Words About Stuff (Mostly) Worth Writing About

Staccato Roller-coaster

2011-09-03T01:46:00.008+08:00

Friday certainly had its ups and downs. I woke up and was on the computer for a bit, and I enjoyed myself because of Tumblr and the Sims Social and also because T-Kun was online so I could talk to her for a very brief while.

I was doing my sit-ups when Hannah and Mama went out to take Ringo to the vet. I decided to stop before I was done so I could go say goodbye to him for the same reason I like to make sure I hug my parents and let them know I love them before I head out for a drive: there's always a chance, no matter how small, that that might be my last moment with them and I want to make sure it's a good one.

After the stairs and a shower, I rushed off to work. I had a stress-free day at work because I stopped worrying about the amount of completes I was going to get and just focused on the calls at hand. I also had some tea, which was nice. In between calls, I browsed Wikipedia. I went from MyKad, to Eddies, to Billabongs, to Waltzing Matilda, to the All-Black's Haka, and then back to Waltzing Matilda. I also ended up reading about the Mechanical Turk and a bit of the bombing of Dresden in between all that. I learn quite a lot in-between calls at work.

Near the end of the day, I lost a complete because the fire alarm went off. I followed the instructions pinned to my desk, but apparently we're not supposed to do that. Next time the alarm goes off and we're almost done, we're supposed to finish up unless the manager gets a call from the alarm company confirming that there's a real fire. That seems quite absurd to me, but I'll roll with it.

I asked Kelly a few questions after work and learned things. I like it when Kelly's around because then I can actually "Refer to [my] supervisor IMMEDIATELY on ANY issues" like the whiteboard near my desk says.

On Saturday, Lutfi will be in, so I won't be able to do that any more because when I ask questions from him it reflects badly on his position as a trainer, so I'll just keep schtum. As Uncle Shark(Shak? Chak? I need to ask him how to spell his name sometime) says, the boss is always right.

Anyway, I stayed back for an extra hour to finish my tabs and to memorize Waltzing Matilda. It is an incredibly catchy song. It ends in hobo-suicide, though, so make of that what you will.

The whole ride home I had the radio off while I sang the unofficial anthem of Australia. When I got home my happiness was promptly murdered when my mother told me that Ringo had died while he was undergoing an operation at the vet to remove a fluid build-up in his lungs. He had been misdiagnosed earlier in the week and so the medicine that I was forcing down his throat to try and make him better weren't actually helping. I'm glad that at least my last memory with him was giving him a goodbye stroke before he went off to the vet instead of fighting with him to get him to swallow pointless pills.

Despite all that, I still had a craving for karaoke that I had let build up all throughout the time I was at work, so I took the set and plugged it in Susanna's TV and we sang together for a while until it was time for dinner and mature grown-up conversation with Uncle Shark, Papa, and Mama.

I left at one point to check my computer, and I found the Secret Recipe website, so I gave the local branch a call to make sure they were still open. I then drove down to pick up some chocolate indulgence for Hannah, because chocolate cake is my default response to depression among women. When I got home, I put it on a plate with a tiny spoon and then I brought Mercy and a glass of cold water over to Hannah's room. Mercy ran off and Hannah told me that she didn't like cake. She ate half of it anyway, though, and I got to have the other half. I gave her Faith to replace Mercy as role of comforter-in-chief for the next week. Until the ninth of September, 2011, he is her cat.

I then went and had a wee bit of wine and some conversation with my parents and their friend. I have learned from past experience that nobody tells me anything if I blog about everything they say, so this paragraph will be intentionally left vague.

Anyway after that I went on my computer for way too long. I was on Tumblr for a long while and then I read this and then I made a long blog post. I guess after that I'll take a shower and go to bed for a short while before waking up early for the weekend shift, where I will earn a lot of money for a lot of work, and after that it will be Geraldine's birthday party and I will be bringing the karaoke. It looks like it will be a difficult, then very fun day for me.

But yeah, rest in peace, Ringo. Even though you couldn't possibly find a better owner than Hannah in your next eight lives, hopefully you'll at least last a bit longer on your next few times around. Go make some friends your age who will actually want to play with you, and never ever lose your questioning meows. Those are adorable.

Another Good Day

2011-08-30T02:54:00.003+08:00

Work was good. Ian and I logged out early because completes had ceased coming in for about half an hour, so we were quitting while we were ahead. I spent some time researching the Virgin Mary. It says in the Bible that Jesus had four brothers (Simon, James, Joseph Jr, and Jude), but apparently according to Catholic and Lutheran doctrine (or dogma, I forget), Mary never lost her virginity to Joseph so these "brothers" were either children from Joseph's dead wife who was never mentioned (the Catholic explanation) or actually his cousins or close relatives (the Protestant explanation).

I went to dinner at Joanna's house. Kuberan, Milan, Amanda, and Geraldine were there, too. I asked them about it. Amanda said that she had been taught in some Catholic class that Mary had lost her virginity after she married Joseph, which I found weird because that is a progressive Protestant concept, not a Roman Catholic one. Kubes called his priest who confirmed that I was right and Catholics believe she was always a virgin. We never found out whether his priest subscribed to the dead wife or actually cousins explanation.

Anyway we had a delicious dinner and I found out that I have a lot in common with Joanna's dad. Next time I want to watch a movie and Jan and Hannah are too busy or poor to tag along, I'll go with him instead.

After that we did some karaoke for a few hours. Joanna's family has the exact same system as we do (Singstar). I was thus familiar with all the songs and managed to score perfectly on just slightly less songs than Joanna's mum, who was at one point an actual singing coach. That felt good. We had fun. I got to sing Tell Laura I Love Her and My Own Prison and Creep. Everyone seemed to enjoy watching me sing Creep for some reason. I scored 91 with that one, because I can identify with the lyrics.

As we left, Joanna's mum said to one of my friends that he should be more like me during karaoke, because apparently, whether I can or cannot sing, I always do it with gusto. That was the nicest backhanded compliment I've received in a while.

So yeah, even though we didn't get to swim or practice Salsa, I still had a good time.

Anyway I got back home and went on the Sims Social and Tumblr for far too long. I will need a long nap after work. Also I bought a new soundcard and headset for my computer, which means that I can finally use Skype, which is excellent for my social life.

This post is probably a one-off thing.

The End of This Blog (Probably)

2011-05-20T17:43:00.003+08:00

I should've stopped blogging ages ago. People let me in on so much more gossip now.

Anyway this'll be the last post in a long time (or ever), so I might as well sum up what's happening in my life now: First semester at SEGi for my Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering is almost over (finals at the end of the month), I'll be going for an interview at Datacom for the Roy Morgan position when my semester break starts (and I'll be shaving my rather pathetic attempt at facial hair right before that), all the shows I watch have begun airing their season finales so I will have to find something new to watch in the meanwhile, and I have not made (m)any new friends but that's okay because my old ones are still awesome.

Yeah, that's about it.

So this is my life now

2011-02-19T21:35:00.004+08:00

New Year's Eve was fun. Amanda and Joanna came over. Geraldine showed up with her friends and we all played taboo.

Chinese New Year was good. I got a lot of money since it was also my birthday. Ian got me a slice of cake. Jan bought me McDonald's. I gave him RM20 for his birthday. Hannah got me No Country for Old Men.

I read Hannah's present at SEGi, which is where I'm doing my Bachelor's in Civil Engineering. It's a four-year course, so I'll be there for a while. Most of my classmates are from the middle East, which is interesting. One of the subjects I'm doing is Engineering Mathematics, which should go smoothly because I already did that at HELP.

Aron visited. Hannah forgot to return Ruben's hat to him.

We got a package full of licorice from Corinna. When I thanked her on Facebook, she replied that it had been sent on Christmas, which meant that it took more than a month to get to us. Anyway, the licorice was pretty great.

I've been playing Minecraft a lot. It's a very good game. Recently I made a giant mob trap in the sky and a big pit in the ground and a very large staircase into that pit. Also, Ian found some 3D glasses that came with his graphics card, so I can play the game in 3D anaglyph mode and that is pretty great.

My dad's letting me get a car and he's given me a budget. I plan on getting something small and cheap. Jan's learning to drive now, so I guess he'll be sharing it with me.

That's about it, I guess.

Oh, I also went with Amanda to drop Walker off at a shelter. After all her puppies died she started barking all the time and the neighbours started complaining. It was quite sad to let her go.

Also, Hannah got a kitten from her friend, Rebecca. His name is Ringo and he is extremely cute. The other cats don't get along with him so well, but most of the time they keep their distance. The only downside to the kitten is that sometimes he really stinks. Hopefully that'll stop when we castrate him.

Almost 2011

2010-12-31T14:22:00.002+08:00

So it's almost a new year. Christmas was nice. I visited Amanda and Carmeni. Amanda had a nicer tree and tastier food but Carmeni's family served a really tasty drink.

Amanda's dog, Walker, had eight puppies. Six of them died, I buried one.

I've been sleeping a lot. It's been nice.

I finished watching all the Community episodes yesterday. It's a good show.

Hannah had me drive her around a lot to visit kittens and such.

For Christmas, I got The Road from Hannah (dang good book; I read it in a day) and a bunch of Coca-Cola contour glasses from Amanda (so cool!) and I got some jeans, a belt, and a polo shirt from my mum. I also got a flashlight from my dad, I think. I drew Hannah in the Secret Santa, so I got her a "How To Take Care of Your Kitten" book and a Buzz Lightyear watch and some other stuff.

Tonight there is going to be a New Year's Eve party at my house but not many people are coming. Amanda and Joanna will be there, which is good. We'll probably order pizza. I got the keys to the roof so we'll have an awesome view of the fireworks, which will be nice. I also got, like, a buttload of snacks so that should be good, too.

Aside from that not much has happened.

Summary (18/11/10 - 10/12/10)

2010-12-10T18:38:00.006+08:00

A few weekends ago we were in 1U and Corinna was sick. We ate Carl's Junior and it was pretty gross.

I applied for another job at Datacom and met some other people but then I changed my mind because my dad didn't want me working after my contract expired anyway. While waiting for my aptitude test, I met some people from HELP.

I got a new chair from Ikea. It's the same as the old chair, but not broken.

Angela was in Malaysia and she was bored. She came over to KL and her family was cool with me showing her around so I went and drove her and her cousin around KL. Well, basically I took them from some very-difficult-to-find house in Cheras to a place in town near Petaling Street, then we walked and took the LRT and walked around KLCC and took pictures and drove back to my house. I showed Angela the view and she said "hi" to Hannah but nothing else because Hannah was shy. Angela's cousin and Corinna could talk because they were both from Germany and new to Malaysia. Angela's cousin didn't speak much English anyway; just Chinese and German. I don't know her name. The four of us went for dinner with Angela's family. It was surprisingly good for Chinese food.

Also, I got a very bad haircut. I criticized the barber too much.

I lost RM200 from my savings so I left work early and I found it again. My boss got me to work eleven and a half hours on my last day to make up for it. It took him almost two weeks to pay me after the job was over.

I drove to see Rebecca and David's cat's kittens with Hannah. We're adopting one of them in January, but we don't know which yet.

I watched Tangled (actually, since we're in Malaysia, I watched "Rapunzel: A Tangled Tale") in 3D with Ian and Jan the day after my work finished. Later on that night I went back to the mall to watch The Social Network with Hannah. They were both excellent movies. I teared up a little during Tangled. I am very easily moved by movies. Hannah has a crush on the leads from The Social Network.

The next day I visited Amanda and Milan and Kaminie at Devi's and then I went to watch Tangled in 3D with Kaminie and Amanda and her four nieces and one nephew. I wanted to see the movie in 3D so I paid for the difference between the 2D and 3D pricing. We all enjoyed the movie except for one niece who fell asleep. It was totally worth it. Also, another niece kept accusing me of lying. Children are strange.

The day after that I went to get my new passport with Jan and my dad, and then I went to PetroSains with Corinna. We walked a lot and my feet hurt. I bought Joanna's birthday presents last-minute from the same bookstore where I found The Zombie Survival Guide and The Company. We also dined at Chili's for two hours and bought some polo shirts. The polo shirts were very expensive. The black one looks nice on me. PetroSains was fun until the last hour, which was a bit draggy.

Joanna's birthday was the next day, and it was nice. The theme was black and white and I think I looked okay, except for the haircut. It was Chinese food and I had a lot of peanuts. There was a dude there who was studying in Germany. He was attending the second-best university in the country and he was living above a peepshow in the red light district. I talked to him for a while. Also there was a video made by Amanda and Kaminie and there was a bit near the end where I embarrassed myself and it went on much longer than it should've. It was all in good fun, though, so that was all right. Joanna liked her presents, so that was good.

After the party we went to Joanna's house and I stepped in dog shit. I managed to get most of it off my shoes. We were supposed to go clubbing, but Milan had to go home early and I was kinda tired so I decided to go home, too.

The next day was Sunday, and that was okay.

After that I went to Singapore with Corinna and Jan and Hannah. We were helped out when we got there by Uncle Danny. He's a guy who knows my dad. We had some trouble at the hotel, but he paid for it. My dad paid him back later, presumably. The hotel was okay. I was in a room with Jan and directly under us were Corinna and Hannah. Jan is a surprisingly tolerable roommate.

We spent the first evening on Orchid Road, which was okay. I had some McDonald's. It's basically the same as the one we have here, except with McWings (which are good) and the McCafe (which is everywhere except Malaysia, apparently). The fries were only very subtly different, but in a good way. Also it was more expensive.

The day after that we went to the zoo, and we saw a lot of animals. The white tigers were great; one of them reminded Hannah and me of Faith. The baboons were fun, too. Jan loved them. During feeding time they were all riled up and they kept having crazy baboon sex. One of them was doing backflips. I thought that was pretty cool so I threw bananas at him and he caught most of them.

We went to the night safari and that was good, too. Hannah and Corinna really liked the otters. Corinna also liked the bats; Hannah was kinda terrified of them. She didn't get as scared as she does when frogs are around, though. I still don't know why she's scared of frogs.

On our last day we went to the Singapore Flyer, which is basically a really big ferris wheel. It was okay. They had a Subway there; that was really good. It had real bacon and ranch sauce but I only noticed that after I ordered my sandwich. It is my biggest regret of the trip.

We went back home and we were picked up by Ian, who had had a bad day. He was stuck in traffic for three hours. Later on that night I had to pick my dad up from the LRT station with Hannah. My dad bought us Twister Fries from McDonald's, though, so it was worth it.

The next day I drove my dad to the airport so he could go to Penang. Hannah also went to Penang, with Ebony. In the evening I had Outback Steakhouse with my mum and Corinna. There was a nice symmetry to that, since Corinna had gone to Outback Steakhouse with Ian and Jan and my dad when she first arrived here. I ate a little too much and ended up throwing up outside. It was probably my most expensive puke so far.

I woke up early the next morning to drive Corinna to the airport. Our goodbye was pretty pathetic. I said "bye" and she said "what?" and I said "I said bye" and she said "oh" and that was it. I listened to the Beatles on the way back. The drive seems to get shorter each time I make it. I must've driven to the airport at least a dozen times this year.

And now we're at today, I think. I went to town with Ian and my mum briefly, and then I had McDonald's for lunch. I'm thinking of maybe having McDonald's again for dinner. I want to try the Prosperity Burger. Amanda says it's really good. I know it isn't; it wasn't good the past five years when I tried it and it isn't going to be good this year, but I want to try it again just in case it is. Also the Twister Fries are really good.

Condoms

2010-11-18T21:14:00.002+08:00

Jan, Hannah, and I walked into a 7-Eleven and bought a pack of condoms last night. It was the funniest thing I've done all week.

I would write a detailed post but I think this is one of those things that's best left up to the imagination.

Possibly the Second-Last Wednesday I'll Have with this Job

2010-11-17T20:52:00.004+08:00

Today I woke up, like normal, and I slept through my first two alarms, like normal, and I read my Bible, like normal, and then Hannah and my mum arrived home from the Netherlands, which isn't normal because it doesn't happen very often at all.

I said hi and I hugged my mum and I went to the kitchen to get some water. My mum had brought home loads of candy and biscuits and licorice in many bags of luggage. It was delightful. Hannah had brought back stories of the speed of the internet in the Netherlands. 800kb/s, she'd said. Five minutes to download an episode of How I Met Your Mother. Lucky Dutch.

I opened the least-best candy first (saving the best for last has always been kinda my thing). It was the Engelse Drop. I had some of that and it was nice. I can't wait to get to the other stuff.

My mum showed me pictures of the funeral, and also a picture of Oma a week before she died. Oma looked healthier than you'd expect from someone who was a week from death. She looked quite grey afterwards, though. I think it's a bit morbid to take pictures of the body at a funeral.

I'm glad that my grandmother had a good life and that she raised a good family. She's with her husband now and I guess that means she's glad, too.

Corinna was at home, which was unusual. I asked her why she wasn't at BLTC and she said that it was a public holiday. My mum said that BLTC was over for the year except for a party on Friday. Corinna would be around a lot more now. Today, she was meeting up with Grace from BLTC to go shopping for dresses or something in Mid Valley at 11. I told her I could drive her there on my way to work.

I went to do my exercises while Jan took a shower. He was going to Mid Valley to meet Cherie and her sister and Adriel and Gabriel. I told him that I could drive him there but he said it was at ten, which was a bit inconvenient.

I took a shower and went on the computer for a bit, but Tumblr kept dying. I asked Hannah if she knew what was up but she didn't. She wasn't on Tumblr in Holland; she was too busy hanging out with Stefanie. Anyway, Tumblr started working again and I answered a question and asked some questions and then I turned off my computer and got ready to go.

Corinna was on the phone with one of her friends from Germany or something. She didn't mind the bill, either because her parents were paying or because she had loads of money; I forget which.

We went to McDonald's for breakfast first. I had a lot to eat. Corinna had a milo. After we entered the restaurant we talked about Pepsi and Coke. Pepsi is cheaper in Germany, apparently, but everyone thinks Coke tastes better, even without the labels. We left the restaurant while talking about dreams. Corinna said she had a dream about me but she couldn't remember anything from it except that it involved Megamind somehow. I told Corinna that nobody is really interested in anyone's dreams unless they predicted the future somehow or they involved the person that the dreamer is talking to or they were about sex. Corinna said that everyone dreams about sex. I told her I don't. It's odd; I think about it all the time but even in my dreams I can't get laid.

I dropped Corinna off at Mid Valley and drove to work. I was late again. Yesterday I was late because I had spent too long on Skype talking to Sara. This time I was late because of the extra time it took me to eat a Sausage McMuffin I wasn't expecting to order.

I worked for a while and now it's late. After I'm done blogging about this I'm going to read another Machine of Death story and then I'm going to leave before the system locks me in again .

Driving, Gua Tempurung, Kuala Woh, and Cameron Highlands with Corinna

2010-11-16T19:54:00.010+08:00

As of Tuesday the 16th of November, 2010, this post is incomplete. That's what happens when I procrastinate. It's not my fault that this is such a good, free book. Anyway:

My alarm went off at eight-ish on Sunday. I didn't wake up; I wanted to sleep more.

My dad came in at nine and told me that Corinna was waiting for me, so I woke up.

I showered and I think I may have read the Bible, but I definitely skipped my exercises. I do so little that it doesn't matter, anyway.

I packed some extra clothes and a couple of towels. I decided to put my laser in a bag, too, because why not? Also, I packed some sandals because I didn't want to ruin my shoes

I called Corinna. She had thought we would be leaving a lot earlier because I had told her at one point that I would be waking up at six. I had changed my mind the day before and I thought I told her that, but apparently I hadn't.

Before we got in the elevator I asked Corinna why she hadn't packed extra clothes. She said that she didn't mind getting wet in those clothes because they were old then Malaysian sun would dry them out pretty quick anyway.

We got in the car and I drove. We'd agreed beforehand that I would drive there and Corinna would drive back. I got to the toll for the North-South highway in less them then I thought it would take. After that we just drove and talked.

I spent a while the night before putting songs on my phone to listen to on the way there, but Corinna preferred the radio so we listened to that instead. Some good stuff came on, so I didn't mind.

We talked a bit about Mormons and Rastafarians and Jesus and the Catholic church and abortion and teen pregnancy and palm oil and contraceptives and sexual education. There was other stuff, but I forget.

We pulled into the Tapah rest stop for brunch at KFC. Corinna had never eaten KFC before. We each had a snack plate and large wedges and a box of popcorn chicken. Corinna was too full to finish the popcorn chicken, and she couldn't even look at the chicken leftovers so she just covered them with a cloth instead.

We talked about stuff. I asked Corinna when she wanted to have kids and her answer was a very specific 28, but she had no reasons behind it. I thought that was interesting.

We went to the rest of the rest stop so I could get some drinks and candy and so Corinna could try to find a toilet that wasn't a dirty hole in the ground. When we walked to the food court she almost recoiled from the smell. She said it was the worst smell she had ever smelled. It was just dried fish.

I bought a Red Bull and a Coke and some packets of Nano Nano and some Strepsils and a bunch of lollipops. I also got a razor and some glue. Corinna was gone, so I called her and told her to meet me at the car. Apparently the smell had been too much for her and she left.

I gave Corinna a Nano Nano in the car and her reaction was priceless. She reacted exactly the same way that most Malaysians do when I let them try licorice. She said it tasted like vegetables and vanilla. I didn't think it tasted like that at all. She declared it the most disgusting thing she had ever tasted. She still hasn't tried durian. Anyway, when we got back home I gave her a pack to share with her friends in Germany so she could enjoy their reactions like I enjoyed hers.

Gua Tempurung was easy to find. It's fortunate that I had a leadership camp in that area for college earlier this year.

The entrance for wet tours had ended at twelve and it was already twelve-forty, so unfortunately we couldn't go in. Well, Corinna felt pretty fortunate. She has a fear of confined spaces like submarines and space shuttles and tight crawlspaces in caves, so she was glad she wouldn't have to crawl through a subterranean river. I was a bit bummed. I had packed my boardshorts and everything.

We couldn't even go on the longest dry tour because we needed to have five people. I tried to convince three other people to come with us, but they didn't have enough time, so we ended up buying tickets for the 45 minute tour.

My dad called me right before we were supposed to go in at 1pm. I told him where we were and what we were about to do. He told me to drive safe.

The cave was pretty fun. It was quite cave-like, and I was really glad I had brought my laser. The best place for a laser is a cave, really. There were a lot of stairs and it was very humid and there were a lot of people, so we got pretty sweaty.

When we reached the end of the tour, I asked the guide if he could take us further. He said it was fine, but we'd of course have to pay the extra price as if we had gotten the ticket for the "Top of the World" dry tour. I was very pleased with this, because it meant we could stay for another hour and it would only cost three ringgit more each. A small group of other people decided to come with us, too.

The rest of the tour group started going back, but before they did I let a kid play with my laser. I figured I'd've wanted to play with a laser if I was a kid in a cave, so there was no reason to deprive him. Oh yeah, earlier on in the tour some chick asked if Corinna was my wife. I thought that was pretty funny. Corinna's exact reaction when I told her had been "What?".

Anyway, we continued to the tour to the "Top of the World". There was more walking and more stairs, but it got cooler deeper in the cave so it was alright. There was even a breeze at one point.

Eventually we came to this huge cavern that was the end point. It was, indeed, pretty high up. Previously when I had been there they turned off the lights, but the guide told me that they didn't do that any more. He could turn them off at the place with the breeze, though, so that was nice. In the meanwhile I sat with Corinna and tried to find Top of the World on my phone so I could play it and have everything be all appropriate and stuff, but I had deleted the song. I was pretty upset with myself for that.

We turned around and went to the tunnel with the breeze. I tried to talk to Corinna but she told me to be quiet because the total silence in the cave was really nice. I told her that we couldn't hear the silence even if I wasn't talking because the guys behind us always were. She pointed out that they stopped sometimes, but I didn't. She had a point, because after she said that they did for a few minutes and there was silence and it was nice.

The guide turned off the lights. My laser looked really cool in total darkness. I told Corinna to come check it out, but she didn't come.

Someone walked out of the rails to take a picture. I walked out of the rails because I wanted to walk out of the rails. Also, there was a big rock and I wanted to see if I could lift it. I couldn't. I smelled the dirt, but it smelt like the kind of dirt you get on the side of the walls in condominium basement car parks, so it was a bit disappointing.

We left the cave and we were very sweaty. Corinna still smelled nice, though. I asked her why and she said it was because of her Nivea body lotion or something. I asked her how much it was and if they made one for guys. She said yes to both, so now I know what I'm going to buy with my next pay (aside from polo shirts).

We got in the car. Our drinks were warm. We decided to go to a gas station and buy colder ones because we were still thirsty and also because we needed to refill a Touch 'N Go card so we could pay for the tolls. It cost more than RM20 to get from KL to where we were.

After we bought the stuff and I topped up my card, we got back in the car and drove to Cameron highlands. It was further down the highway than we remembered it being.

Okay, it's almost nine o'clock here at the office. I'll continue this post tomorrow.

Okay, it's tomorrow.

While driving up to Cameron Highlands, I spotted the Sufes campground, which brought back some memories of Writer's Camp many years ago and a BB camp less many years ago. A little ahead of that, I saw a sign for Kuala Woh, and I knew that that was where we had to go.

I missed the turning at first because it was on the wrong side of the road, but I found a place to turn around a little ways down. The road to Kuala Woh was not as well-maintained as the main road up to the Highlands, which made sense.

I sounded the horn as I approached a big turn in the road and explained to Corinna why. It was so that people on the other side would know I was coming so they'd slow down and stick to their side and there wouldn't be an accident.

We parked at Kuala Woh and I'm not sure how I got in my swimming pants. I think I asked Corinna to go wait by the river first.

Anyway, I went down and met her. She thought the water was dirty. I walked around in it for a bit until I found what I was looking for, and I called her over.

Hot springs are cool, especially ones along rivers because then you get the contrast of the cool river water rushing by but the hot spring water bubbling through the sand at your feet. I forgot what Corinna's reaction was but I think she was at least slightly impressed.

I put my shirt with my bag and tried to walk through the river to the other side, but I underestimated the current and was pushed a short way downstream. I hit a lot of rocks, but I didn't get seriously injured. When the water got deeper and calmer I found my footing and walked up to shore and started digging on the hot sand.

The spring water is hotter if you just dig for it because then it doesn't mix with the water from the river and get cooled down. I put a rock in the hole that I dug to heat it up. It got pretty hot pretty fast.

I talked to some Indian guys who asked where I was from and where Corinna was from. They were okay.

I waded across to the other side of the river and started digging again. I called Corinna over and got her to hold a hot rock that I had put in a hole. I think she dropped it and swore. That was funny.

I told her that I didn't want to leave until she had at least gotten her calves wet, because it was silly to come all the way out to the river and not swim in it. It took me a while to realize that she wasn't reluctant to get wet, she was reluctant to get dirty. I have to admit, the water did look kinda nasty.

I noticed a bridge over the river and how wobbly it was and I said we could leave if she went on that with me, but she didn't want to do that, either. Eventually she caved and went in the water. I took another refreshing dip and then told her that we could go, but first I wanted to shake the bridge. I ran up and shook the bridge. It was not as wobbly as it looked. It was hardly exciting.

I went back to Corinna and told her to wait by the bank for a bit while I got changed in the car. I said I'd miscall her when I was done.

She walked to the car before I miscalled her, but I already had my pants on. I asked her why she hadn't waited and she said that nobody takes that long to change. I told her the car was cramped and asked what if she saw me changing. She just did that thing where she blows air through her lips in exasperation. I dropped the subject.

We got back on the road and started driving again. Corinna told me about the dead fish she saw, and also about the dead cat she saw. Kuala Woh had quite a few dead things. Hannah and Jan and my mum went there once and there was a dead snake. Well, it was alive when they got there, but it crawled in the engine and so that's why the car makes a funny noise when it goes too fast.

And that is all I'll write about for today. I like this, pacing my blogging. I'm afraid that, by the time I get around to writing about the long conversation about sex that we had on the way back, I will have forgotten most of the details. The fact is, though, that I already have, and besides I told her that I wouldn't tell anyone until she left the country. If I do tell someone before she goes, she gets to tell everyone something that I'd rather not have everyone hear about that she knows.

I'll continue this after work tomorrow. Shit, after tomorrow there'll only be Friday. That's only two days to write about the next... five hours? Dang.

And it's after tomorrow again. Here we go.

So we were back on the road going up Cameron Highlands, and we were talking about stuff. It was a long road. It was very curvy. There were a lot of dogs on it. It was difficult to overtake people. On two occasions there were fallen branches blocking the road and I had to drive on the wrong lane to get past them. On one of the occasions I scratched the car against it pretty badly.

I can't remember what we talked about. I guess it's for the best. I've lost the inspiration to write this post. It was perhaps not the best idea to spread it over so many days. Oh well, might as well finish it for the sake of finishing it.

Um, at one point on the way to Batu Caves we talked about Corinna's friends and why her friend who slept with basically anyone would not sleep with Asians. I don't know why I remembered that or why I'm putting that here and up the story a few dozen paragraphs where it belongs, but there you go. Anyway, back to the part in the story where we're going up the curvy road.

We passed the cloudbank and kept going. It was quite high up. We rolled down the windows and the air was cool. That was nice. Eventually we saw a really big strawberry and we were in Cameron Highlands.

There was a town and we followed the road and we came across a big brownish-orange lake. Next to it was the Lakeview Hotel. It looked like Europe. We parked and got out and took pictures, then we went in to get a map from reception. Corinna went to use the toilet and I sat down in a very comfortable chair in front of a fire place and wished that I lived there. On our way out we saw someone taking scones and tea to a room. That hotel is now one of my favourite places in Malaysia. It even had a typewriter.

We checked the map and drove down the road to a tea house which overlooked a tea plantation. The tea plantation was vast and cool and beautiful. I ate some scones and had some strawberry tea while Corinna ate a slice of carrot cake and drank some plain tea. I thought it was a bit pointless to go all the way there to drink normal tea, but oh well.

I washed my hands and even the water felt like Europe. It was so cold and nice. I really like Cameron Highlands.

We went for a walk in the tea plantation. On our way in, two Dutch tourists passed us, so in addition to the trees, the smell, the temperature, and the air, for a brief moment it sounded like Holland, too. That was nice.

There was a sign that forbade people from plucking the tea leaves, so I plucked a sprig of pine or something instead. It was from I tree that I didn't see much elsewhere but it smelled very nice. I dropped it halfway through our walk and I was sad because it really did smell nice.

We talked about how I had told the girls I liked that I liked them. I think Corinna said that I shouldn't do that any more. I can't remember, though.

We took some pictures in the tea. I tried to climb up a hill but I didn't get very far. I got quite wet from all the dew and such on the leaves. It was quite drizzly.

After we got out of the tea plantation we drove back down to try and find a strawberry place, but they were closed. I pulled over across from the Lakeview Hotel and let Corinna drive.

On the way down we talked about sex. Midway through the conversation, Corinna told me that if I told anyone anything she'd said, she'd kill me. I told her that I wouldn't say anything until she left the country. She said that was alright. I told her something embarrassing about myself so if I betrayed her trust then she could betray mine.

I learned a lot about sex during that drive. I really wish I lived in Germany. Malaysia seems so boring. And the women are pretty sexually repressed here; Corinna was shocked to find that none of my friends had ever masturbated or experienced an orgasm and they all thought oral sex was gross. (I'm going to go ahead and assume that I'm allowed to talk about Corinna's reactions to what I said. That could lead to trouble. I should probably cut this short.)

The rain got worse and the sky got dark and our windows started to fog up. It was difficult to see out of them due to all the condensation, and we struggled with that for the rest of the drive. Corinna got pretty upset with the windshield for being so crap.

