heaven is 0oC at night
Monday, November 19, 2007
Guess what? I'm actually blogging from China, using my hosts' super ancient but workable IBM ThinkPad! I shouldn't underestimate this machine though, cos it probably has a mind of its own. But anyway, this house that I'm staying in right now is very very much like a hotel. I have my own room, its freezing cold, has big windows, and has a nice view. Both my sony battery charger and my sony ericsson charger can miraculously fit into the absolutely outrageouly weird 5 pin socket, and that means I'm gonna take lots and lots of pictures :D
I can't really upload any now since I apparently didn't bring the cable since I apparently didn't expect my host to have MSN and internet and all, and I'm apparently freezing cold and my hands keep pressing the wrong keys on the keyboard which is configured in a really weird way so I kepe making mistakes and have to go back and forth typing stuff that I've meant to type about 5 minutes ago. Did I mention, its 0 degrees celcius outside? Water is supposed to FREEZE at 0 degrees celcius (But apparently not, I guess the pollution and all makes the melting point lower than it already is, ya?)
This is such a weird immersion programme first day. We spent half the day flying and now I'm kind of stoning in the host's house cos my host buddy is doing his homework and preparing for his major test. Whee. And also, a320 is probably the worst plane in the world in my standards. After one ride on that silkair plane, I spent about 2 hours trying to hear properly again- and a lot more time trying to get rid of the annoying headache that I got during the descent. And in contrast, the China Southern 737 was pretty smooth, and, even though I probably pissed off the air steward when I asked for extra food and extra drinks, the staff were pretty good. Except the female pilot who could hardly speak english, but yeah.
So far the hosts are pretty nice :D My buddy is some basketballer who has pictures of Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian on his bedroom wall (expected), but also has papers and papers of chem stuff stuck to his cupboard door which he needs to memorise. Oo. My hands are really, really cold right now so I guess I shall stop soon. It's been dark since 5.30, so 9pm is really kind of late. Considering I woke up at 4am to get to the airport on time, yeah, that's late. More soon. I can't stand it any more. I'm frozen.
A surge of randomness at 8:38 PM, Singapore time.
leaving for the middle country
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Where, you might ask, is the middle country? Translate that directly into chinese- yeah, it's a huge yet commonly occuring crime in the world of RI chinese projects. Anyway, for 14 long days, I shall be away from this heavenly abode called Singapore, away from MSN (unless I strike it rich and get a really loaded family with computers in every room for my homestay), away from my soon-to-be-retired neeon which has hundreds of songs just dying to be played on my entertainmentless silkair/china-southern/shenzhen air flights. Great. Oh yeah- I couldn't find any winter gloves, so in the spirit of innovation, I'm bringing my goalkeeper gloves- just just just in case. Sandra challenged me to some random DropOut puzzle game and apparently she says its super addictive. Haha I hope I don't get hooked by tonight, or I'm going to suffer super withdrawal syndrome in Wuhan.
RANDOM INFO: I now have a grey and orange timex watch :D I can finally stop asking people for the time/straining my eyes to read ezlink card readers to get the time (Side note: whenever I have to do that- I'm probably late.)Oh yes. I'm bringing my phone, so anyone who has too much money to spare, please call 82397768 for a mind-numbing conversation of your life- it'll probably take at least 10 minutes to get past the China telecom operators, if that's any added bonus.
OH YES OMG. Before I leave, I totally have to say this out of total joy. I have an ipod touch !!!! I didn't even have to touch a single dollar from my ipod fund! So, I have $250+ in my savings AND a nice ipod (even though I'm half worried about the lack of space.. it's only 8gb, and YES LEON, feel free to shove your 80gb ipod classic in my face in the name of storage superiority. But anyway, I didn't really choose it or anything, but it's pretty cool. I was fiddling around with Alex' ipod touch during con3 camp (hmm, I seriously wonder what it's doing there :O), and yeah, I'm happy :D
Anyway, WUHAN here I come.
Sun is in the sky, oh why, oh why
Would I wanna be anywhere else?
When you look with your eyes,
Everything seems nice...
But, if you look twice,
You can see it's all lies.
- Lily Allen, LDN.
Hope that's strictly for London- not China. RANDOM NOTE: I WANTED TO MAKE THE CHINA FLAG BY COLOURING EVERYTHING RED AND THEN COLOURING OUT THE STARS AND ALL, but guess what? I screwed up everything, so in some soft of silent protest to blogger's incesssant stifling of creativity, I'm just colouring everything yellow. I like yellow. Gdnite.
A surge of randomness at 9:34 PM, Singapore time.
can't keep my eyes open for much longer
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Confirmation!Not much else to say. I spent the whole day out out out. Woke up at 930, went to RGPS to visit my sister with my other sister, then went to Bibi and Baba at Scotts Road to get a new set of school uniform for the Wuhan OIP trip (and conviniently that includes long pants for confirmation :D)- after that, I wasted about 20 good minutes of my life waiting for the 54. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. Right after that, I got a haircut since my hair was apparently too long and messy (!!! yeah right), went to church at 330, went out for dinner right after church, and now I'm half asleep and typing this. I can type without looking at the keyboard, unlike Kern Choong!
I desperately need to have a long, long rest before leaving for China. For those interested, here are the flight details in the really scarce chance that you want to see my off. You'll see why in about 6 lines.
