Today was the year 2 chemistry paper. I had actually swapped duties with Sherry (who lost a bit of wisdom after her dental op), so I didn't need to invigilate today. However, seeing the sheer quantity of paper to carry around, I thought I would help out. I helped carry some scripts and items over to LT3 for one colleague, and to my horror, the doors were still locked! There was about 20 min to the start of paper, so I quickly called up the General Office. My mistake was not speaking to the Operations Manager (OM) himself, and asking someone to pass him the message. I thought my colleague in charge of the LT would be carrying the scripts of the other sections, but she didn't, probably because she was lugging a laptop. So I went to LT1 to get the remaining scripts.

In LT1, they didn't know whether they had enough scripts to spare, so I went down to the hall instead. Those at the hall told me they had just enough, so I went back to LT1 and took what I needed. I went back to LT3, which still wasn't opened yet, and my colleague told me I should have spoken to the OM directly. Sherry came over to help, so we quickly distributed all the scripts. My Level Head suddenly called me, and asked me if we were holding on to extra data booklets. Apparently a whole box had gone missing. So he dispatched me (how convenient...) to return to the staff room to check. (Note that there is a reasonable distance between the staff room to LT3, and to LT1, and to the hall.)

I found the whole box left on top of the cupboard where we keep all the exam stuff. So I quickly lugged the box to the hall, and helped to distribute. By this time, I was sweating so profusely that my entire shirt was soaked, and my hair was plastered to my head. It was so noticeable that my students asked me about it when they saw me after the paper. Darn, I must had looked terrible. Bleah. When I was there, there was a whole section of students missing the second section of the structured questions. I checked the front of the hall, and apparently there wasn't any spare. I ran over to LT1 to get some, but it wasn't enough. Then I went to check with the other 5 colleagues all over the hall, and found a few scripts at a time. There was actually more than enough. Just that the people holding on to them didn't know they had them. Honestly, I was kinda fed-up by then. It wasn't even my duty today, and I was running around all over. The best thing was that my Level Head later commented that when I printed the structured questions I should have bundled them in stacks of 30. So it becomes entirely my fault now. How wonderful.

When I finally returned to the staff room, everyone was wondering why I looked like I got caught in the rain. A foul mood to start the day, to be honest. It took a nice breakfast to snap me out of it. A few of us went for a quick lunch to charge up for marking, and I started around 12.30pm. I think one of the occupational hazards of teaching is a stiff neck, that is easily obtained from long hours of marking.

Anyway, along the way, I'd marked all my own classes, although it's just one and a half questions. The first I marked was my weakest class, and they did very poorly in general for the question I marked (and setted), which was fairly easy, and many from other classes scored well. I was greatly disheartened, thinking it could have been my fault. Then I came across my average class, and they did...well, average for that question. Finally I came across my sports class, which is better in terms of aptitude, and true enough, they generally scored high marks for that question. I noted the strange disparity. Now, in all fairness, I taught exactly the same things to all three classes, and spent almost the same amount of time on the weaker students in remedials; in fact, I spent less time on the sports class due to schedule clashes! Suddenly, I realized the fault never lied with me. I also realized that most of the time, it probably didn't lie largely on the teacher either. The same teacher, teaching the same things, spending the same time, will produce classes that span a huge range of results. How can that be the case if the fault is the teacher's teaching? It's either aptitude, or attitude of the students. Those who didn't bother throughout the terms of course does poorly, unless they have some amount of quick wit to save them in the nick of time. I think it's clear - a person reaps what he sows. Of course, there is a small percentage of people who get away with little effort (ahem...*cough*me*cough), but they suffer different consequences, so it's usually fair anyway.

Still, it's dismaying to mark and see such results; it feels as though the students didn't really learn anything from us at all. What have they been doing all this while??? Kau.

I left the school at about 6 pm, which is very much later than the time I usually try to flee the place. I brought back some scripts home to mark too, and just finished after a much needed nap.

One and a half questions per script. Total of 6 parts to mark, worth 13 marks. About 25 scripts per class. 21 classes marked today. In about 7 hours. It has to be a new record! WoohoO! Average of 3 classes per hour, and less than 1 min per script. Haha, I really am Dash in our little Incredibles family in the staffroom. That leaves me 10 classes for tomorrow, and I suspect I can probably go for my church conference in peace over the weekend, and relax next Mon and Tue! A good mood to end the day, at least~

Today marks the last day of respite. Tomorrow my chem scripts will come in, and I'll be buried in marking once more. I went to help invigilate the year 1 chem paper today, to cover for 2 colleagues who are not around. On my way to school, I was thinking of nasty retorts for Mr Itchy-Mouthed, until God stopped me dead in my tracks, and reminded me of Saturday's sermon on forgiveness. So I had a little session with God, and felt a lot better after it. It really didn't help that Mr Itchy-Mouthed started the day with a tired jibe of exactly the same thing. Even so, during invigilation, I talked to him as I would a normal colleague. Forgive, yes, but I can't help being wary of him still, and he's one of the few people I'd regard as having negligible EQ.

I'm concerned about one of my students KW. Her civics tutor came to look for me to tell me about her situation. Apparently, she had been pushing herself so hard that she had suddenly developed a fear of exams. Her mum had accompanied her to seek psychiatric help, and she is now on MC for this whole week. She came to school today to attempt the econs paper, which is a good enough sign. I gave her a call earlier to ask how she was doing, and to just give her some encouragement. It's a shame, particularly because she had turned around from being playful and unfocused to someone focused, and had shown tremendous improvement in her work. That set me thinking a bit.

I think I still don't know my students as deeply as I want to. Except for a rare few, I don't really know the problems troubling my students. Not that I expect them all to have really serious troubles, but I'm sure there are. Taking KW for instance, I would not be able to gauge that she was this stressed through daily interaction. She seemed so...cheerful. I guess people generally are able to hide certain negative emotions. I'm just wondering whether there are more like her around, since it's quite apparent the kids of this generation are less resilient, and are facing possibly more stress.

I also note in shock another death of a NSman just this morning. I think this is the second case in 3 weeks of a NSF serviceman having a run, collapsing, and passing away after being rushed to hospital. The circumstances sound, in fact, identical. Added to the recent drowning, that's a whopping 3 deaths in about a month! I think people are bound to sit up and take notice of this. I'm sure the army will be under scrutiny now. What I find curious is that I seriously doubt army training has become harder. I've talked to full-time army personnel, and even from my own army experience, the general conclusion is that army life and training have been improving along the years, and training has become less tough and not tougher, especially with growing emphasis on technology rather than manpower. I wonder if this has any link to the lacking resilience...?

Today was a fairly relaxing day for me (a.k.a. no admin). The day started with a potluck breakfast for science department, and I went to help the girls carry their soya bean milk. There was a huuuuge spread of food. There was fried bee hoon, chicken wings, otah, prata, sandwiches, pancakes, cakes, pastries, green bean soup...heavy meal there, but shiok! Actually it was a department meeting, led by our resident (quirky) HOD. She introduced the 7 new staff added to the science department, briefed us on some issues, and then we had a demo through-train lesson. I must say, teaching through-train now looks very challenging, but extremely fun. I hope I'll take to it like fish to water, because I do think it's where I wanna be at, at least for next year. Play-time! Kekeke.

Then came the next most dreaded thing - SPA. Four of us came to meet and discuss the marking of the latest Skill A (planning) scripts, and we took a whole 2 hours to go through 10 sample scripts. It's a disgusting, time-consuming, and blood-puking process. Personally I pronounce it as Si3 (i.e. die) Ba4. My guess is that marking SPA shortens a teacher's lifespan, much like smoking does, although without the risk of cancer; high blood pressure is hard to say though. I aim to finish marking all the scripts by tonight. Even as I type this, I have 6 scripts left. Bwahaha. One more Skill C (analysis), and I'll be done with SPA for the rest of this year! Good riddance, I say!

Lunch was at Sizzler's, Suntec, treated by my Level and Subject Head. 17 of us chem teachers were there, making a ruckus while trying to order our meals. Another big meal here, and I'm sure I must have put on some weight today. The tenderloin steak was pretty good, although I'm still not very impressed with the salad bar. I am still looking forward to my return to Ikoi restaurant for a sashimi buffet. Yum! Thanks to one itchy-mouthed colleague and my Level Head, I became the talk/joke of the meal. It all traced back to my one innocent comment about this new teacher being pretty, which got interpreted very drastically by those two jokers. My Level Head has been referring to her as my meng4 zhong1 qing2 ren2 (dream lover), and the other guy has been talking as if I'm interested in her, claiming that someone else told him about it, which I very seriously doubt.

