Dear Dreams – Page 113

Cashier Order and Shop at Vivocity

On Saturday, Gilbert made arrangement to go to Marina South Pier. It was a busy morning for me since I had to rush down to the POSBank to buy cashier order to pay for my school fee.

I received two missed calls from numbers which were not in my contact list. Just as I was locking the door, I received another call again and I realised it was from Meihoe. Mr Ng had invited me out for lunch and I felt too pampered over it.

I arrived at the bank and was so fortunate that there was no queue. I tried to cash in a cheque but the bank teller told me I had to drop it at the box outside. Next, I found out about buying the cashier order and even though she told me I had to pay a five dollar fee, I did not want to waste my trip down. Next, I found out about the maximum purchase using NETS could be adjusted to $3000 per day and the maximum for ATM withdrawal was only $2000.

I went home to place everything back and gave Gilbert a call and he insisted me to put on the new clothes and shoes, and thus, it took me ages to get out of my house. I met him below his office and walked over to Keppel Road to take a bus towards Vivocity instead of Marina South Pier since the sky was getting dark.

We had our lunch at the Food Republic food court and I got myself the usual chicken chop but it was not as yummy as in the past anymore. The shopping trip started and I finally got to buy Gilbert his birthday gift. I also got myself a sleeveless shirt to make my collection four. Nevertheless, the stay at Topman shop was too long and exhausted me.

Gilberto in his new jacket

Me at the corner of the seat. The lighting was quite special.

The sauces

We took a rest at a new restaurant called Barcelos. My focus was on one of the staffs who looked like primary school kid as I remembered in the past, there used to be an age limit for youngsters to work part-time.

It was getting late and we had to call off the plan to the Marina South Pier.

Too Flattered Again

On last Friday, I finished the final amendment for the poster before lunch. Jenne sent me an email to thank me and she even included my bosses in the carbon copy. I felt too appreciated but flattered, and I did not reply her in case it would seem like I was too full of myself.

Lunch was together with Meihoe, Dorothy, Weitat, Daniel and Jingkun. We went to Clementi Avenue 2 for the duck rice again. We discussed over the badminton sessions during the soon-to-come school holidays. It was great to see Dorothy regaining her youth and behaved just like any other teenager, after hanging out with us.

Jingkun left earlier to repair his car. Weitat was involved in a seminar and thus, I had to wait for Daniel, who was too occupied with his work to leave. In the end, I left together with Alfni but she took a ride from Alex.

Badminton and Volleyball Friendly Match

On Thursday, lunch was “lor mee” again since I was still feeling sick and could not take other stuffs.

In the afternoon, I tried to drag time so that I could get to rest more. I would not have done any sport for the day if Meihoe did not tell me that Mr Ng was going down to play with me.

I went to the canteen to grab some sandwiches and the auntie sold me a box of them for two bucks, and even asked her assistant to make a cup of tea for me when I told her I was sick.

The entire hall was very crowded. When Mr Ng arrived, I teamed up with him to play against the rest. Next, Daniel allied with me against Afni and Vivian. After teaming up with Dorothy against Meihoe and Mr Ng, I played one on one with Mr Ng and it certainly took me lots of courage and energy but at least, we did not play as long as the previous time.

After badminton, we proceeded to play volleyball. We had friendly match with some Malaysians and some of the SIM players came down as well. It had been ages since I last had serious volleyball game and I felt so weird. Jumping with my injured right knee was difficult and the runny nose was irritating. I was not able to do my best.

Overall, we won three games and lost one game. I left after that since I was not feeling well and that I had to wake up early for the next day.

My stomach gave me lots of problems, posing more problems than the flu and cough.

Gave Badminton a Miss

The flu tablet caused excess drowsiness on me. I did not take it in the morning and I totally forgot about the lozenges as well until I was at the carpark.

The Photoshop work was handed over to me and it was really tough since Yuanyuan had merged the texts with the background previously, and now that they wanted to make changes to the text as well. On a plain background would be much easier but it was fanciful designed and I had to perform some magic so that the amended texts would look normal with the edited background. It required lots of time and patience.

Lunch was at the canteen with my two buddies and Daniel. I bought food from the usual mixed vegetable rice stall but this time, I chose fried fish instead of chicken cutlet. Mdm Seet joined in the table to create lots of laughers.

