Dear Dreams – Page 112

Volleyball with Baseball Player

After the long weekends, returning to work on Tuesday was uneasy.

Boss took leave to go to library so that he could concentrate on his work. Weiming and Jonathan’s presence was another bonus to resist the emptiness of the entire office.

Jingkun left to find his girlfriend during lunch time. Weitat took Daniel and me to Botak Jones, where we waited for Mingfa and Jennifer’s arrival. Weitat, Daniel and I shared two big plates of fish and chips and they were quite yummy.

I took Jennifer’s car back to work. All of them left before four PM and I was left “alone” working on the website’s design. The only noise was Alex and his two students who were working on videos.

In order to allow the Serco guy to leave early, I left the office after six PM so that he could lock up the place earlier. Later on, he opened the MPH door for me. As the rest started to arrive one by one, we were ready to set up the court but the security guard came in to chase us out, saying that we had booked the place only from eight to ten PM. I was angry for she was doing it on purpose with instructions from some bastards, and taking account that we worked together before, she was such a disappointment.

Volleyball was supposed to be a fun game but it really depended on the players as well. I was totally not used to playing with arrogant people who showed no respect towards his own team, and worst still, towards the game itself. We had a baseball player for the night who expected his own team member to handle the ball which seemed to fall from the hundredth storey.

If I could not do something well, I would not have the creep to lecture others about how to do it. If I did not have the mood to play in the game, I would step out of the court instead of ruining other people’s game.

The boredom drove me insane and that I started to make noises like an escaped mental patient. I left earlier.

Shop at City Square, Johor Bahru

I woke up exceptional early on the freezing Monday morning. After washing up and bathing, it was almost 9.30 AM when we took off from the house. My younger brother, my mum and I boarded bus 75 from Cantonment Link towards Bukit Timah and stopped near Bukit Timah Shopping Centre to transit to bus 170, which kept us waiting for very long. All of the buses arrived, inclusive of another bus 75, before we flagged for the next bus 170.

We stopped at Causeway Checkpoint. The new system allowed us to scan the passport manually and then by placing our thumb on the scanner, we could avoid the long queue with the foreigners. The old bus conductor was very fierce and he was probably trained to do so with all the cheapskate and disorder people around, especially those non-Singaporeans. After re-boarding the bus and moving towards the Malaysian Checkpoint, we had to bear with the long queue to stamp our passport.

Just then, I received an SMS, telling me of the new amendment to the poster again. The date was changed. I was glad that I had not done the previous changes of the logo instructed on last Friday.

We arrived at City Square at around noon, and my younger brother was already late for one and a half hour for his eyes checkup. He was lucky as usual to get into the room immediately without queuing up. My mum made hot Milo for us, which kept our stomach filled.

The nearest restaurant at the basement was Secret Recipe. While we were going up the escalator, I saw a pretty girl holding boxes of chess set made of glass, which was similar to one of my collections.

We had lunch at a restaurant near Mary Brown, which the specialty was Portuguese chicken. The sauce to the noodle was superb and unique, however, the fish was too salty and that the chicken tasted normal. My mum had a bowl of chendol but could not finish it.

We started combing shops like Factory Outlet Shop and Rejected shops for cheap yet good quality stuffs. We even walked around Popular and some gift shops. Ever since buying the short sleeve shirt at Freshbox shop, I only set my eyes on the more stylish type and not just a plain format one. It took me the entire hour to just get a short sleeve shirt costing nearly RM$50, which had surpassed the price of all my brother’s wears.

Anyway, I felt uneasy to spend my mum’s money though she was the one asking me not to go to the money exchanger since she had leftover Malaysian Ringgits from the previous trips. We left at around five PM and were disappointed that there was no train service. We paid RM$2.50 each to get a bus ride directly to Queen Road, but there was this hassle to go down the bus at the Checkpoints.

At the Causeway Checkpoint, while waiting for the bus, a male Malaysian was being stopped by a bus conductor, probably due to cutting queue. He was very frustrated and spitted a couple of times towards the bus. This hooligan made me realize Singapore was a much civilized place to stay in.

The bus went by BKE, followed by PIE and probably took CTE to reach Bugis and I dozed off in the mid of the journey, and it was really fast. We crossed some roads to wait for bus 145 and 80 to proceed home.

Dinner was steamboat again.

Dinner and Shopped with Family

I started my lazy Sunday late. The most eventful thing was the dinner with my family. My elder brother wanted to taste the curry fish head at Chinatown again but he had to accommodate me since I did not like taking fish. My mum chose the usual sting ray stall and we had two plates of sting rays and a plate of prawn at $8 each, and a plate of vegetable at $4.

