Injured Finger and Wrist

It was a rare morning sleeping throughout the silence till after sunrise. Thursday morning, I woke up feeling tired still after the long rest since I did not catch enough sleep the days before. I went to visit the Chinese physician and got myself eight days of medicine before going to work.

Jingkun and I wanted to give Mei Hoe a belated birthday treat and thus we proceeded to IMM’s Swenson. Daniel joined in. We had great chats as usual.

I stayed inside the office until 7.30pm before proceeding down to the MPH for volleyball. Everyone seemed to play well. Somehow, my team had the upper hand. My legs were wrecked at my third game playing the centre position with other people. I was very amazed by my wrist power. Later part of the night was dull, but I made sure I did my duty defending given no other role.

We left at around 10pm. Kachua gave me a ride home. I realised I had sprained my index finger on the right hand and also over-exerted the wrist.

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Wednesday, Mute Again

On Wednesday, Jingkun, Weitat and I went to IMM to meet Dorothy for lunch. We settled on the Banquet food court. Daniel arrived with his students while Mei Hoe and Vivien joined us.

I targeted the western food stall for a plate of fish and chips and the stall holders were two China ladies. Her English was very frequent but her pronounce was worse than mine. It was the first time I was being asked whether I wanted mashed potato or fries for my fish and chips and she pronounced it totally way off that she had to use Chinese instead. It was not my fault for the next customer faced the same problem.

It was not a peaceful meal as usual, having to chew on the nasty fish, and hearing debates and people trying to battle each other on volume and ideas. Sometimes I really wondered if they had understood each other’s intentions after each conversation since they did not want to give way. At least, I knew Mei Hoe would not get the main point most of the time.

From Weitat’s car accident, we talked about car insurance and then human’s insurance, but it seemed to stretch further away. There were times when I tried to ask something, none of them heard me as usual. I was never interested in competing because it would only make things worse.

After lunch, a few of them were going to Giant to get stuffs for the next day’s teambuilding event and luckily Jingkun wanted to go back to the office to do work and thus I could follow his car back together with Mei Hoe and Vivien. If only I did not have any project on hand, I would have enjoyed the shopping with the rest of them.

Back to the office, I did a final touch-up of a design for PowerPoint and also helped Jingkun to solve some programming problems. Then, I joined Bernard’s car to Dover MRT station.

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First Working Day after

Monday was a total different day. It was the first working day after my studies finished. However, I did not feel much after being stressed for the entire year for my brain seemed to be numbed and my body had yet to recuperate.

Weitat was sick. I had lunch with Jingkun and Dorothy at West Coast and after that, we went to fetch Mei Hoe for dessert. The famous “Daily Scoop” at Sunsetway was closed and thus we moved on to IMM. I was not very interested for I had work to do in the office but did not want to dampen their mood. We went to Ajisen Japanese restaurant but switched over to Fish&Co.

Back to the office was a stressful time for me since I was supposed to touch up on a PowerPoint presentation, which some of the slides had the contents merged together, probably by external software, such that I could not edit.

I took a ride from Bernard to Dover MRT station.

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Weird Lunching Team

On Tuesday morning when I reached my desk, I saw the driving basic theory book. Kevin remembered it well and spent extra efforts to even place it there, which made me very touched.

It was not an easy morning when there was invigilation to do, especially having to arrange the messed up tables and seats in the normal classroom. Luckily, I was seeing my favourite class.

I had one of the weirdest lunching team. Since Mei Hoe had work to do, Vivian joined Daniel and I at the “Dead end”. I took a plate of wantan mee while both of them had fish soup. The stall was ridiculous to charge Daniel an extra forty cents for changing the noodle to rice, but Daniel claimed that the bowl of soup had more ingredients.

We had half an hour lunch, one of the fastest ever. After sending Vivian back, I accompanied Daniel to IMM’s Giants to get apples. I wanted to get some for Mei Hoe but the expensive and big ones did not have very good skin. After choosing for very long, I gave up.

I was studying for my driving test all the way inside the car on both trips. However, on the returning trip, I almost dozed off completely a couple of times.

I stayed for longer than usual again in the late afternoon before walking alone to the MRT station. I went to Long John Silver’s at Plaza Singapura for dinner and Stephen joined me after that. We moved to The Cathay’s Starbucks to meet up with Soon Siong and later, we did some testing and I was quite amazed by both the programmers’ work. Andy did not go down due to work. We stayed until around 10.30pm before we called it a day.

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Treats from the Nice People

Yesterday, I had lunch with Xiao Mei at IMM where I received my belated birthday treat. We chose Ajisen for the reasonable set meal price. It was quite okay but I would prefer western food. After finishing our meals, we shopped at one of the baby shops and followed by Daiso.

In the evening, Bernard dropped Mdm Seet and me at Dover MRT station. Mdm Seet accompanied me for dinner at Plaza Singapura’s food court and treated me a cup of milk tea at the Xin Wang café at the basement level.

It was not long before I would not have time to meet up with all the great people.

I made a wrong choice of getting a venti size Dark Mocha frappuccino at The Cathay Starbucks during the FYP meeting, which was so sweet that I could not finish.

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Volleyball Friendly Match

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.

