Taking Things for Granted or Just Comfortable?

Taking things for granted, that happens fairly often and we live with it. Its really not that bad to take things for granted, makes life easier, simpler. Not true? Take example :



I recently did an ebay search on handphones and i discovered something. Under the description of almost every handphone, it seems fairly important to denote the phone as unlocked. My initial reaction was surprise, for i didn't know a phone could come in locked or unlocked status. But what did locking or unlocking a phone do?



Apparently, a locked phone means the phone is locked to the service provider. Say if SunHub locks your phone, then the phone can only use Sim (the actual phone line identification device) cards of the same network from SunHub. If a phone is unlocked, then it can use any Sim cards of the same network from any service provider. There are even online companies that offer to unlock a phone at the charge of five usd.



Yet, whenever we purchase phones, we simply assume, without knowing we've made an assumption, that our purchase would be able to use Sim cards of any service provider. But if a person is not going to change service provider, sell/lend his phone, then what would this person gain, other than trivial info, by knowing whether the phone he is buying is locked or unlocked. Taking handphones for granted seems 'ok' enough, but invariably, one would ask, "What if the thing you take for granted is another person, or a relationship?".



It certainly doesn't sound good, but is it neccessarily bad? What exactly does taking something for granted mean? One definition could be making assumptions that something, usually a good thing, would last. So based on this definition, let me put the phrase in a different light.



Husband says to wife, "I'm going out with a friend for a couple of drinks tonight." What happens if the wife does not take it for granted that her husband is just going for a couple of drinks and not going out to have an affair? Wouldn't that result in the wife always keeping tabs on the husband whenever he goes out? Wouldn't the whole saga eventually degenerate into a life of paranoia if some of the things weren't taken for granted?



The example brings to light the fact that taking things for granted requires a certain level of trust. But does trust facilitate taking things for granted or does taking things for granted facilitate trust, one might ask, of which i have no answer.



I think a friend of mine does not want me to talk about, on a blog, whatever i'm going to say next. But since she doesn't know that i have a blog, or i assume so, she didn't exactly ask me not to talk about it. "No beat around the bush.", that's my slogan, if anyone doesn't want me to talk about something, they should tell me directly : p



Anyway, my friend shall remain anonymous. This friend of mine has a boyfriend for couple years already. Of course, me being the loud-mouthed insensitive (while i can't stand people bashing me, somehow, i like to bash myself : D) guy, asked when she was going to get married. She went like, "unlikely."



Apparently, the guy has bought a house and my friend had moved in with him and they were becoming a little too comfortable with the scenario and the guy doesn't want to get married. Not that my friend doesn't want a marriage, but want and hope are two different things. Marriage has become to them, little more than a piece of paper. Some would feel sad for them, but i would not and i advise you not to. To each his/her own life, who are we to pity anyone.



I shall digress. I had a pretty lengthy discussion with another friend of mine on the differences between pity and looking down on someone, of which there isn't much. But there is a significant difference between pity and sympathy. How does one pity anyone? The mose basic requirement is the perception that someone is leading a life that is considered inferior/lacking compared to another which is perceived to be a better life. More often than not, that other is oneself.



Who are we to pity anyone? If not arrogance or self righteousness, how could one ever pity another person? You sympathise misfortunes, but you pity, not sympathise, lives different to a perception of better life.



Back to taking things for granted. It is obvious that whether taking things for granted is good or bad depends vastly on the context it is being used. So is taking things for granted in general good or bad? I have no answers for you, i offer you only food for thought.



Oh and a happy new year : )

I had this wierd dream last night. I dreamt that my defecate had worms in it. The worm were of varying sizes. Some were thread-like, others had a thickness similar to that of an udon noodle. Some squirming some rearing their heads, well, one end of the worm that is, the rearing end has got to be a head right?



Anyway, in the dream i went to see a doctor. The doctor, after examining me, confirmed that i needed further examination. He left my dream through a door and i was expected to turn up in his office for the further exam.



After the doctor went off, there was a nurse left in the dream. The nurse was actually my colleague Siew Ling. I think in the dream, the nurse was supposed to take me to the doctor's office. While i waited for the nurse to take me to the doctor she takes her time by packing and filing her stuff.



There i was, waiting with worms festering in my bowels, possibly dying, and all this woman cares about is the neatness of her table! : / Then i heard the alarm clock ringing, and it was time to wash up and come to work.



And the funny thing was i sent an sms to my lil cousin yesternite saying i was gonna go and dream about pretty gals. And instead of pretty gals i get a... a... watever it is you call a group of worms, worms.



Okie found it, bed/clew/bunch/clat of worms.



Anyway, i dropped my handphone onto the rock solid pavement yesterday. The handphone cover cracked and now i do not have an on/off button anymore. It was the blue cover : ( I kind of liked the blue cover. Anyway, other than aesthetic deformity, the handphone seems to work fine.



Oh well... just another day : \

Condolences to all affected by the tsunami.

Yippee! My 'Archangel' alternate art japanese promo magic the gathering card has been shipped. I should get it in my mailbox in around five working days. Maybe next week monday. I'm sure everyone would be saying that i'm crazy to pay such a large amount for one puny card. But who cares, not like i'm saving up for marriage or anything ya? Oh there's this other card which i'm also very keen on getting, but that'll have to wait, need to replenish my reserves.



I think i'm picking up a love all things jap craze. And today is three days after christmas, three days before new year. What has this particular day got to do with me loving all things jap? Absolutely nothing, i just feel like mentioning it that's all : p



Maybe i should get a jap wife or something. Then she can whisper into my ear all the sweet nothings in japanese. Doesn't matter if i don't understand a single word of it right? After all ain't they just sweet nothings? I mean how could anyone not love all things jap? Look at all the divas... anime... sushi... hmm... sushi... hungry...



Darn, i took my jacket back for washing and i forgot to bring it. The aircon in this office is absolutely freezing. Gotta hit the publish button now before my fingers freeze in place. Ciao.

Played around abit with the digital camera today, wheee, its fun. I could just go snap happy with it.



Anyway on with the 'turn left turn right' canto version saga. I didn't get the vcd, so where did it go? Well, during the explosion, pigsticker (cousin) mentioned jokingly to my aunt that if she wasn't gonna give the vcd to me, he didn't mind receiving it.



Apparently, loud mouth and careless words wasn't the way to go : p He ended up getting the vcd for christmas. Oh not as the gift exchange, it was part of a so called lucky draw present. Apparently it wasn't really a random draw since presents were pre-designated.



For me-self, i got a wallet for the lucky draw. Well, my wallet was kind of broken, so that's why i got a wallet. See the wallet below, courtesy of the new digi cam.







In addition, at the end of the gift exchange programme, there was this fan handout or something. I got a yellow coloured mashi maro fan!







Oh, for those of you wondering what happened to my other fan, i broke it. Contrary to what you see in the 'wu xia' movies, fans aren't really suitable for fighting : D Maybe the fans in the movies were reinforced with stainless steel or something.

Anyway my fan is broken and i'm still looking for a replacement. The shop which i bought the fan from, has finished its stock and wasn't stocking anymore : (



Of honorable mention is pigsticker's gift exchange for this year. He got a lego set. Which doesn't sound too bad until he mentions that he is twenty-three years old and the lego set had a 'For ages 3 to 6'...



And the present was from my brother... why didn't he get the 'dungeon and dragons booster box' which i told him about? A little more expensive, and a little more random, but certainly much less of a doink... Oh well, i guess not only are my cousins wierd, my brothers are wierd too : D



Anyway, for my gift exchange i got a small cat from Russ! Haha, guess this will be dedicated in memory of that Gippy gray cat which has dissapeared for more than a month already.







Oh and i do realise it is difficult to gauge the size, so i took another pic together with my handphone.







Hmm... the cat really is very cute : ) Yippee!

X'mas yesterday didn't end too badly. We had a gift exchange. The process was such that each particpant would be randomly assigned another participant. The idea was to secretly buy a gift for the participant you're assigned to. Of course, many times things turn out to be not so secret and not so random.



Anway, my auntie got me as the assigned participant. And ages ago, i mentioned that i was looking for 'turn left turn right' vcd canto version. Well, i didn't mention that i was getting it for my lil cousin. So anyway, i did get the vcd mandarin version for my lil cousin.



But that was ages ago, so not too long ago, my auntie bought the 'turn left turn right' vcd canto version. Considering that it was a mandarin show, it was kind of a funny effort to get the canto version... Anyway, some weeks ago, i wanted to watch 'turn left turn right' again. So i borrowed from my lil cousin. And when my auntie discovered that i actually bought the vcd before, things kind of exploded.



She said, "How come u didn't say that you have the 'turn left turn right' vcd when i asked you that time?" Well... it was really true that i didn't have it, coz i've given it away and it wasn't mine so i didn't have it. She went like doink. Anyway, she traded the assignment with taekwando kid before christmas, and i end up not getting the 'turn left turn right' vcd. I'll talk abit more on what i did get next post : p



Anyway, the budget for the gift exchange was only $10. But quite a number of people went over the budget. And the gift which i think that went over the budget most was the present from my auntie to my mom. Me auntie got me mom a digital camera!! And the happiest person can only be me, coz now i'll have a digital camera to use!! Yippee.

