砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Monday, July 25, 2005

Saturday was a tiring day rushing from point A to point B. In fact I was up 635am in the morning, ready to go with my parents to work (in order to seize control of the van) I had to be at NUS at 830am, for a long-awaited table tennis game~! Haha. Unfortunately, we had no access to the tables at NUS' Sports and Recreation Centre, but a few options were put forward by the organiser of the game, my previous Artillery Formation team-mate, Dennis Chu. It included NP and Clementi Sports Hall. Eventually NP wasn't available as well, for their tables were all shifted out. We had our breakfast there though, and it had been a long long time since I had such a cheap breakfast, $1.50 for a toast, milo and egg set! Wow. I wish you could get that sort of stuff at SMU, but of course, dream on! Anyway it was my first visit to any polytechnic in Singapore, and yes, I think NP is quite a nice place to study! After breakfast we went to Clementi Sports Hall to play table tennis at a rate of $3.20 per hour (man, that's real expensive). Had a really poor game playing against our ex-captain Mr LKY...as I always concede the control of the game to his topspins... argh. Anyway I do agree that I had improved compared to previous times but still not enough to beat KY. Maybe more practice with the SMU school team will aid a lot, but there hasn't been any practice since the start of the holidays! Oh well, too bad I don't have any regular table tennis khaki (and yes, that reminds me that I miss Dan so much as a table tennis khaki...sadzzzz.. T_T)

I went back home to nap a bit after returning the van to my dad. I sure made a good decision as the trip to JB that followed was the worst I ever experienced. The jam at the Causeway was unexpectedly ridiculous, if not for the poor traffic policeman controlling the traffic there, I guess the public bus (950) I took with Charles , would never have reached the Woodlands Checkpoint, let alone the JB side. Haha. Overall the trip began at 4.50pm and we had our dinner at Ya Wang (Duck King) around 6.30pm, while watching channel 8 news in JB. (hmm, wonder why so) Anyway Ya Wang's duck rice is indeed nice, save for the bony duck meat. I don't like bones! The bill was pretty acceptable, 2 plates of duck rice + 2 glasses of barley drink = RM10. You can't get that in Singapore! The next stop was definitely the indian snack stall under the overhead bridge leading to City Square. You can never miss it. But before that I took Charles on a trail of pasar malam (night market in Malay - hey, my blog has international readers,ok!) where all the food were cooking in the narrow backlane... My mouth was like...drooling? Unfortunately, we couldn't eat there because we just had our meal, and I'm not sure if Charles could handle street food.. haha. Bought 2 large packs of the indian snacks and then off we went to City Square.

My primary target of the day was optical shops and hair salons. The prices were pretty fine for salons, but I felt it was still too much. RM100+ for a hairdye? Hmm.. walked a few shops to let Charles see what City Square offers. Essentially it's a Singaporean look-alike shopping mall. I think if you are not there for the street wear or the cineplex, you are better off elsewhere. Oh, but don't miss the pizza restaurant on the 4th floor. It's pretty nice.

After touring the place, I was contemplating whether to go Holiday Plaza (or in Malaysian terms, Plaza Holiday) or Plaza Pelangi. The shuttle bus service linking Plaza Pelangi was gone... so I decided to go Holiday Plaza because if the guys wanted to go JB for karaoke, Plaza Pelangi will be the place to go - the famous Red Box is there. Holiday Plaza is like the Sim Lim Square for hair salons! So many of them on the top floor~ Now which one to choose will be a headache. I manage to get a quotation at a optical shop on level 1 for my kind of contact lenses, RM60 for the astigmatism kind, woo.. my astigmatism is really high and making spectacles cost a bomb! However I will want to make a nice new pair of spectacles because I can't be in contact lenses all the time. By the way, the normal kind of contact lenses for myopic people cost RM45 per box at that shop. And yep, I guess I will be there again on a weekday before my birthday to order my contact lenses and if there are no big events on 6 Aug, I should be spending a memorable weekend there. Anybody interested to join me? I will be aiming departure in the night though because there may be a tri-university Bizcom gathering... Sunday morning should be okie if we depart early, because I presume the National Day long weekend (if you take leave on Monday) will see many people getting out of Singapore (pretty ironic, right?) to recharge their batteries quickly as the next public holiday is a long long wait till Nov.

We got back home around 1030pm for there was a little jam on the causeway itself on the way back. Nothing much to report on the return trip but I guess quite a handful of people were staring at me... a big fat orange! I mean I was dressed in orange, my t-shirt, my knee-length shorts, and my lovable slip-ons! Haha. My slip-ons are always attracting weird stares... I don't know why but probably they shouldn't be on my feet ba?! (Like I bother..) I bought them in JB too during our OG trip last Dec.

Sunday was a super boring day, but as expected, the young chaps asked me for a pratice session of football, so I went down to play at the street soccer court. Wasn't feeling good at all, as my fitness levels have since plummeted from the time the school holidays ended for them. Anyway these days I don't have the luxury to run because of the stupid weather... if I had a threadmil like Joyce I would be real happy! (but then, it wouldn't fit into my tiny home.) There was a group of challengers after 2 of the chaps left, and they were pretty lousy and yet arrogant. We beat them easily with some slick teamwork, but there was this guy who was totally in yellow, Brazilian jersey and carried a CBF bag (CBF refers to the football association in Brazil). He was very quick and played quite strong, but we were pretty drained out because it was already 630pm and we were actually there from 330pm onwards. Gave him the opportunity to run circles around me without even 1 successful tackle...haha. Eventually I realised that it does really takes plenty of mental strength to carry on playing... I really lack that sort of mental strength now.

After the soccer session I played a little bit of old games, Nintendo games that we played when we were real young, on my PS2. Wahaha. This Chip-n-Dale game that I once played in the past was actually pretty easy, and I managed to get to the last stage only to be 'game over-ed' there because the last king was too difficult to beat. Haha. I'm real lousy when it comes to playing games! My parents soon then returned and I had tons of administration work to do. Had to file documents for my dad's workshop, prepare pay slips, prepare cheques and stuff. We still have yet to do up a proper accounts book! I am really unsure of how accounting for sole proprietorship should go, I guess I will need a textbook soon! Anyway I finished all those stuff at 230am in the morning...

This morning I was at Compass Point to meet my potential insurance agent for my dad's workshop. She taught me many things about insurance for SMEs, and stuff like that. I was quite surprised that she said she was dabbling in golf at the driving range after I mentioned I worked in a golf travel agency! Woo.. that's like, wow, even insurance agents have the time to play golf? Haha.

Woo... you finally reached the end of this blog entry! Shiok right?

Longwinded
Jeffire

Acknowledged my existence at
8:09 PM