Dear Dreams – Page 72

Passed My Driving Basic Theory Test

Wednesday morning, I was relieved because there was no relief duty. Walking into the office was like torturing myself inside a big freezer without clothes on. Thus, I moved to an empty classroom to do my remaining studies for the basic theory test.

I received my new project before the holidays even started, which boss wanted me to work on when school reopened. Workload was far from what I was expecting. I decided to leave it for the next week after my test and FYP presentation before starting to reckon my brain.

Joy offered to send me over to BBDC for my test in the afternoon but I did not want to trouble her. In the midst of my meeting, she went to packet her lunch. Mei Hoe and Daniel went out without me since they thought I was not joining them as well. In the end, I went down to the canteen to packet my meal.

It started raining right before I was about to leave the office. I walked to Clementi MRT station like usual and took the train to Bukit Gombak station. It took me around twenty minutes for a slow walk over to BBDC. I waited outside classroom 1 where more people arrived. I was quite amazed with the number of bangala. I saw one of them using a very old book and I thought I was lucky enough to be using Kevin’s one, which he used three years ago.

The guy in charge of the room was very polite. We did the test with a touch screen monitor and I supposed someone who used the station before me had trained his fingers well that the surface of the monitor was rough. Before I could finish the test, a Chinese guy had left the room. A China lady failed her test and the staff had to explain to her that she had to get another test date. Whereby, when I was doing my checking for all the questions, the smelly Bangala besides me had not even finished half of the fifty questions. I clicked the “end” button to confirm that I passed.

I was not really surprised that I could do it since they allowed five out of fifty questions to be answered wrongly. I had passed my theory during my army days with perfect score, and the toughness was similar. Being the fourth person to walk out of the room, and probably the only one with a satisfied face, I was quite proud of myself.

I waited outside to get my PDL and witnessed a rude China man arguing with the counter lady, debating over her claim of him being rude. I was disgusted when he said that he was a PR.

I took the same route back to the train. It was yet time for me to relax myself, but at least I managed to take a little break inside the train, though I was standing all the way as usual.

My other worries after passing the basic theory test were the finding of private instructor and the advanced theory, which I had no clue about.

I Don’t Want to Stay On

I knew it.

It has been two years and things keep pouring in. all the kind people have been trying to evacuate all shit that has fallen on me but others take advantages of my willingness to help.

It is never easy for me to say no.

My tasked jobs are always on design but somehow there are more in the backstage where nobody else can see except the people who owe me favours.

I do not wish to stay on. I really hate it and have this deep hatred and phobia of everything.

I have no choice but to return the favours.

Weird Lunching Team

On Tuesday morning when I reached my desk, I saw the driving basic theory book. Kevin remembered it well and spent extra efforts to even place it there, which made me very touched.

It was not an easy morning when there was invigilation to do, especially having to arrange the messed up tables and seats in the normal classroom. Luckily, I was seeing my favourite class.

I had one of the weirdest lunching team. Since Mei Hoe had work to do, Vivian joined Daniel and I at the “Dead end”. I took a plate of wantan mee while both of them had fish soup. The stall was ridiculous to charge Daniel an extra forty cents for changing the noodle to rice, but Daniel claimed that the bowl of soup had more ingredients.

We had half an hour lunch, one of the fastest ever. After sending Vivian back, I accompanied Daniel to IMM’s Giants to get apples. I wanted to get some for Mei Hoe but the expensive and big ones did not have very good skin. After choosing for very long, I gave up.

I was studying for my driving test all the way inside the car on both trips. However, on the returning trip, I almost dozed off completely a couple of times.

I stayed for longer than usual again in the late afternoon before walking alone to the MRT station. I went to Long John Silver’s at Plaza Singapura for dinner and Stephen joined me after that. We moved to The Cathay’s Starbucks to meet up with Soon Siong and later, we did some testing and I was quite amazed by both the programmers’ work. Andy did not go down due to work. We stayed until around 10.30pm before we called it a day.