On the way down, I took out my laser and shined it out the window of the car and that was fun. I couldn't hit any of the nearby mountains with the beam, but I didn't mind.

We talked about vibrators and pornography and (loss of) virginity and Corinna's "type" and herpes and contraceptives and many many other things that nobody else would talk to me about so that was nice. I'd list more but I'm probably already to close to saying something I shouldn't, so I'll stop. Also I can't really remember much of the conversation.

We got back home and I said goodnight to Corinna and think I went on the computer for a bit and then I went to bed. I'm not sure. I know I felt quite depressed and lonely for some reason that night. That tends to happen after I spend a lot of time with people and then I suddenly stop being around them. The transition usually isn't so quick and it usually isn't after spending only one day with a person.

Oh well.

Hey, I'm done.

Actually, I'm not. We also went to Pizza Hut after we got back to the city but before we got home. Corinna was happy because she had been craving pizza all day. She'd never eaten in Pizza Hut before. We ordered too much food and I had a slice of pizza and it was good. I liked it. We didn't finish everything we ordered and Corinna wanted to pay for me, but I didn't want to let a girl pay for my meal so we split the bill. She ended up paying more but then again I did eat a lot less.

Okay now I think I'm done.

Friday Night Clubbing in Fragmented Thoughts (Also the Evening After)

2010-11-15T19:38:00.008+08:00

Well I had thought this was going to be in fragmented thoughts, but that didn't really work out so well. It's still fragmented, but the style of this is still conventional enough that I didn't save much time at all. Oh well.

I have been procrastinating this post for too long. It's almost eight now, so I'll only have an hour to write this.

Clubbing on Friday was fun. Well, for the first four hours, anyway.

After I got home from work I took a quick shower and got changed and then I went with Corinna to Amanda's house. We waited and watched a National Geographic show about large crocodiles for a while.

Joanna, Amanda, and Kaminie showed up eventually with two of Amanda's cousins. One of them was named Jose. I don't know who the other guy was.

Everyone went in another car except Corinna and me, who stayed in our car as we went to pick up Milan. I drove over a bump too fast because the other car was in a big rush and we were following them.

The drive to the club was uneventful.

When I parked the car, we were approached by a jaga kereta fellow, so we paid him five bucks not to scratch our car. Corinna said that would never happen in Germany.

When we got to the club we got in for free because it was lady's night or we were on the guest list or something. The girls went to get free drinks and I decided I wasn't going to drink anything because everyone else was drinking and I didn't want Corinna to be the designated driver because I wanted to see her drunk.

I spent RM80 on drinks somehow anyway. The guys bought a beer tower and I pitched in, even though I didn't drink any. It was a Carlsberg anyway, so whatever. I also went up to the bar to get Corinna a refill but they made me pay for it because I was not a girl. I also bought a coke.

I encouraged Corinna to take advantage of the free drinks, so she ended up having fourteen of them. She had thirteen whiskeys-and-coke and a single vodka-and-lime, which she thought was disgusting. She let me have a sip of the latter and I liked it.

The whole club was pretty empty when we arrived. The dance floor was empty for quite a while. After a while two girls from the VIP section went up to dance. They had nice bodies but crap faces. That theme continued with the next group of people up on the dance floor. They went back down after a while. Something happened that made a whole big group go up, and then soon other people were going up, and then things started to get fun.

We danced. The first time the whole group of us except Corinna went up because she didn't feel like being watched by everyone or something, so after a while I went down to convince her to join us, but it took me a while to find her and when I finally did locate her everyone else had gotten off the floor. I told her that next time we went up she'd have to go, so she agreed.

Throughout the night Corinna told me how shit the club was compared to the ones she'd been to in Europe. I heard a lot about Ibiza. Later on she also gave me tips for when I was out with ladies, three of which I remember. The first was to get a polo shirt and pop the collar, because girls dig that for some reason. I know polo shirts are great. I told her I'd buy some with my next pay cheque. The second tip was to keep my hands out of my pockets because when girls see a guy with his hands in his pockets they think he's playing with himself. The third tip (actually, she said it was the "first rule") was to never ever do anything with an unconscious girl. I thought that last tip was a bit unnecessary since that's actually rape and I'm pretty sure I would never rape someone, but she stated it anyway. On Sunday I'd figure out why she was so insistent on that last tip.

Anyway, eventually we went up dancing a second time and that was fun. At one point we danced back-to-back and I thought she enjoyed that because we did it for quite a while, but every time after that for the rest of the night when I wanted to ask her if she liked it or not, I was always interrupted. In the end she asked me if I really liked it, and I said I was only doing it because I thought she really liked it, and then on the car drive back home when it was just the two of us she said that it was fun. I really actually did like it, though; dancing back-to-back with Corinna was the best part of my night. It might have been the best part of my week but then I had such a good time on Sunday. Actually, Sunday is the start of another week so I guess dancing back-to-back with Corinna really was the best part of my week.

I met my colleagues, Reena and someone else, at the club. They came in at one-something and when I asked them why they had come with only an hour or two before closing time, they informed me that the club was open until five in the morning that day, so I learned something there. Reena had been buddied up with me at work when she was nearing the end of her training. She still uses my computer in the mornings, I think. Anyway, her and her friend looked very very sexy on the dance floor. I enjoyed their dancing very much. They kept offering me drinks for a while but after I refused a few times they stopped. Well, actually, I had a few sips, but I didn't finish a glass of anything. I feel proud of myself for that.

Anyway the pattern of the night seemed to be that I would talk (yell, actually, since it was quite loud in there) to Corinna or Amanda for a bit, then the girls would go to the toilet or go off to get drinks and I'd stand in the alcove near the store room and rub two coins together while thinking, then when the girls came back I'd talk a bit more and then a nice song would come on and we'd go dance and then we'd come back when lousy songs came on and so it would repeat.

I asked Corinna which guy she'd want to dance with most in the whole club, and after the obligatory "Of course I'd want to dance with you, Shaun" line, she told me that there really wasn't anyone that handsome there. I told her to just pick the least ugly guy, but she couldn't find him either. Apparently Asians weren't her type. Too short for her.

At one point we went up to dance for a while with my colleagues instead of my friends from college, but they only seemed interested in each other so we let them be and moved down a bit, and then I turned around and noticed that Corinna was dancing with someone else, which I thought was odd, and when she didn't turn around I moved off to join my college friends and when I glanced over and saw that she was still dancing with the same guy, I got off the dance floor and went to sit down for a while and rub coins together.

Corinna came down after a while and I congratulated her on finding the least ugly guy in the club, but she told me that she wasn't dancing with him because he was the least ugly; she just thought he was a good dancer. She thought he was a weirdo, though, because he kept asking her to go low or something.

Anyway once I knew that he was a weirdo I felt pretty okay and I went back to talking and waiting and then going off to dance, but when we were back on the dance floor she was dancing with him again and then they were swapping numbers and I thought screw it and got off the floor again so I could go sulk in a corner or whatever.

Corinna and I talked at some point, probably earlier on, about how annoying it was that the emcees kept talking over the music. They didn't let the music play uninterrupted, someone always had to chip in and say something or other. At least they let Sweet Child O' Mine play to the chorus, though; last time we were there they ended it before the verse. Also, they played the theme from Outsourced. I'm not sure what the theme of this paragraph is.

Jose told me to go dance with Corinna because everyone could see how down I had gotten. I told him that I would and I did, but after that I kinda just sat around and waited for the night to end. I got pretty tired. At four fifteen-ish I decided that we could go, so I told everyone that we were going. Joanna wanted to do one last thing with someone. Milan was practically asleep for the last two hours or whatever so he had no problems with going, and the rest of them... I forget what happened with the rest of them but at four twenty-ish everyone seemed good to go, so I left. I said goodbye to Reena and her friend and I got a hug and was told to drive safe. That was nice.

When I exited the club I noticed that nobody was behind me, so I sat by the stairs and waited for them to come out. I texted them and said I was outside.

Amanda's other cousin had gone home in his own car so everyone (Joanna, Amanda, Jose, Kaminie) was going back in the car with Milan and Corinna and I. Also, we met Roshaan and Joshua at the club. That was earlier on but they left with us.

Everyone was out except for Jose, but then he went back in to say goodbye to someone. Everyone was quite drunk except for me (because I hadn't drank anything) and Kaminie (I don't know why) and Corinna (she's German; even after fourteen drinks she was barely buzzed). Milan walked down the stairs so I had to follow him to make sure he didn't hurt himself. Either Joshua or Kaminie came down as well, and then the rest joined us from the elevator eventually. I was quite annoyed to notice that the guy Corinna had been dancing with was there, too.

I could tell right away that he was going to be annoying. He kept asked me where I was from, so I told him Bangsar, and then he asked me where I was from "originally", so I told him Bangsar because my dad was Chinese and my mum was from the Netherlands, and then he asked me where I was from "originally" again, and then when I told him Bangsar the third time he gave up on trying to understand and just went back to bugging Corinna. Except she wasn't bothered, as I later found out. She just kinda tuned out of everything he said and she ended the night under the impression that he was a "nice guy". Ha!

I thought we were all headed to the car to go back the same, but Joanna and Kaminie broke off to go back somehow else. We were all meeting in Devi's, though, because Amanda wanted cheese naan. Amanda always wants cheese naan when she's drunk.

It was a bit tricky to get Milan and Jose to the car as they were both pretty well out from all the drinking, but Joshua helped us so we were grateful for that. Amanda sat between them and Corinna was up in shotgun, and I don't know why I'm mentioning seating arrangements but there you go.

Anyway, we got to Devi's and Amanda and Jose hobbled off to go order. Corinna and I stayed by the car while we watched Milan puke. Corinna pointed out how she could tell that he hadn't eaten anything because his vomit was entirely liquid. It meant that there wasn't any smell, though, so that was alright.

We got to Devi's and I sat down and then Kaminie and Joanna arrived with the dumbass that Corinna was dancing with and two other guys. The dumbass kept saying "trust me" after everything and he kept insisting that Corinna should try nasi lemak because she'd love it even though she'd already told him that she'd tried it and she hated it. He asked us what our favourite countries were and Corinna replied that she didn't have a favourite country, and then he said his favourite country was America and I knew he was full of it. I asked him how many states there were and his reply was "forty plus". Gah, I hate him. The worst bit was that he wasn't mean-spirited or anything, just so freaking oblivious and idiotic and obvious in his intentions.

I asked Joanna if she knew who the dumbass was, but she didn't. She didn't know the other two guys, either. I asked her why she decided to ride back with them if she didn't know who they were, and she said something about Kaminie.

Meanwhile Jose was threatening the dumbass' friend with a fork and the dumbass' friend was also being an obnoxious annoying dumbass. Kaminie looked miserable. Earlier on he had been leaning in near her and it was pretty obvious that he was trying to flirt with her or something but she was having none of it. Oh yeah, when Corinna had mentioned that she as from Germany, this guy's first reaction was to yell "Nazi!". Not as an accusation or anything, it's just that that was the only word in his thick empty skull that he associated with Germany, so he felt that blurting it out was an acceptable reaction. Idiot. Fortunately, Corinna was tuned out because of the other dumbass (Mr Trust Me) so she didn't hear it.

I finished my second limau ice and decided to go have McDonald's instead since they were serving the breakfast menu and the hash browns would be very fresh. I jogged over and there was a group of four girls talking about college or Form 5 or something, but they were the only other people on my side of the counter. Behind the counter it took the staff a minute to find someone to take my order. I didn't mind though, because it only cost RM10 and I got to eat from the breakfast menu for dinner.

After I finished my McMuffin and hash, I took my orange juice and walked back to Devi's. Along the way I was contemplating whether I should tell the dumbass about Corinna telling me on the way to the car from the club that she wasn't going to sleep with him or even text him back. I don't know why I decided against it, but I guess he wouldn't've understood no matter how clear I made it anyway.

When I got back, the dumbass was still talking to Corinna and she was still semi-ignoring him. She was responding to what he was saying, but I'm pretty sure her mind was elsewhere because there is no other explanation for her conclusion that he was a "nice guy". At one point he leaned over and whispered something in her ear and her response was "Okay, A) he's not my boyfriend, and B) he's not my best friend" so that was a thing.

I asked Amanda why she was eating nasi lemak instead of cheese naan and she said something but I didn't hear what. It sounded sad, though. Everyone was in a lousy mood except the two dumbasses, because they were the ones ruining everything, and Corinna, because she had zoned out or whatever. Even the dumbasses' cousin (or friend) looked like he was feeling lousy, probably because he realized at what shitty company he was keeping.

Finally everyone finished their food, so we got to leave two dumbasses and their cousin behind and go back. I asked why Joanna and Kaminie had even decided to ride with them anyway, and apparently it was because the dumbass that liked Kaminie had been so persistently annoying that they decided to ride with him just to shut him up. I thought that was phenomenally stupid because, I dunno, they might have just driven off someplace and raped them or whatever, but Joanna said that Kaminie apparently knew them from somewhere so it was okay.

Milan threw up a second time while I was waiting in the car. It was very convenient of him to only spew immediately before and after journeys. It kept the car nice and clean. Milan is a considerate dude, even when he's drunk.

In the car, Amanda got pissed at Kaminie for bringing them to Devi's, Joanna got pissed at Amanda when Amanda told her to stop defending the dumbasses (Joanna wasn't defending them, she just didn't want everyone yelling), and I was pissed at Corinna for giving that dumbass her number and not recognizing how stupid they were.

Apparently the dumbass that liked Kaminie had been punching her all night in some retarded form of flirting, and so Amanda said that she'd punch him if he hit her one more time, so he dared her to, so she slapped him, so he said that that wasn't a punch, so she said it was a "preview to a punch", and then he said if she could hit him then he could hit her, then Jose said not to touch his cousin, and then he said something to Amanda, and then the dumbass thought he was talking to him or something, and then Jose raised his fork and started threatening him, and then Mr Trust Me kept chiming in to try and impress Corinna who had stopped caring a long time ago, and then I left and went to McDonald's. So that's what was happening on that side of the table.

Anyway eventually everyone in the car agreed that the dumbasses were dumbasses, and then I dropped Milan off at his house and everyone else off at Amanda's. Joanna told me that we could maybe do it again on her birthday, which I wrongly guessed as being on the 31st of December. It was actually on the 30th of November.

On the way back home with Corinna, I told her about the "nazi!" dumbass and tried to convince her that it was stupid to give the other dumbass her phone number, and although she agreed that the other guy was really stupid she still stuck by her decision to trade numbers with the guy. I told her she'd regret it. I was wrong, though; the next day she hadn't received anything from him so I conceded that she was right and maybe it was okay to give out contact details to dumbasses.

We got home at six in the morning and the sky looked very nice. We said goodnight and I took a shower. Jan knocked on the door right when I started, because he had just woken up and needed to get ready for BB. I told him to just wait and then I brushed my teeth and told him and Ian about Corinna not being drunk after 14 drinks and about the dumbass she had danced with and then they left for BB and I went on Tumblr for a very short while and I went to sleep at seven.

I woke up at six and had pasta. Corinna joined me in the kitchen and we talked until my dad came home with Uncle Shark. The four of us talked about Aquaria for a while, then Corinna and I went out to the dining room to play checkers. The board I had bought was too big. It was 10X10 instead of 8X8. Corinna had never played before so it was doubly awkward. We didn't finish the game because it got too boring and we forgot whose turn it was.

Corinna told me about the headache she had when she woke up in the morning. Susanna had walked in twice just to stare at her and that didn't help. Anyway she said she eventually woke up to take a shower and go back to bed, and then a little later she went to the pool for a while but went to sleep afterwards anyway. So I had eleven hours of lovely sleep in my bed and she had ten and a half hours of sleep in her bed and also by the pool and such.

Jan stopped by and I told him that Corinna had complained to me the night before that I was the only one that talked to her. Jan felt pretty bad but Corinna said she wasn't complaining, she was just saying. Jan defended himself anyway by pointing out that I talk so much that it just seems like Hannah and Ian and he don't say much, but really they're talking a normal amount and my excessive talking is making them seem quiet by comparison. Then he left.

Corinna and I went through all the pictures on her camera and I took a bunch of them to upload later. They were the ones from Batu Caves with snakes and the big lizard and such, like these two:

After that, Corinna went on Facebook and she showed me a picture of the stripper clown from Ibiza with cock ring and the gigantic penis. After that she showed me pictures that her dad sent from the Middle East of the gun store and the lavish golden bathroom and the gold ATM and such. She also showed me pictures from some parties and her friends' profiles and her ex-boyfriend's car crash and her castle school. She told me loads of stuff about Germany and by the end of it all I was very jealous of where she lived.

We watched some videos from the Midnight Beast on YouTube and then we watched some of Tenacious D and some of my favourite music and her favourite music and soon enough four hours had passed and it was eleven o'clock, so Corinna went back to bed and I went to my computer.

I wanted to blog but I didn't. I think I just got kinda depressed for some reason and I didn't do much except e-mail Sara and delete a bunch of photos from my phone and put some more Taylor Swift on it while trying to figure out how to compress songs. I went to bed at five.

I woke up at nine and then Sunday began, but I'll write about that tomorrow.

On Sunday night I was also sitting at my computer for a while feeling depressed even though I had a really nice time. It's weird. I think it's because I start missing the fun times the moment they end, and that's not good for me.

Updating for Updating's Sake (and of Course this Grew into a Longer Post than Intended)

2010-11-12T14:27:00.006+08:00

I have a lot of unread items on my Google Reader feed. I have three weeks of webcomics to catch up on. I have two weeks to blog about. I'll do that all later. Like, end of the month later or something.

I'm going clubbing tonight with Amanda and Milan and the rest. They said it's cool if I bring Corinna along, so I'm going to see if she wants to come.

Tomorrow we're going to Gua Tempurung, and then after that we're going to Cameron Highlands. We're using my mum's car because she's in the Netherlands with Hannah for my grandmother's funeral. I spoke to my Oma a week before she went. She sounded small and a little bit confused. She's with her husband now, I guess, so that's nice.

I don't have any more maternal grandparents.

Yesterday (technically, today), I was at the office for a long time. My shift ended at nine, I stayed on until ten watching the new Glee, and then I called Sara on Skype and talked to her for the next three hours. There was only one other person at the office. I moved all the abandoned chairs to my area of the cubicle farm. I felt like a furniture king. Anyway, I decided to hang up at 1:30am so I could go home and get some sleep, so I did. My card wouldn't work in tagging me out, so I had to get the other guy to let me out. I then realized that I had left my keys on my desk, so I had to yell from outside for him to let me back in. He was a patient dude, luckily.

When I got to the car, there was a dog napping underneath it. It had a hurt paw. It looked really cute. I took two pictures, but I can't upload them right now because I didn't bring my transfer cable to work.

When I got home I lost Ian's USB stick. I went back to the car to look for it, but it wasn't there. When I came back upstairs it was lying on the welcome mat. I felt a bit silly when I noticed that.

Jan was still awake, listening to the Ricky Gervais show. I took a shower and went to sleep at two-thirty.

The next morning I went through my morning routine, ate some sausages and bacon with Corinna and Aunty Rosie, and checked my e-mail. Then I went to work.

So far work has been okay. It took me a while to log in because of some technical hiccups, but it just meant that I didn't have to answer calls for the first twenty minutes. We were supposed to have some important clients visiting, so I wasn't on Tumblr or Conquer Club the whole day. For my break I went up to the roof and I saw that I had a text from Amanda asking if I wanted to go clubbing. I like getting drunk and seeing my friends get drunk, so I said I would.

When I got back I went up to the ops team to talk to them about something, and someone had left their phone on their desk. Nina (the nice lady in charge of approval for lunch and breaks) wanted to hide the phone. I asked if she wanted me to take it down to Sukarno (my boss) when I went back to my desk, since apparently it's his last day and it would be a nice (albeit short-lived) going-away present. She said she did, so I did. I'm not sure what he's done with it.

The fire escape in this building has "no smoking" signs on every floor, but even during an actual fire you're still more likely to die of smoke inhalation on the stairs than you are inside the actual floors. I guess illiteracy is like mouth cancer and coughing: just another side-effect of cigarettes. I'd pity smokers if they weren't all so stupid about their mortality.

I only really have to write about the weekends. I need to write about Halloween and Batu Caves and Megamind and Tropicana City Mall and that's pretty much it. Should be pretty simple. Work days are all the same anyway.

Oh. I also need to upload all the pictures of me with the snakes and the bearded dragon and Catholic Jesus up at Batu Caves. They're on Corinna's camera; I have to remember to get those from her sometime.

I don't know what my opinions are regarding Sara Elizabeth Madren. On the one hand I really really like talking to her, on the other hand I can never decide if I'm infatuated with her or not. I'm pretty sure I will be tonight, because I'll be drunk and I'm infatuated with every pretty girl when I'm drunk.

I'm running out of money. After tithing RM400 to Beacon Life Training Centre to help buy stuff to help the special needs kids, I think I'll only have, like, RM300 left. I'm probably going to spend RM200 tonight and maybe half that tomorrow (not counting petrol), so I'm going to have to starve a bit near the end of the month. Oh well.

Man, it's gonna suck to be unemployed again. It's gonna suck worse to be in university, but at least I'll be able to make new friends. It's the in-between period that'll get me. I'll be pretty bored. I should get a laptop and install all the awesome games of the past three years on it. That should tide me through.

I need more money.

KLCC Park with Corinna, and Other Things

2010-10-29T01:13:00.006+08:00

It's 4:32am. Wow.

Okay, wow. I'm tired. Um, this will be "short". It may even be short.

Milan, I'm still blogging.

World, I love you.

Hannah, it's good to know that you're still reading this. You can tell me how lame it still is later.

Let's do this with numbers because limits make things easier:

1) I saw a rat at Restaurant Emas. Corinna was the first person to spot it, but my mum and I couldn't see it so we told her that it was probably a squirrel since we've never seen a rat before. Mostly we just get cockroaches. Corinna hates cockroaches. They've been crawling in her shoes and such ever since she got here.

Anyway the rat came out again and it was indeed a rat. My mum called Mr Wong and he said that he was trapping and killing rats tonight. I asked my mum if she would let me keep a stray rat as a pet if I cleaned it up and immunized it first. She said wouldn't. She wouldn't let me have a snake, either. My mum can be a real buzzkill sometimes.

Corinna asked why I would want a rat. They are cute and intelligent and I could train one to sit on my shoulder when I'm at the computer. That would be great.

2) I'm always so lonely when I'm not with people. I want a girlfriend so badly (or is it bad? Which one means that the mechanism which allows me to want is broken? Whichever it is, I meant to type the other one. Or maybe I didn't. I don't know. I don't really care. I do really care. Gah). I just want a friend badly, actually.

3) I'm sitting in my room wearing an oversized jacket and a blanket over my legs. Why don't I just raise the temperature on the air-conditioner instead?

4) I went to KLCC park with Corinna. It was nice.

After dinner we talked for a bit, but then Mr Wong took our empty plates away and our drinks ran out and we had no reason left to be there, so I asked Corinna if she wanted to go to KLCC and take pictures and stuff. She said yes.

We went upstairs so that she could get her stuff and I could put on some jeans and shoes. I also got my laser pen and she kept that in her purse. I also got Ian's car keys. I asked him if he wanted to come but he didn't. I think it was because he had work today but it might also be because he was lazy.

I parked Ian's car in this parking lot near the Bangsar LRT station. Corinna thought it looked like a scary place. I would have agreed with her, but I knew that it wasn't.

I paid the dude in charge of the place three ringgits and he gave us a receipt or a ticket or something. I had exactly three ringgit in my wallet, but I paid him with my RM10 emergency note because I thought that the price was five ringgit. That's not anything you needed or wanted to know, but it's something I wanted to write down. Don't worry, I put another RM10 ringgit note in later.

We took the LRT to KLCC.

At KLCC, I bought a large passionfruit drink from Aunt Anne's (Or is it Annie's?) pretzels. Corinna bought a small. We talked about pretzels while waiting in line for our turn. They don't have Aunt(ie/y) Ann(e's/ei's) in Germany.

We went to the park and walked around. Corinna liked the soft paths they have there. It reminded me about that story I once heard of that one king (or emperor; I can't remember if it was a Western parable or an Oriental one) who wanted the roads paved with leather so it wouldn't hurt his feet when he had to travel. One of his servants suggested that he just get nicer shoes instead, so he did. I can't remember what the moral was, probably something like "Don't do awesome things that will benefit everyone when you can just do something that'll benefit only yourself." Anyway I told Corinna how they had rubber paths for the blind in Brickfields so they could tell by feeling where they were. She thought that was a neat idea.

We talked about our dads. We talked about our countries. We talked about the pollution. We talked about each other (a little). We talked about the path. I had a good time. She didn't hate it.

We went to the playground. I tried to swing but some ~~uniformed bitch~~ lady just trying to earn a living whistled at me to get off.

I found another swing further inside. I swung on it and Corinna sat around and took pictures, like this one:

After swinging, I went to the monkey bars and hung upside down on those for a while. Corinna took another picture of me.

I took a picture of her as well. Scroll back up and see if you can figure out which one it was.

I would have taken a picture of myself, but Corinna told me a guard was coming. It was actually just a concerned parent, but by the time I had found that out I was already off the monkey bars. A real guard showed up shortly afterwards to say that they were closing the park since it was ten o'clock.

Corinna and I went to the wading pool and took some pictures. It was loud in there, so we did not hear the whistling. The whistling was coming from a guard who wanted us to leave. Apparently their job is to make sure no fun occurs on park grounds.

There was a mosque in the park. We would've gone in but we weren't sure where we could put our shoes. We talked about religion and how each religion has its own crazy people and people who don't care too much and people in between. Corinna and I are in the second category. We changed the subject after three guards in motorcycles came by.

Since the park was closed, we walked back to the train station. Along the way I told Corinna about the time Jan had seen a homeless dude with a huge hole in his pants that everything was hanging out of. Corinna said Jan was probably staring. I hope Corinna thinks that Jan is gay. That would be amusing.

We took the LRT back. There was a Canadian couple next to us. The were visiting a friend in Bangkok and had stopped by Malaysia because it was close to Thailand and not as full of prostitutes of indeterminate gender. They had come to KL after spending some time relaxing and feeding eagles and rays in Langkawi. I told them about the time I had taken a picture with a large stingray while scuba diving in Redang. I also told them to visit the KL tower because of the view and because of the two-headed turtle. I showed them a picture of the two-headed turtle. Corinna told them about her time in Vancouver. They were nice. They had been to Cameron Highlands. I told them that that was where we were probably going the next day.

When I got to Bangsar station I took out the laser pointer and dicked around with it a bit. It was an awesome purchase.

We took the car back. There was nobody in the parking lot.

Back at home I told my dad that I wanted to go to Cameron Highlands. He said I might as well pick Jan and Hannah up from Ipoh. I said okay. He asked me whose car I was going to use, because he was using his. I told him I was going to use Ian's, but I'd need money for petrol. He said to forget about it. I suggested maybe doing it next Friday. He said that might be a better idea.

Corinna wanted to know what time we were going to Batu Caves. I said that I was waking up at ten-thirty, so one. She laughed.

I like Corinna. I'll miss her when she's gone.

5) Here are some things before I end this post:

a) Work is still work. The weeks pass faster than I thought they would. It's already payday.

b) I wish I was older. Then I could've had a slightly better chance with Effie, Elo, Amanda (Ha! Better by, like, 0.01^100¹⁰⁰%), Juria, and I might even have started flirting with Corinna by now.

c) I spent an impressively nerdy amount of time getting that superscript just right, and I still probably fucked it up.

d) What did I do on Thursday? Nothing, unless sleeping at 4am and waking up at 5pm counts as something. Oh, I guess I played counterstrike against a bunch of bots with knives and shields. That was fun.

e) Oh yeah! Amanda called me on Tuesday and I met her and Milan at Devi's and we talked and then we went to eat ice cream. We talked about her boyfriend in Texas for a while and then I spent the next hour or so insulting her religion. I was a shitfaced dickhead (her words), but her religion sucks so I still feel justified. Sanctity of life is bullshit and arguing against contraception on the basis of that is even bullier shit. Or shittier bull. Whatever.

f) The perfect amount of people for a conversation is four. Two to do all the talking, and two to exchange knowing glances at what perfect arses the first two are making of themselves.

g) I got infatuated with a girl over the internet again. Fuck; I'm pathetic.

h) Okay I have to end this post soon. I want to Google pathos.

i) Oh my goodness it's six forty-eight in the morning.

j) Bugs are flying into the light of my screen. I'm going to eat one.

k) That tasted like hair, dust, and ick. I feel like a wimpy Bear Grylls.

l) I can still feel it in my throat. I think it's stuck. I'm going to go get a drink.

Ten Things that Happened Since My Last Post

2010-10-16T00:44:00.007+08:00

1) The weekend shift:

Watched some movies, went on Tumblr, answered a few phone calls, earned a couple hundred bucks. It was pretty great.

2) The next three weekdays:

Wake up too early, eat a lot, work a lot, sleep a lot. I was in bed at six o'clock on most days, I think. It was pretty exhausting. I had no time to Tumblr or blog or anything. Ian had started his training, so he sat with me and listened to some calls.

3) Dinner at Outback:

My bosses cancelled at the last minute, but that just meant that I had more money to spend on other stuff. Also, I had already eaten at the Outback Steakhouse with my brothers and my dad and Corinna on Wednesday. It was really tasty, and thankfully she is attractive. I was worried because before she came I had been picturing her as a pretty person and then I realized that she might not be one and then I'd be disappointed, so I tried to lower my expectations but I couldn't picture an ugly German twenty-year-old, so I kept picturing her as pretty and I'm glad that I wasn't disappointed.

4) Chilean miner rescue:

Chi Chi Chi!

Le Le Le!

Los mineros de Chile!

5) Thursday out with Hannah and Corinna and Jan:

We went to the KL tower first. We parked for free (in the city!) at this place near this two-way road that looked like a one-way road. We then walked up a hill (Bukit Nanas) and saw a dude with a monkey. Jan failed to photograph the monkey in time. I took some photographs of the day. They're down near the bottom of this album. Hannah took some pictures, too, but her privacy settings aren't right for strangers to see them.

The KL tower itself was pretty great.

We decided that we'd go up to the observation deck. Hannah got me to pay for her ticket.

We stayed there for quite a while. They had these headset-video combination guides that would tell you a little bit about what you could see from each window. That was pretty cool. After I was done with the guides I went out to look at stuff through the binoculars. I found our house.

Jan didn't believe that I could see our balcony from there, so I called my dad and told him to walk onto the balcony, then I passed the phone to Jan and I went to look through the binoculars. The exact moment our dad walked on the balcony, I told Jan. Then he believed me. My dad started waving and I could see that. I let Jan and Corinna have a look, too. My dad waved Jan's green underwear to make himself more visible.

After that we mostly looked used the binoculars to find rooftop pools. The first one we found had two women with bikinis on it. That was the best one.

After we were done playing with the binoculars on the roof and looking around a lot, we left the observation deck. I hung around outside the elevator staring at the roof, which was awesome.

From now on in this post I think I'll leave all but the best pictures out. Just head to my album if you wanna see the cool stuff. I might add them in later but I'll probably be too tired.

Anyway, we went down to the zoo at the bottom of the tower. There's a zoo there, and admittance is free if you've bought a ticket to the observation deck. I knew it was going to be awesome when a bunch of guys carrying this giant python came past us at the entrance. Also at the entrance were a bunch of prairie dogs and a naked mole rat (Tikus Belanda in Malay, which is more amusing than offensive) and also a parrot that actually talked. It said "Rawk! Hello!". It was fantastic.

