i realized i'd been having quite bad insomnia lately. since around 3 days ago. i have no idea why this is so. from 11pm i'll lie on bed, until 1, then 2, then 3, then before i know it, its 4... and i fall asleep around 5. and the eye rings are getting quite bad.

and yesterday i got back home around 11.30pm, and went straight to bed. at 3.30pm i just gave up and switched on the computer to catch up on kdramas, check the library catalogue and facebook.

and i realized that starhub had cut off our internet connection as my dad had forgotten to pay the bill again. played freecell and spider solitaire until i was so bored i started reading up on my fyp, which made me so bored i decided to just go to sleep.

and while lying on the bed, tired out, i wonder if it was internet-withdrawal symptoms that was stopping me from sleep as i hadn't had the chance to touch the computer much at home.

and in the morning my mum went to pay off the bill for my dad, and 2 hours later, the connection had not come on yet. and not for a long time after that. in the end we called to ask about it, and apparently, they were waiting for us to call them to request for some guy to put us back on the network again. it was 'procedural' and lo ho ho ho the cashier didn't tell us to do it. you'll think that for a company sponging money off customers by coming up with evil hi-tech devices such as digital boxes and cable modems they would be able to do a simple auto-authorization/notification system linking its billing with its service staff. or maybe it is a scheme to keep bandwidths and usage rates low at the expense of their unfortunate 'strapped in the deal for 2 years' customers.

yes i'm one irate customer, and if someone is saying 'serves you right for paying your bills late' i'll say 'f*** you a million times over'. when you keep on receive spamming smses that say 'please pay up to prevent service disruption, but ignore this if u'd paid' (u can almost hear a silent ha ha ha in the background) when you'd already paid... let's just say i think the kid who cries wolf deserves to be eaten up along with his sheep.

We won the scrabble championship againz~ it was a freaking close shave; we almost didn't even make it to the finals.

The tournament was broken into two days- and for the first day our Singles player Hansel was MIA - church camp. so we trudged off to battle with Les, Jo (we kop-ed her from hall 8; she's a Master) and me as singles, gerard and yanh (the permanent captain since he'll be in hall for 8 more years, being the prof's son), huimin (the next lester in the year 1 team) and a rotating reserve.

the first match was against hall 10, and we were rather freaked out by them since their boggle team was notoriously strong; i drew with a year 1, and that was coz she challenged off many words and i suffered heavy penalties. vocab-heavy players are scary when thrown into the scrabble game.

however, luckily, hall 10 seems to have separate teams for boggle and scrabble, and we won quite easily 5-0, with a spread of 1023.

the next match was against hall 15, and we won 5-0 again, with a spread of 1046.

then it was hall 14, and we won 4-1 again, but still with a spread of 1011.

then it was hall 4, and we won 5-0 again, with a spread of 882. we ham-tamped everyone who scored less than a 200 spread. my opponent was a very beautiful lady who became my umpire later on in the match <3.

and it was a break for dinner, and we happily trooped off to the nearby HDB blocks in les' trusty white van for prata and noodles to celebrate our getting into the semi-finals. (8 people squeezed into one van. we were joking that if we all got into an accident it'll be a post-humous loss against hall 6 'we won IHRG coz our opponents died')

and it started raining heavily, so much so that the roof at the hawker center started leaking, and flood waters made their way steadily to our table. of course we didn't have an umbrella, and we rushed through the downpour into the van, and back to a soggy showdown with hall 6.

hall 6 has an nbs junior who joined the ISG with me last year; herry who beat Jo once before, and Andre, who was really quite strong. and we were facing them without Hansel...

we were pretty peeved that hall 6 refused to use our rotating scrabble boards (which cost like $80 each). luckily it was the last match of the day, and we didn't have to move the board off the table and on again.

i won my match easily enough, although it wasn't very fun as the opponent had 3/4 of the S'es, and he closed the board up so i couldn't bingo or play anywhere without an S. in the end i got a blank and threw him far behind with a vengeance. the game wasn't fun, but the opponent was a fun indian guy and we joked a lot with the umpy.

however, Jo lost to Andre grrrr. (attributed to bad luck) and the doubles lost and we lost~~~ one of the doubles lost by only a measly 17 points. and i swore vengeance~ but even though we lost the round, the overall spread was still a positive 64... which meant our individual boards pwned them more then they pwned us. GRAWRGH!

the next day Hansel came back to us~!!! and we fielded him in doubles taking the place of our reserve so as to give the finals hall a nasty surprise when we suddenly unveil him as a singles player~

we won hall 16 first thing in the morning 5-0, with a spread of 630... (oh no, the spreads are getting smaller and smaller..)

