Monthly Archive

that’s the title i’ve earned, for returning the third time over three years.

as i was talking to a new face in the office, she mentioned that she heard of my name long before i went to work today. apparently a cheeky sales engineer who used to argue with me over marketing issues had told all the new people in the office that i am hyperactive, talks a lot, laughs a lot and bounces (!) when he saw my admin head with my application form last week.

he scared the new guys in the office so much that they were keeping their fingers crossed that i wasn’t soo hyperactive, cos they cannot tahan hyperactive girls, haha.

luckily for them, i’m still adjusting to normal life. a routine that has me wake up before the sun has fully risen, squeeze on public transport smelling faintly of dried pee, extreme hunger before lunchtime, etc. so i wasn’t so hyper today. plus you know, i don’t talk to strangers.

so those new people just gave me weird, suspicious looks when they saw me.

in the first hour that i started work, i managed to cause a technician to be paralysed from shock.

he: “can you please print out the cashcard records for me?”

me: ” ok, you bahar right?”

he, staring at me with a shocked expression: “you….you….it’s your first day at work today right?”

me: “yeah, my first day. but i’ve worked here before what!”

he: “is it? how come i never see you before?”

me: ” …”

during lunch, i hopped on to a new colleague’s car together with already-known colleagues before either of us were introduced. he kept giving me weird looks throughout lunch, despite my admin head introducing us to each other while we were seated.

nah, work isn’t all fun. i spent the first half of the day filing till i almost dozed off. and spent the second half of the day learning something new and only realising ten minutes before knock-off time that all the information that i had been keying in weren’t recorded cos i missed out a step.

DARN. i hope i catch up with my work tomorrow, or it’s gonna be OT galore.

i went on the emergency wardrobe malfunction correction mission today, and things improved slightly. i returned with a white top, a black document bag, a casual white belt, assessment books and some other stuff.

yeah, i know only the white top is relevant to the mission. what’s weird is, now i have a black shirt, two black tops and a black cardigan-sweater with a white shirt collar attached to it.

let me digress to the document bag first. since i’ll be juggling tuition and a daytime job, i figured i need a relatively big bag to contain all my stuff and one that goes with a workwear wardrobe. i combed the entire jurong point and only managed to spot two suitable bags. suddenly aware that i have been buying too many things, i was determined to get the cheaper option, thus the document bag. i don’t mind it actually, but i think i’m gonna look like a pompous admin lady.

oh yeah, back to the main point.

together with my black shoes, black document bag (maybe white bag on some days), black/gray/white apparel, i’m gonna appear in grayscale mode everyday.

damn.

when i get my paycheck and time to shop again, i’m gonna revert to colours. till then.

p.s. 1) did anyone notice how perfect the weather was today? sunny and breezy in the day, cool and breezy in the night. 2) the second round of the spare-no-cents-campaign has begun. 3) i really like shopping. 4) mf is declared my favourite jp-buddee. while weiwei is my favourite jw-kopitiam-buddee. fengyiyiyiyi is the out-of-jw-buddee.

today was a crazy shopping experience. i tried to convince my favourite attachment mate that i don’t always behave like that and that today was probably the most extreme case, but i don’t think she’s convinced.

first thing, i stepped into bega to buy my clothes. which is a miracle, cos i’ve stopped buying their clothes after buying a brinjal-purple top for cny which i only wore once. mainly because their sales personnel are too aggressive and keep chattering till you buy something. i tried walking out of the shop without buying anything and they showed sulky faces, which really pissed me off.

anyway, the bega shop in marina square is pretty huge, and the attachment mate was the one who pointed out that they sold working clothes and that we should go in. once we went in, i found several tops which looked okay. so the sales personnel held the tops for me and followed me around the entire shop while i walked around the shop floor picking up a lot of tops. think i picked out around eight tops. and bought three. the buying part wasn’t so scary, i think what scared both of us was the way i swept around like a typhoon picking up clothes to try on in a seemingly random manner.

together with the bag which the attachment mate bought, we qualified for a membership card. that was more than one hour spent at bega. more than one hour, can you believe it?