The afternoon kept me busy and it was torturing in my drowsy state to walk around. Things were still okay, except for a very immature and arrogant kid who was rude. I tried to control myself to tolerate such bitch because I did not want to make the first attempt to shout at girls. It was pointless to try to save anyone who did not want to save himself or herself.

Jingkun, Weitat, Meihoe, Dorothy and Vivian were playing badminton. I could not join in due to my illness. So, I walked to the MRT together with Daniel.

Flu Again and Again

I pinned high hopes to get some vicks or strepsils from the Co-Op in the yesterday morning. It was over 10 AM and after looking at the notice on the door, which “9am to 4pm” was written, I happily went in to get my lozenges. The girl at the cashier was asking me what I wanted and told me it was not in operation yet.

It was so ridiculous to have the operating hours indicated at the door and yet the shop was still not opened an hour later. I supposed none of the retail shops out in the market would do this. The excuse was that the girl in charge, Colin, had not arrived yet and probably due to some traffic jams. Her working hours were supposed to be 8 AM to 5 PM and yet the traffic jam could actually cause her to be late for two and a half hours. When the shop was finally opened for business, I realised none of the lozenges was on the shelves anymore and that the excuse given was that it was coming to the end of the semester soon.

I had lunch at the Tradehub with Baey, Joy, Alfni, Alex, Hasnah and Bernard. I ordered a plate of chicken rice for $3 and the can of carrot juice cost $1.50. The meat seemed to taste quite good with the gravy and nasi lemak rice, but I was unfortunately having flu and thus did not get to enjoy much. I did not join in the conversation often since I had to handle my runny nose.

I almost finished a packet of tissue papers in the afternoon; it was a tough afternoon for me.

Was it so difficult to follow instructions when the speaker was not right besides you? Was it just because of your self-discipline problem that your attention was diverted away once nobody was right besides you to monitor you?

This afternoon, I repeated my words many times and did as many times debugging as well.

As I was rushing off from work, Bernard offered to send me to Dover MRT and thus saving me lots of energy and time. I was more appreciative of the companion.

I took the wrong exit out of Outram Park MRT, having to make a detour. As I was asking for Dr Sally, the nurse at the counter disappointed me by telling me Sally was on leave. I had not met her for years and she was one of the best doctors at the polyclinic.

The waiting time was in fact, quite short, at four PM. I got into the room right after around two patients. Dr Ho in room 2 looked quite stylish. My main purpose for visiting the polyclinic instead of a Chinese physician was because I wanted to ask about my swollen right wrist and freckles on my shoulders but she did not seem to be able to help me at all. I was then prescribed the usual flu tablets and cough syrup, and she asked if I needed any lozenges, which quite stunned me since she was the doctor. The short consultation period cost me $9 together with $4 of medicine. I was wondering if I could get better medicine if I were to pay more than thrice the amount in a private clinic.

My mum was cooking dinner when I got home. I took my meal earlier than normal. I finished the last episode of the “Ten Brothers” online, which I missed it a day ago on channel 8, before swallowing a flu tablet and dozed off shortly.

Irwin’s New Golf Clubs

I woke up with a very terrible sore throat on Monday morning, which almost tore my throat apart. After swallowing saliva for some time, I recovered with itchiness left on my throat.

New task awaited me and the thought of working with Photoshop on the super duper tortoise-like laptop was a complete turn off.

I had to take lor mee for lunch since the Chinese mixed vegetable rice would not be nice without the curry as gravy.

I left work earlier and rushed home to get changed before meeting Irwin at Queenstown. Since his bus was taking a long time, I went into the NTUC supermarket to have a quick shopping, buying a packet of red bean buns and two bottles of isotonic drinks, which I had not seen before; they tasted like 100-plus but the label was 7-up.

I waited at the golf driving range after that. Irwin came along with his personal golf clubs and I was quite excited. Nevertheless, my entire body was weak somehow and together with the irritating itchiness on my throat, I did not have good game. We only finished two baskets of golf balls, which was slightly more than two hundreds of them.

We could not decide on what to eat and if it was not for my throat, I would have decided on one of the fast food restaurants. Anyway, Irwin suggested to go home first to check out if his brother was home so that he could borrow the car and fetch me at my house for dinner.

In the end, the dinner was called off and I finished the remaining of the buns for dinner.

