Dear Dreams – Page 106

Tampiness Safra Sakura and IKEA

Yesterday’s family dinner with my father’s side relatives was quite rare. Last year, I was invited as well but the lack of sleep put me throughout the afternoon.

Anyway, this dinner crashed with another two events – gathering at Alex’s house and golf with Irwin and his friends.

My younger brother insisted to take bus 30 to Bedok interchange to transit to bus 168. We met our aunt who took train over to Bedok. We could have met up earlier since she stayed opposite our block.

We did have some miscommunication problems with elder brother and he was actually waiting at Tampiness Mall, after which, he took cab down instead and reached Tampiness Safra before us.

The dining at Sakura was alright, except that I was too small an eater for buffet. The variety of food was not as many as West Coast and Orchard. The worst thing was that I took too much appetizers to begin with. It was a treat from my youngest uncle and we had seventeen people in total.

After the dinner, we went to Tampiness IKEA together with the aunt who stayed near us and it was my virgin visit there. The Courts and Giant buildings next to IKEA’s were very tempting.

The layout was somehow similar to Alexander’s IKEA. I was quite interested in an armchair because of the holes that would allow air to breathe through and kiss my butts, such that I would not perspire so much; the size was smaller than my current one, which was more suitable for the position in the living room. We went back to search for the chair but I felt it was too costly at the price of $168, which could be much cheaper. Anyway, my elder brother’s girlfriend was going to pay for everything using her IKEA voucher, which I felt was not too good. We got a set of utensils and some other stuff in the end.

We took the free shuttle bus to Tampiness MRT station and took train home.

It was a tough night to get my mum to throw away excess utensils, which were probably not touched for a couple of years. We managed to clear a box out of the four annoying ones besides the kitchen’s windows after battling with my mum.

Chinese New Year Lunch with Colleagues

Last Friday was quite a memorable day for we had nine persons to dine together during lunch at West Coast. The meet-up was problematic even though we were working at the same place due to work commitments.

The golden hair uncle seemed to be in a better mood this day, probably because he could not scold people during Chinese New Year. We were discussing that he needed not rush so insanely in everything, which would lighten everyone, including himself. However, I was quite envious of his spirit.

We managed to follow through the plan to “lao yu sheng” and then ordered some plates of dishes to share. The pork rib and vegetable were especially nice. Each of us forked out around $12.50 for the meal.

Second Bad Dream

It was not usual that I had dreams during my sleep anymore. However, the second occurrence of bad dream related to work happened last Tuesday, which was not very long from the first one.

I could not recall much of the story after waking up but it was all about me being set up somehow. Apart from my best boss, I could not remember who else was involved in the show.

Somehow, it was a sign of phobia.

Deferment for Reservist Successful

Two weeks ago on a Wednesday, I received an email from Mindef to confirm that my reservist deferment was successful.

It was quite a waste since this reservist would last around twelve or fourteen days, which was considered as a “high key” one. I had to complete at least seven “high key” and three “low key” reservists in order to ROD and wipe my butts from the trouble.

I was quite shocked for I always thought they would probably give me around two days time-off for my exams, which crashed with the first few days of the reservist.

Anyway, what I did before that was to get Weitat to scan the letter from UOW to prove that I was a student there and then I logged into NS.sg to submit a deferment application, and dropping them an email with the scanned letter together with my timetable. At the website, I indicated that I was in the third year and the school fee cost me SGD15,500 per year.

Another confirmation letter by post was received a couple of days later and I was glad to set my mind peace.

Getting Back Balance from Lost Ez-link Card

Two Mondays ago, I received a call from the Transitlink company; it was around a day after dropping an email to Ez-link company for my lost Ez-link card. Since it did not directly concern Ez-link company, the person replied me and “CC” to the Transitlink company as well.

Finally, I was told that I could recoup the balance left in my lost Ez-link, which was a blessing for it was around $20.

The staff from Transitlink even advised me to call up National Library for the person could have used my card to borrow books.

Sleepy Volleyball

Something caught me when I was about to go to sleep. It was an extremely tiring morning. Lunch was all alone inside the office. When I rushed to the lab to see everyone standing outside, I knew I was somehow being setup accidentally.

I struggled the afternoon nodding a few times inside the office to do work. Jingkun left for his night class whereas Weitat went home because he wanted to meet up with his friend before the volleyball game.

Mingli came over right after her class and I met her at the canteen. Weitat got back with my Burger King’s Chicken sandwich and it tasted very good.

I dozed off for a while and woke up to join in the game with five hours of sleep for the past two days. I was exhausted and thus could not perform to my standard. We had to play five on five in the lack of players and Mingli let me play throughout the games since she knew I could not go down to play often anymore.