What's worse than not having any dates on x'mas eve? Well, that would be going home for dinner and while waiting for dinner to miraculously appear, you hear your brother say, "Mom's not cooking." who btw is already well-fed for the night... I really should have made an episode of Happy Tree Friends that night...



Anyway, i really should make an episode of live Happy Tree Friends these days and invite all my friends to come. But i doubt anyone would turn up.. Coz it'll be like asking a turkey, "Hey turkey, wanna join me for x'mas dinner?" Of course, i needn't mention what would be for dinner : D



Then today on x'mas, it would seem that being on time wasn't enough for Yvonne, i met up with her at coffee bean. She showed me some pictures, which turned out that Mei Mei was her primary school friend and they had a KTV session, what two nights ago. What a small world indeed. Anyway, Mei Mei did look more pretty in the KTV photograph. I guess it was the smoke from the steamboat that night.



And somehow, along the way from bishan to my cousin's house in sengkang, i kind of forgot about lunch. And the only food i had was my morning milo (1 spoonful of oats to thicken the milo and lower cholesterol levels), the coffee bean drink and Yvonne's cookie. Only one cookie for lunch!! Oh why must god punish me so!!



Anyway, on my way here, i made a couple phone calls to my cousin on how to get to her house. Don't really know the place, house number or even block number. Took a feeder bus and didn't miss the "church temple church turn left" land mark. Went up block 314A to try and all the levels in the block. Turn out that it was the wrong block :(



And i thought, if it wasn't 314A, it'll be 314B. And so one 314B later, i discovered that there was 314C and 314D... Anyway, i gave up and decided to send sms once more. And to top the day of mis-Givings, i sent the correctly keyed sms to ask for the block and door number. And i had to send it to the wrong person... three times in a row...



Let's see if anymore 'doink's come up before the night is over. Oh btw, i slept very early last night. Around 2345. Really had to catch up all the lost sleep of the week.



Of honorable mention was Yvonne's question that goes like, "how many x'mas sms did you get?" It kind of makes me feel pretty anti-social when i say i've got nothing, and her handphone was beeping non-stop whole night.



Oh well... welcome to the darker shade of life, where behind every sunshine and rainbow is a story of Happy Tree Friends : p In the spirit of giving and mis-giving, Merry Christmas to one and all, and may every higher power of every religion bless you(plural).



And one last before i sign off, Merry Christmas - Lov Hon Choon

I eavesdropped on an advertisement over the radio some time ago. It was a Caltex advert, and they weren't promoting fuel, atleast not directly. The Caltex advert went on and on saying that Caltex toilets were the best. Man.... advertising toilets.... Tell me, which journey in SG would be so long (distance) that you'll require a refreshment stop to rest away tiredness.



Anyway, this other day, i managed to find Yvonne's card and was on my way home, using the mrt. There was this guy, think his ass was fat or something, who had to occupy 1.5 seats. Me having to sit beside him, occupied 0.75 seat, which means i was spilling over to the other seat, which happened to contain a girl. Cheekiness aside, it is never fun to sit on something poking your buttocks.



So i tried to shuffle my buttocks into occupying 0.5 seat. And that guy thought i was some kind of a gay trying to squirm into him actually elbowed me!! I can understand why people elbow when the try to fit into the mrt, when the stand in the mrt, and when they try to alight. But fancy elbowing me when seated??!!



Me being the nice guy and all, continue to sit on the hump in the seats. But that's not all, just one stop before the one i would alight, that guy actually had the audacity to look me down and dust his sleeve. As if i was some kind of a diseased dust. [Vulgar expletive deleted] !!!



If i hadn't got a job i would have 'seh' his head ten times over liao. Grab his oily face and punch it through the windows, grind his face onto the tunnel walls till he is left with blood, flesh, bone and pulp, muhahahaha, i love happy tree friends.



Anyway, when i was purchasing Yvonne's card, i saw this really really huge card. I think i was standing in front of the card, staring at it, and kept saying, "OMG, this is so huge." Coz at some point of time, one of the plain clothes staff who was standing near the card agreed with me by saying "Ya, its very big."



The card was atleast a meter in height. And that's without exaggeration. The card really was atleast one meter in height. Anyway, i looked around then came back to that really huge card, and picked up one of the smaller cards. The staff then went, "Buy the big one lah." After another short exchange, i decided that i really didn't want such a huge card. The larger the card the more things you have to think of to write : p.

Ever had a vaccination before? Where the nurse pokes a needle into your arm, vein or even butt cheeks. I'm sure everyone in SG has had a couple before, for measles, small pox, and all the other diseases created by man. The after effect of a needle poking is never nice. Although there is no visible blood, the needle had pierced through skin and flesh. And thus explains the numbing yet painful swell at the point of entry.



Numbing yet painful swell... that's exactly what my finger felt like when i vaccinated myself with a durian shell... The thorn of the shell to be precise. After that, I did the most sensible thing anyone could think of. I took my revenge on the durian. Never again will its seeds grow into saplings, muhahahaha.



Funny how some people say eating eggs are cruel, that the unborn chick would never get a chance to experience life. Doesn't the same thing apply to fruits? Don't think i'll call you benevolent if you eat the fruit and sow the seeds onto the ground to give 'em a chance. Coz in SG, that's considered as littering.



Heard in the news yesternite that some new piracy law is gonna come into effect in a couple of days in SG. Which made me recall an article in the newspaper which had an interview with some irrelevant guy. Anyway irrelevant guy was telling the journalist that the government couldn't possibly catch them all.



Which is probably true. But to think that the new laws are a useless waste of ink on pieces of paper is wrong. Here, we practice punishment system, not reward system. You don't get rewarded for being a good citizen, but you get punished if you are a bad citizen.



In response to that irrelevant guy's comments, yes the governement can't catch all of them, but no, the government doesn't need to catch all of them. All they need to do is catch a couple, fine them severely to make an example and fear will propagate through the population and piracy would drop.

Haha, don't you just fall in love with this girl? Oh wait, i fall in love with just about every other girl, but that's beside the point : p Xiaxue is auctioning her msn address!! Check it out here.

Yipeee! I received more X'mas cards, i must be popular : p The cards were from my lil' cousins. From lil' couzin,







The background is actually gold color, but the scanner is not good with the colors and i ended up with black. The card opens up into







Not bad huh? Look at all the "Merry Christmas" scrawled around the border of the card ^.^



The other card is from my lil' cousin.







I really did get a card from korea after all. Coz it opens up into







Look at that, Qoo from korea, Macs from korea! The card's got to be from korea despite the local postage label on the envelope : )



And the other part of the card







I guess by now you would have notcie something about the cards i put in my blog. The personal messages are pixellated. Well... they are afterall what they are, personal messages.



And together with the card in the envelop is a postcard from korea!







Now i really feel bad that my lil' cousin sent me a card and i didn't send her anything. Some of you might be thinking that its still not too late to send a card now, the most was that it becomes a belated greeting card.



But it doesn't work that way, ya see. Coz in the previous post, i wrote about having one extra card, that was supposed to be for Yee Mui. So if i send any cards out now, i'll probably be sending that card out. And the receiver of that card is gonna think, "this card wasn't really supposed to be sent to me". And this line of thought is really mind boggling considering that i've already sent out one card to KL and one card to Gippy, and those cards are gonna be late...



Anyway, for those who sent me a card and didn't get one from me, all i can say is better luck next year : p Oh i still haven't buy Yvonne's X'mas card. Its kind of abit hard to find... Oh well, guess no OT for me again today, or until i get her card : p

I bought a card for Yee Mui, but didn't send it to her. The reason being that i've lost her address and i feel kind of bad asking for mailing address when x'mas is just round the bend. It only means that the card could only be late.



A little on Yee Mui, i didn't really get to know her until her last couple days in gippy, she went back to malaysia after that. Anyway, at that time i was hanging around with Ben and Bryan my dinner-mates. At that time, for some reason or the other, there was this little craze about the movies "Young and Dangerous". Bryan kept calling me the "Old and Stupid", but that's beside the point : p



Anway, Ben kept his hair lengthy and we began calling him Chen Hor Nam (acted by... now wats that guy's name in english? You noe, the long hair guy...), and Bryan called himself San Kei (acted by Chen Xiao Chun (pinyin)). They called me Dai Fei the worst possible character... these bunch of friends are really nice guys.



Anyway, we began calling each other (canto) which translates into (pinyin). We were at some mid-exam party. Yes party in the middle of examination weeks, but that's becoz we've finished early and couldn't care less about the others who were still studying.



Anyway, Bryan the wise bugger introduced me as . So Yee Mui, began calling me , even though she knew my name, i think. Anyway, since she calls me , i began calling her my 'leng mui'. I've no idea how to translate 'leng mui' into mandarin. Well... it means young sister of our 'hong heng clan.version.gippy' : )

A little on the guys at char-kway-teow dot com. Couple nights ago, we were talking and one of the guys, yong keat, mentioned that he went undefeated in a tournament hosted not too long ago. The next then question was that if he was undefeated, why wasn't he in the first place. Apparently, undefeated was strictly only undefeated, he had a couple of draws, which means he did win either... doh.



