pain in the head.

damn, not another headache. i didn’t realise it until now, but i actually have been getting migraines way too frequently, especially during this cny period. i’d get this annoying pain in my neck and head that’s not quite as bad as a migraine, but still just as persistent and debilitating. at least it goes away after some time, or after taking some painkillers.

as it is i probably already complain too much about my headaches but well i can’t help thinking that this particular cluster of headaches is somewhat unusual. in fact they’ve kinda become more frequent ever since i started work. boo. and the worst thing is that even if i have headaches, i can’t take too many days off. not just because i won’t earn any money for not working, but also because it’ll look really bad on me, like i’m too lazy and sickly or something. bah.

anyway i was really late meeting the 34 people this morning. apparently my maid did wake me up at 9 and i’d said i was getting up, but i have no recollection of it. i only got up at about 10.20am when we were supposed to meet at 10.30am! thank goodness my dad was at home so he gave me a lift after i showered and changed super-quickly. and i guess being late was more embarrassing than usual this time cos i’d messaged everyone the night before telling them not to be late. haha.

so we made our way to ms ng’s house, which is really quite nice. and we made a beeline for her wedding photos and all. hehe. and there was this cute picture of her and uncle tan in their hc uniforms, and her prom photo too, where they both looked good. and i realise that their relationship is like awww so sweet. meeting in jc during cca, falling in love, managing to maintain their relationship all the way to adulthood, and now they have a baby girl on the way. and that’s despite they do have rather varied interests (uncle tan’s all about the sciences, ms ng’s all about the arts) so yeah, lucky ms ng :) and she’s got us too! haha.

we mainly played daidee (where i unfortunately only lost money), watched the school of rock, and ate. a lot. haha. the 32/04 people were also supposed to come visit, so ms ng ordered 4 pizzas from canadian pizza but they didn’t come in the end. and to ms ng’s horror the eight of us (me maryam yy denise georgia mark jasper yijun dwayne) not only managed to scarf down all four pizzas, but also fifty sticks of satay that she had her husband go out and buy because some of us (mainly the guys) were still hungry. haha. i guess she’s just realised today how expensive it is to feed voracious eaters like us.

i think she must have spent nearly a hundred bucks just feeding us and giving us angpows, which was a not-bad 6 bucks each. and in polymer notes, even. i can just imagine her or her husband queueing up to get those polymer notes. haha. anyway here’s a great big thanks going out to ms ng, just in case she reads my blog, which i’ve long suspected that she does. haha.

and damn, my head’s really killing me. guess i’ll be taking some napan and turning in early tonight. sigh. work again tomorrow, and tuition after that. life’s so incredibly boring and tiring now. can’t wait for the end of march. and for about one week later. i hope all goes well, it’s the only bright spot in my life now.

pong!

Ten Top Trivia Tips about eeling!

1. Eelingocracy is government by eeling.
2. Only one person in two billion will live to be eeling!
3. The original nineteenth-century Coca-Cola formula contained eeling.
4. Abraham Lincoln, who invented eeling, was the only US president ever granted a patent!
5. An average beaver can cut down eeling every year!
6. Every day in the UK, four people die putting eeling on.
7. In Japan it is considered rude to talk with eeling in your mouth.
8. A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but eeling cannot.
9. A eelingometer is used to measure eeling.
10. Tradition allows women to propose to eeling only during leap years.

I am interested in – do tell me aboutherhimitthem

hee. i stole this from georgia. i know it’s randomly generated but it’s still kinda funny.

and today was mahjong day at my grandma’s, with many newly converted mahjong freaks like my mum, my brother and a few cousins. so we seriously just spent the whole day playing mahjong.

which just about sums up my day. time flies when you’re playing mahjong. haha.

and wow i didn’t know the SAT results are released so quickly – i’ll find out what my score is just two days after my (ahem) birthday, which is just about two weeks more. that’s fast. unless they’re delayed, like maria’s. i hope not. i want to find out asap so i can think about whether i need to retake it and try for a higher score…

hmmm i was previously practically bubbling over with excitement over a tiny tiny thing as i am prone to do, but something’s deflated my balloon somewhat… boo. i know i’ll survive but i was really, really looking forward to it. i guess that’s a lesson in not getting my hopes up too high, but still. but hmmm. i still don’t know what to make of some things. oh well. shall just sleep on it or something.

