I went to Marsiling around three times, mainly to help to babysit Luckie and my elder brother took good care of me. He tried to pay for my meals. My sister-in-law also helped me to buy lunch. Eventually, I felt I had not contributed much.
During the day of the bike shoot with Boon Hui, she bought me drinks from Starbucks and helped me to press some of my acupuncture points to relief some pain from my shoulder injuries. She refused to split the cab fare and then insisted in giving a treat to her friend who was loaning us his bike. After the shoot, she suggested me to take a cab home and offered to pay for me.
My mum helped me to apply medication oil every night. Even though she was clueless about pressing the acupuncture points, it more or less would have helped in making improvement.
My ball-bearings for my trolley from Ebay arrived. I brought it down to Bike Culture and my elder brother and Fattie helped me to replace the old ones.
Gilbert brought me to the Fitness First gym at 100AM. As he was a busy person, it was not easy for him to fork out time to catch up with me.
I had a photoshoot with Cheryl Chua. She took the initiative to do a video discussion with me. As the shoot was a little revealing, I was glad of the trust she had placed on me.
During the shoot with Sharon Ng, she bought some delicious bread from ToastBox for me. She was also very patient with me to try out the yoga moves.
Tag Archives: family
Spread the Love – April 2017
While I was struck with extreme bad luck during the beginning of the year due to a few models who had wasted my time, Boon Hui helped me when I was in need of someone to test playing with my new white backdrop. We had a “last minute” shoot and it helped me to test the limitation of my equipment to prepare me for an important shoot with Joy.
After the shoot with Joy, she gave me a good treat. I felt guilty for I was not someone who would appreciate good food and dining at an expensive restaurant was really a waste of money.
There was a volleyball game in NUS new town. Jingjie gave me and others a lift over at Harbourfront Centre after our lunch at MacDonald’s. After that, we went to Tampines and he was the driver who also sent me home. Anyway, Jingjie was the coordinator for the game and it was very kind of him to help to arrange with us even though he was very busy with work.
My younger brother arranged for a Mother’s Day dinner. He managed to get discount through an application and we got to enjoy expensive Indonesian food at low price at the new Tanjong Pagar Centre.
I went over to Marsiling twice to help to take care of Luckie who had his third slip disc problem. During the first stay, my elder brother helped me to fix the tablet he had passed to me much earlier – the WiFi was down after doing windows update. During the second trip, he tried to fix my trolley’s wheels but realised the ball-bearings were spoiled. Then, he found out the model number so that I could get new pieces online.
Spread the Love – August 2016
My mum noticed that I had many photography equipment lying around and she packed some space at the shelf previously used to put Luckie’s stuff for me to store things.
Gilbert had a free movie ticket as one of his colleagues fell sick and could not go. He even picked me up to go over to Lido together. I stopped him from sending me home after that and I actually made it home earlier than him. It would take him double the time if he were to give me a lift home.
During the re-shoot with Angie at her place, she cooked dinner for both her new social media manager, Mary, and me. It was great to be given a treat by someone of a high status who had cooked personally for us. In fact, Angie had arranged the shoot such that I would gain more exposure for Mary would be capturing the behind-the-scene photographs – if Mary were to use them on her publication.
Weitat arranged around three sessions of volleyball games at Yusof Ishak Secondary School and sent me home twice. During the last session, we had dinner at Clementi and I was able to go home by myself since the coffee shop was quite near to the train station. Alas, he was very concerned if I could catch the last train and I felt very touched. Alas, I could finally feel less guilty by not troubling him. After one of the games, our favourite auntie footed the bill for our supper at a coffee shop in Bukit Gombak, which made me feel very bad since there were quite a number of us. Jingjie bought many bottles of greentea for one of the sessions and shared with us generously.
As I was asking my elder brother about using HDMI cable to replace VGA cable for my computer, he told me he had a spare one. When he came back to my house, he actually remembered bringing it along.
My hairdresser endured another last-minute booking from me as I was about to go for reservist. As usual, she was not pissed off. Anyway, she charged me the same price since twenty years ago and she actually needed not take my business.
During reservist, the drivers Fabian, Melvin and Kenneth gave us free rides that had reduced the amount of time and energy used in travelling. I made a new friend, Teck Hui, a social worker, who gave me a treat on the second day.
Spread the Love – July 2015
Just as I was busy looking for a coin pouch to replace my spoiled one (somehow, the skin started peeling off), my mum offered me one that she had made herself. After I told her the size that I wanted, she did another two and one fitted what I wanted exactly.
