sat afternoon till sunday night. whenever you want. anybody can come.
my house (address to be released later)
parents overseas =P
anybody can come
talk/eat/ps3/wii


also, thanks to ljh,
http://www3.safra.sg/page.aspx?pageid=402

"Sunday: 11 am - 1 pm

We're having our Open House in the month of December. 
(every Sat & Sun, from 6 Dec to 21 Dec 08)

SAFRA members and up to two friends get to enjoy two hours of free PC gaming by just flashing your SAFRA card at the counter located at Level 4."

1 safra card and counting... (mine)

if you're coming, or have any suggestions, please reply.
 

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Current Mood

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sick

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this is...so annoying.

i've been waking up to nosebleeds for the past week. bled thrice today. =_=

it's supposed to be really hot nowadays but i'm not feeling it >_>

even cycled to kap under the morning sun for a hamburger spree. 36 hamburgers.

realised how weak i was when i went uphill back home. lol to the coy mate who asked me if i was a cyclist when i started wearing admin attire in camp.

maybe its my knee injuries. *shrugs* physiotherapy sessions are supposed to help and i'm set to undergo that twice a week. which is fantastic.

this all seems pretty disjointed, but i'm not too worried about having nothing much to say right now.

life's been like a robot dance for the past few months. revving up for the weekends then standing still for the rest.

it's about time. for time to stop.

see you in an instant =P

i don't understand why strangers from hc that i happen to meet on the streets say hi and ask/talk about life nowadays instead of doing so back in school.

'Sir, how many days can we book out for christmas arh?'

'One day la, how many you want?'

'But Sir, you never hear that song meh? 12 days of christmas?'

...

'Recruit, you never hear before meh? 18 levels of hell?'

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Current Mood

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lost

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Today, I boarded the bus home alongside 2 lost foreigners and sat beside a man who was high on spirits.

I assure you, I was certainly not in high spirits then.

Today was a failure on so many different counts, of which I shall give a recount.

It seemed it was going to be a great day. Supposed to, in fact. You see, there was this class BBQ i was preparing that was meant to be our last class outing. Piece of cake considering I'd done 4 before. Turns out this cake got a little too squishy and sticky.

I was quite familiar with what I needed to prepare for the BBQ. Apart from some minor purchases that involved food items that weren't sold near my house, everything was bought today. I had to go down to BTP to pick Cherng Yu (cyo) up, as I didn't expect that my mom would offer to buy the stuff we needed at the Shop 'n Save near home. Despite that, I and cyo had to shop around for some stuff my mom missed out, like charcoal, and spaghetti for aglio olio, a last minute addition to the menu.

Upon reaching home we set ourselves to work; cyo was stringing the marinated chicken and capsicum on skewers, and I was washing and cutting the corn and potatoes. Then Yee Siang (poon) called to tell me that he had arrived at the bus-stop nearby and so I had to go pick him up. All this while, my mom had been busy preparing the staple foods: pineapple rice, fried udon and aglio olio.

As our budget allowed us to prepare loads more to feed a group of 15 really hungry people, our estimated turn-out for the event, we soon set out for lunch (which was really tasty mee pok that costed a mere $2.50) and the Shop 'n Save to get a couple of chicken wings on their insistence. I hadn't bought chicken wings because past BBQs had always ended up with a surplus that was usually thrown away.

Soon enough all the food was packed and we were ready to go. Everything had gone well thus far.

We hopped on a cab, our destination Grande Vista. To some that would be Elbey's condo, and to others its basically some condo which is 20 minutes away from the nearest bus-stop by foot, which is then 10 minutes from Yio Chu Kang MRT station by bus, which is about as ulu as it gets.

Get the point?

It was ~5:00 when we reached the BBQ pit. Our host, Yau Loong, and poon later went down to the MRT station to escort the rest of the class to the BBQ location. That left me and cyo to mull over what we all know as a BBQ's greatest enemy: dark ominous clouds that were creeping over the horizon.

Unfortunately, a downpour wasn't my downfall.

The charcoal never sustained combustion. This is what we did:

1. Light the firestarters.
2. Build pretty charcoal formations around the firestarters.
3. Fan the formations.
4. Rinse and repeat. (okay, maybe not the rinsing part)

2 hours on, we already had different people try setting up the fire BUT nobody could get it to burn continuously. Yun Zhou kept going at the fire but remained rather light-hearted about it. I was however getting absolutely pissed off because we didn't seem to be doing anything wrong! The charcoal always ended up glowing red-hot, catching aflame, and then dying out when we spread it just a little. Just a little. The guys using the pit next to us got their fire going strong in less than 30 minutes. I wasn't too happy as all my previous BBQs had proceeded without a hitch, and these people here were impatient enough to be in the mood for cold food. The suppressive aura of disappointment hanging around us seemed to aid in stifling the already smouldering fire. 

Some people then left. I hadn't the face to ask them to pay up. Some people decided to use our large supply of serviettes as fuel, which provided brief moments of intense cooking, shoring up several servings of meat before we ran out of fuel. Not ideas. You see, our hope for an actual bbq had not been extinguished with the passing on of our very last firestarter.

