Best Christmas Without Celebration

Ten years ago, my festival celebration usually routed around with my volleyball team. We met up and celebrated via karaoke sessions or dinner. Sometimes, we even stayed overnight at public places like Merlion Park. It seemed that we could no longer return to the fun times when everyone started to have more commitments. I had strayed further away from them since the location of volleyball game shifted. I stayed furthest among them who were all in the west side. Moreover, they knew my interest quite well that I was not into most of the common entertainments – movie, pool, KTV and mahjong etc. The worst thing was that I was not even into appreciation of food. For the past few Christmas, I had been home alone, either spending my time working or being a little kind to myself by playing some games. My younger brother had many good friends while my elder brother stick closely with his girlfriend. My mum had some activities sometimes, otherwise, she would sleep at home. Christmas 2011’s night was a peaceful night for me like usual. I began rewarding myself by uploading some outdated photos into Facebook. I had a surprise when a net friend messaged me in Facebook regarding embedding copyright text on my photos. We began chatting and she suggested calling me through Skype. I was entirely melted by her sweet voice. The thing I enjoyed most was her appreciation for me. In fact, she sounded too nice to be true and I had perhaps met many weird people online to believe that I was lucky. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the one hour of Skype chat. “I wondered if that voice was real; no doubt it was the greatest present ever. The clock ticked as the countdown ended without me knowing for the best Christmas. There was no celebration, except for a wishing – a simple wishing that weighed more than anything and could melt anyone.”

Valentine’s Day 2011

[Monday, 14 February, 2011]

I spent the early morning chatting in Facebook with Sae Yeoh and Galvin. I went to sleep after 5am and woke up after 2pm.

Uncle Rocky came over to look at the house’s renovation after my mum complained to him about the poor workmanship. He got an Indian guy over to fix up the holes. That guy’s English was really lousy or perhaps, he seemed to be using Indian language to talk to us in a tone that it was our main language. Since I had to wait for the Indian guy to come over again, I did not go to the office.

I spent the day working on SEO but the main tool was down and left me almost paralyzed. I thought I could reward myself on the Valentine’s Day by pushing more keywords up in Google but it turned out to be a sad day.

I had never celebrated Valentine’s Day before and I did not have any urge to do it due to my work.

I had a chat with Jingkun in Facebook during the evening. After that, I continued working on my superb article for SEO purpose.

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Finally, Met up with Jenrine

[Tuesday, 4 January, 2011]

I had some discussion with my younger brother and eventually I went to sleep at 2.30am. Failing to doze off, I joined my elder brother. I woke up after 10am and went to the office.

Mike and I had our lunch at the second storey of Tanjong Pagar. He was then harassed by the car company Eazi Car Rental because they insisted him to pay the money for the wear and tear car battery. He got pissed off for the first time in front of me but I thought his temper was much better than mine.

We walked back to office and discussed over how Singapore’s review website had sided companies, probably because they were paying money for advertisements all that. There was no honest review site that allowed users to post bad reviews without being moderated by the companies. Therefore, a nasty company could easily get lots of fake good reviews on Singapore review websites. We even suspected that most of the so-called good reviews were written by the product or service companies themselves.

I had a chat with Vanessa finally after she commented on my Facebook. She thought I was doing great with an office space but I debated with her that it was Mike’s success because I did not get to contribute any amount of money. However, the conversation was short lived as usual because she was busier than me.

Mike left the office earlier to settle stuffs. I left during the evening to The Cathay’s Starbucks. Along the way, I saw that most of the shops at MacDonald’s House building were closed. Though the days when I was rushing projects with Soon Siong and the university gang at Starbucks was tough but I really missed them a lot. I had a cup of frappuccino while I tried to rush some work for the tuition agency, working on a new page regarding facebook.

It was not long before I went over to Plaza Singapura to meet up with Jenrine at the Long John’s Silver for dinner. I had quite a long chat with her over there, telling her the situation of my site. We went over to The Cathay to meet up with her boyfriend and I treated them for the movie.

Back at home, I continued with my work and at times when I wanted to ask my younger brother stuffs, he was too busy.

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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.