They were going on and on about how I should pursue her, and one of the tutors who used to teach her, chipped in, and offered to secure me her phone number. Itchy-mouth dude was talking very loudly, and the conversation slowly spread down the table. One other colleague misheard the name, and thought I was interested in another teacher, who's married with two kids. In the end, it spread to the 3 new chemistry teachers, and one of them exclaimed, "But I think she's attached!" Hmmm...I think my reputation has just gone utterly down the drain. I'm pretty sure from the bits and snatches the others were hearing, they probably really thought I was interested in that teacher. The other day I was talking about how I can't imagine committing murder, and couldn't think of anyone I really disliked, but hey, I'm getting closer to that now. Frankly, I think I would be less agitated had I actually liked that girl, but I don't. And I definitely suspect there were those who didn't realize it was a joke. Worse if that girl actually hears about it. Goodness, I think I can easily deal with a situation where the girl I really am interested in gets to hear about it, but I think in this scenario it's a lot more tricky. I can't admit to something that isn't true, and denial only makes me subject to further jibes. I think I'd better avoid that girl, just to avoid cases like some nosey parker walking by when I was talking to her and making some inane remarks.

In the evening I went to meet the dad of one of my boys. He smsed me the other day, requesting to meet up to talk about his son. Now I was thinking and preparing for the worst scenario of him objecting to his son being in church, since he wasn't a Christian, but I was proven (thankfully) very wrong. He's a really open-minded guy, who has a rather unique style of parenting, and the positive effects do show up in the son. The kid has a certain sensibility and independence, and now I know where it came from. We had a very long chat of almost 3 hours, certainly more than what I expected, but it was interesting to talk to him. He's one of those self-made man, and is very well-travelled. The thing that struck me was that he was conversing with me like a peer, which I found interesting because he is clearly older, and more mature. The most important thing was that he was supportive of his son being under my care, which is essentially all I needed to hear from him.

We had dinner at Singapore Recreation Club, and I had never been there before. I had actually withdrawn a lot more money, not expecting that he would be giving me a treat, or that the food was not expensive. The cafe there charged prices much like a food court, ranging from 3+ to 6+ for a meal. After dinner, we headed to the lounge for some wine, and the glass of wine was around 4 bucks only! Haha yeah I know I sound sua ku (i.e. ignorant), but my impression of these clubs had always been expensive to get in as a member, and expensively posh inside. The latter impression had been proven wrong, and I found out that it now costs $8k upfront to be a member and $40/month after that, which is a reduced price compared to previous years, but man, I still can't imagine myself forking out $8k for this. I would have bought a 40" plasma TV, and home theatre system without batting an eyelid had I that kind of money to spare.

Analyzing my own reaction, I am now dead sure I'm pretty willing to forgo certain realms of life experience, particularly living opulently.

I'm back from a pool session! Interestingly, this morning a colleague asked me, "Tonight go where happening?" and I told her I had no plans. Somehow things just crop up nicely when I don't plan stuff. J and Collin wanted to play, so I happily went along. Shups! came to join us somewhat later. Today I was very inconsistent. Some games I played well, some games were terrible. The form was not there one game, and was there in another. Bleah. I need to play more often!

I was in Orchard in the afternoon (perk of teaching!) and had lunch at Rabbit Brand Seafood Delicacies, 3rd floor of Lucky Plaza. They were advertising shark's fin and abalone at low prices. I had a meal for $4.90 that had a bamboo bowl of very nice chicken and mushroom soup (chinese kind), a bowl of rice, a couple of big pieces of lettuce, scrambled eggs with a sprinkling of shark's fin on top, chinese tea, and a bowl of snow fungus and red dates dessert. I don't really care about the shark's fin, but the meal itself was quite delicious. My only gripe was that it was not filling enough for me (too little rice in one bowl perhaps), so I added a plate of braised groundnuts. The meal was very worth it for the price though. Now there is another cheap place to eat at in Orchard! Thanks to Sherry for the recommendation.

I think tomorrow my Level Head and Subject Head are giving a lunch treat. Yay! More good food awaits! However, looming in the horizon is another treat from me and two other colleagues for our confirmation (as teachers). That one should cost each of us more than a hundred bucks...ah well, we gain some, we lose some. Heh.

First day of school again, after a month long holiday. The inertia is extremely strong, to say the least. It started with some sharing session about counselling, but interestingly enough, I've already learnt it through my church's School of Leaders 3 training, and in greater detail too. It was identical, except that it was further simplified. The day would have been great, if not for my most dreaded workload - adminstrative matters.

I was basically running all over the place, zapping scripts, printing purchase orders, settling payment records, and etc. Only now do I finally get a breather because there is a bottleneck somewhere for one of the admin tasks, and I have to wait. Argh, I can't stand admin!!! I shall flee from school the earliest possible today...kekeke...

I was reading an article in the Sunday Times today about handphone addiction. Honestly, I think in the current era, I will not call it an addiction anymore. It's more like an over-reliance on that device that has worked it into our very lifestyle. Especially with the gradual increase in number of functions, the handphone is becoming an all-in-one device. If not for the fact that my cell group had given me a MP3 player for my birthday, my handphone would probably serve as my radio and MP3 player right now.

The line that struck me came from this lady who had lost her handphone. She was complaining about how it devastated her, and she commented (not in these exact words) that now all her stored numbers are gone. She said with her new phone now, she had to wait for people to sms her in order to regain their numbers, and lamented on how the handphone numbers of people she rarely contacted would thus be forever lost.

Duh. Why would I be sad over numbers of people I rarely contact in the first place? I find this phenomenon puzzling, even as I myself as subject to it. I mean, sometimes, we may bump into some acquaintance outside, talk a bit, and then exchange numbers. To me, it seems like it's more out of courtesy than anything else, because frankly, I doubt I will ever need to use that number. If that person was important enough, he or she wouldn't just be an acquaintance anymore. And likely, I would have other means of contacting him or her. Sometimes, as I scroll through my contact list on my phone, I wonder why some numbers are there in the first place. I think, if I were to run a poll of 'What percentage of your contact list in your phone do you actually contact?', I would say the average result should be 20% maximum. Hmmm...I think if I were to run the same poll except that it's for Friendster's friend list, the result should be almost identical. 80% redundancy. Then again, likewise for MSN contact list, and ICQ contact list!

I'd lost my handphone once, and as far as I recall, all the numbers that were important to me had been swiftly recovered, because they belonged to friends who I regularly see online on MSN or ICQ in the first place, or old friends whose handphone or home phone numbers I had memorized in my head. Right now, I think my contact list is a bit more utilized because of my colleagues' and students' numbers being in it. Sad isn't it? I think I know a lot of people, and have a wide social circle, but how many would I really bother about? How many acquaintances, and maybe friends once, have slipped through my fingers over the years?

It's baptism day today for my boys! I arranged for all of them to go for baptism together for several reasons:

1. They requested for it to be in June, because many of them have birthdays in June
2. I want them to do it together for the sake of team spirit
3. I want to baptize them altogether for economy of scale

They were very excited about the whole thing. So was I actually. It's the first time I'm baptising anybody at all, and all 6 of my boys at that. J was getting baptised today too, and I had to help Adrian with that. So Adrian and me stayed in the baptism pool to baptise all 7 people. The water wasn't cold initially, but if you stayed in there that long, it became cold enough. I find it amusing that quite a few of my kids like to shake their head when they come out of the water, and end up splashing water on our faces. Adrian commented that he has not baptised so many people in total compared to the years before. My guess is that he's happy too.

I'm more glad for having cell group with my boys today, and everyone is around. For various reasons, I had to let Adrian babysit them, and I think I haven't met them for cell group for about 3 weeks already. The more joyous thing would be that I have a new cell member now. One of my boy's P6 cousin has officially joined us. Next thing would be to pack him up and send him for encounter! Hehe.

After service and dinner, J, Collin and I headed down to Tanjong Pagar to meet Elaine and Steph. Steph had suggested checking out Eskibar, which is this pub that is super cold, and patrons are supposed to wear winter jackets inside. Or at least that's the impression we all got from seeing their website. When we walked in, we saw a small bar counter in a very narrow walkway, and we had to squeeze our way through the few people seated at the counter. Narrow is an understatement actually. It was pretty cold when we walked in, and we headed further in to explore the place. The next room was cool only, and totally empty. I walked around and found that the next room was all to the place. No way to go upstairs, and nothing further in except a toilet. They were playing trance music, and I was cool with that, but otherwise, we were pretty disappointed.

We expected a bigger place than the shophouse premises. We also thought the whole place would be chilling. The fact that it was pretty empty on a Saturday night was surprising too, although the place became crowded nearer to 11 pm. The decor was nice, and at the time we were there, it was fairly quiet. When Elaine asked me what I thought of the place, I told her that it really depends on what you want to do here. If we want to chill somewhere and chit-chat, this would be a nice place. What I find most disappointing though are the drinks. The jug of long-island tea I ordered is kinda small. The drink tasted like too much lime, and too little alcohol. I think when I had set Zouk's long-island tea as a benchmark, most other places fail terribly. We played some new card games that J taught, and we left around 11 pm to hunt for food, with J heading home.