Weitat decided to dine at the prata shop near my house. I took a lift in his car together with Mingli while Mingfa took a lift from Wilson. They had employed a China guy to work and the combination was weird since all of the staffs were Indians.

When I asked for new prata, the guy claimed that the pratas were all “new” and Wilson witnessed them reheating the pratas. Weitat was very disgusted with the plastic-like pratas even though the rest of us thought they were not that bad, but was definitely off standard.

Slow Laptop

I was ready to sleep at three AM but Irwin seemed to be troubled and thus I accompanied him to chat downstairs my house until around six AM. I had two hours of sleep before getting up for work.

One of the most sickening things was that the office’s software was not updated enough to configure the new EHz-link card, such that I could not access into the office by myself until when the headquarter was ready to move on with the government’s trend and technology.

I received another two ang bao and I actually felt quite bad since I was already a grown up.

I tried new lunch together, which was the long-wanted nasi pataya but I was very turned off to the fact that inside the egg, it was plain rice instead of fried rice. The sauce almost made me faint. Other than that, the food was quite okay.

I had a pathetic day because I uninstalled the Photoshop CS3 from the laptop since the resource could no longer take the load. The system drive was actually too small; the free space had to have more than a gigabyte big in order for the entire windows XP to run at normal speed.

The research on my presentation was a disaster since the topic on cryptography was very dry for case study. I tried my best but with the slow system, keeping my eyes open was helpless.

I was quite tempted to get myself a laptop to use in office, for studies and to get out of my house to work at one of the cafes or fast food restaurants in future.

There was no badminton even though I had brought my stuffs along.

Weitat, Daniel and I left together without Jingkun. However, before we leave the gate, Jingkun had driven pass us without any signalling and we could see how rush he was.

Chinese New Year Day 2

The plan to have golf with Irwin on the second day of the Lunar Chinese New Year day two was cancelled since I was not sure what time my family would be leaving house for house visiting. My gang’s gathering at Kok Chiang’s house faced the same problem.

We took bus 80 instead of NEL and the journey almost killed me again. My elder brother and his girlfriend reached the interchange at the same timing. We had our Ez-link cards replaced by the new type but I was having hesitation since I would face the problem of accessing the office again and I hated troubling others.

We had fun disturbing our nieces and nephews for the entire afternoon.

Since it was my elder brother and his girlfriend’s birthday, we placed order for tickets at Bishan’s Golden Village for “Love Matters” by director Jack Neo through the GV website. Bus 88 put me to sleep.

The cinema was one of the worst we could find in Singapore nowadays. My younger brother’s view was blocked by a big head who sat straight throughout the show. On my left was a couple and the girl was in sexy red dress, whereas their hugging was an indeliberate distraction with the girl’s butts facing me.

The movie was humorous at many scenes but the ending part was quite weird at the “Jeremy” part.

We managed to catch the last train home but my elder brother was not as lucky.

Chinese New Year Day 1

The start of the day was like previous years, which was house visiting to my aunt’s place. Before that, we went to Burger King but changed our minds and visited the new MacDonald’s branch at Shenton Way instead. It was fantastically designed and I regretted not asking them to dine in instead.

We spent some time over my aunt’s house before going home. There was a gathering at Wilson’s place but I was waiting for my family to visit the River Ang Bao until quite late. After my younger brother reached home, we went off without my elder brother.

The event was hosted at the Floating platform where NDP had been conducted for the past two years. There was a big crowd at the entrance and we were quite turned off because the entire place was much smaller than the usual ones.

There was a stage where all the China people performed. Statue-like lanterns of the twelve animals were as per normal and there was an additional gigantic Chinese chess set. We left the platform very soon and walked around the small “Food Street”. Some of the stalls did not label price for the food, which was very cunning. We did not buy anything in the end.

It seemed that more than half of the patrons were China people. The only good thing about the place was that there were many sweet girls around.

Chinese New Year Eve

I woke up after four in the afternoon. Starting the day at the hour was amazing considering the fact that I rarely would have a good long sleep. However, I had a mixed feeling since I could have spent the time doing other things.

There was some sweeping and mopping of the floor by my younger brother and I but I did a few times on my part.

Reunion dinner was as per normal; nothing was appealing.

At around ten PM, Irwin came over to bring me to West Coast Park MacDonald’s again for the second night, where he did some brainstorming on his work. If only I was not taking the course at UOW, I would have taken up his projects.

We shared a nugget meal and I got to drink chocolate milkshake finally again but somehow the sensation was not very good.

The chat resumed at the car park and finally nearby my house. A mosquito irritated me badly.

My mum had insisted to go to Chinatown early and I refused to join in the “fun” in the rain with the huge crowd. By the time I went home, they had returned and thus I did not go down to Chinatown.