Ya guys (gals) remember the olympics that wasn't too long ago? The table tennis event... I was undefeated. In fact, i was undefeated in every singles event in the olympics : D Aside from the fact that i wasn't competent enough to participate in any of the events, i was undefeated... and to borrow a phrase from Xiaxue, "Pui!".



Anyway, i had my very first team event for magic the gathering yesterday. Our team had pigsticker (my cousin), Kar Hoe, one of the more friendly guys from char-kway-teow dot com and last but not least, 'moi'. The thing about team events was that we had to think of a name for the team.



We went through a couple crap names like "Team One", "Team Cool" etc, but those names were either a little too arrogant or uncool and therefore crappy. We wanted a super cool name, atleast if we don't win a single match in the event, we would atleast still be the most funky named team there.



Anyway, in our usual tourneys, if we're paired against each other, we would call each other 'leng zei' (handsome guy in canto) and politely ask the opponent to concede before we actually sit down for the game. So in honor of what we usually do there, i suggested that the team be called (pronounced leng zei sahm in canto), which is literally translated into handsome guys three. Pretty catchy name huh.



Unfortunately, they don't accept team names in mandarin characters so we had to write 'Leng Zei Sahm' as the team name. Turned out that the tournament organizer couldn't pronounce our team name and therefore didn't even try, he just went, "your team, that table".



There were six matches in the team event. Aside from losing four out of six of the matches, we were pretty much undefeated : p : D

Hmm.. i didn't know yvonne set her blog in multiply for viewing by everyone. haha, so here's another advertisment. Visit yvonne at Yvonne's Blog!! Yippee!!

*Tired*



I'm very tired today, had to sleep, and i mean really sleep not the usual fake shut eye, in the bus on my way to work. I didn't even put my handphone to radio mode. I think i forgot to pull the blanket over myself last night, coz i woke up this morning feeling very cold. Mom woked me up two minutes before my alarm clock did its job.



Since there was another two minutes, i pulled my blanket over myself and curled myself up into warm cozy bliss. When the clock began thundering two minutes later, i snucked my hand out into the freezing air to put the alarm clock into snooze mode. And it wasn't long before i began to wonder, "How come the second snooze is taking so long to ring?"



Turn out that i've only taken another six minutes of napping, four more minutes before the clock began its reminder. Well... four minutes is quite a long time, so i dragged myself out of the bed. And i felt like a swallow like my nest was being grabbed by someone to make dessert.



*Sigh*



Atleast its friday.



Oh.. and read this Concubine Chicken and Longevity Abalone Rice, quite interesting.

Yester-night was kind of interesting. The night before, i looked at the street directory to try and figure out where Super Bowl was. The instructions that i set for yester-night was pretty easy. 'Come out of Marina Bay mrt, walk along the road until i hit Super Bowl'.



But maps had always worked their magic on me, and this time was no different. I emerged from the mrt only to find that there's a lack of clear indication of where the road was. But there was a bus stop near the mrt and that bus stop sported only one bus, bus 400. Plenty of people waited at the bus stop so i guessed that we were all headed for the same destination.



When bus 400 arrived, it had a sign on it saying that it was terminating in Shenton Way. And i began to sort through my thought processes. These people at the bus stop couldn't have taken mrt from Raffles Place (Shenton Way) to Marina Bay just to take a bus back to Shenton Way right? So the bus has got to be the correct bus and is headed towards Super Bowl. Pretty logical and flawless thinking eh?



Anyway, 15 minutes later, i took a cab from Shenton Way to Super Bowl... A friend of mine once said, if i'm ever lost, just take a cab. I've held onto that lil' gem of wisdom for many years and it has never failed me, not once : D



Ok, i'm just kidding you. I didn't end up in Shenton Way. But i thought it would be pretty funny if i went through all that thinking process and still ended up in Shenton Way. I had absolutely no idea where to alight. But following the crowd was my best talent. So when a huge amount of people alighted, i followed.



Upon alighting, i am faced yet again with more choices, should i turn right and walk up the road or should i turn left to walk down the road? I decided that right makes right, but apparently it didn't. Along the road, i overheard a girl talking on the phone, she was saying, "Which one? There's two Super Bowl u noe?" And i thought to myself... ~what a wonderful~world... I could imagine myself taking a cab:



"Uncle, Super Bowl please." says me.

"Which one?" says taxi uncle.

"I don't know, just any one will do." says me.

Then one Super Bowl later,

"Another Uncle, the other Super Bowl please." says me.



Anyway, Super Bowl wasn't too elusive, i found it rather quickly once i realised that i was in the wrong direction. Met up with Karen and she brought me to the table where they were having steamboat. I had expected to see just Yeat Yee and Ken Ming. But the crowd kind of surprised me.



At the table was Ken's Sharon... Yes, i have to refer to Sharons as Ken's Sharon, Tee's Sharon, Bryan's Sharon... there's just too many Shaons around. Anywhere, there was Ken's Sharon, Ken, and Mei Mei. Oh... Mei Mei is not as mei as i last saw her. Maybe working stress or something.



Anyway, has grown from pretty to 'OMG you're god dam gorgeous'. But no one ever believes me when i tell them that...



Then later on, we were joined by Marco and i can't remember his wife's name. There was Ben, Daphne... speaking of Daphne, Ken told me that she works in some entertainment company, and i think she somtimes get free tickets to concerts. Well, since i don't really know her, i didn't ask for S.H.E. tickets : D Anyway, i think her name card can get you a couple free drinks in Zouk.



Ming kor kor wasn't there. But don't worry, Ming kor kor and are still together. Anyway, I asked when she was planning to get married. She told me... oh wait, i wasn't supposed to talk about it...



Anyway, when i told that i gave yinyin a call the day before, she went like, "You and yinyin got anything happen anot?" She adamantly does not believe that there was really nothing between yinyin and me. But then she did point out that i gave yinyin a call but i didn't give her any calls. Maybe its just me, but i do feel kind of weird to call up someone who's attached to chat, me being the shy-der and non-chatty type of person. Anyway, throughout the rest of the night, she kept saying that i'm gonna hafata save money to go hong kong...



Anyway, hopefully by the time starts handing out wedding invitations she does not forget about her . Oh that's wat calls me in cantonese, .

Slumber Jean 13 Dec 2004 post is rather interesting. Something about how we know whether we're getting old anot. and... visit my couzin's blog at Paint me pink clouds against purple skies!

Xiaxue's post, which was mere hours ago, about her cousin getting married, is rather sweet. Don't you hate it when i put so many commas in one sentence? Anyway, in her post, she mentioned something about funny dreams, which brings to mind the dream/nightmare karate kid mentioned to me couple days ago. It goes like this :



A vampire jumped out of a coffin and charged at her. Seeing an incoming vampire, karate kid turned and fled. When the vampire caught up to karate kid, she thought she was gonna die as the vampire was gonna drain her dry of blood. But turned out that instead of biting her, the vampire began to talk to her trying to reason with her, saying she didn't need to run as he was only looking for someone. The vampire went on and on talking, nagging and very 'loh soh' in short. And in my cousin's own words, it was a fate worse than death : D



Anyway, I manage to catch this piece of news off the radio this morning: Christmas is ten days away! Not that christmas is very exciting, christmas being ten days away implied a couple of things:

1. Pay day is five days away! Woot.

2. I'm very likely late for my card to yinyin.

3. My cross stitch will never be finished on time.

4. I gotta buy and send cards soon, or yvonne's xmas card is gonna be late.

5. Couzin's badae and xmas card too.

6. I'm like left with 16 days to complete the job my boss assigned to me.

Five out of six things are incompleted stuff... Christmas being ten days away really isn't very exciting.



Anyway, i finally made a phone call to yinyin yesterday. Been trying to phone her, but kept forgetting. Think that hour long of phone call to gippy is gonna burn a hole in my pocket, even with singtel's christmas discount. Anyway, she passed and is on her way to graduation, yay!

Something about the cross-stitch thingy. The feeling of dejavu is enormous. As i stitched the thing up, i could swear that i've either done it before or seen it being done before. So much that it is starting to become eerie. As i spend hours hunched over the piece of cloth, a dull ache takes up residence in my neck. Maybe i should just throw the piece of cloth away. Or maybe i shouldn't have watched the movie 'Shutter'...



Xiaxue has done a pretty good job. Her votes in the 2004 Best Asian Blog Award is around 3187 votes. Xiaxue's blog outstripped all the other nominees in the race, with the 2nd place bagging only 630 votes. Total votes was 5166. There's another poll coming up soon. Hope she gets nominated in the Best Singapore Blog poll.

Apparently, only karate kid was kind enough to point out to me that my usage of mandarin characters was wrong. Two posts back i used the word when i really should have used the word instead.



