Dear Dreams – Page 126

Most Enjoyable Volleyball Ever

The last day of torment for the previous week ended a memorable day. Jingkun drove us out for lunch as Mingli joined us, picking up Mingfa at Dover MRT. I went into deep sleep inside the car and woke up to find myself at Commonwealth Avenue.

Chicken chop

Melted iced jelly

We went to a hawker centre where I took chicken chop at five bucks, which did not taste very special but was good enough. I ordered a cup of iced longan for Mingli but the uncle gave me a large bowl of it. My iced jelly was another similar sized bowl with lots of other weird toppings. My stomach was so bloated after that.

We put Mingfa at Commonwealth MRT before going back to work. It was a very sleepy afternoon after exhausting myself terribly since the start of the week, even though we started working on Tuesday. The noises of the event at the ground level slowed down work further more.

Into late afternoon, we finally put down our work and got ready for volleyball. I began collapsing on the floor as usual but could not doze off. It was not long before Weitat and Mingfa started calling me to get up for the real games. We managed to form two teams, which included a few of the senior players who usually played with us on Saturday nights. Two of the uncles were really fun, sporting and friendly.

We had the most enjoyable games ever. Screaming and teasing filled the night and the exhaustion failed to take our feet down. It was not my best performance day but at least not my lousiest one. I enjoyed the night totally, being selfish and not showing any consideration for anyone else like what I had been doing every time.

We walked to Weitat’s house after bathing. Kachua, Andy, Mingfa, Mingli and I waited at the park while Weitat got back to bathe and drove his car out. Wilson came over to pick up Mingfa before we proceeded to the Punggol nasi lemak stall at Tanjong Katong Road.

Wilson amazingly stick to his dieting plan and refrained himself from taking any supper. My portion of food consisting of ikan billis, chicken wing, pork meat and egg cost three ninety, which was very costly and yet not impressive. I wondered why so many people were queuing up even at such late hour after midnight.

Weitat gave me a ride home after dropping off Kachua. It was already after one AM by the time I reached home.

Dinner at Chinatown Complex

Last Thursday, my gang decided to go for dinner together. Jingkun initiated it but since he left earlier than Weitat and I, we had some problems communicating with him.

In the end, we decided to go to IMM. We met up with Mingli first and walked around to search for her printer. Mingfa and Jingkun later merged into the group and we decided to go to Chinatown to have sting ray. Jingkun was the driver and we parked the car at Maxwell Food Centre before crossing the road over to Chinatown Complex.

The colourful fruit juices

Tableful of food

Mingfa and Jingkun

Weitat and Mingli

We ordered two plates of sting rays and an individual plate for octopus and vegetable each. Mingfa ordered a plate of Hokkien noodle whereas Weitat bought three bowls of soup, which we felt it was waste of money.

I finally fulfilled one of my wishes to give them a treat on the food which my entire family had been enjoying since my dad was around. They were good and cheap food.

Ikea for Quilt

Ikea had done a great job by mailing their magazines to households yearly. Despite the quality of the material, I loved their nicely designed pages with varies types of furnitures, and also with some good tips.

Some discounted items were really attractive and that was why I invited my family to visit the big building together. It was supposed to be on last Monday, but however, my younger brother suddenly claimed that he had a lecture. We decided to go on the next day then.

On the day of the family outing, I actually planned not to work overtime again but failed as usual for the responsibility. Insensible people were destroying their own future and even though most were hopeless cases, I still continued to do my part, or rather, overdo my part.

With a half an hour’s delay, my buddies were already gone for they probably thought I would have left earlier as told. It began drizzling before I could leave work place and then, I boarded a bus 198 which arrived coincidentally at the same time. I met up with my mum and younger brother soon. It was not long before my elder brother and his girlfriend joined us.

We had our dinner at the food court where I bumped into a few of my colleagues. My family bought food to share, which dug extra small holes into my wallet. After the dinner, my elder brother went to get a cake at the first level and it tasted good.