Scheduled flight details:
0730hrs
MI922 (Silkair)
SINGAPORE -> XIAMEN
Terminal 2
Row 11
Gate E2
Reporting Time: 5.15 AM (Latest 5.30)Heh. Now that you've seen the reporting time- you're probably not coming, but never mind :D Yawn. I still have to buy souvenirs for my host family. I'm half thinking of buying them like.. toys since you can't get them in China without praying really hard that you don't get lead poisoning, but wait- since we learn CULTURAL AWARENESS and dunno what else- so I shall respect other cultures and not be a sociopath (hmm, I'm not sure if that's the right word to use. But heck.) :)
I am a flower quickly fading,
Here today and gone tomorrow,
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind.
Still you hear me when I'm calling,
Lord, you catch me when I'm falling,
And you've told me who I am.
A surge of randomness at 10:40 PM, Singapore time.
unemployment is surprisingly appealing.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I'm actually really glad that I'm not working any more.
Yeah that sounds really stupid in a "lol rich kid" kind of way (which is totally not true by the way), but working at Mandarin Oriental is an ultra tough job that requires you to wake up at 5am, go home in the evening, catch up with your life in about 1 or 2 hours before you go to sleep early so you can wake up at 5am the next morning. Plus, if you have a floor i/c straight from
hell, your job is a whole lot worse. A whole lot lot lot lot lot worse. And I mean it in a totally honest way.
I had a great day at work today- had fun, talked a lot of rubbish to the guy who our nicer, other floor i/c describes as "the one who talks a lot of crap" (he even asked one of the business execs to sit on the table where the coffee machine was when she said asked if there was any place to rest. -.=??!), and in fact, our whole lvl 8 staff was having much more fun. Guess why? Our hyper-cruel floor i/c
LX-123ABCDE didn't come!*
* note:
randomly generated names have been used to protect
the privacy of those mentioned my welfare :)
The bottom line: Getting a job is NOT as hip and that some people make it out to be.
The cancelled out line below the bottom line:
Unless you work as a Orthopaedic surgeon and operate on bones like the spine and the hip.Is the good life better than the life I live
When I thought that I was gonna go crazy
And now my grandmamma ain't the only girl calling me baby
And if you feeling' me now then put your hands up in the sky
And let me hear you say aye, aye, aye, ooh
I'm good.- Kanye West, The Good Life (ft. T-Pain)
A surge of randomness at 8:35 PM, Singapore time.
music: with all i am - hillsong
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
you're the reason that I live,the reason that I singwith all I am.Tomorrow is officially the last day of my 5 day stint as a hotel worker. To be perfectly honest, I have totally no idea what my job title is called. I'm not a lift attendant or a bellboy or a receptionist- and I'm certainly not housekeeping. Seriously. If people ask me what I do there, I have absolutely no choice but to list all the random jobs that I've been doing every day since monday. I met a lot of crazy, crazy people- from the Maris Stella guy who actually went thru a job agency to get the crappy "hotel worker" job, which is totally asking for it- and there's also this china lady who was asking
angmohs caucasians what they wanted to drink- in Chinese.
Hey, now I have friendly relations with the upper crust of the Coca Cola company! I served them "2 cups of white coffee with no sugar" 5 times in a row! AND I'm glad to know that they know that I'm Andrew and not some random crap temp job loser in a black and gold hotel uniform! I think they were feeling random, but they even praised me for my "perfect timing" when I popped in and asked them if they wanted any coffee right after their 2-3pm meeting was over. :D I think I wanted to quickly refresh their room and go to star of the sea to visit my godfatherrrr before confirmation! (and away from the painful black shoes and *ahem* floor i/c from hell too :D).
Argh. My ankle hurts a lot and I'm 100000% sure that it's cos of this job. Hey, I wake up at 5 am and stay until evening- what else can it be? Oh yeah. I was playing soccer yesterday and let in about a million goals since my ankle hurt so much. Random information: After the "renovation" of the park near my house, we now have a relatively rectangular concrete place that we play soccer (goals are some random pink footpaths!) and a totally obsolete shelter that has this 2 pillars+roof that we conveniently use as goalposts for random people to shoot against me before we play matches.
Anyway. My ankle hurt so much that I couldn't really jump/dive/block any balls with my left foot, and I couldn't throw anything cos you need like... proper balance or whatever to throw properly. AND I can't kick straight for nuts with my right foot. Because of this, I took a huge huge leaf out of George Bush's bush. (Wait, is it supposed to be book? I think so.)
If you can't do anything yourself, commission someone to do it for you. I got Jeremy to kick and throw everything for me. He fared worse than me. Somehow. The really cool thing was: when we actually played a match, even though we got thrashed (since the footpaths aren't exactly goal-sized, keepers can't use hands) I could actually sprint really fast like normal which was cool. Yeah, I couldn't kick properly without hurting my foot, but hey, if you can run with an injured ankle, that's amazing.