Inside the zoo itself were loads of reptiles and spiders and monkeys and tortoises and turtles and stuff. It was awesome. Oh, there was a two-headed turtle. I am not making that up. Also, there were chickens. I'm not sure if they were actual display animals or food for the snakes or whatever, but they were there.

I took some pictures with a snake. I had to take a tiny one because the big ones were RM30 for a photoshoot, whereas the tiny ball python was just RM5. The dude forced it onto Hannah after my time was up, so I had to pony up another five bucks for that. It was worth it for the look on her face, though. My phone ran out of memory after the first picture of me with the snake, so I didn't get to take a picture of Hannah and the snake. Jan did, though.

After the zoo we went back to the car. Along the way I deleted Bad to the Bone and a few remaining songs from the Inception soundtrack to make way for more pictures. We walked past this F1 thing that we could've done for free, but didn't. We also passed a sad monkey.

We took the car to KLCC and parked. Then we went to McDonald's and exploited the free refills which Corinna told us they don't have in Germany. Hannah went to the toilet for a while. We went to the front of the KL towers to take pictures. Mine turned out really nice.

We went to the back of them to play in the park. Hannah wanted to play, but Jan was being a killjoy and he changed her mind. I lost some of my will to play when I got a muscle cramp trying to hang upside down on the monkey bars. Corinna said that the age limit for playgrounds was 13 in Germany, and she hadn't been on one since kindergarten. I was unable to convince her to try again. Playground are great.

Jan started moaning about how lame playgrounds were or something, so we left. Hannah and I spotted some swings so we tried to swing on those, but the security guards nearby were being anal and they started blowing their whistles so we left.

We sat around and watched the fountains, then we took some pictures of the towers at dusk, then we went back into the mall. We were supposed to go back to the front and take some pictures of the front of the tower at night, but I guess we forgot or something because we went to the PetroScience gift shop instead. It's so cool. There is so much cool stuff there. If you want me to be happy with your birthday presents for me, buy them from that gift shop. They have glow-in-the-dark stuff and dinosaur stuff and science stuff and it's all awesome.

After that Jan didn't want to hang out any more and my dad wanted us to go home unless everyone wanted to keep going so we had to go back.

6) Petaling Street:

Traffic was bad, parking was tough. We found two parking places that were both closed at ten, and it was nine-something, so we had to go somewhere else. Fortunately, the parking outside Central Market is open 24 hours, so we parked there.

We is Hannah, Corinna, and me, by the way.

Anyway, I bought a green laser thing (haggled down from RM130 to RM70), a low-quality rubix cube (to RM3 from RM5), a bottle of hand sanitizer from KK Mart, some candy from the same place, a drink also from KK Mart, a bag of mangosteens, and a pair of knockoff Oakley wraparound sunglasses, the same kind as the Chilean miners were wearing when they got out (Bargained down from RM45 to RM18. I got congratulated by one of the dudes in the next stall for managing that). Hannah bought the same drink as me from KK Mart. Corinna's also only purchased stuff from the KK Mart; she got a bunch of postcards.

It was a pretty great store. They had a wanted poster out front for one of their ex-employees. It was for RM2k. I remarked that he must've run off with either the till or the owner's daughter to warrant such a reward. Also, there was this restaurant outside that had, on a stick, the biggest prawn I had ever seen. It was practically a lobster at that size, and it cost lobster-price, too. They also had squids on a stick. I think the only reason they get customers is because of tourists' girlfriends going "I wouldn't ever dare eat that! Would you?" to their boyfriends and the next thing you know they're sitting in front of a plateful of crustaceans and cephalopods on sticks and wondering why they even decided to travel to this bloody country in the first place.

After buying stuff we got in the car and went home. Corinna told us about Germany. We told her about Malaysia. It was fun.

7) We mentioned the war:

We mentioned it more than once, and I think we got away with it.

8) KK Mart sells KK Mart brand whiskey:

This isn't a thing that happened since my last post. This has probably been going on since long before then. Still, it's a pretty cool thing.

9) I didn't get to give Amanda and Milan their ice-cream:

They both claimed to be sick. I wasn't aware that "not wanting to hang out with Shaun" was a disease. Hannah told me that it was, though. She gets it all the time. You'd think she'd be immune by now, but I think it's one of those things that gets even stronger each time you catch it.

10) I got a wee bit addicted to Tumblr:

I can't help it. My followers are just too wonderful. I'm asking them loads of questions. I ask so many questions to so many people that I can't even read all of the answers any more. The ones that I do read are great, though, so I'm gonna assume the rest are great, too.

I'm Tired and I Want to Get This Out of The Way Before Bed

2010-10-08T19:20:00.004+08:00

Ian quit his job and came to interview for mine on Wednesday. I went out on my lunch break to interrupt his interview.

Wednesday was also the day I got my pay. There had been a lot of delays leading up to that point.

I was quite happy that it had arrived. It would still take a while to clear, though. I went to deposit it but then I realized that I needed my account number on the back. It was a bit of a hassle to get that since I had changed my password for my Maybank2u and all that, but I got it eventually.

Money is great. I've already budgeted it.

RM50 is for gambling (poker only, so I can only lose as much as I've put in), RM500 is being saved, RM160 is being tithed, RM350 goes on celebrating it (I was going to buy Outback for my bosses tonight, but they took too long to get the cheque ready for me so it didn't clear in time for that. I'll be buying McDonald's for the whole department on Monday instead), RM300 goes on food for the month, and there are other expenses that I've budgeted for like movies and stuff that I can't remember at the moment.

Hannah made cookies today. They are really tasty.

While she made the cookies, I made some oobleck to play with. Oobleck is the funnest fluid.

Thursday and today are my off days. I woke up really late on Thursday, and I slept really early (in the morning. It was five A.M.). Today I woke up at ten because Susanna was playing her music too loud. At least she wasn't playing Barney songs this time. I hate that purple reptilian idiot and all his stupid friends.

I've downloaded a lot of Elvis to listen to recently. Elvis is great.

I've been on Tumblr too much recently. I love the "ask" feature. I get to know more about all these strangers (and some of my friends). Most of the time it's just silly this-or-that, but sometimes I'll ask something open-ended and I'll get a thoughtful and interesting reply. Also sometimes they ask me questions back. I enjoy answering those.

Hannah will have to give up her room next week because we have a daughter of one of my dad's friends' coming over to stay for a while. She's twenty years old (which sounded like a lot the first time I heard it but then I realized that that's only two years older than me and one year younger than Amanda and exactly the same age as Ian, which makes her seem less distant somehow) and she's from Germany. I'll end up referencing the war or the football rivalry and things will get awkward, I just know it. If I miraculously manage not to be a bumbling idiot, it should be pretty cool. The last time we had a guest from Europe was four years ago when our cousin and his friend came over during the 2006 World Cup. They went down to Singapore for the finale. They were cool. The guest room was frigid when they were staying over, though. They put the air conditioning on the lowest temperature and you could feel the cold as you walked past the door. Malaysian weather is not kind to those used to the more temperate northern climates.

I'm still waiting for my cheque to clear but my dad transferred RM700 to my bank account so I have money again and I don't have to starve at work. When the cheque clears I'm sending RM765 over to him (RM15 interest and RM50 from a previous loan).

I won RM7.50 from making silly bets with Jan this afternoon. It was too easy, so I let him win it all back. Hannah only made two bets and she managed to break even.

I thought I would spend more time playing RuneScape after getting a job, but that didn't happen.

Amanda went to Indonesia and came back and I didn't even notice because nobody told me. Joanna went to Greece and I only found out a few hours before she left. She didn't know what the isle of Lesbos was. I'm disappointed in her. I'm also jealous of her, she's going to be cruising around the Mediterranean for almost twelve days.

I've only got four days left before I have to buy Milan and Amanda some ice cream. Dang. Oh well, at least the first time after that is going to feel awesome.

Joanna's videos of me did not get enough hits for me to have to buy her McDonald's. I still owe her RM10 for uploading them on time, though.

My tooth hurts. I think it's because I've been clenching my jaw too tight.

I'm not sure if I'm desperate enough to date a fifteen-year-old. I hope I'm not. A man's got to have principles. Sixteen is the limit. Seventeen after my next birthday.

If Hannah starts dating a sixteen-year-old now I would feel that there was ass to be kicked. A fifteen-year-old would probably be risking the same fate unless he/she was awesome.

My parents watched An Idiot Abroad with me. It's great.

I love my one month of free premium at Conquer Club. I think I'll use some of my final pay cheque to buy a whole year. If I'm doing that then I'm also going to buy some Dinosaur Comic T-shirts. I want the Time Traveller's Essentials and the "Feelings are boring, kissing is awesome" one. I'll also donate a couple dozen dollars to JoCo as thanks for all the songs he let me steal.

I have more to say, but I think I'll end this so that I can go to bed sooner.

Oh yeah, my boss needed extra people to come in to work today but it's my day off so I told him that I was "kinda busy" today. I only went to Subway and I spent the rest of the day on the internet. Was I lying? I hope I wasn't lying.

A Lazy Sunday on the Job

2010-10-04T01:38:00.003+08:00

I watched the 1950s version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers at work today (Sunday). It was great. I think the Pod People had a good thing going, though. I wouldn't really have minded becoming one of them. The movie reminded me of On The Third Day in some ways, too, so that made it all the more awesome. I still wouldn't want to catch the Sadness, though.

I got a call from someone who claimed he couldn't understand my accent. It was the first time I got that complaint. Usually they just say I'm going too fast. He asked me where I was located and when I told him that I was in Malaysia he got upset and started swearing. I was excited because if he said three swear words I could hang up on him and being allowed to hang up on a customer is such a great feeling. After his fourth swear I started to tell him that I was allowed to hang up on him for being too profane, but he hung up on me first. Oh well.

After that we didn't really get any more calls, so the rest of the team talked about our more "fun" callers and what they were like. Google and Facebook helped us learn what some of our callers looked like. I think it's against our contract to add them to our friends, though.

One of the T2 guys, Ismael, took me up to see the Microsoft floor, which was abandoned when the department was moved overseas. It was pretty awesome. There were two Xbox rooms with Halo wallpaper. I took some office supplies that were left behind. Now I have a new ruler.

While waiting for the Perth phone lines to close, I took a nap under my desk. I was supposed to wake up after an hour, but I only woke up when my dad called to say he had arrived fifteen minutes ago and had been waiting outside for me to arrive.

When I got home I went straight to bed while listening to music from my phone. It was a good sleep. My dad woke me up at one point to ask if I wanted dinner, but I told him no. To make sure I wasn't sleep-talking, he asked me what the square root of nine was. I answered correctly and went back to sleep.

Ian, Joel, and Jan woke me up around six hours later with the sounds of gambling and football. I went out to the living room and Hannah was reading my Tumblr. She didn't follow me, though. She said I was annoying her and started playing videos of me talking to make her leave.

It shouldn't be 3:30am now. I would be waking up to get ready for work at around this time. This is ridiculous. I wish Ian and Jan and Joel could have just gambled outside or watched football somewhere else or something. Gah. I'm going to be so tired at work later.

I downloaded a lot of Elvis songs and Mr Bean episodes recently. They're great.

Let's Go Do Something We'll Regret

2010-10-02T23:58:00.006+08:00

Yesterday was, um... Hang on.

Okay yesterday was Saturday. But it's only been Sunday for a little over half an hour.

Friday. Let's talk about Friday.

I woke up in the afternoon and after getting ready for the day, I took my motorcycle down to Devi's to meet Joanna and Amanda. Joanna and Amanda were on the phone when I arrived. I said "Hi" and Amanda asked "Is that your father?" and I said "What?" and then not much else happened.

I talked to Joanna while waiting for Amanda to get off the phone. While that happened, two attractive white girls walked in and talked about whether they were going to stay in Devi's and sit at the table in front of us or leave, never to be seen again. They decided to stay, so that was nice.

Also, it was my dad at the other table. He was at Devi's having lunch with my mum and I had no idea at the time that he was going to be there. Devi's is like some kind of event horizon for coincidental meetings. Every time we're there we have to see at least one person we already know. The food's still pretty lame, though.

This is a picture of my father. I'm not sure why I took it.

Anyway, when Amanda finished her conversation with her mother over the phone, I told Jo and her how I hot I thought the girls in front of us were ("very") and how badly I wanted to talk to them ("very"). I told them about how I had missed opportunities to talk to pretty girls at Pizza Hut on Ian's birthday and at the bowling alley at KLGCC and such, and how I really wanted to talk make sure this didn't end up being another thing I regretted not doing anything about.

Amanda and Joanna told me that I needed to get the perfect pick-up line or something before I approached them, which I thought was ridiculous. I told them I just needed some kind of motivation and then I'd do it. They told me that I couldn't just go up and talk to someone. I told them I could, and I got up and talked to this elderly stranger who was sitting alone at the other side of the restaurant to prove it.

When I got back Joanna and Amanda still thought I needed a pick-up line, but I told them I wasn't looking to pick anyone up. I just wanted to go talk to the girls so that I would not regret not talking to them. I asked Joanna and Amanda to give me some kind of motivation, but they couldn't come up with anything.

The girls at the other table were done with their meal and they were ready to go, so I knew I had to do something soon. Fortunately, Amanda told me that she would let me talk for 10 hours uninterrupted if I went to talk to the girls. That was all the motivation I needed. Before I got up to talk to the girls, I told Amanda that I would only talk for 30 minutes because 10 hours is a bit unrealistic.

I got up and walked over to the table in front. Joanna ran over to my old spot to get a better view. I stood for a few seconds to think of something to say before I finally leaned over and won 30 minutes of uninterrupted rambling.

"Excuse me; my friends over there were wondering how good they looked, and I was wondering if you could help."

Joanna and Amanda were not expecting that at all. When the girls asked which friends, I pointed out Joanna and Amanda for them, and Amanda and Joanna started frantically pointing at each other. When the girls asked which one, I said both. I asked for an objective rating on a scale of one to ten. They were reluctant to answer at first, but I told that my friends would probably never see them again so they wouldn't have to worry about hurting anyone's feelings. They finally settled on a rating of somewhere between seven and eight for both Amanda and Joanna. I thanked them and returned to my table.

I told Jo and Amanda what they had said and they accused the girls of being liars. Whatever, I think seven is a fair judgement for how they were looking that day.

I was very happy that I had talked to the girls since now I wouldn't have any regrets about it. Joanna said it didn't count because I didn't get their names and numbers, but that was never my objective in the first place. It's not like I'd have a chance with them anyway.

After that I rambled on for the 30 minutes that I had won and I enjoyed it. I said a lot of stupid shit, but I think I also said one or two really clever things as well. Overall I'm pleased with how it turned out. Joanna filmed it on her phone, but she hasn't uploaded it yet and I don't think she ever will. Amanda and Joanna seemed quite bent on figuring out whether I was gay or not. Women arouse me far more then men do, so I'm gonna go ahead and say that I'm not.

When that was over I drove Joanna and Amanda to Sunway in Amanda's car. We talked about stuff and listened to music and played word association because Joanna and Amanda kept answering "both" or "neither" for This or That, and the game is no fun if people do that.

We dropped Joanna off at her house. Oh yeah, she had a dog. Here's a couple of pictures of it and me:

I look better in the dark and I don't like what that says about me.

After dropping off Joanna I drove back with Amanda, but she was too tired to provide great conversation. I didn't mind though. I let her take a nap while listening to Regina Spektor. The traffic jam was pretty bad. Wanna read something creepy? No? Okay then, because I was just about to say "there's something different about looking at a person when they're asleep. When they're awake you see all their defences and mannerisms and expressions but when you're asleep you just see... them." Shit, that sounds like that queer vampire's inner monologue from when he was perving on Bella whatsherface as she slept Twilight.

Amanda woke up and then we went to pick up Geraldine. We parked in an alley and talked about friends and siblings and how Imagine is not a sad song, and then we drove around for a bit. Geraldine got in the car and I let Amanda take the driver's seat, and then I got on my motorcycle and went home.

Ian and I went to the Outback Steakhouse after that.

I heard That's Amore and All Shook Up on the best radio station on Astro and then I went to bed.

I woke up on Saturday at 3:30am. My dad drove my mum to meet up with some people so she could go to Penang for a seminar, and then he drove me to work. We picked up some McDonald's along the way. I had ordered sausage McMuffin with egg meals. I paid for one of them and ate both of them. I talked with my dad and then I went to work.

At work I earned a little less than RM100 doing this:

Around ten hours later work was over and I was napping outside waiting for Aunty Rosie to arrive and drive me home. I listened to a playlist I had made on my phone specifically for naps. It had taken me something like half an hour to create, but it was so worth it. Naps with music are the best naps.

Back at home I got changed into something less presentable and more comfortable and then I went to sleep. It was five o'clock or thereabouts. When I woke up again it was seven something.

Hannah thinks I have tickets to Paramore or something.

I ate barbecued pork ribs for dinner. Joanna dreamed about Amanda eating pork ribs earlier. It's a coincidence.

I'm tired.

I started a blog on Tumblr today. I have no more followers on my Twitter.

I need to get more space on my phone. I don't have any space left for all the Elvis and additional Jonathan Coulton I want to put on it.

I'm tired and I have to be awake in two and a half hours. Goodnight.

My desk

My contracts (Part-Time, Full-Time, Hannah)

The One Before This Was 200 and I Didn't Even Celebrate

2010-10-01T02:12:00.001+08:00

Okay so it's now early Friday morning. I missed the clubbing deadline, so I sincerely complimented my siblings on Facebook.

Wednesday was work. It was harder than usual because I was very hungry and very tired but I had cupcakes from Amanda to get me through the hunger bit and I took some naps during my breaks to get me through the sleepy bit.

I am very tired. I changed my passwords, for security. They were all the same and easy to crack, but now they are all different and difficult. They are so difficult, in fact, that I have forgotten most of them. That is why it took me so long to change all of them. It took me three hours.

I got distracted by my Gmail. Hannah came over and laughed. Jan came over and laughed a bit, too. Sue Yen from church used to like me. I guess online she goes by Emily Leong. She stopped liking me when I was blunt (and quite mean in an unthoughtful way) to her via email. Oh well, she isn't that good-looking anyway. I know that I'm shallow. I'm only 18, I'm allowed to be.

Hannah likes Kevin Tan, I think. She blushes when I say his name. She used to blush when I said Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the name of this guy from Indonesia, too. She didn't blush when I said Ruben Tan. Well, sometimes she did, but that's only because I was saying Ghrooben instead of his actual name.

I enjoy it when Zachary Bower and Rebecca Grootendorst are online. They are people I enjoy talking to. Amanda Gabriella is also pretty great, but I don't have her address for Windows Live Messenger.

I also enjoy the music of Katy Perry and The Eagles.

I'm tired. I can't make any promises about the clubbing thing. I'm free tomorrow (except for packing Amanda's stuff) so I guess I could do it then. Well, not tomorrow, today. It's Friday now. Dang, time moves fast.

On Thursday I woke up from the couch at twelve but I was still tired so I did my push-ups and then I took a shower and then I tried to go to bed but all I did was talk to my cat and then I woke up and then stuff happened and then I went out with Hannah to buy stuff and she spent all my money and then we got home and watched Glee (it is so great; Brittany is so great) and then I did not watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers and then I changed my passwords and then I read the funny old e-mails and then Rebecca came online and I like her but I'm not sure whether it's as a friend or as something else, I think it's as a friend. I'd like for it to be as a friend, otherwise it wouldn't work and I'd be sad. It's as a friend.

Ebony are you reading this? I know Hannah isn't and Milan only would if he ctrl+f'd his way here.

I want a dog when I move to my mansion that I will never have because probably I won't ever be rich to have one. Another childhood dream bites the dust.

Goodnight everyone. There are things left unblogged about here but I am too tired to give a damn.

Final thoughts: I enjoy songs by Katy Perry the person more than Katy Perry the persona. Also, after Faith dies I want to get a pair of kittens so I can name them Noun and Verb. The female will be Verb, of course.

The Last Two Days in Under 30 Minutes (Hopefully)

2010-09-28T23:50:00.005+08:00

On Monday I went to work early and I came home early, too. Daylight savings time had come into Australia and New Zealand, so from now on I am starting work earlier and ending work earlier, too.

I also got my roster. It said I had to be at work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, all at 6am. I asked my supervisor about this and he said that I could come at 7am on the weekdays, so that was nice.

Work was okay. About halfway through I started to get sleepy, but I made it to the end of the day and when I went home I was in bed fairly early. I just finished watching The Infidel (I had begun watching it in the morning) and then I went to bed at 10pm. I had done my exercises long before my shower. I should do that more often, it takes so much less time to go from doing things to being in bed when I'm on the computer.

Tuesday I woke up a bit late. Later on in the day I changed my alarm tone from "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" to the opening music from CSI: Miami (YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAH!). Anyway, I got to work at around 7am, but I had to wait outside the doors for fifteen minutes before somebody showed up who could tag me in.

I worked through the day. Halfway through my nine-and-a-half hours (right after lunch, I think), I felt really tired and my performance suffered. It also suffered because I got a lot of calls from people whose phones all had this same problem whereby I would hear everything I said a few seconds after I said it. Hannah was right, I am bloody annoying. I couldn't concentrate with me talking in my ears all the time. Some people got quite upset.

Also I answered a call from a French guy in France. I could not help but smile at his accent. It was so amazingly... French. And not the sexy French that Amanda would probably be thinking about, but the frog's-legs-and-surrender-and-cheese-and-w(h)ine-and-effeminate type of French. I'm sure he was a nice guy, it's just that his accent was too French for me to hold a straight face and it was also too strong for me to help him with his problem, so I stumbled through the French HP page until I found the number for the French call centre and directed him there. I'd like to think his call was picked up by a typical Indian call centre, except everyone there wore berets and pretentious moustaches and spoke wit ze... ow you say... eavy French ixaunt.

After work I got my contract. There are lunch chunks of it devoted to patents and inventions. At the end it says that the terms I agree to will survive the termination of my employment, which sounds pretty sinister.

I drove to Amanda's house and we went to Devi's with Milan. Our conversation was about penises and masturbation and a little about other things but right now those two things are the only topics I can remember. In two weeks' time, Milan and Amanda will be buying me ice-cream. October twelfth. Start saving, you two.

Milan went home and Amanda and I went to pick up Geraldine from tuition. She thought that Aunty Rosie's car was Amanda's car. When I clarified things for her, Amanda and she simultaneously asked why my maid had a car. My answer to them was "Why wouldn't my maid have a car?"

When we reached Amanda's house I took Walker on a walk so that she could pee because Amanda couldn't do it because she had to pee. After the walk we went inside and then we went out again so Amanda's mother could run some errands. Meanwhile, Amanda and I stayed in the car and talked about domestic abuse after hearing that one Eminem song on the radio.

When we got back I stole the remote control so that we could watch world news instead of E! News. I tried to educate Amanda's family on how Kim Jong Un is a more important figure than Ellen DeGeneres, but they were women so they didn't understand. They didn't care much for the latest news on the Israeli naval blockade, either. At least Geraldine took interest in the trapped Chilean miners, though. I thought it was quite fascinating that she had never even heard of the mine disaster before. It must be nice in her head. Very... Local.

Anyway, after world news we watched a program on Nat Geo Wild about cats in the womb. I knew most of the facts already, so I tried to say them all before the narrator could. I was hoping to impress someone with my knowledge, but I don't think I achieved any reaction from anyone aside from annoyance. I did learn something new about purring and roaring, though. Also, cheetahs are fast. Also also, Amanda and Geraldine are still grossed out by birth, even kitty birth. Good luck to their future midwives, I say.

After that I moved to the massage chair and watched a show called Desperately Seeking Sheila. I hope Georgia and that cowboy dude work out. They seemed nice.

After that, Amanda tried to watch Friends but the disc was not working, so she watched House instead. The start of the episode was very interesting, and I wanted to know more, but the moment I left Amanda's place I lost all interest. Here's my guess: it wasn't lupus.

I'll be dropping by Amanda's again on Wednesday to help her move stuff because we didn't actually move anything today. After that we're watching Cloverfield. Yay!

I met one of my neighbours in the lift. She walked in when I was singing Stacy's Mom to myself. We had a pleasant (if slightly brief and awkward) conversation.

I need to do my fake push-ups, and then I'm going to sleep. I will only be asleep for two and something hours. Oh dear.

Airport, Pictures, Hannah and Her Friends, Movies, and Other Things

2010-09-26T23:00:00.006+08:00

So I said I would continue blogging, and I was not lying.

Yesterday (Saturday) we went to a mall and I read a good book by a cool guy named Rhys Thomas. I know he is cool because I later read that he sent a free copy of the book I was reading to a girl who had posted a cool review of his other book on her blog. That is a thing only cool people do. Anyway, the book was called On The Third Day and it was about an epidemic that removed all the hopes from people and then killed them exactly three days later. They didn't mind because without hopes their lives were meaningless. Even though I only made it through a third of the book before I was interrupted, I very much enjoyed it. Hannah, Ebony, and Yii-Huei (H.E.Y. from now on for the sake of convenience and fun acronyms, but without the periods, because groups of girls are always better when periods aren't involved) had gone to watch Charlie St Cloud. Afterwards they told me it was okay. I told them the book was awesome. I hope this will make them start reading. It probably will not, though.

Hannah was upset with me for something that was actually her fault, but I bought her ice cream to cheer her up because I read somewhere that girls like ice cream. It didn't really work, so I tried initiating some gossip, because I read that girls like that, too. She felt a little better after that.

Well, it wasn't actually gossip. It was the platypus game. I've explained the name before, but I shall explain it again. The name has nothing to do with the game, Hannah just likes the way it sounds because she's a 13-year-old girl and they are allowed to be whimsical and silly like that. Basically the game is truth or dare without the truth. It was... enlightening. We also played it in the car that we took to the mall and in the sauna that we will encounter later on in this story.

Hannah promised we would go to the sauna. The sauna is something I enjoy but something I don't like to do alone. Yii-Huei and Ebony enjoy the sauna. Hannah enjoys doing things with her friends. Everyone wins.

The sauna was hot and there was a lot of steam, which is exactly what you would expect from a sauna but just because something is expected it does not mean it cannot be fun. We left six minutes earlier than we had planned because it got too hot. Next time we will last longer. There may not be a next time, though.

Hannah cried when Stefanie left. Hannah is currently quite upset with me. This paragraph could fit anywhere in this blog post, and there are probably better places for it, but this is the place that it was when I wrote it and I don't feel like moving it.

Today was Sunday. Church was church, but the sermon was more interesting than usual due to a guest speaker. I did not have gum to stay awake, so I looked through pictures on my phone and showed them to Jan and HEY. Jan thought this one was particularly hilarious:

Ebony was reading the fourth Harry Potter book next to me. I've never read any of the Harry Potter books or watched any of the movies, and this usually surprises people. Based what I saw on the pages I read over Ebony's shoulder (She is a slow reader, I had plenty of time to read her pages and look at pictures and also listen to the sermon a bit), I'm going to say that JK Rowling is a pretty good writer. I guess I wouldn't mind a Harry Potter box set for Christmas, but I'd still much rather have a Stephen King collection or The Zombie Survival Guide or anything by Max Barry or even The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

After church, Yii-Huei went home with her family and I dropped Ebony off at her house and then I dropped Hannah off at Grace Assembly for a Royal Rangers 22nd anniversary. She likes a guy there, I think. I hope it isn't David Soh. I think it's another guy she says she hates. I followed her inside. The uniforms don't look that bad, especially when you compare them to the junior uniforms that BB has. Ugh, who thought those shorts were a good idea?

Anyway, as I left I met David's dad. I should have greeted him with "Old man, old man", but I did not. I did not say goodbye in that fashion either. Oh well, we all have regrets that we must live with.

I took a nap when I got home.

I watched Outsourced with Jan and Joel. They were both texting and talking and so everything was less funny than when I watched. People should give more things their undivided attention. That way there would be less collisions on the road, and also people would enjoy things more. It's not like the texts are going anywhere, anyway.

True Love is an objectively good song. Even if you were to ignore who was collaborating on it, it is a nice sounding song that most people would enjoy. Prove me wrong, Hannah.

After watching outsourced I may have taken a nap. I am not sure.

Stuff happened. I can't remember. It probably was not interesting. You know what is interesting, though? This.

Ian, Jan, and Joel were gambling. I strung some of Jan's bets and won around RM10 from Ian. Everyone was happy after the gambling was over, with the exception of Ian, whose gambling debts had recently reached three digits for the umpteenth time. I wouldn't go so far as to say that he probably has a gambling problem, but I will say that gambling probably gives him problems.

Hannah, my mother, and I went downstairs for dinner. Joel was waiting for us there. Do not fear, Joel is not omnipresent; time had passed and he had gone downstairs first. Dinner was tasty and somewhat expensive but that was fine because I paid with my winnings.

When I get my pay cheque I will tithe a tenth, save half (or thereabouts), and spent most of what's leftover on food. Everything else will either go to gambling, Hannah, or movies. This is an arrangement that I am happy with, but some people think it is a bad idea. I think some people are wrong sometimes. Actually, I think most people are wrong most times. That does not mean that I am not most people, but it does not mean that I am, either.

We talked about stuff over dinner. Politics, my grandfathers (They are awesome; did you know that? One sabotaged Nazi operations during the German invasion of the Netherlands a little over half a century ago, and the other killed communist terrorists for a while before moving on to spying on them and figuring out ways to destroy them from the inside), science and religion, my future, Hannah's future, relationships, and other stuff. It was fun. Hannah was on her iPod for half of it. Typical teenager. Typical Hannah, actually.

I need a best friend. I don't have one; I never have had one. Well, maybe I don't need one, but I want one. If she's a girl it's a plus. I would settle for an awkward loser, at least then we would have something in common. I would settle for a dog. I would settle for a cat. I already have a cat. I guess that'll do, then.

I still have to write about clubbing. I will get to that. Look, I'll make a deadline for myself. Something will happen to the clubbing post by Wednesday. Early Thursday morning latest. I'll find something to sincerely compliment my brothers about if I don't update the post. There, it's said. It'll happen now.

I also said I'd write about movies and something else. Jan and I went to see Resident Evil: Afterlife with El-Hanan a few days ago. It is the third movie I've seen more than once in cinemas. Inception was five times, the Dark Knight was two and a half times. Afterlife is undoubtedly the shittiest movie of the three, but it was worth watching for the 3D. Proper 3D is worth the eighteen ringgit. Do not bother with that post-production bullshit, or else I will think less of you as a person. I will do the same if you pay to watch shit like Epic Movie and Vampires Suck and all that other Friedberg and Seltzer bullshit.

That one 3D owl movie looked nice. I might watch it if I have someone to watch it with.

Oh yeah, I also had to write about going with friends to surprise Nicholas at the airport. Basically, after work I spent a whole lot of money going to KLIA to say goodbye to one of my friends' boyfriends. I went because I don't get out much and I would do pretty much anything as long as I knew my friends were there, too, and it didn't involve too much lawbreaking. I was told Amanda wasn't going to be there. "Oh well," I thought, "Joanna is pretty fun and there is much wisdom within the mind of Davinia that I can attempt to obtain. Also, I should probably say a proper goodbye to Nicholas since I was kinda drunk the last time I saw him. Also also, Carmeni is going to be sad afterwards and maybe there is something I can do."

In retrospect, there was nothing I could do except be there, really.

On the way there I stopped at this place along the highway and I got my Touch 'n Go credit moved from my inactive MyKad to a new Touch 'n Go card. I used RM40 of the credit that night alone. The road to KLIA is an expensive one. Parking's pretty bloody pricey, too. I've still got RM50 left or something, so that should last a while. Or so I hope.

