Finally, Out with Huiting

[Sunday, 2 January, 2011]

I had a lazy morning doing work while chatting with Carmen until 7am.

Huiting messaged me to delay the meet-up time and later, she decided to go for a movie instead of cycling since it was far. I met up with her at Vivocity’s cinema ticket booth near 3pm. After we bought the tickets to “Meet the Focker”, we went to Long John’s Silver for lunch.

It was a humorous movie that caused laughers inside the theatre. After that, I sent Huiting to work before going home and dozing off in the early evening.

My mum ordered delivery from the Golden Café for dinner. I spent the night working on the tuition agency site and also had some discussion with my brother again.

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New Year Eve Working in Office

[Friday, 31 December, 2010]

I could not doze off at 2am probably due to the air-conditioner. It had been a great problem for me to sleep early all these years. For the past week, I did not have this problem since my mum and younger brother were not around and thus I could sleep with only the fan on.

I went to join my elder brother after some hours since he had not switched on the air-conditioner. However, my nose was already blocked and I had problem dozing off. Knowing about this, my elder brother did not switch on the air-conditioner even though he was about to do it before I joined him.

I went to the office after waking up at 11am and started doing networking stuff for Smart Tuition Singapore. Mike and I had lunch at Pinnacle Duxton. He bought herbal soup and plain rice, carrot cake and chay kway teow. We were rather disappointed with the latter.

After going back to the office, I continued with my work and also did some coordination work for Smart Tuition Singapore.

At night, we went to Vivocity and had dinner at Super Dog for the first time. It was rather expensive for the standard of food. We went to the Challenger and saw a stuff selling the Xbox 360 Kinect. She was stylish. After she ended her job, she got changed into her home clothes and looked even more attractive.

Mike and I left for the office before the crowd became worse with the New Year countdown. We met the security guard, Kirstna, and he told us his story for almost half an hour while I was having a bad stomach. In order not to give him the wrong impression, I waited for him to end the conversation before I rushed to the toilet. We continued with our work and Mike released his stress by playing Starcraft 2 online.

Working on the New Year Eve was nothing unusual but working inside the office during New Year Eve was quite special.

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Collected, Lost and Retrieved the Company Stamp

[Wednesday, 29 December, 2010]

I worked a bit on the tuition agency website and went to sleep after 2am.

Lucky refused to sleep and he woke me up a few times. I went to office after 9am. During lunch time, Mike and I went to Tanjong Pagar to collect the company stamp and we became arrogant and crapped a lot about it. We had lunch at the second storey’s coffee shop and the noodle with wantan and char siew at $4 was nice.

We shopped at NTUC and bought detergent to wipe off the white board. Then, we went to Watson at Amara Hotel. After reaching the office, we realised there was really a transparent cover on the white boards and that was why we could not clean the markers’ ink away.

We enjoyed some grape fruit juice without alcohol. Suddenly, we realised we had lost the company stamp.

In the evening, we drove over to Pinnacle at Duxton and parked the car there for the first time. We changed our mind and decided to go to Tanjong Pagar for dinner at Mike’s favourite Chinese mixed vegetable rice stall. After that, we went up to the second level and saw our company stamp there. Someone had tied the plastic bag to the wall. We went back to the office to continue with work.

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A Disappointing Miscommunication

[Tuesday, 28 December, 2010]

I went to sleep at 3am. After my alarm clock sounded, I went off to sleep since I thought Mike would message me. I woke up at 11am and went to the office. We went to Everton Park but decided to cross over to Pinnacle at Duxton’s Kopi Tiam. We had two sets of chicken rice.

After that, we picked up the car and went over to Tanjong Pagar. I was checking my email on iPad when I saw an email for a new message from Andrew in Facebook and I was taken back because it seemed that someone had told him things that were twisted, making me a backstabber. The incident kept up with me for the entire day.

Mike and I went to make the company stamp and we checked out the price for the namecards as well. After going back to office, I spent a very long time typing a reply for Andrew instead of working on my tuition agency website. This issue further discouraged me from going down to the gym apart from I had to concentrate on my websites.

I received enquiries about tuition and it sucked that I could not continue working on the tuition agency’s website since I had to do the coordination. I knew well if I could not proceed on with my work, the business would be stagnant soon, and coordination would continue to be tedious.

Mike and I had a quick dinner at Everton Park. The mixed vegetable rice was quite nice. After going back to the office, I saw a bug in the tuition agency website and it took me quite some time to realise it was just because of the string of encoding text I placed inside the Meta.

After reaching home at 10 plus, I spent my time look through the website.