Wade Robson's choreo for Sexyback is amazing. Yeah, he has a professional mixer to rearrange all the songs and all, but it's really amazing. The funny thing about Wade Robson, is that his Emmy nominated Ramalama Bang Bang, which is supposed to be his best, is the one that I hate the most cos I really can't stand the music. If you don't like the music, half the battle's lost. Yup. Anyway:
GOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD LUCK TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE!leon- going for french exchange programme soon! and happy bdae (even though your bdae is long over) too :Dwuhan OIP people!- we're leaving next monday to make the world a better place!lincoln ang- who's going to sing the first stanza of the chinese version of home in front of chinamen unless he can convince eugene lee to do it.everyone who's busting their brains/muscles in their cca selections!con 3s- have a great confirmation :D50 cent. he's really going to need it with kanye totally thrashing him in album sales! yay!and more. Just that I'm too tired to think of anything else to write. Yawn. Tmr is the last day of hotel work. Yay.
A surge of randomness at 9:24 PM, Singapore time.
music: just about everything on my neeon
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
My 6gb neeon must be plotting some kind of revolt real, real soon :D I think I'm seriously overusing it, but I'm so tired that I'm drowning myself in music to relax, because tomorrow I'll be back at the same hotel at the same (hyper-ultra-insanely early) time, doing the same excessively tiring job, and after tomorrow I'll be even more tired that I already am. Did I mention? My left ankle hurts like crazy after standing and walking and running in some ridiculously tight black shoes which probably could have killed my feet if I wore them any longer than I did. Oh yes. I woke up at 4 this morning by accident. I was so worried that I would oversleep, but guess what, I
underslept. Fantastic.
[random interjection]
I give you everything that I amI'm handin' over everything that I've gotCause I wanna have a really true loveDon't ever wanna have to go and give you upStay up till 4 In The Morning & the tears are pouringand I wanna make it worth the fight- Gwen Stefani, 4 in the Morning
Amazing(ly random and dumb)!!
Anyway, I woke up at 4, and it was freezing cold, so made sure my phone alarm was set to 5.30, and went back to sleep. :) The cool thing is that I didn't even oversleep after that! I woke up at 5.20, which is a real accomplishment- I ALWAYS oversleep after I go back to sleep when I undersleep! <-- hey that sounds cool. Somewhat. Hahaha. I missed the 6.10 162, and couldn't reach the hotel in time for breakfast at the staff canteen (hey, the food is free, and it's open 24 hours).
I'm just randomly watching so you think you can dance videos on youtube (Wade Robson is totally the best dancer/choreographer in the world), and listening to music in a pathetic attempt to relax before another day of Mandarin Oriental mayhem. Even though I'm kind of happy I'm not a lift attendant like most of the concierge group people (hey, its a ridiculous job that totally waste's all your time.), THEY GET TO LISTEN TO MUSIC WHILE WORKING!! Grr. I have to listen to my stupid i/c who's not even like.. some big boss guy- he's just another banqueting staff member. (The floor managers are really nice, though :D) Anyway, I'm probably 100% sure that I'm not ever working in a hotel ever again, unless I'm really desperate for money and don't mind walking around half-paralysed for a few weeks, so yeah. :)
On a side (or rather, bottom) note, HMV IS PATHETIC. I dropped in to see if they had Her Name is Nicole, but couldn't find it. I saw Unbreakeable and Back Home by BSB and Westlife, neither which I want due to the unbelievably high price. Plus, I don't get how people can sell singles for the same price as normal albums when you just get 1 or 2 songs and a few extras. Anyway, my music collection is steadily increasing :D I have the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and the Harry Potter soundtrack plus my sister also has West Side Story Soundtrack which I haven't ripped yet. AND I have ¡Viva La Cobra! by Cobra Starship which is great too :D
So, since you wanna be with me,You have to follow throughWith every word you say.And I- all I really want is you;You to stick around,I'll see you everydayBut you have to follow through.- Gavin Degraw, Follow Through
A surge of randomness at 8:15 PM, Singapore time.
never say no. but feel free to say "i'll check with my manager" and never return
Monday, November 12, 2007
Today was officially the first day of work at a hotel that I will probably never work for, doing a job that I will probably never ever do after this- and come to think of it, I'm not even paid $2 an hour like they do at McDonalds.
Mandarin Oriental is a really nice hotel. They are basically 3 rows of rooms that all have amazing views, not like some Thai hotel that gives you a picturesque view of the side of the building and maybe some other shopping centres nearby. You can either see Singapore river AND Esplanade AND the Singapore skyline AND PSA (which had some brown smoke billowing out for no reason.. Michael took a photo!), or go to another row of rooms and see Suntec and raffles city and St Andrew's Cathedral and the rest of city hall, or go to the last row and see the ocean and SINGAPORE FLYER UP CLOSE :O Really amazing hotel, but the jobs are insanely tiring, and it didn't help that I stayed up talking to various people on MSN and then watched air crash investigation on National Geographic until almost 4am. Heh.
AND the food at the staff canteen is good and it's free :D Ate dinner with Michael, Timothy and Avinash. We had triples. The cook must have thought we were crazy, but nope, we're just hungry, totally underpaid and tired growing sec 3 boys in black and gold hotel uniform :) Argh I'm too tired to write anything properly. I didn't even take any photos cos my phone decided to run out of battery- and anyway phones weren't allowed today. But they're fine tomorrow, so I'll probably take some photos photos photos.