I ate Burger King and was just about to take a nap in a booth when the girls found me. We hung out for a bit. Joanna and Carmeni stayed at one spot for a while while Davinia and I went to look at aeroplanes. You guys, aeroplanes are really big. It's awesome. Did you know they fly? They are huge and metal and they fly all over the place. Awesome.

We got back and took pictures. Then we got a call and Nicholas was in the airport. We surprised him. We went to McDonald's. Carmeni sat with her boyfriend and his family. Joanna, Davinia, and I sat at another table nearby. At the airport McDonald's is a bloody rip-off, too. Burger King offers the same menu and the same prices, but McDonald's doesn't care. McDonald's is like the country it represents; it's so large and ubiquitous that it thinks it can do whatever it wants and that it can get away with it. Right now it's right, but the times, they are a-changing.

Sometimes, even I'm aware of how crazy I sound.

After McDonald's, Davinia's phone rang. It was the kind of phone call that you can't discuss in front of a guy, so she went off with Joanna for some girl time and girl talk, whatever that is. Meanwhile, Nicholas' family was taking some final goodbye pictures. I ended up in the group photos but, because they were away, Joanna and Davinia did not. That's not really fair; they know Nicholas better than I do.

A few more pictures were taken, and then Nicholas left and Carmeni started crying. I am terrible at reading emotions because I thought she looked like she was handling the whole thing quite well up until then.

We hung out some more and then the girls went to the toilet and I went home.

Here are the pictures of the night that I took with my phone and one that I did not:

So yeah, that is the story of the time my friends and I showed up at KLIA to make sure that Nicholas Rodriguez could have a little more time with Carmeni before they had to say goodbye for a while.

I'm not sure what to put in this paragraph. I'm not sure what to put in most paragraphs. Usually I just type my thoughts and that turns out quite well. This is a transition paragraph that I feel should be a bit more solemn than usual.

This is also a transition paragraph. This one is about how I just recently learned that "swig" and "swing" are different words. Never again will I say "another swing of wine". Not that I ever said it before, but at least if I ever need the phrase in future I will be saying it right.

This is not a transition paragraph. This is me, blogging. I texted people almost out of nowhere recently. I asked my friends to recommend a best friend for me. Davinia gave me sound advice. Joanna also gave me good advice, but over Windows Live Messenger so that she wouldn't have to use credit or something. Amanda did not reply and I hope that it is because she was busy or out of credit but I guess it might also be because she did not want to. Saundra replied, but I'm not really sure why I sent it to Saundra.

I want a girlfriend. I won't settle for a cat on this one.

There, now I'm done blogging, and it's only twelve. All I have to do is upload all my recent pictures, tweak the HTML, add a few more thoughts, upload, and I'm done.

Oh, I joined Twitter. I wonder why I didn't mention that earlier. I've wanted to join ever since I found out that astronauts have Twitter accounts and they send tweets from space. Until then I had never realized how badly I have wanted to receive electronic communications from space.

Electronic communications... FROM SPACE.

You guys that is so awesome.

Anyway, I'm going to upload the rest of my photographs now. Well, I won't really be uploading them. They're already online, on Facebook. I'll just be attaching them to this post. If Zachary Bower is right and Facebook is just a fad, then when my children read this post there will be nothing here but a bunch of white squares with "x"s in them, assuming my children are reading this with an ancient (by future standards, of course) version of Internet Explorer, which is a silly thing to assume, since Google will probably own the internet by then. What's the Chrome icon for a dead image?

But yeah, pictures. Enjoy:

Okay I think that some explanation is required for some of those pictures. From the top down: Some owls Hannah drew in church last week, a few pictures I took for Hannah in church when she was trying to see what her braid looked like (it did not look nice, as you could see), Hipster Hannah in Cotton On, cats and kittens at Bukit Kiara, Hannah and Yii-Huei and their attempts to hide from the camera, and finally Mercy and her son being cats.

I enjoyed writing this post more than I usually enjoy writing blog posts. I think that may be because it is still so early in the night (it is not even 1am yet).

By the way, did you notice any errors in this post? Yes? Then you should tell me; I can't fix them unless I know where they are.

Oh yeah, Daylight Savings Time is in effect now, which means that work starts an hour earlier and ends an hour earlier, too. I don't mind waking up early, especially for what they're paying me.

I Am Still Blogging, Hannah

2010-09-25T14:27:00.002+08:00

I haven't quit blogging, it's just that I haven't been on my computer since I started work on Monday and as such I haven't had much time to update this blog. But I'll get to it eventually. There isn't much to write about this week, my days have mostly gone like this:

1) Wake up
2) Get ready
3) Wake up again from a nap that was taken sometime between items 2 and 3, suddenly realize how late I am
4) Rush to work with my dad or Aunty Rosie or on my own
5) Work for a few hours; don't remember enough about any calls to blog substantial amounts about them
6) Costly lunch
7) Take a break, maybe sneak in some Conquer Club in between calls.
8) Work for a few more hours; maybe get one or two interesting calls
9) Go home
10) Hang out in Hannah's room/Do exactly one interesting thing/take a nap
11) Do exercise and take shower
12) Go to bed relatively early.

Well, on Wednesday night I went to watch a movie and on Thursday I went with friends to surprise Nicholas at the airport before he left, but that's about it. I'll blog more about those later, I guess.

I will definitely be updating the previous post with more information about my first time clubbing. This is a blog-commitment. It is, like, the closest I can get to making a promise without actually making a promise.

Gotta take Hannah and Yii-Huei and Ebony to malls now. Should be fun.

Before I go, here is one picture from Facebook for this post:

Awesome Weekend: Clubbing, Movie, Karaoke

2010-09-19T18:56:00.008+08:00

So I haven't blogged in a while because I kept falling asleep before I could do so. It's unfortunate, because I have so much to blog about. Let's start with Friday.

On Friday, I woke up when my dad walked in the room and asked what the music was about. I told him it was my alarm, and then I listened carefully and noticed that it was Should I Stay or Should I Go, which meant that it was already 7:15am, which meant, holy shit, I was super late.

My dad said he'd go down and get the car ready while I got prepared for the day as quickly as possible. I didn't have time to put in my contacts and I was only in the shower long enough to get myself wet and I don't think I used any soap, but that was fine since I had taken a proper shower only a few hours earlier before I went to bed. Also I had that mouthwash I bought at Guardian with Amanda, so that meant minty fresh breath and that was nice.

It was raining like mad while we were driving to work, but I still managed to arrive before eight. I got sat down at the same computer and I was set up and ready to go a lot sooner than on Thursday. I got a call from a lady who was willing to pay for support, but just before I was able to charge her, her problem fixed itself. I hope she gets the customer satisfaction survey, because she was very happy with the service. I was a bit miffed about missing out my RM10 commission, but right now I'm new to the job so happy customers are still worth more to me than commissions and a low AHT. That'll change eventually, I think.

I answered calls until two-ish, then I went for what I had hoped was going to be a quick lunch and a nice nap, but I got approached by someone representing Prudential, so I did a short survey, and then after I bought my pies and lunch a colleague engaged me in conversation so I was in the cafe for a while. The pies and conversation were good, though. The guy I was talking to was an overflow technician or something similar-sounding, which basically meant that although he was with the new Fujitsu department, he'd handle calls from the HP queue if all the other T2 guys were busy. He had actually got one of my customers and helped her fix her problem, which was cool.

Anyway it was a good thing I was talking to him because after lunch I forgot my bag and he reminded me about it. When I got back down I was still on my lunch break, so I went to talk to Kuberan and we talked about our jobs. After that I think I had a talk with my supervisor, then I went on break for fifteen minutes. During that time I traded some movies with Dinesh, who is a very experienced T1 guy who sits nearby and answers my less complicated questions when he's not on call.

After the break I handled some more calls. I had to process my first two DOAs on Friday, which drove up my AHT quite a bit, but now that I know how a DOA case works it should be a lot quicker next time. I also ended up inadvertently frustrating a customer by taking too long to register him and then forgetting to tell him about the support charges until quite some time had passed, so he demanded to speak to my supervisor. Fortunately I was told it might be a hardware issue, which was still under warranty, so I logged the rest of the problem details and he said he would call back later when he was more composed and ready to troubleshoot. I told him that since it was a hardware issue and since he still had a hardware warranty he could get to T2 free of charge. Anyway that is the closest a customer has come to crying and I hope I never screw up that bad again.

I did have a few victories that day, though. An old lady called and she ordered some recovery CDs, which were 66 AUD, so after Dinesh helped walk me through the process of charging a credit card for a purchase, I had earned HP the equivalent of two days of my salary. My AHT was quite high at the end of the day, but since I'm still quite new it's still fine. I should be hitting the six minute target within two weeks, apparently. But yeah, old people are my favourite customers. They don't care about having to pay for support and they're always so friendly and easy to deal with. It's the people with technical knowledge that are harder to deal with, since they usually want to get through T1 as quick as possible and over to T2, so they treat T1 people quite poorly. Oh well, I get paid either way so I can't care too much.

I texted Aunty Rosie to pick me up at five, since that was the exact time I was going to stop taking calls. A few seconds after 4:59, I got a call. It went on for about fifteen minutes. The lady at the other end was pleasant enough, though, so I didn't mind the extra time so much. Aunty Rosie might've, though.

When I got home I set my alarm for nine in the evening and then I took a nap. When I woke up I had a huge bowl of carbonara that I could almost finish (I've still got a few forkfuls of leftovers in the fridge from that dinner), and then I got Hannah to help me figure out what to wear. She picked out a nice shirt that was a bit large and I called it "garish". I wasn't quite sure what "garish" meant, but it sounded right. I looked it up later and that shirt was not at all garish.

Ian dropped me off at Amanda's house at 10:15. Amanda was still getting ready, so her mum let me in. She complimented my Puma shoes, which I thought was pretty funny because I had recently come home to find that my aunt wears the exact same shoes as me but two sizes smaller. We watched the Asian Food Channel while waiting for Davinia to arrive and for Amanda to get ready.

Davinia arrived and she looked nice. She had apparently been getting ready since six. I told her I had only been getting ready since nine. I like being a guy.

Davinia told me to tell Nick that she was going to wait with him while Amanda and I were going to pick up Milan and get some money from an ATM (I only had nine ringgit). I texted Nick the plan and he told me to withdraw loads of cash. Thousands, he specified. Maybe steal a credit card if I didn't have that much in my bank. Nick's a funny guy.

Amanda got done and she looked very nice as well. I told her that I thought her shawl was an especially nice touch, but then she told me that she was only going to wear that in the car and I was all like "oh".

Geraldine was going to leave somewhere with Amanda's mum's friends and then they were going to The Ship in town. I said hi to everyone involved with that previous sentence. There... there isn't much to say about that, but I remembered it so I figured I might as well put that in.

Davinia realized that I had not brought a car and that meant that she had to drive us to pick up Milan and head to the ATM, so Nick would have to wait on his own. So Davinia drove us to the Maybank in Bangsar and Amanda went to 7-Eleven while I withdrew some cash. I met up with Amanda in 7-Eleven while we waited for Davinia to circle around. Amanda had bought credit for Davinia's phone and also some mints for me. In the car I had told her she could get any flavour except purple, which was unfortunate because she had wanted to try purple. Anyway I didn't really have a good reason for not wanting purple, so I let her get it anyway. Turns we both had never tried the purple flavour before, which was why I didn't want it and why she did. So a packet of mints taught us that Amanda likes to try new things and I like familiarity. That was nice, I guess.

After that we picked up Milan from his house nearby and then we went to the Esso where Nick was waiting. Actually, we may have picked Milan up first and then gone on to get the mints and cash and stuff. Whatever. Anyway, we were at the Esso and I noticed that Nick was driving alone and so it was just going to be the five of us. Davi and Milan swapped places so Davi could eat while Milan followed Nicholas to Changkat.

Along the way, Davi lost her spoon so she had to use her hands to eat some food she had brought. When we stopped at a light near Dataran Merdeka, she opened the car door, leaned out, and washed her hands with some mineral water that was lying around. When we stopped at the next traffic light I told everyone about my worst nightmare ever, which I had had just a few hours prior while I was taking my nap. In it, I was at work, but then I screwed up on a call, and then my supervisor came and talked to me. It was terrifying.

When we got to Changkat we drove around for quite a bit looking for parking. The best word to describe the place would be seedy. Seedy with a lot of interesting-looking food places. Well, interesting to the rest of them, it was all oriental nonsense to me. There were a lot of guest houses which made me wonder if it was a really convenient place to stay for tourists or if (and I considered this less likely in my mind because real life is usually more boring than this) they were all fronts for brothels or something.

Anyway we found a place to park and then we walked down to find a club and then loads of interesting fun stuff happened.
Around five hours later Davinia dropped me off at home and I went to bed after doing my exercises (or not, I can't remember) and taking a nice warm shower.

When I woke up I did my exercises (or not, I can't remember) before my shower. I had woken up in the afternoon, too, so that was nice. It was Saturday and I didn't have anything to do, so when my aunt asked if I wanted to watch a movie I said yes. I asked Hannah if she wanted to come, but she was too lazy.

We decided to watch Devil because she screening time was convenient and there wasn't really anything else worth watching. When we got to Mid Valley we picked up the tickets, and then we stopped at one of those stalls that sell all sorts of trinkets so my aunt could get something engraved. While she was doing that, I met Mark Tan. He told me that Ian and Jan were still in a meeting in Cheras but he had left early to get his eyes checked and he was currently looking for something for his girlfriend. I would later be informed by one of my brothers that he was going to marry that girlfriend soon. I am always the last to find out these things. Anyway, after that we went to Popeyes for lunch. It was extremely tasty and I now love it more than KFC due to the delicious chicken fillets (I think they may be called tenders) and the lack of grease. The biscuits are great, too, but my aunt wasn't too fond of them. Oh well, it just meant more for me.

My aunt picked up the engraved thing while I got the popcorn, and then we went to watch the movie. We saw the trailers for Red and The Green Hornet, both of which looked awesome. After that was the movie itself, which was surprisingly good. I guess that may be because even though the story was from M Night Shymalan, he didn't actually write the screenplay or direct the movie. Anyway when it was over we agreed it was quite good. In my opinion it's better than Signs because it makes more sense, even if Signs might have been the more enjoyable movie experience.

We split up for a while after the movie was done. I went to MPH to read the first bit of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at my aunt's recommendation while she went to look for a handbag strap or something. The book was good, but she never found her strap.

When we got back home the house was pretty empty. Aunty Rosie said everyone had just left for dinner, so when I called and found out they were in Sin Kee, I told them to order me a chicken chop and I'd be there soon.

I drove over and we talked and ate dinner and then we went back. Jan wrote his name in the new sidewalk that had just been filled with wet cement, but then Hannah went and tried to write hers next to his and she got spotted by one of the workers who probably smoothed everything out when we left. Nice going, Hannah.

When we got home I went on the computer for a bit, and then I decided to take a nap on the couch for a while before I blogged and did my exercise and took a shower and went to bed. Unfortunately, I did not wake up from this nap until sunrise on Sunday.

Breakfast was okay. The newspaper was a bit more interesting than usual (there were articles about rape and affairs in the NST). Church was slightly better than average.

I watched Mission Impossible until 3:30, then I went to pick Hannah up from Royal Rangers. When I got there, she texted me and told me that I could wait until 4:20 before picking her up. I napped in the meantime.

When Hannah was done we drove home and I finished Mission Impossible and then I forgot what I did. I probably procrastinated writing this blog post, actually.

Oh wait now I remember, I went on the karaoke for about an hour and a half. Susanna and my aunt joined me. Apparently the machine cost RM1.2k. That... that is a lot. We'll have to use it more. It's fun. I only actually went on it because nobody else was at home so I could sing without offending the hearing of others. I love singing but I suck at it, it is my curse.

This post isn't a finished product. After work on Monday I'll come back and fill in all the details about Friday night. I've got a bit of paper with a list of stuff on it that I had written down before I went to bed that night. Here is exactly what's written on it:
"Main points for 1st time clubbing:
-Changkat, envie, nevermind, (it is lousy)
-Car to Palace with Nic, talk about prostitutes & politics
-Palace, too young, lenient bouncer, yay
-No cover charge, yay
-First round on Nic
-Felt socially obliged to purchase second round
-No Heineken, no Tiger
-Is Corola [sic] RM17? Yes. Later, nope, it's RM26. Had to collect RM10 from guys.
-Amanda wants to dance. Nevermind.
-Money seizure stuck in head. Said it, no real result
-Saw some video boobs, weren't that great
-Half songs good, half lame
-Sweet child o' potong steam
-Dance & talk
-Why no jump? Chest spill issue. - Amanda
-Go back before 3:30
-Milan wants to watch fight, is strong
-Drunken goodbyes
-Cheese Naan
-Drive back
-Amanda says I can talk about spillage on blog but nothing else
-Pretty 5.5 for a white guy
-To Devi's
-Explain over & over why Kierran [It's actually Kiran, I think] can't make it.
-Amanda fed by Da
-Amanda sleep
-Nevermind McD's
-Drop off Milan
-Went home
-What else?
-Will figure out later
-T-shirt (Hannah) did good.
-Amanda slurr
-Premarital sex advice from drunks
-Skin colour attraction
-Maybe/Definitely for Da/us"

So yeah, that's like a sneak preview of what's to come. Hopefully I'll have this updated on Monday.

First Day of Actual Work

2010-09-16T23:50:00.005+08:00

Thursday (today?) was my first day taking actual calls. It was very interesting. Other stuff happened after work, but I am tired and I have to be awake again in less than five hours so unfortunately not every thing that happened will get the details they deserve. Also this post will probably be loaded with errors.

Okay, so I woke up early. I did my daily Bible reading. I took a nap. There was some alarm trouble but fortunately I set two alarms, so it was inconvenient but not, um, fatal.

I got ready and then I spent a little too much time on the computer. I left the house later than I should have.

I arrived in the office around eight minutes later than I should have (I was supposed to arrive at 7:45, I got there at seven fifty-something). Fortunately, I was already inside the office when Hariz first spotted me and nobody had started working yet so I was in the clear.

I got assigned a temporary desk and computer, and then I tried to set everything up. The computer froze, so I restarted it and went through everything all over again.

I got my first call before I was actually ready for it. Right now I've forgotten what it was about, but I think I should be able to recall in future if you ask me.

After that the calls came in quite steadily. I answered them to the best of my ability and it took me around 15 minutes to work on each. A few wrong numbers meant that my AHT was down to 12 minutes, but it was still way about 6.

I had to check with my supervisor for help quite a few times, but I was told many times during training that calling the supervisor was perfectly okay as long as the customer agreed to be put on hold, and all of them did.

Between twelve to one o'clock my fellow part-timers went home, but I elected to stay on until five for more money and experience. Before my lunch break I got called over to meet with a dude who does call monitoring. He told me that the call he was monitoring of mine had passed, so I was doing okay. However, I had to practice the script, slow down so the customers could understand me, repeat the serial number with the phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, etc), and use less words (I was talking a bit too much). I also met with Hariz and he told me some stuff, but I kinda forgot what right now.

After that I took my break and did my Conquer Club turns and then I answered one more call before I went for lunch. The car was really really hot. I had to wait a few minutes for the car to cool down before I could drive it. I went to McDonald's. I had too many fries, maybe.

After (or before, it's late and my memory's a bit wonky) lunch, a lady dropped by my desk as she was leaving. She had also stopped by earlier when my wrap-up time exceeded six minutes. Anyway, she asked me how things were going and I told her that my biggest mistake so far was sending a customer to T2 without giving him his case ID and the support hours. She said that was not that bad for a first day mistake, but I shouldn't repeat it.

Anyway, I took more calls until five, then I went for a talk with my supervisor. Dave asked how my first day was and I said it was good. He said that that was good because I was doing a pretty good job. I asked him what AHT was expected of me as a new guy, and he told me that 12 minutes was pretty good since his AHT when he was starting was between twenty to thirty minutes. I asked him how long it would take before I could keep my AHT under six minutes, and he said around two weeks. He also told me that hiring the lot of us was no mistake, so that was nice. It's nice to know that I'm not a mistake.

Oh yeah, sometime during work it was someone's birthday so I got cake. It was chocolate indulgence. It was delicious cake.

On my way back, I decided to drive by Amanda's house to see if I could help her pack. I gave her a call and she said she was in Bangsar with Davinia because her parents were away, but I could join them in Devi's in a bit. I told her that sounded like a good plan.

I drove to the cul-de-sac (it may not actually be a cul-de-sac, that's just the first phrase that comes to mind to explain the place) near Saundra's house to do a u-turn so I could go back. I decided to park and see if I could go see Jared and Saundra's new puppy. I gave Saundra a call and she let me in. Kendra, Saundra, and I went to see the puppy. Scratch is adorable. Kendra is nice, too. I don't understand how Hannah can think she's one of the most annoying children ever.

Anyway here is a picture of Scratch.
While playing with Scratch, I got a call from Amanda. I said goodbye to the Lockes and went to Devi's to meet Amanda. She told me where to park.

At Devi's I washed my hands and looked for Amanda. She took a while to find me because I wasn't wearing orange, and I took a while to find her because I was looking in the wrong direction, I guess.

We went to Guardian to buy Amanda some eyeliner (Geraldine had lost her previous supply) and to get Davinia some makeup remover. I bought some mouthwash while I was there. I also saw some eyeliner with ferrocyanide in it. I probably spelt that wrong. I'll Google it tomorrow, it can't be as dangerous as it sounds.

After getting the stuff from Guardian, Amanda and I went to Devi's to meet with Davi. We got a table and we talked about stuff until Geraldine arrived, and then we talked until we ran out of conversation, and then we played a game where you connect animals to other animals or countries based on the first and last letter and it was a lot more fun than it sounds and a lot easier to explain than I've explained. Amanda kept getting "E"s and "A"s, it was fun to watch.

Anyway some of the stuff we talked about in Devi's was how Daryl worked nearby and what was going on with Amanda and the guy she liked and how apparently Juria and her boyfriend had been in that very same Devi's just three hours ago or so. We also gossiped but I won't be sharing much of that here. Also this local celebrity showed up but I didn't recognize him. Also Amanda and Davinia passed judgement on random passers-by. Also Amanda told us about her upcoming Nike photoshoot and how I should do some modelling. I agreed to let Amanda and Davinia take me shopping one day to get me new clothes because I don't really know how to dress fashionably. I dress for comfort and utility first and fashion... last.

We went to Bangsar Village so the girls could use the bathroom. Davinia spent a long while waiting outside with me for Amanda and Geraldine while Amanda and Geraldine were spending a long time in the bathroom waiting for Davinia. It was a bit pointless.

I returned Geraldine's English-Malay dictionary and said goodbye. I'll be seeing them again on Friday evening at 10:30 to go clubbing. I'll be driving Amanda there and staying sober so I can witness the shenanigans and drive her back home safe and sound.

When I got home I told my mum and Hannah how my first day of real work was, and Hannah asked for some of my money. I told her that I'd give her RM5 a day if she exercised with the stairs and fake sit-ups. She agreed. I realized later that this scheme would lose me RM155 a month. Dang.

Hannah actually got me to sign a contract about the exercise and stuff. She's also getting RM20 for burning Cloverfield and Titanic onto a DVD for me for a movie night that may be happening next month or so.

Hannah is a crafty girl.

I need to go to bed now, after showering and stuff I'll maybe only get three hours of sleep or so. I need to nap from when I get back from work until when I have to get ready to go out at around nine forty-five or something.

P.S. Oh yeah, while I was at Devi's, Amanda pointed out that she saw my brothers. I wanted to sneak up on them and surprise them, but they spotted me first. They were going to Pappa (Papa?) Rich with El-Hanan and Joel. After exchanging greetings, I went back to Amanda and Davinia to talk about nonsense.

Fifth Day of Training

2010-09-16T01:40:00.003+08:00

So, Wednesday.

I didn't actually fall asleep after writing my last post. After my shower I kinda just climbed into bed and lay there for half an hour until my alarm went off, then I went about getting ready for the day and such.

Aunty Rosie needed the car for something so I couldn't take the car. Instead, I went with Aunty Rosie so she could drive it back and use it for whatever. We left at around seven fifteen. I ordered McDonald's for breakfast since I was early enough to finally have the time to do so. We used the drive through, so I didn't have enough time to perfectly optimize the pricing, but I ended up with an order of RM27 that included three hash browns, three ice milos, one sausage McMuffin for me and one sausage McMuffin with egg for Aunty Rosie, and also some hotcakes and an extra sausage patty. By right Aunty Rosie's portion should have cost RM5, but she paid RM10. I'll fill up her car a little more next time.

I stopped at 1 Tech Park so I could get out and put my stuff down to eat while Aunty Rosie got in the driver's seat and went back home. I managed to construct the following monstrosity from my order:
It's a bun, then a piece of hotcake with syrup, then a hash brown, then a patty, then a hash brown, then a patty, then a hash brown, then another piece of hotcake with more syrup. It was amazing. The syrup was the key.

After breakfast I went to the roof to enjoy the cool morning air and the nice view. I had my phone with me so I had music to enhance the atmosphere.

I arrived in the training room at eight. Hariz told us that he had bad news and good news. He delivered the bad news first: Since Jonathan and I had passed the test, we would be going live on the floor (taking calls, basically) that day. The good news was that the others could retake the test, so they wouldn't have to worry about failing the training or anything. I don't see how us going live on the floor was bad news, though. It was more like two pieces of good news.

Jonathan and I went out to buddy up while the rest of them retook the test. I was with Koshla again, which is good, because she's very professional. There were very few people on the floor so there were a lot of calls waiting and people were more frustrated than last time. There were less wrong numbers, though.

After that we went back in and learnt stuff, and then we had a lunch break. I spent half of it in front of the computer, and then I went upstairs to check out the empty floor. It was only when I arrived that I realized it was full that day because a mobile blood donation unit was there.

I was greeted on my way in by my department's business manager, Edward. He was on his way out. I walked in and filled in some forms, and then a nurse pricked my finger to get some blood to check my blood type. I'm type A. I was sent to the doctor, who asked if there was anything I wanted to ask before the donation started. I asked her if the nurse was correct when she said that it was okay for me to donate even though I had bipolar disorder. The doctor told me that it wasn't okay, because even though my blood was fit for use, bipolar disorder is caused by a chemical imbalance, which can be brought on by a loss of blood, which meant that I could never donate blood ever. This was disappointing, but I guess it was for my own good.

I went back to training and learnt some stuff for a while, and then we had a break. I took a nap. During the break, Jack came in and gave Sean some recruitment forms to fill because the ones we had filled after the interview were with Roy Morgan. Sean passed me mine when I woke up. After training I filled them in and gave them to Jack.

Aunty Rosie drove over with Susanna to pick me up. She told me that we were going to Bangsar Village to buy Susanna a movie because Hannah wouldn't download it for her. I told Aunty Rosie to just save the money because I'd download whatever movie she wanted. We went to pick up my contact lenses instead. When we got to the optometrist, I realized I had no money, so we went back and I got my money from my dad, then I drove over and got the lenses.

When I got home again I didn't do much before I was asleep on the floor again, this time in front of the TV. Nobody woke me up for dinner (again), so I had to reheat everything when I woke up around four hours later at 11pm. I ate my carbonara while watching Deadliest Warrior on Ian's computer. I had known from the list of weapons that the SEALs would win, even though I think the Israeli commandos are more awesome.

So I never ended up answering calls on Wednesday, but today (Thursday), I will. Chances are, in around five and a half hours I'll be on the phone providing people in Australia and New Zealand with the best support options for all their HP Desktop related problems. Yay!

Fourth Day of Training

2010-09-15T03:18:00.004+08:00

It's 3:30am, Wednesday morning. I took a nap for too long on the floor. I'll get to now later, right now let's go back to Tuesday.

On Tuesday I woke up a few minutes before six after my alarm went off for the third or fourth time. I had let it snooze a bit because I didn't have to climb the stairs on Tuesday so I figured it would be fine.

I woke up and read my Bible and only fell asleep a little a bit. I was done at 6:15am, so I set my alarm for six forty and took a nap. When the alarm went off I tried to hit snooze and after that I can't remember what happened, but the next time I woke up it was seven thirty. If my mum hadn't woken me up I would have been late as hell.

I quickly took a shower and brushed my teeth and all that, and then I left for work. It was raining like mad, but I still managed to arrive in the training room around ten minutes late, and training hadn't started yet, either.

We were buddying up again, but since there were only two cables, we could only have two trainees buddying up at a time. I decided not to be in the first group and so I went to take a nap while waiting for my turn.

When my turn did come, I got to be buddied with this lady named Koshla (her floor name was Kay) who I would much prefer to Raj if I ever had to call customer service. My time with her started with her answering maybe eight wrong numbers (people calling about laptops or printers or workstations when this was actually the desktop number) before the actual people needing assistance came in. She handled the calls really well.

After the buddying was over, we registered fake customers and fake assets onto the fake customer service database for training. That took a while. We only broke for lunch at one fifteen, which is either forty-five or an hour and fifteen minutes later than usual, so I was really hungry.

I drove to McDonald's for lunch since earlier I had been browsing through the McDonald's websites of various different countries to see what they had that we didn't and vice versa. I am now jealous of the USA's breakfast options and aware that everyone but us has chicken selects. Also I have to enjoy McDonald's breakfasts as much as possible while I'm here, since they don't have 'em in the Netherlands.

After lunch I went back to 1 Tech Park and talked to the guys about religion and pepper spray (Eddie once used a bottle of the stuff to defend himself from four guys on the train who crowded around him and were trying to rob him. They only caught one of them, I think), and then I went up to see if the roof was open. It was. The roof is pretty cool.

After I was done with the roof I went down to to a different room where we were taught about some other stuff, and then we had to take an exam. There were two questions we had to get right to pass, and all but one of us got them wrong. Anyway, the passing mark was 80% and I got 83.33%. Jonathan got 91.67%. Everyone else didn't make the grade.

Hariz told us to be there by eight the next day because we might be talking to Edward, the business manager for HP.

I drove home and I'm not really sure what I did after that. I think I set up for a nap on the floor because I recently downloaded a whole big bunch of podcasts and I found the best way of listening to them was by lying on the floor next to my computer. I brought a couple of pillows and a blanket so it would be more comfortable, then I got called for dinner, which was fried chicken and rice. I just ate the chicken.

I turned on the podcast and lay down to listen to it, but I think I was asleep before the first segment even started. That couldn't've been later than eight, I think. Anyway, the next time I opened my eyes it was midnight. I nodded off a bit more after that and it was three in the morning.

So now it's almost four twenty so I'll have an hour's sleep left, probably less I've still got to do my exercise and take a shower. Man, my sleep schedule must be really messed up now.

Third Day of Training, Lost One of My Jobs

2010-09-13T23:29:00.005+08:00

So today I lost a job. Well, I never had it to begin with, but I thought I had it, but I actually don't. I've still got another job, though, so it's not that bad.

I started off today by waking up early and then falling asleep again while reading my Bible which meant that I had to rush to leave the house in time to arrive at work by 8am. It was exactly 8am when I reached the training room.

There was nobody there to train us, so after an hour we were told that we could go for breakfast while our trainer arrived from Rawang. I went to McDonald's. It was pretty dang tasty.

When I got back there was still no trainer, and then we were told that our trainer's car broke down so we could go for lunch while they found someone else to train us. I used the lunch break to listen to music while napping.

Finally we got a trainer. I forgot what his name was, I think it starts with a P. Anyway, he was quite good. Hariz was better, but then again this guy's speciality wasn't training so he did quite well considering. He taught us how to register a customer and an asset. That took about two hours, and then he went home at four.

