house phone to return calls. So much had happened in one evening, I felt like I was just appearing at one place after another. In fact, I was half expecting to run into beulah on the train because of some funny reason like she took the wrong direction. Overall, it was memorable, fun and tiring — it just wouldn’t be very appropriate for me to share the truth too early. Lying is a bad thing, but direct refusal and causing disappointment is hard to do. That wouldn’t have been a good thing either.
So I lied. Maybe I shouldn’t have. The night was still awesome, but that doesn’t make the act correct… anyway, in the manner of procrastination, that’s for me to worry about in a year’s time. how angry can people possibly get about something that happened an entire year ago right? …right?
One cannot help but to wonder how much could change over a year. How different would things be a year from now? How different would I be a year from now? My guess is that it will probably be quite different from how I believe things would be a year from now. Life isn’t about a plan, it is about a series of unplanned random coincidences that we really don’t know about.
some people feel a need, or rather an obligation, to keep their blog updated regularly. i don’t. i just feel that the lack of writing is symptomatic of something else — either a loss of creativity, or severe busyness. Often, it is both. How creative can a diligent and busy person be?
For the past few weeks, I’ve been almost living a triple life. I have work in the day (a lot of time spent doing nothing and at the pool, but It Is Still Work.), studying at the night. a job at night, or rather in between night and day, which in turn clashes with either/both of the earlier two activities mentioned. It is quite a packed schedule. I now only eat dinner at home once at most, on a weekend night. Weekday evenings are usually spent out, affecting family time. Social life is still thriving for some reason, but online life is horrible, mainly because I get home too late. Hrm, now where can I find a slot to put in a tuition kid. Let’s not even talk about retaking a certain sets of tests. Oh, which reminds me about what other important thing I have to do!
So how do I entertain myself these days? With a lot of food. For some reason, my appetite has increased like crazy recently. On average, each of meal has doubled in portion. Breakfast includes more servings now that I somehow wake up earlier. Lunch involves eating a free taxpayer lunch first, then eating another $3+ plate, or vice versa. Dinner now has this additional meal after that which involves guzzling any random thing I can scavenge. My family will soon wonder how come the food has been disappearing at such a rate.
Looking at the things I do to myself, I can’t tell if I’m damn intense or plain slack.
Oh dear, it has been almost a week since I last posted. Has my mind been that stifled? I was quite busy for the past week (and bit more) — needing to split my thoughts on three different broad fronts. Let’s not even talk about each sub-tier that I had to split it further for each front — they could total up to around 15 different areas maybe?
Hrm, so on my only free night at home so far — I thought about which of the three major areas to devote my time to, and decided to screw it — and clear my room instead.
My room generally has some standard of tidiness, but often there come these random things which don’t fit anywhere and end up lying around. Some may recall that I cleared my room once around half a year ago and made it all nice and decorated. I scrapped that. The room took a more practical image — books on the outside, stuff lying around inside, and uhhh my pantry.. out of convenience sake is this pile on a small table. My room is almost like a self-sufficient dorm.
Of course there are still some areas I’m not satisfied with (mainly on my floor right now) but at least I have an empty table, and a mountain of books that disappeared into order and neatness somewhere. I just created a heck lot of empty space — like magic.
Now what do I do with my remaining time :\
The eyes are the windows to the soul, and persuasion is an evil spirit — that penetrates into the head and distorts reason. I was convinced that there could have been no other reason that I such illogical thoughts, that worked against my self-interest, or that overturned a general mindset that I held onto for a while. It was almost as if those thoughts were planted, not with the strength of reason, logic and argumentation, but by an unexplainable force. It wasn’t seduction either. But maybe, just maybe, it was that slight resemblance in those eyes by some uncanny coincidence that struck a chord with my subconscious, and made it more susceptible to suggestions.
Actually, that makes no sense.
Wednesdays are traditionally the worst day of the week. Back in school, wednesday would be mostly the slack go back early day — which for some reason, got converted into a stay late till eight for debate day. And at work, it was usually a turning point right at the middle of the week, otherwise it was the start of a week that ends on a disgusting note. Either way, Wednesdays were bad.
And there I was taking a casual morning walk under the welcoming weather — to the clinic. It was the first time EVER in an ENTIRE year that I took an mc –I had finally lost my mc virgnity. But quite deserved, recall that Poison incident one week ago, yeah it lasted almost that long.
