Dear Dreams – Page 28

Home Alone Day One

[Thursday, 23 December, 2010]

I went to sleep at 4am and by 9am, everyone was gone and I knew they were on the way to Malaysia for holidays. I felt weak somehow and I knew I was going to fall sick soon.

I went to the office alone and did not take my breakfast. I started tidying up a bit while waiting for the SingNet guy. Given the time range of 10am to 2pm, he came after 12pm. He did not sound happy for it was his second trip down to my office. I saw the voucher and realised I had rushed down to the office two days ago for nothing since the stated date was the day before.

I bought a “mai gai” from the canteen and started doing a bit of my work. Mike came over and after some time, we went to Vivocity for movie, catching Tron. It was the only time I could sit down properly to relax after so many weeks. It was in fact the first 3D movie I had watched but somehow it was not very impressive to me. Mike complained that the movie was too dark.

After going home to feed Lucky, I went down to the gym to join the guys in the Christmas celebration. Tze Khit passed me a list of tasks to do for his website but the place was too crowded for me to do anything when my head was spinning. When there were fewer people, I went home to bring Lucky to play with the kids but they left soon.

I reached home near midnight.

She’s a Babe

[Wednesday, 22 December, 2010]
I did many minor things and by the time I went to sleep at 6am, I could not even remember what I had done. I woke up at 1pm and rushed down to the office because Mike told me the SingNet guy would be going down. I was not sure why he did not go down the day before.
My day was lightened up by a sweet voice over the phone to enquire about a tuition assignment in my tuition agency website. I was quite surprised for people usually would ring my brother up instead since I had placed his number above mine.
The SingNet guy came and he asked for the company stamp. He passed his supervisor’s number to me and left with the MIOS modem. Mike contacted the supervisor and he said he had instructed the deliveryman to solve our issue with the stamp but he did not get back to us.
We did a thorough area cleaning and moved the furniture to the exact position. We advanced to Vivocity for dinner but Mike missed it as he tried the highway. We decided to visit IKEA instead and had our dinner at Anchor Point’s Subway. The ulcer inside my mouth and the sore throat quite irritated me.
We went shopping at IKEA to do a final grabbing of necessity before travelling to Vivocity’s BEST to purchase a kettle and fan. Then, we went to the Giants to get a mini fridge. During the journey, I was using Mike’s iPad and I was deadly addicted by it. After going back to office, we started drilling holes and continuing with the positioning of the furniture.

To the Office Many Times

[Tuesday, 21 December, 2010]

The key thing I did was blogging, followed by editing of my photo. It had been too long that I did not play with PhotoShop and thus I refused to go to bed until 8am.

I woke up at around 1pm and went to the gym to find Tze Khit. He told me that Bobby had taken away the 3G mobile stick and thus he could not go through his website to tell me the amendment needed. I went to the office immediately instead since Mike told me the SingNet guy would be arriving between 3 to 5pm.

I started clearing up the office while waiting for the SingNet guy. Mike arrived with new IKEA stuffs from Tampiness and we continued with our work like fixing up the stuffs on at the walls. The air-conditioner guy came down with his two workers and we left for Vivocity. We shopped at Giants for drill, power extension bar and some stick-on wall hooks. Then we went to the food court to packet chicken rice for the workers. After going back to office to deliver the food, we left for Tanjong Pagar and parked the car at Amara Hotel. However, we went to the Thai food restaurant at the corner of storey two of Tanjong Pagar Plaza. There was a couple sitting at the table near the door and they seemed to know the staffs very well. They were playing cards and sometimes seemed quite intimate, and the most important thing was that the girl was very cute looking. The pineapple rice Mike ordered was a big portion and tasted very nice but my egg wrapping fried rice was just normal. I tried their sour plum juice but it did not really satisfy my taste.

After going back to the office, Mike decided to go back to Tanjong Pagar to withdraw money for the air-conditioner contractor. After it was done, we started cleaning and packing up again and left after 11pm. We wanted to have supper at the shop besides the prata shop for beancurd and youtiao but it was already closed. In fact, I had not even noticed it at all.

Freelance Work for Bobby and Fixing up Office

[Monday, 20 December, 2010]

I started the day blogging again and went to sleep at 6am. I woke up many times due to incoming SMSes. Eventually I got up after noon. I went to the gym to help Bobby with his poster and flyer editing before going to the office.

Mike and I continued to fix up the office furniture. Then, we went to IKEA in his newly rented Mazda 3. We started shopping around for the office again after having a clearer picture of what we needed. The young couple trying out the rocking chair made the atmosphere envious. Needless to say, the girl was cute looking. After shopping, we went back to the office and continued with fixing up the furniture until my fingers were numbed.

After going home and had my dinner, I went down to walk Lucky with my brothers.

Two New Gym Works Pending

[Sunday, 19 December, 2010]

I took blogged as the first task of the day and went to sleep at 6am.

I woke up after 3pm and started “packing” my desktop to tidy it up. I had a chat with Tze Khit and Mike before my family and I went to meet my elder brother and his girlfriend at Chinatown’s CK departmental store. Initially, they wanted to have dinner at the porridge stall opposite but I opposed since I had taken it with Mike just a few days ago and it was nothing good. In the end, we went to Maxwell food centre instead. I took chicken rice for dinner.