but anyway there’s still seeing most of the class again tomorrow to look forward to! with the exception of yy, i haven’t seen everybody for what feels like eons. so tomorrow will be a great time to catch up. pity some of us can’t make it though. but better most, than none at all, right? and we’ll all be meeting up soon enough anyway… for that dreaded day. heh.

think i’d better turn in early tonight, lest i get another splitting headache like i did this morning.

take me out

when i first downloaded franz ferdinand i didn’t really think much of them, especially since their music was a bit too noisy for my taste. but they’re starting to grow on me, and take me out’s gotten stuck in my head. haha.

cny’s been pretty good to me so far, despite an ominous morning calf cramp (that actually had the nerve to re-cramp twice!) and there were also my initial fears of it being ruined by sickness when i woke up with an extremely sore throat. it felt like there was a lump on the left side of my throat, it hurt to swallow and my voice was taking on an even more hoarse quality than it’s already been.

but fortunately it seems like i’ve become better as the day wore on, despite my guzzling of cold drinks and invariable snacking on cny goodies (i’ve a very very soft spot for these pineapple tarts my third aunt got from a friend). even my nose’s cleared up and my cough’s not so bad now. thank goodness my fear of having to take yet another mc on wednesday was quite unfounded, after all.

and of course cny is gambling season. i had good luck with bridge (we didn’t play with money, darn!) but for the most part of the day my luck with daidee and gin rummy really sucked. fortunately i managed to recoup most of my losses in the evening, with a couple of nice wins at gin rummy. hehe.

and it’s so funny. according to my mum, my grandma doesn’t like/want us to play mahjong at her place so no one’s ever played there before. but my hands were itchy last evening and i was discussing it with stella (though i still call her gengyun-jiejie, hehe) my only older female cousin and i somehow got the impression that my grandma didn’t really seem to mind. so i boldly asked her if she’ll scold me if i want to play mahjong. she kind of laughed it off and said something along the lines of “can play la” and almost immediately all my relatives were like “wah you know how to play mahjong ah”. and some of them were like “wah you dare to ask ah-ma whether can play mahjong… it’s been so many years and haven’t even dared to open my mouth about it.” hoho. and you can tell some of them really want to play la. when i went over today they were like “where’s the mahjong? i thought you were bringing it?”. guess i’m not the only one with itchy hands… hehe.

and hmmm i guess i’m quite doted on by my grandma, some of my aunts and my older cousins. probably because i stayed over at my grandma’s with the older cousins when i was a toddler and i was the last of the grandchildren to do so, and was pretty much a good kid who didn’t throw tantrums and all. well, at least i don’t remember being a hysterical kid and according to my mum i wasn’t a really naughty one. yeah so i get the perks of being one of my grandma’s favourite grandchildren… i get to ask about mahjong, and she attempts to ply me with more food than other people. haha. yeah that’s what i like about cny too – nice, doting relatives who no longer go “eeling you put on weight again ah?” or stuff like that. haha.

and all the little grandkids sure grow up fast. before i know it, my fifth uncle’s older son arnold’s already six this year, and his younger brother keegan’s already three? wow. that’s really fast, considering that i still keep thinking of them as just a big bunch of babies… i really can’t remember how old they are all, cos their ages really are too close to each other and there’s almost too many of them. but all of them are cute in their own way.

arnold and keegan look really alike and i love the feel of their hair. kinda like gideon’s hair when he’s just cut it. haha. but gosh keegan’s a terribly crybaby who apparently is just faking it to get attention when he cries. ruijie is a bit unpredictable since he’s autistic but he’s still plenty cute, especially with his favourite thomas the engine trains – he has like ALL of them! and of course sammi’s always still cute and tanya’s still very much on her way to becoming a real beauty when she grows up… even if they can’t remember our names, haha.