We sat around for another half hour before I went out to ask what we were waiting for. We were told we could go.

Sharmila (Shamini? The recruitment lady I met the first time I ever went to Datacom, with my dad) told me that Roy Morgan had a problem and they couldn't take me on. I asked why Jack had offered me dual jobs in the first place if this was the case, and she told me he wasn't aware and it was actually their department's problem. I went up to check with the Roy Morgan department and Kelly told me that the government had a new rule in place whereby if a part-timer worked a certain amount of hours, the company would have to pay for their insurance and pension or something involving acronyms. This was only coming in to effect in October, and Jack wasn't aware of it when he offered me the HP job when I was applying for Roy Morgan. Anyway, all this meant was that it wasn't anybody's fault, really, but as long as I worked in HP I couldn't work in Roy Morgan because then I'd clock too many hours and they'd have to go through the hassle of figuring which department would pay for everything and that wasn't something they wanted to do. So I guess I've got a lot more free time but a lot less money. Oh well.

In the lobby I talked to Sean, Ganesh, and Eddie about what was going on with HP and why I couldn't work both accounts and such. I'd mention what I said but I'm not sure if it's supposed to be confidential or whatever so I'll just play it safe and say nothing. Anyway at the end of today's training I think we only earned two hour's worth of salary since that's how long we were trained, which meant that we wasted six hours. Oh well, at least we had internet access.

After work I drove to the optometrist to order new contact lenses. She gave me a check up and went over my history. I've been wearing the same pair of glasses for three years now. Apparently it's bad for my eyes since my right eye astigmatism is increasing, but my dad probably won't pay for new glasses unless mine break, and I have never broken a pair of glasses. It's always been someone else's fault. But yeah, the optometrist gave me a good deal for contact lenses: six months' supply plus two free left eye lenses to pair with the two right eye ones that I have left over. While I was there I helped her mum view a slideshow of wedding pictures. There wasn't really a problem, it was just that Windows 7 streamlining made it difficult to figure out what to do next.

Back at home I told my dad about what was going on with the contact lenses and how I had gotten six months' worth of lenses plus a check-up plus two additional left eye lenses for only RM20 more than the other store was offering. He doesn't like the way the optometrist does business or something so I felt the need to justify everything to him. I like her, though, she's familiar and friendly. Of course she'll try to convince us to take the more expensive option, but then again she is running a business and that is why we have discretion and the right to go elsewhere. Anyway I'm rambling.

I ate a large-ish dinner that was quite okay and then I watched TV and and then I took a nap. I will be very surprised if anyone other than me reads this whole post by the time it's done. I doubt even I will ever read it again. But yeah, I did some boring stuff and then I wrote this and after this I'm going to do my exercise and take a shower and then I'll try my luck at sleeping in bed and if I'm still having trouble sleeping (I had trouble sleeping last night, by the way. Ended up falling asleep a little after 3am to a BBC news update), I'll just turn on the news; the news never fails to put me to sleep.

Okay then goodnight. To anyone reading this, try to kiss someone soon. I hear that's pretty fun.

Nobody Ever Thinks About Me

2010-09-12T17:41:00.005+08:00

The title is hyperbole. Still, I'm hardly feeling extremely happy right now.

So today I had my "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" alarm set for 7:42am, and then I had "I Feel Fantastic" set for 7:50am. This way I could be roused out of a deeper sleep by my first alarm, then (because it is a relatively gentle song), I could sleep through it until my second alarm went off so I could get ready for the day.

Just my luck, then, that my dad woke us all up at 7:40am by turning off the air conditioning and fan and opening the curtains. Ian got out of bed first, which meant that instead of plenty of time to get ready by virtue of being the first one up, I would have to wait for Ian and Jan to get ready first and then rush to get ready before 8:30am. If only my dad would have waited ten more bloody minutes, then my morning would have been perfect.

Anyway, I got up and read my Bible while waiting for everyone to get done. Jan took his own sweet time, but I still managed to be ready to go right before 8:30am because I didn't have any contact lenses to put in.

Ian and my dad went in one car to breakfast while the rest of us (and Ebony) went in my mum's. Someone else had ordered the food while I went to buy a copy of the NST and some gum to stay awake in church, so I didn't get any extra hash browns and the order hadn't really been optimized. Oh well, at least my McMuffin was free of cheese and also very fresh and delicious.

After McDonald's, everyone except Susanna, Jan, and my mum went back with my dad because my mum was taking a longer route so she could pick up Aunty Catherine. Along the way I talked about why I was so upset about yesterday, but then my dad interjected and talked for fifteen minutes about mass communication or something, and then I finally got tired of listening and asked if I could have my say so I could finish what I was saying, then Ian got upset and swore at me in front of Ebony and Hannah and my dad. I was being quite an obnoxious shit, though, so you can't blame him entirely for it. I think a 85/15 split (majority Ian) is reasonable.

Anyway, church was quite empty due to the holidays or something. I got to be in charge of the projections. I did the word jumble during my down time. I would have continued with the jumble, but my mum was giving the sermon so I went outside to show I was listening. I found that our church has new Bibles, the second version of the NLT. After the sermon I asked my mum to get me one for Christmas since it's got an infobox before each book and also because it's quite a bit easier to read. Oh yeah, I also need to tithe double next week because the ushers were going out for collection instead of having us come to them, but they didn't come to me in the projectionist room so I couldn't give my RM5. I tried signalling them but they are children so they didn't notice.

While at church I had decided I was going to sleep really early, so I scheduled in my phone to blog at six and exercise and shower at seven so I could be in bed by eight so I could still have plenty of rest before I woke up at five to get ready for work. I'd also hopefully have time for another McDonald's breakfast.

After church we went to visit my grandparents who were over at my aunt's place. Ian and I went with my dad first and the rest of the family was to show up later. There wasn't anyone there at first except for Cinta, so I played with her for a bit until Uncle Simon showed up. He told me to be careful with Cinta because she had hurt her paw, so I stopped playing so rough with her. A little later Dexter showed up and Ian and I told him about our jobs. Then my aunt Mina came out and then she left with her husband to go somewhere for a while and Dexter went to say bye.

Soon my grandpa came out and my dad told us to ask him about his war stories, so we did. My granddad has a lot of good stories, but he doesn't really tell them often. When the History Channel did a documentary on the Malayan Emergency, they interviewed a bunch of my granddad's friends for the documentary, but he declined to be interviewed because he didn't want to travel all the way to KL, and I guess he's modest or something. All that aside, he's also still bound by the official secrets act, but if the government wants to go after him for such a trivial offence after all he's done for this country then Malaysia is a much shittier place than I thought.

Anyway, an example of one such story that he never tells is when he was in a squad of four people and this British guy was supposed to cover his back. However, the Brit failed to notice a communist sniper in a tree, and so the sniper took a shot at my grandfather. Fortunately for the two most recent generations of my family, the gun misfired. It wasn't very fortunate for the sniper, though, since my grandfather turned around and shot him after that. The British guy would have gotten in deep shit with his superiors if it had gotten out that my he failed to watch my grandfather's back, so he bribed my grandpa not to tell anyone, and he didn't. He didn't even tell us, we had to hear it from my dad.

Anyway we talked to my grandfather and we talked among each other as well. I heard about how my grandfather had interrogated Dexter's girlfriend last night and how my other cousin lives in fear of my granddad meeting his girlfriends. Daryl came out and talked for a while before he went to his open house. Wicket (or Wicked. I'm not really sure which and he responds to both, so it doesn't matter) came out, too, so I played with him for a bit.

Here are doggie pictures:

I got a miscall from a withheld number, which worried me because it might have been about work. I called Sean but he hadn't heard anything. My dad called the house and he found that they were leaving soon. I called the house to ask Hannah to bring my swimming trunks and my sandals. Things winded down after that and they were supposed to arrive in twenty minutes or so, so I took a nap on a chair outside while waiting. My dad woke me up to tell me to go inside to nap, so I did.

When I woke up again, it was five o'clock and Ian and my dad had already gone home. My mum was rushing me to get in the car and I didn't even get to say goodbye to the dogs. I was upset because nobody woke me up to even check if I wanted to swim. It seemed so stupid that they would just assume that when my swimming trunks finally arrived I would just want to continue napping. I got very upset. Hannah apparently had wanted to wake me up to tell me they were there, but she didn't; instead she got changed and jumped in the pool and asked for someone to wake me up but nobody heard her and she didn't follow up. Also apparently Wicket jumped in the pool and swam with them for a while, so I missed that too.

So the drive home was hardly pleasant. I got on the computer and started blogging at around 6:30 (you'll know exactly when, just check the timestamp on this. That's the time at the start of composition, not the time of posting.) so I was already behind schedule, and then there was a hassle about whether Ian or I would go out to buy dinner and where we'd buy it from and what we'd buy and stuff that ended with me very upset and my parents talked to me for a while and then I took a break for twenty minutes to calm down and then I talked to my dad and now we're done and it's almost 8:10 and I'm barely done with this blog post, so I'm an hour behind. I think I'll probably end up in bed at around ten or something. Bleh.

Oh well, at least I get nuggets for dinner. I hope they remembered the barbecue sauce.

Oh yeah, Milan (and the rest of you guys, but Milan is who ctrl+Fs), I told all last night's secrets to Hannah; I hope that's okay. I don't think there's an overlap between people my sister knows and people that you know. Her friend Ebony was also in the room but Ebony is very quiet and there is even less overlap, so you should be fine. Also I got no Facebook messages or wall-to-wall stuff from you so I'm assuming that last night's post checked out in terms of not revealing any secrets.

Resident Evil: Afterlife and Nick's Farewell Party

2010-09-12T00:59:00.003+08:00

Oh man I am so tired. This post is probably going to be riddled with errors, both factual and grammatical, which sucks because it's probably going to be one of the more popular ones that I've written recently. I'll try to keep it short. Here goes.

I woke up at 10:30 on Saturday, which I shall refer to as today throughout the rest of this post, if I do refer to the day at all. I started my day with the typical stuff: daily Bible reading, shower, etc, etc. I was on the computer until two, and then my dad lectured me and my brothers about spark plugs for some reason. I think he said it was because we are driving our own cars now so we need to know how they work so we know how to fix them. I suspect he was just preparing us so we could change his spark plugs tomorrow or something.

After that Hannah had Audrey and Ebony over for some reason. Ian wanted to go watch a movie. I thought that was a good idea. The girls wanted to go to 1 Utama instead of Mid Valley because they wanted to shop there or something. Jan wanted to come along, too.

We checked the screening times online, and both Step Up 3D and Resident Evil: Afterlife were showing within a reasonable amount of time. I wanted to watch one of them since they used proper stereoscopic 3D instead of that post-production bullshit that Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans tried to pull. I'd explain it, but I'm pretty sure I've explained it before and I'm also pretty sure I'd screw it up if I tried to explain it while I was this tired.

Ian said he was going to watch Afterlife with Jared that evening, so he'd prefer if we watched Step Up. I didn't feel like sitting through a crappy romance plot for awesome 3D dancing, so I convinced Jan to join me to sit through a crappy post-apocalyptic plot for awesome 3D zombie-and-faceless-goon killing action.

The plan was that Ian and I would take separate cars to 1 Utama, then after the movie he would drive the girls and Jan back home while I would go to Nick's farewell party. When we were walking down to the cars, I thought Jan was going to travel with Ian and the girls were going to come with me, since I would be driving the larger car, but Jan said he called shotgun for my car or some bullshit and Hannah didn't want to travel with Jan and also the girls didn't want to travel without Hannah so the girls ended up going with Ian and Jan ended up going with me.

I thought our first stop was going to be McDonald's because it was nearing the end of 2 o'clock and the lunch discount would soon be over so we'd better eat at the Bangsar McD's before we went to 1 Utama because we could eat cheap and also because I could stop by the optometrist's store to check if they were open so I could order my contact lenses. The opometrist was not open. Stupid Hari Raya holidays. Anyway, Jan and I went to McDonald's and I ordered myself a McNuggets meal with two additional packets of large fries because I had told the girls I would buy some fries for them to share and also because I was super hungry. Jan had a triple cheeseburger that I had to goad him into buying. The girls didn't show up because they went straight to 1 Utama because they don't know how to inform people about changes in plans and because they don't think logically and because bleh.

I called Ian to see what the deal was, and he told me they were eating in Burger King and the girls suddenly didn't want to watch a movie and neither did he so Jan and I shouldn't show up. I told him I'd call Jared and tell Jared to watch Step Up 3D with Ian in the evening so he could watch Afterlife with Jan and me while the girls shopped. Jared wasn't answering his phone, so I think I tried to call Hannah and Ian to update them on the situation but neither of them was picking up, so I called Audrey, but for as much as I enjoy her presence she is thick as fuck and did not relay a single word of what I said to Ian. I told her that Jan and I would be coming over to watch the movie and so they would have to stay so Jan could have transport back after the movie, but like I said Audrey is really vapid so Ian did not get any of what I said. It's my fault, really. Should have texted him; never trust a woman to do a few words' work.

After we finally finished our food and hearing a pretty awesome cover of Tik Tok on McD FM, Jan and I left for 1 Utama. This was around 3:30pm. We arrived at the parking place near the park (do you know where it is? Yes? No? I don't care.) and Jan spotted Ian's car. I wanted to leave a message on it, but I had no pens or paper, so we just plucked a bunch of flowers and dumped them on his windscreen. It was pretty funny at the time, and the time was then 4:00pm.

In the mall I went to TGV thinking it was GSC and that wasted five minutes, then we went over the escalator to GSC and we decided that I would look for an ATM while Jan stood in line for the tickets. I found an ATM quite quickly (I love 1U's touchscreen map thingy), and since there was a gift shop nearby I decided to pop in to find something for Nick. I took the risk-free route and got him a notebook.

I went up to GSC and saw Jan in the line. I wanted to call him up and then sneak up behind him while he was on the phone with me, but every time I dialled his number he tried to call me, so I couldn't get through to him. Eventually he spotted me, so I joined him in line. When we got to the counter there were, like, four tickets left for the 4:15pm showing of Afterlife since it was already 4:15, and all of them were shitty and separated. Jan and I both got tickets aisles apart in the same column (the furthest one to the right).

We ran to the cinema and arrived in the middle of maybe the first trailer. It was the really orange and blue one with Sigourney Weaver and Kristen Bell (She's the Kristen that isn't Bella, yeah?). We also saw the trailer to Devil, which Jan somehow thought looked like a decent film. Foolish boy. Anyway, I got the guy next to me to switch places with Jan, even though it turned out that he was previously sitting behind a group of friends. I bet those friends gave him hell afterwards for that, since I was a rather obnoxious moviegoer and I must've ruined their experience. I'd hate to sit next to me. Oh well, at least Jan and I were together.

During the trailers Jan got a call from Ian. Apparently he had already driven home with the girls because Audrey had told him nothing (stupid girl. Nice girl, fun to talk to, good friend to my sister, somewhat intelligent but very stubborn when wrong [and when right], charismatic, but still sometimes very, very stupid.) so Jan had to find his own way back. I told him that I'd drive him, because I guess it wouldn't be too bad if I was late to Nick's party, even though I had told him that I might be arriving early.

Resident Evil: Afterlife was fun. I won't call it a good movie, but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the 3D (even if they did do some things wrong like mess with the clarity and set it in the dark) and I enjoyed the zombies and the action sequences, though highly derivative, were good mindless fun so I enjoyed them, too. It was RM17 well spent. Don't bother with the movie if you're not watching it in 3D, though. Also there's something after the credits, so stay around for that.

After the movie, we went back to the car so I could I drive Jan home. When we got to the car we found flowers all over our windscreen. Ian had gotten his revenge, somehow, but it wasn't over yet. Anyway, I removed the flowers and brought Jan back. Along the way I stopped at 7-Eleven to buy some Eclipse mints because my backpack is out of super effective mints. All I have are my emergency/celebratory orange tic-tacs, but I don't think I'm ever going to open those. Anyway I bought the Eclipse and that brought my total spending for the day up to RM60, somehow. They're still in the car. I need to get them before Hannah eats them all. She'll do it because when it comes to mints she is greedy and wasteful and to make it worse she does not even have bad breath except for morning breath so she doesn't even need them 90% of the time.

I had used Google Earth to find Nick's address, and the directions I had worked so well, but they all relied on me finding the right turn-in. I spent half an hour looking for that turn-in. I called Carmeni and she tried to direct me there, but in the end she got me in to Taman Ehsan, but the wrong part of it. I found a large field and called for directions again, and this time she passed me to Nick who guided me to his house which was closer than I thought.

Okay now for the bit that everyone has come here to read about. I'll mention all your names here so that you can find this easily with ctrl+F: Milan, Carmeni, Nicholas (Nic, Nick, Nicholas Rodriguez, etc), Amanda, Davinia. Was there anyone else? I hope not, because if there was then my memory is seriously terrible.

So I arrived at Nicholas' house. I parked nearby and walked over and said hi to Carmeni and Nick who were sitting outside. One of Nick's friends had arrived at the same time as me, and she was meeting Carmeni for the first time. I later told her that Carmeni's family still didn't know that she was dating Nick, so she should consider herself lucky to get an introduction, even if it was five years overdue. Anyway, Nick showed us around the house and introduced us to relatives and his mum and her brownies. The brownies were delicious. His mum was friendly. I don't remember his relatives and they won't remember me. I think I may have met his dad, but that might just have been one of his older relatives.

I talked with Nicholas and his friend who arrived at the same time as me for a while. Nick's mum brought out the food but nobody ate anything because the relatives were watching Man U thrash some other club and I did not want to be the first person to start eating. There was a lot of alcohol, too, but I was driving so I restrained myself from sampling the free booze. I could have slept in the car since my church was right nearby, but I had the large-capacity car so if I was sleeping in it the rest of my family would have no way of getting there the next morning. I drank orange cordial instead. There may have been Sprite in it, too, I couldn't really tell.

Amanda and Davinia and Milan arrived. I assumed they all took the same car. I think that Milan and Amanda were actually in one car while Davinia was in another. Anyway they all arrived at exactly the same time so they could've fooled me. I was not greeted with the enthusiasm I had imagined, but then again I wasn't too enthusiastic in my greeting, either.

Amanda was starving so she went straight for the food, which meant that everyone else could start eating, too. I put rice and vegetables on my plate and I got chided for not trying the curry. I said I would try the curry later. I don't like curry. It doesn't agree with my palate and it doesn't agree with my stomach. I like Carmeni and her boyfriend and his mother and her brownies, so I figured I'd avoid offending them (except the brownies; they can't be offended, obviously, since they're only delicious inanimate objects) by procrastinating with the curry and figuring out a diplomatic solution later. Oh yeah, some fried chicken showed up on the table and that was really really really good and I had loads of that since it was probably the tastiest thing I ate all day. Nick's mum really knows how to cook.

The atmosphere was like this: there were neighbours playing with fireworks and every time they'd go off, Davinia would flinch. I had my phone in my pocket and I had taken it out to show Nick's friend the World Happiness Index since she said that Netherlands was the happiest place on earth or something, but she wasn't around when I found the image so I showed it to Carmeni, and then after a while I showed Amanda and the rest that California Gurls and Tik Tok were the same song, and then after that I left it on random for pretty much the rest of the night. Also, Milan, Amanda, Davinia, Carmeni, and I stayed seated in mostly the same place with Nick stopping by occasionally to converse with us.

The conversation only really got interesting at around eleven, but that leaves a three hour gap since I arrived at eight (well, seven-forty but let's say eight) so I'm not really sure what we talked about before that. I know we started by talking about what happened last night and how everyone went out to go clubbing and they forgot to invite me. That last link feels like the appropriate soundtrack to that particular conversation, aside from that it had nothing to do with anything so feel free to ignore it (you've probably ignored the others, if you're even still reading. Don't worry, I don't mind). Anyway we also talked about the Bible for a bit. I gave a brief summary of Christianity to Davinia and Milan, but they didn't know enough about their own religions to explain theirs to me. I then went on to talk about sex in the Bible and my personal favourite 18+ Bible story. I got some details wrong but whatever. While I was explaining it, Amanda had an epiphany about some Catholic thing, so good for her. Was there anything else before I get to the good stuff? I can't remember.

Anyway after that, starting at around eleven, we talked about other people. Mostly we talked about other people at college. It was gossip, and it was all news to me. Apparently nobody ever gossiped with me for the whole year I was in college because they assumed I would either tell other people or put in on my blog. This was very likely a correct assumption. Still, it meant that the whole time everything I knew about everyone was only good stuff because nobody wanted so say anything bad about anyone else in front of me because they knew that the people they were talking about would find out through me and then drama would begin. So I never knew anything and I ended my Foundation in Science thinking that I was lucky enough to have friends who never talked behind the backs of others and all got along super well and stuff. Ignorance really was bliss. After eleven o'clock is when I got to hear all this stuff that had previously been kept secret from me. Unfortunately for those of you hoping I will continue to uphold my reputation as a person unable to keep anything private, I was told I couldn't tell anything from the conversations that night aside from the Bible story stuff to anyone. I forgot who made me promise. It was probably Davinia but I'm going to say Milan because then he'll arrive at this paragraph when he ctrl+Fs himself. Actually I'm not sure if I even did promise. I'm going to assume I didn't because I hate promises. But anyway there was a lot of stuff that came out, all sorts of drama and bad talk about people not present (and some who were, I guess) and Milan didn't know about most of it either. In the end we agreed that I was more naive than him, though.

It's no secret that people talk behind each others' backs, right? I'm under the impression right now that that was only a secret from me, and that was only because I never asked. I wouldn't've been told anyway. But yeah, I'm glad I heard what I heard but I'm frustrated that I can't talk about it here. I was going to write it and then encode it with a substitution cipher so that I (and people who I gave the keyword to and also people smart and bored enough to bruteforce it) could read it later, but I couldn't find a decent app for free at this hour. Maybe next post.

Carmeni, Da, Milan, 'Manda, Nick, hit me up on Facebook if I've said too much. I don't think I have but it's 4am so maybe I missed something.

"Hit me up"? Who even says that? Is that even a phrase? I need to sleep very very soon or who knows what nonsense I'll say next. Okay, let's finish the party.

Amanda went home with Milan a little before twelve and Davinia went back at around the same time. Carmeni had gone home a bit sooner with her uncle. Did I mention her sister was at the party? Her sister was at the party. I didn't say a word to her because I was unsure if Carmeni was joking when she said she was her sister and I spent the next few hours trying to figure out whether she was or not until I finally got my answer when she got in the car with Carmeni to leave.

I tried some wild boar with curry. It was delicious but so so so spicy. This was before the conversation, though. Oh yeah I also gave Nick his present. I'm not sure what he thought of it; I never saw him take it out of the bag. Back to people leaving:

I said goodbye to Nick's mum and complimented her fried chicken one last time (it really was really good), and then I said goodbye to Nick, and then I got in the car and drove back. On the second last traffic light before my house I saw an advertisement for an "Adult Sex Toy" hanging on a poll, so I went out and tried to remove it while waiting for the light. I managed to tear it in half, but it was the half that said "Adult". The light turned green and I gave it one final yank that removed the "Sex Toy" bit which I ran back to the car with before driving off. When I got home I put it on Ian's car's windscreen. When he finds it later on today (for it is already almost 4:15am on Sunday morning), he shall agree that I have won this one.

That's about it, really. After this post I'll do my exercises and take a shower and turn on the torrents and then I'll go to bed and then I'll have to wake up near the end of seven o'clock and get ready for church and then chew a lot of gum so I don't fall asleep during the sermon and then take a long nap.

What else can I write here to finish with? Audrey is a good person but when she does stupid things it really annoys me, so I like Ebony more. I learned a lot more about all my friends today, except for Amanda and Davinia. I only learned a little more about them, specifically that Amanda is still very fun when drunk and Davinia... wait never mind, I said I wouldn't say. It's a small thing anyway. I found out that my either friends either gossip or are not quite the same people that they seem to be around me. I much prefer the gossip thing. Oh yeah! I also found out why Jacob Black shaves and Edward Cullen does not. That... that's about as good a thing to end with as I'll get, I guess. Have a nice day, everyone.

P.S. I just remembered that Amanda told me (in the nicest, sincerest, best-meaning way possible), that sometimes I freak her out. This was after I suggested we go to that spooky abandoned place between HELP and the street to kill time before her curfew. Wait, was it freak her out? Maybe it was creep her out. Or scare. Or spook. Or a synonym to one of those words. Anyway if I'm going to learn something from today, it is going to be something from there. And on this note I will end unless I have something else to add.

Country Club and Cloverfield

2010-09-11T02:05:00.004+08:00

A little over three hours ago, it was Friday. I woke up at four in the afternoon on Friday. Hannah woke me up to ask me if I was going to drive her and Ebony to the KL Golf and Country Club so they could bowl. I asked her when she wanted to leave, and she said right then. I told her that I would need half an hour. We haggled over how much time she'd give me and we compromised at 23 and a half minutes. Or maybe 22 and a half. Whatever.

Anyway, I got up and started reading my Bible, but then my mum said that she would drive them there instead. When I was done with my chapters for the day, I told them to wait for me while I did the stairs and got ready to go out. My mum asked how long it would take, and I said seven minutes, so she agreed. I ended up taking nine.

Jan joined us to go bowling. I bowled terribly at first (12) and ended up bowling better but still terribly after some tips from my mum (54, I think). While we were bowling, a couple of girls were sitting nearby, and I told Jan I'd give him five bucks if he had the balls to go over and talk to them for long enough to get their names. He didn't, but he told me he'd give me three bucks if I were to do the same. I told him that I would right after I finished bowling my next turn. The girls left right as my next turn started. Oh well.

After that we went swimming. Originally I didn't want to swim, but everyone else was swimming and Jan told me that the showers were awesome, so I decided to swim so I would have an excuse to take a hotel-quality shower (I am a huge fan of hot water). The showers were really good. KLGCC has an infinity pool, so it looks pretty cool. I lost my last pair of contact lenses when I opened my eyes to see how near the end of the pool was while swimming underwater, but it wasn't too bad since my contact lens supply was only supposed to last six months and it ended up lasting around a year. It does mean that I'll have to wear my glasses to Nick's farewell party, though. Oh yeah, there were also snails at the pool.

When we got back, Aunty Rosie had made a tasty dinner with great homemade fries. The fries were a bit soggy because we got home late, but they were still great.

I watched Cloverfield again and read all about it. It's still one of my favourite movies and Hud is still the character I still enjoy having been compared with most (the others being Columbus, Sheldon Cooper, and Fogel, in that order). I want to watch it again soon, but with a friend this time.

It's now very late so I'm going to bed again. This time I hope to wake up at around ten. I got a miscall from the lady who owns the dogs when I was swimming. Hopefully she was calling to say that tomorrow I can visit the dogs that I helped rescue. I sent a text for clarification.

I dislike residual feelings of attraction because they make you jealous and petty even when you don't want to be. I'm happy for both of them, really, it's just that sometimes my subconscious is not. My subconscious is a dick.

Second Day of Training

2010-09-10T01:53:00.005+08:00

So today (Thursday) I woke up really early because I wanted to eat breakfast at McDonald's. Unfortunately I was really tired so I took naps and let my alarm snooze and by the time I left in Aunty Rosie's car I did not have time to eat breakfast at McD's if I wanted to arrive at 7:45.

I met Ganesh and he told me that we actually had to show up at eight, so I was fifteen minutes early. I went to the third floor to get some juice and some pies from the cafe, and then I went to take pictures of the view while listening to my music. You can actually see Sri Wangsaria from 1 Tech Park, which means you can see 1 Tech Park from my parents' room's window, and perhaps also Hannah's room's window. Oh yeah, when I went to get my pies I found out that Kelly's name is Kelly, not Cali. Later on in the day I found out that Eddie's name is Eddie, not Eddy. I'm not going to bother changing previous blog posts. I'm too tired to bother with that.

At eight o'clock we were all waiting in the waiting room for Hariz to show up. Sukarno stopped by to tell us that Hariz would be late so we could go get something to eat if we wanted, so we did. We were only in the cafe for a little while before we got a call from Hariz saying that we should come downstairs soon since he was here. Anyway, here is a picture of the paintings in the living room that I was talking about in a recent post.

Training was engaging and interesting again. This time we had our work e-mail accounts and accounts that gave us system access. The computer I was using had Windows 7. It's a really cool OS and I'm pretty sure I'll upgrade to it the next time I get my computer updated.

Anyway, we read through the warranty and learned where to refer to in order to answer common customer questions.

After that we had lunch. I went to McDonald's for the drive-through. It's really close by. The fries, nuggets, and coke were all real good. My only regret is that I didn't have enough money to buy another packet of large fries.

When lunch was over we continued learning about the warranty, and then we got to go listen to some live calls. Eddie and I were the first to buddy up with someone taking calls. Eddie got one of the best senior agents, and I got Raj. I'm going to pass him Ghostbusters 2 the next time I see him. He taught me a few things about how to register stuff and I helped him point out a typo when he was recording a customer's address.

After everyone had a chance to listen to the calls, we went back to the training room and told Hariz how the calls went. He told us what our seniors had done right and what they had done wrong. When that was over, we could leave since all the training for the day was done, but we stayed on for a while longer.

Jack talked to Sean and me about Roy Morgan. He said that they didn't want us to feel overworked or anything, so I just told him how eager I was to do my job and I heard that that kind of enthusiasm is rare. Sean told him that he had a schedule clash so he couldn't do Roy Morgan, and Jack said that was fine.

When I got home I took a nap. Ian almost woke me up by hanging around in the living room for some reason, but he left and I went back to sleep. Jan and Hannah woke me up by talking about Cherie's sister. That may have been a dream, though. Jan started playing his music so I countered with some of my own. I love my new phone. I really need to thank Joanna again for that.

After I awoke, I went to Subway with Hannah and paid for her meal to earn some goodwill. We went to Bangsar Village so she could smell the collector's edition of Teenage Dream (it has a cotton candy scent) and buy herself a copy of Seventeen magazine.

Back at home, I watched Hannah play Theme Hospital and then I watched her watch the first episode of The Office. She laughed at the jelly stapler and at nothing else. She thought Dawn was annoying, for some reason. I hope she'll keep watching the series, it's really good.

We played with the piano for a bit. Neither of us could really play what we wanted.

I'm going to wake up late tomorrow.

First Day of Training

2010-09-09T01:25:00.004+08:00

Wednesday (technically yesterday since it's 1am and already Thursday) was my first day of training. I was worried that I might fall asleep during training because I last night had slept very late and woken up very early. The worrying was unnecessary because training turned out to be very interesting and engaging and fun. Our trainer was this guy called Hariz, and he answered all our questions and guided us through our first through modules. He also showed us around the office.

Before all that but after waking up, my dad drove me over to 1 Tech Park since all the other cars were in use. For Thursday I'll be able to use Aunty Rosie's, though. Anyway, once I got here I just waited for three minutes for the other trainees to arrive. The other guys were Sean, Ganesh (a more experienced fellow from Brickfields), Jonathan, and Eddy (the guy who had more experience than computers with me. He used to work for Apple). Our training started at around eight and ended just after four-thirty.

The first thing we learned about was Australian privacy laws. They're very important, mostly because there's a $150,000 fine for the company and a $50,000 fine for any individual who breaks them, but also because breaking them means instant termination. As such, I'll try to just mention trivial things here and you won't be learning much about how HP Customer Support works. Sorry, but this job is awesome and I don't want to lose it. Also, $50,000 is a lot of money.

We have a hundred-page training manual with eight modules. We've already covered two. They came to us unbound and I took them to reception to be bound. We had computers, but we don't have accounts so we can't use them yet. We'll be getting access soon, along with work e-mail addresses.