We drifted down to Smith Street for supper, and I was quite surprised to see very few stalls still open, and very few people around. As I was ordering char kway teow, I asked the uncle what time the place is opened until, and I was shocked that it closes at 11 pm usually, and opens a little later on Saturdays. I think my (misguided) impression of Smith Street is that it is open to wee hours to cater for the supper crowd. Apparently not.

The gals left at around midnight. Collin and I hung around at some coffee shop and had a hearty chat for some 3 hours. We could have stayed longer if not for this group who sat near us, and all three guys in the group smoked. One guy practically had a cigarette between his fingers throughout. I counted 4 sticks in the 40 mins they were there, and less than 2 minutes between each new stick roughly for this one guy. It doesn't help that we were downwind from them. That man was practically a walking, talking chimney of pollution.

I brought my boys to watch Batman Begins this afternoon. My choosing to meet them half an hour before showtime was a mistake; I should have made it 45 mins to be safe. The only fortunate thing was that GV Plaza has a penchant for horribly long commercial times before blockbusters. True to my expectations, commercials and trailers ran for 20 minutes before the movie began. I decided to be nice and treated them to snacks and drinks. I always forget how beastly expensive these things cost at the cinema, because I can usually do without them. I bought a total of 5 drinks, 2 boxes of popcorn, and 1 box of nachos, and that costed $25.50! (I can imagine how much collateral costs there will be raising kids next time...) On junk food. An unhealthy expenditure on unhealthy food and drink.

I think the movie finally did Batman justice. I thought the first Batman was good. Jack Nicholson was great as the joker. I like Batman Returns too, although it was dark and brooding, but it had a certain visual style. And then Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, came out and for me, spoiled the whole thing. Just bigger, badder, and more colourful villains. If you really think about it, of all the famous superhero icons, Batman stands as one that is very unique. He is the only one who actually does not possess superpowers. He is 100% human. No special ability. No special talent of any kind. He only possesses a whole truckload of money, and owns many cool gadgets. I guess this movie finally explored the human part of him. In fact, the movie actually manages to explain why he became Batman by his own choice, and why bats. The villains are not products of comic-style origins (e.g. fall into some chemical and gets disfigured with huge grin on face, a.k.a Joker), but are rather human as well. A solid cast for this movie. I mean, we are talking about Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman. All established actors here. Christian Bale is fairly low-profile, but is a credible actor too. The movie actually makes Batman a symbol of fear as he does battle, and I think that's the really cool part. My only gripe: the batmobile has changed form. Now it looks like an armoured tank of a car, with way too many tires. The older sleek vehicle is much more elegant. It's a good movie...now I only wonder what Fantastic Four will turn out to be.

It is interesting to note the sheer number of comic book adaptations these days. If we go waaaay back in time, there was Superman, which spawned several sequels after catapulting Christopher Reeves into fame. Then it was the Batman series. I don't really recall others, except Spawn. All of a sudden, X-men came into the scene. It became widely popular, and very successful, and then it led to an onslaught of superhero movies: Spiderman, Daredevil, Hellboy, The Punisher, The Incredible Hulk, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Elektra, Constantine, and the up-and-coming Fantastic Four. Are the movie-makers finally running out of ideas, or did they finally realize that there is a wealth of literature to be borrowed from books and storylines from comic books (that can go on and on for indefinite number of sequels)?

I think my boys enjoyed the movie too, although they don't have much of a clue about the earlier Batman movies, except the most recent (sucky) two. After the movie, we went to the arcade for a while. I realized how out of touch I am with the games now, and I probably can hold my own only at an arcade with a lower set difficulty. But I still am good at one game: Photohunt! Hahaha. Now that is one game I can always play to surprise people. I'm good at spotting differences, and seeing minor details that look wrong. The best thing is, from the moment I entered teaching and started marking, I knew I found a home for this skill of mine. I mark fast because I can quickly spot anomalities in answers, and that genuinely saves me a lot of time in my profession.

The good thing I realized is that at least I don't have much of a generation gap with my boys. I pretty much still play the same things they do. Hmmm...maybe I haven't fully grown up yet. Bwahaha...

I'm baptizing all 6 of my boys tomorrow! My first time baptizing...so exciting! Heh.

I changed the picture at last! Honestly, I was getting sick of seeing my face drawn onto Naruto for so long, but I had no inspiration for a new one. Until just now. Bwahaha. I had a good laugh doing this one. I didn't put in my trademark 'kianseh kyoshi' this time round, in order to fit in the theme of the original poster, but I think it still ends up kinda fitting my profession doesn't it?

Sigh. When will I be able to add in the other half of the poster? *Wonders wistfully.

I went back to school (finally) to attend to my student in need this morning. I met him at about 9 am, and he told me he had some questions for me. He asked me about some pretty fundamental things, which he missed because of his councillor duties at various times, so it was alright. Then, after about half an hour, or rather, 4 or 5 questions, he told me, "Yep. That's all." The conversation went like this:

Me: "That's all? So few questions ah?"
He: "Yeah. Read through the whole thing once...should be ok."
Me (visibly impressed): "So you only weak in organic chem...everything else ok?"
He: "Ok."
Me (relieved): "No questions about the tutorials?"
He: "Must read tutorials ah? I only read the notes."
Me (in abject horror): "..."

Yep, as I said yesterday, these kids haven't revised enough to know what they don't know yet. I received a few more questions by sms throughout the day, but so far, I'm still relatively undisturbed, compared to the maths tutors who have about 5 students per day this week for consultation. Hmmm...something is wrong somewhere.

I was going off from the school when I saw the fruit juice stall uncle and aunty, and I stopped to chat with them. They're a really friendly and humourous couple actually. The noodle stall aunty was there also, and she asked if I was a student here before. She actually recognized me too! Come to think of it, it's not that surprising also, considering I always spend an inordinate amount of time chatting with stall owners, be it school canteens or hawker centres I frequent. She said I still looked the same. No leh. I grew fatter.

It was K-Lunch time! I went with Sherry and her buddy, Sharon (NIE coursemate also), to Kbox. I'm not trying to advertise for them, but frankly, at a price of $6.50, I got to sing for about 3 hrs and 15 mins, with a pineapple fried rice and ice lemon tea thrown in. Not good deal then what? Bwahaha. I think I sang not bad today...at least didn't miss many notes. I finally regained my voice! And after singing almost 5 consecutive Shin songs at the end of it all, I lost it again. Ah well. Easy come, easy go. Back to a bad cough again...

I didn't plan for the rest of the day actually. I was prepared that it would end at 2 plus originally. The two of them wanted to drop by Popular, so I accompanied them. They looked like they were about to go off, but then suggested dropping by Parkway Parade for a short while, and so we did. Sharon bought quite a few things, and we decided to stop somewhere for a snack. In the end, we settled for Ya Kun Kaya Toast, right outside Parkway. Wah seh, the half-boiled eggs from Ya Kun are really perfect! And the kaya toast is mmmmmm crispy.

We bumped into Sharon's brother-in-law there. It turned out that he is a manager at Fish N Co, which is next to Ya Kun, and he was outside taking a break. Actually, in the whole of today, I bumped into 3 different colleagues, 2 separate groups of students, 1 church friend, 1 army friend (but didn't get to talk to him). Both girls with me commented that when they go out they hardly bump into anyone, and conclude it's because of me. And the truth is, I actually believe so! Haha...I have an unbelievably high frequency of bumping into people I know. We ended up sitting there chatting from 4.30 to 6.30 pm, without being conscious of the time. Sharon's kind brother-in-law then came out, and passed us fried calamari and fries, saying, "See you all sit here so long, must be hungry. Here, take this."

I noted the various shocked expressions on the faces of customers nearby. I was joking that now the people will probably hang around Ya Kun, hoping that they'll get free Fish N Co food if they sit out there very long. Hehe. We ended up chatting for another hour, before we decided we all needed to visit the loo. And it still wasn't the end of the day! After we came out, we decided to walk around and shop some more. By the time we were finally done, it was slightly after 9.

I walked over to the bus stop, ready to go home. Then I bumped into the one church friend (mentioned earlier), who, after we talked a while, suggested that we go and play pool. I didn't play too well at the start, because there was no powder in the place, and my hands were sticky. In the end I changed to a much smoother cue, and things began to pick up. We were playing 9-ball pool, which I used to like very much. However, as time goes by, I realized that my placing and shots were far too inconsistent to play 9-ball well, so I think I'll stick to 8-ball more. But today's rebounds were deadly accurate. Even those I had to get out of being snooked with extreme spins were executed well. I'm happy with that, at least.

A surprisingly long and entertaining day, for one so unplanned. Haha, guess I fit the spontaneous part of my profile after all.

