Drive the Balls Far

Last Saturday I was supposed to go out with Irwin after the end of my assignment phase. Weeks before that we were even crapping that we could go down to the beach together.

He was running a fever and I supposed I was too slack after the months of struggle that we did not meet up until evening time, he asked me to go for golf to sweat it out. I called my mum to inform her not to get dinner for me before leaving the house.

Irwin and I tried our luck at one of the coffee shops near Queenstown MRT and that was a terrible experience to me. Three bucks for a plate of sticky rice partially covered by a few pieces of awful chicken and that would what I consider wasting of money and torturing myself.

I was not even close to an intermediate player but at least I continued to be familiarised with better swings. When Irwin exchanged his driver with my 7-Iron, I finally got to experience how swinging with less strength could increase the distance of the poor balls. I did try using the driver before but my swinging was totally off and thus, this time with a better skill, I felt so excited. However, when I returned to my 7-Iron club practise, I lost the touch again; or perhaps, the blisters had already been too hurting.

.

Golf and Meet-up with Irwin

Last Wednesday night, the sudden invitation from Irwin for golfing was too tempting. Actually, I had already told him twice that I needed to submit my last two assignments on Friday and could only meet him out after that.

Since it was necessary to release my stress, I decided to join him. He came down in his brother’s car to pick me up to Queenstown. It took me quite long to get back a bit of the “feeling”. The usual blisters came back to haunt me.

After the game, we had some chat downstairs my house before ending the night.

.

Valentine’s Day 2009

My mum went on cruise last Friday and thus, my meals were affected badly. Saturday afternoon saw me fill my stomach with cornflake and milk.

I was a lazy bum as usual.

I pinned high hope for Irwin to get back to Singapore early and he returned in the evening as planned, however, he did not want to risk queuing up with the crowd outside any restaurant since it was Valentine’s Day.

We went for golfing instead and I bought some finger food at the cafe. The crispy lemon chicken pieces were disastrous. It was not very safe to get such food from small cafe because the food may not be fresh enough. Whatever the case, some parts were not well cooked enough.

I strike many air balls before beginning to do the swinging in more an appropriate way than ever – that was to use the left hand’s strength instead of both. I could not get the ball far until I got bored and started to use my waist when I decided I had enough of practice with the “P” instead of “7 Iron”.

We went to Bugis to meet up with Eugene before proceeding to TCC. I was right that the waitress, Charlene, was not around. Anyway, the inside seats were all taken and thus we sat at the non air-conditioned place. We asked for ice water while we were looking through the menu but the waiter claimed that it would be served only when we placed our order. It took them some time to attend to us to take our order later and even longer to bring the water over to drench our thirst. We did not like the attitude of the waiter at all. We were interrupted twice in the midst of enjoying our chat for they brought drinks over like as if we would order new ones before finishing ours.

We went over to a pub at Suntec City where we were questioned of our ages. I was not fan of alcohol. Since there was no backrest and the recent relapse of my worsening back problem put me in sweat. I knew I probably looked pale if it was in the daylight.

Eugene took a cab home. Irwin and I walked towards my place but stopped at a prata shop near Clarke Quay to have our dinner. Irwin’s briyani rice turned out to be just plain white rice, whereas my two plain roti pratas were hard. We were served can drinks without ice and cup.

After we reached my place, Irwin took a cab home. It was around four AM when I reached home.

I had never been through a Valentine’s Day with a girl before but it did not affect my mood.

.

A Rather Stressed Day

Some people could do stupid things to risk throwing two hundred bucks away.

There seemed to be a bug in my flash game but I had already forgotten the way I programmed it years ago. Just a couple of important tasks to implement but I was inefficient for the entire day no matter how hard I was working on it. There were unavoidable interruptions in the afternoon, which was the main cause.

It was great to see Chi Chiang again and I loved chatting with Eunice as well.

The discussion with my boss rather made me realise the future still sounded smooth for me although I was still battling against the boredom and frustration. If only I were from a rich family, I could easily make a choice between making a living and working towards my dream.

The urge to continue with my website crashed with my studies. The tonnes of loads I missed from the lecture were piling in my brain, and every time I thought of them, I got so depressed.

I went home with the bulky projector, which added frustration, having to bring it to Bukit Batok the next morning, which was even further away. I dozed off in the evening and jumped up an hour later to realise it was the actual time I was supposed to meet up with Irwin for golf.

I took a little food for dinner before rushing off to Queenstown. It was a wrong decision perhaps for my entire body was wrecked since the day before and the blisters on my right hand instigated to defy my instructions.

I was using one of Irwin’s drivers instead of the usual “7 Iron” and it was a different feeling. However, I was too anxious like before, hitting the ball too hard to get it right.

A Rather Stressed Day

.