Lovelle helped me to book for my staycation as she was able to get a good rate. I wanted to get one room at M hotel but she accidentally booked Studio M hotel. Eventually, she took up the Studio M hotel room and helped me with my M hotel’s stay.
Weitat not only made effort to book the indoor volleyball court at OCBC Arena, he also paid for it without asking us to return him our share. Other than that, he also took the trouble to gather everyone.
My elder brother bought durians for the whole family – he could have just bought it for him and his wife but he was not stingy over sharing food and fruits.
My voluntary group had a gathering till late. Yongsheng was not only the gentleman who took orders for everyone at the dessert shop and tried to get seats at the MacDonald’s, he also tried to send everyone home. I was really amazed over how he took initiatives like a real gentleman.
Spread the Love – February 2015
Weitat had always played a role more than good friend. I tried not to repeat the same type of kindness too often but he was making me feel guilty. On the first day of February 2015, we had our usual Sunday beach volleyball game. Instead of going to nearby places like Vivocity or even Queensway for dinner, we went to Jurong West for Mookata. After that, he sent me home from the West to Central even though he was staying in Clementi. I guessed everyone was already tired after the volleyball game and he was going to be more exhausted since he needed to drive.
On the last day of February, we had a gathering with Mingfa at West Coast Plaza. After that, we went to Sunsetway for desert. Weitat planned to send Jingjie home so that Jingjie could pick his car up to send Gin home to Bukit Gombak and Weitat would send me home after that. On the way, my brain was exploding for I thought I could never repay him for his kindness, although he never expected anything in return. He had no obligation to be so nice. While we were on the way, Gin “saved” me by speaking up for Weitat to just drop both of us at Clementi MRT instead of troubling both Weitat and Jingjie. It was quite overboard to make the two drivers to send us home from their “home” when we were so near the MRT station, which was still in operation.
Although I really hate travelling on the “world class” public transport, I should not have my comfort and convenience at his tiredness. Although the “affordable” and “cheap” public transport fee is ridiculous, I’m sure Weitat’s petrol fee would cost more for the double distance (to and fro). Although Singapore is such a fine country, there are sure body odor on the train. Although Singapore’s education system is known (from mainstream news) to be excellent, probably half of the people (talents) have not gone through the same school system to be gracious inside the train. I really hate taking public transport.
My gang of volleyball friends have endlessly demonstrated kindness. Drivers like Mingfa, Wilson, Tze Khit, Jingkun, Kachua and Weitat have been teaching me how good it would be to send friends home. Of course, Weitat is the extreme of all the car owners as he can make extreme detouring to give me the convenience even when public transport is still in operation. I would like to be nice and be appreciated but having a car is never for poor and average people.
Among all my models, Alessandra Wong was the first to “date” me out. It was a coffee chill up when she was near my place and followed by a street photography session for Thaipusam. If it was not her, I would not have forced myself to get up so early to capture the Thaipusam photos. Besides, I was not the kind of person who would go out alone. That was also the period of time when I kept wondering how many models were really treating me as friend instead of just using me to get them quality photos.
I troubled auntie Chwee Lian again for a photoshoot for Vanessa and Jiamin because we planned to do it at the Skybridge of Pinnacle@Duxton. Therefore, I went to borrow the access cards from her. Eventually, Vanessa was sick and thus the shoot was called off. When I went over to return the three access cards, I rang her up instead of just slipping the cards under the door. It was a good intention to meet her up to thank her personally but she was actually having her nap at around 6 plus in the evening. Needless to say, she did not get pissed off.
During Chinese New Year, My uncle and his wife invited the entire Chan family over for reunion dinner as usual. They were never stingy with all the food, drinks and snacks. The effort to organise and then clean up the mess was the key thing. I was speechless over what they had done.
Year 2014 – Professional Photography Journey Began
Smart Tuition
The tuition agency business was somehow as stagnant as before. I did not have the time and energy to “expand” it. The lack of credible and suitable coordinators was the main problem. There were quite a number of people emailing us to take up the job but we did not want to take any risk as we really wanted to help clients and tutors to our best ability and not treating it like a business. It was thanks to the existing team, especially Tricia and ET, that the business was able to sustain. We continued to meet weird people along the way and I got more and more weary of dealing with ridiculous and cunning people as well.