Oh did I mention I have to report at 7 AM TOMORROW? Means I'll have to leave home at 5/6+. Are there even buses then? Bleah. At the end of the day, I wasn't dead like I was half-expecting to be. But I'm dead tired.
A surge of randomness at 9:12 PM, Singapore time.
music: kiss my sass - cobra starship
Sunday, November 11, 2007
I feel like im drownin in da ocean
somebody come and take me away- Sean Kingston
Ok if i stay on the computer long enough to be posting twice a day, something is wrong, and pretty soon, I won't be able to survive without specs anymore D: argh! Eh I like it that my eyesight isn't that bad, so I can kind of choose to whether to wear specs or not except during exams or I'll have to lean really close to the paper cos they ALWAYS print everything super small in some patheetic attempt to save the earth from global warming. Anyway the previous post was nothing :D youtube videos of really really really cool modern dance performances don't satisfy my need to write lots of crap every day :)
Anyway after confirmation rehearsal, I've been desperately trying to do my part of the tq proposal, but I haven't done much work for so long that it's like dragging a sack on the ground. Hey, how's that for a great analogy. Plus, I'm half regretting signing up for the Work Exposure Programme which I'm tempted not to go for and possible get killed by Mrs Janki. I'm attached to Oriental Hotel, and I missed the compulsory briefing in school cos of church camp, so I'm half clueless, half dead. Yay. Im just going to tag along with Lincoln tmr and hope everything turns out fine. :)
Right after my possibly torturous hotel week is CONFIRMATION and omg I'm going first. Crap. My 3 siblings ALL have names starting with M, but great, I'm Andrew and I'm always like near the front which sucks sometimes. Like when I have to go absolute first for some stuff, and when people insist on being retards and start counting from the back. But otherwise, as Andrew K. says, "Andrew is the sexiest name alive" :D so yeah. But confirmation is like.. kind of bittersweet. I've only started getting to know some of the people and half the people in my huge cat class are still... just random people. Yeah.. kind of sad..
I haven't properly choreographed the dance.I haven't done the tq proposal that was due long agoI think I'm going to die for Work Exposure ProgrammeI am going to China to teach English next weekI think I'm going to die clueless in ChinaI'm going to spout random butchered malay that doesn't make sense.
Saya mahu bermain bola sepak!
Saya tak mahu tulis tq proposal!
Saya mahu pergi ke tidur.
Saya tak ialah orang Malayu.
I am not malay. I am not malay. I am not malay.
Malay is a scarily funny language that I've got 10 DMP lessons worth of knowledge of.
I've left all the hate and fury at St Teresa's. I hope.
"I forgive you;
I love you;
You are mine;
take my hand.
Go in peace;
sin no more,
beloved one."
A surge of randomness at 9:39 PM, Singapore time.
post-exam stress
Who says holidays are for resting and relaxing???? Mrs Jacq
Sim Chua apparently thinks we are all going to take a nice long rest these 2 months, but guess what? We have so so so much crap to do that we're all going to drown in our homework, yay.
A surge of randomness at 5:08 PM, Singapore time.
late night letter
Saturday, November 10, 2007
GOALS and DESPERATELY IN-MY-FACE TASKS FOR THE UNSPECIFIED TIME PERIOD.
1. THINKQUEST PROPOSAL (OVERDUE)
2. CHOREO DANCE BY TUESDAY 9AM ARGH (HOME IS A DUMB SONG)
3. WORK EXPOSURE PROGRAMME. I'M SCREWED, YAY
4. BUY STUFF FOR WUHAN OIP TRIP (BEFORE I FLY OFF ON THE 19TH ON A LOUSY Silkair A320)
5. SAVE UP FOR AN IPOD TO SAVE MY DYING NEEON
6. GET HER NAME IS NICOLE, GRADUATION, DRASTIC FANTASTIC AND SOME OTHER POP ALBUMS
7. BEAT KC FOR SIT&REACH NEXT YEAR! I
ONLY GOT 58cm, which is
ONLY 4cm FURTHER THAN HIM! I WANT AT LEAST 65cm AND GET A COLLAR PIN ARGHHHHH!
8. WHATEVER ELSE MAY COME TO MY MIND LATER.
sorry for the caps.
all these are urgent except for number 7, and i need somewhere to make a proper list that won't get lost in my jungle-resembling desk.
A surge of randomness at 10:24 PM, Singapore time.
touched by an angel
Warning: This post is really long.Warning 2: Even though I don't really like talking about religious stuff publicly in the spirit of respecting other religions, I guess you'll have to bear with me today :DI'm back from camp! 3 days of tiring, fun, happiness, randomness (insert your own noun here), in this really, really, REALLY weird-feeling place. Majodi Centre is some isolated, ulu sanctum of spirituality (I magically retain my class-topping lit skills exemplified by alliteration! :O <-- rubbish), but the retreat centre at St Teresa's church is on the TOP floor of the parish house at this ancient but pretty church next to IJ Kellock. (I stole some random picture off google images below hehe)
Anyway, the weird thing is that the retreat centre is right opposite PSA, and the roofs of the PSA buildings freakily look like people- it reminded me of the classic Jesus walking on water scene. I REALLLLLY wanted to take lots of photos :( It was a really nice place but GUESS WHAT? I'm a good boy and handed over my phone unlike *ahem* someone who was fiddling with his ipod touch at night >< Argh. No photos of the place- only random group shots that aren't with me. Haha.
