Life through Speckled Lens

This was taken on the bus on the way to Genting. The rest of them were sleeping, but I was too excited.

Yes, part of 9P went on a Genting trip on the 6th July for 3 days. Today I watched "L - Change the World." I found it funny how he was obliged to clear his huge pile of backlogged cases even when he was about to die. This has got no link to this entry whatsoever except that if you'd realised, we came back from the trip on the 8th, and today is the 27th. This entry is 19 days late. But like Johan always says, "better late than never."

This is skippy looking excited about the trip. She was having gastric all the way there, but didn't let it affect her mood. (:

This is datou looking sleepy, but still feeling excited about the trip.

Carnie looking very happy here. XD
Shy tofu was too shy, so all she put out to pose for the camera was her hand.

We are the Happy Friends.

HAHA where got people take picture with this kind of place-your-head-here-stands still put up the twist sign one! Not realistic ma!
Notice how carnie doesn't have a neck. She has one in real life. Really she does.

Finally, a picture of shy tofu.

At this point in time I realise there's an even shyer person, and that I don't have pictures of her at all.

Datou looks very cute!
This was taken by the shyer person whose name is otaku teng. Now you should understand why she's shy.

Skippy looks like she's advertising for the bottle of water here.

This is what you see when you look out of the room window to the right.

This is what you see when you look out of the room window to the left.

This is what you see when two girls start going crazy about taking photos from a hotel room window of everything else but the two of them together.

This is the mysterious, alluring, silhoutte-ish backview I fell in love with.



And the owner of the mysterious, alluring, silhoutte-ish backview I fell in love with.



Our laughter caught in the carousel, amplified a hundred times over.

This is for mel and dg.

Not Old Enough to Grow Up.

When you're feeling like the loneliest person around in the office, what do you do?


You start thinking about how right you were when you decided that you're never going to work an office job.

When on the inside you're crying silently, but on the outside people are telling you to be strong for the others, what do you do?


You take deep breaths and take it as it goes.

When people turn to you, who do you turn to?


You look towards your inner self, and you see an escapist, who triumphs, and when things start to happen you ask yourself if it's your fault.
Or whether you should even have to take any responsibility for it at all.

What do you become?


You turn into a premature adult.

Why?


I wouldn't know why. Things happen for a reason.
But no matter how I look at it, I can't find a good enough reason.

The Weekender's Promise.

It's a very happy feeling to be doing something with people you love, even if it's something as slow-moving as going up on the Singapore Flyer.

Introducing, Love of My Life 1: Anita.

Introducing, Love of My Life 2: Jianwei

And the love of their lives...

...me.

Yes, make no mistake, we are all in love with one another, and thus we decided that like all lovers, we should go up on the Flyer.

And off we go.

Bad weather will not stop the Flyer from operating, neither will it stop us from having fun.

Fun like this,

this,

this,

and this.

And then the skies could take it no longer, and decided to open up in shower.

Rain that pelted on our capsule might have formed currents in the Nile river once before.

And we continued our fun.

The rain ended almost as soon as it started, and the sky started clearing into a lovely blue.

And the sun broke through the clouds, and Anita said that no matter what, the sun will still shine through. I will remember that for a long time to come.

My favourite picture. When we saw this we collapsed in laughter.

The two dears look so happy here, how wonderful if I can see them smile so vibrantly like that every single time.

We went home giddy with laughter that day.

It's been the happiest day I've had with them in a long time. I'm so glad we went up the Flyer. It's not so much of the event per se, it's really the people. And I'm thankful that these people are in my life. Thank you both of you!

When I Stare at Daniel Craig All Day.

I have been increasing my caffeine dosage over the period of work. On the first day of work I drank Milo for my breakfast drink, and managed to stay awake the entire day. Then I started drinking coffee made with two level teaspoonfuls of coffee powder, sugar and creamer. Then I realised the height of the coffee powder on my teaspoon was getting higher as the days went by. This morning I had coffee made with two heaped teaspoonsfuls of coffee powder, sugar and creamer. 6 hours of sleep each day doesn't qualify as sufficiency. ):

Work revolves around answering questions and feeling smart about it, like as if I were an IT genius. "Please close your browser and try again some time later. And don't worry your responses would have been saved" pretty much answers a whole list of technical questions along the likes of Fatal Errors, Denied Access and urm, uuurm, you know, the rest of it.

There's a Casino Royale postcard stuck on the cabinet compartment just above my workdesk, featuring Daniel Craig clad in a tuxedo, flaunting tall stacks of gambling chips, conjuring an enigmatic pose with his face tilted 34.9 degrees right, his pupils directed to the corners of his eyes, and the fingertips of his right hand placed in ever-so-light contact with a gun. Sometimes I feel him staring at the top of my head, but when I turn to look, his slitty eyes are back to staring sideways.

Work has been occupying my time such that my morbid thoughts have been left aside. Which is good because then I don't muck around wallowing in self-pity, which is a situation I know that I am occasionally extremely susceptible to. But work doesn't really feel like work because there is virtually no work to do. I almost feel guilty updating this blog during work. And my heart skips a beat whenever people walk past my cubicle at the same time I am surfing the Internet. I almost feel guilty thinking that the company pays me to surf the Internet.
Almost.
Okay I do, I do feel guilty, sometimes. I try to improve the situation by asking the colleagues around me for work, but most of the time they don't have work for me to do.
And rather than sitting around getting paid for doing nothing, I sit around, getting paid for surfing.

And making lists.

The Weekender's To-Do list.

1. Post pictures of happy times in blog entry. (:
2. Go cycling with DG tomorrow morning.
3. Attend donut party with aforementioned friend and cousin.
4. Catch up on sleep.

