t s u b a s a reservoir chronicle

Monday, June 08, 2009

Yayyyy this should be an exciting time. PC show coming up this weekend, during which I have to buy a laptop, dim sum buffet on Friday and Bangkok upcoming in another 2 weeks. I love shopping with Enid and Sok Mui. We just complement one another's tastes too damn well. After class gathering at City Hall last Sunday we're bagged with tons of requests for things from Bangkok, including rings, a tuxedo hat (-.-) for Jess, those very popular Max&More dresses which were going for $19.90 some time ago, plus t-shirts and scarves which Kum Boon really wants and um Lijie wants a cotton skirt. I asked her to elaborate she said it's just made of cotton. I pushed her for details but apparently she's not trying to be funny she really cannot supply any more details -.- So yeah maybe we'll just see how it goes.

Today we got to update the addresses of over 1000 business/companies in IRIN! I felt very powerful.

The 3 of us met up with Sasa at Sumo House for dinner today. They have stopped offering us free breaded fish to our dismay :( Think it's recession and they chen ji to take away the freebies. Scooted around AMK Central to buy ~~cheap~~ competitively priced beauty products. The Vaseline lotion for hands and nails I got seems really good. I have this urge to get moisturizing stuff to slather on my skin and also feet cream too. I think buying beauty products makes you very excited because the idea of something miraculous being done to your skin/appearance is delicious. Of course, whether or not it actually happens is something else. But this excitement is usually good for at least a week or so.

Oh yes I must talk about flowers. Sok Mui bought roses on all our behalves for Sasa the MC at the Anderson alumni band concert 2 Fridays ago. Here's a picture of the gorgeous bouquet, which was so gorgeous and elegant and expensive due to a miscommunication between her and the florist:

It is the most refreshing bouquet I have ever seen because of the unusual mix of colours. Really beats all the stupid atypical Valentine's Day flowers hands down. Here's a close up by Jia:

So goddamn pretty. I know flowers are highly impractical and seriously, have no idea what to do with them at home, but they are just too pretty to ignore. Yay I'm such a girl.

Oh and here's a photo of Lijie the lizard, who was getting damn high on chinese songs today, because I think the rose mural on the wall of the female toilet in VCH is very pretty and the contrast I created in the photo makes the whole thing very got feel.

Speaking of photos, Chris (HE LOST SO MUCH WEIGHT) posted some photos of the class gathering on facebook already. The lighting is particularly amazing. We all have flawless complexions and even look rather elegant in the warm yellow light. Even candid shots of Jess and I have this sort of photoshoot quality to them. I intend to incorporate a photographer friend into every one of my social circles from now on.

Lingga says @#%$! at 9:59 PM

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Waaaaaah I just realised I am super inconsistent with the blogging -.- Last entry was like almost 2 weeks ago and I still thought the previous update was quite recent. Time passes damn quickly now. At work it stretches infinitely (okay not so bad) so we amuse ourselves with 346254 games of dai di, making weird noises (eg. what sound does pufferfish make. Ans: male ones go puff-puff-puff really deeply, female ones go PUFF PUFF PUFF very shrilly, then young ones jsut suck in air and breathe very hard. To which Kum Boon replied "Ms Yang is a pufferfish" and proceeded to hyperventilate. Okay inside joke), weird actions (what sound does octopus make. Ans: *wriggles arms* okto okto okto. I know it's not funny at all but Lijie laughed very hard when i said that) and draw funny stuff on Paint! I now have enough material to hold exhibition already. I think I'll create an album on facebook one day. :D Trust me it is not something you want to miss.

I had abalone instant noodles just now. My mother opened the last can of abalone leftover from CNY for me. :) Cuz I'm the only one in the family who likes abalone. My sister doesn't like it at all. My parents can do without it. Therefore I can safely claim all ownership rights over the abalone and zhan wei ji you. Fabulous. Got prawns and egg and veggies just now too. Very rich instant noodles.

I love Novena food!!!!

Watching Much Ado About Nothing this Sunday evening with Sok Mui. $28! It had better be good. But I think it should be not bad seeing as how the reviews have been quite positive. I guess I pulled Sok Mui along to watch it on a whim. I have certainly never read the play. But I found the BBC movie (modern version) very very entertaining. I mean, it's supposed to be a comedy after all. Omg at first I thought the play was gonna be held at the Singapore Repertory Theatre so I kept asking Sok Mui where was it. It turns out the play is at Fort Canning Park and SRT is the production house behind the play. Omg embarrassing.

