Stressful Meeting

[Thursday, 2 December, 2010]

My new pages for my tuition agency website were up though the contents were not fully ready. Meanwhile, I had difficulty filling up my stomach with the dinner my mum cooked for I had roti prata with Kachua a couple of hours ago. I managed to get the website’s url up in Wikipedia before I went to bed at seven plus. It took me quite some time to doze off.

David gave me a call at 1pm to deliver to me the bad news that the viewing for the office had to be postponed to the next day.

I tried to work on the new website for the new project with my gym friends but my mind was all about the tuition site to stop me from making any progress. Anyway, the thought of the tedious design and programming work frustrated me because I knew with my lack of experience, it would take months to deliver the work.

I went to the gym at 7pm with my stressed mind. Andrew was training under Dan and he looked worse than me. However, I did not display my frustration and instead, I showed everyone the opposite side of my mood. I started playing the Xbox 360 Kinect and the volleyball game got me tired soon. Eventually, when I moved too near the gym bench, my toe was cut badly by the sharp edge. I lost quite a big amount of blood and Bobby was quite worried. He wanted to go upstairs to get me the “yellow medical oil” but I went up myself instead since he had two clients coming at the same time – one came late and another was earlier.

Before 8pm, Andrew was very worried. His stressful face did not recover even after sweating out. He told me to call Letian and Junze. Both of them were already on their way and were pretty on time. We were lucky that Bobby was around during our meeting again. He commented that we were not moving after so many sessions of meeting. We decided to take actions and I told them of my concern of the website. Andrew suggested to engage his partner’s service. I was happy that the problem could be solved as the professional definitely had much more experience, manpower and existing coding to establish the website probably more than ten times faster than an amateur doing one-man show. The meeting was eventually interrupted and before we realised, it was over and we started playing the volleyball game on Xbox.

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Bitch, Bitches

[Wednesday, 24 November, 2010]

I finished up a page about Stress Management for Smart Tuition and went to sleep as early as right after 2am.

I woke up before 6am because of Lucky moving around. I was very scared that he wanted to pee or even do his big business that I opened the door a few times for him. In the end, I switched off the air-conditioner and went back to sleep with the door opened so that he could go outside any time.

I woke up after 9am eventually caused by the renovation noise of the unit above. The disgusting bitch decided to join in the fun of the HDB home improvement after all my surrounding units had completed ours.

The renovation was actually planned well enough that the work would start for one unit on three storeys (vertical) each time for two weeks. In the mid of the two weeks, the next three units (horizontal) beside them would proceed. Upon completion of the first three units, the next three units below would have their turns.

I did not expect the terrible noise and air pollution would come back a month after everything was cleared up. I started cursing her when I recalled how much time I had spent cleaning the kitchen’s windows and frames right after our renovation, because the dust and dirt had their best hideout in between the windows and frames; unless I could remove the entire windows from the frame to clean them, nothing much could be done to clean them.

I was extremely disgusted and disappointed at the management of the project for allowing such incident to happen. The noise and dust had badly affected my family and I. I had to change my plan to go to the gym earlier to do work and train up before the meeting in the late evening. I had to stay at home to bear with the noise with all the windows closed, because I could not leave Lucky inside the kitchen anymore like usual when everyone was out. My younger brother went down to the third storey to escape from the shit soon since he had to study for his exams.

I was very fed up and the nasty network connection worsened my mood. I replaced the old router my elder brother took from his girlfriend with our original tiny one, and the connection was much faster and I needed not refresh the pages multiple times in order to get some images loaded.

In the early afternoon, nobody was at home except me. Lucky surprised me by going into the bedroom alone and slept on my bed. I went in a few times to check on him and he followed me out like normal but he went in again. I was not sure why he was so “emo”. He was never like this even if my elder brother was not home and I suspected it was due to the drilling noises caused by the bitch. Anyway, during my house’s renovation, I stayed inside the bedroom almost the entire day with Lucky, and I suspected it was partly due to this experience that he thought he should stay inside.