When I failed, you bailed.






Why, why did you bail?











When you bail, I fail.

Sometimes We Learn, Sometimes We can Never Get it Right.

You are a trap I am aware of but keep falling into. A vortex that I cautiously try to avoid. You are a symbol in my life that represents nothing but yet so substantial. An ideal I stupidly cling on to.

Tonight I looked up in the sky and saw the stars that were always there. I thought of how much we have changed since the last time we looked at the bright dots in the sky, as well as the bits, pieces and chunks of ourselves that we have lost to growing up.

It's not difficult being around people yet feeling so alone. And that's when I start feeling rather annoyed. Annoyed that I let myself stupidly get entangled in the mind games you play. Annoyed that I tell myself everytime to take it easy but yet ignore my own advice. Annoyed that I can't seem to tell anyone what's really happening. Annoyed that the cycle never seems to break. Annoyed that I blindly pile importance and expectations on you and wait restlessly for you to step up to it, which you never do.

But it's okay, I'm used to it.
I know I can just hit the reset button when things go awry on my part.

I Wouldn't Know Until I Have Tried.

I miss the early morning ride we took in the back of your cousin's car back in Ipoh. Your cousin drove with the windows down. The wind was cold, crisp and fresh as it caressed my face. Wherever we drove to there was the constant chirping of birds. The sky was a lovely sleepy blue, there was just enough light to illuminate the words on the signs on the short buildings, but not enough to illuminate the face of the very ocassional passerby on the streets, much less the detailed patterns on the leaves of trees. There weren't many streetlights in Ipoh, unlike in Singapore, and that gave the place a strangely comforting quality. The imprint of trees against the sky has always been my favourite sight.

Life in Ipoh is nicely paced, laidback, but not that all. My first impression of the place was that we were surrounded by mountains in the distant horizon. Seemed like everywhere I turned I could see mountains in the faraway background, which was a nice feeling because everywhere you turn in Singapore you're surrounded by tall buildings. My second impression was that there are many dogs in Ipoh. There were dogs running freely on the roads, and there was a dog at the house I stayed in. Everywhere we drove we saw dogs. In Ipoh you have to drive to get somewhere because the shopping centres and buildings are pretty far apart. A whole lot of land they have.

We arrived in Ipoh at about 5 a.m. and were driven in two cars to some place like a big coffeeshop, because it was apparently the only place nearby that had light, to wait for 6 a.m. to arrive so that we could have breakfast at some dim sum place. (The dim sum was fantastic. Hoho. So many types I'd never seen before. Mmmm.) The other car almost got robbed, from the little Cantonese I understood from the adults' conversation. Apparently, 6 Malay motorcyclists took turns to ram into the back of the car, and according to one of the victims, if the driver had stopped the car and gotten down, they would have beaten him up and robbed the passengers. Quite scary considering that we had only just arrived. Fortunately there wasn't any loss or injuries sustained whatsoever. A little bit of morning terror and excitement.

The weather was sweltering hot, much hotter than Singapore in my opinion. I got slightly sunburnt staying in direct sunlight for about 2-3 hours. And you have to drink a lot of water when you're there because of the heat. Which I obviously didn't, and fell sick. Bloody hell. Kids, it's important to drink sufficient water every day, if you feel like you haven't drunk enough today, now's a good time to go get a glass. It's horrid to be sick in a foreign place without family members to take care of you. I felt a teeny bit sorry for myself for a while, and then I felt much better after a shower and bounced right back. When there's bad, it can't be bad forever-- there's always good next, and that's pretty much what I like about life.

People were speaking Cantonese everywhere around, even the non-Chinese. Amazing. Of course I also heard Malay and Mandarin being spoken. No English though, I felt a little crippled, but of course my command of Mandarin's good enough. :D Oh, I tried the famous hor fun that you find everywhere in Singapore. It's nothing like the Singaporean version. Ipoh's hor fun is the best I ever had; supremely soft and smooth. Like baby's skin, or even finer. Mmmm. The rest of the food we had was good too, maybe when I retire I'll move to Ipoh just for the food. I'm hungry now dang.

We visited a cave called "霹雳洞" (or pi li dong) which housed many statues and figurines of religious figures of either taoism or buddhism, I couldn't tell. There were paintings on the walls of the caves, and it was pretty cool in there, in all senses of the word. It was leaking though, and they were collecting donations to stop the leakages. The sun shone in through small holes in the rock formation and resulted in strong, almost solid beams of sunlight that I wanted to reach out and hold on to. But they were too high up, and it's silly to think that you can hold sunlight in your hand. I dunno, mysterious caves can make you think mysteriously silly thoughts. Oh there was a fortune teller there too, and I wanted to give it a shot because I'd never had my fortune told before. At this point I really want to say "Curiousity killed the cat." There. But I didn't get my fortune told because... because... because of mysterious reasons conceived in a mysterious cave that I have mysteriously forgotten.

Yes, Ipoh was a good experience. Our host, the aunt, was plenty nice, and got her sons and daughters to bring us around. A bunch of nice people I'd declare, although one of the sons tried to persuade us into going clubbing with him. And when we declined him twice, his ego got in the way and said "oh, luckily you all didn't agree, I was afraid you two wanted to tag along." I rolled my eyes so vigourously that they went 360 degrees in my sockets. No I didn't, that'd be rude. We just kept quiet-- I couldn't think of a comeback, our brains had retarded and been turned to mush by the heat outside. Okay I'm rambling right. But overall, still nice because he brought us around and made small talk.

And then I decided that I wouldn't mind living in Ipoh.