Dear Dreams – Page 42

Finally, Jogged to Marina Barrage Again

[Saturday, 7 August, 2010]

I had lunch at the Tanjong Pagar food centre with my family. I had a bowl of fish soup.

The highlight of the day was the jog to Marina Barrage at 6pm. Due to the problems with my stomach and that I did not maintain a constant pace, I faced difficulties. For the start, I realised it was not a good idea to set off on the last Saturday before National’s Day. I knew there was rehearsal of the National Day parade and many people would crowd around at Marina Barrage to catch the fireworks.

This time round, I held on to my phone and started recording video from Shenton Way till Marina Barrage. However, the product was much shaken than I had expected. I was quite unlucky that traffic light was against me at the first junction to delay me badly. Soon, I was exhausted and my timing was disgusting in the end.

Marina Barrage was crowded. The management even projected shows at the ground level to a big screen and they blasted the sound. There was no quiet spot and I had to go till the far end where it was much warmer to take a rest. After being attacked by sand flies, I shifted to near the lift at where I used to camp at during my earliest few trips. Finally I lay down to close my eyes and rest. However, when I tried to check my watch for the time, it started to go haywire. The screen went blank and the alarm sounded to irritate me from my rest. It stopped after quite some time and when I tried to press the buttons, the same irritant came back.

It was not a good night to catch rehearsal’s fireworks for there was explosion for every ten to fifteen minutes that lasted probably around ten seconds each time. I was surrounded by Chinese from Shanghai.

It was one of the latest times I set off from Marina Barrage. I had to use the stopwatch from the phone’s function instead since the watch was down. I hated my timing. The jog seemed to have worsened my left foot’s condition.

My dinner was spaghetti cooked by my elder brother.

Happy National Day Singapore! Happy 45th Birthday Singapore!

If you haven’t, please post your wishes to Singapore at the facebook main post so that we can see the total number of wishes easily.

Invite all your friends please!

And post the url at your status and blog!!

My Second Movie of the Year – Salt

[Friday, 6 August, 2010]

I went to bed at 4am and woke up after 1am. I blogged to clear some existing tabs in my browser. The packet rice was somehow terrible, or rather, my appetite was very bad.

I saw Zaki in MSN and I messaged him to ask about the updates for the gathering but he told me it would be cancelled. He asked me to go shopping for his video camera together, followed by a catching a movie. I called our buddies but none of them was free.

I met up with Zaki at Plaza Singapura at 6pm. We went to get the movie tickets first and started walking around. We visited Best Denki first but the salesgirl seemed to have no initiative. Though it was a moving out clearance sales, the selling price was definitely not the best. We walked over to Centre Point and the auntie at Harvey Norman was too busy clearing her stuffs slowly, rather than to even acknowledge our existence. We went to the Courts and waited for very long for the promoter to serve us. The Canon video camera was tempting and the promoter had a good trick of offering us an “extra battery” but Zaki was too calm to be impulsive.

Next, we went to SingPost at KPO building to collect his registered mail. I was quite amazed with the well decorated SingPost but the location was weird. I hated the idea of having to walk past smokers to get in. I was amazed by the products of SYOG at the display cabinets and the staffs were in Crocodile polo tee with SYOG logo printed on the chest. It was quite a long wait.

After that, we walked towards Long John’s Silver at MDIS building. Zaki bought an umbrella with Singapore flag near the entrance of MRT station before we went for our dinner. I ordered Golden Deal 1 with three pieces of chicken. It was more crowded than usual and a lady was lying on the table near the entrance to sleep.

We walked to Zaki’s place. He had a shower while I caught a documentary on Thailand’s death. I was amazed when I used the laser point to point at the floor and his cat, Pika, started chasing around. However, I could conclude that he gave up easily.

Zaki drove over to Plaza Singapura. I was already exhausted somehow, feeling unwell. My throat was rough and I regretted that I should have bought his second idea of packeting chicken rice back to his house for dinner instead. We walked around for a while before the movie, Salt, started. Sitting at the third row worsened my condition.

After the movie, Zaki sent me home and I felt embarrassed. Practically, I was stoning all the way and thinking if Salt’s movements were realistic, and also comparing her to my favourite Japanese game show – Ninja Warriors.

Dinner with Anthony at Tiong Bahru

[Thursday, 5 August, 2010]

A new website came into my mind but it was tough due to inexperience with the trades. I spent hours chatting with Vanessa while doing my work. I went to bed hours after sunrise. Eventually, I got up at around 2pm.

My lunch was chicken rice and it did not taste good. Anthony called me at before 5pm and we arranged to meet up at Tiong Bahru Plaza at 6.30pm after his work. I rushed down to the gym slightly after 5pm and started my second gym session of the week after missing one session for the previous week.

