Suntan with Wanling

I woke up unusually early on a Saturday morning again. The actual plan was to meet up with Wanling at 10.30 AM but she changed it to 11.15 AM, and she probably went back to sleep after that.

She was one of my long-lasting female friends who still kept in contact with me. Almost all my female friends drifted away from me slowly after they met new friends or sweethearts; and the remaining probably could not stand my frankness, my poor time management, and maybe other flaws.

She was late. We went to Subway to grab our breakfast and Giant to get a bottle of mineral water before heading towards Sentosa. We set up the mats outside Café Del Mar and started to enjoy the delicious sandwich. It was one of the most causal Saturdays that I ever had with my work being placed aside totally.

view from the sand

As I underestimated the power of the sun, I did not apply sunblock lotion on my legs and thus getting bad burns. Washing up at the washroom caused some fears for the water flow inside the cubicle seemed to be unstable and it would be the most embarrassing experience to walk out with shampoo on my hair.

We got back to Vivocity where Wanling got a little shopping for Christmas cards before we took the train and headed towards Chinatown. I bought shampoo and toothbrushes from the usual Swanston shop before I walked her to the Sago Lane.

Dragon Gate Buffet Dim Sum and Alone at SIM

Friday was rather an interesting day. I was so exhausted that I could not get up on time.

Lunch was special since we went to Dragon Gate together with Daniel, Dorothy, Mrs Wo and Jonathan to have dim sum buffet and it was the first time we got to dine together with Mrs Wo and Jonathan.

Poor Mrs Wo could never take her time off from work, and she was occupied with her phone. Daniel faced the greatest challenge with his seafood allergy, whereas most of the dishes included prawn.

Sago – big versus small

I did not forget to leave some space inside my stomach for the dessert – Sago. I ordered two bowls at one shot and when the auntie brought them over, I joked that I wanted have the third one and Jingkun was tempted as well. We did not expect the auntie to come back with two big bowls of sago, which kept me in high spirit; the taste of the sago was enjoyable, but the service of the auntie delighted me more.

After work, Jingkun sent me over to SIM to submit my reply slip to confirm my decision to take up the course. He dropped me at the bus-stop and it was my first time being alone inside. I dialled the numbers given on the paper and by Jingkun, but none of them picked up the calls. I made my way to the student administration office and realised it was the exact place where I should be submitting the papers. When the lady told me that I had to refer to the date on the invoice to submit the school fee, I was very turned off since I knew I had to make another trip down again.

I took bus 75 home and was excited when I realised the bus had upgraded. The sound was similar to the MRT’s and there were announcements as well to inform passengers not to eat or drink. The structure was designed for the wheelchairs but overall, the important factor was missing – number of seats – since it would be a long journey for me to travel to and from school in future.

The Pain at My Knee

Lunch for Thursday was at the canteen. I almost lost my voice since George was gone for the fourth day.

Nothing was special except for the badminton session in the afternoon. At first, I got into game play with some kids at the third court and soon, as more colleagues arrived, we had to invite them out of the court.

I got into a tight situation when Deon tried to get her students into the court. I explained to her that we had too many players and that since we had to even get the previous group of kids out of the courts, it made no sense to give special privilege to her students.

Luckily, we had Hirman and Zaki joining the court, and I played against them together with Daniel. Hirman displayed superb skill. Daniel and I had to aim at Zaki in order to increase the percentage of scoring points. In the end, we managed to emerge the winners.

I got into another game with Vivian against Dorothy and Meihoe’s husband, Mr Ng. My side was thrashed badly but Mr Ng seemed to be very impressed with my determination to dash and dive all over the court, and he invited me to play single with him. My initial plan was to rest as much as possible before the volleyball game after missing it for weeks, but it seemed that I was not good at goal setting.

It was a hell training for me as Mr Ng hit the shuttle cock towards the two corners of my court, and I seemed more like a clown. I could see that he was quite happy with his intention to train me and thus the effort was worthwhile. I made the final spectacular dive far at the right side and managed to save the drop ball, and after which, Weitat and Meihoe took over the court. As I lay down on the side of the hall, my sweat continued to drip.

I had a few sets of volleyball game to realise that my right knee was strengthless after hitting the floor for many times while diving earlier on. The pain slowed me down. I dozed off after that and my knee was tighter than before. I only wanted to play for the last set of game but nobody was there to take over me and the game dragged on another three sets. Luckily that throughout the volleyball games, I did not get many chance to spike.

Darius sent Mingli and Mingfa home and he dropped me at Jurong East MRT station before that. I had to stagger up to the train and back home. Another fortunate thing was that I did manage to grab a seat on the train. By the time I reached home, it was already after eleven PM and my dinner was vegetarian food.

Zaki Gave Me a Ride Home

I was a little stressed up on Wednesday morning while doing the design work for George. I had some good ideas but it was not easy to get everything done on PhotoShop; perhaps, my skill was far too shallow.

During lunchtime, Jingkun, Weitat and I were going to the canteen and suddenly Meihoe dragged us away and insisted us to go out. She refused to tell us what was happening but we could sense she was trying to avoid some people in the canteen.

I had chicken rice and sugarcane juice; the food was quite nice but I did not like the drinks. It was a special day, which marked the first time Meihoe dined together with us.

I did not like the afternoon until the badminton session began. We had Alex, Alfni, Dorothy, Weiming, Bernard, Vivian, Mr Neo, Mr Baey and Zaki with us. Alfni’s skill was impressive. We had a long afternoon and the last survivors were Dorothy, Mr Neo, Zaki and I. I was quite lost when Weiming and Bernard decided to leave suddenly since I thought Weiming could at least accompany me for half of my journey home.