and then it was hall 2 where we won 4-1 with a spread of 731.

and it was the semi-finals against the champion of Group B, Hall 9~! it was a really hard battle, with the opponents evenly matched with each other... halfway through the game i was suddenly consumed with dread when i realized it was impossible for me to win, even though i was strategically supposed to. Jo was against the captain, and les was against a really freaking strong player.

in my defense, that game was.... i'll describe it as... i felt like there was a black hole sucking all my luck away from me. she started the game with DJIN for 24 points. and i stared down at my rack of VIAEUOI and realized with a dread that i can't put down any good moves at all. if i played UVAE for 10, i would be left with a hideous IOI and she would be able to eat the TWS or TLS in a tasty gulp. the same goes for playing EUOI. so i changed all 7 of my tiles, while she threw a bingo in my face. the score was almost 80-0 now.

i threw a 27-pointer, and she threw an equal scoring. i knew i had to either consistently play 20-pointers or bingo to catch up, but i had IEIEcvc on my rack, and i couldn't bingo with 5 vowels. i survived with the IEIE for 3 turns before i gave up and changed all 7 of my tiles yet again, by which time the spread was 100+.

towards the end of the game i managed to bingo with GRITTERS at the ONLY available bingo spot and catch up briefly, only to be left behind yet again. the final spread was 30+, and i lost majestically. sob........

Jo won, I lost, one double lost, Les won... and in the end we pulled through by the skin of our teeth. we almost couldn't even make it to the finals. shit man.

and finally it was the finals against hall 6, and we threw les and yanh together as the strongest doubles combi ever in the history of NTU, and fielded Hansel as a single player.

I was table one against Ivy, a player who almost killed lester in the preliminaries. i won. i was lucky, bingoing twice (sunNier and sOuping) and getting the J, the Z, the Q and the K, bringing my total score to 500.

Hansel met the closed-board player I played in the prelims in table 2 and won by 20+.

Jo met her arch-nemesis Andre and took her sweet revenge upon the man. i think she was quite begrudged that the opponent refused to use her rotating board (she supplied 4 of the boards used by our hall). so she was very ecstatically recounting to us when her opponent played VOILATE as he was staring at the board upside-down. lolz~ give you rotating don't want lar~ put wrongly.

les and yanh, the supposedly strongest combi ever almost got their asses handed back to them on a platter. almost. but they still pulled through in the end with a bingo each. initially les put SHAILED, but it was challenged back, and yanh hastily played REO for 3 points so les may play HALIDES and OH. afterwhich yanh bingoed STRIPED.

the last table was gerard+huimin against herry + herry's partner. and we won even though he played ZEATINS for 104! good job, you two~! it is still very hard to believe they won. yay~~~~!!!!

and there you have it! we won the IHRG gold medal for scrabble again, three years running! i can graduate from hall with a light heart now. its a legacy~

Its the last day of the year, a time for reflection and mulling over all that's gone wrong this year. At the beginning of the year I had a whole list of new year resolutions... which suddenly look so impossible and laughable now.

1. I resolve to teach lester's parrot to perch on my shoulder!

Gawd. that's impossible. I think it hates me. *cries*

2. I resolve to become a home investor!

Aye. I lost all my money.

3. I resolve to pull my GPA up to 4.3!

That's impossible. Really. I mean, was it really possible? Well... my Year 2 Sem 2 was horrible, but I did try last semester and my grades were A- all the way, but i think its more like 4.03 now.

4. I resolve to write a book!

Eh.. let's push that resolution into this year. at least the prologue's done if that helps...

5. I resolve to bring my ISC rating up to 1200!

Yay! At last! I'm at a current 1270 now! I rock!

6. I resolve to never lose a Scrabble game in the IHG ever again!

I was SO close. SO close. Damn.

7. I resolve to make time to hang out with my friends!

I did~ If boyfriend counts I did this remarkably well.

8. I resolve to memorize 3 piano scores by the end of this year!

Hmm.. compared to this, i guess that GPA 4.3 thingy seems like child's play. sheesh, who am i trying to kid.

9. I resolve to push off all sub/main comm posts in my final year!

I got pulled into Dinner and Dance Main Comm. >_<

10. I resolve to hate less, love more, heal more, and steer clear of hopeless idiots so as not to break my resolution. *forced grin*

I still hate those counter staff at Hans Tampines. I hate them, i hate them, i hate them. I love more~ I... healed? coz i fell down a lot? Hopeless idiots... well, they're all around.

and there you have it~ a remarkably bad year, with only 20% of the objectives met. but har har har, i survived. till tmr then~