i hope stella gets a baby soon! then i’ll be an aunt (finally) and there’ll be one more kid to play with. i kinda miss playing with kids sometimes. they’re so wonderfully innocent, if not a bit too rowdy at times. and sadly enough stella’s the only married cousin. of my four other older (male) cousins, only one’s attached and the other three are still pretty much swinging bachelors, i think. oh i forgot that edwin (chanjoo-korkor to me, still.) has a girlfriend but i don’t know what’s happening cos she’s a hongkonger and i haven’t seen her since stella’s wedding. i guess we’re all still a pretty young bunch so it might be too early for talk of weddings and nieces and nephews. darn.

can’t wait to visit ms ng on tuesday. in case anyone forgets, we’re meeting at 10.30am at yio chu kang mrt. i’ll figure out how to get there later on, with good old can.com.sg, which i always use if i need to know how to get to places.

something’s making me go both hmmm and :) now. haha. shall just enjoy the feeling of it while it lasts :)

SAT down and did it.

yay the SATs are over for me. at least for now. but i have to admit that time issues aside, the SAT is actually kind of fun. but only because i actually know how to do most of the stuff without studying for them… it’s almost like an IQ test, really.

but gosh i’m either too slow or they give us too little time. i didn’t finish my essay, so argh at my dropping points there. and being slow of maths-brain i either only finish the maths sections on the dot, or only have like half a minute to glance through my coloured circles and make sure that i didn’t shade them wrongly. it sucks that the whole thing is divided into 10 sections instead of being one extremely long test, because i almost always had time left over for the english section.

but oh who cares? it’s over! yayness.

and damn, i just read in life that brokeback mountain’s going to be R21. which means i can’t watch it in the cinema. pirated dvd and/or bittorrent download, here i come.

and mmm. am drinking a nice warm bowl of shark fin’s soup now, waiting to eat our steamboat reunion lunch. can’t wait, actually. i hope the fuzhou fishballs from dodo are good, and that the prawns and scallops are fresh. yum yum. and there’s still reunion dinner at my grandma’s place to look forward to. i’m practically drooling at the thought of ngou hiang and all the other grandma-cooked stuff.

chinese new year’s a time for eating, seriously. eat up! :)

breathless.

and damn, that’s another day’s salary gone. yes, i’m at home again, when i should be amongst that awful NEL morning rush crowd now. it makes me wonder if i really am more sick now, or if my willpower to go to work is actually just a lot less than my willpower for school, despite the fact that i get paid to go to work. the only payment of sorts you get for going to school, sick or not, is the possibility of gleaning a bit of knowledge from our teachers. so it doesn’t really make sense that i’ll force myself to go to school but not to work, right?

last night my mum actually told me not to go for work after hearing me vainly try to cough up the phlegm stuck in my lungs, but i wanted to go cos i felt mostly okay and because of the possibility that today’s like the last day to submit our timesheet or they’ll take another month to process our salary claims. i’d even planned it just before i tried to sleep – go to work as normal, hope it ends early, rush home, have a really quick dinner and pop by the doctor just before tuition.

but i felt (and am feeling) really uncomfortable and odd after taking my morning shower, and something just told me that i shouldn’t go for work. for one the top of my throat feels somewhat raw from all my coughing. but what kept me at home was the little bit of pain in my chest and how i’m feeling a wee bit breathless. i’m just trying to see if it’s just anxiety or something on my part now.

sigh. all this trouble just because i am quite utterly unable to cough up phlegm whenever it’s in my throat or lungs. and previously i was unable to truly blow my nose for years too, until this recent runny nose. i guess it sucks to be me, cos i can’t even perform basic bodily functions like coughing and blowing my nose properly. heh.

now to look for some steam to inhale so i can try and get rid of the stupid phlegm. and i’m sorry if i grossed out anyone with this entry, haha.

11×11=121

we almost had to install 11 email accounts on 11 different computers. the sheer logistics of that is just mind-boggling, with big question marks everywhere. which computer should we backup their old accounts on? and more importantly how were we going to set up so many accounts and change the passwords for each account? we didn’t have to do all 11 users on all 11 computers in the end, but it was still pretty much a big mess, and an absolute nightmare. at least it’s over. for now.

and now i regret telling the doctor i didn’t need cough medicine, because while my nose is pretty much clear now (after lots of noisy blowing in the morning), a whole neighbourhood of phlegm has taken up residence in my throat and lungs, giving me this annoying cough that stubbornly refuses to go away. i doubt i’ll recover by CNY, but that’s okay. i just have to make sure that i don’t cough around my relatives and grandma or they’ll go “oh you have a cough! cannot eat this and that!” and forbid me from even touching all the new year goodies. yes, i’m a greedy pig, haha.

