Monday, September 21, 2009

Making Memories

Yesterday morning I woke up much earlier than I had expected to. I had originally seen myself sleeping in until the afternoon, brushing my teeth before forgoing shaving and putting in my contact lenses, and spending the rest of the day at home doing my homework and assignments for college. My mum, however, had different plans. She wanted the whole family to take a long drive so the whole day would be spent together in the new car. My dad managed to convince her to change the long drive into two two-hour drives punctuated by a stop at my grandparents' place in Ipoh. After this slightly-more-reasonable-but-still-pretty-lame new plan for spending the holiday was agreed upon, my dad went to wake the rest of us up. He did not have much success. From my bed, I told him that I wasn't going to wake up and go all the way there because I wanted to sleep in and I had homework to do. He kept coming back in the room to try and get me to wake up, but I only did when he threatened my allowance.

By the time I was up everyone else was almost ready to go. I got changed, brushed my teeth, and, since I was going to be outside the house after all, shaved. I quickly went over my daily Bible reading (Two chapters Old Testament, one chapter New) and my morning exercise (Up twenty flights of stairs), had a drink of water, grumbled a bit about still having to go, then put in my contacts, grabbed my wallet and phone, and headed down to the car.

There were seven of us in the car (Parents, two brothers [Ian, oldest brother, and Jan, youngest brother], two sisters [Hannah, younger sister, and Susanna, youngest sister], and me), and not all of us were pleased at the situation. I loudly voiced my opinions about going out during the holiday instead of staying home to do the work I needed to do and such. Ian said he didn't want to spend four hours cooped up in the car. Hannah and Jan talked about breakfast, I think.

Breakfast was the first stop. While eating, I asked my dad if Ian and me could drive to Ipoh so that my parents would be sitting in the back to see how they liked it. He agreed. When we were finished with our food, Ian took the first shift and I rode shotgun.

A few minutes after we left the corner shop where we had breakfast, my dad asked if we would rather take a half-hour drive around the city instead. We said yes. Ian adjusted the route and my dad called ahead to let the grandparents know that we wouldn't be coming over after all. I was considerably cheered up by this change in plans, because it meant that we would have time left after the drive for me to do some homework.

We talked about all sorts of things on the drive. My parents told the story of the day they met, and we learned that my dad never told my mum that he loved her until seven years after they met, which was when they got married. Ian then discussed his theory as to why countries with seasons seemed to be more developed better off than Malaysia and other such equatorial third-world countries. We also talked about the various empires that ruled most of the world, and how many of our friends were in serious long-term relationships. When we got to the last topic, I mentioned our cousin, Dexter, but Ian said that he didn't count because the relationship had to have been going on for more than year to count as long-term. I told him that when we met Dexter's girlfriend at last year's Christmas party they had been together for a while already, so it was probably more than a year. Ian said they had only been together since October or something. I suspected he was just making shit up, but I dropped the subject.

After we went around the city, we decided to go visit a mall. This was good, because we could buy some stuff and also watch a movie. We went to One Utama, and chose to go watch Up. Ian, Hannah, and I had already seen it, but it's the best movie of the year, so we didn't mind watching it again. Also, it would be the first time the entire family would watch a movie together, so it was definitely something we wanted to do.

Jan, Susanna, my mum, and I went to Golden Screen Cinemas to pick up tickets. When we reached the counter, we found out that they had stopped showing Up the day before. All the other shows playing were crap, so we went to check a newspaper to see if any other cinemas were still showing Up. Unfortunately, there were no newspapers that day because it was a holiday.

I think it's pretty retarded that GSC stopped showing Up after a month but was still showing Transformers 2 three months after its release. I guess that just goes to show how lousy this country's taste in movies is.

We went down to meet the rest of the family in Marks and Spencer. When I got there I texted a bit and found out that one of my friends had seen Up recently. I had an agreement with her that if she saw Up I would watch Twilight, so while I was glad that I could convince her to watch such an awesome movie I was a bit bummed out about having to watch such trite when she hands me the DVD. Oh well.

I wandered back to where the rest of the family was and they helped me pick out a jacket for the annual ball. It also fit my younger brother and my dad, so we got three jackets' worth in one. That was cool.

When we were done with Marks and Spencer, Hannah and I wanted to go see if Tanjung Golden Village was still showing Up. When he heard this, Ian said that they weren't. I asked him how he knew, and he said that he saw it in the newspaper. I told him that no newspaper had been printed today, and he said he saw it in yesterday's newspaper. Hannah and I called bullshit and went to check for tickets.