In the end, Zaki was nice enough to give me a ride and I was extremely lucky that he was passing by Keppel Road. It was a comfortable trip without having to walk to the MRT station or standing and squeezing with the crowd with my heavy bags. He gave me advices while driving, and I was glad to befriend such a friendly guy.

Anyway, my calf muscles were giving me problems since before the game and it worsened after that despite the fact that I had done minimal running. It could be due to standing for too long in the class or because I was quite pissed off in the afternoon.

He Left Right in Front of Me

On Tuesday, lunch was at Clementi. Jingkun took us to a duck rice stall and the amount of cucumbers at the bottom of the meat made the entire plate looked so big in proportion; nevertheless, everything tasted quite okay.

The greatest disappointment was seemed when George bid me goodbye once I got into the office. It was probably a good training for everyone to learn to appreciate him more upon his return, or perhaps, realise that the problems lay in themselves.

Alas, I learnt to ignore arrogant bitches in the afternoon.

Jingkun sent Desiree and I to Jurong East MRT station and I fainted on the bed soon despite telling myself not to take any nap in the evening.

Not Going to Care Too Much

On Monday morning, the sudden news of George on leave wrecked my entire plan. I wanted to spend my time concentrating on the design work for Faris and his website but I ended up spending the time on catching up with the assignments instead.

It was the first time I took over from George to stand in front of the kids even though I was given quite a number of times earlier on. The old disappointment seemed to return to cling on me once again with the lack of appreciation.

If you did not even try to listen, how would you understand? If you had a thousand excuses not to do something, nobody could help you.

I saw faces of people who were full of themselves; I saw ostriches who buried their heads to pretend nothing was happening; I saw arrogance which was the result of why some people were positioned at.

One of the things I hated most was to be insulted. If you had done any insulting thing and yet you did not realise it at all, that proved your brain was not really functioning properly.

If I had taken control of everything since the beginning, things would be different and I could become a devil who tries to push everyone to heaven.

Confucius was right that it was pointless to preach people who did not want to listen.

My blood was boiled in the afternoon. The weird guy told me, “Got work to do” like as if I was slacking and getting paid for nothing. He would only approach me whenever he need or want to get helps since I was being too kind to him since my first day of working there. Nevertheless, I could never ever forget how he had almost destroyed my friendship with my buddies more than half a year ago. The existence of such man was the massacre of kind souls, driving human race to the epidemic of selfishness.

I had totally lost trust in him and thus, I asked my boss directly over the task and somehow it was true. I did not want to put my boss into tight situation and thus I chose to hide the fact on how this asshole had been taking my kindness for granted, and thus I did not question if it was him who initially decided to put me on this task.

Office boy’s job

Somehow, for the one-man photocopying job, this creep was kind of using me while chatting with the administration staff. I had to agree that one person’s strength alone to finish up the stapling of 320 sets of papers was quite insufficient, but I was paid to do more important jobs and that working with him was a total turn-off.

Weiming was right that I had to “choose the face to work for” but I was totally proud of myself since I would choose everyone to work for, except for creeps who had betrayed my trust.

Weiming and I took a lift from Bernard to Dover MRT station and it was an enjoyable journey. I loved leaving work together with Weiming because he could at least accompany me until Commonwealth, so that I would not doze off while standing and putting embarrassments into myself.

Updated Some Pictures

Last weekend was spent like usual. I stayed at home for the two days to buck up on my own work like blogging. The main achievement was that I managed to upload some pictures to the older blog entries. I probably had to give up on many older entries.

I did some tidy up of my desk and it looked more presentable after that.

The usual television shows accompanied me. Other than that, I was kept occupied by online chatting and little naps.

Confident Boost

I woke up early like the previous Fridays. The only difference was that the two hours before lunch time was occupied by extra workload. I managed to chat with Hirman as we worked together and at the end of the session, Jingkun came over to help out with the mess.

We had lunch at West Coast temporary market and both Jennifer and Kevin joined us. The usual plate of duck rice filled my stomach and we had a little shopping session at Sheng Siong supermarket after that.

Jingkun sent Desiree and I to Jurong East MRT station and both of us managed to grab seats. Since she was going to Cityhall, my journey was never as sleepy as usual.

I went straight to get my old watch fixed with new battery. The auntie was quite embarrassed to make me wait for long for she had many customers. While standing and waiting there, I spotted a cockroach and she praised me for my sharp observation. As I chatted with her about the messiness of the shop and lost of business opportunity, she was very impressed with me.

Her praises almost made me hang in the air but it was certainly a morale boost. Suddenly, she remembered me and she returned me a dollar as a discount.

As I was walking home, Cecilia saw me and she signalled to me that the bitch was not around and thus I went over to talk to her and followed by Uncle Sam. The past had made me a grown up, and the experiences gave me confidence.

Gave Volleyball a Missed

Birthday boy

Birthday boy

The females

The males

Cake

Birthday boy

My created scandal

This Thursday, George was on course and thus I worked alone. The class had a celebration for Liangquan’s twenty-first birthday and it was pretty cute for the rest of them to organise it for him.

After work, we started playing badminton again. Mingfa came down to join us. Since the previous days’ workout had totally drained my energy off, my body could not carry out my brain’s instructions. I started playing with the HPO colleagues since the other two courts were occupied and those tiring games further exhausted me.

There was volleyball session in the evening but I had to give it a miss since it was a last-minute one and the cramps on my legs earlier had advised me to give up. I waited for Daniel to take his bath before strolling to the MRT station together.