It felt good. But (or rather ‘Hence’) I must be cautious not to become an mc slut — many things stop me: cost, trouble of seeing a doctor, my own reputation and how my boss’ perception will have a practical impact on my schedule in the long term, plus how i still continue to get phone calls even while at home. It’s not all that fun.
***
On a side note, you know that foreign talent is here and stealing monies, when you’re sitting in this new clinic run by one hong kong doctor and one taiwan doctor, instead of the usual clinic you used to go to.
Poisoned! I have been poisoned. I have been worrying that one day someone will come around to poison me, and if other things had occured this week — I would have been strongly convinced.
For now, I pin the blame on a masala curry and naan I had with my Snake-Oil seller friend on wednesday night. But upon deeper thought, that might be racist — it could have well been the thai food on tuesday night or the 4pm chicken rice on wednesday.
This has probably one of the worst case of poisoning I have had in a while — it already has been four days and I’m still having very bad diarrohea. To be optimistic, at least I never needed to run off to the toilet over this period. But I have been feeling incapacitated, with a perpetual funny feeling in my stomach (which cannot be purged) and a dehydrated weakness. Worst of all, my appetite has been affected. I have been barely eating any rice. Like for today’s dinner, I had ice cream, croissant, fries and cookies for dinner.
Yet I have been working long and late this whole week. I haven’t had dinner at home at all this week. Maybe it is a form of irritable bowel syndrome due to stress from the new jampacked work schedule — but that’s unlikely. It has been shown that my most recent physiological expression of stress is the left eye-twitch, which came during my May exam period and went away on the day it ended. Seriously.
It’s more likely that its just the food. It’s quite likely that its the curry, but just as likely that it was the thai — after all two of my friends did get pretty bad poisoning from that same thai place almost exactly three years ago. Or maybe a combination of all three. Compounded poison. Or it could be just that I have only been eating nonsense all week — Man cannot live by nutella alone.
I should see a doctor soon; I could get an MC. Pity I hate seeing doctors.
It had been a hectic jampacked week till today — or so it seemed. Even on a seemingly peaceful day with nothing scheduled, I got no rest. Who would have expected that disaster would appear out of the blue while I’m happily having my pre-lunch relaxation. The day would have otherwise been perfect. Fortunately, I brought my phone — or the shit would have been so much more. How bad it would have been, how bad.
This is a week where I do not get to eat dinner at home. The least I could ask for — is not a nap, which is actually safer, but to have my pre-lunch relaxation in peace. I mean, why else do I go to work?
The weather has always been capricious, like a crazy woman on crack (TRIPLE KILL). But ever since I came back from that two-week ‘vacation’, I haven’t had a day of ideal weather with a matching ideal time. Twice already, have I gone to shower on what looked like the preparatory phase of a thunderstorm, only to come out of the shower to see the scorching sun. With weather like this, it’s almost like the heavens are literally playing a joke on you.
Misfortune is like a day when you have no work to do at all, no boss around, and it just had to be a grey, gloomy, wet day. Similarly, misfortune comes in a form of a temptingly nice sunny day, when you are jam packed with work, and expecting more arrows to pop out from the phone. Again, the heavens play a bad joke. Like Nintendo DSes are to amry boys are we to the gods, they play with us during office hours.
Then at the end of the day, you look back and realised: it wasnt all that busy after all. If, just IF, you had the foreknowledge of all the things that you didn’t have to do that day, all the things that you were tasked to do at first but were unexpectedly cancelled — you could have gone ahead and done what you actually wanted. You wouldn’t have wasted your time. There’s almost that slight tinge of regret.
But we don’t have such prescience. The things I ask for in life are very simple — either give me control over the weather, or omniscience. I guess the best things in life can’t be bought with money.
***
story doesnt end there. frustrated by such misfortune (and how perfect the weather was for a swim), I decided to bring home all my stuff with the intention of going tomorrow. But I failed to foresee that when I got home into my comfortable bed and had my busy Other Life to live, I didn’t want to waste my time off work.
I mean, “I do this stuff at work! Why the hell should I be doing it out of workhours when I can do it during?! So not worth it.” This thought was actually present when I packed my stuff and planned for tomorrow, but it was somehow outshouted by the nice weather (irrational. I was fully aware that the weather tmr might be different). And this was later outshouted when I got back home and inundated with things to do.
In decision making, we probably never really consider reasons and arguments — we just pick them based on whatever we feel. I bet pro-life people are just one unwanted pregnancy away from supporting abortions.
And i guess our present selves can almost never make good decisions involving our future selves. I brought my stuff home for nothing — I’ll be bringing it back on Monday.
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