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One Burden Off and Elder Brother was Home

[Monday, 27 December, 2010]

I was trying hard to solve an issue on Smart Tuition’s CMS that caused auto reload on completion of the first load. I walked through my coding and saw nothing that would trigger it. I was suspecting the server side but I failed to solve the problem. I went to sleep at 3am.

I was not sure if I did doze off but I got up at around 5am. Before 7am, I set off to the office.

It was quite a productive morning. I finished an article on deep breathing for the tuition agency website to help people to relax themselves. Then, I did SEO for it, together with the stress management article. After that, I started to work on Tze Khit’s website.

I had lunch with Mike at Everton Park. The standard of the fish and chips from the western food stall was a little below average. After taking lunch, I continued with Tze Khit’s website and it gave me quite a big headache since almost every link is targeted at the live site. When I was almost done with all the tasks on the piece of paper, he dropped me an SMS to let me know that he would get Daoxiong to update the site since he knew I was very busy. I felt it was really right since Daoxiong was the original person who started his two websites. I finally put a burden off my mind and started working on SEO for Smart Tuition.

I had dinner with Mike at Kampong Bahru at the Muslim prata shop near the bus-stop. We ordered Maggie goreng, laksa and mutton soup. None of them tasted good. After going back to the office, I was exhausted soon with the lack of sleep.

My elder brother had reached home before me. We went down to walk Lucky together. I got two packets of milks and some heat reducing drinks at the NTUC before we went home.

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Home Alone Final Day

[Sunday, 26 December, 2010]

I continued with my programming work on Smart Tuition Singapore and then blogged. I went to sleep after 4am.

I woke up at around 10am and started hand-washing my clothes. After that, I dozed off.

I had my first instant noodle ever since my family was away, for my lunch. I continued with my programming work for the entire day and I was being rewarded well with the success. I was quite proud of myself for Lucky was disturbing me throughout and I could still finish it.

I called for delivery for the second time and I ordered the normal fried rice instead.

At 10pm, I brought Lucky down for a walk.

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Home Alone Day Two

[Friday, 24 December, 2010]

Eileen messaged me in MSN to solve her Microsoft Word issue and thus I did not go to bed early as planned. My giddiness worsened and I went to bed at 3.30am eventually.

Mike woke me up a few times with his SMSes and I finally got up after 1pm. It was low productive day for me at home in my illness. I spent the most efficient time on photo editing. I heated up the “tang yuan” from the fridge as my late lunch.

I started working in the late afternoon and rewarded myself with a meal from Burger King near 8pm. A few minutes after I started eating, Lucky had finished his dinner and emptied his waste in the kitchen for me to clear.

After the movie on channel 5, Transporter 3, ended, I brought Lucky down for a walk before I started blogging.

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Home Alone Day One

[Thursday, 23 December, 2010]

I went to sleep at 4am and by 9am, everyone was gone and I knew they were on the way to Malaysia for holidays. I felt weak somehow and I knew I was going to fall sick soon.

I went to the office alone and did not take my breakfast. I started tidying up a bit while waiting for the SingNet guy. Given the time range of 10am to 2pm, he came after 12pm. He did not sound happy for it was his second trip down to my office. I saw the voucher and realised I had rushed down to the office two days ago for nothing since the stated date was the day before.

I bought a “mai gai” from the canteen and started doing a bit of my work. Mike came over and after some time, we went to Vivocity for movie, catching Tron. It was the only time I could sit down properly to relax after so many weeks. It was in fact the first 3D movie I had watched but somehow it was not very impressive to me. Mike complained that the movie was too dark.

After going home to feed Lucky, I went down to the gym to join the guys in the Christmas celebration. Tze Khit passed me a list of tasks to do for his website but the place was too crowded for me to do anything when my head was spinning. When there were fewer people, I went home to bring Lucky to play with the kids but they left soon.

I reached home near midnight.

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Being Cheated to Church Event for Second Time

[Saturday, 18 December, 2010]

I was busy with the tuition blog and eventually I updated the website with Google Map. The display refused to show the new location and I wasted a lot of time trying out. I also finished up some minor amendments for the tuition’s flyer. Lastly, I updated email and password for a tutor who got it wrong. I went to bed at 5am and I had problems dozing off again.

I was woke up by the drilling noise after 9am. My younger brother went Johor for his eyes check-up and he left some minor tuition assignment tasks for me to follow up. Since I did not handle it before, I took very long to figure things out.

I went down to have lunch with Mike before buying some stuff such as mop for the office. Then, I brought him up to my house so that I could finish up the work. He finally saw clearly why I needed a better working space.