Photography
I took my photography to the next level by upgrading to a full frame camera. More people started approaching me and I began to take up event shoot instead of just sticking to portrait shoots. It was a tiring journey. I got to meet more people both online and offline. I was very excited to interact with all the good people in real person. However, just as there were many kind people in this world, I had encountered many eat-full-nothing-to-do people. It was irritating enough for “shoppers” to enquire for the fees when I had already stated the minimal amount on the website, but there were also many who were worse. I had entertained many people who had shown so much interest in engaging my help. We chatted for long time and I gave them advices but they eventually decided to waste my time.
Family
Things were pretty much the same as previous years, except that we were all more enthusiastic towards the arrival of my elder brother’s new BTO flat, which should be ready by end of year 2015 or beginning of 2016. By then, our current flat would be more “spacious” and there would be less conflicts. My house might still be very messy since it was my mum’s characteristic to keep everything. However, there might be a change in her attitude when we had an “extra room” while my elder brother would not help to mess up the living room again. Eventually, there would be a big problem for the family as my elder brother was a handy man. Apart from that, my mum continued to put stress to me, while I worked from home, by creating
Health
I had my right arm and wrist injured for a long period of time. The arm was due to volleyball games while wrist was because of holding to the heavy camera on a single hand for long duration. I fell sick twice for a long period of time too, taking panadol tablets more than I had ever taken in my entire life. My health was badly affected by my neighbours’ puppy who barked loudly every morning. My neighbours were helpless over the aggressive dog who was trying to destroy their main door.
Volleyball
My gang was quite active for beach volleyball games until towards the end of the year. Everyone was very busy, especially for those who were doing shift jobs. We finally had an indoor court game because of Jingkun’s request before his marriage. That was the first time I played on an indoor hard court after years.
Friendship
I felt I was disconnected with most of my friends. The struggle for work and photography had massacred every single thought to catch up with my old friends. I had no time to think of giving away presents or whatsoever. In the last three months of the year, I had to attend six wedding though and I had to be the “brother” for two of them. Photography did help me gain many new friends but not many kept in touch with me, most probably because the models were mainly into getting good photos. At least, they knew my character and felt safe to be with me.
Love
Boy-girl-relationship was a flat zero score for me. Due to photography, communication with people was mainly about the hobby. I did not really find new net friends to chat, except for a few occasions, I was curious with some sites like OKcupid, Omegle and the phone app Tinder. I was too busy to utilize them. Besides, it was not my forte to fight for attention with thousands of guys.
Conclusion
My life was stagnant except for the progress in photography. I did not party nor meet friends often to chill up together. To many people, my life was boring but I was glad that I was living it differently and meaningfully. Some people might be seeking to enjoy their lives to the fullest by partying around, some wanted different experiences of sexual partners; I sought to establish a name for myself and be remembered positively after leaving this world.
Spread the Love – September 2014
Since my younger brother was working under MOE, he was able to get free passes to some local tourist attractions. Each time, he was able to get only four passes though. He took my family and I to River Safari, and paid for the extra ticket and lunch. It was the effort to arrange everything that was really tough.
It was Geraldine’s birthday celebration. I was not very keen in taking up this shoot initially because she was busy with her school and thus replied me quite slowly. However it would be my greatest regret if I had given it up. The party was filled with nice and cute people. Eventually, her mum gave me extra money when she saw my effort. I felt very appreciated.
During my corporate shoot for JCL shipping group, I was greeted by very friendly people as well. During the first night when I knew none of the participants, one of the guys, Peter, kept asking me to put down my camera and grab some food by the side of the pool. At the end of the shoot, Peter got me a glass of beer. On the following day when their conference began, I realised he was the president of the group.
On the last night of the JCL shoot, one of the participants from Sri Lanka, Sunil, passed me a National Geographic magazine. He told me he got it free from the hotel room because he knew I loved photography. Even though he did not pay for the magazine, it was really nice of him to specially bring along to the Gala dinner and give it to me.
I had my worst period of the year – reservist. Not only I had to delay my photoshoot with my models, I also had to turn down clients for event shoots. It was totally a time-wasting period for me. Luckily, I had great company over there and the instructor, Liangwei, was one of the nicest guys I had met. Liangwei was very patient and understanding and he took care of us well.
Year 2013 – Year of Stagnant & Frustration
My year 2013 was full of downs. It was a year when things were not moving fast enough.
