Every November should be like this year's

Kinda thought that I should make better use out of my time spent on the computer, so instead of the usual stalking on Facebook and the browsing through of a never-ending queue of posts on my Tumblr dashboard, I'm here.

To be honest, blogging has become more and more of an obligation, because it kinda seems as if no one reads my entries, or rather, there isn't much interaction from blogging now, compared to last time. And that has really made this place boring as hell. But I figured that I had a lot to write about anyway.

I shall start with my egg-crack day: Thursday, November 3. It wasn't as big a deal as it was supposed to be (lol) and I was really quite disappointed, but in hindsight, I guess it was okay. Probably a reason behind why I was rather down then is because I'm used to being around people and having friends do all sorts of nice stuff for me, so used such that, unknowingly, I've started harbouring greater expectations from everyone.

The morning of my birthday was spent finishing up my PW OP slides during free periods in school. Dry, isn't it? But I just had to do it being the perfectionist I was. Just couldn't leave the job to someone else and be assured that everything'll sail smoothly. :S

Jasper went to find me after the Economics lecture to pass me my gift — a very beautiful tumbler with a photo collage. I was also given a birthday surprise after school by a couple of my closer classmates. On top of that, Rashid & Janet came to find me to pass me a huge plastic board they made complete with birthday greetings. :D

Went for dinner at East Coast Park with my parents after school. Had it at Jumbo restaurant, was pretty good. :) Went home shortly after, where Hui Yen met me to pass me her gift, haha. Was really sweet of her to come down and all!

Shared another birthday cake with my family, and when the candles went out, my birthday more or less ended.

November 4 was slightly better, but it just went downhill towards the end. Don't really want to remember that night; took me quite some of effort and self-encouragement to get over it.

After school that day, I went down to Parkway Parade with some secondary school friends to hang out for a bit and have a celebratory lunch together at Pastamania. I left them early to meet some of my classmates and head over to Somerset to catch 'Footloose'. The movie was okay, but I expected much more emphasis on dance, hahaha. The country soundtrack was good though.

November 5 all the way till November 10, which was the last day of PW for me, was spent with my PW group on OP, the final component. Hosted one of the meetings, and brought them to the McDonald's nearby for lunch, where we bumped into Jun Jie's PW group, haha. Because the final lap is usually the busiest, I compromised quite a lot of trainings, but it's not like compromises have never been made before then; I really did a lot of work for the damned subject.

The day of my PW group's OP was November 10, and it was really dramatic one (in a bad way of course). Was up for the afternoon session along with TJ082, Teck Wee's group. In summary, one of my group members got into trouble with the examiners, and this worked well as a major morale destroyer, after which we met with technical difficulties once at the start, once in the middle and once at the end of the presentation. The outcome? Two of my members breaking into tears after OP, when all of us were supposed to celebrate the end to a whole year's worth of hell. But they're really not to blame, though. But overall, the OP was still alright.

Our group was also not the only one that met with a whirlwind of... interesting, events. Teck Wee's group saw a rather awful spat between two members after OP, which left one storming out of the school. But of course, we did still take some celebratory photos after everyone calmed down and all. At least.

My 11/11/11 was spent with my class and E391. Met Michelle, Amira, Hannah & Cally in the late morning for lunch at Tampines Swensen's, after which we went down to the Udders at Siglap for the class gathering to spend the $200 worth of ice cream vouchers we won from various school events. It was a pretty successful gathering I guess. :)

Headed home for dinner after the gathering and left the house again in the evening for CGM. It was kinda ridiculous because the venue was at Opera Estate, somewhere near Siglap. So essentially I went from Siglap to Pasir Ris and back again, tsk.

Compared to the previous session, CGM that night was much better. Everything was great, from the worship, to the testimony and finally the word. Hui Jie & Yu Yun came along as well, so I had a good time of catching up with some friends I haven't met in a while too. We arranged for dinner next Sunday; can't wait. :)

The morning of November 12 was spent at the Outward Bound campus over at East Coast Park. Came totally unprepared for the gear check for the upcoming India expedition, and as a form of reflection (I already made plans to go shopping actually), I met my parents and we headed down to Queensway Shopping Centre to get my track pants, track shoes as well as a pair of fashionable Nike shoes (which I didn't intend to get initially), haha.