Sorry Lijie! Our lives are really too mundane I cannot think of what to capture -.- I tried hard with the pufferfish part. You can tell!

And Sok Mui keeps not replying my ssmes and blogging her replies to me instead. What the. She says cuz it's easier to blog her replies than to sms. ............... Win loh.

Anyway I can't wait to go Bangkok to shop. It's GSS in 2 weeks and Thailand's version of GSS from 1 June onwards. Exciting!!! But the problem is now when I look at clothes I can see them hanging on a rack in Platinum Mall for 150 baht and I can't bring myself to pay $25.90 for them anymore. It's quite horrible. I may never be able to buy clothes from Far East ever again.

I should probably try not to work on Sats. Pearly takes the chance to give us sai kang to do. Although we do not have to answer calls, we have to make outgoing calls instead and really do end up accomplishing more work than we would have if we had just been left to pick up calls. For us languid souls who are unaccustomed to doing work (seeing as how there aren't that many calls lately), it can be rather tiring and hence make us sad. :( Oh yes! Speaking of Sat! Free titan chicken 1-inch thick toast from Long John's! Really really really nice. So good that on Sunday morning I got up at 7.30 just to go collect the free sandwich at BOTH Northpoint and GV Yishun LJS. Damn jian right. I also think so. But it was worth it.

My mother laughing hysterically outside. Dunno what the hell. But I'm kinda bored online sooooo.. probably go Sim a bit instead. :)

Lingga says @#%$! at 8:48 PM

Saturday, May 09, 2009

Meow Mee went to the vet today! For his yearly vaccination. This one was actually due a month ago I think but we couldn't get him into his carrier. Yeah, it was so hard to force him in that we gave up on the trip totally. My sister convinced herself that it should be okay seeing as how Meow Mee is kept predominantly indoors and would not have to chance to go out and attract funny diseases. However, the clinic sent a reminder letter about a week back so we decided to bring him over today.

How my mother trapped him was to put his food bowl with tuna into the back of the carrier and pushed him in when he was sticking his body into it to eat. Poor thing. He was totally scared shitless and kept thrashing about in his cage, before settling for meowing all the way during the car journey to the vet in Geylang. I don't think he likes cars. Anyway he was totally "nua" at the vet and when the vet lifted him up he kinda just flopped about limply -.- Poor poor poor thing. Sister speculated if he thought we were gonna abandon him somewhere. When he got home he headed straight for the underneath of my sister's bed to hide. And after coming out he walked like his legs were made of jelly. Traumatic ordeal for cats.

I'm currently watching 我和僵尸有个约会 on VCD, which was my favourite show back in primary school. I thought 况天佑 was kinda hot (I have now seen the error of my ways. But in my defence in '98 he looked a lot younger) 马小玲 was super cool. It's been about 3 - 4 years since I've watched it and omg it is even better than I remember. I think I've watched the whole series like 13 times already. It rocks.

Oh yeah, which was what I skipped work yesterday to do. All 3 of us except Lijie spontaneously decided to take leave on Friday, but I was still undecided seeing as that meant throwing away $55 and was scheduled to meet Tzu Wei on msn to conspire if we should skive off work. However the msn discussion was unnecessary because we both reached a conclusion before meeting on msn and that was to skive indeed.

Why got $55 to earn you don't want to!!!, I hear you shout. Answer phone calls very slack one! Yeah it used to be slack, before all the empty promises we made to people who want to get their Jobs Credit started catching up on us one by one, and they started demanding answers to questions us temp staff have no answer to because we are powerless and can't do anything and can only blame departmental efficiency. Like you know you deserve to get scolded but at the same time it's not your fault it's the department's so you feel an odd mix of emotions, which is not pleasant at all and you suddenly wish you weren't at work to hear all these people complain.

Seriously, I have come to truly understand what is meant by government red tape. It's like normal citizens put out a simple request us temp staff take down to pass on to our supervisors who pass it on to higher authority who are supposed to accomplish it, who then relay the result back to us temp staff who then get back to the citizens. In this case the 'higher authority' seems to be one "Janet" who must be flailing under the weight of the 2426731873 cheques we are supposed to cancel and re-issue. Everything is "email to Janet" or "call Janet" or "pass to Janet" (from what we hear when we eavesdrop on the supervisors). Why aren't there like FOUR Janets to deal with this so stuff gets done faster?