Family
My elder brother finally got married. There was not much difference since his wife aka my sister-in-law had been staying with us for more than half of the weeks for many years. A joy for my mum was that she needed not be working super hard to find out if both my elder brother and his wife would be joining us for dinner everyday. There was less grumble about this and thus relieving some stress from me.
Luckie was one of my greatest problems apart from the joy and comfort he had given to me. As I was staying at home most of the time, he had been posing lots of troubles to me. I had to clear his pee and poo and he would pester me to bring him down for a walk every now and then. My elder brother would usually lock him out of the bedroom at night and I would still be the one clearing all the shit since my younger brother was not at home most of the time. Luckie was unofficially an abandoned dog since his daddy had been neglecting him as I could use my fingers to count the number of times my elder brother had brought him out of the house. There was a period of time when I felt so bad for Luckie that I tried to bring him down almost every weekday but I gave up, knowing my elder brother would continue to neglect him if he knew someone was taking good care of Luckie. Whenever I thought of the moment I told my elder brother that I would not be free to help to take care of a dog before we brought Luckie home, I felt stupid.
My younger brother moved over to his good friend Derrick’s place for some months as it was nearer to his school. That was a period of time when I became even more stress since he was the one who would settle everything in my house, including sorting out bills and my mum. I was also worried about his safety, especially his illness, when I could not get to see him during weekdays.
Money was the greatest evil in the universe. My family was plagued with issues with money as usual that often I wished I could just move out of the house to avoid torment of my ears. Basically, my mum continued to grumble at my elder brother frequently for she expected him to help out with the household expenditure, including grocery. My younger brother also joined in to nag over the wastage of electricity. Things got better eventually after some dramas. I felt our relationships had improved a lot and the bond was strong.
My mum gave me one of the greatest headaches as usual, behaving like a child most of the time. It would not going to be fun when you already had big problems with your work and someone kept asking you obvious or stupid questions, grumbling over small things or repeating stories over the phone near you. For example, she would watch her favourite Taiwanese drama and turned over to ask what was happening in the show when obviously I was busy with my stuff to even care about the noisy television.
Friends
As I was stuck with work and photography, and facing financial downtime, I did not get to go out with many friends. At times, I rejected gathering invitations in order to cut down on expenditure and it was difficult to make people believe how bad my situation was – besides, I was really busy, with many non-profitable stuffs though. The person I went out most with was Gilbert. Even for my volleyball gang, there was limited number of beach outing and there were groups within group. I did a few voluntary work with the voluntary gang and the experience with them was fulfilling. The few get-together sessions with my younger brother and our common friends were excellent. I got to meet up with old friends like Hoay Min, Guoxin, Xiuwen, Mike and Wanling etc. There was a rare occasion of meet-up with ex primary school friends and unfortunately I had not been keeping touch with them and could not remember the childhood encounters with most of them. I also attended quite a few wedding dinners and was a loner at a couple of the tables. I got to meet quite a number of new friends through photography but I was not able to keep in touch with most of them. Irwin returned to Singapore a few times but I only managed to meet up with him for once.
I learned to distinguish between net friends and real life friends, as well as true friends and fine weather friends. I was, however, still trying to learn to lower down my expectation for people in order not to torture myself. If you were to treat others very good, do not ever expect them to treat you even half as good. Sometimes, I just felt too guilty when friends like Gilbert treated me too well because there was nothing I could offer to him as a buddy.
Somehow, I felt very isolated sometimes despite I had quite a few groups of caring friends. There was no close friend who stayed near me and shared the same hobby – photography.
Health
Ah Pa introduced her friend, Dickson, to me and with his knowledge and experience in Chinese medication, my back problem improved a lot, even though it was still haunting me. I got sick less frequently than before ever since I started taking manuka honey, keeping the usual sore throat, cough and flu away from me most of the time. However, my right arm gave me pain for many months due to beach volleyball. At the last quarter of the year, I also sprained or slightly dislocated my fingers after holding onto the camera for too long hours without rest.
I rarely exercised. It was the thought that I could have spent the time to bring Luckie down for a stroll that placed me in a deep dilemma. He could not run for long.
Relationship
At the beginning of the year, I got close to a girl but she was too busy to keep in touch with me after a week. Then, I realised she was not the one for me. I was never close to any girl despite getting to know many nice girls, especially through photography; in fact, I was too engrossed in photography that most of my chats were just discussions about the shoots. At least I could stand tall to say that I did not use photography as an excuse to get closer to girls.
