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.

Resident Evil: Afterlife and Nick's Farewell Party

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.

Secrets, Smoking, and Stuff

So today was very interesting. Most of the paragraphs here are not, though, so feel free to skim to the good bits. Also, the second word in the title is purely for alliteration. There are only like three sentences on it in this entire story.

It's been a week since my second motorcycle accident. On the way to school I kept the bike revved at the lights and kept my eyes on the road ahead the whole time. It worked, and I got to school without any problems.

I usually have two classes every Monday: an English class at eight and a Physics class at eleven. Today I also had a replacement Engineering Mathematics Applications class at 10:10 and a replacement Critical Thinking Skills class at two o'clock.

I arrived about half an hour early and decided to check if anyone I knew was at school yet. I didn't find anyone to talk to while I was walking down the corridor, so I wet my hair, found a mirror, and wasted some time by playing with my fringe to see if I was capable of pulling off an emo look. I was not. I kept the hair anyway, since it wouldn't take long to dry.

I met Carmeni in the hall and we talked for a while. The conversation was about the best place to sit and what I had come early to college to do. Carmeni said that my plan was ridiculous. I said it was the best way to move on. Ten minutes before class I decided to roam the hall again to see who I would run in to.

Juria was in the upper foyer with some friends waiting for her statistics class to start. I tried to figure out the statistics homework for a while, but I am just not that great with math when all the equations are upside down and the formulas are things I have never heard of. At one point someone said that statistics was cancelled that morning, and the information was confirmed a little later by three texts saying the same thing. At eight o'clock everyone started leaving for their classes, but I stayed around to hear Juria tell her story of how her birthday went and for another reason that will be mentioned a few paragraphs down.

Juria's birthday was awesome, apparently. Meeting Boys Like Girls and getting the lead singer's wristband as a present on the eve of her birthday on Friday night was just the beginning of the story. The second half happened the next day but was so mind-blowing that Juria told me to promise twice not to tell anyone what she told me, with the exception of my sister and people who she had already told, which turned out to be quite a large list. But more on that later.

By the time I was done processing what I had just heard and the magnitude of the secrets I had to keep, I was more than half an hour late for class. Once fifteen minutes had passed my attendance mark was as good as gone, so I decided to stay on a little longer and finally do what I should have done sometime during my first semester.

So I told Juria that I liked her. She told me that she already knew, and had known for about a month or so thanks to my blog and Facebook notes. I been anticipating a reaction be more along the lines of rejection and avoidance, so it was a nice surprise to see how cool she was about the whole thing. Of course she wasn't interested, but I had never imagined the outcome of that conversation as anything along those lines anyhow, so that went much better than expected, even though things are pretty much the same.

I remember surprisingly little of that conversation. It happened a little more than half a day ago and I can somehow only remember the gist of things. It's odd, since I'm pretty sure that her eighteenth birthday story was the best birthday story I had ever heard and that the talk after that was the first time I've ever told a girl face-to-face that I liked her. I guess memories don't form that great when you're only getting four hours of sleep every night.

I left the foyer when there was still half an hour left in my class. I figured showing my face was better than not appearing at all, since I could schedule a replacement class and such. The lecturer asked why I was so late and I told him I didn't have any good excuses. The class ended fifteen minutes early and he told me that I could sit for a class tomorrow to replace the one hour that I missed, and I'd still get full attendance. That was pretty awesome. What wasn't so awesome was when I checked my schedule and saw that that one hour was my only break the whole day, and so now I had back-to-back classes from eight am to five pm. Wonderful.

I went back to the foyer to see if Juria had told anyone else, since generally the more people that know a secret the less exciting it is, and the less exciting it is the easier it is to keep. A lot more people knew, but the secrets were not any less exciting or any more easy to keep. Oh well, at least I had more people that I could talk to about it if I ever got overwhelmed by the urge to blab.