As usual, we were split into groups again (that's kind of common sense), and it was supposed to be really random, but my group was half made of people that I knew and half made of nice people that I didn't. The thing I hate about random groups is that I feel very scared that I get some crap group with no friends :S But in the end I got grouped with really nice people. [small note: I'm really glad I wasn't grouped with any of the *barbarians* that I really try to stay far away from]. Anyway my group comprised Bryan, Renee, Sandra, Mary-Anne (no idea how it's spelt, but that's my JC sister's name, so I shall spell it the only way I know), Rachel, Pauline and Damien, and our facils were Xavier and Deborah. Yay how's that for a totally boring yet seemingly necessary factual regurgitation. :P
Haha I shan't be stupid and start narrating an elaborated itinarary cos that's just stupid. But I need to say this desperately. The Mission Team of Indians as I call them are SO, SO, SO SADISTIC!!!! ARGH! There was this
torture session "game" where we had to sit in the blazing hot sun (sorry bayley, but some things cannot be tahan-ed :D)and then proceed to play this totally cruel game where we had to take turns to use our mouths to find M&Ms in a plate with a whole pile of flour. !!!!!!!! I ate so so so much flour and breathed in a whole lot and I still have this lingering feeling that I have flour in my throat/lungs somewhere and I keep coughing and it hurts :( AND we had to use chopsticks to fish out random items from milk water that looks like the fishhead bee hoon soup T_T argh.
I've come to realise that some people are really, really, really, really crazy and spoilt, crazily spoilt and so spoilt that it's crazy. Take exhibit A: Alex, who is contemplating choosing either Sally, Apple or Sapple as his confirmation name. He refused to eat any of the food and survived on his own smuggled food, 2 apples and random stuff ><
BUSINESS CLASS EVERYWHERE HE GOES, from Paris to Milan, London to KL, and he was telling me how he flew on Garuda and got a tail seat and hated it. I mean HI? That's the safest part of the plane unlike business class which is right in front -.- why do you think black boxes are at the tail of the plane and not lounging in business class? Argh AND he has this super weird fengshui ritualistic thing that is SO scary. Apparently, his blatantly flawed fengshui master made him a firm believer in the fact that "feet can't point at doors because they resemble dead bodies", and that "heads should always point to the CBD". WHATTTTTTTTTTT?????????
Anyway, the most important part of the camp was really the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and NOT some rubbish fengshui crap, and that was really, really cool/touching. It's really something that's indescribable and the annoying thing is that people who don't believe can't be persuaded into believing because you really can't say much about it. It's something you feel inside and not something you can really express well no matter how vast your vocabulary is. Oh well. I feel pretty happy and seemingly carefree now. Um. I wonder how long it will last, but oh well.
I think the last activity where we went around writing stuff on paper stuck on each other's backs was really nice. On one hand you have to trust that no one writes some crap on your paper, and on another hand there's like... haix wait never mind. I'm feeling pretty touched after reading my paper. There's really this thing that comes with writing that unleashes the unknown. I'm really surprised by the things that the people that I least expect to write write, but I think I'll keep that personal :) I'm not sure what to do with the paper but it's a very special piece of A4 paper. "Hey Andrew, Andrew is the sexiest name on Earth! Stay sexy, Andrew". Heh. Andrew Krygsman is lame but nice and super random.
I'm going to try finding all the songs we sang :D
PS: I don't think I'm shy- I'm just quiet sometimes :)
A surge of randomness at 8:45 PM, Singapore time.
unbreakable
Before I start rambling on and on about camp, I'm officially transferring off all my old posts, so I shall be restarting this blog :D I shall write a ultra hyper long post LATER. I have about a million unread emails (haha nice joke :P) and I have about a million things to do (wish it were a nice joke ><).
I shall temporarily leave you with the chorus of this "really nice" song-
This is home, truly
Where I know I must be
Where my dreams wait for me
Where that river always flowsThis is home, surely
As my senses tell me
This is where I won't be alone
For this is where I know it's home-and I have to choreograph a dance with the chinese version of this totally death inducing song.
A surge of randomness at 8:10 PM, Singapore time.
heaven is 0oC at night
Monday, November 19, 2007
Guess what? I'm actually blogging from China, using my hosts' super ancient but workable IBM ThinkPad! I shouldn't underestimate this machine though, cos it probably has a mind of its own. But anyway, this house that I'm staying in right now is very very much like a hotel. I have my own room, its freezing cold, has big windows, and has a nice view. Both my sony battery charger and my sony ericsson charger can miraculously fit into the absolutely outrageouly weird 5 pin socket, and that means I'm gonna take lots and lots of pictures :D
I can't really upload any now since I apparently didn't bring the cable since I apparently didn't expect my host to have MSN and internet and all, and I'm apparently freezing cold and my hands keep pressing the wrong keys on the keyboard which is configured in a really weird way so I kepe making mistakes and have to go back and forth typing stuff that I've meant to type about 5 minutes ago. Did I mention, its 0 degrees celcius outside? Water is supposed to FREEZE at 0 degrees celcius (But apparently not, I guess the pollution and all makes the melting point lower than it already is, ya?)