We touched up the painting work in the office before starting to fix up the IKEA furniture. I was exhausted. Mike’s watch was slow for forty-five minutes and I was shocked when I checked the time with my lousy phone and his car’s clock. After he sent me home, I got changed and rushed off to Expo.

I felt relax when I called Caiping and realised I was even earlier than her. I grabbed myself a sandwich at 7-11 and started chewing, while I prayed hard that the Magic Show she invited me to was not a conspiracy. I had a taste of being conned to a church event by a male friend and a MLM one by another female friend many years back. Furthermore, I was so busy and exhausted, and yet I made myself available for her. I had interrogated her before accepting the invitation from her and I really hoped my intuition was wrong.

Caiping arrived with her friends and some of them were distributing Christmas presents. I felt uneasy and it was the first step towards unveiling the ugly truth. However, since she was a very religious person, I assumed her closed friends should be of the same religion as well, and thus I gave her the benefit of doubt. As we moved towards the exhibition hall, I saw big banners of City Harvest Church. Since the church could have booked a large number of tickets, I skipped it. After meeting other friends of hers, the guy let out clues by asking me if I were from her group and she tried to stop him. Later on, he asked me if it was the first time I went for a church event. Everything was clear.

In order not to make things look bad, I swallowed up my anger and played on to test my patience. The crowded place was a big turn off. We moved in and took up the seat. When she told me the magician was her pastor, it was nothing shocking to me anymore. As the show began, I felt quite boring since I did watch Taiwanese magic shows on television that were much more impressive. The dances made me sleepier for I was just expecting for “magic” shows.

The worst thing that I had expected did happen. It was a conspiracy to get non-member to join them. They tried to intimidate every non member indirectly by using the mass power – taking account that most of the viewers were their members, they instructed everyone to put their heads down. I was not sure how many strong willed smarties with integrity had refused them like me since I tried at least not to show disrespect and thus I did not turn back, but some people had walked off. It was one of the most disgusting moments that I had witnessed in my entire life when twisted words of nonsense were pushed into everyone’s ears.

Anyone could have started a religion and claim himself as the appointed one, which the special someone had instructed him to spread the religion through his dream. As accordingly to the tales I had heard, since there was no evidence to prove that the dream was a fake one, everyone should believe the guy. I was proud that I was clear that I would only believe if there was evidence. A sane person should not believe something just because there was no evidence to show that it was a crooked up story. It required a really good speaker to do a good job though.

When Caiping asked me about the “message”, I gave no comment since I was too tired and never wanted to waste my time to debate. I did not want to turn friendship sour as well just because of some craps. I could not blame her since she was just one of the victims.

It was one of my greatest hobbies to take photos with pretty girls but I avoided being included in any of the photos. I was quite worried that through Facebook, I would be located and I would see or hear things that I was very annoyed with. We took MRT off and I took a different direction at Tanah since they were going to Bedok 85 for supper.

This incident, together with the previous two, would definitely put me on guard in future when any old friend tried to ask me out.

My younger brother’s friends were at my time. The bedroom was probably too squeezy for them that they had to sit in the living room. I was with them for a while before I went inside the room and dozed off near midnight.

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Painting Work at the New Office

[Friday, 17 December, 2010]

After the exhausting day, I was finally home. Due to lack of sleep and extreme long hours of physical and mental endurance, I was on the verge of breaking down. I was helpless because I was jobless and needed the time to do up my website in order to get it popular faster, but, there were too many things that were hindering me. The delay of office setup and the countless requests from friends summed up my frustration. Spending more than half of my life trying to learn how to reject friends, I had failed badly.

It was not long after I sat down to check my emails, Lucky did his business on the floor next to the newspapers again. I could no longer control my emotion and shouted at him angrily. My world seemed to be glowing with darkness. I knew well Lucky was too adorable for anyone of us to let go anymore, especially me, but it was beyond my ability to hold another liability. I was at one of the toughest times of my life and I could not afford to have my time being eaten up.

I went to bed at 2.30am with my heavy head. I was too tired to care about anything anymore.

I was woke up by my mum’s phone call at 2pm. Soon, Mike SMSed me to prepare for some tools. My mum finally returned with my lunch and I asked her for the rug, pail and vacuum cleaner before I went down to meet Mike. We walked to his rented car.

After reaching the office, Mike went to take his lunch while I started pushing all the furniture to the centre. Then, we started painting for the green wall. After that, we went to get extra rollers for the white paint. Mike tried to fix up the curtain but his drill failed him on the hard wall.

After Mike sent me home, I started looking through the brochure that I took from the office’s letterbox. I took instant noodle and started crapping with him in MSN while I updated the tuition agency address to the new address – 10 Raeburn Park.

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