My main objective was to get a cheap but decent quilt since my spacious flat with the two giantic rooms were trying too hard to cool me down every night without fail. We got stuck at the quilt department for quite some time. My initial plan was to get the cheapest quilt as shown on the magazine. However, there was some sudden change of plan which was eventually resolved.

We also came across study tables and wheeled chairs. My younger brother wanted badly to get a pair of them to place inside the room, but it seemed like an impossible plan. I wanted to give him a good environment for studies but my financial situation was not stable enough for upgrading the flat.

We shopped till the very last few minutes of the operating hours before we left.

TIRED

Exhaustion drives sanity.

I need to get away, for at least a short period of time.

Sail me a plane and I would ride a trolley to outer-space.

A Silent Phone Day

My phone had pronounced temporary dead yesterday without me knowing it.

It was all quiet and peaceful without the disturbance; however, I could not communicate with others as well when necessary. I failed to call or SMS anyone, and at first I thought it was just a temporary situation.

When I was given a sudden duty in the morning, I did not receive the usual SMS notice. In conjunction with the missing notice, my laptop’s antivirus was having problem and thus I only checked my email once in the early morning at 8am and did not read the email sent around half an hour later.

When I repeatedly could not send out SMS, I tried calling myself using the office phone and it did not get through. I called Starhub customer service and the lady smartly led me the way to configure my K800i at:

Settings > Connectivity > Mobile Networks > GSM/3G networks

The phone was supposed to be set to “GSM only” instead of “GSM and 3G”. The friendly operator told me it was a common problem where the two options were automatically toggled. I forgot to ask her if it was the network or phone’s problem.

Anyway, somehow I enjoyed the peace during the absence of ringing.

Having a phone is more of setting up a free call centre for all sorts of services, for free.

Finally, Back to Beach

The sun showered me with too much love that my skin was burnt on this very interesting Monday, which was a holiday.

The sleep after six pm in the morning and waking up less than two hours later for haircut left me exhausted. Before I could get back into deep sleep, Mingfa called to ask me down to the beach. I was too tired for celebration of the long abandoned place. My brain was blank but somehow, could not fully utilise the remaining time to sleep.

I met up with the three of them – Mingfa, Weitat and Jingkun – at Seah Lm Food Centre. I had a cup of fruit juice while waiting for them to finish off their breakfast. Jingkun drove us into Sentosa where I witnessed the great changes at the entrance, and even the ticket booth for drive-in was shifted further in.

Since it was a holiday for most schools, the beach was actually occupied by youngsters despite it was a weekday. Full of sweeties in all sorts of bikinis, it was quite a gazing place.

We met up with Mingfa’s students and started playing volleyball. I was quite careful with my almost-recovered index finger. Beginning of the games wrote some incredible records for me; somehow I did better in spiking at beach than indoor courts even though the sand made jumping much tougher.

I did not take out my camera at all.

Into late afternoon, the sun had worn us out. It was tough on feet, dragging on a dehydrated yet heavier body, I simply lusted for resting. Since we left earlier than usual, we managed to skip queuing up at the washroom.

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Longan drinks

My mushroom baked rice

French fries

The four of us went to Vivocity and had our early dinner at Kim Gary. It was my second time dining over there at the costly restaurant. Jingkun left us after the dinner and we started walking around before going home.

Visit to the Asian Civilisation Museum

The museum tour organised by Gilbert kept my Sunday afternoon occupied. We were supposed to meet up at around three pm but he was probably too engrossed in the monopoly game with his friends at Kallang that the timing was dragged. I dozed off until near four pm, I woke up to be shocked by his SMS that we were meeting at 4.30pm.

I missed a train and decided to walk over to Raffles MRT station instead so that I was able to control the timing better. It was, however, a great mistake, for I had not travelled that route for quite long and had totally forgotten the fact that the travel time was much longer than estimated.