and i discovered today that walking from the mrt station to work is much faster than taking the shuttle bus, although it is of course also more tiring. but i guess i’ll get a wee bit of exercise done that way, anyway. and the nice morning breeze does make it almost a joy to walk to work, too. i guess that means i’ll be ten to fifteen minutes early for work instead of being five to ten minutes late from now on. haha.

you’re looking at my mint of the moment – wrigley’s peppermint eclipse mints. it’s good mint, with just the right combination of sweetness and mintiness. and it comes in a nifty little flip-top tin that i like, so it scores on the packaging for me too. and it’s not too bad in terms of price either – about 3 bucks for 50 mints. a bit ex, but at least it’s still cheaper than altoids. must buy a few tins at the local 7-eleven outlet (local outlet meaning the SGH one) before they disappear on me, as my favourite sweet treats are liable to do.

for some reason the blackcurrant mentos at the SGH 7-eleven keep disappearing and reappearing. i bought a box last week and when i went back to buy another box the next day, they were gone! odd. apparently they restocked over the weekend cos there were many many boxes of blackcurrant mentos on monday and on wednesday. but when i checked today, they’d vanished from the shelves again? i’m quite bewildered by this. it really doesn’t make sense la. oh well, at least i have my eclipse mints for now.

heh maybe i should have waken up to watch the man u versus blackburn match, after all. cos they won and smithy played :D but he had to get himself yellow-carded and banned for the next match, just when man u has a desperately thin squad of midfielders now. i wish alex ferguson would just splash a bit of the cash and buy javier mascherano already. erh, just because his names sounds nice and he’s good on my football manager games. haha. unfortunately he’s not very hot. but soccer’s about skills and not looks, anyway.

sleepy, sleepy. i feel so terribly unprepared for the SATs but i don’t really feel like caring. oh well. worse come to worst i’ll fork out some more money from my paltry earnings and take it again, if my results really suck. i’m just too tired to really study right now.

always calling, never phoning.

i’m getting more and more absent-minded these days. i think i’ve left my wallet somewhere and forgot about it twice, and my streak of absent-mindedness peaked today, when i left my phone at home. i didn’t even realise it until i was at like clarke quay station, when i’d plunged my hand into my crumpler to feel for my phone, but to no avail. it was only then that it dawned on me that my phone was still by my bedside, where it had last functioned as my alarm clock.

which was really bad news for me considering that a phone’s really essential in my line of work, what with the fact that i’m wandering around the giant SGH compound and the possibility that i might need to call up haslan or choon hua to help troubleshoot stuff, being without a phone was practically a handicap.

and i felt so terribly lost without my phone. i couldn’t contact anyone at will, and neither could anyone contact me. it feels like with a phone, you’re never alone, doesn’t it? everyone’s just a call or message away, and there’s no need to remember any numbers… which is a bad thing, actually. apart from my parents’ numbers, i don’t really know anyone else’s numbers. if kasster didn’t have yy’s number it would have taken quite a bit of creativity for me to contact her about lunch. so lessons learnt today – don’t forget your phone, and go memorise a few phone numbers. i shall memorise the easiest ones… my memory’s a fickle thing.

we finally had lunch at the housemen canteen, and can now understand the numbers of people who flock there for lunch. the food’s not bad, and the prices are almost dirt-cheap. three dishes from the mixed vegetable rice stall only cost $2.50, and the sweet-n-sour pork chop was quite nice. and their post-mix drinks are a mere 60 cents. i guess that’ll be our lunch spot of choice now, provided that it’s not bursting at its seams with people trying to get cheap, good lunches. haha.

the users after lunch were bad. i nodded off once or twice at the first user and headed straight to 7-eleven after that to get a caffeine fix. i was awake for the second user, but my word, doing up the email account for the third user was just sooo sleep-inducing. for one he had like 8000 emails which took FOREVER to backup. the user was around in the office, manually shredding up some documents by tearing them so i was trying not to fall asleep, but to no avail. why oh why do people need to keep so many bloody emails??? and then the last user was the horror, almost heart attack-inducing one, because i’d somehow managed to screw up and all the user’s emails had disappeared. thank goodness i managed to get it all back after some fiddling around, or i might have been in seriously deep shit. but that really gave me a huge scare man.