other than bega, we only managed to hit g2000, daniel yam and the foodcourt.

damn, the attachment mate looks darn good in evening gowns. even though she kept complaining about some parts of her body. i cannot mention all her body faults cos she’ll kill me if i do, i know. and since she paid some compliments to me i shall be nice.

oh yeah, the working clothes i’ve got are all black. i need a recovery shopping mission to overcome this minor wardrobe malfunction.

i need a gas mask to sleep tonight.

i was ordered to varnish the wardrobe in my room and i did it in the late afternoon. all because i was so determined to wait till the weather turned cooler with the rain.

now the fumes are killing me and i don’t even want to air the room by adjusting the blinds cos cockroaches might fly in. i’m having a headache from these fumes.

if i get senile dementia someday, remind me that it might be due to all these varnishing sessions which kills tonnes of braincells.

thank goodness i’ll be safely out of the house tomorrow, still on the mission to search for more working clothes. provided the attachment mate doesn’t grossly oversleep and screw up the timings.

you hear me, my favourite attachment mate? you make me rush from jurong to city hall and back to jurong again in less than six hours, i kill you then you know!

but then again, the mad rush to and fro might be worth it, cos she has soooo much gossip to share. hahahahaha cos she’s my spy from the other side of the marketing people (even though we’re graduating, some gossip just makes life more interesting). plus i always get to laugh at her subconscious dumbness.

about twice a week, my parents go out in the mornings to search for magical cures for their aching limbs and joints. and they’ll always call back to see if i want breakfast. yes, i know i sound like a lazy brat. it’s just that i’m on a prolonged holiday and it’s ending soon, anyway.

so today they bought some fishball noodles for me. damn, the noodles had zero hint of ketchup and tonnes of vinegar. i know foreigners have fits when they hear that we, singaporeans, have noodles with ketchup. but i like noodles in ketchup and a bit of chili a lot more than noodles in vinegar.

i am vinegar-intolerant and by the time i got to the last mouthful, i gave up.

no more vinegar food for me in the near future.

my mother, the housewife is kinda weird.

like all housewives, she complains that the weather is too freaking hot on sunny days. on cloudy/rainy days, she complain that their laundry can’t be dried properly.

i’m sure i don’t belong to the future-housewives club cos i like all sunny or rainy or cloudy days. and i don’t give a damn about laundry. to me, laundry and all household chores are a pain in the ass. except for washing the bathroom, i think. i have a fetish for cleaning my own bathroom when i’m not feeling lazy.

yet, i want to be a nothing-to-do-housewife someday. the kind where we singaporeans label as tai-tais. i was even more determined to be one when i saw those very-free taitais around in town yesterday, pushing little prams or having shopping bags of designer labels.

it doesn’t matter whether i have enough money to shop in those designer stores. i just want to be rich enough to shop at regular stores without working. or should i say, enter the workforce whenever i feel bored, since i think i’ll feel damn bored if i’m left unemployed for the rest of my life.

dreams are dreams and from next monday onwards, i’m gonna live life like hell. come and think of it, i’m going to juggle a full-time job and a part-time job. i think i’m crazy. with no shopping, no good food in the bowels of jurong. no free weekends, no coffee outings. no swimming sessions in nice, sunny weather. no more sleeping in till noon. no more relaxing in bed with a good book, or being a couch potato.

damn, i’m already scared of the next nine months of working hell.

i think i know what i like best about shopping for the time being - sales.

nothing beats the feeling when you find a top which you saw last week at another branch, but was too expensive to be deemed worthy on the discounted racks. the savings of 30% that allowed the purchase of a pair of earrings which matches the top.

the great singapore sale is coming and man, i AM all ready for it!

but i hate shopping in orchard, as usual. cos of the many many many outlets of the same brand, which turns out to be a pain in the ass during sales season. cos i will start entering every shop to see if there are different items on sale in different outlets, and sometimes there are.

of course, i see people i don’t really wanna talk to in town and such people are everywhere. eeeeek.

though i still like the direct bus home which has plenty of seats for tired legs.