This is such a weird immersion programme first day. We spent half the day flying and now I'm kind of stoning in the host's house cos my host buddy is doing his homework and preparing for his major test. Whee. And also, a320 is probably the worst plane in the world in my standards. After one ride on that silkair plane, I spent about 2 hours trying to hear properly again- and a lot more time trying to get rid of the annoying headache that I got during the descent. And in contrast, the China Southern 737 was pretty smooth, and, even though I probably pissed off the air steward when I asked for extra food and extra drinks, the staff were pretty good. Except the female pilot who could hardly speak english, but yeah.
So far the hosts are pretty nice :D My buddy is some basketballer who has pictures of Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian on his bedroom wall (expected), but also has papers and papers of chem stuff stuck to his cupboard door which he needs to memorise. Oo. My hands are really, really cold right now so I guess I shall stop soon. It's been dark since 5.30, so 9pm is really kind of late. Considering I woke up at 4am to get to the airport on time, yeah, that's late. More soon. I can't stand it any more. I'm frozen.
A surge of randomness at 8:38 PM, Singapore time.
leaving for the middle country
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Where, you might ask, is the middle country? Translate that directly into chinese- yeah, it's a huge yet commonly occuring crime in the world of RI chinese projects. Anyway, for 14 long days, I shall be away from this heavenly abode called Singapore, away from MSN (unless I strike it rich and get a really loaded family with computers in every room for my homestay), away from my soon-to-be-retired neeon which has hundreds of songs just dying to be played on my entertainmentless silkair/china-southern/shenzhen air flights. Great. Oh yeah- I couldn't find any winter gloves, so in the spirit of innovation, I'm bringing my goalkeeper gloves- just just just in case. Sandra challenged me to some random DropOut puzzle game and apparently she says its super addictive. Haha I hope I don't get hooked by tonight, or I'm going to suffer super withdrawal syndrome in Wuhan.
RANDOM INFO: I now have a grey and orange timex watch :D I can finally stop asking people for the time/straining my eyes to read ezlink card readers to get the time (Side note: whenever I have to do that- I'm probably late.)Oh yes. I'm bringing my phone, so anyone who has too much money to spare, please call 82397768 for a mind-numbing conversation of your life- it'll probably take at least 10 minutes to get past the China telecom operators, if that's any added bonus.
OH YES OMG. Before I leave, I totally have to say this out of total joy. I have an ipod touch !!!! I didn't even have to touch a single dollar from my ipod fund! So, I have $250+ in my savings AND a nice ipod (even though I'm half worried about the lack of space.. it's only 8gb, and YES LEON, feel free to shove your 80gb ipod classic in my face in the name of storage superiority. But anyway, I didn't really choose it or anything, but it's pretty cool. I was fiddling around with Alex' ipod touch during con3 camp (hmm, I seriously wonder what it's doing there :O), and yeah, I'm happy :D
Anyway, WUHAN here I come.
Sun is in the sky, oh why, oh why
Would I wanna be anywhere else?
When you look with your eyes,
Everything seems nice...
But, if you look twice,
You can see it's all lies.
- Lily Allen, LDN.
Hope that's strictly for London- not China. RANDOM NOTE: I WANTED TO MAKE THE CHINA FLAG BY COLOURING EVERYTHING RED AND THEN COLOURING OUT THE STARS AND ALL, but guess what? I screwed up everything, so in some soft of silent protest to blogger's incesssant stifling of creativity, I'm just colouring everything yellow. I like yellow. Gdnite.
A surge of randomness at 9:34 PM, Singapore time.
can't keep my eyes open for much longer
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Confirmation!Not much else to say. I spent the whole day out out out. Woke up at 930, went to RGPS to visit my sister with my other sister, then went to Bibi and Baba at Scotts Road to get a new set of school uniform for the Wuhan OIP trip (and conviniently that includes long pants for confirmation :D)- after that, I wasted about 20 good minutes of my life waiting for the 54. Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. Right after that, I got a haircut since my hair was apparently too long and messy (!!! yeah right), went to church at 330, went out for dinner right after church, and now I'm half asleep and typing this. I can type without looking at the keyboard, unlike Kern Choong!
I desperately need to have a long, long rest before leaving for China. For those interested, here are the flight details in the really scarce chance that you want to see my off. You'll see why in about 6 lines.
Scheduled flight details:
0730hrs
MI922 (Silkair)
SINGAPORE -> XIAMEN
Terminal 2
Row 11
Gate E2
Reporting Time: 5.15 AM (Latest 5.30)Heh. Now that you've seen the reporting time- you're probably not coming, but never mind :D Yawn. I still have to buy souvenirs for my host family. I'm half thinking of buying them like.. toys since you can't get them in China without praying really hard that you don't get lead poisoning, but wait- since we learn CULTURAL AWARENESS and dunno what else- so I shall respect other cultures and not be a sociopath (hmm, I'm not sure if that's the right word to use. But heck.) :)
I am a flower quickly fading,
Here today and gone tomorrow,
A wave tossed in the ocean,
A vapor in the wind.
Still you hear me when I'm calling,
Lord, you catch me when I'm falling,
And you've told me who I am.
A surge of randomness at 10:40 PM, Singapore time.
unemployment is surprisingly appealing.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I'm actually really glad that I'm not working any more.