tuition was frustrating today, because i went there and discovered that qaiyuum hadn’t done practically all his homework. and to top it off he didn’t seem to be making any progress in maths despite having supposedly learnt more stuff during lessons. and the fact that i was utterly exhausted and the weather was just perfect for sleep really didn’t help. it was only through an enormous effort on my part and the popping of lots of clorets that i didn’t fall sleep during tuition. sometimes i wish he’d be more sensible and not make it any harder for me than it already is for me. sigh.

and i’m now in the market for a new mug (as a very early birthday present, maybe?) because my maid just broke mine and all the other ones at home are too ugly for me. i’ll seriously be very happy if anyone got me a nice mug, so i won’t have to go out and get it myself. too tired, too lazy, and there’s no time.

man u versus blackburn tonight at 4am. i’m so tempted to wake up later so i can watch it… well i’ll just use the ipod as an alarm and hope that i can wake up. if not, it’ll be crossing my fingers till i can get to soccernet on a user’s pc tomorrow, or my hands on the new paper. hopefully it’ll be a good result. and smithy’s still out, boo :(

come ringing in your silent symphony

the timestamp on this entry clearly shows that i’m not at work. or that i’m blogging via my phone again. but no, i really am at home now.

i woke up this morning with my nose alternating between a leaky faucet and a clogged up one, my throat still feeling someone sandpapered them and my shoulders aching like someone had sledgehammered them. and the knowledge that i could legitimately not go for work today cos i already have an mc.

after thinking for a while i decided that it be better for me to just stay at home and rest today. even if i had to give up the $36.40 i would have earned if we worked seven hours, which isn’t much but still counts for something. especially when the doctor’s bill came up to 34 bucks last night. but while my cold wasn’t that bad (i’ve gone to school with colds like that) i really didn’t feel up to eight nine hours of travelling around (no one’s going to give you a seat in NEL just cos you’re having a cold), walking around SGH, installing email accounts and having to explain the changes to the users. and fine, i admit that i also felt too lazy to go to work.

so i told my maid i wasn’t going to work, messaged yy, kasster and my superiors (you know calling haslan my superior sounds weird) and went back to sleep.

and i only woke up at like 1pm, despite having turned in at 12 last night. so maybe not going for work was a good idea, after all.

well i guess i’ll just take the time to rest and study for my SATs, which i didn’t do last night because i felt too sick and exhausted to do so. but geez i just woke up and i’m already feeling like i want to go and sleep again. what gives?

sniff. there goes another part of a poor tree somewhere in the world… but no time to mourn, it’s time for lunch.

and still the words you said to me

fish, i’m so bloody tired. heh that’s like an almost constant refrain now. i’m bored, i’m tired, i’m exhausted. but i really am.

and inexplicably so too, considering that i actually felt refreshed and possibly energetic in the morning. it started with my shoulders mildly aching, and by the time our lunch hour rolled about, i’d been solidly hit by this wave of exhaustion that threatened to make me just fall asleep regardless of what i was doing.

i suppose it might be because of my cold/flu (still can’t tell one from the other) that has decided to pay me a visit, making me wake up in the middle of the night to sneeze almost non-stop and kill some trees with the amount of tissue i was using to blow my sprinter of a nose. and now my throat’s immeasurably dry and my nose feels like crap. bah. i hate feeling sick. and it just had to come when all my other little ailments (blister-like thing, mega ulcer under my tongue, bad breakout) are gone. i can only hope that my immune system won’t let me down by allowing me to recover before chinese new year.

and i just realised that the difference between school and work is that at least you can look forward to certain days because you know the timetable’s nice, like our half-day mondays and slack tuesdays. but at work, there really isn’t any respite from the almost punishing 9-to-5 (or 8-to-6 if you’re unlucky) schedule. well in my case it also depends on how many users we get assigned that day but you know what i mean.