In the mid afternoon, my mum returned home with a neighbour who stayed next block. My house was the “show flat” again and I was quite sick of it. Moreover, this auntie asked me to carry Lucky when I was trying hard to rush my work. I got so disgusted for I could not do my work anymore.

In the evening, I tried my luck in Facebook to look for people to go to the movie with me for the next day. Luck was not with me but it was a really good try for I did not expect to get a response that I did not have for many years. Eventually I had to leave my house for the meeting at the gym. I tried to do my work-out but I only got to complete one station before the meeting started.

We were stuck at the same issue until Andrew thought of an alternative. Since it was not foolproof, I still could not see a confirmed success.

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First Official Meeting

[Monday, 22 November, 2010]

I spent the morning updating my blogs and slept at 8am eventually.

I woke up at 4pm. Lucky gave me hell with his waste. My elder brother’s girlfriend tried to bring him down for a walk but he refused to follow and started crying at the lift lobby.

I went to the gym and Bobby kept me occupied with amendments to their flyers. Next was Tze Khit’s turn to flood me with amendments to his website. Andrew reached later and I was in a mess to remember the points to be updated as some were given verbally. I was stress for I was supposed to have meeting with my team but the updating work was holding it back with my team-mates surrounding me. Anyway, I had a “bao” to fill my stomach while I was working. I was not sure who paid for it, together with my dessert but I wasted no time to ask since they would not take the money from me.

Alas, the meeting started and Andrew’s new idea struck me. I was exhausted after the intensive work while my tuition agency website was bugging me, and I was empty. There was no solution to implement Andrew’s brilliant plan without paying a high cost. Bobby impressed me as well with his knowledge. In the end, we went to Maxwell Food Centre.

After reaching home, I continued with the work for Tze Khit.

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Meeting Off, Stuck at the Gym for Work

[Monday, 25 October, 2010]

As usual, I spent the morning working on my tuition website and then blogging. I went to sleep after 7am.

Lucky woke me up in the afternoon. My elder brother went down for his leg treatment again and thus I had to take care of Lucky by myself for an hour.

A guy from Starhub, Ari, called me regarding the request for voucher for my renewal of mobile phone plan. He insisted that Starhub could only give me at most a hundred dollar voucher and I was quite pissed off. I got him to call me back the next day so that I could discuss with my younger brother as we had intention to switch over to Singtel for Starhub’s reception was ridiculous.

I wanted to go down to the gym earlier but I had some stuffs to sort out with my younger brother regarding the tuition agency. Since he was coming home, I waited for him.

I left home at around 7.30pm, so that I would be early for the meeting with Andrew and Letian. I was quite shocked that none of them was around there since I thought they would be there for training before the meeting. I waited until it passed 8pm, I SMSed Letian who did not reply me. Later on, I tried contacting Andrew and he told me the meeting was cancelled for Letian was sick. I was at a lost suddenly for waiting down there over nothing.

Tze Khit stopped me from leaving since he had a poster for me to edit. He accompanied me to Burger King where I grabbed my dinner and helped Wilson to get a meal too. Tze Khit insisted to treat me for the dinner but I used his fifty dollars note to foot the bill before taking out my money from my wallet to return to him together with the change. He was too generous to check the sum.

We went back to the gym soon and I started having my dinner. The new mushroom chicken tasted quite nice at the first bite but I craved for the normal chicken burger instead.

I started working with Tze Khit and Bobby. They wanted to make changes to my previous design with all the updated stuffs. It was an extremely tough night for me as they were trying hard to fight against time and poured me with multiple instructions at one time before I could finish even a step. There were numerous trial and errors to exhaust my brain and fingers, especially when I was using the laptop’s mouse pad.

Right before midnight, when it was almost done, while waiting for them to surf the net for photos, I rushed to the toilet as I had diarrhoea. The rest of them left the gym soon.

