7250 + 8850 + S57 + 8910 + iPaq + T|T - T68m

the morning started with a wondrous symphony of my parents' voices. in A#. they were arguing about money again, my father having spent his half of the $10 000 he brought back from PNG at the horse races. my mom spent most of her half on the house mortgage and a replacement bed. which my father ordered and was supposed to pay for. when my mom asked him to transfer more money here, he said he couldn't/wouldn't/shouldn't. but within 12 hours of losing that $5 000, he immediately transfers more over.

he wanted to go visit his father this morning. my aunt, who lives with my granddad, wanted me to help her install her HP LaserJet 5L. i didn't think it was a good idea, what with the war going on and all. [hint: NOT gulf war 2] besides, the drivers were generic and hence the same as the old ones'.

thankfully, StarHub Center did not have to suffer the embarrassment of my father today, us having separated from him when he decided to head to my aunt's on his own. my mom dropped me off to queue first, but there were only three people in the queue, who disappeared the moment i got near. kudos to StarHub. however, i still ended up in one of the most unpleasant situations this year. queue for a fashion-victim Nokia. at a half-price promotion.

the grey one looked less offensive, hence i got my mom to buy it. we had lunch at Sushi Ondo, a budget spin-off of Genki Sushi, where all but three plates of sushi are $1.50 each. the rest of the day involved me being dragged in and out of bra sections, sitting for ages in the Giodanos of Centrepoint, and turning down a Coffee Bean Ice Blended on account of a queasy stomach.

"I bit my tongue and stood in line
With not much to believe in
I bought into what I was sold
And ended up with nothing

This is not my idea of a good time
This is not my idea of a good time
This is not my idea of a good time
This is not my idea"

- "Not My Idea", Garbage

severe whatever whatever syndrome

things can get really crappy when everything grinds to a halt. some parents panic, and all schools shut down. i'm thankful for the extra sleep and non-homework time allotted to me, but i could do without the ignorance of adults. including my parents'.

my useless father's back in singapore [since thursday], btw. back to terrorize the population and talk about 'typical singaporeans' when he is so clearly one of them. Nokia 8910 Midnight Edition, remember?

it being I-Haven't-Been-To-Pay-My-Repsects-All-Year-So-I-Might-As-Well-Do-It-Now Day, [Qing Ming Jie] the six of us squeezed into the Suzuki Swift GL and made our way to Lim Chu Kang. an entire hour late.

see, we were supposed to arrive at 0700-0730. i woke at 0600. i was ready by 0630. the rest of the family [aka the females, plus my father, surprisingly] was ready by 0715. my brother had time for a nap before we left.

we spent two hours or so entertaining the relatives, fake smiles, witch-like laughter [male:female ratio was at least 2:1], and my father embarrassing all of us, acting like the ringmaster of an absurd circus. my first aunt had the guts to lash out at him, subtly, which i've always admired. however, he either did not understand it, or was to involved in talking about himself to pay attention.

later that evening, we had half the [very long] queue at StarHub Center staring at us as my father wondered out[very]loud if the phones were being given away for free.

my mom was taking advantage of an offer for half-price Nokia 7250s. this is one of few instances when i would advocate the purchase of a Nokia. half-price. it must be really too ugly, then, even for the singaporean [buy... Nokia... cool...] population.

the thing is not only ugly, but has a crappy camera and keeps in with the Nokia tradition of monomedia MMS. which, incidentally, means not being able to send/forward sounds in your multimedia messages. i told her to buy the gray one, far, far less offensive than the "Plum" cover.

going back to my father, he exclaimed that he would not wait the estimated two hours for the phone, and would rather fork out the extra $500 than have dinner another minute later. i was trying very hard not to bonk him on the head.

