my exams ended on Monday, 7.30pm with Law of Information and Technology! well, let's skip the part about having no time once again now; i'll like to now make a point that - having no time doesn't mean i can't finish the paper ok? it just means i had to make do with less than perfect answers, scribbling 30min worth of answers down in 15 minutes, and cutting away a lot of good points.

the past two days had been squandered away wantonly as i scoured the online world for undiscovered manga to read. found some oldies that i'd wanted to read for a while; Trigun, Battle Angel Alita. and finally went on to sample some of the new stocks in town - pretty good stuff! there's a relatively new manga, High School of the Dead, which is a zombie flick converted to manga form. ultra cool!!! =o(>.<)o=

anyway, i'm back. sigh~ there's only 2 weeks left before i start my internship, so i have to really make good use of my time now. bye byez~ 

today we went shopping at Ikea coz... the construction upstairs was just so freaking loud. (-__-)

as we were eating, i noticed this middle-aged foreigner, dressed in a neat shirt and blue jeans, and i asked my mum: "why doesn't dad wear jeans?"

mum: "he's too short, he wouldn't look good."

me: "...it doesn't work that way!"

mum: "anyway, its good he doesn't wear jeans, or i'll have to alter it for him. sigh, same goes for you."

me: "you mean you don't need to alter for yourself? -___-"

mum: "for me, i just need to fold it up by one layer, and it'll look perfect. for the two of you, i'll have to cut off the bottom part. ...nyahahahaha~!"

damn you, mom.

* * *

the lights in my dining room has three large bulbs. one of them had been dead since a few days ago. so today, my dad took out his jogging shoes and decided that he's going to go pick up a bulb.

sigh~ wasn't that the perfect husband? and mum used to keep complaining he doesn't help out much around the house. i made a mental note to bring it up to her next time they get into a tiff.

an hour later, he called once again, announcing he's getting durians! coincidentally i'd been thinking of eating durians lately, since they seem to be in the season. yay~

at long last he came back, and just when i was about to go down to greet him, i heard screaming from downstairs.

"Why did you buy white ones? Normally its yellow isn't it?"

hmmm? -___-

i suddenly had this bad feeling that my dad got duped into buying white-fleshed durians. IMO, they're dry, tasteless, and generally horrible. but no way he'll ever get suckered like that.

so i hankered downstairs and...

a bright white bulb shined cheerily at me from beside the original bright orange bulbs.

mum was in hysterics. "It looks even worse now~~~!!! my students are going to point it out for sure! its so uneven!"

lol. oh well.

* * *

so we huddled up at the living room table, away from the offensive mismatching dining room lights for dinner, and watched the korean drama - watzitsname

i'd missed many episodes before, and i couldn't help but ask what's happening, because, well, you know, korean dramas have really really complicated relationships.

finally mum got pissed and refused to answer any more questions. (hey, i was only at my second question ok?)

dad happily volunteered.

as he was enthusiastically giving me a low down of all the intricate relationships between the female and male lead characters, and i was happily lapping it up...

mum broke it all up with her exasperated laugh. "THAT WASN'T IT AT ALL!"

in the end she was stuck with the task of explaining everything all over again.

(note on the exasperated laugh: when she's really exasperated, she starts laughing uncontrollably. when she's really angry, she does that too. its really scary... mew~)

it was the worst nightmare i'd ever had; and all the more horrible because it felt so real.

one day, (it seemed just like a continuation of yesterday) the day after i came home happily from a date with lester, my parents very sombrely asked me if i remembered agreeing to a marriage set-up by my relatives in Malaysia.

my blood ran cold because i suddenly had this really bad feeling that i forgot something. and i think i very very vaguely had that impression somewhere deep in my consciousness, like a dream. and as i searched my memory, it suddenly came back at me.

somehow one day i had a slight tiff with him, came back home pissed off and my parents informed me that my grandma back in malaysia said there was a very eligible bachelor in the extended family who was really eligible and asked if i, the Singaporean university undergrad is interested.

i don't know what answer she was expecting, but my parents certainly didn't expect me to say "fine, anything she wants" in my usual reckless fit of abandon. (and i didn't expect them to actually convey that back!)

the impression of this incident was so vague and the scenario so impossible, that i'd actually thought it was just a very very vivid dream.

apparently not.

