The thin fabric of time starts to distort slowly, and suddenly, a blog post emerged from the recent past! And only one week late!
Today, I tested my body with some weird prawn crackers that Kenneth's mother offered me. I have no idea why, but I got this feeling that I was allergic to it. It is like a special ability I have. When I see a food item, I can roughly tell if I am going to get hives if I ate it or not, and the crackers were emitting a lot of evil vibes. Being the adventourous person that I am, I ate it anyway just to complete my list of food items that I am allergic to.
Twisties
This is the first thing that gave me hives. I used to love these nonsense, but one fine day a few years back, I got hives after eating it. Of course I did not suspect anything, so I got it twice more the same month. But luckily, I was smart enough to figure out that it must be the Twisties that I had a sudden allergy for. With a heavy does of self deception, I managed to convince myself that it tasted like crap anyway and I am not missing much.
Honeystars
No! Why do I have to be allergic to the tastiest stars in the universe? Seriously, these things are good with or without milk. At least I can eat 1 or 2 pieces without breaking out with hives.
Generic Chewing Gum from Malaysia
You know, the one with the green wrapper? I have no idea whats the real brand name, but I was chewing on one of these doing my first sia kang warrior job. It did not even look like something I would be allergic to. Come on, who on earth is allergic to chewing gum. Luckily this allergy does not impact my life in anyway at all, necause Singapore's government is kind enough to ban it for me. Victory!
Cheeseballs
I have not actually tried this, but I know that they taste like the original Twisties and I have a really really strong feeling that they will screw me over. Not touching these until I get over this feeling. After which I would probably regret my decision.
And yay, that is the end of the list. I am not allergic to prawn crackers.
xw 7:43 AM
Monday, December 14, 2009
Yesterday marked the start of the new era. It was the first time in my holidays that I actually touched my notes. All I accomplished was just 3 topics that I have already done a few months ago, but I guess it is a start. And it is also not my fault that Mr Lim gave us homework which was designed to ensure that we never forget the first 11 topics ever again. I wonder if I can keep up the boredom today.
The internet radio is down again. And on top of that, it is only down for me. Everyone else can assess it, but not me. NOT ME. Now I cannot listen to the radio without having to stick two irritating things into my ears anymore. Looks like it is the end of my music listening life again. Now that did not last too long.
While I am listing down all the horrible things that are happening to me, I might as well mention that one of the coffee shop near my house is down for renovation. Which is great, because now I only have one left, and being human, I do thirst for variety. Time to try every different store of the other coffee shop.
xw 7:24 PM
Saturday, December 12, 2009
In preparation for the breaking down of my computer, I took the time to dig through mountains of receipts and invoices to find my extended warranty service contract. It is much like then normal warranty, just that it is no longer with the producer of my computer, but rather the distributer. Having spent all of 10 minutes finding it, it only made sense that I read it before I dumped it into the pile of mess on my desktop. I then realized that they sound like they are really unwilling to help anyone fix their computer. Brilliant. Of course it is really hard to read the whole contract properly, as it is written so carefully to prevent misinterpretation that every sentence looks constipated. So here is a simplified version of the contract.
Coverage
This part of the contract states how long the contract lasts. Fair enough. The last line has a really complicated sentence structure, but I broke it down slowly and figured it meant, "Sometimes, the customer has to pay more." Right...
Product Eligibility
It basically states that I have to be in Singapore. Looks like they are not too willing to fly down to anywhere in the world to help you fix your computer. It also states that they are only going to fix your computer if it is meant for personal use only, so no commercial computers. I cannot really figure out the logic of that part though.
Exclusions
This is the longest part of the contract. Seriously, it seems to go on forever. They will not fix anything that the manufacturer will fix for free. They will not fix your CPU to make it look less ugly. Oh dear, it appears that they will not free your computer from viruses and bugs either. Not like that is very hard to do, those lazy workers. The list goes on and on and on. It touches a little on theft, burglar, accidental or intentional damage (Which means they are not going to fix any damage), neglect and misuse and abuse (Thumbs up), animal or insect infestation, and finally, natural disasters. But I do believe that you have better things to worry about if your computer gets destroyed in an earthquake, like you house. Of course that is just in my opinion.
Limitation of Liability
The opportunity cost of you not having your computer while they fix it will not be compensated.
Termination
If you lose your contract, they terminate the contract. If you lose your CPU, they terminate the contract too.
Entire Agreement
Oh this part is interesting. After they fix your computer, it might not be as good as it once was. Also, if they are unable to fix it, they might decide to replace your computer with "one of a like kind and quality." I hope this does not mean I will get one which blue screens me every other day.
xw 7:30 PM
Friday, December 11, 2009
Woohoo! Me and Yanwei redeemed ourselves yesterday by getting 7th for SCBA last night. Thats like right smack in the middle. It was a good day to have scored decently as it also happened to be the day she threaten not to let us play because we suck too much. My very first competition is in a week, so I guess that leaves us amazingly little time to get our pending "Must Use Conventions" up and working. The worse thing is that new conventions needs time to work. Lets hope all goes well then.