my father being back means that my SIM is in his ridiculous Nokia, which WOULD NOT PAIR WITH MY PALM TUNGSTEN|T, EVEN AFTER I THREATENED THE DAMN THING WITH A THIRTEEN STOREY FALL. pairing, btw, means to set up two Bluetooth devices to 'trust' each other and accept connections without prior authorization. so why does it not surprise me when the Nokia asks for permission EACH BLOODY TIME I TRY TO DOWNLOAD MY MESSAGES?! i had to find the fucking buried setting and turn it off.

his shopping list this time is roughly $15 000 long. this includes [but is not limited to]:

a plasma TV

a $1 000 Mont Blanc pen, sorry, penmanship instrument [he lost his $300 one on the plane]

a new set of living room furniture

a laundry dryer [condos do not provide bamboo-pole-perching facilities. isn't that wonderful? now we can be civilized and properly dry clothes]

woo-hoo. let the flaunting begin.

- "The World Is Not Enough (U.N.K.L.E. Remix)", Garbage

i came around to tear your little world apart/and break your soul apart

i bought Garbage [their first album] when i was out helping Matt find a gift for someone. [intelligent guess says Jamie, whoever she is] The entire album is simply raw energy, blended with the strong, sharp beats of Garbage. Supervixen and Vow are so damn addictive, i've been listening to them back-to-back for days now. if you'd noticed the 'lyric' link below, i even wrote out the lyrics to Supervixen. for no reason at all.

Fun Fact: HMW stocks about any CD you could possibly want, but charges abysmal prices for them.

these few days, besides many other things, i've also experienced the true extent of how annoying 4J2003 can be, online and offline. i've more or less had it with most of the lot. and matt? sleep more. at night.

- "Vow", Garbage

make a whole new religion/i will be your religion/bow down to me

"It’s a strange thing about choices. People always like to think they’re making them, when in fact they are not. They like to think they’re deciding which movie to see, or which orange juice to buy, or where they’ll be taking their next vacation. And they are truly unaware that pages and pages of demographic studies, and tests, and focus groups have predetermined their “choices” long before they even get to the stage where they can decide. They are blissfully ignorant of being manipulated by a machine much, much larger than they.

Of course, I think that in some part of their subconscious mind, they have an awareness of the fact that they’re being “helpfully guided” through life by powers far superior to them. I think they need that guidance. I think they’d feel completely lost at sea without it.

Gaia needs my guidance right now. Just as she needs to feel that she has chosen to seek it out. She’ll make her choice as to whether or not she’s going to join me abroad, not understanding that the choice has already been made. All according to a plan.

Control. There are so many misconceptions about it. All this foolishness about how there’s no such thing. People love to convince themselves that they have some kind of free will and that this free will plays any roll in their choices. It’s really quite ridiculous. But I am eternally grateful for the illusion.

Because the illusion of free will is the one essential element in maintaining complete control."

- Loki

- "Supervixen", Garbage

can't you see the futility of it all?!

well. here we are. five days into 'spring break'. what has been accomplished so far?

>> item 2 on my holiday to-do. my Olympus is now in the hands of Olympus Singapore. the say it'll take about two weeks for quotation. their showroom looks like a Olympus exhibit, by the way. what seems like every modern Olympus every made is on display there. it was blissfully empty, though.
>> four EHist and four SStudies source-based questions.
>> two EMath worksheets.

so, contrary to my all-conquering theme today, i'm a bit of a lazy arse. business as usual then.

- "The World Is Not Enough", Garbage

missing: one Nike squirt water bottle

the times when i leave more than a week's gap in my blog are of five main types:

A: there's nothing happening worth writing home about
B: there's too much happening to write home about
C: i was just plain lazy
D: weekday computing is being frowned upon by my mother
E: all of the above

this week, it's E - A

plus, i lost my Nike water bottle, which cost me $13 and was bought together with the guys when we bought our class jerseys last year. i'm sure someone in 4H picked it up. whoever found it, please return. dump it unceremoniously at the desk i sit at during MT class, or whatever. just. return. it.

if there's nothing else, sod off. go find something else to do. i'm not in the best of moods now.