I'm actually in school now! Haha. I think I'm already quite blessed. I didn't need to return to school at all since week 1 of the holidays, so that was an undisturbed 3 weeks thereabouts. Finally I received a SOS from a student! I was wondering where they all disappeared to. I couldn't believe that till now, no one has panicked enough to ask for help. I wonder if 1) I'm unapproachable (but they always approach me in school leh); 2) They are confident (but their usual results say otherwise leh); 3) They haven't revised enough to know what they don't know (most probable); 4) They are leaving the consultation to the Common Test week, because Chem is on the last day (likely too).

Anyway, that student who came to look for me only had a half-hour worth of questions, which was not too bad already, considering that he hadn't been taking his work very seriously so far. Not that I want to come back to school to entertain them, but then, I wonder how they are faring.

Hmmm...nah, don't care liao. I should go enjoy the last bit of my holidays. KTV time~ Still coughing though. Hope today doesn't turn out like the last fiasco. I want to sing~

Today I had to attend this election official training at Toa Payoh. The stupid thing is that when I searched for the address on streetdirectory.com, I typed the 'No. 9' as '9', and I actually printed out the wrong map. So there I was, searching for the stupid block (old estates have horrible numbering systems I realize), and when I reached it, I found no training centre. So I went a-hunting along the main road, and found that it is in an old, unused primary school. Ok lah, I dumb lah, but at that point, I was trying to get out of a maze of disorganized flats, that had almost everywhere boarded up because of renovation. Argh.

It was dead boring at first, until I had to sms various people to keep awake. And sane, perhaps. After some briefing, and touring round exhibits, we had to do this simulation thing, whereupon we take on different roles on the actual day. And I kenna PO (Presiding Officer) Wheelchair. Bwahaha. We were split into two groups at each of two stations, so while one group roleplay the POs, the other group will be voters. So there I was, wheeling willing (sounds funny, huh, "wheeling willing"?) and unwilling people, and there was this guy from another station stopping me and asking me to detour one big round, which I know is the wrong route. I told him so politely, and he stopped me again. I repeated myself politely, and told him that he can check with the facilitator of my group, and he still insisted I'm going the wrong way. I didn't expect it, but I raised my voice (in irritation) at him, saying, "Hey, I know I'm going the right way. If you got any problems, go and talk to that guy over there" and bulldozed my way through.

I know he was just trying to do his (roleplay) job, but at least he could have just listened to what I said, and check with the guy in charge right? I didn't expect to meet inflexibility in a simulation exercise, for goodness' sake. And at the 'polling station', yet another joker told me I'm going the wrong way, and insisted despite my explanation. This time round, I went to ask the guy in charge, and he explained to me (like I was some dimwit who didn't understand his instructions the first time round) exactly what I already knew. Wah kau. I hate this kind of crap...the kind that spills over from other people's incompetence. All civil servants somemore. Bleah. Now I know why there is so much red tape in the government. All rigid brains. I'm glad I'm teaching in a school, and not working in the ministry. It would kill me to work with and for this kind of people.

Did another personality test out of boredom (thanks Elaine for the link~). At first I thought little of it, but I raised an eyebrow when I saw the 'careers' comment. Take the test too!

Your answers suggest you are an Innovator
The four aspects that make up this personality type are:


Summary of Innovators
- Energetic and creative taking inspiration from everyone they meet
- Enjoy flexible work environments with few rules and many opportunities for fun
- Think of themselves as imaginative, sociable and sympathetic
- May not think logically about their ideas

More about Innovators
Innovators are fun-loving, creative, sensitive people who enjoy developing their ideas by discussing them with others. This group supports the people around them and expects the same in return. Others are drawn to Innovators because of their love of life, caring nature and openness.

"Innovators are most likely to say they do their best work when they start at the last minute, according to a UK survey."

Innovators are good at spotting opportunities and recognizing potential in people. Innovators put all their energy into new projects and their enthusiasm motivates others to support their plans.

In situations where they can’t use their talents or are unappreciated, Innovators may become rebellious and unfocused. Under extreme stress, Innovators may become preoccupied with meaningless details.

Innovators may over-extend themselves or put a night out with friends ahead of more pressing commitments.

Innovator Careers
Innovators are drawn to careers that require teaching or counselling, where they can work with and help encourage the development of others.

I dropped by Sim Lim square just now with Sherry to look at LCD monitors to replace her dying CRT. I must say, looking at all the chic new monitors makes me want to change my monitor too! Bwahaha. Well, but I'm still a practical man, so I'll postpone that purchase till my current monitor dies. I'm pretty deadset on 19" though. Might as well go for a bigger one.

I spent $50 on 3 code3 DVDs too! I bought The Matrix, X-Men 1 & 2 to replace the ones my ex-gf took back (because she bought them, of course). I decided to upgrade from VCDs, even though it costs a lot more. And the reason is to pave my way towards buying a new DVD player or possibly home theatre system. Most likely the former though. I would save the latter for when I get married, get a new house, with a room that can hold a really good system (read: soundproof!). There are some things I won't waste money on, and then, there are some things I'd blow a lot on. A 40" plasma TV would go really well with a home theatre system 2 to 3 years down the road. Keke...

I have been curiously wondering what is being built in my neighbourhood right now. A certain open space with trees and seats had been levelled, and the whole area boarded up recently. Only today I finally caught a glimpse of what is being built, and it looks like a street soccer court. Right now there's only a cement wall, but the gaps on opposite breadths of the rectangular space seem fitting for goal posts. It strikes me as a little weird to build this in an old folks' estate, but after some thought, I realized that there really are quite a few kids who use the basketball court. Ah well, I hope new life can be infused into the estate...

I've been following the Liu Hongmei murder case on the news, and it's really shocking. I think it really is one of the more gruesome murders in recent times. The body was chopped up into several parts and packaged into plastic bags and boxes, and disposed off in garbage and Kallang River. I tried imagining the person I dislike the most (actually it was quite hard to remember anyone I disliked to start with...), and can't imagine how much you must hate a person in order to want to kill him or her. I tried to imagine that I had to chop up a corpse, and I can't picture it either. It must have been done in cold blood.

What I find disturbing is the accounts of people on the accused. I mean, how many murderers, terrorists or criminals of any sort who get featured on the news, and people get interviewed about them would say, "Oh, this man is a true incarnate of evil!" It has always been "he's a responsible man", "he's a loving husband" etc. Essentially, none of these criminals ever look the sort capable of killing someone in cold blood, chopping up the corpse and dumping the remains into a river and garbage dump. Which actually implies that anyone around you could well become a murderer someday, if circumstances turn that awry. Scary huh?

Latest news: about 5700 accounts have been stolen, and about 3 accounts have already been used to make $10k worth of purchases. The good news is that the banks have stated that the owners of those accounts will not be held financially responsible for those transactions.

I went to catch Mr and Mrs Smith today! It was quirky, and man, those two sure look darn good on the big screen. Angelina Jolie was smouldering! And Brad Pitt was...well, just being Brad Pitt. I'm wondering if there's any hair style he would actually look bad in. Maybe disco hair, but that's about it. I think the movie is quite funny, very entertaining, although I really didn't like the ending. I would have thought they could have developed the plot a bit more rather than just a massive shootout of croonies. Now I know why the reviews all commented about their apparent chemistry...

I was watching the news and there was this one about some third party company whose computer system was invaded by a virus that reportedly stole over a hundred thousand accounts from Visa and Mastercard. Apparently, in Singapore, it's estimated that maybe 8000+ Visa accounts and 10000+ Mastercard accounts may be affected. That got my (paranoid) mum into a panic, so to calm her down, I went to do internet banking for the first time, just to check for unusual activity in my accounts, as advised by the official spokesman about this theft incident. Technically, I'm assuming my computer is safe from spyware and viruses, so wonder which is more dangerous...

I just came back from one of my boy's birthday party. It was actually quite fun, but it was a long boring wait at the MRT for the various guests. We were supposed to meet at 4.30 pm, but by the time the last guy reached, it was 5.05 pm. Call me biased, but I do not have the patience to wait 35 min for a guy. It didn't help that I took cough syrup, and a super strong lozenge that rendered me drowsy for the whole duration.

I finally got to see the girl who has been turning my cell group upside down. Somehow, intuitively I guessed it was this girl I saw at the MRT without being introduced, and was later confirmed. A bubbly and very petite girl, who looks a little nerdy. At first I was wondering whether it was some beauty or something, but on hindsight, I realized that three of my boys seem interested precisely because of her nerdiness, because they themselves are somewhat like that. Which was probably why I spotted her straight out. Very amusing for me as a bystander, of course.

We hid out at the birthday boy Sherwin's house for a short while. His 12-year old cousin challenged me to chinese chess out of boredom, but suffered a horrible defeat. We then went to the pool room, and my boys asked me to teach them pool. Not very teachable though; they didn't even practise what I taught them. Only Sherwin showed some semblance of normal play. He challenged me though, which I thought was somewhat insane. It was a mere 7 feet table. I decided to give him an advantage by playing with my right hand only. He still lost. He asked for a rematch, specifying that I use only my left hand. He lost that one too. Eventually I left them to their own devices; I think they just wanted to have fun, and not learn how to play well.