We were told that we'll occasionally get racist callers, so we're encouraged not to reveal our last names and if we have a foreign-sounding name, we should adopt a floor name. Hariz goes by Harry. Ganesh has to figure out something for himself (Garry?). Having two people with the same sounding name is confusing, so Sean's agreed to go by Tuck or Tucker, since that's what his friends called him in primary school. It's good because it means that I can still be Shaun and also because I can now say I know someone named Tucker. Tucker is a cool name.

We got to go to the DC Cafe on the third floor for lunch and break. The food there is great. There are pies and desserts and hot drinks and everything is affordable and the quality is spectacular. Not just spectacular for an office building; if this place was in the middle of a mall or something I'd definitely stop by after movies and stuff. The strawberry cheesecake tart was ludicrously good. It is truly a cafe worthy of Elo's initials. Well, the DC actually stands for Datacom but if you're reading this then you've probably read her blog so you probably know what I'm talking about. Anyway, during lunch I spotted Zac. He was just wrapping up a survey. I talked to him for a bit, but then a stern lady with a clipboard showed up and I figured I'd better leave before he got in trouble.

When we returned from lunch with our newly-bound manuals, Hariz brought in a dead computer for us to dissect. I suspect that he was just trying to get us to remove the hard disk for him since he told us to leave the hard disk out because he needed it for another computer. Ulterior motives or not, though, taking apart a computer was fun. That's when I learned that Eddy knew more than me about computers. Anyway, Hariz came over and explained how the industry works and we got side-tracked talking about new technology like firewire and blu-ray and flash drives (apparently they're made with nanotechnology. I thought nanotechnology wasn't possible for at least the next five years. I must have read that information five years ago or something) and how Microsoft owns the patent on one of the iPod components (I think the scroll wheel) so a fraction of money made from each iPod sold goes to Microsoft which is maybe why all the new stuff is all touch screen and scroll wheel-less. We also learned that there was a new (well, new to me. It's from '09 so in IT time it's quite old) HP TouchSmart thing in the office that we could play with after work was over.

At a quarter to four, Hariz told us we were close to wrapping up. I told him that was a shame since we were being paid by the hour, so since he is awesome he extended the training a bit so that we could be there until 4:31 so that we'd be rounded up to a full hour. After we were done, Jack called us in for a quick meeting. He told us that there were 10 new open spots for part-timers that we could tell our friends about, and they'd have all day tomorrow to interview for the position. Our friends could show up to interview right up until 4:30, but he'd prefer it in the morning. Also, the HP operation might extend until November instead of closing in October, and if that happens we can stay on for longer, too.

Sometime during Jack's meeting my dad texted me and said he was here. Since he was early, I told him I'd be down in ten minutes, and then I went with the guys to check out the HP TouchSmart. It was a real beautiful piece of technology. I started to geek out over it, but I managed to compose myself enough to ask the other guys if they'd like a go on it for a couple of minutes before I fulfilled a nerd fantasy of mine. They said it was fine, so I went to Conquer Club and executed my war strategy like one of the generals in a war room or something. It was brilliant. I hope they get a holographic one in soon so I can pretend to be that badass antagonist mercenary general from Avatar. That would kick major amounts of ass.

Wow. Next time I wonder why I don't have a girlfriend, I'll just have to refer to the above paragraph.

Anyway I went down to my dad and told him how awesome the job was and how I had just earned something like five serious Burger King meals' worth of money that day for the training, which was awesome and interesting and super great. I can't wait for tomorrow. Well, I can, but that's the metaphor that best expresses my feelings.

When I got home I think I took a nap. Aunty Rosie and Ian tried to wake me up for dinner, but I was in too deep a sleep to hear what they were saying. They heard me mumble and saw me roll over a bit, but that hardly counts as a response. Next time you want to check if I'm awake, ask me to add two two-digit numbers together. If I can't give you an answer, I'm probably sleep-talking and I won't remember what I said to you.

Anyway when I woke up my dinner was cold and we have no microwave, so I wanted to go out for KFC instead since I've been craving KFC. Jan didn't want to come with me, so my dad offered to come instead. As usual, there was a transsexual behind the counter. "Anne" was a friendly and efficient bloke/lass, though, and he/she did a good job with my order, so I didn't mind so much. Because it was Raya, though, all the good foods were unavailable. There was no jelly ice cream, there was no garden salad (the first time in years when I consider ordering a salad and it's unavailable. Just my luck.), and worst of all there was no popcorn chicken. I ordered a dinner set and some large wedges to go.

When I got home I was very happy with my meal, but I had made a mistake by saving the best piece of chicken for last, because by the time I got to it I had consumed so much grease and chicken skin that I was feeling a bit sick. I pulled off all the meat and gave it to the cats. Faith had some difficulty eating the bit I gave him. He's a carnivore, it's meat; why would that cause him trouble? Sometimes I worry about him. Mercy chased him away when he tried to eat her scraps. She's a mean mother. I don't know why she was so protective, anyway, she had plenty of leftovers and she's probably going to throw up whatever she ate anyway. Why is she even bulimic? Who's ever heard of a cat who cares about her figure?

Anyway Wednesday was a great day and I'm going to bed soon so I can wake up early and eat McDonald's for breakfast. In the meanwhile here is another Bollywood thing that Jan and I laughed at and here is what happens when a cruise ship draws the card that says "Joseph Gordon-Levitt hallway fight scene from Inception" for charades.

Last Day Before Work

2010-09-08T00:24:00.005+08:00

Today is the first day since my Redang holiday that I haven't taken two showers. I didn't have time to take my morning shower, and when I woke up it was afternoon, anyway. My next chance to shower was when I got back from driving my dad around, and by then it was evening so a shower would have been quite pointless.

My dad woke me up at two o'clock in the afternoon so I could drive him around because he had a couple of meetings that he needed to get to very soon. The first place I dropped my dad off at was KL Sentral. I went to get lunch from the Brickfields KFC but I had no money, so I walked over to the CIMB ATMs to withdraw some cash, but their switch transfer system wasn't working so I had no money so I couldn't eat.

After that I took my dad to this incredibly boring place called Bandar Pemaisuri or something like that and there were no places to eat there except for nasi kandar places and kopitiams. I settled for the busiest kopitiam and fortunately enough, they had chicken chop, so I ordered that.

When I was done eating I went back to the car and found ants carrying their eggs across the dashboard, so I killed a bunch of them with my slipper. They were coming out of the air conditioning system, so I assumed that's where their queen was. When I picked up my dad he told me that they had probably come from Terrenganu and moved their nest into his car while we were in Redang.

While stuck in various jams on the way back, I texted all my friends to see if anyone was free on Saturday to do something. I don't think anybody was.

Later on in the evening, my dad found that there was a problem with our toilet lights, so he asked one of us to go buy some new lights. I said that the blinking lights didn't bother me, so Ian could go get them, but Ian didn't want to. My dad said that one of us had better volunteer or else, so I told him I'd do it.

Jan came with me to buy the lights and we gave them to Ian to install when we got home.

I'm waking up at five-ish tomorrow so I can be ready by seven fifteen because that's when my dad and I will be leaving so he can drop me off at 1 Tech Park for the job training. Also Clement's friend had to apply for Roy Morgan since HP was full.

The Office DVD extras are almost as good as the series itself.

I also watched this great Bollywood action scene with Jan. I cried laughing. There were literally tears streaming down my face; I was laughing nonstop for maybe two minutes.

I still haven't gotten a call or text from the lady who owns the dogs. I guess I won't be seeing them again after all.

Unemployed No More

2010-09-06T22:22:00.005+08:00

Today I got a job. Well, actually I got two.

I woke up early and got ready for my day and my aptitude test. I was wearing the same thing as when I had my interview because I didn't want to risk picking out something new because I have no fashion sense and it's just pure luck I got a nice combination of clothes last time. This time I brought a pen and I remembered the documents I needed, so I was feeling very prepared.

The car was empty, so I stopped by a petrol station to put five ringgits' worth of petrol in it and drove over to the office. I arrived a wee bit early, so I read a few pages of The World Is Flat before going up for my aptitude test.

I was let in to the second floor and told to wait. I met two other applicants, Victor and Sean. We talked about college and stuff for a while. I also noticed that the nice paintings in the lobby are actually the same scene with different colours so it looks like Summer, Spring, Autumn, and Winter. That discovery made them that much nicer.

Jack came in and told us that there was something new that had just come up. There was some part-time work with HP Customer Support that had just come up, so if we wanted to we were welcome to take that on as well. It would be from 8am-12am from Mondays to Wednesdays and the pay would be RM12 per hour. It wasn't for long, though, the job would be finished at the end of October.

We met with two guys in charge of the HP thing. One guy was called Dave and I think the other guy was called Sukarno. We were briefed on what our job would be and why we would be needed. Basically, people with HP desktop computers would be calling us about their computer problems, and if they had a warranty we'd process their information and then send their call to the appropriate department so that they could get their stuff fixed. If they didn't have a warranty, it would be our job to sell one to them. If they needed new computer parts, we'd have to try and sell those, too. Also we learned that the payroll department had recently decided to do the pay on a monthly basis instead of a weekly one, so we'd be getting our money in one big lump at the end of the month.

After the brief, we were sent on our way to the third floor for our aptitude test. We were told that the test was going to be handled by Ms Cali and that she would meet us in around five minutes. While we waited, I talked to the guys about how my typing speed was so fast, which led to a discussion on RuneScape. As a side note to anyone who cares (which is nobody except me in the future, looking through this post to try and recall what this day was like and feeling immense shame every time another I spot another error), I made a little over a million gp recently by buying up yews when they were bottoming out and selling them right at the peak of the bonus XP weekend. Boom, 20% profit, which is brilliant. Anyway, after I was done with my rather long and very nerdy speech, we started talking about what we which jobs we'd be doing. Victor still hadn't sorted out his schedule for college, so he wasn't sure if he could get either job. Sean had classes from one to five, so Roy Morgan was probably out of the question.

By then it had been a while and there was still no sign of Ms Cali and we started to consider the idea that maybe the test had already started and they were trying to see who would take initiative to go look for her. I volunteered to do it, but right after I went outside I saw a lady walking over to the room we were in, so I rushed back over.

Ms Cali asked us what we knew about the job we would be doing, so I told her what I had learned from the websites. She said that I was exactly right, so we got to skip a bit of introduction there. We were briefed about the aptitude test. We were told what it was for and what it would involve. After that she went out to set up the test and once again, we waited. I think I may have talked about gambling.

When everything was ready, Ms Cali came in to get the first applicant, which was me. The test involved reading out questions and filling in Ms Cali's answers. It was very straightforward. After it was over, she asked me how I thought I did. The first thing that came into my head was "7/10", but I couldn't figure out how to put that in words, so I just said "slightly better than average". She told me that my pace was too quick, which was a problem because New Zealanders are laid-back people who take life slow and talk slow, too. Also, I used words like "er" and "um" quite a bit, and I had a lot of dead air when I was filling in the responses. Overall, though, she said I did very well.

I waited outside in the lobby. There was a magazine on outsourcing on a table, so I read a bit of that. It was quite interesting. There was an article at the end about how 20% of Britons thought that Steve Jobs was a footballer, so that was interesting. After a while Sean came out and told me how he did. Apparently he got quite nervous and ended up with a lot of dead air. His pace was perfect, though, and he didn't have any difficulties with "er"s or "um"s, so he did better than me. We talked about 3D films for a long while after that. He had watched Avatar in 2D, and I was trying to convince him that it was worth a watch in 3D. When Victor was done, him and Sean went downstairs to wait for Jack. Meanwhile, I had to go back to get the photocopies of my IC and transcript that I had accidentally left behind.

I went downstairs and waited around for Jack to tell us what to do next. I continued my conversation with Sean by telling him about how post-production 3D was different than proper 3D and how it was the next big cinematic step and such. He was either genuinely listening to what I was saying or very polite and extremely good at feigning interest.

Jack showed up and told us that the HP training would start tomorrow, so he needed to know if that was okay with us. I told him that that was fine with me, Sean said that he had a presentation tomorrow for college that was quite important, and Victor told Jack that he needed time to sort out his schedule. After a discussion, Victor left. Jack said that there were no hard feelings, but he couldn't afford the time for Victor to sort everything out so Datacom would just bring in someone else since there were other applicants that Jack with going to meet with later on in the day.

Kuberan stopped by while Sean and I were waiting for the HP interview to begin. He told us about how he and Arun and Elo and the others had applied and how he had chosen to work with HP SEA (Sean and I would be doing HP ANZ) instead of Roy Morgan because there was this guy in Roy Morgan who he instantly hated. He said he's glad he got the HP job because he is literally being paid to sit around wasting time for most of the day. He only has to work when the calls come in, and the calls don't come in often, so he spends a lot of time watching stuff on YouTube. I think he's finished, like, five seasons of The Amazing Race or something. He also told us that the reason HP SEA was hiring us was because they had just recently decided to end the thing by October, so once everyone was notified they all started looking for new jobs and whenever they got a position they just left, so there were a lot less people to deal with the calls and that's why we were needed to fill some of the newly vacated spots.

So Sean and I went for the interview for the HP position. Once again we were in an interview room with Sukarno and Dave. Dave interviewed Sean and Sukarno interviewed me. The questions started off pretty normal, but they got unusual fast. They were also sneaky. There was on question that seemed like it was about what we'd do if we were asked about something we had no knowledge on, and it was actually a test for our listening skills since if we had paid attention during our first brief we would have known there was something wrong with the question. Sean did better in the interview than I did, but I felt pretty sure that I was going to get the job because of what Kuberan had said. Dave and Sukarno told us to wait outside while they discussed some stuff.

Sean and I waited in the comfy chairs near the nice paintings for a while and talked about stuff. After a short while Dave and Sukarno left the meeting room to hand in the forms they had filled out during the interview to Jack. When they passed us they joked that we had better settle how we were going to distinguish between ourselves or else they'd just hire one of us and not have to worry about having two people with the same name working for them. Unfortunately our names are spelled differently so the joke is impossible to write in text. Oh well.

Jack came out and told us that we had both passed. He collected the photocopies of my transcript and my IC and said that he would call us to let us know about the training, since it might start tomorrow or might be delayed to Wednesday, depending on whether he got enough people in the meanwhile. He told us that if we had any friends who needed jobs, we could ask them if they wanted to work at Datacom. I tried calling a bunch of people but the either weren't picking up or they already had jobs or they were going to start college midway through October so it wouldn't work. Anyway after that Jack said we could leave, so we did.

When I got back home I told everyone how my interview had gone, and my parents were pleased. Hannah started thinking up ways that I could spend my money. Most of her ideas involved paying for her stuff.

I called Clement to ask if he had any friends that needed jobs, and he said he did. I told them to call me if they were interested. I also called Jared and told him about the job.

After that I watched the first part of the Christmas Special for The Office, and then I took a nap. I woke up to a miscall, and then a few seconds later I got a call from Jack telling me about the HP Training. He told me which day it would start and what time it would be and who would be in charge and what their phone number was, and I wrote all of it down except the day. Right after the call was over I forgot what day the training was going to be. Fortunately Aunty Rosie was in the room when I answered the phone and she heard me say "the day after tomorrow", so I think it's Wednesday. It's from 7:45am (Well, technically 8:00am, but I'm to report at 7:45) to 5pm, and I'll be getting paid for it, which is good. The training will last for five days, I think, and then the Roy Morgan training is for three days from the 15th to the 17th.

After that I got a call from Jan. He was at the YMCA since his Advanced NCO Training thing had just finished, so I had to go pick him up. He told me stories from camp. Apparently they were staying at an NS barracks and they watched The Dark Knight as one of their lessons and also there was a gay guy named Leslie Gan and when Jan got home he told Hannah and me about how he accidentally "caressed" (that is the word he chose to use) some guy's junk while he was doing star jumps. I'm glad I'm not in BB any more.

Dinner was very delicious. Auntie Rosie made fish and chips, and the fish was very very very tasty because of some special marinade and nice breading. I got a call from one of Clement's friends during dinner and I told him how to get to the interview the next morning. After that I called Jared to ask if he was going, but he couldn't make it. Oh well.

I finished The Office by watching the second half of the Christmas Special and I was glad to see that it had a happy ending. Yes Hannah, I cried a little bit. Well, I didn't actually cry; not with noises or wails or sniffles or anything. I just felt a couple of tears welling up, all right?

Anyway hopefully the training starts Wednesday and not Tuesday or else I'm screwed.

Last Class and Doggies (Last Friday)

2010-09-05T23:46:00.006+08:00

So Friday was an interesting day.

After my usual morning routine, I went to the bank to deposit my allowance, which my dad had given to me in cash for some reason. While I was there, I also got my Maybank2u account reactivated. Apparently if you don't log in every three months or so, they'll shut you down automatically.

When I was walking back to my motorcycle from the bank, I saw my cousin Daryl leaving McDonald's. I asked him what he was doing in Bangsar and he told me that he had been working here for the past year. Apparently he works in the building just across from Devi's. He saw my mum and my brother eating there a few months ago but they said nothing to me. Nobody tells me anything. But yeah, it was cool meeting him.

I went to the KPD for my last Bahasa Kebangsaan class. I was half an hour early so I reviewed all my material from the past three months. When Ms Belinda arrived we got our marks back for our Tugasan and reviewed what the most important things for the exam were going to be. At the end of the class we got our overall marks. The highest was 42.5 out of 50, the average was around 35 out of fifty, I got 33 out of 50, which meant that I needed to score 17/50 on my final to pass.

After that class was over, and it was only 4:30, so we had finished two hours early. That was nice. Some of my classmates were waiting for the bus, I asked them what their scores were. Roy and Lee Kening both scored 25, and two other people I asked were only 2.5 and 1.5 points under me.

When I was walking to my motorcycle to go home, I heard a commotion behind me. I saw these two German Shepherds bounding around the place scaring everyone with their friendliness. It was quite funny, so I followed them around. They had collars, so I checked them for tags, but they didn't have any. A guard came up to me and told me to get control of my dogs since they were causing trouble. I told him they weren't my dogs, but I took them away anyway.

I spent the next few hours trying to help them find their owner. I wrote about it already but I'll repost the whole thing here in case the link ever stops working and I still want to read about it.

"As I was leaving class today, a couple of Alsatians bounded out of the foliage and started being very friendly with people. Most people did not take kindly to this. I thought it was quite amusing to see people freak out over the dogs, so I followed them into a bus queue. After accidentally inspiring fear into the crowd of pedestrians, they moved on down the sidewalk. I took some pictures of them while waiting for their owner to show up.

Doggies!

Male doggie!

Top of female doggie! Also shoes!

It soon became apparent that the owner of the dogs wasn't going to show up, and they were lost. They had collars, though, so I decided to check them for tags. First, though, I offered them my hand to smell. They were very affectionate and didn't act at all aggressive, so I moved on to a side rub, and then I examined their collars. Neither of them had tags, which either meant that they were unregistered or they were registered but without tags because they had identification chips implanted in their shoulders. They were happy, healthy dogs, so I assumed the latter, but without a scanner the chips were useless.

A guard came over to me and told me to get my dogs out of the area because I was creating a situation. I told him they weren't my dogs, but I'd try to use them. I managed to herd them away from the crowd and back where they came. It wasn't hard, all I had to do was grab the lady-dog's collar and walk her over and her guy-friend would follow. It was obvious that they were in this together.

Once the dogs were away from the bus queue and the main road, I had to figure out what to do with them. I couldn't leave them and go home, since they would go right back to the bus queue and annoy all the Muslims, who can't touch them, and the women, who are generally just scared of large animals. I couldn't call the police since their policy for stray dogs was to destroy them (they have these poles with nooses on the end so they can kill the animals without having to touch them), I couldn't call my parents because they wouldn't want dogs in our car or our apartment and besides our cat would probably murder them, and I couldn't call the shelters because I didn't have any of their numbers.

I tried asking passers-by if they knew the dogs, but nobody had ever seen them around before. I asked them if they had the numbers of any shelters I could call, but they didn't. I could only hang on to one dog at a time, so occasionally one would run up to someone and start sniffing them. The more frightened people were, the more excited the dog got. Soon I was telling people not to run because that he'd just chase them. He just wanted to play, but the way people reacted you'd've thought he was Cujo or something. It was quite funny to watch, though.

I realized I needed some kind of leash, so I wandered around with the lady dog until I came across an abandoned chair with police tape around it. I unwrapped the tape and strung it through a loop in the lady dog's collar. Her friend ran ahead and she trotted after him and I got dragged along for a bit until the tape broke. I restrung the collar with twice as much tape, and after that it was unsnappable.

LARGE DOG DO NOT CROSS

Now that I had a leash I could tie her down and call my brother to ask for the SPCA's number. He looked it up and gave it to me and I tried calling it, but nobody was answering. An American lady walked by and asked me if the dogs were mine and I said they weren't. She asked me if I knew where an ATM was and I told her there was one just around the corner. I asked her if she knew the numbers of any shelters or anyone who could help, and she told me that she hadn't been in the country long and the only number she knew was for the American embassy. I told her they were German Shepherds so the embassy might not be very helpful. We talked for a while and then she left to get money and wished me good luck with the dogs' owner.

After she left I still had no idea of what to do. Meanwhile, the male dog went and took a big shit in the middle of the street.

He is happy because he has just made himself king of the road.

I settled tying some of the police tape leash to a sign and waiting for someone to show up who either knew the number of a shelter or who had a phone that could go online and find such a number. I had plenty of time to wait since my class had ended two hours early due to it being the last class of the semester so the final was tomorrow morning.

I met a few people while I was waiting. There was a lady who went into her office and got the number of a shelter from the internet, but nobody picked up. There was a guy who stopped and told me that the dogs had been around since his classes started in the morning. He tried to help me figure out what to do while his friend stood a safe distance away because of the largeness of the dogs and the smelliness of the poo. He told me that it was very much a bad idea to call the police. Knowing Malaysia, they'd either not so up at all, show up and ask for a bribe before helping, or show up and kill the dogs anyway since it's simpler to just strangle them than it is to scan them and be stuck with the job of returning them to their owners over the weekend. Anyway, after telling me what I shouldn't do, he left with his friend. After him came a Chinese guy, Max, who noted who "taming" the dogs were. He called a friend who used to volunteer with animals and asked if he knew someone who could help. Meanwhile, I called various vets to find out if they knew the numbers of any shelters, but they either weren't picking up or they were out of the office and unable to help. I then met these two ladies who worked at the college. They got along well with the dogs, and the dogs got along well with them.

Max came by and said his friend knew a guy, Ka Lim, who ran a pet shop and that guy was coming over to pick up the dogs until the shelters opened again. Ka Lim said that he would be here at around seven o'clock because traffic was insanely heavy. It was around then when I realized the reason nobody was answering their phones was because it was Friday, and everything closes early on Fridays because the Malays have to go to the mosque or something. Anyway, Max gave me Ka Lim's number and then left to do whatever he was doing before he stopped to help a stranger with some dogs.

The ladies from the college left to go buy some food for the dogs. I hung around for a bit until some people emerged from a nearby office building and wanted to know what was going on with the dogs. Among them were two ladies who were friends with each other and also lived nearby. One of them, Maha, said she might have seen those dogs before since there was a guy who would walk his pair of German Shepherds past her house every so often. The other lady had two dogs and was experienced with rescues, so we were in good hands. She sent one of the guys from the office to go get some proper leashes from her house. In the meanwhile, I explained the story so far to them and they said that they could take care of the dogs until Ka Lim arrived. I gave Maha his number. She called him and she was told that the traffic was too heavy and he wasn't coming. So now we had to figure out where the dogs were going to stay while their owner was being located.

The ladies from college got back with two cans of dog food. One of them cut her finger when she was popping open the can. Someone from the office took her in to take care of the wound. Meanwhile the leash guy showed up, and the dogs were happy with their newer, more high-end restraints. After a few cautionary whiffs, the dogs ate their meals and were satisfied. After a while the lady from college who hadn't cut her finger went off to look for the lady from college who had, and the lady from the office who wasn't Maha called a friend with five dogs and a big house to see if her house was big enough for seven dogs.

The lady with the cut finger emerged and told us that she had fainted, but fortunately there was a guy from the office with her. The lady who wasn't Maha told us that her friend had plenty of space and was coming over now to pick up the dogs, but wouldn't be here for a while due to traffic. She then asked someone (probably the leash guy) to go up to the office and get a camera so they could make some posters to put up around the area. After that the lady without the cut finger came back and was reunited with her slightly woozy friend.

The one on the right cut her finger and passed out and the one on the left got lost looking for her. They haven't even been teaching for two years but they're already well on their way to becoming quirky professors.

The camera was brought down and some nice pictures were taken. Maha went to the office to print out some posters.

Time passed. Small talk was made. The male dog took another large dump, this time right in front of a parked car.

Maha emerged with a stack of posters. The college ladies agreed to put some of them up around the area when they came in for work the next day. They then went off to find a clinic that wasn't closed for a tetanus jab in case the can was rusty or something.

The lady with five dogs arrived with a large SUV capable of carrying dogs. We got the dogs in the back, and then I went to the front to take one last picture of the dogs with my phone. I remembered taking it, but it wasn't on my phone when I was uploading the images to the internet, which is both spooky and unfortunate because now I do not have a picture to end this story with.

So tomorrow there will be posters up all over the place and eventually the owner (or one of his friends) is bound to see it. He'll call the number for one of the office ladies who will direct him to the lady with a big house and five dogs, and there will be a happy reunion.

It's almost an hour past midnight now so there are a lot of things I've omitted and I might have messed up the sequence of events, so if anything seems odd or inaccurate just mention it and I'll try to clarify tomorrow after I pass my final exam. Also there was a strange guy who wanted to take one of the dogs for his own despite the fact that they got very distressed when they were separated and he only had a motorcycle for transport. Remind me to tell you guys about that, too."

Anyway after the doggies were safe, I went to McDonald's to have dinner. The guy at the counter charged me non-discount prices for my meal even though it was discount time, but I wasn't too upset because they accidentally gave me a McChicken that I hadn't ordered. I gave it to Jan when I got home.

After that I spent a long time writing about the dogs online, and then I went to sleep late and I woke up only three hours later.

I had thought I was going to write the dog story all over again in a different way for my blog since my blog is for a different audience, but it looks like I'm too lazy for that. Also I spotted some errors there but I'm not going to fix them until someone complains, which I don't think is going to happen.

Oh yeah also I might be attending one of Carmeni's lectures on Wednesday, just for kicks.

Anyway I'd better end this now so I can get some sleep. I've got an aptitude test tomorrow.

Mehhhhhhhh

2010-09-05T22:56:00.003+08:00

I feel very... apathetic. Maybe that isn't the right word. If I knew the proper definition of ennui then I'd call it ennui, but I don't so I won't.

Today was okay, I guess. We had McDonald's for breakfast, so that was a good start. I didn't fall asleep in church, but then I haven't ever since I figured out that I could chew gum to stay awake and that was ages ago, so I guess it's nothing notable.

There was no Alpha or anything after church, so Ian and I went to have lunch with Clement, Jonathan, and Esther (Jonathan's Esther, not Clement's). We talked about Genting and gambling and card counting and how to win at roulette (realistically you can't due to table limits and even without them you'd only win a fraction of a fraction of your capital each time) and then we moved on to talking about insurance and real estate and how renting is better than buying. It was a lot more interesting than it sounds. Well, maybe not; Esther and Jonathan looked pretty bored. Anyway we left after the adults arrived because by then we'd finished eating and also because it was kind of awkward talking with them around.

Ian and I realized that our parents had left without us. My dad thought we were going back with my mum, and when my mum saw that my dad had left she assumed we went with him. Fortunately Clement could give us a lift back, so we went with him and discussed Shutter Island and stuff.

When we got back home I went on the computer for a while, and then I had to go drop my mum off to a meeting and pick Hannah up from Royal Rangers, which she's apparently going to join later on. Susanna and I found some swings to play on while waiting for Susanna. I used my phone to play some music. Fun fact: the proper music can improve almost anything by at least 50%. Anyway, Hannah we went to buy doughnuts and drinks, and then we went home and I took a long nap.

When I woke up I didn't feel like blogging yet, so I watched the last few episodes of The Office instead. It ends on a pretty depressing note, really. I hope the Christmas Special is better, because that's all I have left.

I guess those last few episodes might've had an impact on me. Now I feel all lonely and kinda sad. I need to start hanging out with my friends again. I also want a dog.

Finished! Finally! Also, Doggies

2010-09-04T22:54:00.010+08:00

I finished my Foundation in Science today. The test was pretty okay and I'm quite confident that I passed. Soon I'll finally be able to claim my certificate and start applying at different universities to get an engineering degree or something. You know what sucks? If I had failed a subject during my Foundation I would have finished sooner than now because I would have joined the new semester and done my Bahasa Kebangsaan then, and that semester finished about a month ago. It would have also meant that I could still hang out with Elo and Carmeni and that lot. Oh well, at least I saved my dad the cost of me resitting.

Yesterday was my last class, and it ended early. Two hours early, actually. I spent that time rescuing a pair of dogs that showed up as I was asking people what their overall score was (mine was 33/50, the highest was 42.5, the average seemed to be around 35). I will try to blog about the doggie rescue tomorrow, but I am tired tonight so here is a thread I started about it that you can read in the meanwhile.

I had a delicious breakfast this morning. I spent way more money than I should've on it, but our lecturer told us that we must eat before the test because hungry students can't focus, so I'll just consider it my last assignment. Easily the most delicious assignment I've ever had.

That's a hash brown sandwiched between two sausage patties sandwiched between two toasty McMuffin buns sitting on top of two soft, fluffy, delicious hotcakes. I also have two drinks to wash all that down. Oh yeah, there's also a another hash brown off to the side.
I finished everything and it was all good. I was still kinda hungry afterwards. Maybe I'll have a couple more extra hash browns next time.

I saw a poster for the dogs before my test. I took a picture of it; see if you can spot me in the background.

Hannah wanted to watch Shaun of the Dead today. I had told her that if she watched that movie I would buy a large packet of Lays, a bowl of M&Ms, and a bottle of coke to share with her and whichever friend she decided to watch it with. I was hoping she'd pick Ebony because Ebony is quiet so Hannah wouldn't be distracted so she could catch all the little jokes and repeated lines and such, but Hannah picked Audrey who is a louder person and therefore not as good to watch movies with, especially one as detail-heavy and layered as Shaun of the Dead.

Anyway aside from ending up with a more boisterous viewing partner than I had anticipated, there were other things that went wrong, too. There were no Lays to be found anywhere, or any decent-quality potato chips, for that matter. They had all been snatched up when "Balik Kampung" started. All the convenience stores and hypermarkets had bare shelves and it was very unnerving, like everyone had been stocking up for the apocalypse and now there was nothing left except the shittiest flavours that nobody wanted, like seaweed and curry. Also, we were interrupted halfway when some contractors came through to fix Hannah's air conditioner. We ended up moving to the living room. Also right at the bit when they were stuck in the cellar, Hannah skipped to the end accidentally and killed all the tension. Nice going. Anyway, it was still Shaun of the Dead so it was still awesome, I'm just disappointed that it wasn't as awesome as it could've been.

Before the movie Audrey had told me that all zombie movies were alike, and so after the movie I asked her which zombie films she'd seen. She said I Am Legend. In fact, that was the only movie she listed. I told her those were vampires, but she insisted I was wrong, as if there was some way I of all people wouldn't know the difference between a zombie and a vampire. I tried to explain to her how I Am Legend was actually a pretty terrible adaptation of the book because it had changed the monsters so much and the Hollywood ending they gave it basically pissed all over the legacy of the book, but she wouldn't let me. The Omega Man did a much better job of adapting the book. The only things I Am Legend got right was casting an excellent lead and getting a real good atmosphere for the city.