i don’t really understand it, but i’ve got more than 20 spam mails asking if i want a diploma. with subject headings telling me how cheap and easy it is to get these diplomas.

i even got a sophisticated spam mail in the school account. there was this person who somehow found some secret service of the school which allows her to search for email accounts based on the year of study, the school, etc. and the school oh-so-nicely informed me that this person was searching for my email account.

thinking that it might be someone i knew, i emailed this person to ask if i knew her.

damn, she’s just selling graduation teddy bears.

sometimes i really hate the school for making spammers’ lives easy. not that the school itself doesn’t send us spam mail.

and sell out information to external job agencies.

bloody hell.

maybe i should call my tuition kids tomorrow, i’m beginning to be a little bored of the nothing-to-do-routine.

waking up at 11am every morning, switching on the computer after reading the papers and a little of brainless tv programmes.

having nothing to read cos i can’t afford my reading habits.

having nowhere to go cos singapore is just this big.

i need some other stuff to occupy my time.

but i guess i’ll start complaining about fatigue in a few weeks’ time, cos i’ll have started work and tuition, and that’s a lethal combination, i think.

meanwhile, i think i want to swim! how’s that for a change?

my sister came into my room wanting to use the computer to view some video clips on a disc. she put the disc in the cd-drive and waited.

and waited.after a while, she asked me, “how come don’t have ah?”

jokingly, i asked “is that a vcd in the first place?”

“no, it’s a dvd. oh, dvd cannot play here ah?”

me, laughing my ass off, told her, “no, a dvd obviously requires a dvd player!”

“then how come other people’s computer can play?”

i told her to go downstairs and watch it on the dvd player. after a while, she came up and told me she couldn’t see anything on the screen.

me: “did you switch on the amplifier?”

“oh! yah hor!”

bimbo no. 2 couldn’t resist taking a photo of the pretty little ones:

i did a french manicure yesterday, and it made me very happy. i know this sounds bimbotic but fengyiyiyiyi said i cannot be depressed while she’s away, so i have to think of some way to make myself happy, don’t i?

lucky the rational mf didn’t get her nails manicured too, otherwise it’ll be a case of three gals with manicured nails and totally helpless. at least i could wear my own shoes without having the manicure lady to help with dainty straps, lol.

been buying books almost everytime i go out, cos i’m so bored at home and books are just so nice to spend my time with. sheesh, i’m just a geek. and i’ve also been downloading passe pc games to play: remember theme hospital, sim farm, pizza tycoon, etc?

ok the geek shall get back to her geeky games.

you know, i think last night was the first time the family didn’t dine together as a family on mother’s day. bros studying overseas omitted, we usually celebrate mother’s days with a cake and a simple dinner.

last night, we didn’t. partly because we were all stuffed and drained from the wedding lunch and partly because, well some things have changed.

i miss how things used to be so, i’ve tried wishing for things to return to their original states.

sometimes, wishes just don’t come true.

sheesh, one thing i learnt about weddings and relatives today: always make sure you follow the traditions and everything like the legal system, or there’s bound to be plenty of unhappiness around.

it was a nervous wedding lunch i had.

p.s : i hope there’ll be clear and beautiful weather in hong kong for the next few days! =)

went shopping in my no.2 favourite shopping area - the marina/suntec area, and i was surprised to find myself strangely restrained.

the only shop that went caused me to go a little crazy was accessorize, where they had a sale of 50% on selected items. so i grabbed a necklace at $4.95 after the discount, which was a really good deal. and a pair of earrings too.

that’s all, that’s all!

and a book at times bookshop, where they had a 20% storewide discount.

that’s all! that’s all!

i actually started out to find some working clothes, cos all of mine are getting visibly worn, and it’ll be nice to stock up on my wardrobe a little. especially since i really couldn’t find anything i really wanted to go out in today. there were plenty of desirable clothes, but i just didn’t like them enough to fork out the money.

i hope i have a better (or worse, from my bank account’s point of view) time shopping at bugis on tuesday. if i see that top at topshop again, i’ll probably get it, haha. otherwise i’ll have to wear oooooooold clothes that yes, look worn, to work.