- "GHV2 Thunderpuss Megamix", Madonna

island life. love it.

Qn: why was the annual inter-school cross-country event moved to Sentosa [island life, love it!]?

An: so students and teachers alike can rediscover the charms of $3 iced teas, $12 fish-and-chips, getting sand everywhere, a monorail that's more believable as a a few six-seater rickshaws strung together and dragged along a rusting green track, mingling with Jappy and Cheena tourists in said rickshaw, the New Blazing-Hot-Fantasy-Carpark, etc.

in the usual disorganized-Victorians tradition, we were left to find our way to Wherever, and matt+pat showed off their anti-war banner everywhere they went. i was mortified. the P saw them and wanted to see the banner. somehow, they squirmed out of it.

i wasted three fucking hours of my life mucking around the monorail and the Southernmost Point Of Continental Asia. i did not purchase the abovementioned beverages and food products, making it a full 24 hours of non-nutrition that day. i tried to take some shots at Palawan Beach, to try and prove that i'm not completely useless behind a camera, but the damned Olympus failed me. i can't really expect it to work well with a damaged lens aperture, but i was pretty angry with the little runt anyway.

and all i had to do to gain free reign of Sentosa [island life, love it!] was to walk over to the VJC cohort [who, incidentally, were not forced to go] in plain sight of the instructors. i spent five minutes acting like i was one of them, talking to those i knew, and was outta there when some of them were moving.

i got back on the monorail again later, and was two stops past the arrival/departure center, when matt called and said he'd left. instantly i knew i was doomed to stuck in human traffic, and tried to make back to the center before the masses, but it looked like Sentosa [island life, love it!] was giving away Hello Kitties by the time the blue line bus pulled into the arrival/departure stop.

i had to float around the crowded mass-transit system for an hour to get to tuition. i bummed sandwiches and two coffees from my tuition teacher to keep me going [breaking my fast], but by the time tuition ended i was so tired i hailed a cab home.

funny how all cab drivers seem to know where Chuan Park is.

"This is the noise that keeps me awake
My head explodes and my body aches

Push it
Make the beats go harder
Push it
Make the beats go harder"

- "Push it", Garbage

it's. not. raining.

i wrote most of this entry on my Palm Vx, and it automatically caps the first letter after punctuation. so there.

For once, the weekend was better spent than a Monday in school.

I leave the house late, because of my fucking contact lenses, and have to threaten my punctuality, taking the risk of taking TIBS 106, which i have never done before. I'd compliment TIBS on their excellent bus services, but i'm too pissed off now.

I get to school, and they have a sex talk. They clearly overestimate the maturity of the students in this school. HIV/AIDS is not a topic for Monday morning discussion. I will not repeat the questions posed after the talk, but they covered excessive masturbation, the age of consent & the problems commonly associated with a torn condom.

I hope the school has learnt something from this.

After assembly, i grabbed my bag from the classroom as stalked off to my free period, cutting through the bullshit served up on a platter by my classmates. As usual.

So why am i surprised when none other than Mr Alvin Pfeiffer Lim comes over and decides to be the first to disturb me this week? He trots over to the bench i'm sitting at, and wants to see the i was reading. It was already more than an arm's length away from him, but i sensed that he wouldn't buzz off without it. Hence, i handed the book over & moved on to finding something else to do. He buzzed off, uttering something about returning it the next time saw me. Exit Mr Lim.

Enter Mdm Kwok, informing me that my classmates managed a 100% distinction in geography. I knew that, along with their results, about three hours before they they knew last Friday. And even if i didn't, i certainly didn't need another My-Time-Had-Passed reminder. but, no. she even goes on to talk about how great it would have been if i had continued along with then last year. how insenstitive is that?

then Pfeiffer joins her and cackles about seeing my name there next year. i shouted that it was already - under Withdrawn

why can't they just leave me alone?

"I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains

You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains"

- "Only Happy When It Rains", Garbage