We Golfed, We Ate and We Chatted

The morning did not start off well somehow. I woke up very early but dragged before going out to meet Irwin and Eugene for golf at Queenstown MRT. Being afraid of getting gastric pain and that I knew I should have taken more light meals, I grabbed a sandwich at the seven-eleven store.

It was a better morning than other times since there was a young sweet girl at the other end of the driving range. Since the machine over our side was spoilt, we had to go over there.

Eugene impressed me with his calmness and consistency in his first attempt of golfing. Irwin spotted my mistake of swinging the golf club and thus I realised the last two times of golfing were waste of time.

We shared around eight hundred of balls and due to the correct swinging angle, I was not as tired as the past. We took bus 51 to Bugis Junction after that and dined at Wang Kok Hong Kong Café. I had a set meal. In the end we were quite full but managed to finish everything.

We made a big turn to TCC and camped there for very long. The cute waitress, Charlene, quite impressed me. The three of us had great chats and killed the stress of the mountain-full work waiting for me.

We left at around five PM. Irwin went back to play golf and I decided that I should not spend too much time outside especially when my fingers were already equipped with many blisters.

I started dozing off and when my younger brother returned home, we went to look for my mum to do some shopping at the NTUC. At first, I was expecting my mum to get the stuffs and leave, but they took their own time leisurely when my brain was malfunctioning. The one hour of shopping was billed at almost a hundred dollar.

.

Irwin’s New Golf Clubs

I woke up with a very terrible sore throat on Monday morning, which almost tore my throat apart. After swallowing saliva for some time, I recovered with itchiness left on my throat.

New task awaited me and the thought of working with Photoshop on the super duper tortoise-like laptop was a complete turn off.

I had to take lor mee for lunch since the Chinese mixed vegetable rice would not be nice without the curry as gravy.

I left work earlier and rushed home to get changed before meeting Irwin at Queenstown. Since his bus was taking a long time, I went into the NTUC supermarket to have a quick shopping, buying a packet of red bean buns and two bottles of isotonic drinks, which I had not seen before; they tasted like 100-plus but the label was 7-up.

I waited at the golf driving range after that. Irwin came along with his personal golf clubs and I was quite excited. Nevertheless, my entire body was weak somehow and together with the irritating itchiness on my throat, I did not have good game. We only finished two baskets of golf balls, which was slightly more than two hundreds of them.

We could not decide on what to eat and if it was not for my throat, I would have decided on one of the fast food restaurants. Anyway, Irwin suggested to go home first to check out if his brother was home so that he could borrow the car and fetch me at my house for dinner.

In the end, the dinner was called off and I finished the remaining of the buns for dinner.

Some payment issues from my current webhost boiled me up so much that I almost wanted to dedicate a few days to write a long essay to curse them. Luckily that they had a live chat system on their website and the staff attended to me and all problems seemed to be solved. I was handling it so professionally in very fine tone that Mike appraised me that I was a good client.

This night, I started sneezing and I knew it was the continued symptom of the sore throat.

Long Weekend – Deepavali

I spent the long weekend better than previous weeks; more things were done although the efficiency level was still too low. I did not even know about the Deepavali’s holiday until Daniel told me on last Friday morning.
I managed to update two blogs:
Chinese Dramas
Hey! Are You Joking?
My upcoming directory site had moved to another era with the confirmation of the design and layout, such that I could go ahead with the remaining coding without fears of amendments.
I added four Chinese songs to my collection:
吴英仔 – 双手的温柔
(Wu Ying Zai – Shuang Shou De Wen Rou)
吴宗宪 – 留心
(Jacky Wu Zong Xian – Liu Xin)
李玖哲 – 想太多
(Li Jiu Zhe – Xiang Tai Duo)
薛之谦 – 黄色枫叶
(Xue Zhi Qian – Huang Se Feng Ye)
The meet-up with Irwin, including golfing, was great except for the fact that my flu and cough had not recovered.
I also managed to spend some time trying out the add-ons for Mozilla Firefox to enhance my surfing experience.
If only the weekend was longer…

No Sweat, No Ache, Zero Metre

Irwin returned to Singapore yesterday morning. He messaged me in MSN at around nine PM to ask me to go for golfing. I was itchy for it as well, especially for the late night experience, I agreed instantly. He reached my place twenty minutes in his brother’s car and we sped off to the Queenstown shooting range.

We managed to reach before ten PM but the auntie told us that even though the range centre would be opened until eleven PM, the shop was closing at ten and without the clubs, we had to give up. We decided to go home straight away and turn up early at seven AM to “knock” on the shop’s door.

I did manage to wake up at six AM but was too sleepy to clear my mind before I started dozing off for another hour. Irwin messaged me just in time and I quickly got up and started preparing. We met up at eight AM and it was really fortunate that Irwin could get his brother’s car again such that it greatly reduced my travelling time and waste of strength.

