[Tuesday, 15 June, 2010]
Tuesday morning, I finally played LANs game together with my elder brother again. After that, we caught the world cup match of Italy against Paraguay.
In the afternoon, when I was going to the gym, I forgot to bring my keys and water bottle along. Luckily, my elder brother’s girlfriend was at home. I started doing gym with Weisheng and his friend.
At night, the IMM’s free bag arrived at my door. It was a double side handbag, with zebra and pink design on either side.
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[Thursday, 10 June, 2010]
On Thursday, just as I was considering over how to resolve the matter of the bad incident at IMM, their staff called me and offered to send their delivery man over. I could see that they were doing something about their negligence and thus I did not want to pursue about the matter anymore and accepted their offer. My complain letter was a victory, though the result was not the most satisfying one.
The most fruitful thing I did for the day was a little tidying up of my house in preparation for the next day’s air-conditioner installation. There was nothing much I could do for the bedroom since I did not want to start moving the furniture alone and end up worsening my back’s condition; moreover, I needed my family’s consent in the placement of the furniture. Therefore after finishing the living room’s area near my work area, I merely tried to unplug all the power cables to make sure the items were easier to be moved when necessary.
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[Monday, 7 June, 2010]
The main goal of the day was to go down to IMM to redeem our free gift for purchasing the air-conditioner.
I focused well in the afternoon to update Tze Khit’s websites but it was tough to change another person’s work. The solid two plus hours saw me doing great but amount of work was too much.
I set off with my mum at 6pm to meet my brother and his girlfriend at Tanjong Pagar MRT station. We transited to the IMM shuttle bus at Jurong East. The worst thing that could happen simply fell on us and after queuing up at the Customer Service counter, the lady told us the shipment for the gift was delayed. We tried to ask for the beach chair instead of the bag but the lady refused for it was meant for purchasing after 4th and we bought the air-conditioner much earlier. The thought of returning to the place again specially for the gift pissed everyone off. I was the most furious of all since I could not tolerate such crap from a big company who did not inform us earlier.
We had a bad dinner at the food court. The food was really nasty and I had the worse sweet and sour pork meat ever.
After that, we went back to the All Best shop to see if they could reissue the receipt for us but the boss’ mum was busy and the guy at the counter rejected us. We went to the management office at level 4 but it was empty. We decided to drop them an email then.
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[Thursday, 3 June, 2010]
I had gaming till 5pm and it was difficult to wake up even at 10am. I made it to Tiong Bahru before 12pm but shifu was late for quite long. She introduced me to her friend, Jeremy, and Jeremy’s student. They went separately for lunch while shifu explained to me about Jeremy’s websites.
After lunch, I went straight to Tze Khit’s gym. He told me of additional amendments for his websites and I started working on it. It was difficult to edit another person’s work and I had problems searching for the exact files.
While working, I was distracted by the noisy gym. Then, Jeremy started asking me questions and soon, Kachua called and visited the gym. Since I had my sports gear with me, I skipped doing gym and joined Kachua for volleyball instead.
We went to Clementi ITE and I was quite surprised to see many ex colleagues’ cars around. We went to IMM since the hall was empty and I grabbed a Mc chicken burger.
Upon returning to the hall, we heard about story of Mingfa’ student fell and was injured by the hook of the volleyball pole near the private part. Everyone was disgusted. Mingfa was not around and I accompanied coach to chat. I joined in only at the third game and could see myself rust like as if I was a newbie. I was strengthless, or rather, having phobia with my hurting left should and foot. I even missed two serving, which was crappy.
Luckily, Weitat asked me over to the side to warm-up and I got more used to controlling the ball – usually, we had too many people playing with a ball by the side and I would not want to join in. However, the hurt on my left shoulder was too unbearable each time when I exerted it.
I played as setter in my third and last game, and turned the table around after being thrashed in the previous games without Mingfa.
After the game, we went for supper near NUS, next to the prata shop.
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[Thursday, 27 May, 2010]
I was quite lazy to leave my house in the late afternoon. As usual, I was more determined and inspired every time when I was rushing to leave the house, but too bad I had to proceed on.
This time, Elvin asked me out for dinner and since I was always not free for the past two years, I did not want to reject his offer. We were arranging to meet up at IMM and I decided to go back to ITE Clementi to meet him, which was more convenient.
I went to the PosBank ATM to withdraw some for my UOB account since I used some when purchasing the air-conditioner. However, the machine gave me all ten dollar notes and when I went to the UOB cash deposit machine, there was a queue and an uncle even cut my queue when I was able to give up.
The carpark of my ex company was very deserted. I met Jonathan Cheong who was inside the car and he told me it was “family day” and everyone was allowed to leave at 5pm, and that explained why it was so quiet. Hirman and Mrs Grace Cheong were leaving the campus then. I met others like Jonathan Siah and Alamelu, and I decided to go up to the staffs room to wait for Elvin.
It was just nice that I met Joei at the door and I remembered I owed Hirman money, and I passed them to her. I tried to ask Mei Hoe along for the dinner but she refused to join in. When Elvin called me, I walked down with Diana to the carpark to find him.
We went IMM and he gave me a treat. Then, he taught me a bit about watches. In the end, we went to West Coast Park to walk around to digest the heavy food and I was quite amazed with the scenery after the construction work was finished by the side of the sea. After that, he dropped me at Clementi MRT station and I took the train home.
[Wednesday, 26 May, 2010]
I had two games of Command and Conquer with my brother. We played three versus five in a different and harder map and we managed to secure our area properly before launching an attack to tear down the enemies fast.
I was woke up by a person who was given the wrong number and she even dropped me an SMS. I hated to reply to unknown number and I hoped that person would realise she had made a mistake soon.