Sherwin's dad handled the entire barbecue on his own. He was equipped with this special charcoal that was shaped like pebbles, and were glossy, probably coated with those chemicals that enable them to catch fire easily. He also had those solid fuel burners that you see at buffets to warm food, and he used it to start the fire. The food consisted of big fat sausages, lamp chops, beef, gigantic prawns served like in Fish n Co, crabs, chicken wings, and they tasted excellent! It helps that Sherwin's dad is a chef at Orchard Hotel, of course. One of the best barbecues I've went to!

I saw my boys playing, one was performing magic tricks, and somehow I felt a certain pride. It's a feeling of satisfaction, seeing them slowly grow up, learning new things, and my participation in the process. The other day, my boy Adrian's mum commented that she wished Adrian would just be able to become 10% of what I am, and I told her that he will surely surpass me. After I thought it through awhile, I realized how much I meant it, and how much more a real parent hopes for that, if I, as a spiritual father, hopes for it as well. I hope all of my boys will surpass me in the things I have done or will do. I hope they all grow into fine, God-loving men of character. I hope, and I pray so, indeed.

I missed service today, in order to attend a colleague's wedding. I rushed like mad, and ran after the train on seeing the next train is arriving in 1 min, and the next train is 9 min later, so that I'll be punctual. Everyone else turned up late anyway. How ironic.

The wedding was at Fisherman of Christ Fellowship, a church in Queenstown. When I reached there, I realized why I found the name familiar...it is next to Church of our Saviour, which I went to when I watched Godspell a couple of years back, I think. Anyway we had to sit outside the main hall, because we were late, so we had to watch the whole wedding through a glass wall (and pillars). Interestingly I saw a couple of chem eng people, one at the reception counter, another one in Wisma. More interestingly, I bumped into the girl at the reception counter again at Borders later.

In any case, it was a mini-gathering for the teachers at the wedding reception. We all sat together, waiting to eat the food, but the speeches before the dinner buffet was exceptionally long (due to translation to English). After the wedding, I thought we could go hang out, but in the end, only left with me and Tun Leng. We went down to Orchard to shop eventually. I found a nice sling bag, but I'll shelve the purchase for another day. Not sure if I really want it yet. Heh.

I just came home from a long (and expensive) pool session with shups!. We started playing about 7.30 pm, and ended almost at midnight. Between the two of us, the pool session costs $44.90. Haha...the cost is much higher with only two people playing. I was quite off-form. I feel like I'm playing below my usual standards. Bleah. Dunno what's the problem also. Sigh.

I waited with her for her NR7, and goodness, we waited from 12.05 am to 12.45 am! Come to think of it, we should have played another half an hour. We were playing better nearer the end...Anyway, the frequency was supposed to be about 15-20 minutes. I missed whatever buses I had left, and so strolled home in about 20 minutes from Bras Basah area. Looks like the pair of Bata sandals I have is still quite comfortable to walk that distance back without making my feet hurt, to give it some credit.

It's interesting to walk home at night. I see people who sleep at the bus shelters and other areas, which makes me wonder how many homeless people there actually are in Singapore. I do see quite a few people sleeping on the streets near my area...hmm...foreign workers? I saw a guy going to pee in the bushes too; there was no public toilet within the vicinity, I guess. Parkview Square looks particularly gothic late at night, and with nobody around. It still reminds me of the scene in Ghostbusters one, Empire State Building, I think. I almost wanted to go in and look around, but didn't want to reach home too late. It's quite a grand-looking place actually...just horribly under-utilized.

I've uploaded the Batam pics! I am a fast worker...bwahaha.

I just came back from Karaoke. Lesson learnt: do not go to KTV when you have a sore throat and a cough. I realize I really do a lot of stupid things (my mum will happily nod in agreement), in that I don't bother about my state of health and go out. Recently there were two counts of playing badminton while sick. One was with a fever, the second was with flu. I couldn't hit the high notes. Sob. I couldn't sing songs I normally have no problem with. How tormenting. Bleah. I left after 2 hours when I feel my throat giving way and I can smell flu in my nose.

Incidentally, the Party World at Shenton Way is really, really big. I need to recover soon! So frustrating. For the past 3 weeks I've been planning to go KTV, but no one seems to be free. Then now when I have sore throat, then people jio. Murphy's law clearly demonstrated here.

I've finally finished the website for my travel photos! As of now, pictures of my China trip and KL trip (way back in 2003) are up. The link is below in this post, and also on the sidebar. Still working on the Batam pictures though. Once I get my hands on a scanner, I'll probably try to put in photos of Taiwan and Australia, way back during army overseas training. Argh. I wonder if there are pictures of my Bangkok trip...maybe with shups!?

The Funky Photojournal

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! I got a call today from HDB, and they said that there is no income review for this 2-year renewal exercise this time, so my rental fee stays at $66 for 2 more years! Of course, by the next renewal, I would be subject to scrutiny, but hopefully by then, I'm on my way to getting married (small hope there), or to being able to afford to purchase a flat with my mum (higher likelihood of occurence). As Adrian puts it, it's actually a saving of $12000! ($500 increase per month for 2 years = $12k!)God is compassionate on this poor soul...heh.

I went to play badminton with my boys. I was defeated by a 12-year old kid! My only consolation is that he's from his school's badminton team, and I'm currently suffering from flu...methinks I got it from my sick colleague in Batam, who was nursing a bad throat infection. Not bad lah, it was a close fight all the way. Lost by one or two points twice for best of three, beat him once by a close margin also. I realize that I actually am average, and not mediocre! The performance today greatly varies from last Mon. I guess the other time the 38.9 degree Celsius fever did make playing a lot more difficult...hahaha...

I stayed at home for the better part of the day today, to the delight of my mum, who happily cooked a lot. One bad thing about being a teacher: day time you have not much company to go out with, unless it's with other teachers, since everyone else is working. Or students, for that matter.

I went shopping with Huijun in the evening. I was at Suntec, keeping my eyes open for a few things, but nothing much of interest. The nicest things in the shop are always "New Arrival" for some bizarre reason, and are never on discount for the Great Singapore Sale (GSS). The only I bought, which I intended to buy anyway, was Jade Empire, a XBox game I've been eyeing. Other than that, no nice shoes/shirts/t-shirts/sandals around. I think I must stake out Orchard Road then. I went to Times and Popular so far, but they have no poetry section at all! I think I must go down to Borders while I stake out Orchard Road. Hopefully I can find some local publishers who publish poetry by Singaporeans. *Fingers crossed.

I am depressed. I just came back from HDB branch office after settling some tenancy thing. Right now I am living in a 2-room flat rented from HDB. Recently they revised their tenancy contracts, and now make it a 2 year lease agreement that is to be renewed every 2 years. I went down with my mum to sign the new lease agreement and update particulars, and true enough, my fear has realized. My current income way exceeds the monthly household income for subsidized rental fees.

Originally, the rental was only $66, which we could afford all those years before I started working. However, now my income puts me as ineligible for subsidy from the government, which essentially ups the rental to $500+, market rate. That would imply that instead of the $700 I give my mum each month, I have to give her $1200 to cover the new rental. To put it simply, after paying my remaining bank loan, tithe, bills, transport, and etc, I'm back in the same position I was when I had two bank loans to pay off - I can't save a single cent each month. Until I pay off the bank loan, that is, which is about 2 years away.

I really don't want to be a rat in a rat race, that can't even smell the cheese. I'll be slogging my butt off, with zero savings, and not even having a permanent (ok ok Singapore's permanence lasts only 99 years of lease) roof over my head. I trust in the Lord's provision all this while, and I still do; I don't put my security in the amount of money in the bank account, but this feeling is still one hell of crippling. It feels like I'm walking on a treadmill - getting nowhere at all.

I can deal with love problems, work problems, and all, but money woes still gets me in despair. I must find alternatives, and get out of this rut. Grrr.

I just came back from a blood brudder (Kevin)'s girlfriend's birthday celebration. It was at a chalet at Downtown East. Super duper crowded in the Jun hols. It's like the cluster of barbecue pits were swarmed with people. I think it's a bad idea to position all the pits so close to each other. On the plus side, it's interesting to have side by side groups sing 'happy birthday' songs almost simultaneously though they don't know each other.