Anyway, yesterday's dinner was kind of different. At the end of the dinner, we ordered some dessert drinks. I ordered something called advocado shake. It was pretty good, it had none of advocado's tasteless-ness. Apparently, they mixed the fats up with some brown sugar. You know, the type where they use to fill up the green oni oni (I have absolutely no idea how oni oni are spelled, or if wat i'm calling them is correct...).



Karate kid ordered a fermented glutinous rice drink. My first impression when i read the menu on what she was ordering, i didn't even think it was a drink. I thought it was gonna be some moldy rice ball served on a dish on something. Maybe some parsley to go with it....



Anyway, it really was a drink. And it being fermented, was somewhat mildly alcoholic. I took a sipping of it and it was like how my cousins always exagerate on quality of food. A flood of memories rushed to me as i re-lived my childhood. Ok, maybe not childhood. But i do remember having tried some of the same stuff in gippy when i was visting Jeannie's friend, Tony. Think tony's wife was called Eileen or something... Doesn't matter, anyway, I hadn't made a connection between the two foods considering that i really thought it was gonna be some greenish moldy rice ball : )



Big sister is coming to town on wednesday. Karen sent me an sms (yeah, i noe, it should be 'a sms', but i like the sound of 'an sms') saying to meet up for some steamboat. That was kind of good, since i hadn't seen Karen ever since she left gippy. Think that was around more than a year ago. The meeting on wednesday would be netting two birds in one swoop.



Ok, some would say things like, "Its only one year. One year is not a very long time" But suerly time is relative to two things. The perception of the person, and the topic at hand. I've heard of my lil cousin talked about her bgr stuff and there's loads of anniversaries in a single year. There's the one week anniversary, one month, 3 months, half year, and finally the actual thing.



I don't know what to call these things... maybe young romance or something. Its the kind of thing couples like, ya know, like walking beside the river at esplanade. Its really just one big drain ya noe? Ok, maybe i'm not the daily romance from paris... Hmm... i wonder why romance are always linked to the french. Maybe they are great lovers or kissers or something : D



Anyway, alot could happen in one year. Afterall, couldn't people fall in love and get married in one year? So i guess meeting Karen on wednesday would be kind of interesting. Maybe she's grown taller or something : p



And before i go, i'll add one more story on the adventures of bus 91A. I usually board the 0745 bus. And the at the stop where i board the bus, it's usually pretty empty. People start packing in from the mrt at the next stop. Anyway, there's this girl who always take the same seat of the same bus. And i generally take the seat behind hers. Nothing special, i just like to take the seats on the left back of the bus, closer to the pavement so i could look at babes.



Anyway, i always took the inside seat, the one closer to the window, so others could sit beside me. But lately, there's this guy who alights later than me but always takes the seat beside me. End up i have to point, some kind of 'i want to alight' gesture, to indicate to the guy i wanna alight. What a waste of my precious energy, requiring me to gesture before i could actually alight!!



Anyway, back to the girl, she alights later than me. So i thought i'll take up the seat beside her even though the bus is like empty, so i could save myself the energy of pointing. And on friday, i did exactly that. But i think i scared her off coz she ain't in the bus today : D

I don't think i'll be getting any cards from korea this year. Unless my lil cousin put the card into the mail system before they left... But i'm still hopeful about cards from australia or malaysia : ) Or maybe somewhere closer to home... i don't know, maybe telok blanga or something.

Anyway, i've discovered something rather interesting, and it is taking up alot of my time. Cross stitching is so fun!! You've got to count the squares/holes to make sure you're stitching the correct spot. But it does seem kind of a girly hobby to me, so i'm gonna just stitch just this one piece only.



I was going through my daily doze of thoughts just now. Funny how i have so much to think. Anway, since i was eating durian, i didn't think i was gonna choke on anything, maybe if i swallowed the entire seed... Hmm.... where was i? Oh yes, my daily doze of thoughts.



I can't really remember what got me into thinking the following line of thoughts. Coz there's something wrong with my ICQ, and there's a flashing message from yvonne to remind me that we're meeting on monday. She sent the message only once, but somehow, i think the message cache on ICQ server didn't clear. Which is also a good thing, since everytime i read the message, i realise i've forgotten about it...



Yes... my line of thoughts before the flashing messages takes over... I was thinking earlier about this one line of wisdom that many people love alot. I think it goes something like, "You don't know what can happen tomorrow, tell the people you love that you love them today." And my verdict, it's a fine piece of crap : p



Why so? Conversely, if i were to say, "The world is gonna end tomorrow and you should go kick the ass of people you don't like, less you never get the chance to do it.", no one would do it. The very simplistic reason is not because people are peaceful by nature or some other holier than thou philosophy, but becoz of the underlying possiblity of, "What if the world suddenly didn't end tomorrow, won't i be like kicking myself instead?"



Ah yes... possiblities. I was thinking about possiblities before that. It is a possibilty that extra-terrestrial beings are among us already. It is a possiblity that this whole world is just a dream of some other being, and we would all dissolve like whispers in the wind when its time to wake. Anything is a possibilty.



But if anything is a possiblity, why aren't i kicking everyone who i don't like. Here, we must differentiate, likelihood from possibilities. While the world ending tomorrow is a possibility, how likely is it going to end tomorrow?



But still 'possibility' is a powerful word. I won't be doing alot of the things that i do these days if i didn't believe in possiblities : p

Managed to meet up with Erica yesterday. It was really nice, she's one of the few friends whom i feel more comfortable talking to. She doesn't feedback wat i say to my colleagues, doesn't feedback wat i say to that someone, talking to her has that no strings attached kind of feel, and she doesn't asks me to forget anyone or someone for that matter : D



Although i hadn't been to Sydney that many times, i somehow feel like i've been to Sydney alot. I can recall the first time i went to sydney, it was with Erica and Roy. Roy and i were travelling light, we brought clothing that was enough only if we washed and dried them for use later. Erica on the other hand had finished her course and was bringing all her barang barang along, ready to leave for home from Sydney.



To describe the trip from Melbourne to Sydney with just one word, agony. Economy train seats, shaking journey, and crying babies, there was little sleep to go around. The trip itself costed ten to eleven hours. I think we were in sydney for around one week, Erica was going off back to SG and we were taking another train (another 10 to 11 hours) to Gold Coast to meet up some other friends. These friends had it easy, they took a plane!!



Anyway Roy and i were sending Erica off by waiting with her for the bus that would take her from Sydney city to airport. And it was really sad watching Erica board that bus. It has always been painful to see loved ones walking out of your life, and i would say that the same is true for good friends too. Good friends are hard to come by!



While SG is a small country, and some would even say the world is a small place, it is quite possible that people never meet one another again once they part. I think at that time i told Roy :

I've just formatted the computer i'm using in the office. Seems like i'm formatting computers everywhere i go. Muhahaha.



I'm gonna go off earlier this afternoon to raffles place, so gonna start tuning up my babe watch radar now. Muhahaha.



I've recovered pretty much from the run and i can now walk properly without any pain in the legs. Muhahaha.



Muhahaha. Hahaha. >:)

How do you know when you've been buying the same thing from the same stall too often? Recently, i've been drinking coffee in the morning and teh C (Tea with evaporated milk) in the afternoon and its times like this :



The drink stall uncle instead of asking, "What do you want?",

He asks "You wanted coffee packet right?"

The drink stall uncle's wife hears me say "Teh C", but repeats to uncle "Kopi C"

Then uncle takes a look at me and asks me to repeat my order to prove her wife wrong...



Chicken rice stall auntie doesn't asks me whether i want sauce on my rice, she knows i don't. Morning noodle stall auntie doesn't asks me whether i want chilli, she knows i do. All the tiny bits come together and i'm like known by them personally :)



Dear opp JB,

are you sure you've sent your wishlist to the correct person :p It seems you're more like speaking to aunt agony rather than santa :D In any case, if you do see santa, could you help me beat him up, coz he is owing me 26 years of christmas presents... with compound interest.

Yours sincerely L Bandit.



For the benefit of those who don't do C or java programming, "Not" is represented by "!" so !Dislike actually means my friend "opp JB" likes this "cute" friend of hers. Just a note to those who are pedantic and think too much, "cute" friend of hers is NOT me despite me saying that someone thinks i have a cute smile couple posts back.



Anyway, i've been telling some of my friends, it takes two hands to clap. And ideally, it takes one of your hand and one of his hand to clap. And if the hands are not clapping, never forget that you've only used one of your hands to clap. You've still got another hand free, so plz, learn to multi-task... Use your free hand to slap him lah. Oh wait, since the extended hand is not clapping, you now have two hands free!! While one hand is slapping him, the other hand pick up a chair and "lei" him lah. Then use one leg to kick him and the other leg do your yoga stance or something :D



Okie, i'm hanging out with the char-kway-teow guys too much liao... No, i'm only kidding, dun hit him. This is a world of sunshine and butterflies, happy rainbows and smiling clouds, all things furry and cuddly until Happy Tree Friends came along :p



All i can say is that santa is one fat lazy bum. Which explains my 26 years of missing presents. So rather than waiting for fat lazy bum to do your dirty work, why not send the gentle query yourself? Ask him lovingly, what is on his mind. And if it is still not going, i personally dun think he is zhuge liang. San(1) gu(4) mao(2) ru(2) won't make a difference.