I was not sure which museum he was referring to and thus, made a big detour over to the One Fullerton side. In my wetted shirt, I finally reached the Asian Civilisation Museum, which was located next to Fullerton Hotel and also besides the Victoria Theatre.

Since Gilbert did not pick up my calls, I went in straight away and eventually found him soon. His friends Yong, June and Shirley were surrounding him and none of them noticed my presence until around five minutes later.

The tour around the museum was not really fascinating my virgin visit there was satisfying enough with the companions. I would prefer arts museums.

We had ice-cream outside the museum and eventually crossed over to the shop houses near North Bridge Road after some photography attempts at the Singapore River. We landed up at a Japanese restaurant “所府”. I had a bowl of chicken noodle with grade two spicy. It almost burned my tongue. We had a long chat there before we left for home.

I walked to Chinatown to get a bottle of shampoo and a toothbrush before speed-walking home.

Money the Evil

In the name of money, and for the sake of being together with my buddies and other super duper nice people, I would probably change my plan.

The biggest problem now is that I hate to give people wrong impression that my words are doubtful; it is the second time I have announced my departure. I would probably have some time for my own websites. The problematic people I would continue to face do not matter since there would not be much responsibilities anymore.

NDP 2008 Air Show

The National Day Parade 2008’s Air Show was probably the most touching moment of the celebration.
The reckless performance by the RSAF Black Knights moved me. It was definitely difficult to control the aircrafts to prevent crashing into one another. Movements were uniform.
At times, I asked myself whether such dangerous performance was worthwhile. I could not get an answer but to continue to pray hard and enjoy their great performance.
Nevertheless, I would die a satisfied man if I could do great stuns like them.

Volleyball after so Long

A long day began early in the morning. I struggled to leave my house as usual not long after the sun rose.

Once again I gave myself extra work instead of concentrating or resting inside the office. Weitat was kind enough to accompany me for a quick brunch.

The late afternoon was hours of torturing period but eventually working with the kind souls made me feel quite honourable.

Starvation was my foe for the evening. Faris donated some chocolates to me but my poor health could only allow me to have one piece to win favour from the rumbling stomach. Famine drove me down to the canteen for in search of food and luckily, I managed to get a cup noodle from the beloved drinks stall auntie.

Just as I was trying to take a break and catch up with the online news after neglecting them for a couple of days, Weitat announced that both Mingfa and Mingli were already waiting for us inside the hall.

A quick setup of the net permitted Weitat and I to get changed up. We began playing two versus two, and this time I teamed up with Mingfa to drag his score down.

After the weeks of secluded life, away from the court, I was totally rusted that I could not even serve the ball, let alone spiking. The hit on the top joint of my right thumb when I was trying to spike the ball added to the phobia of touching the ball. I could feel the blue-black and it was a terrible pain to start off with the game. My right index finger was still a victim to the sprain months ago.

We had quite good games but however, I felt weird to have outsiders in the same team. My backache caused me to pause at the later hour – it was not due to volleyball but bad sitting posture probably.

My entire mind was filled with complications throughout the night.

Jingkun drove us to East Coast Park’s C Nai Hong Kong Café. We had great jokes inside the car, and the seat belts’ joke simply lasted us for long. However, I started to get kicked up with famine once again and my entire body was so weak that I stopped talking. In my collapsing eyelids, I could feel only numbness in my mind but could not doze off.

Small cup of Yuan-Yang (same size as the Si Wa Nai Cha)

Wilson and Ruoci joined us soon. I had the usual dish but ordered a cup of “Yuan Yang” (coffee with tea) instead. I could not help but to complain again about the size of the cup as they had reduced it since months ago. I could not stand the small serving with the same amount of price, which failed to give me the satisfaction especially with the enormous numbers of free ice inside the drinks.

Jingkun sent me home. Without looking at the clock, I knew well it was already very late.