booboo moment today: was walking from marina to suntec along one raffles link, when i saw this small, narrow platform across the walkway. a length of white tape was stuck on the platform, screaming “DON’T STEP!!“ the drama queen in me gasped, pointed at it and said a little too loudly, “LOOOK! DON’T STEP!!“

i was seriously just wondering if we could still walk along the pathway or would the whole place explode. i wasn’t trying to be that disgraceful.

i failed to notice a nice indian man sitting at a desk next to the platform. think he was mildly amused by the level of worry the sign incurred in me. he told me “it’s ok, just don’t step on it.”

so embarrassing.

every vesak day, my family eats vegeterian food for half a day, which ends when we finish our rounds of praying.

i didn’t find it such a pain in the past, cos i used to eat almost all sorts of food - whether they’re plants or animals. nowadays i’m getting a little picky about the plants i eat, and i have a craaaaaving for meat.

i’m so glad i completed the half-day-vegeterian challenge today.

but it wasn’t so easy, when i realised even some buddhist monks eat meat. before we started on our standard praying rounds, we visited the mini temple two houses away, and they had invited buddhist monks from thailand to bless the followers. there was a buffet spread outside, which had chicken wings and pork buns. i was flabbergasted and stood there staring at the food.

apparently not all monks need to be vegeterian, there’s different schools of thoughts.

oh yes, these buddhist monks had this ritual which i’m totally new to. we were supposed to kneel in front of the most senior monk among them, where he would bless us with some holy water. i thought i would escape from being drenched cos my dad was in front of me and he provided generous coverage. but gosh, the senior monk had really good aim. he managed to drench my entire face and shoulders without seeing me.

after this sprinkling of holy water we would place a red packet (think it’s something like alms to them) on a tray next to him. guys can hand it to the monk personally and he’ll be blessed by the monk again through physical contact. but females should not touch the monk at all. then we were supposed to go round kneeling in front of the five or six other junior monks to offering our erm, prayers or something lah. somehow my family skipped this step and i was all ready to step back to dry my face a little, when in a state of confusion, i heard someone urgently told me to turn behind.

i saw junior monk no. 3 handing some yellow string bracelet to my brother, who was kneeling in front of him with cupped hands to receive it. junior monk no. 2 then signalled for me and i dropped to my knees and did the same, with a very blank face.

sheesh, the “head” of this mini temple also invited my brother and i to drop in and practise meditation whenever we are free. i was like, woah! meditation! cool! but nah, i’m not so hot about this idea cos it’s kinda strange to me. maybe, someday.

oh yeah, back to the vegeterian issue: i asked my mum how come we have to go vegeterian (even if it’s only half a day) when monks can eat meat. she said it’s our sincerity.

oh well. half a day of vegetables wouldn’t kill me anyway. i quite like cabbage, mushrooms, broccoli, tau kee, those dried lilies thingy etc. etc. just that my mum adds ginger to all the dishes on this special day, to “add flavour” cos garlic and onions don’t belong to the cateogry of plants or something, haha. i hate ginger with a vengence.

i had a classmate who had it worse. her family goes vegeterian for an entire month during vesak day. sheesh, i’m full of admiration for her.

tomorrow, i’m definitely eating carl’s junior for real meat, real cheese, and yeah, some veggies.

happy vesak day, everyone!

despite the post put up just three hours ago, i am searching for innovative ways to increase the storage space in my room.

i had a classmate who stored all his files and books and whatnot in the classroom. he started to stuff his files in the gap between the pipes and the classroom walls when the teacher asked him to cart some of his stuff home. he claimed that there was no space at home (a new-age condominium) to store them and his mum ordered him to keep them out of the house, haha.

i think i know how he feels now.

there’s plenty of space in my room, but my dad is a stickler for matching furniture colour. and ever since we moved, he’s vehemently against defacing his smooth walls with nails or shelves or anything that requires drilling as much as possible.

he loves his walls more than me, i have to say. but at least i have a roof over my head with my own room to boot, so i shall not object to his decree.

meaning now i’ve gotta rack my brains how to create more space to store the ever-increasing number of books. i’m such a geek.