Urgh. It's really a horrid experience especially when you meet nasty people who have a right to be nasty. Like, JUSTIFIED nasty-ness. Can't even bitch about it. And people are the nastiest when they cannot get their $$$ man.

So yes back to what I was saying before i digressed, which was us skivving off work yesterday. I met Wen and Sasa for lunch at Ishimura (Sasa woke up 30 mins before we were due to meet, so Wen came to my house first to greet Meow Mee, who finally allowed her to glimpse him) and told them I felt very "harrassed" by the swarm of secondary school students who throng Northpoint every afternoon. I think I'm old and discriminating against young people.

And after lunch we went looking for dessert and DO YOU KNOW Bakerzin's student discount means 50% off all main courses and desserts?? What the. I think it's bloody worth it lah. To think I've only just found out after the branch at Northpoint's been open for like, half a year or something.

Anyway we were sitting down in comfy plush armchairs and eating our chocolate cake when Sasa said she had to go off for some band concert discussion in AMK, and we let her go happily until she smsed me oh no Lingga! Your house keys are still with me!

*flails arms*

So yeah I headed over to AMK Courts to get my keys back via the route I always took when I went to AMK library to study for exams. It was a profoundly moving experience........... Sorta. Like, I'm never doing that again, yippee. By the way I never knew how freaking ex it is to go AMK library? It costs like $1.60 per trip what the hell? :x once again I miss my student concession. It is such a good thing to be a student. I don't wanna be adult! But I don't want to be stuck as a student forever either.. Okay best is like, right after your As and before you officially graduate. Best 2 months of your life. Post-exams euphoria AND still get to enjoy cheap transport until 31 Dec. PLUS, shopping everyday. Sigh heaven.

Oh and also, aside from watching WHJSYGYH everyday I am also actively taking part in Sims 2 marathon. My affair with Sims 2 is very sporadic, when I am into it (like now) I play like 2 hours everyday but when I suddenly don't feel like playing already I can neglect it for a year or something. Every time different things draw me back into the game but now mostly I am into creating storylines (like forcing people to get dumped at the altar) and watching architecture porn, ie admiring my super chio beautiful houses and imagining how it would be like to actually live in them *dreams*

Mehhhhhhhhhhhh. Tomorrow got tuition in the morning because Nicholas's english paper is on Tue and he can't make it for Mon evening because of swimming. His mother is really super nice. She gave me $10 extra when payment was due on the 4th lesson 2 weeks ago. :D I hope that's like permanent and not just on a whim though. Hahaha.

Lingga says @#%$! at 3:43 PM

Sunday, April 26, 2009

I am frequently bored at work in between calls. Sometimes when I am desperate for something to do I entertain myself by creating works of art on the computer with applications kindly provided for me like Paint and Microsoft Powerpoint.

This a display of some of the many images we have remembered to capture on camera before the app is closed without saving and they are gone for ever.

My first ever foray into Paint on the official first day of work. We were very bored (not many calls). To our dismay all the games in the computer had been removed so the only other form of entertainment was obviously Paint -.-

Note the ingenious mix of colours lending a vibrancy and the thickness of the paint bringing rawness to the painting.

One of the many photos of cats I drew using Paint as well. Kum Boon added something she claimed was a mouse, but which no one could recognize, hence the need to label it.

Graduated to using Powerpoint after Paint became boring. The "woooooo Jia Cheng" part is a reference to this nice colleague of ours who is called Woo Jia Cheng.

I respond and serve (IRAS)

boyboy@hotmail.com is with reference to Wenwen's bogus email address.

Second slide experimenting with "Kum Boon is a loser".

"Sao mao"s is with reference to Lijie and this funny time we were going home and trying to come up with a term for feng sao women and I said she looked like a sao mao.

"Xiao niu" is Lijie (xiao ma is me and xiao shu Wenwen - Wen claims her shu is the squirrel shu and not the mouse shu, but one day Tzu Wei called her lao shu and without doubt from then on that it was the mouse shu), the "is look like a clown" part is an allusion to the language prowess of my 7 year old tutee Nicholas, who is chubby and half-Burmese and has terrible English.

