Not Gonna Write You a Love Song

I love the sound of Sara Bareilles's voice. It's so sultry and sexy that it feels like a sheet of silk being rubbed all over Keira Knightley, with milk. And Honey. And whipped cream.

Holy.

NEWS FLASH: YEAR 3 HERE I COME. Yes, it's official. By some blind stroke of luck, hard work, divine intervention or all three, I have actually managed to pass every single module and am now one year closer to completing this diploma and motor racing. I know I know, wistful thinking. But hoo boy what a relief when I felt the ropes tying that burden on my back suddenly cut free. It was as if seventh heaven had come down and laid out a spread of all the supercars in the world and told me to pick one. Or I could have all if I wanted to too. The elation.

Tomorrow's the first presentation for my ITP. Crossing my fingers and twiddling my toes in anxiety. Ms Wendy's a known hard driver and she doesn't take "I don't know" or any sort of answer like that for a response. So I'm trying to get up to speed on my presentation, fine-tuning it and making sure it's all OK.

For all car fanatics, this is one car you must get.

I don't care how, I just want it.

Sick Sick Sick

Just the week that I wanted to start my column, I fall sick.

My mum's being motherfuckingly anal about everything around the goddamned house. I'm sorry to have to use these words but they are the true manifestations of my feelings so do bear with me. Recently she's been irritatingly picky about every single thing that goes wrong in the house. She's so damn irritable: the slightest spark (i.e. me misplacing my book, a door not closed, a stray hair, a dirty floor) sets off a bonfire of pent-up rage and screaming. It's as if she was PROGRAMMED to sieve out every last wrong, misplaced, extra, missing, excess piece of shit lying around the house and launch into a massive tirade about this book that book lying around. It's so irritating and furthermore I worry if this is a trend that's going to carry on. She's so goddamned negative. Sometimes I wonder why she can't be like other mothers. Understanding, kind, patient, logical, warm, full of fun and positive. Sorry, I talked nothing about me being sick.

My head hurts. My nose hurts. I've got a temperature. My throat feels like sandpaper every time I swallow. I can't think straight. I can't walk straight. My legs hurt.


Thank you.

I've gotten ill

After much research and careful, meticulous analysis involving Wikipedia, BBC world news and Thai ladyboys, I have concluded that my recent spate of restlessness is due to this. Bert's got some form of it too, and he can't sleep. I'm worse. Mine strikes in the day.

Today in lecture in the lab I had this sudden bout of restlessness so strong I literally wanted to jump out of my seat, flap my arms about and holler at the top of my lungs. I couldn't stop fidgeting. Then just now it came back after an absence in the afternoon. As I'm typing this my legs are constantly moving and I wanna jump around the room and do weird things to vases. It is like there's this small current pulsating inside me, small enough to make me feel vastly uncomfortable and restless. Yahoo Answers tells me that I have anything from Parkinson's to ADHD to sleep disorder to knee surgery, so I'm not believing any of that drivel.


HJUYTRESDBKUYTRDWSDFGHJKIUYTGFD>?PL:{:.l;p>:"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!JAJAJAGOSLFJHJCFNSKNLN

Help!

Drowzee

Thanks Jerold's mum who ends work at 0230 but who also has a very nice company S-Class and offered to send us home.

I like Mercedes-Benzes. Very comfortable and cosy and cosseting and smooth to be in.

I like the S-Class.

I like Mercs.

I like cars.




zZzzzzzzzzz....

Ponder

Was thinking of changing the focus of my blog, if it ever had any :)

Instead of typing boring, anodyne, asinine, totally irrelevant entries about my life, which to be honest is not much at all, I was pondering whether to change my blog entries to be sort of weekly columns where I write about some particular topic, with a dash of humour and quirkiness. A la Jeremy Clarkson's Sunday Times column.



What say you all?

Valentine's Day

A day for boyfriends and girlfriends the world over to pretentiously declare their undying, unconditional, unequivocal love for each other FOR ONE DAY OF THE YEAR and then go back to being bitches to each other after that.


While the florists make tons of money out of you ridiculous lovebirds.


What's wrong with having every day be Valentine's Day?