Obtw, plz do read my couzin's blog, Paint Me Pink Clouds Against Purple Skies. She's got a wishlist in the form of lyrics ^_^

My big sister is coming to singapore ^_^ ! Haha, i can imagine people going, "Big sister?". Yeah, i've got jie(2) bai(4) cousin and i've got jie(2) bai(4) .



How'd i come about so many jie bai members? Well, my is actually yeat yee, me housemate back in gippy. At that time, yeat yee was like always volunteering to cook, so when she was around, i hardly did any cooking at all. So i began calling her my to denote a seniority in status. I mean, i'm eating what she's cooking afterall, gotta show some respect :p



Anyway, she was younger than me so it kind of pisses her slightly for me to call her . Anyway, she's coming to sg, gotta blanja her abit. I still remember the good old days, playing mahjong the day before my exam...

Let's talk a little about the run i had on sunday. I'll begin with saturday. Saturday nite, i went home after my game of magic and did some carbo-loading. I didn't realise i was eating alot more than usual (my appetite is pretty small these days) until my mom saw me eating from the rice container and went like "That's alot of rice". Then later on, when i finished the remaining pot of curry, my brother went like, "You finished all the curry!!" And i went like, "but it's only eight chicken wing drumlets." i really didn't think it was alot, since i didn't have anything else beside the rice and drumlets.



Morning arrived, my auntie borrowed her brother's car and fetched us (my brother, cousin's hubby, taekwando kid and me) to the start point. Everything began as late but alright. Nothing much interesting in the babe watch news. A couple of babes here and there, but not as many/much compared to sheares bridge run. Maybe the sheer mileage turns them away. There were two interesting babes though. One was wearing a top that had the words, "Uniquely Gorgeous" on it. Woooo Gorgeous....



At around 16km, i started to have cramps and it was impossible to jog without having spasms in the muscles. And i did what i did best, i walked. In fact, i out walked a whole bunch of other walkers, there were even some who jogged slower than i could walk. I would have done the same thing as them, walk and jog alittle, except that i could not make more than afew paces before the spasms return.



I was hitting 33+km when i come to the other interesting babe. My initial thought was, 'hey, she's running in the wrong direction.' But turned out that she was in the right direction. Maybe she started late or something, anyway, she was some 6+km behind me. Nothing much i could do, xcept to clap for her.



Closing on the finish line, it was quite exhilarating. Took alot of discipline to continue walking and not jog the last 100 meters. Coz if i tried to jog, i would have limped the last 75 meters of the finished line. Kind of feels good when the other runners who have completed hang around there to cheer you on.



Race complete, i forgot to return the rfid chip. Which in turn meant i didn't get my extra t-shirt and medal. Oh well.... Anyway, i grabbed some lunch in suntec, took a cab home and played a round of hide and seek with uncle zhou's daughter.



The only thing that pisses me about the whole ordeal are the abrasions. Can u believe it, i got abrasion on my buttocks. Now that hurts.... Sunburns and all... yeah, pretty good run... i mean walk.

I'll begin this post with a rant. Begining with a rant is much better than ending with a rant right? I've recently been hearing alot from the radio media about the show singapore idol. All was well, the entertainment and telephony industry making money, contestants earning a bmg contract, and audiences watching a show they love. In fact, audiences interacted with the show, by sending sms to vote for the idols they like.



The problem begins when these people who votes actually voted for both contestants. Like eight votes Tulfik (i don't watch singaore idols, i don't know how to spell his name), and three votes for Sylvester. And that's pretty lame. Didn't these people know those three Sylvester votes would cancel out three Tulfik votes? Which actually effects making five votes for Tulfik for the price of 11 sms....



Anyway, i've gotten my first christmas card for the year :







Which brings to mind, since i didn't get a birthday card from korea, maybe i'll get a christmas card from korea. I did get a christmas card from holland last year though. Still hopeful about cards from australia, maybe even one popping over from malaysia :p I'll be sending a couple cards out myself, and dun be sad if u didn't get one from me. Just join the queue :p



Where's the queue u ask? u see the long line of girls from here to woodlands, that's the queue. and i'll be dam if someone is reading this in woodlands :D

Healing is a miraculous thing. Seeing karate kid getting better after the operation, seeing her father becoming relieved, its... let's just say the feeling is inexplicable. At the ward yesterday, my brother and i kept saying that we were gonna drink karate kid's milo and eat her cookies, and that we were being kind by letting her have her pillow. She said, "How can u bully a bed-ridden girl with no chance of fighting back" To which i had to remind her that she knew karate and that we couldn't normally bully her without being serve karate chops for dinner :D



Anyway, i've discovered something that's more addictive than any drug in this world, and that's hot shower. That's right, i took a hot shower again yesterday. I think i'm gonna take hot shower for the whole december before going back to cold water :p



I'm a happier person these days, coz someone told me that my smile is kind of cute, not that she sees me smile these days though. Anyway, you've gotta be happy to be smiling right? So i guess i'm happier :) :p



"~I feel it in my fingers,~I feel it in my toes~ ". Excitement rings in the air as sunday draws near. Yes, the run is still on, even though i hadn't been training. And it's still gonna be the full 42km. Its something i've been looking forward to for the last couple years ya noe. Yes, years, not months.



Anyway, here's the bandit signing off, hoping that the world is a better place and that there's a pot of gold under every rainbow :)

2004 is coming to an end :) woot woot. Hopefully the bad year of bad luck would go away quickly, and come 2005, which doesn't sound very alright either :( For the number five is likened to sounding like 'no' in cantonese. If it was no worry, no trouble then it would be.... oh my gosh, wat's that lump of hair doing on the office floor? Well... long and brown, its not mine. Now that i've noticed, the whole floor is seems to be covered with that same hair!! Talk about stressful environment :D



Anyway, if it turn out to be 058 (sure no wealth in canto) instead, then 2005 is gonna be another harsh year. So depending on wat actually gets appended onto 2005, its not a very exciting year.



Christmas is round the bend. I hate corners, so i'm calling it a bend. Maybe i should make another wishlist, yet another of my cheap shots to get presents huh? :p Anyway, since i got a submarine already, and kerry didn't get elected, i'll leave that do you to argue if i got my world peace yet i'll come up with a new list.



Wishlist :

[Deleted]



Muhahahahaha... wait, where was i before that evil laugh? Oh, i wasn't saying anything yet... muhahahahaha... i'm the alter ego of lbandit typing here, and i deleted his pathetic wishlist and place some of the real inner desires >:) Muhahahahaha



Wishlist :

[Deleted]



Sorry about my alter ego making a scene back there. I've deleted his horrible desire list already. Hope no one was harmed by it 0 :)

I had a hot shower yesterday. Its been so long since i last had a hot shower... oh wait, i just came back from gippy, so my last hot shower wasn't too long ago. Let me rephrase that... Its been so long since i last had a hot shower in sg... oh wait again, i went to chalet couple weeks ago, and i think there was atleast one of the showers which i had hot water. Ain't it terrible, i have to take a cold shower in a fully airconditioned chalet. I could have waited for the hot water to come though, but i'm not a person who waits around for things to happen. Oh um... that's regarding matters that does not concern... dare i say... love.



Anway, back in gippy, yinyin could swear that i shower in winter freezing cold water, coz everytime i come out of the shower, i'll be shaking and shivering with cold, so much that i'm like possesed. Funny thing was that i was showering with scalding hot water. Maybe the water was too hot and when i returned into the colder environment, it felt too cold. You know, like how you can feel both hot and cold from the same water. Try this, put one hand in hot water and another in cold water. Then put both hands in lukewarm water, the water would feel both hot and cold at the same time. So maybe feeling cold anot is kind of relative.



Anyway, i had this electric under blanket back in gippy. And according to proper usage, i was supposed to sleep with it turned off. That means, i was supposed to turn it on before i sleep to warm the bed and turn it off when i'm sleeping on the bed. Kind of logical too, since i won't want to burn myself while sleeping. Like how we shouldn't use laptops on our laps to avoid burning our thighs.



Anyway, i hardly gave any care to these evil advice and slept with the electric blanket turned on. And ya know what, i never did burn myself, haha :D But there were plenty of times where i was awaken in the middle of the night, sweating profusely. My t-shirt would become utterly soaked and there was no way i could return to sleep without changing into a drier, warmer t-shirt. Yes, a soaked t-shirt is cold even with doona on top and a furnace underneath.

Hey karate kid, get well soon ya? Take care.

, guess a mandarin character. It is pretty difficult to guess the word because of the misleading . Whenever is mentioned, people would think of the word . However, in this case, the mu(4) is two different words with the same sound. And the first step most people would do is to form the word and then try to expand on it with more strokes, which unfortunately was the wrong word in the first place.



A friend of mine, tried to lump all the characters into a single character, which of course didn't work. Becoz the last word describes the effect of the word rather than the strokes inside the word.



So here's sort of the answer :

Someone.