Basic Theory Test

Driving Basic Theory Test can be so difficult that the questions are not for humans to answer, or probably, it requires a human with at least IQ190 in order to pass it.

* sigh *

I passed.

The Devil within Me

Monday was the day I was assaulted badly.

It was a different morning as I managed to spend some time slicing off the skin of two carrots before stepping out of my house.

My lunch date with my shi fu, Josephine, was called off after I checked my phone. I was instructed to take over Chenghong’s class for the entire afternoon since he was sick. I was told that I could skip the class at ten but little did anyone know how unprepared the class was for this Friday’s paper and that I could not afford to loosen down on myself. People made planning but they did not consider every detail well. Nobody knew how much I tried to hold my principles that they never knew how hard I had been pushing myself for others, thinking I was having a great life.

Apart from the lunch, I lost the chance to get myself the driving basic theory handbook for this Wednesday’s test and also, the freedom and concentration to do my own work. Basically, my entire plan was destroyed.

From slightly after eight AM, I started debugging and talking, and hardly had any time to even reply emails and SMSes. I could not even get myself out of the lab after ten and was late for the next class. At the next door, I accelerated on the speed of my words and injected more fun into the learning process. I did enjoy doing things I was good at but it only weakened my throat and the enthusiasm to even talk after work.

Dorothy was supposed to chew on bread on every Monday and Wednesday but somehow, she had a change of mind on this day. Since she wanted to dine at the canteen finally, Weitat and I waited for her and eventually went down first as instructed by her. Just as I was queuing up for the usual mixed vegetable rice stall, she told Weitat that she wanted to dine out instead. I could feel the dagger pointing at me. There was so much frustration within me for the afternoon’s extra four hours of workload, which I was very tired and irritated to take up, and yet I was somehow being pushed to go out such that I could be late for my duty. I was already exhausted like half of my soul was burnt.

I would really love to enjoy my lunch with my buddies, given sufficient time. The greatest thing to do was to keep them accompanied and make sure they were happy with my presence. It was obvious that my health was badly degenerated and that I had no other choice than to fulfill my tasked work, and I could not make better of my decision.

Nevertheless, I insisted to stay behind. Queuing up at the food stall boiled up my deceasing blood cells for the uncle claimed that there was no rice again. The percentage of this incident was far too high. I did wait on until Weitat and Dorothy turned back to take on one of the stalls instead of leaving the campus, and the rice was not even ready after they had finished half of their food. I switched to the next stall instead since I could no longer trust the “five minutes” promise, let alone there was still a queue for the rice. It was a good choice for I was very well served by the old couple.

Before I could go to the toilet to get my shit out of the loaded big intestine, it was time for my next struggle. I did have some peace for the first few minutes, trying to act as if I was a nerd, but I could not turn down requests for helps. It was all predicted that I would continue to rock my afternoon with non-stop debugging and squeezing all my brain juice just to explain why Billgates was trying to make data work.

By five PM, I was filled with fatigue. Some of them continued to struggle for results for this coming Friday and it was my usual characteristic not throwing them out even when I was in a rush to go and get my book. My throat was sore and my lungs were twisted; my brain was numbed and I could no longer feel anything. Apart from all these, I was having a gastric pain. Sitting at the front of the lab, trying to get my work done before my name was flying around again, my mind almost went to the heaven. I used to hate sleeping because it took up lots of time but it was now my greatest release from stress.

When it was near six PM, I was finally able to pick the remaining pieces of myself up to stagger back to office. Xiao Mei was sweet enough to offer me food and even making milo. I fixed up part of my broken face in the weariness to go to the boss’ room. In my hundred reasons of unwillingness, I officially promised my boss that I would help him up for another month because the kindest man needed my service and it was the greatest way to repay him.

It could be one of the stupidest mistakes I could have made in my life to toy with my health. There were beautiful reasons that I should stay, for the sweet colleagues, cute students and supposed-to-be easy money, but the evil forces certainly had the upper hand. The devil within me instructed me to do more than I could provide and certainly things beyond my job scope. Yet, different eyes seemed to be watching over me, telling their ignorant owners different stories.