I think we, the blood brudders, were kinda anti-social today. I brought some Xbox games and a controller on request of Kevin, and so did fellow blood brudder Zhenxing. We ended up with four controllers, and we started playing Dungeons & Dragons Heroes, which allowed up to 4 players simultaneously. That was a whole load of fun, but we conveniently missed all the preparations, starting of the fire, and etc. The birthday girl's friends came soon after, but we hardly interrupted the game for curt introductions. After some time, we did go out to grab some food, but we didn't interact with the other people. This is the kind of setting that I wonder why people bother with: when you bring two or more big groups of people who don't know each other together, they will just remain in their cliques, and it feels kinda strange to have two disparate groups there. Smaller numbers, you might be able to get them mingled, but in barbecues, it hardly happens. Under usual circumstances, I might have bothered to go talk to strangers had the birthday girl be someone I am close to personally, but frankly, I think the blood brudders' presence was more for Kevin's sake (so that he's not the stranger there sort-of) than for the birthday girl.

After the food, we went right back to the Xbox. We came out for the cake-cutting, and left soon after. I felt somewhat out-of-character, in that I will usually be friendlier or more sociable. But somehow I didn't really bother today. I think it didn't help that the birthday girl told me matter-of-factly she intended to introduce some of her friends to me. Kevin's idea apparently. I'm honoured by the well-meaning behind the offer, but somehow I always feel slightly patronized by such offers. The thought of 'Do I really look like I need this kind of help?' usually pops into mind. It's not so much as an ego or pride thing, but rather that I doubt I look that frantic to get attached. If I take it more positively, then maybe they reckon me to be unsuitable being available...

I think, point-blank, the question is more like 'Do I look desperate?'.

Got this from a friend's blog...out of boredom lah.

Kian Seh, your IQ score is 138


Kian Seh, your IQ score is significantly above average. Congratulations! You have a wide range of exceptional skills which are much stronger than those of the average population. You are also skilled at answering the types of questions that are asked in a classic IQ test. The test analyses your strengths and weaknesses based on your mathematical, linguistic, visual-spatial and logical skills. Even though you have high scores in all of those areas, we are able to analyse your results to discover the areas in which you have the strongest abilities.

Your mind's strengths allow you to think ahead of the game -- to imagine or anticipate what should come next in just about any situation. Because you're equally skilled in the numerical and verbal universes of the brain, you can draw from multiple sources of information to come up with great ideas. The timelessness of your vision and the balance between your various skills are what make you a Visionary Philosopher.

In addition to your strengths in maths and linguistics, you have a knack for matching and anticipating patterns. These skills and your uncanny ability to detect the underlying blueprint of most of life's situations add to your visionary philosopher mind. Two philosophers who share the same combination of skills you possess are Plato and Benedict Spinoza.

Take the test too!

Hmmm...kinda expected to be tagged by you, shups! so here it goes...

Here's the Literari Baton/Bacon

1) Total Number of Books You Own:
First question is tough already. Other than the fact that my entire house is messy, I wonder if books count everything that is a publication. In that case, if textbooks are thrown in, along with my comic books, then it is quite countless. Yep, comic books alone number in the hundreds. Many hundreds.

2) The Last Book You've Bought:
Hmmm...should be Purpose Driven Life. But that was some time ago. Haven't bought any books in this year I think.

3) The Last Book You've Read:
Excluding the bible, it should be Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel. I think I blogged about it some time back too. Other books are all half-read at best to be recorded here.

4) Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me:
1. Bible. --- I'm reading it less than I ought to, I reckon, but it's still significant.

2. Surprised by the Voice of God by Jack Deere. --- One of the earliest Christian books I read, which gave me great insight, and improved my walk with God.

3. Merriam Webster's Rhyming Dictionary. --- My vital toolbox, in event of writer's block.

4. Lost Love by...me! --- I have finally collected, compiled, edited, and packaged my poetry into one nice book form. All I need is to get it published...yeah, yeah, I know I'm egocentric to list my own writing here, but hey, it's 8 years of work! Of course it means a lot to me right?

5. A King's Tale by...me! --- I think very few people know about this one. I actually wrote a novel in Sec Sch. I forgot about it actually until my ex returned it to me recently. It's meaningful (even though on hindsight, it was not well written) because it was more or less a journal of my 'adventures' when I was still into role-playing games (book and dice kind). Very nostalgic.

5) Tag Five People And Have Them Fill This Out On Their Blogs:
Time to pass the baton...
1. Huijun (waiting for you to blog your trip)
2. Sherry (are you still barred from your friendster blog...?)
3. Sophia (free enough?)
4. Aish (back from your trip yet?)
5. Eunice Chen (frankly, your surname sounds fine lah...)

Hmmm...my male friends don't blog apparently. I couldn't find a single one to list (that shups! hasn't already listed...).

I'm back from Batam! Three days of relaxation there with 6 colleagues - 5 gals and 1 guy. I was initially slightly apprehensive about the trip, because the last few times I went on a trip with a minority of guys, i.e. me alone, or me with one friend, there's always some exclusion, which, while being understandable, is still somewhat dampening. This time round, that occured to a small extent only, for which I'm happy. I only had some minor misunderstandings with one colleague, which was quickly settled.

Day 1
First day at Batam, Harris Resort. Right after we checked in, we were gunning for lunch. The counter receptionist suggested a couple of places, and we asked the cabbie for advice. In the end, we booked two cabs for the whole day, but costs S$80 in total. One thing about Batam: a person can survive on SGD there. Many places accept SGD anyway, and some even prefer it to their own currency, which makes sense too actually.

We went to this DC Mall in Nagoya (sounds more Jap to me than Indonesian still) first. Things were cheap there, but it was quite a small place. As for lunch, we went to A&W! Hahaha, all of us were quite excited to see A&W there, more or less because we all remember items from the menu we used to love, and that it went extinct in Singapore. Most of us went for root beer float. The gals were so excited they took photos with the A&W bear at the entrance. -_-

In the end, we spent some time in the video arcade, because we had time to kill, and not enough interesting shops to check out. That was quite fun, although it's something we could do in Singapore too anyway. Hmm.

Next place was Megamall Batam Centre. It was a big, modern shopping centre that newly opened. Unfortunately, many shops were still under renovation, or haven't been rented. So it was an incomplete mall as of this point in time. I desperately searched for things to buy, but there was nothing interesting, worth buying, or fitted. The gals went ballistic over Wacoal being way cheaper than if they got it in Singapore. I think they spent about half their cash by this time...My diarrhoea came back to haunt me, but thankfully, that was the very last time in the whole trip.

Two things I noted about Batam. First interesting thing: at many traffic junctions, once the light turns red, some locals will come around the vehicles peddling newspapers. Never seen that before. Second thing: their service people work really slowly. The gals were queueing to pay for some stuff at the counter, and it took eternity. As Tearle said, there wasn't a barcode to scan, so the person had to key in the code manually, and she made 3 mistakes, and slowly backspaced her way out. In general, they moved slowly to take orders, respond, etc. Really relaxed place sia.

Dinner was the cabbie's recommendation: 933 Golden Prawn. Seafood place, which totally sucked. Big time. It was fairly expensive at about S$13 per person, but the main thing is that we were expecting much better quality than that. In fact, I think the average coffee shop zi char in Singapore could do better. And the saddest thing is that my colleague was asking the cabbie about the place, and he quite sincerely said it's really good, and that the crowds come in later at night. We observed the other diners around us, and they seemed pretty happy with the food too. We concluded that there is only so much to expect from Batam food. This was the low point of the trip...heh.

The gals wanted to sleep early, so they did. Me and my guy colleague, Tearle, stayed up to watch TV a while more. Turned out that I misunderstood their wake-up timing. They had meant Indonesian time (1 hr behind), so I woke them up 1 hr too early. And they already slept 8 hrs!!!! Although Tunleng was right about one thing: "We came here to R&R what, so must have a lot of sleep."

Day 2
The gals were difficult to wake up. Seemed to take an eternity in my opinion. I wonder if it's a gender thing. Maybe army training is really good for the guy? Breakfast was quite good in my opinion, but Tearle expects better. We wanted to stay within the resort to do watersports and use the facilities, but apparently, our plans were thwarted. After a long breakfast, we headed to the entertainment centre, but they told us that it will open at 12. We decided to go and check out the (deserted-looking) beach.

Frankly, Sentosa beaches look way more promising. We saw a pathetic few jet skis, but the beach itself was grassy, with some patches of sand. Not the long sandy beach we were anticipating. So we crossed out sea activities from our checklist. In the end we decided to go swimming instead. The gals took too long to get ready, so I decided to head for the entertainment centre to check things out again. It turned out that there was a power failure at the place. The counter lady said probably by 3 pm the problem will be fixed. Looking at the speed at which the locals worked, I highly doubted it.

So we spent a long time at the pool. The rest swam. I merely soaked in the pool. I was only after a tan, and got a bit sunburnt in the process. I must say that my throwing of the beach ball is almost deadly accurate. Best shot of the day: Sherry was swimming breaststroke, and when her head came out of the water, the ball landed right smack on it. At a range of about 7 m away! The others also fell victim to surprise assaults from the bored pool-soaker. There was a jacuzzi next to the pool too, but the water jets weren't very strong, and the water was very dirty near the jacuzzi. Yuck yuck.