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Broke my Jogging Timing Record

EIP, my dread, finally started on Tuesday morning. Going down all the way to Bukit Batok ITE was killing half of my days that I was unable to do any other stuff. It was a test of my luck to see which secondary school students were going down in order to judge how tiring I would be by the end of each session. I was lucky that the Westwood Secondary school kids were very adorable. However, I made a great communication mistake and Zaki reached at 8am.

Zaki sent me back to campus to attend my department meeting, which started forty-five minutes earlier and the meeting was over soon upon reaching. Nevertheless, I got to enjoy the nasi lemak from my boss.

I had a payback of my lack of sleep due to gaming before I went to bed. Throughout the afternoon, I was never productive by nodding in front of my laptop. The worst thing was when I discovered that my smoking site did not work properly on my webhost even though everything was fine on both laptops I was using. It was disastrous to work with AJAX when debugging was needed.

Sometimes I did doubt my own principle. I always did my best to attend to all my friends but somehow it made me very unfocused. I had been observing friends who did not even glance at me when I stood beside them during their conversation with others, and indeed they were more successful than me.

I reached home at around 6pm. I slacked for some time and finally left my house for a jog after taking my medicine. It was another challenge to my limit for I could easily sleep like a bear at that moment. I started off weak and felt like sleeping at certain points of time. By the time I reached the big T-junction separating Marina Barrage and Marina South Pier, I was exhausted. Nevertheless, I was impressed with my final timing.

On the Tuesday evening, the place was not even half as crowded as the weekends. There were more groups of youngsters around. The usual huge green snake kite departed soon before darkness embarked. I started lying down to rest. The time tickled fast and before I could doze off, it was near 8pm. I made my way down and did some stretching longer than ever, distracted by a mini bus which I suspected was from MediaCorp.

When I started to take off, I was glad to see bus 400 stopping at the bus-stop. My second race against the bus was granted but I was not given advance start off as long as the previous time. Before I reached the T-junction, the bus had already beaten me. I did not give up and kept my pace constant at the exhausting speed. My effort had a payoff for I managed to overtake the alighted passengers inside the small tunnel as they were walking towards the MRT station. I was quite proud of myself.

I could not keep up with the pace after turning away from the entrance to MRT, but managed to push myself furthermore. In the end, I checked my timing and was very amazed with myself for I broke my own record by taking less than 19 minutes.

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Cute Girl in Purple Dress

On Thursday, my FYP team had our meeting with the supervisor for the last time. It was mainly to discuss about the PowerPoint for presentation.

I had taken leave and spent the entire afternoon working on flash. Somehow, it took me very long to start recapping it.

The meeting was held at the usual place and at the usual time. The only difference was that the girl-next-door staff, Alicia, was around.

I had a quick run-through of the draft PowerPoint slides with Mr John Lim and he left soon after. We continued with testing of setup and in the midst, I was badly distracted. A cute girl wearing a purple dress was at the shop next door. I did not expect much until she and her friends came in to get some drinks. I would consider it a lucky night for the sight even though it was just minutes of pleasure to the eyes. While we were leaving, I saw her sitting near the glass door.

Out of so many babes I had seen over at The Cathay Starbucks, she was the greatest to my liking, even though she was not extremely pretty.

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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.

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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.

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Treats from the Nice People

Yesterday, I had lunch with Xiao Mei at IMM where I received my belated birthday treat. We chose Ajisen for the reasonable set meal price. It was quite okay but I would prefer western food. After finishing our meals, we shopped at one of the baby shops and followed by Daiso.

In the evening, Bernard dropped Mdm Seet and me at Dover MRT station. Mdm Seet accompanied me for dinner at Plaza Singapura’s food court and treated me a cup of milk tea at the Xin Wang café at the basement level.

It was not long before I would not have time to meet up with all the great people.

I made a wrong choice of getting a venti size Dark Mocha frappuccino at The Cathay Starbucks during the FYP meeting, which was so sweet that I could not finish.

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