Dropped off at Suntec City after the shopping session for church service. Rev. John Bevere was up that week, and he was powerful and charismatic as usual. Rarely do I ever come across such outgoing and engaging speakers! Thoroughly enjoyed my time with him. And the word he shared was one in season, too. :)

After service, I headed down to Old Airport Road with E391 for a time of fellowship over dinner. Had good chicken chop and I finally got more of my friends to try the amazingly delicious tauhuey there! As expected, they claimed that flew up to heaven the moment the beancurd melted in their mouths. :P

November 13 was spent with my family in the morning over a dimsum meal at Paramount Shopping Centre followed by '那些年,我們一起追的女孩 (You Are the Apple of My Eye)' in the afternoon at Cathay E!hub with a bunch of friends from secondary school. Save the coarse language (though it's mild-sounding, probably because I'm not used to Taiwan's conversational Mandarin) and the many sexual references, '那些年' was a quality catch! The entire story was well-linked with a fluent flow, and the ending was made stellar by the beautiful flashbacks which tied everything together tightly. Lovely settings were used as well — a given for Taiwanese films, and they evoked in me a pleasant sense of wanderlust. :)

Headed to the new McDonald's at Pasir Ris Sports Complex after the movie to have some ice-cream and catch up for a bit. Jun Jie passed me his birthday gift there as well, and it was a cool USB modelled after a Canon DSLR camera. :D

Yesterday, being Ms Awyong's birthday, the class made an elaborate plan to surprise her at her house. We met in school and went down together to Parkway Parade to get a birthday cake, after which we headed to our ultimate destination nearby. As planned, she had a pleasant surprise, and even invited us into her quaint and cozy flat. Had a quick celebration, after which we engaged in mahjong and Taboo together.

We left Ms Awyong's place together with her at around 1. Went back to Parkway Parade with some classmates to have lunch, where I bumped into Hui Jie and saw Huang Jun Xiong filming for an upcoming television drama. It was such a pleasant coincidence! The story didn't end there — on the way back to TJ, I not only saw Rui En, but did so at close proximity, haha. That afternoon, Marine Parade was truly a district of stars.

Guess in essence, those were the highlights of the past week. If I feel like it, I'll update this blog again later with what happened today. Stay tuned. :)

Fulfillment beyond description

As I stare at this 'New Post' page, the inertia increases exponentially. It's so true that when you've put something off long enough, it gets harder and harder to pick it up again. That applies for both blogging and swimming, hahaha.

But anyway, I'm here. Straining my brain juices trying to recall what I did over the past week.

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Last Wednesday was complete hell for me. Had a PW meeting in my house from 11am to 9pm. Initially, when I fetched Jeanette & Sean from the station, I told them to end the meeting by 2pm so I could go down to East Coast Park for Terence's birthday BBQ in the evening, and I was even optimistic about us being able to finish on time and all. But as we started working and finding even more mistakes, my plan became nothing but a cruel joke, LOL. But I guess that was expected. We even thought that we could print our report that afternoon; how hilarious can we possibly get!

Of course, we didn't just work, work and work. In between all the PW was pizza, telling Sean to stop walking around the living room again and again (a habit of his), and distraction from my cousins' running about from room to room (thank goodness they left by 4pm). But we were still rather efficient; by the time we finished editing the WR, it was still quite early. But because we spent three freaking hours slashing 565 words off the report... yeah.

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The next day wasn't any better. Just when I thought the report we so painstakingly edited yesterday was the final copy, Jeanette had to look through it one last time when she got home last night, and come to school with a copy full of yellow highlighting over some points we had to look into again. I was really, really annoyed, but at the end of the day, I guess what she did was still for the good of our report. :/

Because of that, we spent the entire day editing the WR again. We wrapped up at around 6pm, after which we headed to the AVA room to find Kai Yuan's group. Helped the group cut a couple of words off their report, after which all of us left school and headed for Katong Shopping Centre. The whole process of leaving school was a complete frenzy; Kai Yuan's group was still busy cutting words while walking to the turnstiles and my group, on the other hand, did some last-minute laptop plugging in the canteen because we forgot to convert our report to PDF. By that time it was already nearing 7pm so we completely freaked out because we thought the printing shop was already closed, haha.

When we stepped out of school, we started running around frantically trying to hail a cab from the main road. It was hilarious, because initially there were no available cabs at all, then all of a sudden, two cabs simultaneously stopped in front of us. Guess God saw our desperation. :O

When we got to the printing shop, we bumped into Teck Wee. Then together, we started working the magic — printing the reports. Seeing half a year's worth of hard work finally take shape gave me such great fulfillment. Not that the effort will definitely pay off, though, but still.

All of us finished the printing at around 8, after which Kai Yuan, Michelle, Sheryl, Zhong Kai & I went to celebrate with dinner at Old Airport Road. Treated myself to the savoury tauhuey there before cabbing home with Michelle & Kai Yuan, tired but very satisfied from having lived through the most memorable night of my J1 life.

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Saturday night's after-service fellowship was a little different. Scooted off with Hui Yen, Daniel & Andy to nex @ Serangoon for dinner while the rest headed to Jurong Point, because most of the people we would usually eat with went home. It was still good though, because small groups travel fast.

