Okay I really, really liked Stardust. Gaiman was awesome, as usual.

Haha and I love the part where the star fell too. She swears really softly, and then moans about her leg. But it's quite sad that Tristran had to die, despite the fact that he's only half-mortal D:

And NOBODY remembers Bilquis (American Gods) as merely roadkill, I tell you. Especially guys. They drool all over her chapter. Some (non-guys) even write fanfic about it ;D

Now I'm on Fragile Things, which I think somewhat pales in comparison to the novels, but which is still quite interesting.

--

Uh, I think I'm supposed to do a post-WEP post. But I'm feeling really lazy, so... someday, then :D I'm not sure it was worth the gazillion events+activities (mostly for AV and RGSRCY, and on one occasion my 6RosythGEPers06) I missed for it, but well...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If you don't know who wrote that, YOU PHAIL LIT.

(Mouseover note: We have met the enemy, and he is us.)

Placeholder until a real post comes along;

Heh yesterday was quite fun.

Ironically, things started off with Wesley calling me as I was on the train to Serangoon (don't we all just love the Circle Line) and going all "YOUR WISH HAS COME TRUE."

Uhm. What wish?

"I'M COMING FOR CLASS REUNION!" *does the yaydance*

O-kayyyy. Actually I made up the yaydance part. I don't know whether he was yaydancing since it was a phone conversation, but it sure sounded like it.

So I reached Bishan and found Kester, Rachel, Jikian, Smallboy and Wendy sitting outside Breadtalk. Rachel was wearing glittering eyeshadow and had had her nails painted glittery purple. IT WAS DISTURBING, I TELL YOU. Nobody should be THAT glittery. It's just wrong.

Then we went off to eat at Macs. I hate Coke (and anyway I'm not allowed to drink anything cold or carbonated, for two different medical reasons), so I decided to get a hot Milo anyway. After a 10-second argument with the guy behind the counter on what constituted a meal (he won because he works at Macs. Remind me never to argue with Macs staff about Macs meals ever again), I emerged with a Double Cheeseburger, fries, a hot Milo and Rach's McChicken. (Xinyuan's going to kill me for this, because we were just discussing Makan yesterday :X BUT I HAD NO CHOICE!!! PEER PRESSURE FORCED ME TO EAT AT MACS.)

Yeah then after that we had to find a way to get to Kester's house, which wasn't easy because it was raining. So we took the MRT to YCK and then got on bus 70, where Glendon told everyone present the story of how he managed to get his head shaved, army-style.

So after we got to the bus stop and Kester's dad fetched us all to his house from the bus stop, we started a game of...foosball! I think it was Jiaen and someone against Jikian, but then Kester came back and it was Jiaen/Kester against Jikian/Rach/me or Glendon (each time I lost two goals, it'd be Glendon's turn, and vice versa).

Then it became Everyone Versus Kester.

...Kester won. Again. Sigh.

Kay then we got bored and went in to play mahjong. My tablemates were Kesterandrachel, Smallboy and Shiyuan D: Was pretty bad. Shiyuan and I kept losing money because Smallboy kept pong- and gang-ing.

But then I won a game, and broke even! Yay. Then Vic came, took over my hand and said that it sucked D: It didn't lor! Glendon went to sit beside her and fiddle with her, ahem, tais. I didn't realise the tiles were called tais until I saw that Glendon wasn't touching Vic anywhere under the table after all every time she screamed at him to stop touching her tais, and that he was just messing with her tiles :D (Well, we learn something new everyday!)

Sigh Vic's blogged the rest already. Let's just say that I got owned at Guitar Hero (that's what it's called, right?) and kept dying after a few seconds. Whee. Poor Rachel never even got to press anything on her guitar HAHAHAHA.

rock crystals says (9:52 PM):
*what's GL?

♥φωταύγεια; sexysixfifteener! says (9:52 PM):
*yah but he's not coming right

thamsy =D says (9:52 PM):
*guai lan

♥φωταύγεια; sexysixfifteener! says (9:52 PM):
*you want to talk about lans?

kester says (9:52 PM):
*bryan lee bryan tan? raveen?

rock crystals says (9:52 PM):
*what's guai lan again?

kester says (9:52 PM):
*kai jun?

