[Saturday, 18 December, 2010]

I was busy with the tuition blog and eventually I updated the website with Google Map. The display refused to show the new location and I wasted a lot of time trying out. I also finished up some minor amendments for the tuition’s flyer. Lastly, I updated email and password for a tutor who got it wrong. I went to bed at 5am and I had problems dozing off again.

I was woke up by the drilling noise after 9am. My younger brother went Johor for his eyes check-up and he left some minor tuition assignment tasks for me to follow up. Since I did not handle it before, I took very long to figure things out.

I went down to have lunch with Mike before buying some stuff such as mop for the office. Then, I brought him up to my house so that I could finish up the work. He finally saw clearly why I needed a better working space.

We touched up the painting work in the office before starting to fix up the IKEA furniture. I was exhausted. Mike’s watch was slow for forty-five minutes and I was shocked when I checked the time with my lousy phone and his car’s clock. After he sent me home, I got changed and rushed off to Expo.

I felt relax when I called Caiping and realised I was even earlier than her. I grabbed myself a sandwich at 7-11 and started chewing, while I prayed hard that the Magic Show she invited me to was not a conspiracy. I had a taste of being conned to a church event by a male friend and a MLM one by another female friend many years back. Furthermore, I was so busy and exhausted, and yet I made myself available for her. I had interrogated her before accepting the invitation from her and I really hoped my intuition was wrong.

Caiping arrived with her friends and some of them were distributing Christmas presents. I felt uneasy and it was the first step towards unveiling the ugly truth. However, since she was a very religious person, I assumed her closed friends should be of the same religion as well, and thus I gave her the benefit of doubt. As we moved towards the exhibition hall, I saw big banners of City Harvest Church. Since the church could have booked a large number of tickets, I skipped it. After meeting other friends of hers, the guy let out clues by asking me if I were from her group and she tried to stop him. Later on, he asked me if it was the first time I went for a church event. Everything was clear.

In order not to make things look bad, I swallowed up my anger and played on to test my patience. The crowded place was a big turn off. We moved in and took up the seat. When she told me the magician was her pastor, it was nothing shocking to me anymore. As the show began, I felt quite boring since I did watch Taiwanese magic shows on television that were much more impressive. The dances made me sleepier for I was just expecting for “magic” shows.

The worst thing that I had expected did happen. It was a conspiracy to get non-member to join them. They tried to intimidate every non member indirectly by using the mass power – taking account that most of the viewers were their members, they instructed everyone to put their heads down. I was not sure how many strong willed smarties with integrity had refused them like me since I tried at least not to show disrespect and thus I did not turn back, but some people had walked off. It was one of the most disgusting moments that I had witnessed in my entire life when twisted words of nonsense were pushed into everyone’s ears.

Anyone could have started a religion and claim himself as the appointed one, which the special someone had instructed him to spread the religion through his dream. As accordingly to the tales I had heard, since there was no evidence to prove that the dream was a fake one, everyone should believe the guy. I was proud that I was clear that I would only believe if there was evidence. A sane person should not believe something just because there was no evidence to show that it was a crooked up story. It required a really good speaker to do a good job though.

When Caiping asked me about the “message”, I gave no comment since I was too tired and never wanted to waste my time to debate. I did not want to turn friendship sour as well just because of some craps. I could not blame her since she was just one of the victims.

It was one of my greatest hobbies to take photos with pretty girls but I avoided being included in any of the photos. I was quite worried that through Facebook, I would be located and I would see or hear things that I was very annoyed with. We took MRT off and I took a different direction at Tanah since they were going to Bedok 85 for supper.

This incident, together with the previous two, would definitely put me on guard in future when any old friend tried to ask me out.

My younger brother’s friends were at my time. The bedroom was probably too squeezy for them that they had to sit in the living room. I was with them for a while before I went inside the room and dozed off near midnight.

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