After dinner, I went to get Drink Tea with Hui Yen & Daniel. We then walked around nex for a bit before going home. Saw this really attractive adidas Liverpool backpack; a pity I don't subscribe to any football team. xD

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Monday was the day of my GCE A-Level MT exam. To sum it up in three words: 死定了. But I'm still hoping, wishing and praying for an 'A' grade.

Went for lunch at Long John Silver's with the class, before heading home to do a bit of PW and then going for training @ ITE. Training's becoming more and more manageable for me now; hope that's a good sign. But it never fails to worsen my sinusitis condition, sigh.

Collected my laptop from Fransisca & Jeanette at Tanah Merah before heading off to meet my secondary school friends at Eighteen Chefs for dinner after training. Had a really fun time catching up with them! :) Missed them so much, especially the ones from MJ whom I don't really mingle with nowadays, and the VJ peeps.

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After school on Tuesday, I took a new route home with Michelle & Kai Yuan, which was bus 87 from Bedok Interchange to Hougang. The journey was long and winding, but that gave us time to really catch up with one another, and I enjoyed it thoroughly despite my tiredness. Talked about our childhood, and our elaborate and never-ending list of plans to do after PW formally ends, which includes a food hunt all over Singapore, but Michelle's probably gonna miss out on a lot, since she's going to be away most of the time on an SPH internship (which I was supposed to go for as well, but couldn't even sign up for because I was already accepted into OBI), haha. But don't worry, we aren't so evil so as to leave you out. :P

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There's still much more I'd love to write about, but I guess I'll stop here and post another part tomorrow.

p.s. Really glad I've been living life to the fullest every day lately. Am infinitely grateful for the ones who were always by my side; they're the ones who really made it happen. :)

School makes you do the craziest things

It's past midnight already, and I'm at McDonald's @ Elias Mall. On a Monday night.

Explanation? Sheer misfortune. I reached home at 7.30pm to a whole pile of PW deadlines to meet, and when I turned on my modem, I had a terrible surprise. Turns out the Internet access at home was completely cut off, because the phone line ran into some problems. And the best part? There wasn't any immediate way to fix it. So I had to jolly well do my designing for PW void of any form of online interaction (oh the pain), which took me four whole hours, and then make my way down to the nearest free Internet access zone.

Sigh, I should really stop grousing over this unfortunate situation, lest I run into similar ones in the near future. :/ But I have to say, what happened today was really untimely. The WR's due for submission in 4 days' time, so now's the busiest period ever for PW. And for the Internet to conk out on me during this time... that's really something. Seriously life... :(

Anyway, school today was yet another mundane whirl of events. The most interesting part of today was probably (I think) the training with my OBI teammates. After which I walked to the station with Michelle, Sheryl & Kai Yuan. Got KOI there before travelling back to Pasir Ris with Michelle and Kai Yuan. Really enjoy walking to the station/going home with them because we have the most interesting conversations, hahaha. :)

So, yup. That's all for today. Gotta go back home soon and knock out for yet another long day in school, and a long night of PW, tomorrow. Thank God Deepavali's on Wednesday, tsk. If not I believe I'll just collapse.

Not TGIF, but rather, for the weekend

Woke up at 1.30pm today! Feels so awesome. :) Thank God for the weekend!

The past week has simply been craaaazy. Yesterday was yet another one of those long Fridays again. And seriously, I doubt I've ever had a free Friday when I can just go home after school even once this year. My life's that sad.

Had to bring training attire, my very, very heavy laptop and the usual books and notes to school yesterday because 1. I had PE in the morning, 2. I had yet another PW presentation in the noon and 3. I was (supposed) to have OBI training and then land training after school, after which I would make my way down to Daryl's place for cell group meeting. Can you imagine how refreshing my schedule was?!

I really, really loathe school now because of all the presentation sessions; it just means that I'll have to always carry a heavy laptop to school because right now, I'm the only person in the group who has one. Actually, someone else used to do the bringing, but apparently he lost his charger in the school we conducted our project's pilot test in. =_=' He didn't show up yesterday anyway, so it made no difference... I'd still have to bring it.

After school, Ms Quek called Fransisca and told her that our PW report has been graded. So in the end, I went for an impromptu meeting with Ms Quek to discuss the report, and it didn't end until about 7pm. And that's how I completely missed all the training sessions I was supposed to go for after school. I would so rather train, though. :S

Michelle & Amira waited in the room for us to finish, after which we went down to Mac's together with Cally. Kai Yuan joined us a while later.