I did not know that thee Ministry of Home Affairs sent people to take surveys about random things. A girl went up to my door yesterday and asked me to help her do a survey. It was about how I felt about other races and religion, and how I though they felt about me. There was also a little bit about terrorism, but that part looked like it was a poor little question that was from another survey and got lost because it wondered to far away from its mother. How sad. Just to try my luck, when when she asked for my age group, I told her 20-24, just too see if I can pass off for it. Apparently not. Maybe I would in a few years time.
xw 7:15 PM
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Sigh. My mum is getting really cranky. I think that the thought of A-levels being less than a year away has gotten to her head. Does it really kill her to see me having fun during the holidays? She has been bugging me to file my notes since a month ago, and today, she gave me a book which would supposedly improve my General Paper grades. I guess that it is just a parent thing.
Today was the first time in ages I went for a swim. Of course, by swimming, I mean 5 minutes of complaining how cold the water is, 10 minutes of walking in the water, 2 minutes of actually swimming and 30 minutes of soaking in the sun on the deck chair. Life is good when you have the option to do nothing. I still suck at tennis though. At least I can serve properly about 20% of the time now. That is some pretty decent skills.
xw 4:57 AM
Monday, December 7, 2009
Life sucks when you are an Itallian plumber wearing green. Yup, the colour of your overalls makes a big difference when you are in mushroom kingdom. If you wear red, you get to run off with Princess Peach after your brother jumps over the waves of lava to reach the final platform and miss the giant button to fall to his greasily death while you pop out of your bubble and save the princess. I would like to think that the two little unnamed toads are female at least, so that Mario is not the only one getting rewarded. Oh well, life is never fair.
I have been listening to the radio again recently. 987 finally decided to fix their internet thing, so now I can tune in while doing whatever it is that I do when I use the computer. Well, there are a lot of new songs now, and the old ones have faded into oblivion. But one thing that I noticed is that the songs are still either about love or sex. Is that how you are supposed to make it big if you are a song writer. Actually, come to think of it, it does make sense. The songs about love can be used to target all the foolish people who still believes in love. The songs about sex are for those who gave up on that and just go around screwing everyone who is willing to get screwed by them. Admittedly, there is a pathetic number of songs not about of love or sex, and those do get to the top of the charts when they come.
xw 10:18 AM
I am so ready to study. With a pile of notes, some files to start organizing and the week old Slurpee in front of me, I can finally start to do some work. Unfortunately, I am not that disciplined. So I grab my Slurpee and go off to play some DotA. Computer games - 1, Homework - 0. Tomorrow will be the day I start. Honestly, no more procrastination.
With great skill, I also managed to piece about 4 pieces of my jigsaw puzzle. At last, progress! I can almost see the whole sky now. If anyone is interested in helping me fix my jigsaw puzzle, I warmly welcome you to my house to help me. I will even provide for your meals, so long as you are doing a good job. And if you are enthusiastic enough, I can even accommodate you for a night or two. Thinking back, I has been almost exactly a year since I got the jigsaw puzzle. Maybe I should just spend 5 minutes everyday fitting a couple of pieces in. Surely it would be done by 2013.
xw 12:00 AM
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Yesterday, I got reminded once again why I slept through all but the first PE lesson about tennis last year. Yup, I spent one day learning how much I sucked at it, and the rest of the lessons sleeping beside the net. That is the best spot to sleep, because the raging tennis balls never find their way there. Anywhere else and you are vulnerable to those irritating things whizzing past your head every couple of minutes. And if you are lucky enough, one or two might connect during that one hour. I spent some time learning how to serve again, and remembered that I sucked at the game. Looks like its back to Wii Sport's tennis.
xw 8:16 PM
Saturday, December 5, 2009
It took me all of 17 years to notice that people act on their own interest. The most harmless of conversations are also driven by motives. Is there anyone out there who is selfless enough to live a day without having a personal agenda, or at least not bothering to do everything on it? But I guess that is how life works. Meet someone with conflicting motives and you found an enemy, meet someone with similar interest and you have found a friend. When you put all this in perspective, you are actually much lonelier than you think.
Anyway, I messed with the coding of the blog a little a spawned an archive! You can now read my older posts, not like there are many of them, but I am sure there is someone out there who would want to read some drivel to kill time. No? And for everyone who is using Chrome and Firefox, you cannot see the sidebar. You need to open my blog using Internet Explorer, if not you only see two arrows. Actually now that I though of it, you can still read the stuff on the sidebar with other browsers. Its like looking through a little slit or something.
xw 3:14 AM
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Oh no. My computer seems to be exploding more and more often. It is almost as if it is trying to tell me not to use it so often. Perhaps it is a sign that I should be going out a little more often, or maybe it wants me to actually start on my homework. Nah, can't possibly be the latter. Who would start doing work one week into the holidays.
