Skai Chan
Salesperson can be really annoying at times, knocking at the door every now and then to sell the product, which my family is not very keen in.
As lucky as I can get, I always get disturbed from my work or game. The worst thing is when I only have a big note inside my wallet.
If not only for their weekly efforts… for years, we are the forced patrons.
Do I have to keep my door closed or reject them abruptly to end it?
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Yesterday, I had a busy morning, doing tiny stuffs, such as a little clean-up of my table. I even tried to do up the timesheet for the current month since I would not be around at the end of the month.
I went for lunch together with Jingkun, Weitat, Dorothy and Daniel at West Coast hawker centre. I took half spring chicken. I got two cups of lime juice at the price of 70 cents each. It tasted diluted and Jingkun claimed that he tasted soap. I realised the fact that going for the queue was a better choice.
Weitat, Dorothy and I went to Sheng Siong supermarket for a while to get some chocolate as Christmas presents.
After going back to office, I continued with my work until mid afternoon, Daniel and Jingkun asked me to go for a short tea break together at the Mr Prata shop. I only took a cup of bandung.
I left office together with Cheng Hong but he had to wait at the bus-stop for his brother to fetch him, and thus, I went home alone.
As I was planning to leave the house, it started raining. I played game while waiting and lost the Command and Conquer game a few times while versus the computer one on one, and it created frustration out of me. It was 7pm and the rain had completely stopped, I left my house after a little packing up.
It was the latest timing I had ever left my house for a long jog. The sky was totally dark and the paths were quiet. I maintained my speed well and eventually got there with more energy reserved, even though I was not feeling well with my stomach.
There were three babes at the bus-stop and I regretted not going earlier. Since it was late, it was not as crowded as my usual trips, whereas most of the people left were couples and partially families. Near the lift was a group of friends who made more noises than others.
I lay besides the grass for more than twenty minutes to enjoy the breeze. I reached home at around 9pm and I was quite satisfied with the speed for the return trip.
It was a night of race against time. Blogging, replying messages and helping Gilbert with his photos caught me struggling hard. The main distraction was the Pets game in the Tagged.com site. My plan to finish off a section of the smoking site before sleeping was unfulfilled. I was trying to push the site to live without the programming parts.
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Monday’s lunch was at Singapore Polytechnic with Jingkun, Mei Hoe and Vivien. Jingkun made a turn into the wrong carpark and we proceeded to the next one. However, we realised we had to walk to the next carpark in order to get to the canteen that he wanted to go to.
I took the Japanese food, which did not really taste like Japanese food, but was quite okay to my tongue. I continued my struggle in the afternoon for my work and eventually left office with Mei Hoe. She went to get some stuff and thus I took the train by myself. There were two girls boarding the train after me and one of them almost killed me with her clean looks, and moreover, she was wearing tight-fitting sleeveless black top. However, I was concentrating more on my book.
After reaching home, I received a call at my house’s phone. The person did not sound like local and he claimed that someone had called him. He assumed I was his friend, playing a prank on him. He sounded like a nuisance somehow. After putting down the phone, I checked his number, and it was actually very similar to mine.
I wanted to go for a jog but laziness got all over me.
Finally, I got to update my main website again to include the love stories. It also took me hours to upload the photos taken at Macritchie Reservoir as it always showed me error message after uploading was almost done, or rather, should be already completed.
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On Sunday, I woke up early despite sleeping late. My younger brother asked me to go for a swim together but I was too lazy to give a definite answer. It started pouring and I dozed off after catching my favourite show on channel 8. We finally set off together after 2pm for Mount Faber SAFRA.
It was super costly at $3.20 for my entry ticket. My right wrist and middle finger were giving me problems. There was lots of phlegm once my head went into the water and it was very uncomfortable. After swimming for six laps, it started pouring and we got up and camped under the big umbrella to chit-chat. I was frozen to continue the swim after the lifeguard gave the signal for clearance. I stayed at the Jacuzzi and my fingers were numbed. I enjoyed the heated water inside the shower and they even provided us with the body lotion.
My brother had a buyer for his phone and thus we called off our plan to go to Vivocity’s Daiso, and instead, made our way home directly.
My whole family went to Chinatown in the evening. We shopped at the Swanston shop and it burnt my pocket a hole. Next, we continued to shop towards Chinatown Complex and dined over there. Each dish cost $8 and we had three of them, which I felt was quite a reasonable price.
It was the rarest long weekend ever for I spent three continuous days with my younger brother.