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Kenny Chong, RIP

[Tuesday, 7 December, 2010]

I took long time to live the “our services” page in my tuition agency website as I tried to add my friends’ services inside.

I went to bed at 8am and ended up playing with Lucky like the day before. He gave me the same mess again and I went to sleep at 10am eventually.

After waking up at around 4pm, I read Hoay Min’s SMS about Kenny Chong’s death. I had a few interacts with him during my national service day and he was a good worker. Most of all, he treated me well.

I kept myself busy with updating the tuition agency in Singapore page and I also chatted with Mike through MSN.

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Shopped at IKEA for Bathroom Items

[Sunday, 17 October, 2010]

I was distracted by the Fifa Superstars game in Facebook. It was not the best game around but it definitely aroused my fighting spirit. I was never a competitive person and I believed it was doing me good except that it took away some time from me. I continued to work on my new tuition site and slept at 7am.

I woke up before noon. My younger brother’s German friend came over. He was standing at near two metres and we went to Ah Moy Street to eat the lor mee. We brought Lucky along this time. After that, we went to NTUC where my mum bought another box of big mineral bottles for the workers.

After going home, I took naps and also spent some time on the Facebook game, and also chatted with Anthea.

We waited for my younger brother to return home as we agreed to set off for IKEA at 6.30pm. He was late. After he reached home, I went to the third storey temporary toilet to shit before we went to the bus-stop at Cantonment Link.

We had our dinner at IKEA near 8pm. Since we knew time was running out, we ordered just main course enough to fill our stomachs and started shopping soon. We bought a mirror and corner tray set for the bathroom. My elder brother and I had hotdog bun while waiting for the collection of the items and then we set off to the bus-stop near 10pm.

After reaching home, my entire family went down to the third storey to take our bath together with Lucky. Though I really hated the hassle of preparing and carrying the items down, it somehow brought my family closer together.

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Lucky Chewed on My Spectacle

[Thursday, 14 October, 2010]

I spent the morning blogging on other blogs even though I knew I was lagging behind on my personal blog. I had a chat with Yaozhong before sunrise. I took some cereal and slept after 6am.

I was pissed off with the neighbour staying right above my flat for I had observed slamming of the bedroom door daily as early as 6am since long ago and finally confirmed it. It was definitely done deliberately for the banging noise was very loud. It happened almost every time when I stayed up till after 6am. When Lucky first came, the sudden sharp and loud noise would wake him up to start barking. I was not sure if the lonely bitch was the culprit or she could have rented a room, but there was a high chance that she was the sick fellow.

I woke up before noon and was pissed off with Lucky for chewing on my spectacle. One of the ends was torn and only the sharp metal was left. I threw him out of my bedroom and ignored him when he was crying in the living room alone.

I woke up again at 3pm and went to the gym after having my lunch. The main purpose of the early trip was to help Tze Khit with his website again. Bobby bought chay kuay teow for me in the evening. I did my workout after that and Letian came over to discuss with me over the business plan suggested by Andrew. Bobby was sharp and realistic and warned us about the little benefit we could get. I had my own doubts too because Letian was simply too similar to me and we were too soft to be good sales-persons.

I tried to show my brothers my spectacle at the house’s door and it broke immediately when I tried to remove it from my ears.

I rested for a while before going down to walk Lucky with my elder brother.

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Stalking Cameras

[Tuesday, 12 October, 2010]

I soon realised I was embarking on a slow progressing week of my life that I was too lazy to do anything much efficient.

I got to chat with Anthea on webcam in the evening. It was good since most of my friends did not like to use it, and some would even lie that they did not have a webcam. We had trouble connecting through MSN Live and I got her to install Skype instead, knowing that MSN was problematic nowadays.

I went down to join my brothers to play with Lucky soon after they left the house. As usual, we had the scooter and waveboard with us. After sweating out, we decided to go to my mum to get two bucks to get two cups of slurpee from 7-11 store at Icon.

We questioned my mum’s ladyboss about the webcams that her husband had installed all over the shop and even some that were pointing out of the shop to intrude in privacy of others, but she claimed that most of the webcams were spoiled. We felt it was wrong for them to monitor their staffs this way when the wages were paid accordingly to the amount of work done and not that they were paid a fixed amount monthly that they would try to slack around.