We went for a late lunch at the hotel cafe. The price was fairly expensive again, but then, it was a hotel cafe after all. We placed our orders, and expected the food to be bad, but surprisingly, everything turned out pretty good. My spaghetti carbonara was not spectacular, but still not too bad. The other dishes were good. We were fairly impressed, and refilled with hope about food in Batam.

After lunch, we rested a while, and headed for Marina Spa. The gals had all along wanted to go for a massage. Mine was a last minute decision to join in. I went for the Indonesian massage, which is a fullbody massage, with some scented oils and stuff. It was my first time doing massage actually, so I was kinda sheepish about the whole thing. But it was quite shiok. Whole body loosened up at the end of it. I can see why my ex liked going for massages now. Relaxing to the max. Just lie there, do nothing, and get pampered. I can also see why girls enjoy manicures and pedicures so much. Same thing essentially...

We went for a game of bowling once we were done with the massage. There was several casualties of chipped fingernails, but beyond that, we had some fun. At least the games were rather cheap, but I think in Singapore, we can get such good rates at off-peak hours too. Ah well.

We went to Kuruma Restaurant for dinner, which is the in-house Jap restaurant. The place was very quiet actually, so we went in expecting little of the food again. Again, the food was a lot better than we thought, and was quite good. I ordered Kimchi udon for the sake of the egg, but when the thing came, I saw it being laced with chilli and surrendered the bowl to Tunleng who exchanged her Tempura udon with me. The Kimchi soup base was fearsome, at least for me, so I was very grateful. Else, I would probably be nursing a sore throat right now.

We went back to our rooms to rest, and the gals came over to the guys' room to crash a while; usually, we go over to them, since they occupy two adjoining rooms, one of which has a king-sized bed. I think the guys' room was a lot neater actually. Bwahaha. We watched TV and talked rot a bit, and discussed today's tight schedule, and called it a night.

Day 3
I woke up, and first thing I did was to go ring the doorbells of the gals' rooms. They requested for it actually, for fear of not waking up in time, since we had very little time to work with today. I conclude that Tunleng sleeps a lot. She slept the earliest, and the longest consistently for both days...breakfast today was even better, but some of the food is too oily for my taste. I had many eggs (whites), some nasi lemak, cereal, porridge, and etc. Finally regained my normal appetite, thankfully.

We checked out after breakfast, and rushed down to Megamall Batam Centre again. The gals wanted to do some last minute shopping for friends/family/relatives and what-not; I merely wanted to clear my remaining rupiah. Some went for manicure/pedicure, others went to buy lots of foodstuffs. I tried my hardest to find something to buy but failed. I tried on many t-shirts, shirts, sandals, slippers, etc, but nothing! I couldn't find anything! In the end, I bought one canvas belt. We rushed back to the hotel in time, to the ferry terminal in time, and reached Singapore as intended, which was earlier than what was previously planned, because one colleague had to rush for a wedding dinner in the evening.

I was quite happy to be back in Singapore. I was dead hungry too, and we went for lunch at Yoshinoya. Come to think of it, I spent like $10 on the lunch, so technically, the food at the resort wasn't beastly expensive. After the late lunch at 4 pm, I happily made my way to church. I'm glad I didn't have to skip service, because I wanted to settle some admin stuff. Through this trip, I realized that the personality test I did in school was quite accurate about the admin part of me - that I hate admin, but can be responsible and execute it well when I have to. Frankly, if given a choice, I'd rather someone settle all the coordinating, getting tickets, settling checking in, checking out, and all the nitty gritty stuff. Unfortunately, this group I went with to Batam didn't have any admin-inclined person, so I took the role. Yeah, so back in church, I was still settling signing up of this-this-that-that for my boys. Argh. Had to give them some ground rules and pep-talk too, concerning girls. They are certainly coming of age now. Sigh. Headaches.

We went to play pool after dinner! Chee Yong, Collin and me. I played amazingly well today. I had an unbeaten run of many, many games, and even my losses weren't that terrible. I was accurate with the normal shots, which has been missing somewhat lately. The rebounds were good. Spectacular shots were there too. Even my one-handed shots returned to an accuracy of about 1 in 2. I'm happy~

God has a wicked sense of humour. My mum won $60 consolation in 4D. That just nicely covers the two medical bills with $3 profit, considering she forked out the money for me first.

Haha, God. Very funny. Bleah.

Just came back from the doctor again. Apparently I have developed an allergy to prawns all of a sudden. My mum, in a bid to make the soup sweeter, added some prawns, and now my face and body looks like they have been bitten by a thousand mosquitoes.

All on the eve of my trip! Bleah.

I had to take a jab in the arm to ease the swelling faster. I only hope I would look normal by tomorrow morning. God, you don't want me to go on this trip is it? *Sulks.

I just came back from the doctor. I'm down with food poisoning, and I can't figure out for the life of me what wrong thing I ate. I'm still running a slight fever though (38.5 degrees C). I must recover by Thu! I still wanna go Batam...sigh.

I was having a fever since yesterday, but I didn't realize it until much later. I actually went to play badminton with my colleagues from 1 to 3 pm, and although I didn't feel well, I thought it's just the sickening heat outside. No wonder I was guzzling around 4 cans of drinks while playing. It was only on the way home in a cab, cause by then, I was having one heck of a headache, that I took out my thermometer (hey, I carry many useful things on me!) and found that I was having a 38.9 degrees C fever. In that case, I think my mediocre play of badminton was actually quite good already...heh.

Time for lunch, medicine, and sleep...

We had a little family gathering with some relatives in the afternoon. It's a little bit like a housewarming actually. My second aunt's daughter just moved house, and invited us over to visit. She and her husband have a big combined income actually, and previously she stayed at a terrace house in Upper East Coast. The current place is somewhere inbetween Newton and Novena. I learnt a new term today: townhouse. I know about terrace houses, bungalows, condominiums and other kinds of classifications, but I just found out another one. This estate she moved to has 18 terrace houses built in a kinda elongated donut shape, with a long pool right smack centre.

The place is 4 storeys high, with one floor in the basement where the cars can park. This style is similar to my colleague's place, where I recently went for a barbecue. I think this is a neat design actually, and space-saving. It costs 1.5 million bucks ok!!! Not counting renovations and all. Goodness. How can anyone have that kinda money? Man, I haven't even seen 5 digits ever in my bank account, and can't imagine what 7 digits figure can achieve. Scary to hear people talk lightly about huge sums of money. There are some things I would not think about or dream about. Private property included. But the place is nice. My cousin's husband has good taste for home decor. In the end, I took only one picture, and that's of the cool pool behind the balcony.

Imagine this: the living room opens into a balcony, which has a built-in jacuzzi on the right. The jacuzzi has a ladder right beside it that goes down into the swimming pool that runs by the balconies of all the neighbouring terrace houses. How cool is that? My cousin's kids and her brother's kids were having a fun time swimming around. Frankly, the place reeks of holiday mood. Very nice home to have, if you ask me. If you are friendly with the neighbours, heck, you can even swim up to their balconies and say hi.

Goodness...1.5 million bucks. And I was just complaining about $110 earlier in the day...What a dramatic world of difference.

A view of the balcony, and the pool right behind...

The plumber has come and gone, and $110 has fled my pocket. At least the stupid thing is fixed, thankfully. Not as costly as I anticipated at least, so I can still stick to my grassy diet. -_-

I was awakened by an emergency. My herculean mum had, in a bid to stop a leaking tap, broken off the entire tap, along with pipe connector to the wall. There was nothing I could do to stop the gush of water or reconnect the pipe, so I started with scooping water out of an overflowing sink, much like what a person might do in a boat with a hole in it. A neighbour helped us shut off the water supply from outside, and my mum dispatched me to look for a plumber.

Of all the days this could have happened, it fell on a Sunday. -_-

Most of the shops were closed to start with, including the shop that probably has plumber contacts. I came back, hunted for all the possible numbers. I tried calling water supply, which directed me to town council, which directed me to NTUC plumbing. Eventually I managed to get a plumber, so I'm still waiting for him to arrive. In any case, he said it's quite a serious problem, because the outlet pipe goes through the wall. Transport cost alone is $50. I can't imagine how much the repair cost will be. And who will foot it? Me. This month not just eat grass liao. Think must eat soil too.

Careless blood brudder Yuren came by my place today to retrieve his digital camera. At the same time, he playtested my latest purchase - Splinter Cell Chaos Theory on XBox. It's some espionage kind of game that vaguely reminds me of an old favourite of mine Metal Gear Solid. I think I am growing old though, because such games no longer have the same allure as they used to have. I can easily stop myself from playing, and do more important things. I sure hope this is a sign of maturity...