while checking out the ikea website, i mentally crossed out almost all the furniture, cos the colours of the wooden bookshelves don’t match, they are open to dust and lizards and cockroaches, or they’re just plain expensive.

so i wandered to muji. seems that they have suitable storage system, typical of the space-conserving japanese. they may be slightly overpriced, at least plastic is plastic and they don’t come in shades of beech, oak and whatnot.

i hope the bugis muji has all these storage stuff when i visit it on tuesday.

otherwise i may have to start storing my books under the bed, wrapped in plastic bags to protect them against dust and cockroaches.

i wanted to change my desktop wallpaper to something brighter, cos i got a little bored of the dark (thanks to my monitor) grassy image. so i ransacked the virtual stock of mayday images, which is always a personal favourite.i stumbled upon a nice picture of ashin, the vocal, erm, jumping, with the sky and grassy field as a backdrop.

the thumbnail looked fine enough, till i put it on 1024×768 mode.

why pink? why him?

there’s no way i can use my computer everyday looking at him wearing the pink shoes. i can’t photoshop the shoes to some other colour too, cos the bloody visual image is already in my head.

so now my desktop has a safe, grayscale picture of a mini cooper.

i really hate my hair now. it’s too short to tie up into a nice ponytail and too long, hanging around my neck untidily and driving me nuts.

the hot, humid weather isn’t helping too.

i am freaking tempted to cut it short. shoooooort.

let’s talk about something irrelevant now.

i think i’m a clean freak. i thought my room was messy prior to the cleaning session yesterday. after looking at several friends’ previous blog posts (yes, i’m that bored) featuring pictures of their rooms, i think i’m mad.

their definition of neat is waaaaay beyond my definition of messy.

and i freaked them out by showing them pictures of my neat room. they had spasms and foamed at their mouths.

because as a rule of thumb, after cleaning up my room, there should be a minimal amount of dust on everything, the desk drawers and cupboards should have the contents neatly arranged, the correct stuff put in the correct places, the non-existant storage space below my desk should have less than two magazine files (one for magazines and one for empty files and folders for easy access) and three arch files, and the desk should be at least half-empty, the other half houses my computer and a paper tray which contains neat piles of paper.

absolutely nothing else lying around.

i need to be a little more messy!!

the world’s full of stupid people.

just the other day, i was at the spanking new frontier cc library. since they don’t have lifts inside the library, which covers three floors, i took the lift outside the library to the third floor to work my way down.

just as i was about to exit the lift, there was a group of three silly (stupid) teenage girls from jurong west secondary school. they were crowding outside the lift, effectively blocking me and the other lift passenger from exiting the lift. they obviously wanted to get into the lift, but with them blocking our way, how the heck were they gonna get in?

i don’t understand why they are so dumb till the extent that they just can’t see the point that without us getting out of the lift, no one is gonna get anywhere. besides, just before i entered the library, i met them outside the library. they certainly caught my attention because they SCREAMED (all three of them, at one go) when one of them dropped a mobile phone. screamed! even louder than i do when i scream! sheesh, they frightened the hell out of the general public who were innocently hanging around the library entrance.

extreme stupidity from bimbotic minahs.

being a very stubborn person i stood there and glared at them, communicating through my eyes telling them how stupid they are, till one of them stepped back - by half a step, to allow me to squeeze my way past.

damn, what’s with stupid people?

after posting the previous post, my internet connection died and since i wasn’t crazy about restarting the computer (the only way to revive it), i had to find something else to do.

so i bravely took up the challenge of cleaning up my room, which has been in a state of disgrace since gms exams. cleaning up the room includes the usual packing, wiping and clearing the rubbish like old receipts and stuff and also, scrubbing the bathroom. today, i vacuumed the rug as well as changing the bedsheets and cushion covers and oh yes, taking the fan apart to clean it.

vacuuming isn’t a very hot activity in my household, cos of the relic we own from a few decades ago. therefore everyone prefers to sweep the floor with a traditional broom. if only this trusty elephant of a vacuum cleaner would break down and let us switch to a modern one which will be lighter and less bulky.