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First Packing up for Renovation

[Monday, 11 October, 2010]

My mum started packing the kitchen for the upcoming HDB home improvement program while I settled my work place. I spent quite some time blogging before sleeping near 7am.

I woke up at noon and spent my afternoon working on Facebook and chatting.

Walking the dog at night with brothers was a habit.

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Most Romantic Night Ever

[Saturday, 14 August, 2010]

My brothers and I had a game of Command and Conquer before my younger brother went to bed. We planned to go swimming in the morning and thus I wanted to try dozing off earlier. However, Eileen messaged me and told me of her failed application to SIM and we started talking on phone later. Her incredible cute stories of her past entertained me till after 6am.

I woke up at around 12pm, feeling surprise that my younger brother did not wake me up for the swim. However, I could see that the sky was not in good mood. Five of us had lunch at the market and the owner selling duck rice turned me off the second time with his sales. My younger brother wanted to add an additional egg and he muttered and then pointed at the picture of a set meal for me, which included beancurd and egg, and thus I said okay to him. In the end, he did not serve us with egg and he told me that he had earlier mentioned that the egg was sold out. It was sort of ridiculous. The worst thing was that his duck meat was over salty.

Not long after reaching home, Huiting messaged me and told me to help her with a banner design for a blog, which she needed it by the same day. I spent the next few hours doing up the banner. Towards late afternoon, Regina told me she did not want to attend her church but she refused to meet me earlier.

I set off after 7pm and took bus 167 at Cantonment Link. When I was near Bukit Merah, I saw a bus number 5 in front and I had a strong intuition that Regina inside and true enough that she SMSed me that she was reaching. We went shopping for food together. I was quite disappointed that I could not find sushi at the NTUC. The MacDonald’s was closed as well. We went to the KFC and that was when I realised that upsizing everything in a Zinger meal could cost a big bomb.

We went back to the interchange and took bus 131. When it started turning into Bukit Purmei, I was quite turned off since Henderson Waves was actually just a few bus-stops in the straight Henderson Road away from the interchange. After making a big round, we finally reached our destination and climbed up the stairs to the beautiful Henderson Waves. I was glad that Regina was amazed with the beautiful scenery as well. It was a cool night and I had never thought of being with a female friend hanging around there at night, especially when I did not own a car.

We walked to the far side of the bridge and found a space to sit down. We took our dinner while playing around with the cameras. Next, we walked towards the Terrace Garden and we stopped by the fitness corner to take photos together. It was the moment I had waited for years as she trimmed her hair super short the previous time I managed to take a picture with her.

As we were entering Terrace Garden, I saw three Bangala walking behind us and I supposed that was the problem with going out with a girl at night that I had to tighten up my muscle and get ready for any unforeseeable event. Regina was acting like a reporter with my Sony camera but the battery was drained up soon. It was to my horror that my younger brother did not charge the spare battery and we had to give up the fun.

We reached the top of Terrace Garden to join other people to glance at the fireworks of the Youth Olympics Games starting ceremony from far, but it did not last for long and I could hardly catch any. Regina was waiting for more fireworks with my Olympus camera but it was a useless wait. I was glad that she was ready to take more photos with me ever since her crush joked with her that she was ugly. She did not see the remote control I held in my hand until I decided it was not fun to keep the secret anymore.

She was on the phone for quite long before I led her down to Forest Walk. The place was beautiful, though it more remote than any other places and I was shocked that she chose to complete the journey with me instead of turning back. It was the first time I went there at night, and instead of being with a group of guy friends, I was in fact with a cute girl. I felt lucky being trusted. We reached the Alexandra Arch after the long walk and finally Hort Park. After using the toilet, we went down to the hall area and Regina took pictures with the SYOG Mascot. We went to the swinging seat near the entrance and finally started heading off.

I checked my phone and was amazed that it was already 11.30pm. Regina was worried about getting home since she stayed far in the east and I was a little disappointed for she should not worry with me around. We crossed over the road and took bus 166 to Outram Park and waited for the last bus number 2. On the way, I dropped Hirman a SMS and he told me I could look for him afterwards.

It was one of the greatest nights I had ever been through.

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