The "Ur so Gay" lyrics are because Wen and I had taken to discussing Katy Perry at work 2 weeks ago and the very catchy and meaningful description of the guy she likes.

Once again, boyboy@hotmail.com makes an appearance.

There are also the portraits of Wen (saying OMNIA! because she keeps going on about buying her stupid Omnia phone) and Lijie (saying YILING! because she is my lover). The drawings are highly representative of the people in real life okay! I paid great attention to detail!

For example
Kum Boon: red spiked hair, sorta red cheeks, shorter than Lijie, one of the many black t-shirts she has and her bootleg jeans with white canvas shoes. It was claimed that I have her sissy arms to indicate she is female.

Lijie: brown shoulder-length hair, big(ger) mouth, white arms to reflect her fair skin, white shirt with the white buttons (one of which she lost and went to AMK to replace), lizard red belt, her dark blue skinny jeans and Ipanema sandals.

Tzu Wei got one whole slide to himself cuz I ran out of space.

Tzu Wei: spiky Dragonball hair, brown (sorta. I couldn't actually use brown) skin, red bites on his right arm the product of tick bites from Australia (he said tick but we all heard pig), CAGE black t-shirt from the team CAGE who pays $50 everytime he goes train with them, black/grey Levi's (his only pair of jeans) and blue Adidas sneakers.

Okay no more photos already. I didn't really take that many in the first place -.-

From the cai fan stall we go to almost everyday to buy almost the same things everytime. This time round the sweet and sour fish looked alarmingly bright -.-

And for fruit day last Thursday they gave us.........

!!! How the hell do you eat kiwi conveniently! It's furry! Nafisah's kiwi was super ugly my god.

And this ends my collection of photos. Yay. I said I would blog ddin't I Jess! :D:D:D

Lingga says @#%$! at 4:24 PM

I AM GETTING BITCH SLAPPED BY HEAT WAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lingga says @#%$! at 11:02 AM

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Oh God I am such a procrastinator. I obviously cannot be trusted to update my blog regularly so instead of writing long paragraphs about my life which will doubtlessly turn me off blogging even further, I shall post sentences instead.

ON WORK

I am now reading more newspapers during work than I have ever done so in my entire life (even when taking As).

Such a feat - the entire Straits Times (even the Money and Business sections!!!), Today, The New Paper (thanks to Tzu Wei who buys everyday so we are all informed on the scandals which plague our society) - is possible because Lijie dutifully brings the Home and Life! sections to work everyday.

I then started bringing the main section a few days ago because there wasn't enough news to last until lunch.

The New Paper is essentially a record of absurd stupidity in the world and the consequences which result.

Lijie and I always go and steal soon kueh, carrot cake, fruit tarts, eclairs and coffee/tea from the refreshments table for the people who are having training in the next room.

In the past few weeks I got transferred to email team and also to help Appeals call people back and assorted sai kang Pearly dishes out - also known as diversifying among the few of us.

I still get calls from very irritating people who have no patience and no manners.

ON BEN&JERRY'S FREE CONE DAY

We were very excited in the days leading up to it and Wenwen became the unofficial B&J flavour-announcer in the office.

We went to queue at United Square at 11.40am after buying sushi from Cold Storage and got our cones at 12.15pm.

ON LUNCH

I LOVE EATING LUNCH IN NOVENA THERE ARE SOOO MANY NICE HAWKERS TO CHOOSE FROM

Because Tzu Wei has now joined us for lunch (after both his brothers took turns to enlist), the little table in the B1 pantry which we used to share is too small for the 4 of us, and thus we have taken to eating in the posher eating area on the 3rd floor overlooking the first floor lobby, where we frequently meet Sok Mui who has every right to eat there since she works on the 3rd floor.

ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN THE MORNINGS

Got tall ang moh lady who is very chio who boards at YCK and alights at Novena!!!

ON TV

Ping pang yuan is soooooooooooo bad it is good!

ON WHAT I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY (posted due to overwhelming demand. I had to really think to come up with stuff okay)

Cream for my aching soles which are hard and cracked due to wearing of vain shoes.

Ipanema sandals or something to replace my poor white distressed ones. Size 8 - 9

Meg Cabot's Airhead (not the pink and shiny cover please T.T)

Foxtrot comics

20 cha ye dan!!!