After that, we went to the nearest CK departmental stall to shop. The basement had been renovated and there were less tidbits since the new shelves were shorter. However, the entire place looked much brighter. We got three cute baskets after choosing for quite some time since the quality was so bad that many of them were already damaged or scratched. I felt quite pressurized at the perfume section when my mum mentioned that the perfume I gave her a few years ago was very nice because it cost over a hundred dollar.

It was a great night for family’s togetherness.

After reaching home, I started packing the wardrobe. I cleared some unwanted clothes and there were still many which I could not bear to part with. In fact, I had so many new shirts inside, which I felt unnecessary to use them. I found a short sleeve shirt which my younger brother bought for me at Thailand, which he claimed was expensive. Since it was kind of rainbow coloured and thus not very formal, I was not sure if I should wear it to work.

Updated Older Blog Entries with Photos

I spent the Saturday afternoon updating my blog with outdated entries. After which, the entire evening was used to edit the past few months’ outdated photos for the blog entries. It was a very strenuous process which totally tired me out because I had to match the date between the photos and days.

I looked through another folder and realised there were even photos taken the previous year that I had yet to upload but I had to give up since my mind was totally shagged. I dozed off soon and it was already after midnight.

I woke up at around five AM to brush my teeth but realised my brother was catching the “倚天屠龙记” show on his computer. I joined in but he dozed off soon and I caught three episodes of it until daylight.

Staff Bonding – Food Rally

Friday was quite a special day. After some hesitation, I finally decided to go into the office in shorts. When I saw Alvin wearing more causal than me, I knew I was safe. Afni made some cupcakes for everyone. Most people were in high spirit.

I went to Pui Kuan straight away for the amendment of the poster once again and around an hour later, just before everyone was moving off, she told me there was another amendment.

Things almost turned sour when Weitat dragged the time. He was helping Madam Seet with her work and at the point of time when we were moving out, he was not down at the car park yet. Jingkun was frustrated for the sudden delay because it was already planned since so early. I felt it was ridiculous as well but I remained silent since it was pointless to say anything or to change his decision like always. We decided to go ahead with the game without him but he turned up to ease our disappointments.

Joy sped off in her Suzuki, sending the four “hunks” she claimed to Hort Park. We were quite lost at first but we eventually got ourselves registered at the car park and took a picture to start off. Our initial plan was to stroll off fast but the teams in front were running and thus, we followed.

Jingkun was deadbeat somehow at the start at Forest Walk unexpectedly. My right knee started to ache soon as well. Weitat and I tried to take the gradual slope up to realise taking the stairs could be much faster. We reached the Hilltop and finally climbed up to the usual Henderson Waves.

Next, we tried to fool the rest of the teams into wrong direction but it somehow did not work. The journey towards the Cable Car station marked my greatest mistake as I led the team to take the stairs up. It was the normal route for trekking but the other teams took the road instead and made a faster and less effort trip.

The finish dash down the stairs towards the Harbourfront MRT station allowed me to lead all the way, except that we were all lost at the entrance since it was the last station and yet nobody was around to receive us. Jonathan and Joy were doing their shopping and had to rush over.

I was told of reporting near the food centre and quickly rushed over to get the puzzle from Sharon. It was a magic cubic and Jonathan quickly torn it apart to cheat. The next puzzle was a list of location for us to decode and we simply continued solving them by the crowded covered path besides the food centre. Some people were doing surveys near us and we borrowed a pen from a sweet girl but she was gone when we were about to take off. The pen was from City Harvest.

We went to Yuan Ching, Bukit Timah, Adam Road and finally Clementi to take pictures with the stalls. Our greatest defeat was at the traffic jams and we did make some minor mistakes in turning, but overall, Joy was reckless enough to help us speed up a lot. The final mistake was that we should have asked Joy to wait for us near the main road instead of the car park because it took us quite long to get out afterwards.

It was a very enjoyable day even though we could only emerge as the fifth team out of twelve of them. We had nasi lemak from Adam Road for our lunch at the school canteen. Later on, it was announced at the prize presentation that they had extended it to five teams instead of three, and we were glad to receive the twenty bucks NTUC voucher.

I took a lift from Bernard and then Weiming accompanied me until Commonwealth MRT station.

My elder brother and I were engrossed in the 倚天屠龙记 on channel 8 every weekday at eleven PM and thus, we watched it online after midnight and dozed off together.