Hmm... i having some skin allergy on my legs. Maybe some bugs are biting my feet, coz there are a couple of swells on my foot. And the swells are so itchy that i am becoming pretty merciless in my scratching. Or maybe the swells are pimples... pimples on my foot... My guess is this allergy is kind of seasonal. I do remember there was a time i had the same itchiness making me claw at my foot till it became bloody, literally and without sparing the dripping drops.



I was telling someone... i do realise i am using someone to refer to a particular person alot. but can't my someone revert back to just about anyone? Anyway, i was talking to someone the other day and i was busy mentioning in vivid detail all the funny injuries on my hands. like how my right thumb would click like some rusty joint, my left index finger not able to straighten, and alot more which i rather not go into detail.



I guess all these body parts going into disrepair are parts and parcels of life. Funny how people use the phrase parcels of life. Life giving me these injuries and ailments.... okie, you're probably thinking that this is one boring rant, in which case, u thought correctly. *sigh*

I was hoping to take a long never come back break. But turned out that is was a less than one week's worth of break. Well, didn't want to write anymore since i kind of felt bad that my blog is making someone feel bad. But since she didn't exactly tell me to stop writing, and my lil couzin did ask me to continue writing, so here we are, there and back again (Take that Frodo).



Okie, so this post is dedicated to my lil wonderful wonder-couzin (haha, we had wonder woman, now we have wonder couzin) as promised. Well, not really dedicated as in dedication, but dedicated as in this post will talk about her. You're probably thinking it is quite common to have sworn brothers and sworn sisters, yi(4) fu(4) yi(4) mu(3) (sworn father mother). But how did i come to have a jie(2) bai(4) couzin?



To begin, i have this other lil cousin, i'll call her dancing kid. Haha, i've named my cousins taekwando kid, karate kid and dancing kid. If everyone is gonna be called by what they know how to do, i can imagine people calling me the eat snake kid :D



Anyway, dancing kid was friends with lil couzin. And at that time, i was still in the army, lifting automobile engines here and there. A couple of army friends and i envisioned a bold idea. We would create an irc channel and get it populated with gals so we won't remain as lonely bachelors there after. We called the channel "NTKY", acronym for nice to know you. Pretty good huh.



So to get the channel going, we had to invite people we knew to come and use the channel. I asked dancing kid to use the channel and dancing kid asked her friend (lil couzin) to use the channel. After sometime, we decided to make some sort of a channel outing, which consisted of tea at Black Tea Box, lunch at Mos Burger and pool/snooker (watever its called) at Marina. Not very interesting considering that we did the exact same thing in both of the two outings that we manage to schedule.



Anyway, during the first outing, it turned out that lil couzin didn't really know my name. She knew my irc nick, knew i was dancing kid's cousin but didn't really know my name. Lil couzin then began to start calling me "dancing kid's cousin". Which turn out to be a really lengthy name to call, so we settled for the shorter name "couzin" and thus i have a new couzin in the year 200 1 or 2, dun wanna calculate exactly which year :p



And ya noe wat, she's about the only girl whom i deliver bdae cards to the home mail box personally, by hand :D Cousins are very important people :p

The end of 2004 is approaching quickly. I used to like year end, because its a festive season with long holidays and several public holidays to look forward too. Not that i look forward to anything these days.



But the end of the year also comes to the lips easily. So when the boss says to a customer, "We'll get it done by the end of this year." Which in turn means i have to get it done by the end of this year, festive mood doesn't really come to mind.



So just as everyone is plunging into festive season, i'm psyching up for weeks of long OT. Was gonna start this week, but since the week started with a holiday, the whole week really does feel like a holiday. Went to watch "the forgotten" with a couple friends, tired today, and meeting another friend tomorrow, so no OT this week.



Yeah, i can hear you say. It's only a little OT, everyone does it and its nothing special. Well. then its about time that you realised that the world revolves around me, not you :p Haha, trust me to coin such a phrase, my cousin actually wanted to repeat this to a vegetarian friend of hers when her friend complained that eating crab roe was killing thousands of crabs.



A little on "Forgotten". It's a lame show, don't watch it. Unless you buy into illogical happy endings and stuff. And if any of you've watched it already and still says its good, let me remind you that the Sam's father was never even mentioned in the ending.

*Sigh*, of late, i've been hearing from alot of people that the stuff i write is at times a little cheem (difficult to understand). Dam, it's really difficult to communicate with earthlings these days. Maybe its becaoz the ozone layer is thining. Exposure to more UV rays makes them more... more i don't know more what... more tanned?



I'm in a speechless, quiet, depressed, hate it all mood and lacking ideas for topic for todays post (That is, i'm thinking of what to write in front of the monitor, i usually do that before i actually sit on the chair). So this combined with folks saying my posts are cheem, i'll do a couple post dissection/autopsy, flip old files and make the room all dusty once again.



9 Nov 2004 : "I kind of liked this part of the story, the daughter asking tony to change the ending to a happy one..." Whether the daughter meant it anot, her telling tony to change the ending to a happy one was effectively asking tony to change his own life to one that has a happy ending. For the story tony had written, was really a reflection of tony himself in fantasy.



Um... that's the only part that comes to mind with a dead brain. I'll do more post dissection later on, or on request. Yup if ya need me to explain some stuff, about wat i wrote, go ahead, shoot me. So much for now. Ciao.

Haha, thought i'll try it out.





You represent... hope.You're quite a daydreamer and can be a hopeless

romantic. You enjoy being creative and don't

mind being alone at times. You have goals, and

know what you want in life... even if they are

a little far fetched.



What feeling do you represent?

brought to you by

Quizilla

Watched another show on vcd yesterday. That took me three hours past my bedtime :( Imagine, me sleeping at one am, and having to come to work today! Oh um... actually not that difficult to imagine if you've been around me when i was in gippy :p



The show was called "The Classic". A korean love story, yes you guessed it, another tragic love story. The director was the director of "A Sassy Girl". The vcd had a mandarin title on it, but i can't remember it.



The movie began with Jin Hee, a congressman's daughter and Jun Ha, a country bumpkin or something like dat. When they met initally, Jin Hee asked Jun Ha to take her to a haunted house across a river.



When they were gonna return home, a heavy rain swept their boat to the middle of the river. And it was kind of brainless to jump into the river to swim to get the boat, since the water current was very strong with the rain and all. The couple became stranded on the other side of the bank.



They were running for cover from the rain and Jin Hee sprained her ankle. Jun Ha then carried Jin Hee all around. Jun Ha caught a firefly and gave to Jin Hee. When the rained stopped and they recovered their boat and were returning to the residential bank of the river, Jin Hee gave Jun Ha her necklace saying, "Today, u carried me around and gave me a firefly. I've nothing to give you except for this necklace."



When they returned, Jin Hee's grandpa slapped Jun Ha before going home. That's right, he deserved it. Fancy him running away with someone's qian(1) jin(1) (literal translation: thousand gold) and getting themselves stranded in some ulu place. Anyway, the couple fell in love from that day onwards.



The firefly, as a token of love, does become rather metaphorical. I wonder if the firefly is still alive.



Anyway, in comes Tae Soo, good friend of Jun Ha. Tae Soo's father wanted him to chase Jin Hee. Tae Soo then asked Jun Ha to help him write letters to Jin Hee. But Tae Soo eventually knew that Jin Hee and Jun Ha loved each other alot and decided to take a step back. But his father became very angry and used a belt to whip Tae Soo. Not able to handle the trauma, Tae Soo tried to hang himself.



Fortunately Tae Soo didn't die. Jun Ha became so devastated that he decided to leave Jin Hee, and sign on the army. Join the army! During a battle, Jun Ha got shelled by artillery. It's funny how hardy people are on this show. Anyway, Jun Ha survived the shell but got blinded.



Now speaking of being blinded, i do recall a korean mtv that had a girl and a guy in it. The guy was a photographer, with his own dark room for developing photographs. One day the photographer became careless and left a bottle of acid unsealed somewhere. I have absolutely no knowledge about photograph development, so i won't know whether that acid thingy is relevant anot.



Anyway, the girl went into the dark room later and the acid fell onto her face. The acid was dilute enough not to scar the face, but concentrated enough to blind her eyes. The photographer then um... donated his eyes to the girl. The mtv ended with the girl seeing the blind photographer and cried.



So i was wondering if that was actually an entire movie or just a mtv. If it is a movie, can anyone tell me what the movie name is so i could look for it?



Back to The Classic. Jun Ha then met up with Jin Hee. Jun Ha then went like, "Why aren't you married? I'm already married." Don't think Jin Hee replied to that question though. Since Jun Ha was married liao, Jin Hee then got married with Tae Soo, eventually. But sometime later, a group of three MIB (men in black) approach Jin Hee to inform her that Jun Ha had passed away. They went like, "Actually, he got married only after you got married." *sigh*

Haha, crafty siew ling can read my mind. But then, its pretty easy for people to guess what's or rather who's on my mind these days, if they've been following up on my blog since late october. Anyway, siew ling passed me "love actually", a romance comedy in english. Don't worry, i'll come back to 2046. My initial reaction to the movie was distaste. The show was made up of multiple small stories being run concurrently and independently, and the screen kept switching between the stories. The show on the whole was confusing and disorientating.