Everyone's classes started again at nine thirty, so I left the upper foyer to see if any of my friends were in the hall so I could let them know that I was keeping the biggest and awesomest secret I had ever kept in my life, because what's the point of keeping an awesome secret unless everyone knows that you're keeping an awesome secret so they can be jealous of your position as a person who is privy to such information. When they (when I say they I mean mostly Carmeni and Elo) started asking what the secret was about I started to regret telling them about it, but I decided I wouldn't be breaking my promise if (1) I didn't tell them anything that wasn't already public knowledge, (2) I only told them which guesses were false so they didn't think that it was something terrible or less awesome than it was, and (3), I kept silent or refused to answer if they asked me something where the answer would be a "yes", since that would be giving away part of the secret and count as breaking the promise. They left for class before they could learn anything beyond some Taylor Swift trivia.

I called my sister right after that to tell her as much as I could before I had to get to my 10:10 EMA replacement class. Rushing the conversation on the phone was a bit pointless, though, since the class started at around 10:30. All four of us were waiting outside early, and we talked about cockroaches and the college's past as a parking garage.

Engineering Math wasn't terribly interesting. I guess the only thing worth mentioning would be that no homework was assigned to us, which meant that my half-day assignment-free streak might make it to last a few actual days. That was nice.

Before Physics started I met Denise and a few other friends. Denise wasn't happy about me telling her that I had a secret that I wasn't going to reveal to her. She said she wouldn't talk to me until I told her what it was. She did not manage to stick to that.

Physics was informative and somewhat interesting, but again there was nothing much to write about except for the lack of homework, which was nice again. Also, the class ended pretty early.

After Physics I went to go eat lunch with Joanna. I got to share her meal and get that cool coke contour glass in exchange for telling her the story up until the point where I had promised not to tell anyone anything anymore. When I was done, she didn't believe what had happened. I still got a pretty kickass sundae out of that, though, so whatever.

When lunch was finished we hung out at the computer lab before I went a-roaming in the hall again while waiting for my CTS replacement class to start. When I was bored of the hall I went to wait in the class, where I talked with a dude about the biggest secrets we had kept. He couldn't really remember anything, but he did tell me about this one friend of his who slept with a transvestite. That was good for a laugh.

The class was cool. We got to watch clips from Thank You For Not Smoking, which I have to remember to download again sometime soon. Again, there was no homework. That was a nice note to end the day's education on.

After that I hung out a bit more and managed to avoid breaking my promise not to tell anyone despite around a dozen people knowing I had a secret. That was a bit tricky, to say the least.

Word had gotten around about me telling Juria that I liked her. It was pretty cool being the subject of gossip. Carmeni's boyfriend, Nicholas, was in college, and he had heard. He told me that I did it wrong, and that the surest way to fix things was by kissing Juria the next time I see her. Nick's a cool dude, but I think I'll pass on that particular nugget of wisdom. Somehow I get the feeling that borderline sexual assault is not the best way to get a girl interested in you.

I also found out that Elo used to smoke. She told me how she started and how she managed to quit, so that information might be useful in the future. It seems like a lot more of my friends smoke or used to smoke than I originally thought. Still not tempted to try, though.

Later on a bunch of us went to one of the many Ali Maju restaurants for drinks and snacks. I had spent most of the rest of the week's allowance on a ticket to a student-organized standup comedy night on Thursday, so I didn't order anything. Joanna's mum called and told her that she was arriving soon, so Jo left before she got her order. It arrived moments after she left. Since we are not the type of people to waste perfectly good food, I got to have something to eat after all, and Zach said he would pay. So for me at least, there was such thing as a free lunch. Later we saw Jo waiting outside, so I miscalled her and she sat inside until her mum actually arrived.

After that I went home. I spent quite a while talking about my morning conversation to my sister while my brother tried to guess what the secret was.

So anyway it is now around twelve thirty and all the events described technically happened yesterday since it is the sixth today. The fifth was a long day. Today is going to be even longer. I am not really looking forward to waking up six hours from now to get ready for nine straight hours of college. Oh well.

I guess the short version of this post is I can't keep secret the fact that I have a secret, and also I told Juria I liked her and it was pleasantly liberating. So yeah, there's that.