I took my weight using the weighing machine there and was surprised to see that my weight had hit 55kg after so many years. I was too lazy to tie weights to my body and thus I did the normal chin-ups with raps of 15, 13, 15 and 17, the last one with a single hand push from Bobby who happened to pass by. Both Tze Khit and Bobby continued to tell me to take some protein powder and they wanted to give me one tub for free.

I ran home as I was way behind my schedule. Within around less than half an hour, I showered and reached Tiong Bahru, but I was late for around five minutes. I met up with Anthony soon and we went to Thai Express where we chatted for as long as the staffs refilled my cup of drinks for more than five times. I did not like the idea of being treated for I was jobless.

Getting Back on Feet for a Day

[Wednesday, 4 August, 2010]

The usual deep pondering caused my head spinning. I tried to break the record by going to bed before 1am since I knew it was going to be a boring morning in the internet but my mind refused to stop working. It took two hours for me to give up and start booting up my laptop.

A moment of frustration hit me hard to wake me up. For the past month, I had been strangling myself with greed that had slowed me down too much. I was never in mood for anything. I hated the fact that history always repeated itself.

I started warming up my engine and slowly sped off with blogging, website editing, clearing up my desktop and even uploading of old pending photos. Updating my portfolio with the Chinese poems was a pain in my ass. I realised I had not been adding the new ones for years and it seemed that I did not keep the new ones properly inside my poem files. I exhausted myself but I refused to stop until 7am. I did not feel like going to bed just like having a strike.

Zaki rang me up at around 11am and he guessed well that I was still in the mid of my sleep. He verbally answered to the email I sent him in the morning that our gang was not going overseas anymore for the upcoming long weekend, and he also asked if I knew how to fix router. I went back to sleep and woke up after 1pm.

It was a big struggle to keep my mind focused. I tried hard not to think of catching a movie. The concentration into web design did me well though my mind did wander off some times. The work lasted till late night before I emailed shifu guiltily after the long delay of work with the temporary location in my webhost.

The confession from Vanessa stating she used to be scared of me haunted me throughout the day. The claim was that I was too sharp. I began to reflect on myself for how many tales I had exposed in the past that had drawn people away. I was probably being too harsh to myself. Nevertheless, it was good to be different from hypocrites and only unique people would appreciate.

Crushing Myself at the Gym

[Tuesday, 3 August, 2010]

While waiting for Jade’s ultra slow replies in MSN, I happened to discover new stuffs to add into SmokeForWhat. However, I held myself back since I intended to sleep earlier. It was nearly 4am when I went to bed after Jade finished off her chat with her friends.

I woke up after 10am. I had hard boiled eggs and breads for breakfast. It was never an efficient day. I finally uninstalled MSN Wave 4 Beta for it started to refuse me to webcam with Jade. I almost floated in the air but ended up with a big crushing.

During evening, I went down to the gym and started working out immediately without the usual dilly-dally. I increased the weights to exhaust myself faster. In the end, I struggled with a twenty chin-up.

I sat on the sofa to read magazine with my hands shivering. I realised gym was another way to kill my frustration, other than playing game when my foot was still hurting for a jog to the Marina Barrage.

Blink Blink Blink

[Monday, 2 August, 2010]

I slept at 3.30am after blogging and washing up.

I woke up at around 10am when the Tanjong Pagar GRC team came over to take photos for the housing upgrading work. I got prepared and left my house after 11am to collect my passport. I reached around fifteen minutes earlier and received my passport quite soon. I got home within an hour after departure. After taking a short nap, or rather, dozing off, I spent the time on Facebook to invite people to the National Day event.

I left my house after 4pm and reached Takashimaya at 5pm sharp. I stood by and watched construction work at the big empty square right opposite the big screen. Twenty-five minutes later, Jade messaged me to meet at 313 Somerset. At first, I thought it was a prank. I walked over in one of my lousiest mood and walked around the building first time and on my own. I was relieved when I received the next SMS that she and her classmate were at Superdog already. I looked at the directory and went down to basement 3.

We went to Paragon and finally decided to dine at Fish and Co where I had my usual fish. Then, we walked over to Wisma to shop for Liurong’s cosmetic stuff before she left. Jade and I went back to 313 Somerset to walk around and finally sat at Food Republic for tea before we left.

Sunday at IKEA

[Sunday, 1 August, 2010]

Blogging was a chore. I finally uploaded my latest article regarding smoking in corridor to SmokeForWhat, together with photos. I also created an addition item in the main menu to organise them better. However, it required more than just scripting. In additional, I also included a sitemap near the bottom to showcase the menus at one go so that users could glance at them at one go if they did not want to use the dropdown menu. I went to bed at 6am.

