blabbering blob of blogging blogger

ally’s worthy companion

it’s weird i’m blogging about saying goodbye to non-living things but i think that happens when a person doesn’t have a normal social life.

i’ve put up my dear printer for sale and the deal seems to be going through. i was contemplating lugging the printer back to singapore cos damn it, i do love this printer! it’s a tough and manly laserjet printer which has seen me through three semesters. three semesters of unreasonable printouts, i’ve chalked up about ten packs of paper, double-sided. it’s such a sweetie, it worked for long hours without any complaints or tantrums at all.

still, i have to let it go because lugging a printer along with a few other bulky and heavy luggage items isn’t a wise thing to do. besides, i wouldn’t have much use for a laser printer at home. we have a sissy inkjet multi-purpose at home. inkjets are sissies, i don’t like them.

oh well, i feel sad having to sell my printer. i think i need to give it a loving hug before it leaves for its new home.

that’s right, if you don’t see it, it’s not there.

the world’s heading for a recession [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]  and singapore isn’t? or at least that’s what tharman shanmugaratnam says. is our economy isolated from the U.S. economy or what? oh man, no wonder our ministers deserve their pay hikes, it must be hard on them steering our economy away from recessions. they did such a good job i wouldn’t even be aware there’s a recession, if not for internet media.

“But there will be discomfort on the ground. Unfortunately, the fuel price increase in Malaysia does mean that vegetable, poultry and some other prices will go up. We can’t avoid that. Fortunately, rice prices globally are coming down.”

yes, we should be so thankful that the price of rice is coming down despite the prices of everything shooting up. i bet the rising prices of vegetables, poultry, fuel and other commodities are not as important as the prices of rice. rice is everything, i tell you. i thought the word “discomfort” was a gross understatement. to those who are comfortably employed, the rising prices might make just a slight difference to their spending habits. but imagine those from the low-income brackets, how are they gonna handle the price increases when their budgets are already tight? are they going to feed on plain porridge three meals a day (that is, if they can still afford three meals a day) because the price of rice is coming down?

“But we’re tackling it, and we’re confident of tackling it - both through the government’s measures, the Growth Dividends, the GST Credits, as well as the way in which you see a lot of community initiatives on the ground.”

if i recall correctly, was MM Lee saying something about complacency? now, what’s this then? confidence is one thing and overconfidence is another. i am waiting to hear some solid suggestions on easing our economy out of the recession and long-term solutions to rising consumer prices. i don’t want to hear assurances coming from the government. these assurances are just telling me that they are possibly still in a state of denial and it worries me. does assurances push down consumer prices? will assurances stop the economy from slowing down? will assurances help me get a job when i graduate?

i don’t want to hear about the government giving out $75 twice or thrice in a year so that we can overcome the GST hike or inflation. how on earth are these handouts supposed to see everyone through a recession? community initiatives are just short-term solutions for those who require it. is the community able to endlessly provide help? what if the pool of people who requires help grows faster than what the community can provide for?

time to do something about the recession which is right in your face, dude.

i got this post-it pad from cedele depot last year. they must have put a spell on it cos that christmas eve is one i truly remember. there wasn’t anything much special about that day but it left a deep impression on me. half a year has gone by and that christmas eve afternoon at cedele depot keeps popping up in my mind each time i use up a sheet from this post-it pad.

maybe it was the way i had to hang out at raffles place on christmas eve. the area was a ghost town by late afternoon and i had to hang out till 8pm for the second shift at the redemption counter. most of the shops and cafe were closed and i gratefully found cedele depot open. i was the only customer around and the staff were taking the rest of the day easy. the female manager was bitching about some rebellious employee like a chao ah lian and intruded on my thoughts.

i was scoffing at the tagline on the post-it pad when the staff chucked it into my hands along with the handful of change but damn it, i do vividly remember the christmas eve afternoon spent there.

this is one of the very few christmas eves i still (and want to) remember. it’s totally weird how i’m blogging about a christmas eve which has gone by but i just thought i would, before the post-it pad runs out.

i had planned for a weekend of chicken sandwiches (yes, i am hopelessly insane over chicken sandwiches now) but i am tragically out of bread.

since i can’t have chicken i opted for bacon-wrapped asparagus for lunch. asparagus is something very new to me because for the most of my life, i had cruelly rejected them. i admit i am shallow, but when i reject food, it’s usually because they look grotesque.

i first tried asparagus at a cousin’s wedding, where the presentation of food was pretty good and they made me want to eat everything served to me on my plate. so i ate those asparagus like a hypnotized fool. after that first encounter i overcame the stereotype of this weird-looking vegetable. generally i still refuse to eat stir-fried asparagus cos they look very unappetizing but hey, it takes time to get over something ugly right?

at least bacon-wrapped asparagus looks and tastes good. besides, they’re trouble-free food: no condiments required (except for a dash of pepper), no complicated preparations, no standing in front of the stove, no washing up of dirty pans and pots. they just need to be cut up and wrapped nicely before popping into the oven. i added cheese too, but i realised cheese doesn’t add much value to the taste.