The biggest problem was that I was supposed to get kicking with my websites to start my career.
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I was tremendously excited by the Treetop Walk at Macritchie Reservoir. It was planned since more than a year ago by Gilbert and I, but we were tied down by other commitments.
This time, we had my younger brother, Wanling and Jesslin. I told Wanling to sleep early, knowing I would not be able to do it myself. As anticipated, it took me some time to settle down and to blog, and I could finally sleep at around 1am.
It was a tough fight to wake up at 5am, and the battle lasted for some minutes before I got up to get prepared. Like usual, my younger brother and I missed the first train. We went to Ang Mo Kio to meet up with the rest of them even though we had direct bus over to Macritchie; it was for convenience sake since Wanling had not met Gilbert before and that we were not very sure of the exact bus-stop to alight.
It was simply less than ten minutes’ bus trip and we reached at 7am as planned. It was a long journey through the forest and we had no idea when the path would end. Alas we saw vehicles and eventually reached a country club. Since there were road signs, we were able to find our way without much problem.
Our resting point was at the ranger station. The urinal was flooded and before I could prepare the camera, two foreigners came in and I gave up the idea of taking pictures.
As we proceeded upwards again, we saw to our disappointment for we were too early for the bridge to be opened. We sat near the top of the stairs at the main road and there was a little cute boy who kept us entertained.
The 250 metres bridge was too short for enjoyment. Most people were simply crossing it fast and thus, we did not want to get into their ways and ended up not posing a lot for photos. After the walk, it was far long journey upwards and downwards, exhausting us badly. We reached the Juletong tower and enjoyed the breeze at the second top level under the shade.
After that, we passed by the golf course to enjoy the beautiful scenery of the reservoir right along the water.
We bid goodbye near the carpark. My younger brother and I missed bus 167 and waited very long for the next one. It was crowded and we could only find ourselves seats after Velocity. I dozed off on the bus and my brother told me the journey was almost one and a half hour.
It started drizzling upon we alighted. We went to the market to meet our mum for lunch. After bathing, my younger brother went out. I felt quite bad for he failed to catch his long sleep due to joining me for the trip, whereby I was able to rest after it.
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Last Friday was a holiday, which was brought over for the previous Deepavali. I planned to get started with my websites but my younger brother dated me to catch the “Storm Warriors 2” movie.
I had my haircut at 10am in the morning and my mum insisted me to join them at the hawker centre after that.
In the mid afternoon, we set off to our auntie’s house at Kim Tian Road to fix her phone and brought her to Tiong Bahru Plaza for the show. My brother had a free ticket and my auntie had her elderly card while we had student cards, it only cost me $10 for three movie tickets.
We went to the foodcourt after getting the tickets. I felt cheated by the western food stall ran by two China guys for they offered student meal and an old man also managed to get it. The portion was little and the fish tasted badly. My brother got a bowl of ice kachang after queuing up for more than ten minutes since the same stall was ran by an auntie with “black” face, who had to settle the dim sum as well.
We went in early for the movie. The song was nice and the start of the show seemed quite promising until the cartoons were shown, and both my brother and I agreed it was a low budget film. I did not like the animation and especially the irritating sound effects. The writer certainly had no clue what to add on that the fighting part was dragged long, being over-stretched that both of us almost dozed off many times. In fact, I did blackout for a few seconds every now and then. It was much lousier than the first episode.
We got ourselves a packet of chicken from the Shilin stall before accompanying our auntie home. She insisted us to take the food she had cooked earlier on, which was a turn-off for me since I did not like fish head; moreover, I was still quite full from the late lunch and was extremely sleepy. After dinner, I dozed off on the sofa for probably around half an hour before going home.
Somehow, I blamed myself for not starting off with my websites.
After reaching home, I checked the street directory for the outing with Gilbert the next morning. Then, I rushed down to the NTUC supermarket to get six canned milo, and also got some ants traps. My younger brother was so excited to stick those traps all over the house, watching the irritating ants going in to bring the poison back to their hives.
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It was a tiring school holiday’s Thursday. Due to the teambuilding event, we had to report to ITE’s club house at the headquarter as early as 8am.
It was raining and was definitely a turn-off to travel. I took bus 196 and alighted right opposite Fairfield Methodist Secondary School where I started the long walk into the car park. I did not know the exact location of the club house and eventually made a little blunder to waste some energy.
I had my breakfast there and the food was quite good. The event was very well planned given the short time notice. I enjoyed sitting on the chair, looking at my favourite type of magazine – home decoration.