Yeah that sounds really stupid in a "lol rich kid" kind of way (which is totally not true by the way), but working at Mandarin Oriental is an ultra tough job that requires you to wake up at 5am, go home in the evening, catch up with your life in about 1 or 2 hours before you go to sleep early so you can wake up at 5am the next morning. Plus, if you have a floor i/c straight from
hell, your job is a whole lot worse. A whole lot lot lot lot lot worse. And I mean it in a totally honest way.
I had a great day at work today- had fun, talked a lot of rubbish to the guy who our nicer, other floor i/c describes as "the one who talks a lot of crap" (he even asked one of the business execs to sit on the table where the coffee machine was when she said asked if there was any place to rest. -.=??!), and in fact, our whole lvl 8 staff was having much more fun. Guess why? Our hyper-cruel floor i/c
LX-123ABCDE didn't come!*
* note:
randomly generated names have been used to protect
the privacy of those mentioned my welfare :)
The bottom line: Getting a job is NOT as hip and that some people make it out to be.
The cancelled out line below the bottom line:
Unless you work as a Orthopaedic surgeon and operate on bones like the spine and the hip.Is the good life better than the life I live
When I thought that I was gonna go crazy
And now my grandmamma ain't the only girl calling me baby
And if you feeling' me now then put your hands up in the sky
And let me hear you say aye, aye, aye, ooh
I'm good.- Kanye West, The Good Life (ft. T-Pain)
A surge of randomness at 8:35 PM, Singapore time.
music: with all i am - hillsong
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
you're the reason that I live,the reason that I singwith all I am.Tomorrow is officially the last day of my 5 day stint as a hotel worker. To be perfectly honest, I have totally no idea what my job title is called. I'm not a lift attendant or a bellboy or a receptionist- and I'm certainly not housekeeping. Seriously. If people ask me what I do there, I have absolutely no choice but to list all the random jobs that I've been doing every day since monday. I met a lot of crazy, crazy people- from the Maris Stella guy who actually went thru a job agency to get the crappy "hotel worker" job, which is totally asking for it- and there's also this china lady who was asking
angmohs caucasians what they wanted to drink- in Chinese.
Hey, now I have friendly relations with the upper crust of the Coca Cola company! I served them "2 cups of white coffee with no sugar" 5 times in a row! AND I'm glad to know that they know that I'm Andrew and not some random crap temp job loser in a black and gold hotel uniform! I think they were feeling random, but they even praised me for my "perfect timing" when I popped in and asked them if they wanted any coffee right after their 2-3pm meeting was over. :D I think I wanted to quickly refresh their room and go to star of the sea to visit my godfatherrrr before confirmation! (and away from the painful black shoes and *ahem* floor i/c from hell too :D).
Argh. My ankle hurts a lot and I'm 100000% sure that it's cos of this job. Hey, I wake up at 5 am and stay until evening- what else can it be? Oh yeah. I was playing soccer yesterday and let in about a million goals since my ankle hurt so much. Random information: After the "renovation" of the park near my house, we now have a relatively rectangular concrete place that we play soccer (goals are some random pink footpaths!) and a totally obsolete shelter that has this 2 pillars+roof that we conveniently use as goalposts for random people to shoot against me before we play matches.
Anyway. My ankle hurt so much that I couldn't really jump/dive/block any balls with my left foot, and I couldn't throw anything cos you need like... proper balance or whatever to throw properly. AND I can't kick straight for nuts with my right foot. Because of this, I took a huge huge leaf out of George Bush's bush. (Wait, is it supposed to be book? I think so.)
If you can't do anything yourself, commission someone to do it for you. I got Jeremy to kick and throw everything for me. He fared worse than me. Somehow. The really cool thing was: when we actually played a match, even though we got thrashed (since the footpaths aren't exactly goal-sized, keepers can't use hands) I could actually sprint really fast like normal which was cool. Yeah, I couldn't kick properly without hurting my foot, but hey, if you can run with an injured ankle, that's amazing.
Wade Robson's choreo for Sexyback is amazing. Yeah, he has a professional mixer to rearrange all the songs and all, but it's really amazing. The funny thing about Wade Robson, is that his Emmy nominated Ramalama Bang Bang, which is supposed to be his best, is the one that I hate the most cos I really can't stand the music. If you don't like the music, half the battle's lost. Yup. Anyway:
GOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD GOOD LUCK TO THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE!leon- going for french exchange programme soon! and happy bdae (even though your bdae is long over) too :Dwuhan OIP people!- we're leaving next monday to make the world a better place!lincoln ang- who's going to sing the first stanza of the chinese version of home in front of chinamen unless he can convince eugene lee to do it.everyone who's busting their brains/muscles in their cca selections!con 3s- have a great confirmation :D50 cent. he's really going to need it with kanye totally thrashing him in album sales! yay!and more. Just that I'm too tired to think of anything else to write. Yawn. Tmr is the last day of hotel work. Yay.
A surge of randomness at 9:24 PM, Singapore time.
music: just about everything on my neeon
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
My 6gb neeon must be plotting some kind of revolt real, real soon :D I think I'm seriously overusing it, but I'm so tired that I'm drowning myself in music to relax, because tomorrow I'll be back at the same hotel at the same (hyper-ultra-insanely early) time, doing the same excessively tiring job, and after tomorrow I'll be even more tired that I already am. Did I mention? My left ankle hurts like crazy after standing and walking and running in some ridiculously tight black shoes which probably could have killed my feet if I wore them any longer than I did. Oh yes. I woke up at 4 this morning by accident. I was so worried that I would oversleep, but guess what, I
underslept. Fantastic.