I was never a saint and I could never be one. I did try hard but the demon got the better of me and almost got me destroyed instead. Often, I blamed myself for trying too much. Gilbert and Peh were all correct about me that I was never kind to myself.

I no longer had anything that I could look forward to after this week.

It was killing me.

Missed FYP Meeting

Yesterday morning, I took honeystar with milk followed by a carrot for brunch.

After watching the “Plan A” at channel 8, I started working on the FYP website, which absorbed my brain cells. When I checked my phone in the afternoon followed by a missed call from Soon Siong, I realized they were all meeting up, whereas I thought only Soon Siong was supposed to tie up with Stephen with the coding part. I did not go down.

I got stuck when I tried to challenge SQL statements and it took me hours before Soon Siong did the magical rescue within a few minutes to solve the problem.

My elder brother and his girlfriend packaged chicken rice for me while I was resting from doing my project and thus I had a late dinner.

Jogged to Henderson Waves

I spent my Saturday very lazily again. Nobody was at home by noon and I could not set myself off to go down to get something to eat until around 2pm. I went to the nearest chicken rice shop, at level two, where Bianhong’s mum worked in. Fried chicken was already sold out and I had to get the white one. The three dollars lunchbox was filled with a lot of rice but the meat was almost half of normal chicken rice from other stalls. I supposed they would only attract one-time consumers.

Anyway, I started sweeping the kitchen after eating. Like usual, when my mum was overseas, I would wash the toilet. I could not stand dirtiness even though every area of my house was like garbage area most of the time. The backache during and after the clean-up was tearing me apart.

In the late evening, I stepped out of my house again for a jog. It was the first time I brought my ez-link card along with ten dollars cash for dinner. Adjusting the device from the Polar sports set was quite annoying. Like Weiming told me the day before, the strap looked indeed like bra strap and it looked awful when I was wearing a singlet, which I had to.

It was seven pm and I reached Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. It was the first time I was heading towards Henderson Waves, and also giving Marina Barrage a miss. The weather was cooling but threatening. The first traffic light was the one at the exit of AYE towards Keppel Road, where I had to pause for a while before dashing across so as to not obstruct the traffic with the green man light. Following was a straight path all the way until the interception from Bukit Purmei, where I had to pause again for the traffic. The longest pause was near the Seah Lm Food Centre at the entrance of the bus interchange.

By the time I reached the turn towards Henderson Road via Telok Blangah Drive Road, I was exhausted. The belt just below my chest was irritating me as it was going to slip down. Alas I made it to the stairs of the Henderson Waves.

Date – 05.12.2009
Time – 19.03
Duration – 25:11
Calories – 347 kcal
Average heart beats – 177
Maximum heart beats – 192
Fat burn – 1:10
Fitness – 24:01

My legs were weak and thus, it took me some time to climb the stairs up. The road was dark and quiet and I was glad to see people around. There were a couple of wedding photoshooting and most of the people were Malays. It started to drizzle and I walked to the other end of the bridge before moving back. I saw smokers and I could see how the place would be vandalized by the cigarette butts a couple of years later.

Thinking that I should take the opportunity to catch-up with friends, I sent Baharudeen a message but he was out of his house, probably celebrating his birthday. Then, I remembered Weirong was staying nearby as well and thus I contacted him. He drove his van over to the bus-stop and fetched me to Seah Lm Food Centre for dinner, where we had some great chats.

He sent me home after that.

Another Hectic Friday

Yesterday was definitely a killer.

I did relief for Alex at 8am and my throat was worsened by the non-stop talking to impart the MS Access skill to the hardworking people. It happened that Alex was back at 10am and thus, I stayed with Jonathan to do another hell two hours of singing.