yeah, and i finally cleared the whole pile of “rough paper” in my drawers. i used to convince myself to keep a stack (about six inches tall) of paper which was used on one side, to be recycled whenever i need to doodle or just write some stuff. if i were still in my jc days or earlier, that would make much sense cos there were maths and physics questions to practise. but in marketing? but the last straw was lizard droppings among the stack of paper which i saw just now. so i hardened my heart and dumped all of them, telling myself that school is over for me.

instead, i went to the bookstore to get some notebooks and such for my random doodlings. yay, i am so neat and organised.

i must be psychotic to take up all the above chores at one go, cos i’m now freaking tired from all the work.

but before i sleep, i just want to say how amazing it is people can change.

remember how happy i was when working as an admin assistant in the tuas place in dec ‘04?

well, things have since changed a little, cos the admin head left and they promoted one of the three admin ladies to the position. however, this new admin head (a really nice person) has been facing some unhappiness and jealousy from another admin lady, who had worked there for a year longer than her. she just can’t get over the fact that working for a longer period doesn’t guarantee a promotion sometimes.

since then this jealous admin lady has been keeping away from this new admin head, who is very helpless about her attitude, and has grown closer to the old witch, who will be leaving at the end of the month. while i was still working there, the two of them were forever backstabbing each other.

so today the new admin head was giving me a briefing of this issue in the office, while i was standing outside the backyard-jean-yip at jurong point, trying to fill in my particulars and catching up with the conversation and gossip with her.

it just bugs me that relationships in the office have changed so fast. i mean, the jealous admin lady and this new admin head were such buddies in the past. it’s so ironic. the reason why i liked working at that place was because i knew the people there well and were on very good terms with them. now quite a few of that group have left the company, while the remaining are on not-so-good terms among themselves. no wonder i hate office politics.

sheesh, i wonder if i’ll survive for the nine months in the office.

who says graduates deserve high pay?

with effect from 1st june 2006, i’ll be employed at a miserable salary of S$8/hr. i know, i know, it’s a case of serves-me-right cos i took the easy way out, telling myself that i wouldn’t be able to get a decent fresh grad job on a temporary basis. plus all the loads of freshly graduates who are competing for the juicy and not-so-juicy jobs.

besides, i’ll be back in a familiar environment, even though there seems to be a drastic increase in the bureaucracy. to the extenet that a lowly temp admin worker like me has to fill in an application form.

in the past, all it took was an email memo from the admin head circulated to everyone involved, of the department’s decision to employ me. now, the new boss wants forms to be filled in, and when the newly promoted admin head told him (or her) that i’ll only be a temp, it didn’t change things.

supposedly because it’ll help if i want to convert to a permanent worker. after which the new admin head said i’ll be definitely leaving in feb.

nah, doesn’t change anything. the darn form still has to be filled in.

oh well, i’m making a trip down to jurong point to fill in the form later.

i guess after employment, i’ll be in jurong west almost 24/7. cos the place is in tuas and i still have to juggle my tuition jobs till the end of the school year. nine hours at work, about one and a half hours of tuition everyday, 8 hours of sleep, i don’t have much time left.

meaning i gotta fit in all the shopping trips and dinners and lunches and whatnot before june. i’ll be totally free next week, cos i’m on a short break from tuition.

let’s start planning!

really.

i was lying in bed trying to will myself to sleep, when i felt light flashes even with my eyes closed. i opened my eyes and noticed intense flashes, toned down by the window blinds.

being the kaypoh i am, i looked out of the window and saw these weird flashes that went on for more than an hour. the lights managed to light up half the sky everytime it flashed, its colours ranging from white to light yellow.

and it wasn’t lightning.

must have been aliens, i’m sure.

p.s. no more music on my blog for the time being, till i cut down on the pic albums through some ingenious methods. anyway, it seemed to stop my whole blog from functioning today. mayday will be back on my blog, soon.

out of extreme boredom i read some of my archived entries, and discovered how much i really enjoyed the days of many projects and the schedule of more than a lesson a week. i sounded high every other day, strangely. there was just so much more to share because i met people, not like my current state, where i teach tuition, i talk on msn, and nothing else. oh yes, the occasional kopitiam dinners with weiwei.