Attachment and the Clean Room

Someone threw some rocks and stones at my house last night and scared the shit out of all of us. The minute my mum called me I ran out into the street yelling "COME BACK HERE YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT" but obviously no one - thrower included - heard me because they were either asleep or too busy running away. The police came at around 0230 when we called them at like, midnight. No matter. I've set up a highly sophisticated trap consisting of a state-of-the-art motion detector and two papayas to catch the bugger if he does it again. You have been warned, hoodlum.

First day today in the clean room of SP. For those who have not been to a clean room before - and I suspect there aren't many - it's a place you surely will believe to be some sort of chemical/biological/germ warfare center. It certainly did feel that way with us wearing white jumpsuits and other associated apparatus in order to keep the dirt and dust generated by us stinky humans to a minimum. You suit up in a HEPA-filtered Class 1000 room (that's hair net and face shield, gown, booties and latex gloves in that order), followed by an air shower, then it's into a Class 100 clean room bathed in bright, stark white fluorescent light that makes you feel you were in the middle of a lightning bolt. Around you are various machines that if you didn't know better would seem to be centrifuges for refinement of nuclear material but obvious they aren't. Warning signs are liberally scattered around with ominous words such as "DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU", "ACID BURNS", "DO NOT REMOVE ANTISTATIC CLOTHES WHILE IN ROOM" and my personal favourite, "WARNING: EXPLOSION-RESISTANT REFRIGERATOR" (I am not making this up). Obviously that bottle of Heinz's wasn't what we thought it was.

Obviously we didn't have time to explore so we got to the down and dirty of the matter at hand, which was to learn the workings of all the machines and to learn fundamental wafer fabricating procedures. The seniors sure as hell weren't joking when they said it was the waiting that was tedious.

Let's put it into perspective. You complain when a bus takes more than 5 minutes to arrive while you pace up and down and listen to your MP3 player. In the clean room, this machine - like the others - takes damn near a one-half hour to warm up. That's 90 minutes to you, without the benefit of an MP3 player or pacing or any sort of time-wasting activity to while the boring minutes away. I have a suspicion that the best friend I make there will be the tweezer.



Anyway, Thursday's coming up and I still haven't gotten anything for Best. Die la. Gonna need to start cracking my head.

Attached to attachment

Fa Kin Su Pah.

The minute the CNY holidays end I get my schedule for my ITP (that's industry attachment for you uninitiated). To make matters worse I booked my first auto lesson tomorrow, so the selling of my slot is all the more difficult, compounded with the misery of it being at 815 in the bloody morning, makes it the perfect way to start your week. FA KIN SU PAH.

I was supposed to go to Xian, China, but no sooner did I get the confirmation that I was on the team to go did I get the notification that I had to serve my attachment in school because of the complexity of the fabrication process for my project would be so great it would require 10 weeks for us to undergo training for it. And there went my chance to go to Xian. Sian.

Morose thoughts aside, I went out with Best, her mum and her aunt for lunch today. Plenty to like about the meeting, more so the Formula 1 driving her mum displayed. All that needs to be summed up can be done so in one word, though. For those who understand: waterboarding.

CNY day 3

So fellas.


How be your CNY pickings this year?


Any good?


No?


Yes?





Keep begging.

Here's to good pickings on CNY

The quintessential time of the year is here again - where children look forward to the gifts and adults talk nonsense the whole day while the children, well, look forward to the gifts.

And I'm not talking about Christmas either.

It's Chinese New Year.

Money! Food! Fun! Irritating relatives! Sore throats! What excitement awaits all during the Lunar New Year. It's always such a grand thing and it's one of the highlights of the year.

No actually, I don't.

Let's spell out the reasons. First, I don't visit many relatives during new year. That has been the norm ever since I had a conscious memory and it hasn't changed a beep since. Every year, I don old clothes (except for a new jacket this year) and go to my uncle's place for 3 days in a row, eat and ROT TO DEATH AFTERWARD. I guess I do join in the occasional game of mah-jong, which I lose in a spectacular explosion of banknotes. So I give up, walk to the dining table, eat myself silly and spectacularly explode in a confetti of lap cheong and red barbecued meat. Suffice to say, the only thing that Iook forward to is the familiar red packets, contained wherein are highly sensitive documents of intrinsic value which only must be opened by the end user.