Some payment issues from my current webhost boiled me up so much that I almost wanted to dedicate a few days to write a long essay to curse them. Luckily that they had a live chat system on their website and the staff attended to me and all problems seemed to be solved. I was handling it so professionally in very fine tone that Mike appraised me that I was a good client.

This night, I started sneezing and I knew it was the continued symptom of the sore throat.

Uncle at Hospital and Night Movie with Irwin

I woke up at around 11.30 AM on Sunday morning and started to watch the stupid China show on channel 8, which Michelle Chia was involved and the filming was pulled to Singapore in the recent episodes.

My mum dragged me to the hospital in the afternoon to visit my uncle and since I knew it the night before, I did not start into any work so that the halting of progress would not irritate me. In fact, my uncle had been going to the hospital quite often and thus I was not very worried.

Along the way, my mum was asking me to give some money to my aunt since she was jobless and had to look after my uncle. I hated all these mandatory demands because I hated to be instructed to do things and especially on things which I was preparing to do. Suddenly, I was wondering if the decision to exhaust my saving for the degree course would be a wrong choice.

The long trip to the hospital was a total turn off. My mum was guiding the way as though as I was fresh to the place. When I wanted to go to the ATM machine which I remembered was near the pharmacy, my mum went her way and thus I gave up.

My aunt was scolding my uncle who was behaving worse than a child and when she mentioned about his illness since year 2000, I counted how long she had been taking care of him, facing his nuisance. She had been tortured by him for nearly nine years since his brain was infected by virus and in her childless status, she probably had forgotten how to smile.

When my uncle tried to press the alert button to get the nurse, I managed to stop him and my aunt came over to hit him on his hand. Having to hit someone whom you loved and had been taking care of you for centuries was definitely unbearable, but somehow, it was the only language now to make my uncle understand what he wanted to do was wrong.

Would love in these days last long; and would any girl be as loyal and responsible to take care of her sick spouse for a century or more?

I hated hospital and I hated hospital visiting.

We followed my aunt home, walking down the slope towards the main road and it took some time before we arrived at Kim Tian Road. My aunt was quite hostile somehow and she refused to join us for dinner. From her conversation with my mum, I realised she had been taking instant noodle for her dinner.

I seriously did not enjoy the trip at all. I was looking out for ATM machine all along the road that we passed by, having to plan how to make my aunt accept the money even if I could withdraw the money. Next, she did not even want to accept a simple dinner treat, which caused frustration in me. Things seemed to be going the opposite way for me.

Recapping my childhood days when I was staying at my aunt’s place, with all the good values being imparted to me, I had benefited so much from the poor old couple. At least, I was proud of my honesty.

My aunt was too tiny to get away and we ended up at the coffee shop nearby. My mum made the order of two small bowls of soup and a bowl of oil chicken, and I felt like eating just the plain rice even though it cost me around ten bucks. The drinks stall extorted money and charged us $1.30 for each can drink and $0.90 for a cup of coffee; it was just a normal neighbourhood coffee shop and not even a food court.

I was arranging to meet up with Irwin for golf but when I reached home, he told me his side was raining and thus he could not get out of house. Just as I thought I would only be meeting him the next day, he was too bored and suggested catching a movie together. I missed the last part of my favourite show – 鹿鼎记 – as he reached fast in his brother’s car.

We went to Vivocity and caught the show – Body of Lies. A group of teenagers was out to seek attentions at the extreme right side of the theater and the sad thing was that two of the girls who did walk past us looked quite sweet; such a waste of beauties with brainless heads to mix with fearless ah bengs who would probably get into fights someday. I did not want to curse the girls but could not help thinking how soon they would dirt their bodies.

The movie, “Body of Lies”, was quite a messy show. The scenes switched from countries to countries and that the actors spoke a little too fast for me to catch; I was totally lost at some parts of the show. The last part was definitely disgusting with the terrorist using the hammer on the hero’s fingers. There was a guy whose name sounded like “honey” and it was quite funny to hear the other actors addressing him.

After holding onto my bladder for the entire show, I finally realized that it was not a good idea to catch movie when I was sick.

I was wondering if watching a movie was a good choice since Irwin was facing his downtime and I could have probably chosen somewhere to chat with him, or even with no solution, at least to let him pour out and that was the least thing friends could do for him.

Irwin sent me home as usual.

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.