Sure enough, when we got to the ticket counter there were still showings of Up. I couldn't find seven seats in a row, so I got one row of three seats for the three youngest members of the family and one row of four for everyone else. Once we had the tickets, we went to find the rest of the family at MPH.

When we got to MPH we found our parents and Susanna in the magazines section. I checked to see if the paperback version of The Lost Symbol was out yet, but it isn't going to be in Malaysia for another six months. I tried to check if they had The Zombie Survival Guide or anything by Max Barry, but they were out of stock on all of them except for the Zombie Survival Guide, which had exactly one copy left in Penang. I decided to go to the information counter and order the books for delivery at the MPH branch nearest to our house. They should be there in three weeks.

When we were done in the bookshop, we went to meet up with Ian and Jan in front of the cinema. They were at a game store and told us about The Beatles Rock Band. We discussed whether we should get that or Guitar Hero World Tour for a while, but we didn't really reach a conclusion.

While waiting for the movie to start, we ate some snacks at McDonald's. We asked Ian why he lied about Up, and he said he didn't want to watch it in TGV, which seemed like an incredibly selfish reason to deprive our family of what was essentially our only chance to all go see a movie together.

The time came for the movie and we all went to the cinema. Up was exactly as good the second time as it was the first time. I still got a bit misty-eyed during the sad bits, and the funny parts were still hilarious. When we left the theatre, we all agreed that it was a very good movie.

I drove us home. I didn't get off to a good start, but I managed to (somewhat slowly) get home without hitting anything, which qualifies as a success in my book. When we got home, I went upstairs to do my physics homework while the rest of them went for ice cream.

Physics wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, so I went to my computer to pass the rest of the time. I made a draft on this blog of what happened today, and then at six we left to go say goodbye to Dexter, who is leaving to go study overseas in around a week.

When we got to Dexter's house, we were greeted by his dad and dogs. Susanna was a bit scared of the dogs, but they're quite harmless so she wasn't in any danger. Hannah and I played with the dogs for a bit before I sat down to try some mooncakes and talk with my aunt and cousin. Dexter told us about where he was going to study and what his schedule was going to be like and such, and I would occasionally ask him questions about his time at HELP and the various events he went to and people he knew. I also took the opportunity to ask him how long he had been with his girlfriend, and he said that it had been more than a year. Ian said that that was what he had thought, but Jan and I corrected him. I love being right.

Susanna tried to go for a swim in their pool, but one of the dogs got quite distressed. He was trained to rescue people if there was any trouble in the pool, and Susanna was reluctant to go into the deep water, so he was getting agitated. Eventually he had to be put out of the house for a while while Susanna tried swimming. She didn't stay in the pool for long, though. When Susanna was dried off, we said goodbye to Dexter and wished him well with his studies.

After that we were all quite hungry, so we decided to go try this sushi place that Ian recommended. I told him that I'd try a salmon roll and that I'd say I loved it. When we got there I tried a salmon roll and gagged. When my mum asked how it was, I said I loved it. When Ian checked again later, I said I didn't like it at all and only answered that I liked it because I had said I would. He was quite upset by this. I did, however, finish everything on the plate that I had ordered, but Ian said that didn't count because fried chicken isn't sushi. Whatever. Also, during the meal we talked about how the government's monitoring of blogs meant that I had another regular visitor to this page aside from my sister. It's a bit sad that I only have two readers, and one of them is getting paid to do so.

When we got home I tried to help Jan enable the task manager and registry editor, but the virus that disabled them was real bloody sneaky and I couldn't find any way to get them working again. I berated him for clicking links in suspicious e-mails, but he told me that his task manager and registry editor had been disabled a long time ago by another virus. I told him that without them I couldn't remove the one he got by clicking the link in his e-mail, so he should've been more careful anyway.

Since I couldn't prove that I was superior to Jan technically by fixing his computer, I decided to prove that I was superior to him strategically by beating a level he was stuck on in Stronghold. It took a while, but I managed it, and he congratulated me when I did. When I was done he replayed the mission and managed to score higher than me, so that's nice for him.

After that I was up until four chatting to various people and using Facebook. When I finally went to bed I stayed in it until three o'clock this afternoon.

I spent about two hours writing this and I haven't get any homework done today. I did, however, manage to sleep in, not shave, and not wear my contact lenses today, so that's three out of four goals completed today that I wanted to complete yesterday. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

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