Has CNY lost its value? Has visitation turned into a green-eyed, meaningless action befitting its intended purpose of nothing but acquiring the most number of red packets and then doing nothing after that? The answer for some might be an affirmative one, because they - like I - have been sufficiently jaded by past experiences to have lost all faith in the value and meaning of proper rites and values of CNY to have only left the sole purpose of visiting and reaping the tangible benefits - ang pao.

To those more trad ones, however, who still treasure the warmth and familiarity that Chinese New Year brings to your hearts, the only thing I can wish you is to have fun and continued prosperity throughout the year acquired through your visits and reaffirmation of your Chinese roots.

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR TO ALL THOSE HAPPY/SAD/RICH/POOR PEOPLE!!! =D

BarBQ

Have you ever been to one of those parties where you were the host's close friend, but somehow that prevented you from mixing with others because they thought you were kind of uppity and therefore reasoned you probably had none of the brains required for proper socialising? In the end however the story ends nicely with you making friends with the people you meet around you.

This is exactly how I felt during the CCA barbq that I just came back from. In the beginning I did dread that it would be another one of those dreary, boring barbq's where I would just sit there by my lonesome, mope around, pull a long face a wonder when the hell would everything end and be done. For a while I did act in that manner typical of me - just busied myself barbequeing stuff and generally being out of people's sight. I did get bored enough to think to myself: please please please let this end like this so I can go home and rest and read my unfinished Top Gear. And it did seem like it would end like that.

Until we got to the games, that is. It all started out as a waterbombing session so beloved the world over for its simplicity, instant fun and the capability to turn any boring old bozo into an prancing participant. So my plan of dodging all waterbombs didn't work and the next thing I knew, I was getting hit on by so many bombs that a tornado seemed like a mild shower in contrast. But that wasn't the end of it. We played next a game where you had to guess a number. Game rules state that you have to guess a number - dreamed up by our friendly Sabster - and if you guess it RIGHT, YOU get to do the forfeit. Make a long story short, I GOT HIT both times because I was standing in a sweet spot where I so nicely guessed the winning, offensive numerals. I had to go over to the next bbq pit for the second forfeit and ask a girl for her number, a picture with her and then politely tell her to throw a waterbomb at me. Thanks to you whoever you are :) that was sporting.

Next two games - Indian poker and Simon Says - also saw me in a spot of good fun as I got hit with all sorts of fantastic forfeits. Seemed like I was the guy who did all the forfeits and used up all the waterbombs. And for those of you who might see my ridiculous attempt at a poledance on Youtube (filmed by none other than Lina, thank you lol), I can only solemnly declare to you that I AM NOT PROFESSIONAL AND NEVER WILL BE, though I did pick up a few tips from Jamie Lee Curtis in one of her movies =D

To be very honest I never expected that I would have fun during this barbeque. But I did have fun in the end and that changed everything. I believe that I would have enjoyed myself, even without being the butt of jokes and the waterbombed guy, because I did give myself a chance to interact more with people whom on a daily basis I never would have. A chance presented itself and I grabbed it with both hands. I got to have fun with people whom I was not close to before and that made a difference to me tonight. It made a difference to know that in spite of myself, I believe I now know that the people around me are not merely bystanders in the walk through life but are unique, quality individuals who deserved to be recognized in their own right.

And I have been humbled by that.

I did try, E, I really did.
But as luck would have had it,
nothing came to fruition,
even though it had been one of the more daring endeavours undertaken.
A chance - I hope - shall present itself again
and let me not let it slip.

BLAH

AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME! AAAAAAH HE-MAN TOUCHED ME!
As you can tell from the statements above, I obviously am traumatised. 'Nuff said.

V-day's around the corner and I guess it's going to be back to a boring 14th of February for me. Significant the last time, but definitely insignificant this time round. Sad? Disappointed? I'd say not in the least. I keep telling myself that the silver lining in the cloud is that I get to save on that day where other attached and chained (huge grin) individuals spend their lungs out on bouquets and chocolates for their loved ones. I'm probably spending some on Best (if she wants to be my Valentine that is) but that's it. Unless a miracle happens and the girl I like asks me out, I - like most of my guyfriends - shall go watch Jumper :D .

FREIDOM

EXAMS SIND KOMPLETT UND FINIS!

Der examinationsprufungen ist done und gone! Zey are kaputt und ich bin free! Ich habe many weeksendungen of der freetime to be doing ze blah blah that I vant! Ich bin very happi!