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Serviced Mobile Phone and New Headset

I had my phone sent to the service centre besides IMM during Wednesday’s lunchtime.
Jingkun and I took Daniel’s car over and waited quite long for our turn. The rest reached IMM soon and met up with Daniel and Jingkun told them to go ahead with their meals first while the two of us could take bus back to office after that.
The fact that upgrading the software to solve the lagging problem would take around three hours wrote a little disappointment on my face. I felt stupid for not bringing an extra phone with me since I would have to leave my phone with them. Nevertheless, I did not know I would have the chance to go over on that day since we were supposed to go the week before since I mentioned about the lagging problem.
We were quite fortunate that we managed to catch up with the rest afterwards, or otherwise, I would feel guilty towards Jingkun and probably Weitat for making them to take bus with me.
As they wanted to queue up for lottery, Weitat, Jingkun and I had a tour around the Challenger shop where I bought a headset for eight bucks. It was the first time I had ever bought one for myself. I needed it to reduce the distraction from all the “hoo-ha” around the office.
After work, Jingkun dropped me at the entrance of the same building. I waited for quite some time before getting back my phone. I walked alone towards Jurong East MRT station to take train home.

Department Dinner at Sakura – Clementi Woods

Meijun dropped me a bomb in MSN in the early morning to help her print her resume out. Since my younger brother was asleep, I would ask him to log into his computer to use his printer for the job when he was awaken; or otherwise, I would go to the office early to do it but it would be a black-and-white printout instead.

I woke up at seven AM and lazed on the bed and before eight, I woke up to realise the fact that my younger brother was already gone. I quickly made a call to him and he told me the password to his laptop. Meijun was lucky that my younger brother did not bring his laptop to school and that he did not set the laptop to force thumbprint identification.

Lunch was set on Tiong Bahru market on a last minute decision. We made two extra touring and I got so confused and was so ashamed since I stayed quite near. Luckily, both of them managed to find the way.

Of all food, I chose chicken chop again but this time round it was the hot plate style. It actually came with a soup at the price of five bucks, but the latter was not of a pleasant taste. The chicken was not very cooked at first but it seemed like the long lasting heat of the plate had continued to cook the meat while it was on my table.

Weitat and Jingkun decided to go for a haircut at IMM after that. I took a toilet break while waiting for them and finally, went up to Daiso to fish for cheap goodies. However, it was not long before they called me to tell me that they were ready to set off and I could not get anything.

Both of them decided to go for hair washing near Jingkun’s house. I probably should tell them to drop me back to office to continue with my stuffs first since I did not accomplish much things in the morning.

In the late afternoon, Jingkun left to pick his girlfriend up. I decided to join Weitat at Vivocity since I was totally in no mood to do anything after being drained during idling earlier on. In fact, it seemed very stupid since dinner was already near and we had to get back to Clementi to meet up with the rest soon.

Knowing that it was pointless to stop Weitat from spending money, I kept quiet to avoid irritating him. I had a tough time struggling to keep myself conscious.

I had a short moment of luck and happiness during the trip.

Jingkun met us up later and we continued a short walk around before departing the place. I took Jingkun’s car to join the rest while Weitat went to fetch Mingli. Upon landing at the same expressway the second time, I woke up my half asleep brain to help lookout for the tiny entrance to the Sakura at Clementi Woods.

We met up with Weitat and Mingli at the car park. Most of them arrived soon and without further ado, we proceeded to start the feast while waiting for the rest. I was quite guilty when I heard from Jingkun that the budget set for the department dinner actually did not include temporary staffs and our bosses shared the cost to foot the bill. I had a great time stuffing the food into my stomach, and leaving my stomach empty for two bowls of ice-cream in the end. This opportunity allowed us to interact more with some colleagues.

Since my camera was inside Weitat’s car boot, the effort that I used to charge the batteries the night before had gone into waste.

At the end of the dinner, Jingkun sent me home.

An Early Home Volleyball Session

The Teachers’ Day Celebration was dull. I received a couple of presents and cards from students eventually. I was overjoyed not for receiving presents but was more pleased with the fact that some of them had shown appreciation.

What is most important about education is morale after all.

We had our dinner at IMM. Jingkun’s car did us lots of time and energy saving. We met up with Mingfa there and I finally had my Long John Silver’s meal after missing it for a couple of time. This time, I was greedy and had three pieces of chicken instead of the usual cheapo-yet-cost-effective combo one.

Before the volleyball game started, I fell into concussion once again for I had only around two hours of sleep before that.

The few of us seemed to be reluctant to strive hard like usual because of the Rip Curl beach volleyball game the next day. Apart from trying not to wear myself off, I was basically strengthless and my performance declined soon.

It was one of the rare times that I would leave the place early right after nine PM. eventually I got a little frustrated of myself for forgetting to bring my formal wear home after leaving them on the side bench.

Dinner at Chinatown Complex

Last Thursday, my gang decided to go for dinner together. Jingkun initiated it but since he left earlier than Weitat and I, we had some problems communicating with him.

In the end, we decided to go to IMM. We met up with Mingli first and walked around to search for her printer. Mingfa and Jingkun later merged into the group and we decided to go to Chinatown to have sting ray. Jingkun was the driver and we parked the car at Maxwell Food Centre before crossing the road over to Chinatown Complex.

The colourful fruit juices

Tableful of food

Mingfa and Jingkun

Weitat and Mingli

We ordered two plates of sting rays and an individual plate for octopus and vegetable each. Mingfa ordered a plate of Hokkien noodle whereas Weitat bought three bowls of soup, which we felt it was waste of money.

I finally fulfilled one of my wishes to give them a treat on the food which my entire family had been enjoying since my dad was around. They were good and cheap food.