In the afternoon, I continued with my project, creating new SQL table for new criteria. However, before I could do many things, it was 4pm and I set off with my brother and mum to IMM to search for air-conditioner. We took the shuttle bus over and I realised the “bus-stop” was relocated. There were three shops side by side, inclusive of Gain City. We went to the first shop and learned more about the prices before we tried the “All Best” shop and thought the auntie was more comfortable.
Since my elder brother told me that he would return me his share by installation, I dumped $2,138 on the new system-2 Mitsubishi air-conditioner and I probably needed to fork out another $150 on the fixing day itself for a new frame to fit the new condenser.
I could actually withstand the heat of the bad weather more than anyone, except for the sweating part that would irritate me from working during the day. I was very irritated by the wastage of electricity in my house as well, for the extra fridge in the living room, air plump filtering the big fish tank, the forgetting of switching off lights in the morning, the 24-hours alive computer, and the excess usage of old non-inverter air-conditioner. All these bundled up to big electricity bill for the 3-room HDB flat that nobody would ever expect. Since the bill would eventually come to me in the end, I would rather get a new air-conditioner to reduce the monthly electricity bill.
No doubt, it was a gigantic blow to my long “holidays” plan to build up my websites, which seemed to take forever.
We took the shuttle bus back to Jurong East MRT station. My elder brother squeezed into the train at the centre platform to go and find his girlfriend first. Both of them boarded into “my train” at Woodlands and the four of us headed towards Bishan MRT, where we transited to the Circle Line. Our virgin trip on the Circle Line was towards Payar Lebar station where we switched over to the Green Line to Aljunied station. We proceeded to the You Tiao Da Wang stall but I was torn down by the long boring train journey that I felt so sick to eat. In the end, we took a cab home.
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[Tuesday, 16 March, 2010]
I finally got to dine together with my Shi Fu, Josephine. We went to IMM’s Fish and Co and she gave me very good guidance on my resume while waiting for the food. The meal was on me since she last treated me at New York New York the previous time at Jurong Point. I supposed we hit off well because both of us were very direct-to-point people.
The gathering of the MTRCs was never a smooth job; it was the last task I would be helping my boss with. I spent the afternoon updating my resume.
It was perhaps, one of the greatest mistakes I made, to join in the volleyball game at night. I knew there would not be many chances that I would play so often in future and thus, I gave up the dinner date with Irwin and Eugene.
The pain on my left shoulder was deadly. Even receiving a light ball would cause me cold sweat and I gave up soon knowing that the condition had worsened and that I would not be able to do well in the game.
Perhaps, the bad feeling was already back and the game was never as joyful as the previous week.
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[Monday, 15 March, 2010]
Instead of having Monday blue, I settled a for a Monday black. It was one of the rare occasions that I would forget to bring my wallet along. The waiting time for the lift was more than ten minutes with weird people boarding it to waste extra time.
Lunch was together with Weitat and Joy at IMM. After going to both Starhub and M1 shops, we went back to the office. I was wondering if I should get an iPhone since the price had dropped a lot. However, the short battery lifespan and instability continued to bug me.
I did not pay careful attention to the time and just nice, Joy offered to give me a lift to the MRT station. We met Zaki on the way down and he offered to drop me at somewhere near his place, which I turned down since the journey would be longer than taking a train; I would not want to carry a heavy bag over my injured shoulders to walk towards Dhoby Ghaut MRT and having to cross over to change train at Raffles Place.
Soon, I regretted since he would be going over to Bishan soon and that I would not have such chance to chat with him again after that.
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[Tuesday, 9 March, 2010]
I started off my morning with the mosquito bites, waking up earlier than usual.
My dread started again. Early in the morning, I set up everything at Bukit Batok while Weitat was back in Clementi to monitor his students’ examination. It was a good morning somehow since the teachers from Hillgrove who brought their students over were doing their jobs extremely well. I had an enjoyable morning crapping around with the well mannered students.
We went to IMM to meet up with Mei Hoe, Dorothy and Magdalene for lunch at Red Ginger.
In the afternoon, I went to set up two courts for badminton but initially only Joy came down, followed by Mr Baey who had forgotten to bring his short. I had a long warming up with Joy before Mei Hoe arrived to play doubles. Joy left before Deon came in to continue the game. In the end, Mei Hoe stayed behind to accompany me since I had to wait for the volleyball game. We met Daniel on our way to the office to keep my racket and he joined us at the MPH.
Mingfa bought my dinner over. The small packet of chicken rice fitted perfectly into my stomach and the chocolate milkshake from Sweet Talk was another sweet thing Mingfa bought over for me. I forgot to return him the money. Finally, I got to chat with him while waiting for pretty girls to pass by at the canteen but we were both disappointed.
The volleyball game was nice in my struggle with my injured left shoulder. The joint gave me pain whenever I received or set the ball. Nevertheless, it was a good night. Weitat came down to the campus to join us after the game and he sent me home.
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The first day of work after the long reservist and festival break was better than any other day. Due to the cancellation of the morning lesson at Bukit Batok, I was pardoned from official work. Magdalene was cute in her cheongsam and I made her take photos with me.
I handed over the Polar watch to Mr Neo and I knew it would affect me quite badly in my future jogs.
Having lunch together with my usual clings was more cherished than before for I knew there was not many chances in future after March. We went to IMM’s Red Ginger and after that, Meihoe and I gave the fruit stall a second chance.
Weitat’s idea to get a “Choco Exotic” cake from the Four Leaves cake shop for Joy kept me entertained in the afternoon. It was great to make friends happy.
The downturn of the day was the cancellation of Bukit Timah Walk. Basically, most people had either forgotten or changed their minds.
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