I went down to church a little earlier to help out at the Parent's Appreciation Tea today. Every year, the network does this event, whereby the teenagers in my network will save up some money and treat their parents to a catered buffet meal. They will put up some little item, usually a song, for the parents, and verbalize their love for their parents. It's interesting to see the boys squirm their way as they tell their parents thanks and that they love them. Somehow because of some misinformation, I did not manage to inform my boys about this event in time. Looks like I have to wait for next year then.

One of my boys who have vanished for a while finally showed up for service today! While I was guiding him through writing his testimony, he made a few comments that got me worried whether he is truly saved or not. I brought him outside and talked to him for close to an hour, and managed to ascertain that it was just a misunderstanding of sorts. Now that really made me jump a little in worry. After service we went for a nice zi char dinner, all three generations. It was to celebrate the birthdays of J, and 3 of my boys, all of whom are June babies. The meal wasn't fantastic, but there was a lot of fun during the meal. One thing that made me shudder though - my boys are beginning to talk about girls (actually 1 specific girl that seems to have captivated 3 of my boys) a lot. I can smell their raging hormones in the air already. I am preparing myself for headache and heartache that is to come.

After the dinner, 4 of my boys, Collin and me went off to West Coast RC for a few games of bowling. Actually I always held a certain dislike for bowling, because I thought it senseless a game in which my sole objective was to be consistent at doing only one thing, i.e. strike. However, I realized something today - bowling is more conducive for chatting than pool for sure. There's a lot of peer support when you score well or missed poorly. There's ample opportunity to talk inbetween turns. By far, pool is a far less conversational game. Therefore, I am swayed somewhat. Guess it really depends on the occasion. I'm happy that I got scores just above 100 today. I'm not really improving, but at least I'm not in the 80 range as I used to be.

I do realize that I cannot play a game completely leisurely. I always set some kind of standard for myself. I think I take the quest for self-improvement to a waaay different level.

I had an IP meeting today at this restaurant The Tavern in Siglap. It was rather expensive (28+++) but was on my HOD thankfully. The service there is excellent, and they served fine cuisine, and it was an ala carte buffet! Today, I have officially replaced my level head as big eater of the department. I had a ribeye steak, lamp chop, 3 plates of salmon sashimi, cheese fondue (shared), escargot (shared), 1 bowl of cream of mushroom, 1 bowl of chicken broth, 1 tiramisu, and 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream. And I wasn't full yet! It was unfortunate that by the time I finished the dessert and decided I still can stomach more, the time for last order had passed. Still, it was a hearty meal. A high meat place, as my carnivorous HOD requested (required?). All I know after the meeting is that in the coming months and next year, I have my work cut out for me. I'm going to take through-train classes next year! I hope it will be fun, with all those pesky 15 year-olds.

I went off to meet blood brudder Yuren in the evening. Originally we intended to go to Lavender food court, but I insisted on somewhere air-conditioned in view of the weather. It was ridiculously hot. I was perspiring the whole day, even with the fan blowing full-force at me. I was supposed to return him his digital camera, but we both forgot about it. In the end, he has to come to my place tomorrow to retrieve his precious camera. We had a good chat, and he swayed me into buying Splinter Cell for my X-box. I shouldn't be spending anymore...argh. Eat grass! Eat grass!

My G12 leader gave me a call just now. Apparently I violated some unwritten church protocol about dating...Otherwise, we had quite a good talk actually. It's been quite a while since we had a long conversation, and I had quite a lot of things to discuss with him. In any case, I think the way certain things are done in my church ought to see change. Ever since we evolved into the G12 system, many ways of doing things have become obsolete or at least inappropriate, and I think the leadership needs to seriously look into changing some of the protocol when it comes to BGR. Certain checks are protective but unthinking, and ignores the prospect of the adults being mature enough to handle certain things wisely.

Or maybe I'm just a heretic. Ah well...

I was abruptly awoken at 8 am in the morning by a colleague. Apparently the video projector he requested was nowhere in sight. I tried calling my AVC vice president but his handphone was off; he had probably returned to Malaysia. So there I was, trying to offer alternatives, but it was too late, so the presenter had to go without slides. And there I was, apologizing over the matter.

That sucks. Big time.

It wasn't my fault in a way. I have checked the request and assigned people to handle it. There was nothing I could have done at that moment in time, especially since it's in the holidays. And I have to apologize as if it was, since there was someone breathing down my neck, although this colleague was reasonable enough not to blow up the matter or pursue the matter further. But I got somewhat pissed thinking about it. I can't think of a single PDP other than AVC where the teacher-in-charge gets screwed for oversight of the students. Most of the time, the teachers handle the administrative aspects of the PDP. Maybe the sports PDPs, since the PE teachers double as coaches. Me, whenever a student is late for duty, or something goes wrong with the equipment, or if a piece of equipment is missed out, everybody turns to me. It is totally a shit job. The AVC is one PDP that doesn't earn praise or recognition when things go well, but immediately gets noticed and criticized when something goes wrong. If anyone pisses me off next term, I will shoot an email to the whole staff saying that I will not entertain any more last minute requests that violate the 2-week (usually I accomodate 1-week) in advance rule, which they often do, often notifying me one or two days before the services are required. It compromises my team's efficiency, and if anything goes wrong, we still get the blame. So why should I bother being nice to people who can't even bother to submit requests in advance? I'm short of members some more, darn it. Ok, maybe I'm excessively grouchy from being woken up from my sleep...nah.

I went out with shups! (as she insisted, her nickname has the '!' in it) today, in belated celebration of her birthday. We went to Bugis Junction food court to have her favourite Teppanyaki, and went shopping after that. I bought a sleeveless top for beachwear (after all I invest in beach attire, I must go East Coast and Sentosa more often) from OP, but I think my arms are still too thin. I still don't have the discipline or rather, the vanity, to hit the gym for that purpose though. We watched Madagascar, but we both weren't very impressed. I found some parts funny, but in a cheesy kinda way that probably the kids will enjoy more. Using the Incredibles as a yardstick, this fails by far. Not much of a storyline nor a moral of the story. Penguins were extremely amusing though. And I think the music of "I like to move it, move it" will continue to haunt many. I already hear kids singing it when they left. Heck, even some of the teens too.

We went to play pool after that, and I think both of us were not on form. We didn't play poorly, but I think we didn't play to the standards we expect of ourselves, or maybe of each other. Still, it's been a while since I last played with her.

We then rushed down to Expo to meet her colleague, Bimbo Lee (BL), nickname of course. She is kinda ditzy, but I wouldn't go so far to call her a bimbo though. It's the PC fair! I went merely to accompany them, because I didn't really intend to purchase anything at all. BL wanted to buy a digital camera, so we went a-hunting for it. She was asking about Panasonic Lumix, and asked if the price could be lower, and the guy quoted her $50 less right away! I seriously don't think the price was very much marked up, and I also seriously think that if I asked, the guy wouldn't have given such a good deal, i.e. her looks must have counted for something. Eventually she settled for Sony, and the lady in charge gave her $19 off (which I didn't see happen with other customers), saying BL is a pretty lady and all. Moral of the story: want a good deal, bring a pretty female. (Disclaimer: till now, the writer of this blog still does not find her pretty though.)

For dinner, we went to this Jap restaurant (I can't remember the name) at Cuppage Plaza, a sleazy looking place. Yet, the food was surprisingly good, and pretty affordable. My sashimi set was nice, but still not filling enough. BL couldn't finish her curry katsu, so I had some extra food. Yummy. If I am in the area, I wouldn't mind going back again. Food's good enough to warrant a revisit.

I stayed at home in the afternoon today, first time in a long while. My mum swiftly seized the opportunity and made me clean up the house. Fair enough, since the mess was all my rubbish anyway...heh. I had to take out my dozens and dozens of sets of anime from my cabinet, and do a massive rearrangement in order to fit in all the new DVDs I bought in China. Now that I look at my cabinet, I find it quite scary - I really have bought a lot of anime. No wonder my relatives who visit my mum got freaked out once in a while.

At the spur of the moment last night, I decided to go see the TJC band concert tonight at Victoria Concert Hall. Before that, I met up with Sherry to go shopping a while. I managed to buy a pair of slippers for the upcoming Batam trip, since my old pair is quite rundown. I bumped into another couple of students at City Hall, again from that sports class! Now I'm in trouble. After the band concert, they came up to me and 'interrogated' me on whether I have a girlfriend, and they refused to believe my earnest denial.

The band concert was good! Originally I wasn't too keen to support these events, but upon coming, I think I feel the college spirit and pride in the air, and still in me. Seeing my students on stage is a nice feeling actually. Surprisingly I bumped into Elaine there. Apparently, her cell member was playing tonight. Another surprise is seeing my ex's uncle there. I didn't even realize his daughter is in TJC at all! Either I haven't bumped into her in school, or (more likely) I forgot what she looks like exactly. At the end of it all, the band played the college anthem. At this point, one can clearly see who are or were TJCians. They even did a cheer at the end of the anthem. Feels so nostalgic! Haha...