Full Morning of Torment

Thursday morning was a killer. I did two sessions of invigilation at one go apart from the fact that I had to wake up super early. Cheng Hong SMSed me to give me morning call and I was so shocked over his kindness. The only motivation was that work would be lightened after this. I managed to survive the hours of torment and by then, everyone was already at the canteen.

I spent the afternoon doing the design of icons for George. Most of the colleagues had a meeting and at first I was pinning hope for them to return early enough for badminton. Jingkun went off to settle stuffs while Weitat went over to IMM to buy things. In the end, badminton was eventually cancelled and thus I continued with my work until evening time.

Volleyball game was fun except that my right knee was giving ways. I left together with Kachua at around 10.30 PM to take the train home.

KO Graduation Party

Wednesday morning was a bad start of the day with a sudden changes requirement in the poster amendment. Though it was long anticipated with the previous experience, I was quite frustrated over the never-ending amendments.

I was in my new shirt which I bought during the previous shopping trip with Gilbert. Since it was more stylishly designed,

I attended the KO’s graduation party. It was an unexpectedly early celebration for there was still around three more months towards the end of their struggle. We had endless photo-taking sessions and two rounds of cake-eating sessions because Chun Leng was having his birthday.

Since the celebration stretched till after lunch time, and I had to grab a “bao” and “siew mai”.

The most frustrating thing was to receive an email regarding more amendments to the poster, which I felt all instructions should be given at one shot.

In the afternoon, we had a short badminton session. Since Weitat wanted to take a shower, Jingkun left in a rush first. Suddenly Weitat decided to go home directly but it was too late for me to catch Jingkun’s car since I was too tired to run anymore, and I did not want to dirt his car with my sweat.

Photoshop Editing – Feather tool

On Tuesday, the canteen was crowded and the Chinese vegetable rice stall owners did not prepare enough food. I was queueing up for the pathetic number of dishes left and it was until my turn when even the white rice was finished. I continued to wait there but the new rice never seemed to be able to be cooked. After standing there for a total of around fifteen minutes, I gave up.

I hated doing invigilation and the time spent always seemed like days. By the end of the day, I was dead beat though I actually did not do many things.

At night, I wanted to update outdated pictures into my blog but I spent hours editing some of them and eventually uploaded them into Friendster and Tagged accounts. It was a good learning process and I finally got more familiar with the Photoshop’s very basic tool called “Feather”. The simple task simply lasted me till after midnight.

Monday was a Holiday

I had a long sleep on Monday and woke up in the afternoon, which I had not been doing for very long. It was Hari Raya and thus there was no work.

The weather was freezing for the entire day and I had to put on my shirt. My mum fried noodle but the onion ruined the taste. I had a chat with Irwin and realised he had already reached Australia.

The thought of work resuming the next day was a big turn off.

I was not used to having holidays and I kept thinking that it was a Sunday and expecting to watch some documentary programs after midnight.

Henderson Waves with Family

Sunday started off in the morning with my elder brother’s plan to have breakfast at Amoy Street. We were, however, so unlucky that the stall was having a two day break. Therefore, we had chicken rice instead. So, my elder brother and his girlfriend and my mum shared half a white chicken and half a roosted chicken at twenty bucks. The taste was normal but I did not like the soup. After eating, we had a little shopping at the NTUC.

The next part of the day was during the late afternoon after taking a nap. My younger brother and mum were ready to go to the Henderson Waves. We stopped by the bread shop near 7-11 store and got some buns. My mum had a waffle and complained that the amount of peanut butter applied was very little.

The Henderson Waves

We started off at Henderson Road and challenged the stairs. It was not that tough after all. After admiring the place which I had been to for more than four times already, we proceeded towards the Terrence garden and then down Forest Walk. We stopped at Hort Park and the entire trip took us more than an hour.

We took a bus to Vivocity and shopped at the Giant. We conquered the groceries section and managed to let my mum know that we had to carry whatever we bought all the way home. We were drooling over some nice and cheap sofa but had to face the fact that our house was too cramp and messy to put any.

Next, we stopped at the Starhub shop and applied to change our house’s phone line to Starhub since we would be enjoying the free service as long as we were subscribed to SCV Max-online. We were the last customer and the Pilipino staff Christopher impressed me with his politeness.

We bought big coleslaw from Harbourfront Centre’s KFC and went down to MacDonald’s for dinner. They did not have student meal and thus, our budget meal was destroyed.