♥φωταύγεια; sexysixfifteener! says (9:52 PM):
*munglin would be pleased to

thamsy =D says (9:52 PM):
*...
*wtv

rock crystals says (9:52 PM):
*yeah
*did you ever hear him groaning about them during math

kester says (9:52 PM):
*OI
*BACK TO TOPIC LA

thamsy =D says (9:53 PM):
*okok

♥φωταύγεια; sexysixfifteener! says (9:53 PM):
*"let my lan say OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH to your lan!"


HAHA VIC BEST MAN.

MERRY FREAKING CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE.

I managed to slice my nail while peeling potatoes for the potato salad. If my dear batchmates don't finish the salad during dinner tomorrow I will peel THEIR skins off too. RAWR.

"So what happened to Schrödinger's cat in the end?"

"I suppose someone opened the box to check on it. Would it have made a difference anyway?"

"Well, yes. But even if they did find it dead..."

"Go on."

"Is there a possibility that somewhere else, in another dimension or another world, it survived?"

"Well, that's kind of possible."

"So what if Schrödinger decided to try his luck again and repeated his experiment by locking the cat in a second time?"

"...But that's ANIMAL CRUELTY!"

Okay, so people are forever asking me why I'm always smiling. And I guess they think I'm a happy person since I appear to have an everlasting grin on my face.

WELL, IF YOU'RE ONE OF THEM, YOU THOUGHT WRONG.

Actually, most of the time I'm not smiling. Neither is the crocodile in the stream below you, so don't pat it. I just happen to have chubby cheeks and a fairly round face (it was supposed to be square, but it got padded with my facial fat), so stop asking me about it! Sheesh.

So anyway, to prove that I'm not a nice cheerful person, I shall compile a list of all the things I hate about the world right here.

--

LIST OF ALL THE THINGS I HATE, FROM THE FRIVOLOUS TO THE DEADLY SERIOUS:

1. Slow-walking morbidly obese people on pavements

As this one's potentially offensive, I shall ward off as many of my to-be detractors as possible by saying now that I don't hate you if you're one of these:

- Fat, but not so fat that I can't squeeze past you at all or ask you to keep to one side so that others can overtake you
- Skinny, but like to walk in the middle of the pavement. I don't mind these people, because I can either squeeze past or shove them to the side (since they're probably light enough for me to do that)
- Morbidly obese, but a fast walker. At least you're 1. trying to do something about your vastness and 2. at least as fast as me, so I don't have to overtake you on the pavement

Right so that's done. Now where was I?

Oh yeah, slow-walking fat people.

Now, as people who know me will know, I like to walk fast. My normal pace is apparently a normal person's kancheong speed. So when I'm walking in a passageway and there's a fat slow person in front of me, I get really annoyed.

(I'm not saying that I'm lightweight myself, but at least I don't take up the ENTIRE PAVEMENT when I walk. That's all I'm saying. Besides, I usually walk fast enough that very few people are inclined to overtake me unless they're late for something.)

'Cause they can't keep to the side (there IS no side for them to keep to when they take up the entire pavement already), and it's rude (but tempting) to holler at them to walk faster. And as Rachel was telling me, if you try to shove them from the back you'll get a whiff of BO. Not very pleasant -.-

So if you're a slow-walking morbidly obese pavement-blocking person, I shall now very meanly suggest that you walk faster, especially along narrow pathways, to avoid pissing off other people who like brisk walking to their destinations/are late for work or school. Besides, if you don't exercise now, you'll soon lose the use of your legs and will have to scoot around on motorized scooters like some fat Americans are doing now.

(Not that I'd mind, though. At least I can make you rev up your scooter to go faster. :D)

2. Smokers

I accidentally got stuck behind a smoker on my way to the bus stop this morning. It was HORRIBLE, I tell you. The guy left a trail of foul air all the way from the mall to the bus stop, and I couldn't overtake him because it was raining and I was wearing my slippers-with-heels, which I can't run in during rainy days without falling.

Okay I originally came up with a plan to stuff all smokers into a smelly crowded room with a bunch of chronic farters, but Vic's idea works better. Scroll down and read about her brilliant invention.



