21 and some of 2013

The night before the day of my 21st birthday was quite nice. I invited a bunch of people for dinner but 80% of them couldn't make it so in the end it was just Joanna and Amanda and me at Jake's. We ate a lot of good food and listened to a lot of good music. Well, I ate a lot of good food. The girls weren't as hungry. But yeah, the music was good.

I then drove us up to Genting and we arrived at the resort right as it turned midnight, so fortunately I did not have to turn 21 inside a car park. We had hot chocolate and I got a sexy card from Jo and some delicious repurposed Valentine's Day cupcakes from Geraldine via Amanda. I also got cookies and candy. It was a very edible batch of presents.

We went to the casino and I gave Jo my wallet so I wouldn't overspend. I went in with RM100 and won RM35, so that was nice, but I also lost RM135 so that was less nice. It was still really fun, though, and I was expecting to lose it all from the start so it all went according to plan.

We were supposed to go clubbing or for karaoke afterwards, but Jo and Amanda were tired so I just dropped them off at their houses and spent some time on the computer at home.

I didn't sleep so well because Jan kept opening the curtains to let the light and heat into the room. I woke up at 4pm and Papa gave me a lecture about expectations and dinner or something and he made it pretty clear that he didn't want to go out for dinner and that he'd rather eat in, so I decided to go get some McD's with Jan. Jan was busy with DotA 2 so I went to swim first. While I was downstairs, Papa sent me a text but he received no reply and got upset. When I came back he gave me a long talking-to because everyone was upset that we weren't going out to eat. After that we went for pizza. While everyone else was eating, I went out to get a Pepsi. When I came back, my classified chicken pizza was not there. Apparently the order was mixed up. I wanted to go out and get my own pizza but Papa demanded that I eat the pizza we had gotten so I stormed into the kitchen because I was upset at having to eat pizza that I didn't even want on my birthday. Mama tried to calm me down but she did so by invading my personal space with a pat on the shoulder. When I tried to swat her hand away, Jan came into the kitchen and told me not to "fucking hit mum" and attacked me. After things calmed down I left because I didn't want to be at home. Ian was there, too, and he kinda stank. I don't think he showers very much now that he's moved out.

I went to get ice cream with Jo and Amanda. Along the way they implied that I need to shower more. That was kinda tough to hear but I'm glad they were honest about it. Now I can take steps to improve. I'm still pissed that this country's so hot and humid that we need two showers a day here, though.

At Baskin-Robbins, the cashier lady tried to give me sass so Jo and Amanda resolved to get her fired. It wasn't really necessary, but it's nice to know that they care and I guess it's better for the world if ice-cream people in general are nicer so I suppose I support the firing of cretinous cashiers to make ice-cream eating a more pleasant experience for everyone. Joanna wrote a post about it.

Anyway we went to McDonald's 'cause I hadn't eaten anything all day aside from the ice-cream. I had maybe my last Prosperity Burger of this prosperity period, but I couldn't finish it. I only had about half, but it was a double, though, so I guess I had the equivalent of one burger so that's fine. Anyway Amanda saw someone she hadn't seen in a long time so she went off to talk to him while Jo and I talked.

Afterwards Amanda needed to get back home and Papa wanted me back so I drove the girls back. Amanda told us about how dangerous her neighbourhood was becoming, with a burglary down the road and an attempted burglary on her house when Geraldine and she were home.

Anyway the fourth was a lot better and the fifth so far has been okay. It's also Jan's birthday today so we'll be eating out. Papa is keen not to repeat the mistakes he made on my birthday.

Also unrelated to all that, I've made new friends at work. It's nice to have someone to talk to in between calls.

Also also, the Tans came over to visit near the end of December and start of January. We watched Les Misérables and it was very good. They also came over for dinner and karaoke. Aunty Rosie made some very nice dessert. We sang karaoke. Well, I sang karaoke and other people listened. Elselyn asked a few times why I kept choosing sad songs. Sad songs are easier to sing; the machine scores you higher for crooning compared to regular singing. Anyway hopefully that's the last time I ever see her; I prefer to deal with my problems by ignoring them. For example, there's a girl at work that I haven't spoken with since sometime in 2011. I don't think I have feelings for her anymore but I don't really care to find out.

Jan got drunk near the start of the new year and he kept wanting to fight me. His friends had to restrain him. Jan is an angry person. He yells in his sleep, mostly about DotA and football.

Staccato Roller-coaster

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 sadness 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.

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

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

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

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 .

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

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.

Ten Things that Happened Since My Last Post

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

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

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.

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

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.

Awesome Weekend: Clubbing, Movie, Karaoke

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.