My brother woke me up at 1.30pm. After washing up, we set off towards Queensway and my mum hopped onto the bus near Kim Tian Road. We were eyeing for the hawker centre opposite Queensway shopping centre but it was closed. We proceeded to IKEA straight away and dined at the foodcourt. The sore throat forbid me from eating properly, besides, I could not eat a lot right after waking up.

We shopped around and this time we did not leave empty-handed. My brother bought a clothes hanger trolley for his girlfriend since she was going to stay in my house more often as she was going to begin working at Orchard. We also had an extendable tray holder for the bathroom but it was too big.

I had Hor Fun for my late dinner.

Crappy Mood, Crappy Dreams

[Saturday, 31 July, 2010]

I was in a crappy mood again. After a game of Condition Zero, I started composing a Chinese poem with the inspiration. I finished and went to bed at 4am.

It was as per normal for the past few weeks, weird dream got into my sleep again. It seemed that my family had moved to a new flat or we had renovation in a different house. My dad was alive and he shared a room with my mum, while my younger brother and I took another, and I finally had a proper space to sleep and a normal desk to work on inside the room. I was not sure if the dreams were linked, but I went into the army and was put on course again. While going through a practical test at a flat, the owner had some figures lay in front of him. Just as I asked him about the figure of a weird four-legged animal, it turned into real and started attacking my feet. It was as pain as what the stupid flown away green parrot did to me last time. Everyone remained calm as it was kind of a test for me. I woke up after being attacked a few times.

It was around 10am again and I really hated waking up with my chest stuffed due to getting upset in dreams. Dreams probably reflected on feeling well. I got up to start my system and tried to do some work. It was a morning of disaster when I realised the poem I did before going to bed was only saved during halfway. I could have clicked the wrong button to select “no” to saving the work after I closed the word document file. After making big attempts to recall what I had written originally, I started dozing off again as I took rest on the mattress and finally got up at around 2pm.

It was an absolutely boring afternoon. The television distracted me badly as usual in the evening.

Traffic for SmokeForWhat dropped. Even though I knew well it could never be consistently staying at peak since I could not expect many people to surf about smoking related stuffs everyday, it was still pretty disappointing.

Eating Crab and Prawn were Time-Consuming

[Friday, 30 July, 2010]

I was chatting with Grace and Yaozhong in MSN. After sending Yaozhong an article for SmokeForWhat to edit, I went to the MacDonald’s with my brother and mum for supper. We shared two sets of meal – fillet-o-fish and 9-piece nuggets. I was glad that they allowed us to mix the spicy and normal nuggets because my mum preferred the spicy one. I shared the burger with my mum and she took two nuggets.

After the supper, I started working on websites. I linked some of my websites together to utilise the traffic and I also added Sitemeter to SmokeForWhat as I thought it was time for a visible counter for everyone to witness the growth.

I was not in really good mood and went to bed at 5am since nobody told me to sleep early.

I woke up at around 10am surprisingly. Yaozhong messaged me and stunned me with his powerful English. I finally saw a revised article that could impress the readers with a stronger language. However, there were more to accomplish within the new page before I could upload it.

I had a very bad afternoon. I was probably just too greedy. I gave up and left my house eventually.

I met up with my old friend at Funan Centre in the late afternoon. His and his new girlfriend kept me waiting outside TCC for a while and I decided to go to the washroom at the opposite corner. While I was near the MacDonald’s, a lady stopped me by calling me by my shirt’s colour – orange. I was not sure if she was from Philippines or Thailand but obviously she was trying to sell me her beauty product from a push-cart stall.

I took the other side of the shopping mall after I came out from the toilet. Then I resumed waiting outside TCC. I was glad to see his new love who seemed to be more outgoing than his previous ones. We went inside TCC and had some slips of drinks while discussing over work. Of course, he continued to press me to find a new job.

After a little shopping around for his girlfriend, we walked towards Clarke Quay and went to the Jumbo seafood restaurant for dinner. We got a table and were told that we had to finish our dinner by 8.15pm, probably due to the long waiting list or some bookings of tables. Anyway, we made our order while waiting for his friend to join us.

Almost all the waiters and waitresses seemed to be from China, which made communication much tougher for their English were not very good. However, they were very friendly and their service skill was excellence, apart from being pleasant looking. One of them reminded me of princess.

I showed the three of them how to eat crab and prawn without using hands, but it took much longer than they could expect and my stomach was badly stuffed. That was the reason why I disliked taking seafood.

After the dinner, we headed to the MRT station. I walked home after that in order to digest; besides, I was not in good mood.