It was my third golfing session and we went to the second level again. The weather was fine at first but it got a little warm for some time before it drizzled for a few minutes. Everything was fine except for the number of smokers who were dying to get lung cancer.

Blisters!

There was not much improvement for me since I still could not withhold my own bullish strength and greed to slam the golf club towards the ball, such that I could not get a perfect hit. Nevertheless, the continuous reflections through the entire game did save my hands from having muscle ache. It was the first time I left the shooting range without internal pain, but also the first time I suffered from blisters; three burst and two recovered.

We played a total of around six hundred balls before I gave up and Irwin got himself another fifty plus and finished them in no time. It was a great relaxing morning.

We went for brunch at Vivocity and I finally got to enjoy Long John Silver’s combo one again. Irwin got himself some name card papers and ink cartridges before sending me home.

Golf would probably resume after his return from Korea next Friday.

Golf for the Second Time

I’m trembling so much on my left hand that holding a bottle of drink gives problems. It was since Friday, during the golf session with Irwin, my body entire was whacked.

I was supposed to meet him up early at seven AM in the morning but both of us felt lazy and we pushed the nine AM appointment further into the evening. He was sending his girlfriend off at the airport and we managed to meet up at around six PM, and he was actually late for half an hour.

We strolled over to the driving range from Queenstown MRT station, which was in fact quite near. It was my second trip there and my second try on golfing as well.

The glove to be worn on the left hand cost eighteen bucks, whereas the rental of each club was two bucks. 150 balls were at the price of ten bucks. The glove could probably last a few trips and therefore, it was not an extremely expensive sport like what everyone would have thought like me before I first stepped into the driving range.

This time, we went to the second level. I started off telling myself not to act like a bull, and instead, to analyse by trial and error on my posture. It began all well and there was great improvements that I managed to hit the ball over the 65 metres signboard. Nevertheless, my greediness slowly took over control of my brain and I started using strength to hit the ball further, and I was close to the 95 metres signboard.

The few eager tries soon brought my ego down, with the miscue of the club. I was drained further from the previous days of sports and my back injury sang the same tune of my exhaustion.

When Irwin started correcting me over my posture and ineffective use of strength, it was too late. My left hand was too tired to grab the club firmly. I persisted on with another 50 balls and out of luck, I managed to do the correct swinging a few times and the impact of the golf club on the ball gave off beautiful sound.

After dehydrating ourselves, we ended the game and sat inside a café next to the billiard centre to replenish our body. Then, we had a tough time waiting for bus 51.

Irwin had bought some titbits from his previous Korea trip with his girlfriend, my so-called “da sao”, and thus I followed him home to get my share of goodies. My main purpose was just to visit his house and experience what he called as climbing the hill. Indeed, we had a tough time climbing up the estimated half kilometre of slope.

Right after getting my free goodies, he took his brother’s car and we set off for the nasi lemak stall near the NUS campus. After the dinner, he sent me home.

After bathing, I sat in front of my computer to realise that even my right hand was weak and that it took me too much effort to simply click on the left mouse. Thus, I went into the room to enjoy the massage chair and right after that, I dozed off on the bed and it was only around midnight.

Playing Golf at Queens Townclub

I did the most unexpected thing on this Tuesday, which was playing golf. It was a good recommendation by Irwin before he left Singapore again.

The afternoon placed me in sweat. I was with my gang at CCAB and my bag was inside Weitat’s car boot. The match we were watching ended late and thus I delayed the meeting time with Irwin. I was lost when I realised they were not going to leave any soon. The place was not very accessible and the fastest way was to wait for Weitat to drop me at Queenstown MRT station.

I was unable to direct Irwin to the place but he was alright to make the trip down to fetch me. I waited at the main gate at Evans Road, which was opposite Mr Prata shop. After the long wait with many cabs passed by, I regretted not flagging for any of them and arranging to meet Irwin at Queenstown MRT station directly. I supposed I could have taken Weitat’s ride.

So, I boarded Irwin’s car in guilt some time later. In fact, joining my gang at CCAB was a wrong decision even though I would be loitering outside all by myself if I were to part with them right after lunch.

Anyway, it was my first trip to Queens Townclub, which was near Margaret Road and besides a prison. The weather was too welcoming for relaxation and I almost thought it would drizzle.

I felt weird to be at a place which was supposed to be very high class, though the place looked shabbier than what I had imagined. It was still a marvellous place after all, which was very good for relaxation.

My first swing of the club was still alright, for at least it did not land within five metres. I missed the ball many times and the grass carpet probably hated me for hitting it. I tried hard to get my posture correct, but however, was too impatient and exerted too much strength each time.

We left in the evening and Irwin sent me home.