After writing yesterday's post, I went to see what the girls were doing. They had started watching Cloverfield, which was good, and also Hannah had waxed her legs, which was good. That meant that Hannah had finally done what she said she would and so I wouldn't be asking her to pay for half of the first summons, which was good because I didn't want to anger her by taking her money. Anyway, they said my mum said we could eat downstairs at Restaurant Emas for dinner, so I went with them.
At the restaurant, I ordered some deep-fried squid. It was one of the first foods to arrive, but there weren't many squids left so I only got a half-portion. Mr Wong, the restaurant owner, said that I was allowed to eat it for free on the condition that I didn't share it with anyone. When he left the table everyone wanted to have a piece. I told them no, because I want free squids. Since the squids were free, I ordered some fries.
My dad came downstairs and lectured us for what seemed like an hour. He didn't really have a point, he just covered as much ground as he could on topics as diverse as food wastage, electricity bills, and domestic felicity. It was only when we told him that Ruben and Stefanie hadn't done anything to deserve a lecture and they only had an hour left with us before they left for good that he allowed us to go.
I took Ruben and Jan to the roof since Ruben had missed his chance to go last time. Jan was initially reluctant to go to the roof, but since he had nothing else to offer Ruben in their remaining hour together, he came along anyway. While Ruben was climbing up the second ladder to the very top of the building, Stefanie and Hannah showed up under the first ladder wanting to join us. I knew then that there was no way they were going to finish Cloverfield before Stefanie left, but whatever. I told them to go get a rope for the hatch before they came up.
I climbed up after Ruben, and then it was Jan's turn. As Jan was climbing down, some kind of generator nearby turned on and the hum scared me. When Jan was done, Stefanie wanted to climb next, but I was opposed to the idea. I didn't want girls climbing up because I was scared they'd get scared and get hurt. Even Amanda only went halfway. Stef and Hannah climbed anyway, and they got down fine.
Ruben was the last person to get back in the building, so it was up to him to close the hatch. It took him a while to figure out the right technique with the rope, but he got it to come down eventually, and when he did it was very loud.
I went back on the computer and after a while Stefanie came up from behind and asked for a hug since she was going. I gave her a hug and said goodbye to her and Ruben, and then I went back to reading about 6 Movie Heroes Who Actually Made Things Worse.
After a while I guess I went to bed or something, and then I was woken up by my dad half an hour before my alarm was set to go off. He turned off the air-conditioning and the fan, so I got up, unset the alarm, and went to do my daily Bible reading. When I was done with that I took a nap until ten-ish. When I woke up again, I went to walk up the stairs, then I took a shower and got ready for the day, then I went with Ian to get some stuff done.
Our first stop was Lucky Gardens to get some new photos taken for my license, and then a short walk away to drop off the photos, some money, and the license for renewal. As I was getting my picture taken I was wishing I would have gotten my hair cut first, but it didn't turn out terrible so whatever. Ian ate breakfast while I went to get RM200 for my license and some spending money. I figure the best way not to get worked up about RM600 in summonses is to stop caring about money altogether, so it really doesn't matter if I exceed my float since by the end of this my float's only going to be RM150. Well, RM100 now. Anyway I turned in all the stuff necessary for license renewal and the lady said that my license would be ready in two to three days.
After we were done in Lucky Gardens, we went to Pusat Bandar Damansara to pick up my transcripts from HELP, and also to eat lunch at McDonald's. Ian was impressed by my 5.54 GPA until he figured out that it was out of seven, not out of four. I average a credit. That's disappointing. McDonald's was less disappointing. I had a large McNuggets meal with rather lousy nuggets but two large packs of really large fries. Also Ian wanted a sundae, so I got him a lime one and when it turned out that he wanted chocolate instead because he thinks lime tastes like hand soap, I got to keep it. I still had to pay for it, though.
When we got home, the fan was broken. I asked Jan if he broke it but he said that even though nobody but him was in the room (not even the cats), he was not the one who broke it. I was unaware we had poltergeists in our room. Anyway, I got him to give me the small fan that he had been using to cool his computer. His computer was broken, anyway, so the fan wasn't doing it any good.