and i was now informed that the family had agreed, and they are in a hurry to hold the ceremony, so they would be coming over to Singapore directly.

my parents gave me a "look what deep shit you're in now, what are you going to do?" look. my mum didn't even have the energy to rail at me.

and i thought "oh shit, this is moving really fast, and i'd better turn it down immediately before it gets worse and ends up like those stupid tv series"

we went to meet them, and the dude was a really ugly thing with dwarfism.

i felt really sorry for him. he must have had a bad time with his condition, and i just had to add to his misery. and it also suddenly seemed that my role just turned from a "little girl who's really sorry about this misunderstanding" into the "worst tyrant in history".

on a separate issue i was really pissed that apparently my impression with my malaysian family was that i was fitting with this guy - i have no idea what great things he'd done but - wtf.

my grandma was there. and apparently he was my uncle's second brother (Fallacy! my brain screwed this detail up) so my uncle and cousin were there as well, together with the guy's family, and everyone were happily chatting while i stoned and contemplated plans A, B and C to get out of the arrangement, and my dad kept his fingers crossed, waiting for his unfilial daughter to drop the bomb.

i was really really sorry. really really am. i explained myself, but i can't really remember what i said, only that i was crying, and that it was futile - no matter what i say, it'll just sound like an excuse to get out of marriage with a disabled guy. the guy fell into a depression. my gram and uncle's face turned white. my cousin's face turned black (oh, i guess it was her suggestion initially)

and as i was leaving i noticed he'd brought a few posters along with him (for me) and that oh, he was a pop star. i guess i understood where my cousin was coming from, but, i'm just not into idols. his mother snatched the poster from my sight and shouted "that's for his fans, not a heartless girl like you!" ...i'm sorry.

i apologized to my cousin and her family. i really liked her, even though it'd been years since we last met. she said bitterly, "that was really evil. i don't really have anything to say to you." ...i understand. i don't want to have anything to do with me either.

i guess i can't ever return to that family anymore. it wasn't a huge loss to me as i'd never really been close, it just felt really really bad, but - my dad had been really very close to them.

"yeah, i doubt things would be the same again..." he said, and gave me his usual very tired smile, whenever i did something to hurt him. this made me feel the worse of all, that he'd actually stuck by a selfish bastard such as me, and shouldered it all without a complaint.

as we left sombrely, i felt that i could never look les in the face again, and...

i woke up. and i hugged my pillow thankful that it was all a dream.

and i came online to blog at 6.30am in the morning because i'm too disturbed to sleep.

this really hammered into me that - its really time to grow up. i can't make irresponsible comments, and even if i'm gutsy enough to face the consequences, people do get hurt. a bed of roses could turn into thorns just overnight because of the littlest things you do.

and even though it only happened in dreamland... i'm sorry lester!!! i actually got briefly engaged to someone else!

the upstairs neighbours had been drilling the walls for a couple of days now. i have it worst because apparently the construction is nearest my bedroom. every morning, around a little after nine, i would be rudely woken up by the the stupid drill, and the sound would continue on until their lunch break.

my mother rails about the 3-day noise pollution rule every morning, and runs up to complain to the construction over-seer (who has ear plugs installed, so i wonder if he really hears anything she said)

my dad gets irritated by the noise (coz the computer is in my room) and can't work on analyzing his shares. so after a while, he'll give up and let the computer to me, and go out to drink coffee with his buds.

the sad thing is, he pushes his computer time into the evening instead, so i get less time where it matters.

it'll be a good idea to sell noise-pollution rights you know? like, HDB would only offer 2 noise-pollution rights a year for a certain block. if you don't need extensive renovation that bad, don't do it. if its not that urgent, and there's many competitors for this year, just push it to next year.

or make them pay for immediate neighbours' hotel stay for the two weeks they are doing construction work or something. 

i dreamt that i had a competition and came back to hall late, only to realize there's a hall buffet going on. there's no more tables, so the team had to make do with chairs only. and there was no more food on the table. so i turned around and pleaded for a small portion of crackers from some poor guy, and when i finally returned victorious with that miserable cracker, i realized new food had come in, and yy and co. were happily chewing on a huge piece of bak kwa. there's still 3 pieces on the buffet table.