There were many tiny pieces of stuffs to do inside the office. I filled up a form to submit to UOW for the graduation, finding it so tedious and frustrating to go through the crap when they definitely had my details inside the database already. I could even get my students to pull the data out using MS Access queries, and I expected them to do a better job.

Lunch was alone again. I went down to the canteen to packet my rice back to the office before continuing my work. Next, I tried to scan the identification card and the printed and written form, but the desktop attached to the printer was a head nut. Chi Chiang brought me down to the administration office and I witnessed how pestering could help to get things done fast.

I was rushing back to office to take my medicine when I met Wei Ming who told me to go to the lab first to prepare for invigilation. I had the urge to give a tight slaps to some really sickening hopeless creatures.

Back to the office, I was still busy sending emails and boss talked to me. I promised to help him for another month but he suggested until end of March. The conversation was interrupted and we decided to continue the talk on the next Monday.

When Weiming suggested to leave, I quickly packed up while dropping my FYP-mates a reminder SMS. Then, both of us left together with Chenghong under the rain. Weiming alighted at Commonwealth MRT while Chenghong accompanied me until Dhoby Ghaut.

On the way, there was a china guy blasting his mobile phone music loud. There were many people of other races including foreigners around and I felt very ashamed of him as a Chinese. For a moment I gave him a stare but he reacted nothing. He got his ass out of the seat at Outram Park MRT station.

I met up with Andy at The Cathay before going to Plaza Singapura for dinner. The Indonesian chicken stall had long queue and thus I chose another stall which sold fried chicken with rice, kind of mini wok stuff, but it disappointed me. There were some kids in their early teens sharing the table with us, and I wondered how much pocket money they had, but they were definitely much more fortunate than me when I was at their age.

Andy and I enjoyed our sight on the way back to The Cathay. While waiting for the rest to come, I dozed off for a while after the hectic day. There was no news of Jeremy. Mr John came late but his presence certainly brought us to a clearer picture what the presentation would be like.

I reached home after 10pm.

Second Day of MC and My Mum’s Holiday

On the second morning of my MC, I went to the MacDonald’s with my brother and his girlfriend. The new restaurant was renovated again to accommodate more people, at the cost of the coziness. We shared a nugget meal with a chicken roll, and another cup of drinks and fries at the cost of $10 exactly using coupons.

I woke up in the noon and my brother had bought nasi lemak. However, he did not know I preferred chicken wing to drumstick.

The afternoon was spent resting, playing and working on my FYP’s website, which killed much of my brain cells.

In the evening, I was expecting the most unexpected for the couple started cooking. The food was edible and the best thing was that they did not use onion, garlic or ginger at all.

MC for Two Days

Wednesday morning, my mum and younger brother left the house before I woke up to go to Bali.

I had a little difficulty in breathing at first. I hesitated again but decided I should take more rest at home instead of destroying myself at work. I went to see the doctor at the Outram polyclinic finally.

The checkpoint outside the main door was cleared. There was only a poor guy standing inside near the queue ticket machine, asking everyone if there was any symptom of flu, fever or cough. Then, a couple of old people bothering him over the queue machine in quite a rude tone, which I thought was so silly and ridiculous.

After putting on the mask, I realized my breathing had improved somehow. My queue number was F009 and it was not very long before I went into the consultation room. When the doctor was checking my throat, she said it was very red inside and that made me very curious. I remembered when I was in the army, I went to see the doctor for diarrhoea, and I was told the same thing. I was not having a sore throat that time and thus I took it lightly until the next day, it started to hurt.

I was given two days medical leave by the doctor without asking for it. If I were to tell her about my occupation, she would probably make me stay at home until the next Monday.

After reaching home, I dropped a couple of emails. I was planning to go downstairs to buy lunch before my elder brother’s girlfriend offered to do it. She went alone to help me get my wantan mee.

It was a lazy afternoon for me and I spent lots of time lying on the bed.

In the evening, the food delivery man interrupted my sleep. I checked my phone and realized my brother had informed me to wait for the food because his girlfriend could be asleep. My brother got home soon and we shared the two packets of food.