I'm pretty sure Audrey does not know how genres work. She thinks Hot Tub Time Machine was a porno. Firstly, nobody's said porno since the eighties, and secondly, there's nothing in there except tits. Tits were all over the place in the seventies. They were in, like, every movie. It was like some kind of unwritten law. They're still all over the place in Europe. God forbid Audrey ever visit a Dutch beach; she'd probably think she stumbled across a orgy, what with all the raw boobage on display and such.

Oh yeah I also learned that the only zombie movies Hannah has seen are Zombieland and Shaun of the Dead. I'll have to show her the Dawn of the Dead remake and the original Night of the Living Dead, and maybe RotLD if she's up for it.

Anyway, I drove Audrey back home and picked up her sister along the way. She conceded in the car that I Am Legend was not a zombie movie. We still argued about other stuff, though. When Hannah and I were driving back, I got a text from Audrey saying that Hannah's phone was still at Audrey's house. We went back to get it and I told Hannah about yesterday and how I helped rescue the doggies. Audrey texted me and apologized for arguing. I told her there was nothing wrong with arguing and if anyone should be apologizing it was me for getting so upset with her for not paying enough attention to the movie. Then we came home and I took a nap from 8 until 10. When I woke up I saw that I got a text from Audrey asking if we were cool. I replied that we were. I hope she doesn't misinterpret the 2-hour delay as some sort of passive-aggressive thing. I don't do that kind of stuff, I just leave it to the experts (women).

Hm. This post was longer than I expected it to be. I wanted to go to bed early because I only got three hours of sleep yesterday. I still have to do my exercises and take a shower. Bleh.

My First Interview and Two Half Days

2010-09-02T12:13:00.005+08:00

So the second half of Tuesday was quite okay. I hung out in Hannah's room for a while, and something weird was going on. Hannah was being nice to me. I wanted to see what would make her tell me to leave her room, so I asked her to do or let me do increasingly bizarre things. She even let me touch her laptop (she usually hates it when people touch her laptop). Also at one point I told her that I thought it was impossible to wear underclothes over normal clothes, but she proved me wrong and looked ridiculous while doing so. I should have taken a picture for blackmail, since she has a video of me dancing that is absolutely cringe-worthy. Anyway I stayed in her room until she had finished cleaning it up and it looked nice and tidy, then I left.

I had planned to go to bed early, but I ended up playing RuneScape and reading Cracked until a little after midnight, so I was only in bed by 12:45. Oh well.

The next day was Wednesday. I woke up to the sound of my alarm at 7:45am. I did my daily Bible reading and climbed the stairs. I still felt a bit sleepy, so I set my alarm for 8:40am and got ready for another quick nap. Before I did that, though, I read the newspaper and realized that Tuesday had been Merdeka Day. I hadn't realized. Oh well. Happy belated 53rd to Malaysia, I guess.

The nap was very brief but very, very helpful. When my alarm woke me up, I took a shower and freshened up by shaving and deodorizing teeth-brushing and such, and then I changed into some professional-looking clothes and I was ready to go. I grabbed my phone and my wallet and my transcript and my resume which I had printed the day before, and then I borrowed Ian's keys, put my stuff down to tie my shoes, and left.

It was only 9:15am so I had plenty of time before I was supposed to arrive at 10am. I decided to stop by a petrol station to get some petrol and mints for Ian's car. A little after making that decision I realized that I had left my résumé and transcript on the coffee table at home, so I had to turn around and get those.

By skipping the stop for fuel and mints, I managed to arrive at 1 Tech Park just a couple of minutes after 10am. I went to the second floor for the interview, but I found that access required a key card. I went upstairs to the third floor and I was told to sign in and go back downstairs and knock.

So I went back to the second floor and knocked. Sure enough, someone showed up to open the door for me. I asked if Jack was in, and I was told that he was. I introduced myself to him and told him I was there for the interview, so he showed me in to the interview room.

He asked me some questions and I tried to answer them. I didn't do too well, but fortunately for me Jack is a cool guy, so he told me what I had done wrong and how to interview better next time. He told me to avoid speaking too casually, he told me that I should go for a part-time position (I hadn't realized that there were differences aside from work hours between full-time and part-time), and he told me that I should always, always have a pen.

After that, he gave me a quick brief on what I would be doing if I got the job. The company I'd be working for is called Datacom. Basically, Datacom provides IT solutions. To quote their company mission, they are "Passionate people providing creative quality solutions." Recently, they'd also started running call centres (or contact centres, to quote their site). These call centres do work outsourced from other companies. The one I'd be working in would be doing work for Roy Morgan, which is this big research company. My job would be to make calls to New Zealand and ask random people to take a forty-question survey.

Once the brief was done, I was handed a bunch of forms to fill in. There was stuff about my education background and personal details and such like that, and there was also a place to fill in my answers to an English test which I was also given.

While I was filling the stuff in, someone else was being interviewed. He was even less prepared than me, though, so that made me feel a bit better. After a while, Jack left, which was unfortunate because I had a few questions about some of the stuff that I needed to fill in, and I didn't know who to ask.

I decided to fill in what I could and then take the test. The test was easy for three reasons. Firstly, relative to most applicants, my English is really good. That's probably due to all the books and articles on the internet I read, and also due to it being practically the only language I speak. Anyway, the second reason is that the test is relatively pretty easy, too. I'm pretty sure that my first semester English quizzes were more difficult. The final reason that the test didn't worry me was because despite clear instructions not to, someone had written their answers on the test paper. I know I could have passed even without the answers, though. Besides, the person who had written on the test kinda sucked at English (not surprising considering they failed to comprehend the basic instructions), so they got a few answers wrong. But yeah, unless I made a careless mistake somewhere, I'm pretty sure I got everything right.

After that I had a bit of a struggle coming up with who to use as a reference. I remembered working in a store that belonged to the son of the reverend at my church, but that was a long while ago. I gave the reverend a call, and he gave me his son's number. However, he failed to tell me his son, Eusoffe, was in Cambodia. After what was probably a very expensive phone call, I managed to get the number of the store and the guy who was currently running the store, Arthur. I called the store but nobody remembered me, which I had anticipate, so I called Arthur and was pleasantly surprised to find out that he still remembered me. He told me that he was currently driving and would call me when he reached his destination.

While I was waiting for Arthur to call me back, the lady who helped me out from my last visit (Shamini? I'm gonna go with Shamini for now and when I know for sure I might come back and fix these posts) passed by. She came in and answered my questions about the forms and helped me fill almost in everything that I was unsure of. She told me that since I was a student, I could use a lecturer as my reference instead of a previous boss. I thanked her for her help as she left, and then I called Mr Joel to ask if he was okay with me citing him as a reference. He was, so I had everything I needed to fill out the forms, or at least enough to show them to Jack.

I brought them to Jack and told him that I had filled in everything except the bit for previous and expected salary. He told me not to worry about it, so I didn't. He then told me that I'd have to take a typing test.

The test was pretty simple. Applicants would have two minutes to type out as much of a given text as they could, and then their speed, in words per minute (WPM), would be calculated. The goal was to get at least 30 WPM. Jack told me to take as many tries as I needed and to call him when I got at least 30 WPM. Elo had posted in her blog that when she went to interview, the standard was 25 WPM and Arun (and maybe Milan, too) had to have multiple tries before he finally got the required speed. I got 70 WPM and 100% accuracy on my second try. I would have passed on my first try, too, but I made some mistakes half a minute in which would have landed me with 62 WPM or something, so I just cancelled and started over. Anyway I guess that's why those guys have girlfriends and all I've got is a blog.

I went to tell Jack, but he was busy, so I went back into the room. I considered retaking the test and trying to beat my score, but I decided against it since 70 is a nice number and I didn't want Jack walking in while I was in the middle of a test. Instead, I texted Arthur and told him that I had already found a reference, but thanks anyway. He had tried to call me ten minutes earlier, but I hadn't noticed because my phone was on silent mode because my ringtone is not very professional at all. It's a mash-up of California Gurls and Tik Tok with the timing altered so the song has a swing beat. So... Yeah.

After a while, Jack came in to check my score. He asked me why it was so fast. I think he may have thought that I had cheated or that there was some kind of computer error. Anyway, I just told him that it was because I got a lot of practice.

Jack told me that everything seemed good so far, so they would be calling me back for an aptitude test. I asked him what that was and he told me that it was basically another interview, but with other applicants and role-playing and stuff to see how well we'd react in the type of situations we were likely to face. He said that since there were almost enough applicants, it might be possible to have the aptitude test right that day, so I had a seat while he went to check.

It was a comfy seat, and the room it was in was nice. I wish more of my waits were in places that nice and comfy. I didn't mind that wait at all.

Jack returned with my transcript and told me that the aptitude test couldn't be held that day, but he would call me and tell me when it was. He told me to bring a photocopy of my transcript and my IC next time. I thanked him for the interview and left. The whole thing had taken around an hour and half.

As I was pulling out of the parking spot, I got a call from a withheld number. It was Jack, and he was calling to tell me that the aptitude test would be on Monday and they expected me at 10:15am.

I drove over to Pusat Bandar Damansara to get my stuff photocopied at WN and also to get a tasty lunch. Along the way I texted Elo to thank her for her help getting me the job. When I reached PBD, the traffic was terrible and there was nowhere to park, legal or otherwise. I gave Jan a call and asked him if he wanted to join me for Subway. He did, so I told him to be downstairs in ten minutes.

After collecting Jan, I told him the plan: we'd find somewhere illegal to park, then he would wait in the car while I got my transcript and IC photocopied, then he'd order Subway which we could eat in the car. There were no parking spaces to be found, though, so we ended up parking at HELP and walking to where we needed to be. Before we left the car park I realized I had left my transcript in the car, so I went back for it for the second time that day.

As we were walking through HELP, I met Tanuj. He had been in Calculus with me during my first semester. I asked him how he was and what he was doing. He told me he was working on the second year of his psychology degree. I told him that I had just finished an interview. We wished each other well and went about our day.

I took Jan through HELP's corridor and told him stuff about the college. He told me he couldn't wait to go to college himself. He also told me he thought that people were looking at him because he was so unusually handsome. He's quite vain, but judging from his recent success with girls, he probably had the right to be.

Anyway, we went to WN and I got my stuff photocopied. I also bought a pen, since you should never be without a pen in the professional world.

After WN we went to Subway and I had probably my best sandwich ever. It had plenty of meat, its bread was liberally doused in olive oil before toasting so it ended up being golden-brown and crunchy, it had so many onions and enough olives to be delicious, and the black pepper went on the meat and not the vegetables (you would be surprised how many times I've had people put pepper on my vegetables). Its only flaw was that it wasn't a footlong. I guess I'll save that for when I pass the aptitude test.

When I had finished eating my sandwich, I glanced over at my photocopied IC and remembered that my new IC should be done by now. I checked my wallet for the receipt that I had gotten from the JPN, but I got distracted by the fact that my IC was missing. I realized I must've left it at WN, so Jan and I went over to get it back. Fortunately it was in the care of the lady there and not her perpetually-grumpy partner, so we were okay.

When we were walking back into HELP I noticed that the entrance to the level that lay between HELP and the street was open. Jan and I went in to explore. It was a long corridor of abandoned shops that had been closed for a long while. It was dim and creepy but at least it explained where all of the college's cockroaches and the occasional rat came from. I had thought we could exit from the fire door at the other end, but all the exits were locked and barricaded. I wondered whether it was because they were trying to keep something out or keep something in and which would be scarier, but then I realized that we don't live in a horror movie so I stopped caring.

We left the way we came in and walked back into college. The first person we saw when we got back down was Nadiah. She had gone with Effie and me to MTV World Stage last year. I had driven her back home afterwards, actually. Anyway, we said hi and asked each other what we were doing with our lives. She was taking a break for a while. She asked if Jan was my brother, and I said yes, and she said that he was so cute. And also small. Jan was haunted by those comments for the rest of the day, trying to figure out what they meant.

I also met Sam from my Physics classes. He was playing Fallout 3 with all sorts of mods and add-ons. He told me that he was currently doing his degree in Psychology, but in-game he had just started an evil character and was killing raiders in the metro. Nearby, Shaun Joel was playing Just Cause 2. I felt like watching that game, but I don't know the guy well enough to justify watching his laptop instead of Sam's. Besides, his name freaked Jan out.

As I left I was greeted by someone I recognized. He was one of the more well-known guys of the January intake, and he may or may not have won best dressed at the annual ball. He also knew my name. I didn't know his, though, so I just said hey and walked away with Jan.

I drove back and went on my computer for a bit, then I hung out in Hannah's room as I read through all my Bahasa Kebangsaan material. I then decided that I wanted to sleep early, so I told Hannah I wouldn't be making a blog post that day.

I went to my room and watched a program on the History Channel about the Al-Ma'unah arms heist. I did my exercises during the commercial breaks. It was a pretty damn interesting documentary and I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it earlier, especially since it happened in Malaysia only ten years ago.

Anyway, after that I took a shower and I was in bed by 10:45. I woke up almost twelve hours later and I haven't really done anything all day except write this blog post. I'm supposed to do my hardcore studying of Bahasa Kebangsaan today since my final exam is on Saturday, so I guess I'll do that sometime after this.

Short, Boring, Good

2010-08-31T18:03:00.005+08:00

Today I didn't leave the house. I just stayed indoors, printed my résumé, ate some pancakes, started studying for my Bahasa Kebangsaan, and read stuff online. I'm writing this post early because I don't think anything interesting will happen in the evening, so I might as well get today's blog entry out of the way so that I'll have one less thing to do before my early bedtime (sometime between ten and twelve, hopefully).

I woke up at eleven so I got around nine hours of sleep. I wanted nine hours because yesterday I got eight hours and I still had to take a nap. I thought the extra hour would mean I wouldn't want to nap, but I still have the napping urge so I slept in for nothing, and now I'll have to figure out some way to kill the urge to nap or else I won't be tired enough for an early bedtime. I need to sleep early because I plan on waking up early so I can show up at 1 Tech Park for a walk-in interview and typing test and such.

Anyway, after I post this I'm going to do my exercises, and then I might re-install C&C Generals: Zero Hour or watch a movie or even play RuneScape if the internet connection holds out (it's been quite good today). That should keep me from falling asleep prematurely.

So yeah, nothing much to write about today, and it's actually quite nice.

Productive Day

2010-08-30T23:19:00.004+08:00

So. Monday.

I woke up at ten-ish, got ready for the day, did a hundred sit-ups because I had forgotten to do them last night (I had remembered the push-ups, though, so I didn't have to do those). Took a shower, put on some nice clothes, went out with Hannah for McDonald's breakfast.

I parked in almost the shittiest way that it was possible to park while still allowing for traffic to continue flowing past. Hannah sprinted out to get to the counter before 11am rolled around and the lunch menu began. I didn't repark the car. This was a mistake.

The menus had been spun over even though it was technically 10:58am and thus still breakfast time. Anyway, we couldn't see what we were ordering so we screwed up our order. I paid for everything and Hannah took two ringgits off of me. She said that she had given me RM10 and wanted change, but I told her she hadn't. She kept arguing and insisting that I was lying until I finally convinced her to check her wallet and sure enough, there was the RM10 she hadn't given me for her meal. She's a weird kid.

Our food took a while to prepare. There were only two hash browns because we had fucked up the order. Ian and Jan showed up a while later. Jan ate from the lunch menu and Ian had two half-cups of hot milo and two sausage McMuffins with egg. Ideally we would have had a different order, but it's late and you don't care what we would have ordered so I'm not going to bother explaining it so I can go to bed sooner.

After breakfast we went back to our cars. The one Hannah and I were using had a summons on it for RM100 for parking illegally. None of the other cars parked around had one. I was pissed off.

When we arrived home, I called my dad and told him about the summons. He told me not to worry about it since it was from DBKL so he could get it settled for just RM10. He told me to be downstairs in ten minutes.

Hannah was kind enough to let me use her laptop to take my CC turns. She said I was so lame and nerdy but it was worth it; I've almost won one of them. Victory feels good. Anyway, I was in the lift right when my dad wanted me to be downstairs, but some guys were moving stuff down a floor and so I got a bit held up.

I met my dad downstairs and we drove to pick up lunch for him, then we went to 1 Tech Park for my walk-in interview. I gave Elo a call to ask which floor I was supposed to go to. She told me that it was the third, so I went to the third. A little later she texted me and told me that it was the second, but I had found someone on the third who could help anyway, so that was nice. Unfortunately I arrived right when everyone was having lunch. The lady I met (Shamini?) told me about the job and that I should come back on Wednesday with a proper résumé for the interview. She also told me that there would be a typing test and an English test, but I got HDs for both English subjects and I just scored 66 WPM (They want at least 25) on this test I found earlier, so I think I'll be fine.

After the interview we went to the Citibank near-ish to Ikea so my dad could pick up some cash, then we drove into the city to find the traffic police headquarters to pay for my first summons. It was non-negotiable, but I could pay with my ATM card, so that was convenient. After I paid, my dad reimbursed me for most of the fine, which I didn't think was fair but it is impolite to refuse a gift, so I accepted.

When we got home I had Hannah take some pictures of me so I could use one in my résumé, then I lazed about the house for a while, and then we left again so my dad could go to a meeting at four o'clock. I got Hannah to come along for company by promising her some chicken tenders from Burger King. While waiting for the lift I asked her if she had her wallet or her phone, and she said that she didn't because her phone wasn't charged. I told her to just run over and plug it in quickly for a few seconds so there would be enough juice for the short trip, but she didn't want to. Silly girl.

After we dropped my dad off for his meeting, I let Hannah buy the chicken tenders. I gave her RM10 and told her to get as much of the stuff as she could with the cash she had. I drove a few rounds without seeing her. She should have brought her phone, that way I could have called her and known where she was and known that she knew where Burger King was. Anyway, she got the tenders and gave me the change, which was only two ringgits. I couldn't believe that Burger King would charge so much for just six pieces of chicken, so I sent Hannah out to get the receipt. It really was RM7. You can get a meal for RM9. I asked Hannah why she didn't and she said she wasn't sure. She should have brought her phone, then she could've asked and we would have had fries and a drink, too. Silly girl.

After eating, we waited around for my dad and played the Platypus game. Hannah was being quite unimaginative so she got me to ask all the questions, but everything I could come up with was awkward and inappropriate. Anyway, I told her that I wouldn't reveal anything she said to anyone else or else she could slap me anywhere, any time, so I won't say anything here. It's not like I found out anything interesting anyway.

When we got back home, I hung out in Hannah's room for a while. She had promised to upload the pictures she had taken to Facebook at nine so I could get my résumé ready while my dad was still awake to help me, but she only got the pictures up at ten and the internet died shortly after that, so my dad said I could make the résumé tomorrow. I wanted to set aside tomorrow as the day when I started studying for my Bahasa Kebangsaan final, which is on Saturday, but now I guess I'll have to do that and my résumé. Oh well.

We had tasty fluffy pancakes for dinner, so that was nice. I had five of them or something, and each one was delicious. I also did my exercises quite early which means I can head straight for the shower after I'm done with this. Yay!

Huh, the connection died right when I tried to post this and all my tags were lost. Bad things seem to be happening to me with perfect timing lately. Oh well, at least I still had delicious pancakes.

I Was Supposed to Be Asleep Two Hours Ago

2010-08-30T00:50:00.005+08:00

So I was supposed to sleep at 11 o'clock because my parents want me to get enough rest and apparently midnight is still too late, but then my dad changed his mind and said it was okay so long as I got enough rest. I plan to sleep at one-ish and I've set my alarm for ten.

Sunday was okay. My dad tried to wake me up early, but he failed, so I only woke up forty minute later. I had five minutes to get ready, but I managed. Had to go without my morning shower and shave, but I did get my lenses in, deodorant on, and lenses in, so that was okay.

We had dim sum for breakfast. I ate a lot of prawns. They were yummy.

The praise and worship slides were full of typos. Hannah and I had a good (or bad, depending on whether you were us or everyone else) laugh about that. Our mum later told us that the guy who made the slides was literally retarded, in the learning disability sort of way. I used to think it was okay to talk mean about him behind his back because he was just a normal dude who did stupid things, but now that I know he's actual got a reason for acting like he acts, it's a lot more depressing and I can't do that any more. Oh well, at least I've still got Jan.

I didn't have any gum, so I kept awake through the sermon by going through all the funny/interesting pictures that I have saved on my phone. I showed some to Ian, we had some laughs. Hannah, meanwhile, was blogging on her iPod. I bet I heard more of the sermon than she did. It was about apostasy. Throughout the sermon the children of the guy giving it kept staring at Hannah and I. There were nine of them. I pity their mum's hips. When we first arrived at church I pointed them out to Jan and he laughed because they were Indians and Jan is racist.

After service I sat at the top of the stairs and listened to music on my phone. I wish I would have bought it from Joanna earlier. It makes church so much more bearable. If I didn't have it I'd have to go socialize with people from the congregation and everyone at my church is pretty boring, except for maybe Clement and Evangeline, but Clement is usually talking about DotA or football and Eva is in Canada or something.

Anyway, after the tea break we went down for our Alpha Course. We got some new books which were quite okay except they tried too hard to appease the teen market. I would have preferred the normal version of the books; the youth versions are a little condescending. Anyway we watched another video lecture, and it was interesting and funny and good. Ian and I enjoyed it but Hannah hated it for some reason. She's a weird kid. Anyway, after that we had a discussion and then we went for lunch, and then we went home.

At home I used the internet and watched episodes of The Office that I had downloaded and hung out in Hannah's room. My dad made dinner. I heard he was making steaks, so I got all excited, but they turned out to be pork steaks. He wanted to know why Hannah and I looked so disappointed since he thought we didn't appreciate his meal, so we told him that the food was very good, it was just that we had been expecting beef steak, which is usually even better. It's like expecting gold and getting silver. You're still more glad than before, but not as glad as you could've been.

Anyway after that (or before it, I dunno) I showed Ian, Jan, and El-Hanan this infomercial to give them context for this parody, which made all of us laugh pretty hard. I got Hannah to watch them, too, but she didn't think they were funny. She's a weird kid.

Ian, Jan, and Hanan went to the gym at the KL Golf and Country Club and my parents went out somewhere for a while, so Hannah and I were left with the task of taking care of Susanna. Fortunately I had just pasted Aladdin and Hercules along with The Office and Mike Basset on the laptop that Jan was using (His computer was broken. He breaks a lot of things. The fan still isn't fixed, but Hannah had one in her room so we stole that to use instead.), so we let her watch the former while Hannah kept an eye on her and I took a nap in front of the TV. When I woke up, River Cottage was on. I would've called my dad, but I thought he was out.

Cracked updates at nine, so I got up and tried to use the internet. It wasn't working, so I got Ian to disable his, then I disabled mine, then I went to get Hannah to disable her but she kicked me and started yelling at me because even though her internet connection wasn't working she didn't want to turn it off so ours would work because... I can't actually remember. It was some shitty selfish reason that made no sense. She told me to turn of Jan's laptop instead.

I went to do that and found that it was already off, so I went to tell her. I knocked on her door but she had it locked, so I told her that Jan's laptop was already off. I assumed she had her headphones on so I had to raise my voice to make sure she heard. That's when my dad came by and started yelling at me for shouting, and forty minutes later Hannah had become embroiled in his lecture, which had branched out into all sorts of varied topics with me in centre before he finally ended by getting Hannah to disable her internet connection.

After she did that I went and checked and my internet connection was working, so I told my dad and Hannah that my plan had worked and we could all use our internet connection again. Hannah could have chosen to listen to me straight away and endure half a minute of a disabled internet connection that she wasn't even using anyway because it was broken, but instead she chose to yell at me and kick me and get lectured for forty minutes before finally doing what I told her to. She's a weird kid.

I started the torrents for Titanic (Amanda's recommendation) and Teenage Dream (Hannah's recommendation), and then I used Google to figure out where 1 Tech Park was so I could go for a walk-in interview on Monday.

I went on MSN to confirm with Elo that a picture I found was indeed the place with the call centre, and she replied in the affirmative. Then I noticed that an interesting guy was online, so I chatted with him for a while, then something lead to me looking up his sister online (I think he said something that I took as a challenge). She's pretty cool; cooler than him, probably.She writes a whole buttload of slash fic, though, and if you don't know what that is then you probably don't want to be browsing around that link too much.

After that I wrote this and after this I hope to do my exercises, take a shower, and be in bed before 2am.

So Redang Was Nice

2010-08-28T14:58:00.011+08:00

I had a good holiday. It was really good timing; took my mind of the summonses and now I don't care that I had such a terrible day that day.

I'll try not to include too many descriptions and opinions in this post because firstly I don't want to spend all day on this and secondly because I want there to be stuff left to tell when people who read this blog (Ebony? Hannah?) ask me how the holiday was. Here goes:

We were supposed to leave at 2am on Tuesday, but we ended up driving off at 2:30am because we were tired and sluggish or something. We were taking two cars to get to Terrenganu: my dad's and my mum's. My dad's car had Hannah, my dad, and me; everyone else was in the other car. My dad drove most of the way. I started off by taking a nap while the Inception soundtrack played on my phone, then I woke up for a while and engaged my dad in conversation to keep him awake, then I took over for him for a while while he took a break, then we took a wrong turn which added an hour an a half to our journey because the signs were confusing, then I pulled over because Hannah's contact lens fell out of her eye because she was sleeping with it in, then I helped her get it safe, I drove while my dad napped (even though I still didn't have my license), then we swapped places again and I read some Greek mythology from a book we had brought along, then I napped again, then I woke up and we were at the docks at 8:45 and the boat was apparently leaving at nine.

I was going to rush to get ready for the boat trip, but my dad told me that he was mistaken and the boat was actually leaving at nine thirty, so I was able to take my time. While I was putting in my contact lenses, a kitten approached me and started bugging me. Just my luck that the only time I don't want to approach a new cat, it approaches me. I told Ian to restrain it, but he failed, and it knocked the lens out of my hand and onto its head. I retrieved the lens, rinsed it off, and carried on. After that I changed out of my shoes and long pants into shorts and sandals. I tried to approach the cat again, but when it noticed that I was interested, it decided to avoid me. Typical cat. I did my daily Bible reading instead. When I was done, I managed to get the kitten to stay put, and I gave it the attention it wanted when I was putting in my contacts. It reminded me of Cali.

Anyway, the boat arrived, so we gave the people our stuff and got on board. It was a fun ride over. I sat next to Hannah and shared the music from my phone with her. I also took some pictures.

When we arrived on Redang, we took our stuff to our rooms, then we went snorkelling around a very very large rock (or a rather small peninsula). We saw some tiny sharks and a turtle.

After that we had lunch. They had fresh, non-boiled vegetables, which I thought was great. The always-full bucket of delicious biscuits was still there, and so I helped myself to those. I also had some fried crab thingies that were tastier than I thought they would be. It was a nice lunch. Also there were these three kittens that hung around the canteen. They were all white and they had a white dad who was raising them. It was pretty cute.

When lunch was over, we had some time to kill before our first dive, so I turned on my music and took a nap in the shade. My parents told me that napping in the shade would still get me a tan. I was doubtful, but I went with it. They were telling the truth. Unfortunately, I hadn't put lotion on my legs, so they got a bit burned. Also I slept on my side for a while, so I ended up with a bit of an uneven tan.

Ian and I went on our first dive after that. It was a shore dive next to the rock where we had gone snorkelling around after we arrived. The preparation was a bit embarrassing, because even though we were certified divers, we hadn't dived in three years so we didn't know what went where or how to put anything on, so Stephen, the guy who was guiding us on the dive, had to help us out while making only the shallowest efforts to mask his annoyance.

The dive was nice. Ian and Stephen saw a very large trigger fish, which is quite a dangerous fish, apparently. I looked where they were pointing, but I didn't see it. We probably saw other interesting things, but I've forgotten. My dive log for that dive was "Had to re-learn how to wear equipment, had a good, trouble free dive. Saw lots of parrotfish, slugs, and anenomes [sic]. Everyone else saw a trigger fish but I didn't. Good, relaxed dive."

After that we swam around and played with the inflatable rafts or something. I can't really remember. I think I hung out with Hannah. We stopped when we got bored of the sea and said we were going to shower and have dinner.

I took a proper shower with soap and stuff (as opposed to just showers with freshwater so I'm not all salty and itchy after being in the sea), but while I was halfway through my dad said that there were some really big waves out that everyone was going to play in. I told him that I had already showered so they could go ahead without me, so they did. When my shower was done I went to watch them from a deck chair, then I fell asleep. When I woke up, they were all gone, so I went looking for them for a bit.

I found them and we had dinner. Every two days, the resort does a barbecue. The lamb was really, really good. The sweet potato was a little less so. I didn't eat enough lamb as I should have. Everyone else said the chicken was good, but I was too busy with the lamb to try any.

After dinner we went back to our rooms. Ian and I took turns using the computer to access the internet. I had the first turn, which I used to take my Conquer Club turns, then I let Ian have the computer while I napped, then I used the computer again to finish watching Sphere. It is a pretty awful film, which is a shame because the book is great. Anyway, after the movie I went to sleep. I slept well, even though the room was quite cold (the air conditioning was very effective and the sheets were tucked in very tight, so I didn't have slack which meant there was always space for the air to get under the covers).

The next day (Wednesday), I woke up, did my daily Bible reading, ate breakfast (Sausages and French toast; so delicious!), and then we went for a dive. This time it wasn't just Stephen, Ian, and I, though. There was also a European guy who had lived in Australia for a while and been on around one hundred fifty dives. That's a lot of dives. This time we took the boat out. The water was very choppy, so it was a fun ride. When we dived down, the first thing we saw was an eel. After that there were turtles. Then I realized I had fifty bars of air, so Stephen had me use his other regulator while we finished the dive and did the safety stop. I felt very incompetent. My entry for that dive was "Saw at least 3 turtles, an eel, some large fish and large slugs. Ran out of air early, had to use Stephen's air. Need to control breathing next time. Also saw a school of small barracudas".

After that we took the boat back, had a break of a little more than an hour, and then we were back on the boat for another dive. I ended it with 75 bars left in my tank, which is twenty-five over the minimum and more than Ian had left. The entry for that dive was "Managed to control breathing. Saw lots of anenomes [sic], two types of clownfish (orange & grey), felt strong current, had a generally calm and peaceful time."

When we got back we had lunch. I don't think there was much great food for lunch, so I just ate a lot of vegetables and biscuits. We filled in our logs and filled in our logs, and then it was time for another dive.

We had been to this particular dive site three years ago, and according to my log I had seen some barracudas before I had to surface early. This time around was a lot more interesting. I thought I saw a weird donut-shaped coral, but it turned out to be a tire. I tried to carry it out, but something pricked my finger. I wanted to see if it was something venomous or just a cut, so I squeezed my finger and green stuff came out. I showed it to Ian, but he didn't care. I later found out that blood is green underwater. That's pretty cool. Anyway, after that we saw a bunch of rays. Here's the log: "Saw 3 rays. 1 tail, one in some sand but very visible, one orange & purple & small. Saw large school of medium sized fish. Very, very, big waves. Also saw someone hold a starfish." The waves were indeed very big. I was checking my gauges during the safety stop, and every time a wave would pass overhead, it would go from registering 5 metres of depth to 6 metres of depth. Stephen joked that we may have to cancel dives the next day.

After getting back and storing my equipment, I went to the pier with Hannah, Ian, Jan, and my mum. The pier was new. It floated on the surface instead of being built on stilts or something, so it was unstable and very fun to walk on. We tried jumping into waves as they passed, with limited success. We also tried testing our balance on the edges. It was a good time.