in fact i think i enjoyed year two the most, when i didn’t face the hassle of having to juggle multiple tuition assignments and school (or anything else). it was just so fun hanging out with people whenever i wanted to, having a nice swim whenever i felt like it, yes i even enjoyed the projects with my usual gang.

it was so much fun, but i have to make sure those wouldn’t be the peak or the happiest days of my life, don’t i?

think i need to inject some adrenaline into my life, or a potent dose of all the things that make me happy.

i’m glad my computer didn’t die from the lightning attack yesterday.

still, i’m feeling very blue and demoralised by something said in my presence, which was totally unecessary. i can’t ignore it, cos it involves me and it hurt me badly.

even though i pretend not to be bothered by it.

don’t know if i can forget about it soon. after all, i’m used to forgetting the pain and escaping from things i don’t like.

all i can say is, wait for me to prove it.

around last month, my dad received a wedding invitation, which couldn’t be sent by post. or perhaps it was just convenient to pass it personally, cos the invitation didn’t come in a typical size. neither did it come in typical paper envelopes.

it came in a plastic covering which are used to say, contain packages of huge envelopes to be sold. cos the invitation is about a4 size.

this premium wedding invitation, placed together with the standard wedding invitations my parents had, screamed “I COST A LOT OF MONEY!” right in everyone’s face.

here’s how it looks like:

see the chinese knot hanging on the front, the quite-intricate papercut of the inside and the thickness of the material!

man, this beats the record for wedding invitations, i think.

yes, the guy’s rich. he’s an indonesian chinese and the banquet was held at ritz-carlton, with guests flying in from different countries and a separate guestlist for different nationalities.

sheeeesh.

the banquet souvenir? a chinese tea set, made of very thin and perfectly smooth porcelain for every guest.

their wealth scares the hell out of me.

and i thought i was rich!!

i’m sorry i’ve been sounding like a weird alien who has just descended upon earth to discover jurong point here and here. but i’ve got something new to share again. there’s a sakae sushi at frontier community club, which is the new building behind jurong point! i’m not a sushi person, but i’m just excited cos it’s an extremely weird feeling to tell people that there’s a sakae sushi in the bowels of jurong.

ok i apologise for harping on and on about the wonders of new shops in my most frequented shopping place. i just haven’t been out of boon lay for ages, with so many post-exam celebrations being postponed.

oh yeah, back to watching tv. it’s not that bad for those who have scv in their homes and they can subscribe to all the channels that cater to their interests. but for the un-scv people like me, scv just means starhub broadband and a very clear screen for the televisions.

i remember when i was younger, or maybe i was just too damn young to know better, that the channel 8 tv dramas were quite interesting. i watched loads of that, cos that’s what my mum watches every day.

then i started getting disgusted with the dramas that “touched the hearts and souls of the heartlanders”. the phrase simply meant that there were loads of coarse language thrown in, ah lians and ah bengs as part of the storyline and ultra-defined characters (recall: mo wanwan in holland v or the eldest son in the fish-and-chip-shop-show) who would win awards for their *ahem lively performance.

recently i’ve realised the heartlanders’ dramas (did i even mention how much i hate the word “heartlanders”) aren’t the only ones i can’t stand. it’s all the channel 8 stuff. the phony acting, the wannabe taiwan idol drama or korean idol drama, the copycat formats, etc. etc.

for instance, the latest drama with all the supposedly big shots and the upcoming young things. it’s another story about the dirty and juicy stuff in a reeeeeallly rich family.

where the matriarch is an iron lady with gray hair, always respectably (and tightly) wrapped in a shawl on this unbearably hot island. in this specific drama, she constantly amused me by blaming herself for every fault in her child. in most dramas, there will be a super filial and capable daughter-in-law whom she treats as her own daughter but her son will let the daughter-in-law down.

then the family bum, who always says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and does the wrong things all the time. always with unbuttoned clothes and greasy faces.

the prince charming, always dressed in white from head to toe, always rich, always gentle and understanding and worst of all, always played by terence cao.