Tze Khit continued the conversation with me by helping me to vent through my website. He managed to find typographical errors. Suddenly, Bobby called me and asked me to go down to the gym to help him with stuffs again for the next day. Tze Khit started telling me about the requirements to update the Gold’s Gym website. I was very stressed because I was badly exhausted by the recently office renovation and that it had already halted the progress of my own website. If I could not push the site faster, my saving would be dried up very soon and I would be in a sorry state for helping others instead of myself. However, Tze Khit promised me to fund my AdWords campaign, which I could not even find time to explore.

I continued working with my tuition agency website and did SEO for it.

Being Cheated to Church Event for Second Time

[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.

Painting Work at the New Office

[Friday, 17 December, 2010]

After the exhausting day, I was finally home. Due to lack of sleep and extreme long hours of physical and mental endurance, I was on the verge of breaking down. I was helpless because I was jobless and needed the time to do up my website in order to get it popular faster, but, there were too many things that were hindering me. The delay of office setup and the countless requests from friends summed up my frustration. Spending more than half of my life trying to learn how to reject friends, I had failed badly.

It was not long after I sat down to check my emails, Lucky did his business on the floor next to the newspapers again. I could no longer control my emotion and shouted at him angrily. My world seemed to be glowing with darkness. I knew well Lucky was too adorable for anyone of us to let go anymore, especially me, but it was beyond my ability to hold another liability. I was at one of the toughest times of my life and I could not afford to have my time being eaten up.

I went to bed at 2.30am with my heavy head. I was too tired to care about anything anymore.

I was woke up by my mum’s phone call at 2pm. Soon, Mike SMSed me to prepare for some tools. My mum finally returned with my lunch and I asked her for the rug, pail and vacuum cleaner before I went down to meet Mike. We walked to his rented car.

After reaching the office, Mike went to take his lunch while I started pushing all the furniture to the centre. Then, we started painting for the green wall. After that, we went to get extra rollers for the white paint. Mike tried to fix up the curtain but his drill failed him on the hard wall.

After Mike sent me home, I started looking through the brochure that I took from the office’s letterbox. I took instant noodle and started crapping with him in MSN while I updated the tuition agency address to the new address – 10 Raeburn Park.

Shaggy

[Thursday, 16 December, 2010]

I worked on the tutor registration page for my tuition agency website and was quite satisfied with the contents improvement.

I went to bed at 5am but could not stand Lucky crying outside that I went out to accompany him. However, Lucky refused to stay still and interrupted my sleep even though I was already having a hard time lying down on the straw mat on the hard floor. After my elder brother came out of his room at after 8am, I went into my room to sleep.

I woke up at around 11am and started working on the flyer for Smart Tuition Singapore. Mike dropped me a very sudden SMS to tell me the IKEA delivery men would be arriving in fifteen minutes. I quickly set up the scooter and rushed over to the office. I was in time to receive the new furniture.

After Mike arrived, we went to Everton Park to buy paint and went back to office. Mike decided to call it a day and we went to Chinatown by bus to find a vacuum cleaner. After giving up at People’s Park Complex, we went to look for dinner. He wanted to show me to a duck rice stall but it was closed. Another stall claimed that they were the original one but the auntie tried too hard to sell us other food since they ran out of duck supplies somehow. We had dinner at the famous porridge stall opposite CK. I was not a good food appreciator but the porridge tasted normal to me. Mike was very disappointed in it. He continued to guide me along until we departed at Outram Park MRT station.

I went to my mum’s shop to collect Bobby’s shirts from her ladyboss. Bobby asked me to go home to get my laptop to do stuffs for him and even though I was exhausted and my legs were aching, I did his bidding. While he was having meeting with his team, I set up my laptop and dozed off when it was booting up. I did the amendment for both poster and flyer until near midnight. Both Junze and Andrew were waiting together and the three of them shared cab home.

Office Under Renovation At Last

[Wednesday, 15 December, 2010]

Caiping messaged me in Facebook out of a sudden to invite me to a magic show. I was quite surprised but delighted at the same time to be remembered. Since it was on Saturday evening, I supposed I would be free enough to join her and thus I accepted the invitation on condition that it was not a church event.

I worked with my website and played a while with Lucky before going to bed at 4am. I felt quite sad that he could not join me in the bedroom anymore after the mess he had created.

I woke up at 1.30pm and started working on my tuition agency website. Then, I went to the office to meet Mike for renovation. Since he gave me a very sudden notice that he would be reaching earlier, I took the scooter and rushed over. We sat at the canteen and watched the workers do their work. Until evening, we left the place. We walked towards Neil Road, passed by Pinnacle and I showed him to the Gold’s Gym. Then, I recommended him to “Once Upon a Milk Shake” near Tanjong Pagar MRT station. I did not really enjoy the new white chocolate favour milkshake.

After reaching home, I was quite distracted by the television. I took my late dinner and did not join my brothers down to walk Lucky.

SEO and Web Development for the Day

[Tuesday, 14 December, 2010]

It was the second night Lucky was banned from entering the bedrooms.

I spent the morning blogging and doing SEO for my tuition agency website. Sleeping at 6.30am, I woke up nine hours later by my younger brother’s SMS.

It was quite a simple day, which I spent totally on the website. I also had some discussion with my younger brother.