Anyway I promised Jessica I would post the rubbish drawings I draw on the computer at work because I'm so bored. I will!!! Just not now. Hahaha.

Lingga says @#%$! at 7:53 PM

Sunday, March 29, 2009

YESSSSSSSSSSSS FINALLY APPLIED FOR NANYANG SCHOLARSHIP

My essay was quite lame, but that seriously can't be helped considering the 300 word limit. No one ever wrote something truly inspiring in 300 words. Haha.

I wrote about OCIP, which is indeed very hao xie. Now please call me for interview!!!! *prays*

Call should come in some time in late April or early May (which is like, my birthday period, thank you) depending on when you submit your app I guess. Until then, I feel VERY VERY FREE and unburdened :)

I also feel very thankful that I know exactly what I want, most of the time. And that I never regret the choices I make. I guess it's because I don't look back and keep on thinking of what could have been. Like, what if I had gone to NUS business school instead. Or, what if I had tried mass comm instead. Okay, I do, but I don't allow myself to dwell on it for too long. That is the key to contentment, I think - knowing how to be satisfied with your choices. I don't want to be otherwise, forever permanently stressed out and lamenting the missed opportunities in life.

Because sometimes not all opportunities must be grabbed. Some should be missed just so you can focus on the ones that are truly right for you. If you go for all of them, you bite off more than you can handle, you don't perform your best in all these opportunities, you waste them all. Better to take only what you really want and focus.

I guess I don't understand why people have so much difficulty making choices of what kind of course they should take. Of course, it is a turning point in life and they should be given all the time they need to think it through carefully. Yet I realise I've never yet faced such problems in life. I always miraculously knew what I wanted - bio/chem double science, because physics sucks, then VJC arts because I like VJ and I like the humanities (how is science ever going to be relevant in my career and life), and taking lit maths econs geog GP for my subject combi, and not going for H3 or KI cuz why spend time doing the unnecessarily hard. Not taking external scholarship even though I probably can. I can tell you, being able to decide so quickly saves a LOT of mental troubling and stress. Which is extremely ironic since I can take 20 mins to decide between 4 patterns for a notebook.

I knew I wanted Nanyang Business School since I was in J1. Of course having a sister graduating from there helps a lot. But I simply assess the pros and cons and go for the one which appeals to me most:

NTU, because I've seen their hostels when i visited my sis in uni and I loved the vibes.
NBS, because they offer tourism & hospitality management (which I might take) and a direct 3 year honours program and are ranked first in SEA.

I found out all I could about NUS business too (sorry, SMU. But your girls are too chio and your school is too new and your students are too pushy for me). Their double degree in comm studies and business admin is very attractive. But I don't want a double degree and have no life (I WANT TO ENJOY MY UNI LIFE) and spend 4.5 years waiting to get my degree not knowing if I can graduate with honours. So clearly it's NTU business.

I don't want to be zhuai but my first choice is always right. ALWAYS. Like not dropping to H1 anything even though I was contemplating dropping h1 geog. I don't know why. I think it's because I don't focus on what could have been and concentrate instead on making the most out of what I've chosen. I think many people haven't yet learned to do this, to sorta have an idea of what you want and try your best to get near it without being too distracted by alternatives along the way. Of course, these alternatives may turn out to be the right path for you. But it's too tiring for me to accept changes in my life (like perception changes, ability and task changes. I don't like change) so I just stick with what I've chosen, and hope it turns out fine.

And most of the time it does. (because I have an eternal optimism and endless faith that things will always find their place in life and settle to be fine. Not everyone is able to acquire this talent. It lets me sleep well at night.)

Those of you who are fretting what to take, unsure if you're making the right choice, come on. Just make one already. I'm sure if you give whatever you choose your best shot you will do brilliantly. Those who've made one and are fretting if it's right, DO NOT think like that. Just focus on what you;ve chosen and do your best man.

We're all big people now! Uni life! Impending adulthood! Career choices!

God I wish I never had to grow up. I want to be stuck in this post As pre U rut forever.

Lingga says @#%$! at 4:01 PM

Thursday, March 26, 2009

My mother is now overseas until 17 apr :(:(:( I am going to zi sheng zi mie.

Lingga says @#%$! at 8:08 PM