2. People who keep giving excuses for, well, everything

Oh boy I hate it when people do that. Like the other day, when my parents were trying to convince me that I should study hard and do well in school blah blah blah because "I have a better environment to study in than they did".

My mum said: "Look at me! I had to help out in my parents' shop after school and on weekends. I had to study in front of the toilet because I didn't have a proper study table. So OF COURSE I couldn't have done as well as I should have, because I was disadvantaged!"

My dad said: "Well, I didn't even have money to buy food! Everyday we'd eat rice fried with lard, or tofu and soy sauce. I'd hide in the Room everyday during recess because I didn't have enough money to buy food to eat T.T"

So then I pointed out that my dad could always tell my mum that AT LEAST she had food to eat and a roof over her head, so why did he get into the science stream while she only managed Arts?

Please la, everyone has their own difficulties. I remember in P5 I actually managed to bottom the entire level in Math, and my teacher was more concerned about covering her own backside by emailing my parents to tell them to be mentally prepared for me to fail the midyear too than teaching us Math-losers how to do Math properly.

Well, I could've sat there and whined about how none of my parents could teach me how to do Math and I was struggling with the subject alone, but that'd have been truly loserish. Instead (and I do acknowledge that I'm lucky to have parents who can pay for it), I went for tuition. But since normal tuition couldn't help GEPers much, I went for GEP group tuition. At that time I think only Just Education had that sort of class, so off to Just Ed I went.

But yay another problem cropped up! Only the Bukit Gombak branch had GEP math tuition classes, and it was damn far from my house. And my parents didn't (and still don't) own a car. So how?

Bohpian lor. My class lasted for 2 hours (10am to 12pm, I think), but I had to spend 1 1/2 hours every single week just travelling to the place. It was another 1 1/2 hours back, too. Quite awful when everyone else gets driven to (and back from) the centre by their parents, but as I said earlier, it could've been worse - some kids' parents don't even have the money to send them for tuition. What about them, then?

Seriously, it's not about what life throws at you - it's how you deal with it that matters.


--

Oh yes, I was going to talk about my abhorrence for dating in JC.

I don't understand why people want to purposely go find boyfriends/girlfriends within the first 3 months of JC. I mean, if you just happen to pick one up along the way and you really like the person then fine, but looking for one is just DESPO.

...Actually, that was all I was going to say. Lol.

THE FOOD COURT NEAR MY OFFICE CLOSED DOWN!!!

Now we'll have to live on HORRIBLE UNHYGIENIC COFFEESHOP FOOD for the next one and a half weeks!

And I'm not being elitist here; the coffeeshop is really very dirty :X Like, most of the stalls there are C-grade with only a few Bs here and there. The stall I bought laksa from last time didn't even HAVE a rating. Sheesh.

--

Oh but at least going for WEP forced me to make new friends, like Jia Yi, who has pledged to be like me and stay celibate in JC so we can concentrate on being bonafide muggers instead!

Actually, this is more of a reminder to myself to blog about the subject in my next post. Teaser: They say that within 3 months of JC you'll be able to tell the only-interested-in-dating people from the normal muggers.

Whee.

Okay so for those who didn't see the previous post...

TOO BAD FOR YOU HAHAHAHAHA.

I swear I didn't know I wasn't supposed to talk about it!

And for those who didn't get it, well, I'm currently doing my WEP at Northwest CDC with Lingzhi and Jiayi (Hu). They let us work in different departments for the first few days, but now I'm permanently attached to Social Assistance and Lingzhi and Jiayi are in Projects.

Yes, I know you think interning with SA's dumb, because it's not dentistry or medicine or law and it definitely isn't prestigious. But I still love my job, because I like to see the clients go away happy after receiving food rations/vouchers/whatever aid they got :D

Xinyuan thinks I've been exploited, but if I have, I'm a happy exploitee. I've learnt a lot in five days, really. Most of it isn't stuff I'd be able to pick up in CLE lessons. And I've made new friends; the people at the CDC are all super nice to us (and to me, because I do their photocopying for them) haha.