But as the show went on, i quickly fell in love with the tiny stories embedded in the show. The tiny stories, by themselves, were very good. And the show began with a nice song. "~ I feel it in my fingers ~ I feel it in my toes ~" One of the stories had hugh grant in it. Despite me loving hugh grant, and his story, i'm not gonna talk much about it, coz it's just another boring love story with a happy ending.



Another story of notable mention was that of a man and a wife with two kids. The man was the boss of a hot and sexy secretary. And this secretary always flirted with him in the office. Then came christmas eve or sometime before it, i donno when people buy gifts. Anyway, the boss told his secretary he was going out to buy christmas present. And the secretary went in a coy voice, "Are u getting me anything?"



Outside the office, the boss gave his secretary a phone call asking her, "What do you need?". The secretary replied, "There's nothing i need, only something i want... something pretty". The boss then bought a necklace which he left in the pocket of his coat. When he took off his coat at home, his wife discovered the necklace and thought it was for her. When it turned out that she didn't get the necklace, but a cd instead (talk about metaphorical...) she secretly cried.



Later on, she asked her husband, "What would you do in my place? If you knew your husband bought a necklace which he didn't give to you?". I would say that was some nice pr (people relations). Very well handled.The husband became ashamed and the rest is yada yada.



There's one small story in the show that i particularly like. The story was about a group of friends, two guys and one girl. Let's call the guys, guy m and guy s. Guy m gets married with girl and guy s stays single. Since guy s was a friend of guy m and girl, he was asked to take video shots of them for the wedding. But after the wedding, guy s refused to give the video to them time after time.



Girl then decides to show up at guy s's house unexpectedly with a..... drum roll..... a bonofi pie!!! *nudge one of my cousins* Told ya there's such a thing as bonofi pie and that its an english dessert. For those who missed it, the recipe for banana bonofi pie is on my 9th Sep 2004 post. 0909, not bad number huh? 4d anyone?



Anyway, girl quickly fishes out the video tape from the shelf. But wasn't that guy using a digital cam earlier on?? Anyway, girl puts in the video tape and presses the play button then gushes all the "omg, i look so pretty." phrases. It wasn't before long that she realised something was wrong. While she was pretty in the video, the video only had her in it. The video captured her every expression in vivid detail, with nothing else, not the groom, not the wedding. It was then that the girl knew guy s actually liked her.



Girl turned around, looked at guy s then went like "......". Then she went like, "But you never talked to me...".Guy s muttered and mumbled something, and left quickly. Doh... he fled his own house... I guess girl was rather smitten to hear that someone other than her hubby likes her, but then since she was married already, it was kind of a little too late liao.



So on christmas day, guy s brought a christmas carol radio and a bunch of placards to visit girl. Using the placards, guy s told to girl, "Without hope or agenda, just because it is christmas - (And at christmas you tell the truth), to me you're perfect, and my wasted heart will love you, until you look like this" The next placard was one of a old ugly thing, which prompted a little giggle from girl. Next placard went, "Merry christmas."

Today most certainly feels like friday, tomorrow being a public holiday and all. I'm a little out of topic today, so i'll talk a little more about 2046. It's kind of sad that the only face i can put a name to is tony leung. I do believe i've seen the actresses in some other show some time before, but as always, i can't put their faces together with their names.



As mentioned, tony leung was staying at a hotel in room 2046. The hotel boss had two daughters. The younger daughter was wild and wilful. She ran away from home/hotel at some point of time.



The elder daughter, fell in love with a young japanese. The father didn't agree to the match and things fell apart quickly and the elder daughter had to part with her sweetheart. Despite parting, the elder daughter kept in touch with her sweetheart through mail (snail mail mind you, email didn't exist in those days). The first letter from the japanese sent the father into a catatonic explosion as he ripped the letter to pieces infront of her beloved daughter.



Tony leung then tells her that she could ask her sweetheart to send the letter to his address instead. Yeah, the address was the girl's father's hotel, room 2046. But the boss wasn't gonna read the letters of his customers, so it was kind of safe. Whenever tony leung recieves a letter, he would mention out loud, "Wa, my japanese girlfriend is so hot." or something to that effect. Upon hearing that, the elder daughter would knock on tony leung's door later. Tony leung, without opening the door, would push the letter through the door slits to pass the letter to her.



Tony and the elder daughter eventually began to communicate more. Tony help her get a job at the cloak room of a nightclub to earn some money so she could go to japan.The show then came to the second christmas eve of the show. The first christmas eve was spent with another girl, one who loved him very deeply. By then, tony knew he had fallen in love with the elder daughter.



The show then went on in the tony narrating mode saying, "[Blank]" I'm really hard pressed for a translation here. I can't seem to think of the english version of the phrase. The message meant to say, tony gradually begin to like the elder daughter and this gradually thingy was not pursued by tony. It just happened and it happened over time.



During the christmas eve dinner, the elder daughter asked tony what he thought her sweetheart would be doing in japan on a christmas eve. Tony said, "Why don't you ask him yourself?" That said, tony brought the daughter to his office so she could make the call to japan. Later on tony said something like being content to see her so happy when on the phone to her sweetheart. And that he himself, "wu(2) shuo(3) wei(4)".



Sometime later, the elder daughter really went to japan. By then tony had finished his 2046 story and gave a copy to the elder daughter. Since the story was a metaphorical writing about tony's own life, it was kind of sad. The daughter informed tony that the ending was very sad, and asked whether he could change the ending into a happier one. Tony said he could try, and then we see tony holding his pen for 100 hours without being able to write a single word. I kind of liked this part of the story, the daughter asking tony to change the ending to a happy one, tony's narrative speech which i didn't include here, tony being unable to write for 100 hours and all.



The show went on to talk a little more on tony and that girl who loved him very much. My memory is a little fuzzy, can't really remember that much. But sometime near the end of the show, tony said something like, "Sometimes yuan(2) fen(4) is like dat. If it comes too early or too late, it doesn't stay."

Here's a little about the two shows i've watched, Brotherhood and 2046. I find that Brotherhood is a really good show sporting a tragic story. Tragic stories are usually good shows, coz it injects a doze of realism, reminding us that not all things live happily ever after, not all dreams come true, and fairytales are just fairytales.



Take a look at titanic. It is a very good story (read story and not show) and most certainly tragic. Yeah, so maybe little rose went on and live to old age and all, but it is merely a facade that movie makers feel obliged to include. They couldn't end shows on sad notes, coz any suicides would then be blamed on the show. Which in turn made the ending utterly lame, considering that any sane person would pawn the priceless necklace for a retirement fund rather than dunking it into the bottomless ocean. But the show does capture the hearts of many fans, and i would believe, simply by being a tragic love story.



Titanic was such a success, and a drag, that the fan club became divided into three distinctive groups. The first group were those that really loved a good show and a tragic story. The second group of fans begin to love Titanic becuase it became fashionable. And the last group of fans, hated Titanic. Yes, critics are also fan clubs. This last group consist of a lot of people who choose to hate the show, simply because it became fashionable. Doesn't make sense? Actually it does make sense.



Time and again, one would see young people stand up and say, i'm not part of this mindless crowd. Whether anot that person is part of the crowd is not a point to contend. What is note worthy is the desire of that person to not be merged as the larger mob. The person wants to be controversial, different, individual and unique. And they begin to reject Titanic simply because it became fashionable.



Back to Brotherhood. Brotherhood is a story about two brothers whose lives got messed up when war came upon them. The elder brother had a gf and the brothers and gf lived together with their mother. When war was upon them, the brothers were drafted into the army to fight. The elder brother then began volunteering for dangerous missions to buy his brother's freedom.

Throughout the show, we see small little tokens of love. The elder brother's gf made a handkerchief from her skirt to give to him, for him to wipe his sweat coz he was always using his sleeves to do it. And when the gf suffered a bullet wound, the elder brother used that same handkerchief to press onto the wound to stop the blood flow. And the gf went like, "You kept the handkerchief with you all the time..."



The handkerchief was but a material token. But its sentimental representation was much greater. The fact that such tokens of love did not begin with the significance due it, makes it all the more wonder inspiring. It was not like the gf asked the guy to keep the handkerchief becuase it was her token of love to him. It was given to him to use to wipe sweat to keep the sleeves clean. And such an act, resulted in the handkerchief becoming a token of love.



So it does makes me wonder if people of today still keep these little tokens with them, be it handkerchiefs or metal pens, or even tiny wishing stars made from drinking straws.



On to 2046. 2046 is a slow boring story and full of music which i didn't like. But its story is rather tragic and the overall show does appeal to me. 2046, sports a number of metaphors. The story revolves around tony leung, a journalist staying in a hotel room, numbered 2046. He began writing a fantasy story about people going to the future year 2046 in a train, to look for loved ones, and never coming back.