there’ll also be some extramarital affairs, which the wives bitterly swallow time after time cos the husbands will perform stunts to soften their resolution to divorce. for instance, rolling down a grassy slope to retrieve a jewellery item which the female always flings away to signify the end of their relationship.

not to forget the one that is either an orphan or grew up in a broken family and would soften the hearts of everyone cos his or her story is just so moving. usually this character has two kinds of personality - the extremely kind version who takes care of all the other kids like him or herself, and the evil ones who seek revenge.

throw in some dark tussles for power and wealth and there you go, a channel 8 drama.

so most of the time, i end up laughing and laughing at the stereotypes and the illogical events in the drama. my mum just doesn’t understand why i laugh at every single thing in the drama.

today’s joke: felicia chin (a policewoman) running to and fro on the same street where a fatal accident occured earlier in the morning and took the life of one of the orphans she doted on. hysterically grabbing passers-by to ask if they had witnessed the accident a few hours ago, as if they are as free as her to run up and down along the damn street. of course no one took notice of her but her boss in the police force who pitied her and eventually fell for her. where got police so dumb one?!

haha, think i should record the funniest bit of the show everyday. it’ll keep me occupied and entertained.

the template is finally back to normal and man, am i glad. after spending three bloody hours redoing the whole template format. now my eyes are freaking tired.

sheesh.

at least i’ve learnt how to use slices in templates. wheee!

in my desperation to shop, i went to jp after a particularly excruciating class with a student. it was pretty obvious i hadn’t shopped in some time at my regular haunt, cos i didn’t know about the existence of the blindingly bright charles and keith on the second floor. it was just a huge shock seeing the super-blinding lights suddenly and a swarm of ladies within the glass walls. scary.anyway it was a case of: enter shop, browse for less than five minutes, pick up item, swipe atm card, on to the next shop. at one point i was repeating the routine in a row of shops. it was a disaster for my bank account, by my newly defined standards.

i got this for my cuticles, which looked sorry. i’m glad it worked and didn’t turn out to be an useless impulse purchase.

and a much-needed pair of jeans from the duh-giordano too. now i don’t have to plan my schedule based on the availability of clean jeans.an hour’s shopping is worth celebrating too!

i forgot to save a copy of the template before fine-tuning it. now i’m too lazy and sleepy to change it back.

bah, i think i’ll do it when i feel like it.

meanwhile, endure.

subway has finally entered the suburbs of the suburbs, jurong point!

i am so glad i don’t have to go to holland v for a subway sandwich, or anywhere near town just to have “bread and some ingredients” in between, which is what my parents will call it, or some of my more *ahem auntie friends.

it’s a milestone for jurong point, cos personally i think subway only has outlets in more happening areas, whether it’s fun-happening or work-happening. therefore there must be something in jurong point, other than the rental fees, which is rumoured to be an obscene sum of moolah.

i remember a jc classmate, the one with extremely short and spiky hair and an eternally cheeky smile, commenting that jurong point does seem “quite modern”, in his words on his first visit to the place. i really don’t know what he was expecting, perhaps he thought it would be something like queensway shopping centre. but yah, jurong point is quite modern.

though i’ll still appreciate it a lot more if there’s a place like holland v in jurong. it’s just so much more happening and interesting.

*while surfing the website of my favourite cinema, with a branch at jurong point:

for a moment i seriouosly thought hollywood went the exotic route, trying to name their movie in malay or something.

i think golden village really quite sia sway.

politics is really disgusting. nowadays all the politicians are just slinging mud at each other and to what effect does it have? does it help to grab a small little fault or loophole in each other’s manifestos or actions and start accusing each other of wrongdoings and flaws in characters etc. etc.?even the news are all about the damn elections, they are like devoting half of the news-on-tv slots to this bloody election, and the same thing goes for newspapers. is the world only limited to the elections on this little island. there’s absolutely nothing worthy to report in the news, i’m sure.

great, my computer says there’s too little virtual memory left and every task takes about 5 minutes to take place. and i’m only running two ie windows and my msn.

shopping next week, people!!!