At 9:30 I had the not-so-brilliant inspiration (though the fire certainly paled in comparison) of using a different BRAND of charcoal. The guys next to us were using the same brand of firestarters, and we were certainly keeping our fire continuously supplied with air. On the other, how possible is it to have charcoal that doesn't combust?

But it worked.

"I grow tired of the foolish foolery of the foolish fools of this foolish country!"

By 10, we finally started BBQing the stuff I, cyo and poon had prepared. We were down to 10 people then, and we had until 10:30 to clear up and get out. Needless to say (this phrase always cracks me up), we ended up with lots of leftovers. I didn't want to bring them home, for reasons I will explain later.

Strike 1: It was a pain to get to the condo.
Strike 2: We had a total of 13 people, of which 4 didn't eat much. We weren't going to get our money's worth, and I was definitely not going to recoup my losses.
Strike OUT!: We were going to waste a significant amount of food.

I was feeling really rotten then. I was going to dump the uncooked food because I lacked the plastic bags needed to separate them from the other stuff I was bringing home. That was actually due to the other people using my plastic bags for the trash we had earlier. Since I had no other plastic bags, I was going to have to carry the pineapple rice and  aglio olio home in their transparent containers. However, Yun Zhou went to the trouble of getting more plastic bags, and kindly offered to bring home the pineapple rice, the uncooked satay and chicken drumlets. cyo took home the aglio olio rather reluctantly, because he felt that my mom put in the effort preparing for the bbq which turned out horrendously. Which was precisely why I couldn't bring back so much leftovers. I couldn't have her think that nobody appreciated her food, which was good anyway.

I was considering absorbing the cost of the BBQ since I didn't dare go around asking for money but cyo did anyway =/ It was finally on the trip home that I began thinking about how I could have made the overall experience more enjoyable. Earlier, I was only trying to get the fire up and sulking about it such that I might have ended up dampening the festivity there.  It didn't help that it seemed the smouldering fire mirrored my mood anyway, and that our last class outing turned out this way. So I started feeling bad. Feeling bad about everybody feeling bad. Then I felt bad about feeling bad because I knew that the others ought to feel worse. Then I remembered this all came about due to charcoal that didn't combust and I didn't know what to feel anymore.

Thanks go out to these people. You are deeply appreciated:

cyo and poon: for spending the time and effort in coming over to help out.
Yau Loong: for hosting us and clearing up loads =)
Yun Zhou: for your never-ending enthusiasm in keeping the fire alive! and taking the stuff home. hope it wasn't much trouble =X
Jun Wen and Ming Hong: for lightening up the atmosphere. something we sorely needed since the fire wasn't much help. =P
Tansy: for even showing up! although you did so towards the end! lol, and for paying though you ate quite little =S
Everybody else: for paying more than what i felt you ought to. and turning up of course =/

and of course apologies to everybody involved, as it was really disappointing =(

And hence, Blood, Sweat, but no Tears. The blood of a hundred chickens! have been spilled for this BBQ, but no, we hadn't done them justice. And certainly, we did put our muscles to work when we took shifts fanning the fire. But there were no tears.  I plastered on a smile when I reached home and told my mom that it was successful.

I'm pretty lost myself.

psychotic.

Stirring from sleep, I sat up unsure

Had I just ended an 18 year slumber?

I’d always been watching my life unfurl

Yet now in solitude, waking dreams wander.

Shrouded in shadows, my senses fail me,

The soul thus seeks solace in new fantasies.

As high as the sky, as deep as the sea.

Yet transient like clouds; never to be.

Lost love and wasted youth, do I mourn?

At ages long past, I gaze forlorn.

Recalling shattered hopes, and dreams that lay stillborn.

Perhaps, its time to move on.

But wait.

Is it too late?

Of course, this is fate.
 

**********

Oh, trepidation!

I don't quite know what to make of the last 2 years. They've left me reeling in confusion; perhaps I've been more of a dead body than a living person. I've neglected education; I've hardly paid any attention to lectures and tutorials. My notes/worksheets are still lying virtually untouched in 2 giant plastic bags sitting under my study desk (which I have never used for work). 

That's not to say that I haven't gained much though. While bumbling along in JC life, I've come to experience an astonishing amount of interesting events and funny moments, but these don't simply come without a fair share of emptiness and dejection as well. But I don't intend to live my next 50? years 're-living' these 2 years. In fact, I've forgotten most of what went on during secondary school days. Perhaps this is why I haven't thought much about the past 2 years at all. As people might put it, I'm too busy 'living for the moment'. Ultimately, all I have to gauge my JC experience might just be my 'A' level cert.

'A' Levels? Gear 3rd/Bankai!/Kyuubi/Super Saiyan!!

...my bro brought home a kitten today. said he picked it up near his school, nyps, while cycling. and brought it home in a 7-11 plastic bag hanging from the handlebars -_-

well i'm kinda lazy to get pics up, but its not as cute asresiliang's kitten. haha. but that's because its really tiny/scrawny and it keeps rolling over while learning to crawl. i don't think its legs are injured though.

anyway its really tame, nobody's gotten scratched thus far but it keeps crawling around ( rolling over in the process) and meowing. we've got it housed in  big box lined with newspapers and i've absolutely no idea what else i should be doing with it =P