Today, I managed to oversleep again. By the time I was awake, they were probably already done with drills and doing whatever scrimmage thing they felt like doing. Bleah, I think it would be a good idea if I woke up at 630am everyday. That way, I would not lose so much time. Waking up in the afternoon is just sad. Come to think of it, why has everyone in my family came to ignore the sign on my room door? Could it be because I told them not to wake me up anymore? I guess it is time to get an alarm clock.
The weather is really depressing. If it is not pouring, it is raining, and if it is not raining, its drizzling. Is this what we get in exchange for snow? I want my snow!
xw 7:56 PM
First and foremost, I am going to have to say that I am a ridiculously irresponsible person who cannot keep track of time. I am stating to remind myself of my sister. Oh well, with any luck, I should be able to wake up in time for Ultimate training tomorrow.
Today, I watched my first M18 movie, about 6 months early. It is sure comforting to know I can pull off as someone above 18, especially after the first epic fail at Grand Cathay. Luckily, Bryan assumed "Cathay" to be Cathay Cineleisure, so instead of failing at the Grand Cathay ticket booth again, we got to sneak in an watch Zombieland!
After a couple of minutes into the movie, I realized that it probably got its rating from all the gore. The zombies were like, all drooling blood and stuff. They were also surprisingly fast. Normal zombies usually just crawl their way to you, like in House of the Dead. Zombieland zombies just sprint to you with all their might, and then cling on to you to feast on your flesh. The movie was really funny, though the plot was pretty flimsy. But what the heck, watching a zombie show for the plot is like playing Mario for the storyline.
Anyway, the point is that I managed to sneak into a rated movie. Accomplishment achieved.
xw 3:08 AM
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The body is an amazing thing. After 12 hours straight, I can finally start to think again. Sadly, the first thing I think of is the book reviews that I have been assigned. I really feel like just using the books that I have read before, instead of using new ones. In fact, that would probably be the only way I get my work done, seeing that I am the sort that looks forward to pack his holiday schedule with events. Non homework doing events.
Anyway, it was the first time in many nights that I could close my eyes, and just drift off to sleep immediately. This was really strange, because I was expecting to be doing a little bit of angsting and Bear Bear head rip offing. Apparently, exhaustion owns angst, so I guess my bear gets to live for another day.
xw 8:11 PM
That was some chalet. It had a perfect balanced of being both structureless and well planned at the same time. For the first day, we could do anything we wanted, which is what everyone does at a normal chalet. I finally found out what 4 player Mario is like, complete chaos. There is not even enough platform space for most of the time, causing people to bounce off each other into bottomless pits or pools flaming lava. The only difference between the first day of the Bridge chalet and the standard chalet is that hardly any bridge was being played, save a few boards of rubber bridge. Of course there was the bonding session in the middle of the night (Or early in the morning as some might see it), which involved Truth-or-dare and some new pointing game that Renwei introduced us. It is not like we still need to do a lot of bonding, but I still have this fondness for games like that. Except Truth-or-dare.
The second day was much more structured. I really loved the pirate game that the community planned for us. It was really very well designed except, of course, the last part with the mass beach excavation. And the drinking part. Lets not forget the drinking part with the weird mixture that we thought had vinegar which turned out to be curdled milk. Please do not try to poison us, I happen to value my life a lot. Kudos to Ruth for glupping it all down. I had to sip it a little by a little, and even then it is so painful at times I wanted to just vomit. Come on, the white blobs of mayonnaise (Wow, had to check Google for the spelling of that one) looked so disgusting. The mass beach excavation was pretty fun though. We actually managed to dig out 2 of the 3 hidden treasures, though it did take a pretty ridiculous amount of time. It was actually pretty fulfilling just sitting at the beach watching everyone work together to overturn the beach to no avail. Even those who were digging using eye power and those that are there with us in spirit would have this experience that we shared together. Years down the road, we can tell our grandchildren about this experience when they ask us what a beach is.
Second evening was dominated by some Bridge. I did really badly, as did all the sleep deprived people, and lost Prosty Bear. I did get a mug in return. If I can drag myself to Ultimate training tomorrow, I would be able to see what the mug actually looks like, and find out from Jing Xian who won Prosty Bear. Take good care of her please!
The last test of my physical endurance was of course the "class outing" today. Hardly a class, 6 people, and hardly an outing either. To be perfectly honest, it was so bad that I would rather have went back to Pasir Ris Park to dig up the final $5 Burger King voucher alone. I guess I am going to do that some other day. I guess the most important thing to me in these events like chalets and gatherings is that I have to bond with the others. In the "class outing" today, none of the bonding happened. I do have to admit that the merged Minds Cafe part was fun though. Excellent call.
xw 4:15 AM