Were happily munching on our fries and talking over the meal, when Michelle started noticing this woman who kept looking at our direction and smiling whenever one of us glanced at her. We feared that she'd approach us sooner or later, but she really did in the end, and she got Kai Yuan to help her set up Internet on her iPhone. As expected of weird people (sorry but, yeah =_='), she didn't even have Internet access in the first place, so Kai Yuan had to let her use the Internet provided by his iPhone. After he fixed the Internet, she walked away, so he went all, "I think she's gonna come back soon because my Internet can only reach that far". And after he said that, everyone on the table gave this why-the-heck-did-you-just-let-her-use-your-Internet kind of face. HAHA.

After a short while, this plump man who looked almost exactly like the weird woman came in and sat near us. When I first saw him I thought the woman really returned, and Michelle went all "I know right?!". We didn't notice him walking back to buy his food, so when we were discussing about whether the woman will return, we saw him walk back to his seat again and once again, everyone of us had a mini heart-attack, hahaha. But the weirdness didn't stop there; shortly after, Cally went, "She's back again. I'm serious". And voila, we saw her again, and she even approached us once more. And as expected, she was rambling about how her connection broke, and tried to get everyone of us to fix it back. =_=' We made her leave our table in the end.

Seriously can't take weird people... and that's precisely the reason why I started disliking Bedok since yesterday.

Went down to Daryl's place after dinner for cell group meeting with Tina. It was great! :) Been really long ever since I sat for such an insightful message, though I don't mean it's bad that usually, we would gather and share our experiences and revelations. I couldn't really concentrate during P&W though, probably because I was just too tired. There's only so much I can take, and this week had drained me completely.

Reached home around 11, and that marked the end to a really, really long Friday. Gonna rest all I can... before starting on my revision for Chinese. :(

Still chasing my breath

I wanted to put blogging off to a couple of tomorrows, but I ended up here anyway since I'll never start if I keep procrastinating, haha.

So today wasn't a lazy Sunday at all, like how every Sunday's supposed to be. In fact, it was one of the craziest Sundays ever. Probably because I had a PW meeting in my house. No, wait. Precisely because.

Tried to read a little bit of Chemistry in the morning but I had to go down to the station to pick Fransisca up before I could get started on any tutorial, so in the end I didn't really do anything at all. Ran some errands before I met her, including getting myself a new pair of earpieces when I told her I was still buying ink cartridges to print the WR; little did I know that I made her wait for nearly half an hour in the end, haha.

Started with some research to support some new claims we made in our report when we got back. Jeanette came down after a while, and from then on we just went full steam ahead. It was awesome, because for this entire year, we've never had a single productive meeting. Managed to complete editing and printing the report at 9.30pm, with a lot of laughter, jokes and mini antics in between. The objective of the day was bleak, but the process was, well... different. In a good way of course. ;)

My parents were, as usual, extremely amicable and helped me be a good host to my friends. And I really can't thank them enough for that. Looking back at everything they've done today, including encouraging us as we racked our brains over the report and sending Fransisca & Jeanette home, I really have to say that they're the best parents I could ever ask for. Although it's quite annoying how they're way too generous sometimes, haha.

Chilled a little after I got back from sending them home with my dad, before Michelle started a conference call with Sheryl & I to plot a birthday wish for Kai Yuan. Basically she got us to keep quiet, after which she included Kai Yuan into the conference to supposedly discuss PW with him. And then all of a sudden, when the clock struck twelve, we started singing a birthday song for him. It was quite the failure, but at least we did it with sincerity, haha!

Yesterday was a long day as well. In the morning/early afternoon before service, I was over at the Outward Bound Singapore campus at East Coast Park. Had breakfast at Changi Airport McDonald's with Adam, Chu Bin & Alvin before boarding a bus down to the place, where we attended an important briefing about the India trip I'll be going for at the end of this year. Had an ice-breaking session after that, particularly with the Catholic JC students who'll be joining us for the expedition. From the looks of everything, I guess the India expedition's gonna be quite amazing. Though I can't say this so soon. But I should choose to be positive, right?

Got really tired during service because I spent an entire morning out. But the second half really kept me awake, haha. It was basically a really touching display of testimonies from ordinary people who, by the grace of God, overcame their obstacles.

The church screened the live soccer match between Liverpool and Manchester United right after service because Pastor, being the considerate him, knew that they wouldn't get home in time to catch it in its full glory. Since I wasn't that hardcore a fan of either team, I decided to go for dinner before going back to the hall. Had it at Banquet along Esplanade Xchange, but it wasn't exactly that pleasant due to a mishap which ended up with a bag stained by teriyaki sauce, shoes glazed with mayonnaise and chicken sprawled all over the table. And quite a lot of frustration that followed. The situation was overall quite awkward, but I guess everything's been cleared and all.

Despite all the sticky situations, I have to say that I spent this weekend quite fruitfully. And I believe it wouldn't be fruitful if not for the lows and all. Cliched, I know, so I'll stop. :P

Ah... time to face yet another week.