When that was over, we went to play in the waves. The rest of the family was already there, actually, but Jan and I had stayed for longer on the pier, so we were the last to arrive. Along the way to the part of the beach with the biggest waves, I passed an attractive tourist who looked like she was around my age. She was building a sand castle. I wanted to talk to her, but everyone was waiting for me at the waves, so I joined them for that. When I got bored with the waves, I tried swimming over to where she was. Just as I was leaving the water to go strike up a conversation, she ran off into the sea to play in the waves with her parents, so I went back to join my own family. The waves were big and fun, but they broke my watch strap. Oh well, I fixed it (kinda) a few hours ago.

After the waves, I took a proper shower. It was nice. After the shower I went to check what was for dinner, but there was nothing outstanding, so we went to a restaurant nearby to eat instead. I had a grilled lamb chop, which in hindsight was not such a great choice since there was going to be limitless lamb the next night. Half of the lamb I got was overdone and not that tasty, too. The fries were great, though. I should have had the fish and chips, probably.

When dinner was over we got some ice cream, and then Ian went to the room to use the internet while Jan and I dug some holes under Hannah's supervision. Hannah eventually left, but we kept digging. Jan's hole ended up going halfway up his thighs. Mine was a lot wider, but it only went up to my knees. We built a wall around Jan's hole so it would look deeper, and then I added a ramp, and then I noticed that it kind of looked like the front end of a sperm, so we added a wriggly tail and soon it was done and it looked really great. My dad came by with a torchlight which meant that we could take some pictures. We were quite sweaty from all the digging, so we needed another shower afterwards. It was worth it, though, the sand-sperm looked great. Jan lost his spade, though.

After showering, I used the computer to read a bunch of Cracked articles and take my Conquer Club turns, and then I went to bed.

When I woke up it was Thursday and we had another diving trip to go on. Jan and Hannah had done enough of their course that they were ready to go on a boat dive, and my mum and dad were done with their shore dives and wanted to do a boat dive, so we all went together after breakfast and stuff.

We didn't see anything really interesting on the dive. We had rented an underwater camera, though, so Ian and my dad took some pictures. Ian kept swimming off without me, which was not cool since he was my buddy and buddies are supposed to stick together. Also, he was supposed to stick with Jan and Hannah's diving instructor, Chris, since she was the one who would know what to do if something went wrong. Anyway, our dive finished when Jan and Hannah dipped under the 50 bar limit. My entry for the dive was "First dive with family. My buddy kept straying. Didn't see anything interesting aside from angel fish and big rocks."

After that we had a break, and then another dive. This second dive was much better. Hannah was my buddy this time, so I didn't have to worry when Ian went swimming off on his own. I saw loads of gross worm-like things on corals and pointed them out at Jan so he could share my disgust. At one point I swam above Hannah and watched as she looked around for me for a few panicky moments before I finally descended with my face right in front of hers. That was funny. We also saw a huge stingray. I was behind it, so I got real close to its tail so some nice pictures could be taken. Apparently it was the same type of sting ray that killed Steve Irwin. Huh. Anyway, here's what my log said: "Saw lots of nice coral, lots of worm-type things on a volcano shaped coral, saw and got close to big-ish stingray, saw small blue-spotted ray, (orange & purple), Had wee bit of buoyancy trouble throughout dive. Second dive with family."

After that I took a shower, then I had lunch, then I went into the sun to get a tan. My plan was to listen to the soundtrack of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog while I tanned my back, and then when that was over I'd flip over and listen to random songs while I tanned my front. When I was ten minutes from completion, my dad told me that I would burn and that I should join him on the pier to feed some fish. I told him that I had put plenty of lotion on so I'd be fine, and even if I did join him on the dock it's just as sunny there so I'd get just as burned. He finally left me, but then I realized that he was the one paying for the vacation so I might as well do what he says, so I went to join him on the pier. I aired my grievances and he let me finish my tan, so I did. When the last song on the soundtrack was forty-five seconds from finishing, Ian came by and tried to tell me something, but I told him to just wait for another half-minute or so. When I was done I looked around, but he was gone.

I found Ian and asked him what he wanted to tell me and he said that everyone was going snorkelling around the big rock/small peninsula. I told him that I'd just climb along the side and watch them, since I was getting bored of the sea. Right around then my dad came by and said that we were going to build a bonfire that night so we had to go with him to get some sticks. He said it would only take twenty minutes.

Ian, Jan, and I went with my dad to go get some firewood. We saw a pretty big monitor lizard along the way. I took a few pictures of it. It looked quite prehistoric; it was pretty awesome. Anyway, we brought back the sticks and our twenty minutes were up, so we wanted to go to the rock, but my dad said we had to dig a pit and break up the sticks and stuff. Once that was done someone from the resort came by and told us that we weren't allowed to burn stuff on the beach, so we had just wasted three quarters of an hour.

We finally got to go around the rock. I climbed around the side while the rest of the family (except my dad) snorkelled. Eventually I reached a point where I couldn't keep going, so I just jumped in the water and swam. A little while after I got in the sea, I saw a huge school of fish jumping through the water towards me. They stopped jumping before I could get close, though.

I met up with the others and helped push Susanna back to shore on her inflatable mattress. While I was doing that I saw a stunt plane doing stunts. It was pretty dang awesome. I kept imagining it crashing even though I didn't want it to. Fortunately, it didn't.

When we got to shore, Hannah told me about all the small reef sharks she had seen earlier (six at once!) so I told her that I'd go get my snorkel and join her to just look at the sharks. I did and we did until the sun set. In addition to seeing loads of little sharks (The most I saw at once was three), we also saw a tiny eel, and a bigger shark that was just a bit smaller than Susanna.

While the sun was setting, I took another shower. I had dinner in the resort's canteen since it was barbecue night. I had a lot of lamb. It was all delicious. I also tried some chicken. It was also delicious. After dinner we went to the restaurant for some fries to snack on. They were also delicious.

When we got back to our rooms I did a bit of packing, read a bit of Cracked, took some Conquer Club turns, and then I went to sleep. I had a nice sleep. While the rest of us were sleeping, my dad went out and lit the bonfire. Fortunately he didn't end up burning the resort down, so everything was fine.

I woke up at around seven on Friday. My dad had gone with Hannah to snorkel with the sharks. I had breakfast and did my daily Bible reading, finished up with my packing, and then went to try and finish tanning my front. Unfortunately, the sun was behind a cloud for the whole half hour that I was trying to get tanned. It was practically the only cloud in the sky, too. Oh well.

We went back with a different boat than the one we had arrived in. It was a lot more comfortable, but it wasn't as open as the other one so I couldn't take as cool pictures. Anyway, I listened to my music and before I knew it we were back on the mainland.

The contact lens kitten, Sammy Jenkins (Hannah and I first named him Lenny because of the contact lens that fell on his head, then we called him Lenny Jenkins because Jenkins is a good last name for someone named Lenny, then we called him Sammy Jenkins because Sammy is a better first name for someone name Jenkins), was still there. I gave him some more attention, and then we had to leave.

On the drive back, I took some naps and finished the book of Greek myths. We made a few stops and bought some snacks. Hannah's contact lens fell out again, but this time she just let it dry out because she didn't care. We pulled up at the McDonald's near Genting for lunch. We placed our order just a few minutes before the lunch discount expired. I almost finished the Adrian Mole book I was reading, but I had to stop with just a few pages left. When we were almost home, we dropped by Lucky Gardens to pick up my new license. It's a full license and it'll last for the next five years. Nice.

I didn't have time to unpack when I got home because my dad had a meeting to go to and I had to drive him there. I gathered up that day's newspaper, the Adrian Mole book that I was almost done with, and all the Star Two newspapers from Tuesday to Friday so I could read them while waiting for my dad.

I finished reading the Adrian Mole book. He's less of a twat in 1992 than when he began. I also learned from the newspaper that Malaysia had done something to rile up some Indonesians and now they were throwing faeces at the embassy in Jakarta. That was amusing. My dad's meeting finished and he took the papers as I drove him back.

When I got back home, I unpacked and then went on the computer. I spent a long time on it since there was a lot to catch up on.

My dad wanted to go for dinner because he was suffering from pork withdrawal. Jan, he, and I went to Sin Kee's for dinner. It was a bit of a hassle to find parking because of how busy the road was, but we managed. The chicken chop was yummy, as expected.

Back home I went on the computer for a long while, then I watched the TV and did my exercises for a while, then I took a nap, then I took a shower, then I went to bed at around 2:30am. I couldn't sleep because of how hot it was because the fan was still broken, so eventually I went outside and slept on the couch under the ceiling fan. I woke up at seven and went back into my room to sleep since the air-conditioning had cooled it down a bit.

Aunty Rosie came in and turned everything off and so I woke up an hour later because it was too hot. Then I tried to see if Hannah loves Audrey more than Stefanie and Saundra, but she proved that she cares for them an equal amount, and that amount is more than the amount she cares for abused children in Thailand and stuff.

Anyway, I spent the rest of today catching up on my friends' blog posts and writing this blog post. It only took me three hours to write this. I am pleased. Hannah, tell me my typos and stuff once you're done reading this.

Oh yeah, it was my mum's birthday yesterday, so to celebrate we're having breakfast for dinner today. All that bacon ought to satisfy my dad's pork cravings.

Jan Broke the Fan so I Cleaned Up My Desk

2010-08-23T21:35:00.007+08:00

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.

Saturday Was Shit for Jan, Sunday Was Worse for Me

2010-08-22T16:33:00.005+08:00

Yesterday was Awards Day. It reminded me why I quit BB. I'm still glad I did, and I still wish I would have left earlier. There is no point to it if I have no friends. I was the only regularly attending person in my age group for, like, three years. There still aren't any 18-year-olds in 10th KL.

Anyway, we (my mum, Hannah, and me) started off by having breakfast in McDonald's, which was nice. After that we picked up El-Hanan and Joel, then we drove over to FGA. Along the way my mother revealed that she was a racist (or at the very least, a bit of a bigot. I thought the Dutch were supposed to be tolerant) and that she thought Obama was a Muslim. Her proof was that she had friends who knew people in America with "inside sources" in the White House. Mmhmm. She also says that he was raised in Indonesia, which is a Muslim country, therefore he's Muslim. Isn't Malaysia a Muslim country? Does that make me a Muslim? Whatever, she's my mum and thus I love and respect her despite her ignorance.

Awards Day itself was pretty boring. I slept through the Junior Section awards. The performances were lousy to mediocre, except for the dancing which was quite good but they weren't on the stage so only the people in the front row could see what was going on in full. Ian got promoted to an officer, and Jan got nothing. Now he knows how I felt. At least nobody less worthy than him got promoted, though. I watched Victor get promoted to corporal over me last year. I encouraged Jan to quit, but he's probably going to stay as long as Cherie's still in 10th KL.

I drove Hannah back home. I still had my sunglasses. They were gone the next day.

I watched a movie on my computer. Maybe not. Whatever, I was either napping or watching TV or on the computer until six, then we went for McDonald's. I spent the last of my money (except for RM10 so I could afford my RM5 tithes for the next two Sundays) on my meal. Hannah said she would pay for half of my meal, but she changed her mind and only gave me RM3. It was good enough for a lime sundae.

When we got home Hannah said she'd watch one of my movies if I watched Peacock, so I did, but she didn't. Peacock had Ellen Page and Cillian Murphy and I don't even know why I'm still listing names. It's a habit I'll break by watching a movie without any Inception actors next. Hope that works.

Anyway I got annoyed with her and decided to bug her, but she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened to stab me, so I dropped the subject and took a nap. When I woke up, it was 2am. I watched the first episode of The Office (UK). It's great. Martin Freeman's in it. He's Watson in Sherlock. That's great, too.

I went to bed at 4:45.

Aunty Rosie tried to wake us up the next morning, but we weren't going to church since we had to pick up the Tans so we told her we didn't need to wake up. She turned off the air conditioning anyway.

At 10am Hannah came in and told us we had one hour to get ready before we had to go pick up the Tans. I told her that I didn't want to drive so Ian would have to take them. I told Ian that he had to wake up but he didn't listen, so I got out of bed and got ready to drive. Ian and Jan took their showers while I was reading the Bible, and Ian was still in the shower when I was done, so I went on the computer for a bit.

When Ian was done with the bathroom, I took my shower and put in my contacts and shaved and deodorized and such, and soon I was done and ready to go. I told Hannah and Jan, but they were taking their time in the living room or something, so I transferred some songs from my computer onto my phone. Hannah started panicking because she thought we were going to be late, so I finished up and went downstairs with them. It was 11:30 and the Tans were supposed to land at 12:30.

When we were in the lift I realized that I didn't have my sunglasses, so I went up to look for them but they weren't on their usual place on my desk. Hannah gave me a call while I was looking around for them. She was insisting that we didn't have time and we were in a rush and stuff, so I decided not to look for them any more and went downstairs. I was hoping to find them in the car, but they weren't there.

Along the way to the LCCT, I asked Jan and Hannah why they came along if they were just going to listen to music and ignore me anyway. I told them they should've just stayed at home so there would be more space for Uncle Elisha and stuff. They said that Ruben and Stefanie were their friends so of course they wanted to come. I told them that if that they should have just driven and left me at home. Hannah and Jan said they couldn't drive, and I said that I couldn't either since my driving license had expired at midnight, twelve hours ago. I told them that I'd probably encounter a police roadblock or something and get fined since I've never been pulled over before and I was bound to get pulled over the one day that I was using an expired license since life is shit like that. Hannah didn't hear anything I said because she was too busy listening to her music, but Jan heard me.

Anyway, I told Hannah and Jan that I'd take the fast lane there since Hannah was insisting that we were in such a rush. I told Jan that his job was to check behind us to make sure that nobody wanted to overtake us. I got a random text from Audrey for no reason and I asked Jan to read it. It just said "Hi". Then Jan started telling us about a dream he had where I took a turn too fast and killed everyone in the car. While he was recalling this dream to us, we were approaching a speed trap, but I didn't notice the cop with a radar gun until it was too late to slow down. I saw a flash which meant that a picture was taken and now my dad was going to get a summons for his car and I was going to have to pay it. I blamed Hannah for rushing me and Jan for distracting me with his dream.

I kept asking Hannah to call Stefanie to check if they had landed yet, but she wasn't getting any reply. When we were getting close to the LCCT there were a whole bunch of traffic lights that were all red, so any time we saved speeding was wasted at the lights, so we could have not sped and arrived at the exact same time and not received a summons. Stupid.

The traffic light right in front of the LCCT had a broken green light, so I was waiting at the junction for a long while before I figured out that I could go forward when all the lights were off. It was the opposite problem that the traffic lights outside Bangsar Shopping centre had, where the red light was broken and so you had to stay put when all the lights were off. The first time I encountered that I assumed off meant go and my motorcycle and me were almost destroyed by oncoming traffic with that mistake.

Anyway, we pulled up in front of the arrivals area, but there was no sign of the Tans. I called my dad and told him about the speed trap and he said that I could split the fine with Hannah. We waited for half an hour before we got a call from them. I got more and more annoyed for every minute that passed because it made my prior speeding more and more pointless and the summons more and more aggravating. Anyway, when they finally called it took them ages to figure out where we were even though they were right in front of us and I was sounding the horn to try and get them to look in our direction.

When Stefanie and Ruben got in the car we found out that Uncle Elisha wasn't even coming since he had a friend who was going to pick him up, so the whole drive over was pointless because they could have just gone with Uncle Elisha's friend back to Puchong and have us pick them up from there later. That way we could have saved petrol, slept in, and avoided the bloody summons.

On the way back we had Ikea hot dogs. This time there were onions, at least, so that was nice.

When we were coming back home from lunch, there was a police checkpoint near the golf and country club where I had never seen a police checkpoint. Of course Ruben and Stefanie weren't wearing their seatbelts. Nobody ever does. I don't understand it. It's such a simple bloody thing to do and it saves lives and prevents fines and it just takes five seconds but nobody in this bloody country bloody bothers. Anyway it didn't matter because I was being pulled over for speeding.

The officer asked for my license and pointed out to me that it had expired last night. He asked me how fast I was going and I told him I didn't know since I didn't know where they had measured my speed and if I had been keeping my eye on the speedometer I wouldn't be in that mess in the first place. The only reason my eye wasn't on the speedometer was because Stefanie was going on about Vampires Suck and I was getting upset that people were actually watching that bloody idiotic piece of cinematic excrement. It's a shit excuse for speeding, though, so when the officer asked if I was going to pay I told him that I was. I asked him how much it was and he said RM300. I asked him where I could pay and he said that they have offices all over the place. I asked him what the deadline was and he said I had one month. I asked him how fast I was going and where they had caught me and he said that I was going 108km/h in either a 60km/h or 80km/h zone, and also they had their speed trap under the overpass from the Golf and Country Club. All throughout my conversation he kept asking me if I was going to pay for the summons or not. I think he was implying that I had a choice (bribery), but I didn't bribe him because I don't want to contribute to this country's corruption problem, and more importantly because I didn't have enough money on my person for a decent bribe.

When I got back in the car, Jan asked me why I didn't just drive off when they asked me to pull over, which really goes to show what kind of a person Jan is (a rather stupid, morally bankrupt one).

I stopped by Lucky Gardens to drop off my license at the driving centre so I could get it renewed. It was closed, so I gave the lady who ran it a call, and she said that I should drop by with RM160 and an appropriate photograph so that I could get my full license and I wouldn't have to renew it for another five years.

I went back home and complained to my dad about everything that happened. Ian came in and told me that everything was my fault, which was true, but it wasn't helpful. My dad took me for a drive to try to calm me down. He asked me to imagine the worst-case scenario, which was that Hannah wouldn't want to split the first summons, so I'd have to pay RM300 for that on top of the RM300 for the second license, and also that my dad wouldn't pay for the license renewal so I'd be out RM760, which was RM10 more than I had in my bank account. My dad said that he would pay for the license, so at the very least I'd still have RM150 left in my bank. He also told me that my mum got in an accident a while back that cost him RM2000, which put things in perspective for me and that got me to calm down a bit. He also told me that Hannah was even worse off than me financially and that his suggestion that we split the fine was just that, a suggestion, so I couldn't count on it happening.

He dropped me off at home and went to go play some golf. I told Hannah that she wouldn't have to pay for her half of the fine as long as she finally did the things she had said she was going to do anyway, which was basically to watch Cloverfield and a bunch of other movies and also to use up a box of wax strips that we had lying around. The reasons why she had agreed to do that in the first place didn't really matter to me, it was more the fact that she had said to me that she would do those things but never did, even though I did everything she asked me to do and stuff. So she's supposed to watch Cloverfield after she goes swimming, but I think she'll find some excuse not to and she'll still get away with not paying for the fine. If she doesn't do that, then I'll be pleasantly surprised. If she does, then I won't do anything for her any more, especially things that involve driving. My license is expired anyway.

Tomorrow I'm going to HELP to get my transcripts, then I'm going upstairs to Pusat Bandar Damansara to get some correctly-sized photographs for my license, then I'm going to the driving centre to drop off my license, the photos, and my dad's money, then when we get back from Redang I'm going to collect my license, then I'm going to the JPJ to settle the two summonses, then a week after that I'm going to call about my new IC, then when that's ready I'm going to go collect it, integrate my driver's license and ATM card into it, and finally I'm going to activate its Touch 'n Go and get some credit in it.

This post in a nutshell: Last year I didn't get promoted because I probably didn't deserve it even though someone who deserved it less got promoted over me, so I quit; this year Jan didn't get promoted because of some bullshit because he deserved it but at least he knows how I felt, but he's not quitting because his girlfriend is still in; also I got two summonses today because it didn't occur to Ruben and Stefanie that they could've carpooled with their dad and so I'm going to be RM600 poorer; also I've got to face a lot of bureaucracy in the next two weeks.

Tugasan

2010-08-20T20:52:00.005+08:00

Today I woke up to the sound of my alarm at 8:15, but by then it was too late to do what I wanted to do so I turned it off and went back to sleep. It had gone off six times and I had slept through the first five. I think it's time to retire "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" as my alarm. Back to "I Feel Fantastic", I guess.

I woke up for real at eleven. I did my daily Bible reading, climbed the stairs, communicated with some people on Facebook, and took a shower. I left for class early so that I could study for my Tugasan.

I arrived at two o'clock and tasked myself with memorizing a bunch of words. Once that was done, I read some more Adrian Mole. He's 24 now and a real twat. I've pretty much lost sympathy for the guy. Still it's a funny, well-written book, but now I see that maybe Jared was insulting me when he said I reminded him of Mole.

Anyway, class started and we learned some stuff, then we had a break and we did our Tugasan. I was hoping for a 7/10 but I think I'll end up with a 6.5.

There was a huge jam along the way back. Turns out the traffic lights in the junction outside Bangsar Shopping Centre weren't working. There weren't any traffic cops when I got there either. I didn't want to risk crossing through the traffic alone, so I followed behind another car that moved in for the turn when a bunch of pedestrians started crossing and forced the cars on the other side to slow down. I hope they get those lights fixed soon.

When I got home, Aunty Rosie was cooking fish and chips. Dinner was delicious. I love it when Aunty Rosie cooks Western food.

I told Hannah I'd watch 10 Things I Hate About You if she watched the trailers for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. She did, so I did. 10 Things I Hate About You is a great movie. I would list the actors' names and the other movies they've been in and how all the movies I've been watching lately seem to be connected, but that's going to get old after a while. Whatever. It had Juno's stepmother, Arthur, and The Joker in it. Also I recognized the dad from somewhere but I can't remember where. Also the soundtrack was fantastic. Great movie.

Tomorrow is Ian and Jan's Awards Day. I'm glad I'm not in BB any more. So much responsibilities avoided. It's just work and stress and wasted time for no reward, anyway.

Naps and a Goodbye

2010-08-20T02:04:00.005+08:00

I had planned to study on Thursday but I only really need to memorize a few words so I guess I'll wait 'till Friday morning for that.

Aunty Rosie woke me this morning. I was lying on the couch in my day clothes. I realized that I had never actually woken up from my nap last night, so I still had exercises to do and a shower to take. I decided to nap some more.

After a while the room got too hot because someone had turned off the air conditioning and fans, so I went outside and slept on the couch there. I slept for a long while, and then I finally woke up to start my day by reading the Bible.

When I was done with that, I went on the computer for a while to check if my movies had downloaded. They had, and so now I had Batman Begins and Sphere on my computer. Hannah was on the couch reading my old blog posts and she kept finding typos, so I used my computer to go fix them. Once that was over I was about to start watching one of my recently downloaded movies when my dad called me out and told me he had another meeting, so I was going to have to drive him around again.

I had a time limit now, so I quickly did the exercises I had neglected to do the night before, and then I took a shower and got ready. After that I drove my dad to his meeting, and then I went to Ikea to pick up some more hot dogs. The hot dogs were okay, but they didn't have any onions, so I was back to eating them plain. I only had fifteen minutes to get everything done since I had parked in a temporary spot, but I still had a couple minutes after I was done eating, which I used to get an ice cream, which I ate on the way back to my dad's meeting.

There was still plenty of time left, so I listened to some songs on my phone while waiting. At one point my dad walked out of the building and tried to call me, and when I picked up I told him to look to his left, but he still didn't see me. He finally noticed when I sounded the horn, and he told me there was about ten minutes left, so I just listened to more music while browsing through the massive collection of funny and interesting pictures I had saved to my computer from the internet and from there transferred them from my computer to my phone.

After my dad's meeting was done we went home and I watched Batman Begins. Ken Watanabe was in it, as was Cillian Murphy as the main bad guy. Michael Caine is in it, and also The Dark Knight and Inception. Liam Neeson was in it but he's not in Inception, he's just awesome. Anyway it was a really good movie and I'm glad I watched it for the second time.

When the movie was half a minute from finishing, Hannah came in the room and started to annoy me. I ignored her but she did not notice that I was ignoring her on purpose, so she came and started tapping my shoulder. I told her that there was just half a minute left and I brought up the information bar to prove it, but when the movie was over and I turned around, she was gone. She has terrible timing.

I found Hannah in her room and I asked her for her 8GB thumb drive so that I could transfer some movies to her and have her transfer some movies to me (Hard Candy with Ellen Page and Peacock with Cillian Murphy), but she had lost it. I asked around for it but when I tried looking for it where I had last seen it, my dad started yelling at me for yelling so I had to sit down and endure the lecture until it was over. He gave me a 4GB thumb drive to keep so I made do with that.

I transferred the files and went on my computer, but the internet wasn't working and I was feeling sleepy so I turned it off and took a nap. When I woke up it was very close to nine, so I moved to my room so I could hear my alarm when it went off. I had set my alarm for nine so I would remember to go to Sentral to say goodbye to Elo, since at ten she was supposed to be meeting with a bunch of friends and me before she went back to Sarawak. Anyway, the alarm went off at nine but I was still tired so I set it for nine thirty and went back to sleep. I woke up a few minutes before it went off and went to wet my contact lenses freshen up and change my shirt, since all the naps had dried out my lenses and also made me kinda sweaty.

Hannah walked in when I was wetting my lenses and screamed because there weren't any lights on in the room, which made me scream because I didn't hear her come in. While I was explaining what I was doing, Ian, Jan, and El-Hanan walked in and we both screamed. It was kinda funny.

Anyway my alarm went off after that, so I borrowed Ian's car keys and drove over to Sentral. I was trying to find a place to park, but every place I saw all had signs warning of clamping and towing and fines, and since my dad had just gotten a ticket for parking at Sentral the other day I decided to just park in a legitimate parking garage. The hourly fee was bloody high though, four times what Ikea was charging.

I texted Elo to find out where the meeting spot was and she said it was the departures area. Elo spotted me when I arrived at departures and introduced me to her aunts and cousins who were waiting with her. Apparently they had been expecting Elo's other Shaun. I was able to clarify that I was KL Shaun before they left, since they had already been waiting an hour and were eager to go. I asked Elo why she hadn't just told us to meet at nine and she said that she only found out recently due to arriving early and bus schedules and other valid reasons that I have forgotten about.

Elo got a phone call from one of her siblings asking about a Liverpool t-shirt or something. Elo had been unable to find one and the person on the other end got upset while Elo was trying to explain and hung up. At least Hannah's never hung up on me before; sounds like something Jan might do, though. Anyway, I asked where Nirai was and Elo said she wasn't coming. Arun was running late, too. According to Elo, her bus left at 10:30, so they would have to hurry to arrive on time. While Elo was showing me her itinerary, she spotted Zac (I am so tempted to spell his name Zach but everyone types it Zac so I'll type it Zac) and a friend (I think his name was David or Daniel or something. Let's go with Daniel). She asked him why he was there and he said it was because he wanted to say goodbye to a friend. I thought that was quite a coincidence until he explained that the friend he wanted to say goodbye to was Elo. I think someone said "aww" at that point.

A little after Zac showed up, Elo spotted two of her other friends who she was giving a piece of luggage to since they were going back soon, too. I forgot their names but it was a chick and her boyfriend, who also looked like a chick. They were nice people. They were there for a few minutes when Arun showed up with Roshaan and Milan and maybe one or two other people. It had only been eight minutes since I had arrived, but we were running out of time to get dinner.

The new arrivals only stayed for a while before going outside for a smoke. Milan was the only one left behind since he didn't smoke. Zac and Daniel went outside, too, I think, even though they had already been out for a smoke since arriving. It's quite an inconvenient habit. Elo spoke to the friends who were taking her luggage, and she asked if Milan understood what they had said. He said he hadn't and I asked him why not since his BM must be up to snuff because he didn't have to sit for Bahasa Kebangsaan. I was told that it was because they were talking some kind of special Malay. I think they meant a dialect, but I prefer to think they were speaking in some secret Sarawakian code.

Anyway, after the guys came back from their smoke break, I ran to Burger King to get some fries and onion rings since I was hungry and Elo's bus was due to leave soon. When I got back, Milan and Arun had already taken the bags down to the bus and were waiting there. Elo got a call from them, so we all went to near the bus stop to say goodbye. Along the way, Elo mentioned that her phone's battery was low, so I offered to swap batteries with her since we had the exact same model phone, but she declined since she said she could recharge the phone there. I do kind of remember a multi-charger point at the airport when I went to pick up the Tans.

Above the bus stop, we stood around waiting for the goodbyes to begin. We were delayed when one of us mistook a stranger's luggage for the one that Elo was giving to her friends, but the person who made that mistake wasn't me so it was funny. Anyway, Elo said goodbye to Zac and Roshaan and her two luggage buddies. She was going to say goodbye to me, too, but I told her that I was going to have to pay for a full hour when I left so I might as well stay for a full hour. Elo said that she wanted to spend some time alone with Arun before she left, so I said I would leave when Milan left.

We went down to look for Elo's bus, but the taxi people had said that the last bus to the LCCT was supposed to leave at 10:00. The bus had obviously left late enough that Elo's bags were on it, but not late enough for her to be on it. We tried to think up other ways to get to the airport before her bags (train, taxi, another bus) and I offered to drive her, but she said that she didn't need to hurry since the bus people would sort things out since that was what they were paid to do. Elo has a lot more trust in the system than I do.

Elo spotted Arun and tried to call to him, but he was too far away to hear her. I was hoping that she would try running to him while calling his name and then he'd turn around in slow motion and they'd run into each other's arms as triumphant music played, but reality is not that dramatic so instead she called him with her phone and told him to turn around.

When he caught up to her he said that the bus driver had agreed to go one round with the bags so he would be stopping by again, which was very good news for Elo since she could take the bus ride she had paid for. I asked where Milan was and Arun said that he was already gone, which meant it was time for me to go, too. Elo gave me a hug and we said goodbye and she said she'd see me again in a short while, but for her a short while was three years. "I think I can wait" was my reply. I wonder if I could have come up with some better parting words.

I rode the escalator back up and saw a Dutch family struggling to get their luggage in the lift. I walked in and held the doors for them while they got everything inside. I thought it would have been weird to walk out of the lift at that point, so I just rode it down with them. On the way down the lady asked if I knew where the bus to KLIA was. I had seen it earlier when I was looking for Elo's bus, but I didn't remember seeing it when the lady asked me, so I wasn't much help. The taxi people were saying all the buses had left already so she would have to take a taxi, and for some reason I believed them. I listed the other ways she could have gotten to the airport (train, bus to LCCT and then shuttle, taxi if you're okay with getting ripped off), but then she spotted the bus to the KLIA and I felt very foolish. She thanked me anyway and so I said "Tot ziens" and she said "Tot ziens" back, and so I felt less foolish.

The whole time that was happening, Elo and Arun were a few feet away since the lift was right next to where their bus had arrived. I figured that we already said everything that we wanted to say and any more goodbyes would be awkward (like what happened with the Tans), so I just got in the lift and left without acknowledging their presence. Maybe if I was really, really lucky, they didn't notice me.

I felt kinda lonely on my drive home since Carmeni had left and Elo had left and now my only good friend left was Amanda. I had forgotten about Joanna for some reason. I wish I would have remembered her, it would have made things feel a little less lonely.

Anyway, when I got home I had already made up my mind to procrastinate my studying for my Tugasan until the morning. I asked Ian where the rest of the rum that I had paid for for his birthday was, and he told me my dad had drank it. That was my rum. Oh well, at least I know where all the rum had gone.

My phone was still playing music on random, and at one point it started playing Eye of the Tiger which got me really pumped and and I managed to do twelve real push-ups. I'm usually only able to do four. I shouldn't really be surprised that that song has great motivating powers. Anyway I did the rest of my exercises and took a shower and wrote this and now I'm tired and almost ready for bed.

I wonder how many mistakes Hannah will find in this post.