Friday, August 20, 2010

Naps and a Goodbye

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.

1 comment:

  1. Like like :) Thanks for coming again Shaun. Really appreciated it. Yeah, 3 years. I'll see you soon then :)

    ReplyDelete