No girl was able to spend time with me and I would never want to go into a relationship that I could only get to see my girlfriend once every fortnight.
I was also never anxious about getting a girlfriend given my financial situation. Perhaps, I had become a boring person with the countless numbers of worries and problems in my mind. I agreed that nice girls would not mind about my current financial status but I would mind if I could not give my girl a comfortable life. I would rather let nature take its own course.
The route to starting a family was not within my line of sight. I was, perhaps, depressed over the price of HDB flats. The supposed-to-be public housing to make sure every Singaporean had a roof over his head was more like a money-generating tool to push GDP up, so that the rich could become richer. I was not confident, at the moment, that I could afford a house in future.
Finance
I could hardly sustain my life despite I had been ill-treating myself. Income was at all time low since my NS days while I had to continue to give “protection money” every month, which was much more than I would spend on myself. CPF’s medisave extortion and life insurance added on to my burden. Basically, I was draining my saving every month with my bank account getting lighter. I got some of the cheapest camera gears but they were enough to weigh me down further more – photography was an expensive hobby and trade.
Most people who knew me well would know about my thriftiness but many did not realise that I was actually not earning much income. Almost everyone did not know I was in fact making negative income due to various financial loads as mentioned above. It was a joke when there were people who still tried to borrow money from met. Obviously they knew I was a very soft guy, and thus they would rather approach me than other mutual friends who were doing very well. This had helped me to reflect a lot on myself.
Due to the income problem, I hesitated a lot over to upgrade my photography gears that would bring me to a higher level. It affected me tremendously mentally.
On a better note, I would never get starved because I was thrifty and there were many kind people surrounding me. Before my saving could exhaust, I would have done better.
Work
My tuition agency was in a bad state as a few of the more consistent coordinators had left or taking up fewer assignments, and SEO was not well. ET got into a Taiwanese singing competition, Super Idol 8, and he had less time to help out, which resulted in a great fall of revenue since he was a very good worker. Unfortunately, the business model was more about helping parents than making big bucks – I knew of more ways that was less manpower intensive. Since it was my only source of income, it explained how bad my financial state was at. On a brighter side, I was also able to spend more time on picking up photography. That was because I was too lazy and frustrated to work on more features on my website.
I had to spend hours on my work everyday, including weekends. The workload was never consistent but the administration work had to be done daily. The least I had to do was to go through every new and updated tutors’ profiles, and also their submitted documents. I had to do SEO at least once in a couple of days. I had to be consistent with these because I placed myself in the tutors’ shoes that I would be anxious about my account and documents statuses. As for SEO, it would fall badly and would take many months or even years to pick up. Nobody understood how much effort I had to put in daily in order for my tuition agency to be recognised.
The most frustrating thing was that most people would think that I was very free. My time was very flexible but I was never free. I did not like the feeling of being the default person to handle everything whenever shit happened. If things had to be done, they had to be done and I would suck my thumb to settle them but not if being forced to. In other words, I hated to be taken granted of. This was pushing me to give up and simply get a “8 to 5” job instead. A pity that I was a very determined person. I had to work smarter but it was never easy to learn.
Photography
I spent most of my time on photography. I went through countless number of Youtube videos and websites. I took lots of time to go through potential models’ photos, discuss with them, shoot and do the post-processing work, which included filtering the photos and photoshopping. Unfortunately, lots of time for pre-shooting was wasted because of “models” who were wasting my time. It was very frustrating when things were confirmed and the other parties called them off out of a sudden or simply went MIA (missing-in-action).
Through photography, I was able to talk to more people but at the same time, I was also distanced away from many people. In fact, I was too focused in photography that I hardly kept in touch with my models after the shoots. Nevertheless, some of them were in relationship and I had to maintain a safe distance with them. I was also able to find out who were my true friends eventually.
Portrait photoshoot was very tough on me since I was too soft when dealing with my models and the shoots usually did not turn up half as good as I had expected. I was never a commanding person – even when I was lecturing in ITE, I would never instruct any student to help me in anything simple. I did learn a lot but the progress was never fast enough as there were too many things to learn at the same time while my gears were limited. In fact, I had to learn how to use the gears, see lighting, get good composition, watch out for model’s appearance and makeup, and pose the model at the same time.