All who went to 2046 never returned, well, all except one. I particularly loved the bit of the show where the person who was returning from 2046 on the train was asked two metaphorical questions. The reply to the questions seemed to be always in some kind of third person speech, mainly because the written story was intricately entwined with bit Tony's own life and the questions were like him asking himself as he was writing the story.



"Why do you want to leave 2046?"

The narrator said, "I gave a vague answer to that question."

The next question was, "How long does it take for the train to leave 2046."

To which the narrator replied, "It all depends, some people take a short time to leave 2046 while others take a long time."

There is nothing more regretful than missed opportunites. *pause for a dramatic effect* Ok, since my couzin commented that my entries sounded kind of sad of late, i'll talk about something else. But also related :p (Oh, i've removed the unkymoods, since it wasn't like gonna change :p)



I flipped today's newspapers and realised that the vertical marathon was over. The punchline read, kym ng prance like a deer and hung lu jiang slogged like a pig, in lu jiang's own words. The photograph showed them yay-ing to publicity at the finish line. And they forgot to do the article on the bandit that never even made it to the start line :(



And so it is with regret that i look at the photograph, of not daring to pick up the challenge for fear of breaking my knees. But then, i don't see a difference when comparing it to not training for my 42km. Surely climbing afew steps ain't that hard right? Okie, maybe it is hard, but i really should have gone for it.



People from the brighter world of rainbows and dreams come true would think that optimistic people would say something like, "Oh nevermind, there's always next year." All i can tell them is to read my msn messenger nick. For the benefit of those who does not have msn, or have msn and chooses not to add me, my nick goes like this, "A little helloooooo from the darkside."



That's right, saying "Oh nevermind, there's always next year." is not being optimistic. Saying that is being foolish. The optimistic person would say something like, "I'll not miss the next opportunity that comes around." The difference lies in that there's always another year, another day, but not always another opportunity.



That being said, it's lucky that i'm not foolish. Coz i'm pessimistic :D :p

Watched the korean show "brotherhood" on vcd today and "2046" on the big screen today. Hey, i managed to get the title of the show correct after all :) Both shows were sad stories, and i think brotherhood was a little more sad than 2046. But that may be becoz i watched brotherhood in the morning, when i'm fresh and alert. I had to watch 2046 at night, coz it shows only at night, when i'm dead beat and tired.Kind of difficult to catch the show, it being screened only once for the entire weekend in bishan.



Well, one thing i know for sure now is that when you're down and out thinking of certain things watching two sad stories doesn't help.

I've just realised that my auntie bought me that coffee bean card. Woot woot. Aiya, if i known earlier that i had that coffee bean card, then i won't have to spend money to treat coffee bean, could have used the credits inside :D

bump

I got a birthday card!





I would say it's not bad for this birthday liao. Got one tea break set, one card and one submarine.



I must be getting old. How do i know? Well... you know you're old when a spider climbs onto your head and try to spin a home all over you. What am i? Some kind of a lamp post? Or maybe i look like a bloghead (read blockhead, catch the pun?).



Now imagine a skeleton hanging in a dark dungeon. Speaking of dungeon, i think someone (now i know i've been using the word someone to refer to someone alot, but this is someone... i couldn't remember who) told me something about dungeons, real dungeons. Anyway, imagine this poor skeleton, hanging in the dungeon chained to the wall. As if the person's death was not pitiable enough, some spider had to go spin a web to connect the skull to the wall.



Now imagine that same skeleton sitting and sleeping at the back of bus 105 on its way to work. Same spider trying to weave a web to connect the skull to the window. Tell me that ain't old and dusty :p

Added a new link to pinkcocoa's tabetai blog. Yes, another case of i don't know her and she doesn't know me, link. She probably doesn't know i've linked to her. Anway, who doesn't love food.

Some random thoughts for ya pickings, ya? In no particular order.



Thought One



Chatted with a friend on icq yesterday. Me being the busybody i am, asked her if she was getting married with anyone anytime soon. Somehow, this kind of questions always seem to prompt a similar question from the other person. So i told her someone is already married. "Found a new one?" she asked. Still trying to get over someone i replied. One smiley and one word, "Understood", later, i kind of feel alittle better.



Now, not that i don't appreciate the others telling me this and that, how they went through similar stuff, finding another one, don't think so much (yeah i know i'm the one who asked people to tell me that), time heals everything (this is possibly the worst crap anyone can say, it's like saying 'i look like a girl coz i'm a girl', pretty obvious ya?)etc etc. The thing is, i am not about to turn around and simply forget a person who had been important in my life. Her smiley and single word seems so much preferable.



Oh, and i forgot to tell her thanks. Thanks Charlene.



Thought Two



I'm thinking a little about technology lately. Like wine, couple years ago they said drinking wine was bad for health. Then some time later, they said a glass of wine a week is actually good for health. Here, we see that technological people are always biting their own words.



So i was thinking, they say rf magnetic field is safe for humans. Who is to say that a couple years down the road they won't say rf magnetic field causes me to lose buddy count and thus cannot claim baby bonuses anymore. I mean, suerly they haven't tested it on humans to make the correct assumptions right? I feel so guinea pig now, exposing myself to rf for eight to nine (i don't really know how long i'm supposed to work everyday) hours every weekday.



Thought Three



Another friend i met up with had been reading bits of my blog lately. She... Why is it i have a feeling that if howster is reading my blog he'll comment that most of my friends are female. Maybe us sisters bond together better. Oh wait, i've got short hair now, no one calls me "leng lui" anymore.



Which brings to mind, when i was in gippy with yinyin and yeat yee, they used to call me "chun mui mui". And then they go on about me changing into male in the day and changing into female at night. Or was it the other way round?



Anyway, this friend of mine, reads alittle and skips the rest. She chose to pursue a question which i posted, "Was my masters worth it?", and chose to not let it go. Hellooooooo, I did mention in writing that i have no answer to that question.



Thought Four



Since i mention my adorable housemates, there was once when one of them had a birthday coming round. I asked one of them what she wanted for her birthday. And then they went like, "Diamonds!". So guys out there, never ask a girl what she wants on her birthday, especially if there is more than one around.



Not that any of them got any diamonds. I'm a poor man afterall.



Thought Five



People playing magic tourneys are always complaining that they don't have girlfriends and stuff and stuff. Isn't there Colin who is married with kids and playing magic too? I sure there was atleast once when he said that he can't come for a tourney becoz he had to play golf with his wife. Hmm... now that i've written it down and read it, it does sounds kind of cheeky. Anyway, it goes to show that playing magic doesn't affect social lives.



Oh wait, i think he quit some time ago. And now that he is already married with kids he can come back to play magic. Haha.



Thought Six



My colleague is having a mc becoz of red eye. Rest well.



Thought Seven



I wonder what's the weather like in korea right now.



Thought Eight



I manage to catch yinyin on icq yesterday. Or rather, since she's always invisible and i'm not on her visible list, it's more like she managed to catch me on icq yesterday.



Poor yinyin. She's really having a rough year of bad luck. She also mentioned something about the monash staff striking, and the exam results are being delayed indefinitely. Too bad it was only staff striking, and not the students. So the student union didn't provide any free food over there.



I did mention that i joined in one of their strikes right? Well i also did mention that i didn't make much difference coz i was effectively always kind of like striking every other day.



Thought Nine



Too tired to think.



Thought Ten



Happy Birthday.

LOL. A little on the acronym LOL. It stands for laugh out loud. It has always been common to view words in caps as being loud. Therefore, writing the acronym for laugh out loud as "lol" is wrong, simply because it is really not loud which implies that you don't mean it. The only way to acronym laugh out loud is "LOL".



lol, i mean LOL, i just recieved my first bdae present for this year :D Ok, so posting requests for bdae presents kind of does work :p My couzin and lil cousin bought me a tea break set of one mug, one plate and one bowl. The set had cows all over it and them being cows (born in year of cows) the present seemed kind of cute.



My lil cousin had initially suggested to buy a frying pan for me. Her reasoning being that i had to cook in gippy, would mean i could cook and would in turn mean i do cook. ??!! Me cook? Aside from hoping to make a sago pudding, once i get the recipe from yinyin that is, i hadn't thought that i would be cooking anything but wild stories.



And of all the cooking utensils, she had to think of a frying pan. Maybe it's just me, but i always thought that the frying pan was used to whack someone's head. Too much jackie chan movies huh? And these days, with my thoughts never wandering far away, the person most likely to be whacked on the head with a frying pan, if i do get the frying pan that is, is myself.



Luckily, my lil couzin, being the more sensible in gifting skills, saved me from the terrible headache of having my head whacked with a frying pan :D



And they gave me a submarine!!! Look at it in operation:







And the view of a fresh water gold fish looking at you through the periscope in the um.. saltwater ocean:







And it costs 1.7 million pounds!!







Ok, maybe i should have mentioned that i was wishing for a luxury submarine. Then they didn't have to buy the one that comes equipped with one missile that's pointing in the wrong direction. Oh heck, might as well blow some stuff up along the way.



Thank you for the tea break set (i donno wat to call it, i assume i can eat my teabreak with it) and submarine.



Till then, ahoy!