just as i made a lunge for it.... my mum kicked my bed and i woke up. -___-

i brushed my teeth, drank water... den, unable to give up that delicious looking bak kwa, i returned to bed to try to continue that dream.

i returned back to my chair in dreamland, and the buffet table was still there. i wonder if there's still any bak kwa left?

den felicia came and informed me that Sincere watch was "sincerely interested in having me join their company" due to some design thingy they saw related to hall, and heralded me away as i stared longingly at the buffet table.

as the hopes of filling my stomach in dreamland got fainter and fainter, and i looked set to be caught in a boring interview, i gave up and returned to real life. at least i had a full breakfast.

going to buy bak kwa later. i swear i'll have some bak kwa by the end of today!!!! no one's gonna stop me again! grr....!

oh. in case you guys don't know, i'm having my professional attachment now. i shan't mention the name of the company, but its an insurance mnc, and i'm based in raffles place~

i started my stint yesterday. i've been doing filing and sorting of emails until today. i hope i move on to something more soon... especially after hearing interns in other companies had already started actual auditing work etc. as for the rest of my fellow interns, they are already typing stuff into an unknown program, while i'm still staring at the dismal "please press ctrl+alt+del to log on" screen.

lunch is horrendous. the food's pretty good, but the people - the PEOPLE....!!! once you step out of the block, its a whole FIELD of bobbing heads making a beeline for all the food stalls available!

the bk and mac queue is super long! the hawker centre is a warzone where people fight for territory and seats. *cries* i forsee one day when i'll wake up at 5.30am and prepare my own bento, or eat donuts and bread for lunch. we'd been lucky to find seats these two days.

yesterday, we managed to squeeze into 3 inconspicous oily seats caught right smack in the middle of two long queues. 

today, we stared down at 3 =looks like CEO= businessmen finishing their desserts and snatched their seats.

and the queues are super long~~!!! the food is not enough for a growing adult~! i demand a good lunch at the very least!!!

after not hearing a peep from me for the past half a month, i'm back to continue on about the catastrophe that is my life.

i've been sick for the past few days. running nose, migraine, fever, constipation, inflammed throat... you name it, i've got it.

i made it through work and the harsh air-con in the office. until this morning - when i woke up at 0630 in the morning, too weak to walk off to the bathroom. my temperature was 38.6. so i gave it up, and proceeded to go back to sleep after messaging my friend.

at 9 i had to be up again, to go the dentist to get my braces removed. i was feeling a lot better. so i took the mrt down... and after standing up for 2 stops, i started feeling really bad. 6 stops down, i looked so bad someone gave his seat up to me.

with 2 stops left to outram, i suddenly felt my lips turn icy cold and my mind started swimming. i closed my eyes and wished for it to be over. my fainting spells usually pass in 5 minutes.

finally, i reached Outram! i got up, took two steps towards the door, and red and white patches started to fill up half my vision. i locked in on the benches outside of the train doors.

after a mad dash out the door, my sight was suddenly consumed with white dots and i went totally blind. i still remembered where the benches were. so i took one unsteady step towards its direction

and the next i knew both my knees were hitting the ground with a loud thud, and i felt hands pulling me up. thankfully there was a nurse among the alightees who pulled my head down and gave me a sweet.

a female staff helped me up the escalator to the first aid room. at the top of the escalator, i downed again, and a male security carried me off.

after resting for a while, i went off to the dental centre to remove my braces... and sigh~ now i have to put on a set of retainers 24/7. i can't speak with them on. everything's coming out warbled and garbled. try talking with a piece of plastic covering the top of your mouth cavity, and another under your tongue. its hell.... and my dentist dropped another bomb on me, not only must i keep this contraption on all day, (salivating and garbling all the time), i have to go for an operation to remove my wisdom teeth. ouch. my wallet.

at last, i managed to get home at 1.30pm. after lunch i went over to the clinics at the marketplace. the first clinic i came to was... empty. no patients, no clerk at the counter, only a fan whirling at me.

the second i went to was full~ of people waiting for the doctor to come back. it was half an hour before he returned, and another half before it was my turn.

while walking past the toto store i wondered if i should just go in and buy a ticket, since i seem to have had my higher than average share of bad luck today. theoretically, there should be equal amounts of good and bad luck everyday to balance out life. but nah~ gambling is a bad habit.

but if i do buy, i wanna buy 8139!!!! let's see if it opens!