quick food is always good.

i love the queen’s holiday over here. it’s a public holiday set on the second monday of june every year.

the reason why i love it is simple: the weekend before that, there’s bound to be some looney who sets off a lot of fireworks in the neighbourhood. it’s probably from the retirement village at the bottom of the hill.

it’s a pretty sight from my room cos i’m situated a little higher on the hill slope and i get a perfect view of the fireworks. if this were in singapore i could be raking in gold for providing the best view of the display.

pretty. i do love fireworks, those glittery little sparkles that light up the dark sky.

six days to the first paper, thirteen days to the last paper, sixteen days to home on the sunny island.

from now till the exams, i shall have to spend the bulk of my time mugging. serious mugging, not the usual kind i’ve relied on to get past previous semesters. some of the grades i’ve got for assignments this semester are not exactly pretty. i haven’t flunked anything yet, thanks to the grace and compassion of the stats lecturer. still, there are a couple of grades below my expectations.

gotta make sure i pass this final semester, eh?

here goes, the serious mugger resurfaces!

it’s a bizarre day.

i literally hopped out of bed at 7.30am this morning and got all ready to hang out at the school library for a day to catch up on the final deadline. that was when i saw the gloomy day outside and i changed my mind instantly. it’s gonna be a rainy day today and i don’t like cold rainy weather when i’m outside.

still, i had a bowl of warm oats with banana for breakfast. that was after throwing the dirty laundry in the washing machine. whoever does laundry at 8.30am in the morning? tuna sandwiches for lunch today. i feel like a clean AND health freak all of a sudden.

i’m kind of addicted to sandwiches. i had chicken sandwiches with a healthy dose of fresh tomatoes and onions for almost a whole week. then i decided a whole pot of chicken curry would be good for this week cos i’m too lazy to cook. all of a sudden i was staring at the pot of chicken curry yesterday and i don’t feel like having chicken curry anymore. i want more chicken sandwiches.

oh, excuse me while i collect the clean laundry and hang them up before they get all wrinkly.

i think i might turn into a completely insane person by the time i get back to singapore.

the housemate is walking like an elephant upstairs in her room. she goes BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! to and fro, up and down. under normal circumstances i would have cursed and sworn but i can’t this time. it’s not right to do that when she’s got a fracture. she’s gotta be on crutches for six weeks, save our lives.

apparently she fell down at the garden steps on friday night. it’s pitch black out there at night. i was chatting to the president on msn and i heard a loud thump. i continued to laze around on my bed because i heard the housemate’s footsteps a few seconds later. that probably meant that she was still alive and well so i thought nothing about it. yes, i’m a cold-blooded animal, if you haven’t noticed by now.

well, she went to the hospital yesterday and now she’s limping around on two crutches. it’s a little tricky going up and down the stairs on two crutches so i think she threw one of them down the stairs this morning when she was going out. that explains why i was up by 8.30am despite having turned in at 3am this morning.

i wish i can switch rooms with her or something so she can skip the painful trouble of going up and down the stairs, but i guess it’s not a good solution cos we’d have to move all the stuff we need for six weeks. that’s as good as moving the entire room for me since i’ll be leaving in three weeks’ time (damn it). besides, the bathroom is on the second floor so it doesn’t really make a difference.

while i sympathize with her and i’m glad to offer her help in whatever way i can, there’s always this dark cloud forming over my head whenever she goes BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! while i’m trying to work on my readings. this clash of sympathy and resentment is gonna drive me crazy any moment.

i admit i shouldn’t be such a cheapo all the time. it’s just that in these 1.5 years, i’ve been trying to live within a budget and for a spendthrift like me, living within a budget means buying the cheapest item whenever possible.

so i was getting a fresh supply of printing paper at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago. don’t ask me why, but i don’t think anyone in the right mind would buy printing paper at the supermarket. would you buy printing paper from ntuc? besides, there was only one kind of printing paper to choose from - the homebrand version. it was totally suspicious, but never mind, i was desperate to get some paper while buying groceries.

the paper appears gray even next to school printouts. i’ve always saved the free printing quota in school for presentation handouts cos i didn’t like their paper quality. i am anal in that way - the printouts i use have to be printed on decent paper.

and this paper has a smelly-paper-smell. fortunately i only have one last assignment to work on and some final pre-exams-stuff to print. otherwise i think i’ll die from the Ugly Paper Syndrome.

it’s 1pm now and i don’t feel like drawing the blinds to let some light in, mainly because it’s a crazy 11 degrees celcius out there and i don’t even want to go near the windows. i don’t want to switch on the heater cos i hate having the heater on when it’s supposedly bright and sunny out there. it’s one of those days i feel like just lazing around and lying under the warm sun like a contented cat but damn it, there’s absolutely zero warmth out there.

yes, i’m blabbering in the usual cranky way and i blame it on the poor sleep i had last night.