My new nickname is "Meimei". I don't mind; it's nice to be the youngest person around (: It's just that my new name's usually used in a context like "Eh Meimei help me photocopy this file and send it to ______ thankyoubyebye"

I've almost settled into a routine too! Here it goes, roughly:

9am: Walk into the office with Jiayi and Lingzhi. They'll go off to find their boss, but since mine doesn't come in that early I'll either slack around and watch them work on their sandwich boards or go do archiving (basically just clearing the SA storeroom of old case files).

9.30am: Peek into the boss's office to see if she's there.

9.45am: Boss arrives, and usually she just tells me to continue clearing out the storeroom, so I go back and, well, continue.

12.30pm: Open the door of the conference room to get Jiayi and Lingzhi to go for lunch.

1.30pm: I'll assume my usual seat at the counter (behind the two CSAs - Customer Service Executives aka the Counter Ladies) and do whatever photocopying they ask me to do.

6pm: Knock off and leave the office.


Yeah I know it sounds pretty boring, but I love photocopying and sitting at the counter because I get to see the clients and hear their stories, and after that I'll get to photocopy their documents, which usually will explain why they're looking for assistance.

And clearing out the SA storeroom is okay because I read the case files when nobody's looking ;D They're all pretty interesting, but I can't blog about them T.T

Okay I know this sounds really weird, but I can't wait to go back to work on Monday yay (:

Previous post deleted because of confidentiality issues :X

Anyway this 帅哥 walked in yesterday ahaha :D It's too bad that his (REALLY GOOD) looks couldn't get him a job, though. Meh.

HAHAHA okay I know I'm slow, but Nigahiga's damn funny!

Hmm I don't know how to begin this post.

Anyway, I'm back :D From the Republic of China, which by the way is NOT China but Taiwan.

So I guess I'll start from the, uh, beginning.

--

We reached Changi Airport at around 8.15 am and went to the hidden underground staff canteen for breakfast because Killiney Kopitiam was full. Having a dad who's a tour guide rocks because you get to learn about all the secret hideyholes in the airport where the staff hang out :D The staff canteen's virtually inaccessible to those who don't know the way. But my dad forgot to bring his airport pass, so we didn't get discounts on the food. Sigh.

Plane ride was okay; I got slightly airsick from the smelly plane air and couldn't eat anything for lunch. At least the air pressure didn't hurt my ears that much.

We landed in Taiwan about 4 hours later and met the tour guide. He wasn't as good as my dad (because I've been on one of my dad's tours and his tour-guide persona's amazingly different from his normal self, and really professional), but pretty okay. His jokes are funny :D

Ohoh here's one.

Bill Clinton went to Taiwan for an official visit. After a long day of meetings, Clinton, Lee Teng-Hui and Chiang Kai-Shek decided to escape their bodyguards for a while and go have fun by themselves.

So at midnight, the three men snuck out of their respective hotel rooms and went to a strip club. After some time, the stripper came out and started dancing on the bar top. Just as she reached Lee Teng-Hui, her bra top came off. The man was so happy that he gave her $500 in tips.

Chiang Kai-Shek was next in line, and when the stripper reached him, her underwear came off. Feeling pressured by Lee Teng-Hui's generosity, Chiang Kai-Shek gave her $1000.

So Clinton was watching all this, and said to himself: "Damn, I'm the American president! I've got to outdo them."

When the stripper got to Clinton, her butt happened to be facing him. So in a sudden flash of inspiration, Clinton whipped out his wallet...

...took out a credit card, and swiped it down her butt. ("I'VE GOT A CREDIT CARD! NO SPENDING LIMIT!!!")

Wahaha his jokes are the best man. They're really sick la.

So anyway since it was nearly sunset (at 4.30pm, yeah) we went to the Shilin Night Market for dinner.

...Ah heck I'll just post photos and describe them.

I'll be away from 2nd - 8th December on a holiday to the Republic of China.

If you desperately need to contact me, you can sms me at 93295000 (yes, I know I'm taking a risk here by putting my number up on the World Wide Web, so please don't spam me with calls/messages), and because according to Xinyuan, smses are not subject to auto-roaming charges, I will reply if I really need to.

(Disclaimer: I said you can sms me, but don't come and hantam me if your phone bills suddenly go sky-high - I'm not sure about the waiver myself. :X )