I started clearing space on my desk to fit the fan, but once I started tidying up I couldn't stop until I had done a proper job, and before I knew it I had cleaned up the mess that had been on my desk since the day after it was assembled many years ago. I managed to move all my miscellaneous papers and stuff out of one of my drawers and into a box I found outside. I used the now-empty drawer to move all my papers from my time in HELP into. There was a lot to move.
After that I watched Hercules, which was really good. I liked it more than Aladdin. Hannah accused me of being so lame because I cried twice during Hercules, but it wasn't real crying, it was just tearing up during the happiest bits. She's one to talk, anyway. She was having a full-blown sob attack last night after Stefanie and Ruben left. She still has Ruben's hat.
When I was fifteen minutes away from finishing Hercules, my dad called me out to go for a hair cut. We originally went to Bangsar Village, but the hair dresser there cost RM15 for a cut and he didn't have a picture of the style I wanted. My dad told me to go drive the car around and pick him up while he bought some stuff. Fortunately, I did not get a third summons, so I was okay.
We went to the Lucky Gardens barber and I got a nice hair cut. I also got a complimentary massage from this bulky massage machine they have. Sometimes I'll get that when I go for a hair cut, sometimes I won't. It's weird. Oh well.
When I got back home, I watched five more minutes of Hercules before being called away by my maid to help my dad and Hannah patch up some inflatable boats (Rafts? Dinghies? One of them is a floating mattress) that we've had for over a decade. After the boats were inflated I had dinner, which was yummy, and then I finished Hercules while Hannah and Jan went swimming to test the hull integrity of our watercraft.
I started packing. Thanks to the recent reorganization of my desk, I was able to swiftly locate the bits of PADI equipment that I'd need (Dive planner, instruction booklet for dive planner, and my dive log). My dive log lacked a picture, so I took one of the copies from this morning and went to Hannah to borrow some glue.
After sticking on the picture, I read through the dive log for Hannah. I've made five dives so far and clocked a total of three and a half hours underwater. The entries for the five dives were quite short: "Saw some rubbish: Tyre, pipe, box. Saw some clownfish and a blue ring angel" was the first entry, made on June 20th, 2007. I told Hannah that I had probably meant to say I saw a angel fish and not an actual angel, but who knows. The second entry was "Saw great barracuda, surfaced early due to air wastage caused by overworking arms." The third entry was "Jenking ray, blue spotted sting ray, lionfish, puffer fish all were seen. Also of school of baby barracudas." I remember being told after the dive that the Jenking Ray was the same type of ray that had killed Steve Irwin. One of the guys on our dive had grabbed it by its tail and dragged it out from under its hiding spot to show us how big it was. It was really big. Anyway, the third entry read "Saw stingray tail, had a little difficulty staying neutrally bouyant [sic]." I had to explain to Hannah what neutrally buoyant meant. The fifth and final entry was "Saw porcupine fish, GIANT sea cucumber". Hannah wanted to know why I emphasized the "giant", and I told her that it was probably because it was a really, really big sea cucumber. I don't remember it, though, so it can't have been that big.
I then finished my personal packing and I had back on the computer for a while when Ian told me that him and Jan were moving stuff down to the car, so I tried to help them. I found that there was still space in my luggage, so I picked up one of my dad's bags to fit in so we'd have one less thing to carry. As I was entering the room, the door hit Jan, who told me to "watch it." I overreacted by yelling at him that I had no way of knowing that he was on the other side of the door, and he overreacted by kicking me repeatedly. I get really pissed off when people hit me for no good reason (the only good reason, I think, is if I've hit them first, which is the one thing I don't do. I'll yell at people for little to no reason, I'll get angry over things that happened months ago, I'll stubbornly cling to an argument long after another person's lost interest, but I'll never hit a person unless they've hit me first), and so I got very very upset with Jan very, very quickly. I lost my temper and we got in a fight, so my mum woke up and intervened. I probably would have won if she hadn't; I was about to grapple Jan into a chair.
Moments after my mum calmed things down, Hannah and my dad got home. My mum made us sit around the table and we all got lectured for what felt like an hour, and in the end it was decided that my new bedtime is midnight or earlier because sleep is important. Fine.
After that I wrote this, and after I post this I'm going to do my exercise and take a nap because we're leaving for Terrenganu at 2am. At least my expired license means I don't have to drive.
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