and oh yes. YAY man u won!!! man u’s damn lucky i tell you. first there was beating arsenal (though that was more skill than luck i think) then chelsea (lucky darren fletcher, anyone?) and now rio’s fantastic headed goal. probably one of the best headed goals i’ve ever seen, really. and of course djibril cisse’s horrible miss showed that the lucky stars were shining on man u. and yes chelsea drew with charlton! good old charlton. i guess it shows that chelsea might just not be the juggernaut everyone makes it out to be, if man u can beat them, and charlton can triumph over them (albeit in a penalty shootout) then draw with them. so it was a great weekend for man u fans (cos arsenal also lost) although alan smith’s still out with an ankle injury. boo.

why in the world did i sign up for the bloody SATs? i don’t want to study :( not now.

you can come anytime you want

sometimes i really have to marvel at my ability to procrastinate. i know full well that i won’t have much time to study for the SATs considering that i only reach home at about six, and that my wednesday and friday evenings are gone. and yet i haven’t even touched any of the two SAT books i got from maria today.

i guess i should have started studying earlier but then again time is really flying now, while dragging itself out at the same time. it’s only been a few days to about a week, but i already feel like i haven’t seen aiping, maryam and jieyi for about the same period of time as i haven’t seen georgia and gideon (last seen during prom). but hopefully that’s going to change during the second or third day of chinese new year, when we meet up to visit ms ng.

but i frankly am getting quite sick of trying to organise outings or gatherings. some take a long time to reply and some don’t reply at all. and then there’s the details of when and where. it’s so frustrating to find a day when the most people can make it, and it sometimes makes me wish that i could like grab hold of everyone’s schedules and fix a date. which is another problem in itself. the smart thing to do would probably be to just decide the details on my own and see if the rest can make it, but if you don’t already know it, i probably am the most indecisive freak on the block. for some reason or another i just feel insecure about making decisions for other people, especially since i can seldom even make my own decisions.

i suspect that i might end up not watching memoirs of a geisha after all. for one i’m really not in the mood to organise anything at the moment, for another i realise that i forgot to take my SATs into account. and of course, i’ll still be quite broke until the 7th of next month. well i guess we’ll just see if the opportunity presents itself.

humans are ironic and quite possibly stupid creatures. at least, the specimen of homo sapiens typing out this entry is. why is it that even with the knowledge that certain things and actions are ludicrous and irrational, we still do or desire to do them? all it might take is a momentary lapse in willpower and concentration to make it game over. i still have time to think about it, thankfully. but i can’t even begin to explain or question my motives behind wanting to do this something, which i have a very inexplicable urge to do. i guess the only thing holding me back is a tiny thread of rationality, and the possible ramifications of my action. and heh, i might even look back and think, what the hell was i think back then?

uh, ignore my ramblings. the book i use to sort out my thoughts is running out of paper, and i am reluctant to use the nice but too-big A4 sized miquelrius notebook i bought the other day. i want(ed) an A5 sized one, but there were no nice ones and i was feeling a bit desperate. on hindsight it was probably an impulse buy, though i think i probably can still find some other use for it in future. one can never have too many notebooks, anyway.

and okay i shall not deprive myself of the enjoyment i may derive from coming up with a wishlist for my birthday, even though it may make me appear more thick-skinned than i already am. i doubt i’ll be getting more than a handful of presents, but what the hell, this is fun anyway.

the birthday wishlist:
- accessories (no rings – fingers are too fat and knuckles, too big)
- any better than ezra album (especially before the robots or closer)
- butch walker’s letters album
- any switchfoot album
- blessid union of souls’ perception album
- books (chick-lit or thrillers would do nicely)
- nice A5 sized notebook. (must have lines!)
- new watch? (should preferably be able to withstand the rigours of being worn almost 24/7 by me. haha.)
- travel/pocket-sized board games (preferably scrabble, or something that can be played with only two people)
- almost anything green
- possibly brown things
- anything picked out with me in mind :)

and now for the stuff i just want:
- nokia 3250 (i actually need this. i need a phone that can vibrate.)
- macbook pro!
- 30gb video ipod OR sony playstation portable
- canon ixus i zoom
- that pair of nikes i saw in bangkok. and eh the new nike air max 360 looks good too. crap.
- another crumpler
- some things that can’t be bought. haha.