Tricia guided me a lot through her experience but her critics killed my confidence often. I had problems communicating with her at times because of her extremely serious typing errors in Facebook messenger. There were too much expectation on me, pouring pressure and stress over my helplessness. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to fly before I had learned how to even crawl. Throughout the entire year, I spent most of my days in depression because of the photos I owed people despite I had warned them of the long timeframe before the shoot. I was more anxious than the models to get the photos done so that I could move on to other shoots. Tricia was too busy to go through the photos with me but without her catching errors on the photos (mostly due to makeup and hair), the final photos would not turn out to be good.
I got to realise the limitation of my first DSLR camera – Sony NEX F3 mirrorless. The auto focus speed was simply too slow and I could not expect the models to pause their expression, especially during event shoot. It did not come with a hotshoe and I could not attach an external flash without buying an additional costly adapter. I bought my Canon 650D but things did not go smoothly. I realised the cropped factor of the body was 1.6x, which was lousier than Sony NEX F3’s 1.5x – 1x (full frame) was the best. Since Sony was using Carl Zeiss lens, the quality was much better as well. Canon’s 50mm F1.8 lens was far lousier than Sony’s. Therefore, it was actually a downgrade of image quality that I could never get used to and in fact, it was affecting me badly. Instead of working on my creativity during the shoots, I was badly distracted by the quality of images. I lost my confidence ever since the switch. I knew I needed a better camera.
AFter I got both my photography website and Facebook page up, there were more models approaching me for photoshoot. However, most of them were not serious. Unfortunately, I was someone who would be putting in my best effort every time. I was also disappointed by the results of my Facebook marketing, such that the number of fans for a start was far less than what I had expected.
Through photography, I had learned a lot, especially on human. Most people would not bother much if things were to come for free. I had tasted lots of fake enthusiasm. At least, I was comforted by the existence of great friends, especially Tricia.
Spread the Love – September 2013
The heroes for September 2013 were my younger brother and sister-in-law.
My younger brother, Kaiwei, took my mum out of Singapore for holidays. Even though he was spoiling her seriously (yes, I’m serious that she’s behaving like a kid at times and it’s not funny at all), it was very brave of him to bring her to China alone. The culture of China’s native Chinese was far different from Singapore Chinese’s, although people from different parts of China do vary. I would not say European countries would be safer compared to China, but all the negative stories about China had really scared me – passengers-by ignoring injured person, fake food, milk powder with harmful ingredient… etc. After all, my younger brother and I would appreciate people who are more soft-spoken.
Although it was an eye-opening experience for him and my mum, it was definitely tiring to avoid being scammed almost at every part of Hai Nan Dao. The island was so commercialized that most people were out to cheat you for extra bucks. Nevertheless, the amount of money being conned might not be a lot. For example, the staff of a tourist attraction would ask tourists to take some “holy” water from a fountain like as if it was free and it ended up that they had to pay for it. Some shops would use some prize winning tactics that when you pass by, you would happen to be the lucky winner – my younger brother dared not try on them to see the actual result though. Overall, it is a place where anyone who does not know Chinese mandarin would definitely be conned.
Would you visit such a place that most things are cheaper than Singapore but you have to keep worrying about being conned? No, I don’t fancy that because holidays are meant to be enjoying yourself without worries.
While my mum was away with my younger brother, my sister-in-law, Ivy Leow, did the laundry work. There were a couple of times when my elder brother was not coming home for dinner because of delivery work or soccer game, my sister-in-law bought food for me after she knocked off from work.
Spread the Love – July 2013
“If you can’t afford staying in 5-star hotels, at least get a sister-in-law who works in a company that supplies products to them.”
During the month of July, my sister-in-law got some free credits to get some bathroom and bedroom items from her company’s warehouse as staffs’ bonus. Her company had been supplying the items to high class hotels. They were actually rejected and old stock that her boss needed to clear from the warehouse.
It was a Saturday morning and everyone knew I usually went to bed before sunrise and thus would not want to get up so early to join them. Each family member who went along would get additional credit points to grab more items. In fact, I did not have much idea about the entire thing until my family returned home with items like pillows, towels and floor mats in different sizes.
I got a large share of some of the items, which was a long pillow for king size’s bed. By using that, I could easier turn about on my single size bed. The pillow was long enough for me to share with anyone who would not mind squeezing onto the small mattress with me. I received a large bathroom towel as well and it could easily dry me up after a wet shower. I also got some face towels, which were smaller and more portable for swimming.
These freebies were just some extra bonuses of life. It was the kind thoughts from family members that mattered most.
Luckie got a nice pillow as his bed as well!