I saw hero for the day, someone who volunteered to contribute ideas and efforts; but I also saw bastard, someone who talked more than actions and made clown of others just to showcase himself.
We had quite a number of prizes consisting of food and vouchers.
After the event, I stayed behind to help out in moving the furniture back. Then, Daniel dropped Weitat and I at Commonwealth MRT station.
I dozed off at home and woke up late for volleyball. It was not a good night for the game. My brain was numbed and that the hurt on my right knuckle denied me from performing. The few of us ended the game shortly and Kachua sent me home.
I passed my CPU to him for him to check for the problem.
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On Wednesday, Jingkun, Weitat and I went to IMM to meet Dorothy for lunch. We settled on the Banquet food court. Daniel arrived with his students while Mei Hoe and Vivien joined us.
I targeted the western food stall for a plate of fish and chips and the stall holders were two China ladies. Her English was very frequent but her pronounce was worse than mine. It was the first time I was being asked whether I wanted mashed potato or fries for my fish and chips and she pronounced it totally way off that she had to use Chinese instead. It was not my fault for the next customer faced the same problem.
It was not a peaceful meal as usual, having to chew on the nasty fish, and hearing debates and people trying to battle each other on volume and ideas. Sometimes I really wondered if they had understood each other’s intentions after each conversation since they did not want to give way. At least, I knew Mei Hoe would not get the main point most of the time.
From Weitat’s car accident, we talked about car insurance and then human’s insurance, but it seemed to stretch further away. There were times when I tried to ask something, none of them heard me as usual. I was never interested in competing because it would only make things worse.
After lunch, a few of them were going to Giant to get stuffs for the next day’s teambuilding event and luckily Jingkun wanted to go back to the office to do work and thus I could follow his car back together with Mei Hoe and Vivien. If only I did not have any project on hand, I would have enjoyed the shopping with the rest of them.
Back to the office, I did a final touch-up of a design for PowerPoint and also helped Jingkun to solve some programming problems. Then, I joined Bernard’s car to Dover MRT station.
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It’s a year of struggle comes to an end; looking back, I see pieces of me being left behind. The piles of dreams fill my emptiness; and I’m badly bloated.
My brain is too numbed to feel the freedom. I never know where to begin on.
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On Tuesday, lunch was quite stressful again. I was trying to rush my work inside the office when Dorothy announced to leave. I left my station and waited for around half an hour before we could move off. I really hated the time wastage. My designing work could never withstand interruption.
Daniel, Weitat and Jingkun were not around. Vivien, Mei Hoe, Mrs Grace Cheong, and I took Dorothy’s car to Harbourfront Centre to the Dragon Gate restaurant. It was Vivien’s farewell lunch. We started ordering while waiting for Mrs Seetoh and Mrs Lui to come, however, they seemed to take ages.
I found it weird to see young teenagers around and I assumed people were getting richer nowadays for I could not afford it when I was at their age. Anyway, some of the girls were cute.
After lunch, I joined Mrs Seetoh and Mrs Lui in case they got lost again. We walked over to Vivocity where they parked the car and made a few rounds inside the car park before we could get out. I was quite worried on the way.
After I got back to the office, I tried to do as much work as possible in my sleepy head. There was some progress but too much time was already wasted.
I had a dinner with Gilbert. We had not met up for long. I waited for him at Tanjong Pagar MRT station since it was drizzling and I decided not to go home to put down my stuffs or take a shower. However, before I saw the weather as I was taking the escalator up, I saw a sexy girl in her low-cutting dress and my eyes almost popped out. She was certainly a big distraction inside her office with her good looks.
I stood like a status neat the control station. I was so bored that I even went to top up my ezlink card.
We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant where the food was certainly to my dislike but the ambience was fantastic. I almost felt like throwing out after I realised the baked rice kind of food I ordered contained pasta. We also had a side dish which tasted like “hum jing peng” but with cheese inside. Gilbert insisted to give me a treat.
Next, he brought me to the Iluma, the newest shopping centre at Bugis. The design was quite trendy and scary. They had an escalator leading from the first storey to around the fourth storey, which I found it cool but dangerous; I would not recommend old people to use it. Most of the visitors were young people and a few shops were selling “ah lian” type of clothes. They had a cinema at the top level and I supposed I would visit it next time.
We walked around and I had a stomach upset and started using their toilet, which was well secluded. While doing my business, I could smell smoke.
We peeped into the Topman shop at Bugis Junction for a while before Gilbert went to get his buns and bread at the basement before making our way to the train station.
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