[random interjection]
I give you everything that I amI'm handin' over everything that I've gotCause I wanna have a really true loveDon't ever wanna have to go and give you upStay up till 4 In The Morning & the tears are pouringand I wanna make it worth the fight- Gwen Stefani, 4 in the Morning
Amazing(ly random and dumb)!!
Anyway, I woke up at 4, and it was freezing cold, so made sure my phone alarm was set to 5.30, and went back to sleep. :) The cool thing is that I didn't even oversleep after that! I woke up at 5.20, which is a real accomplishment- I ALWAYS oversleep after I go back to sleep when I undersleep! <-- hey that sounds cool. Somewhat. Hahaha. I missed the 6.10 162, and couldn't reach the hotel in time for breakfast at the staff canteen (hey, the food is free, and it's open 24 hours).
I'm just randomly watching so you think you can dance videos on youtube (Wade Robson is totally the best dancer/choreographer in the world), and listening to music in a pathetic attempt to relax before another day of Mandarin Oriental mayhem. Even though I'm kind of happy I'm not a lift attendant like most of the concierge group people (hey, its a ridiculous job that totally waste's all your time.), THEY GET TO LISTEN TO MUSIC WHILE WORKING!! Grr. I have to listen to my stupid i/c who's not even like.. some big boss guy- he's just another banqueting staff member. (The floor managers are really nice, though :D) Anyway, I'm probably 100% sure that I'm not ever working in a hotel ever again, unless I'm really desperate for money and don't mind walking around half-paralysed for a few weeks, so yeah. :)
On a side (or rather, bottom) note, HMV IS PATHETIC. I dropped in to see if they had Her Name is Nicole, but couldn't find it. I saw Unbreakeable and Back Home by BSB and Westlife, neither which I want due to the unbelievably high price. Plus, I don't get how people can sell singles for the same price as normal albums when you just get 1 or 2 songs and a few extras. Anyway, my music collection is steadily increasing :D I have the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and the Harry Potter soundtrack plus my sister also has West Side Story Soundtrack which I haven't ripped yet. AND I have ¡Viva La Cobra! by Cobra Starship which is great too :D
So, since you wanna be with me,You have to follow throughWith every word you say.And I- all I really want is you;You to stick around,I'll see you everydayBut you have to follow through.- Gavin Degraw, Follow Through
A surge of randomness at 8:15 PM, Singapore time.
never say no. but feel free to say "i'll check with my manager" and never return
Monday, November 12, 2007
Today was officially the first day of work at a hotel that I will probably never work for, doing a job that I will probably never ever do after this- and come to think of it, I'm not even paid $2 an hour like they do at McDonalds.
Mandarin Oriental is a really nice hotel. They are basically 3 rows of rooms that all have amazing views, not like some Thai hotel that gives you a picturesque view of the side of the building and maybe some other shopping centres nearby. You can either see Singapore river AND Esplanade AND the Singapore skyline AND PSA (which had some brown smoke billowing out for no reason.. Michael took a photo!), or go to another row of rooms and see Suntec and raffles city and St Andrew's Cathedral and the rest of city hall, or go to the last row and see the ocean and SINGAPORE FLYER UP CLOSE :O Really amazing hotel, but the jobs are insanely tiring, and it didn't help that I stayed up talking to various people on MSN and then watched air crash investigation on National Geographic until almost 4am. Heh.
AND the food at the staff canteen is good and it's free :D Ate dinner with Michael, Timothy and Avinash. We had triples. The cook must have thought we were crazy, but nope, we're just hungry, totally underpaid and tired growing sec 3 boys in black and gold hotel uniform :) Argh I'm too tired to write anything properly. I didn't even take any photos cos my phone decided to run out of battery- and anyway phones weren't allowed today. But they're fine tomorrow, so I'll probably take some photos photos photos.
Oh did I mention I have to report at 7 AM TOMORROW? Means I'll have to leave home at 5/6+. Are there even buses then? Bleah. At the end of the day, I wasn't dead like I was half-expecting to be. But I'm dead tired.
A surge of randomness at 9:12 PM, Singapore time.
music: kiss my sass - cobra starship
Sunday, November 11, 2007
I feel like im drownin in da ocean
somebody come and take me away- Sean Kingston
Ok if i stay on the computer long enough to be posting twice a day, something is wrong, and pretty soon, I won't be able to survive without specs anymore D: argh! Eh I like it that my eyesight isn't that bad, so I can kind of choose to whether to wear specs or not except during exams or I'll have to lean really close to the paper cos they ALWAYS print everything super small in some patheetic attempt to save the earth from global warming. Anyway the previous post was nothing :D youtube videos of really really really cool modern dance performances don't satisfy my need to write lots of crap every day :)
Anyway after confirmation rehearsal, I've been desperately trying to do my part of the tq proposal, but I haven't done much work for so long that it's like dragging a sack on the ground. Hey, how's that for a great analogy. Plus, I'm half regretting signing up for the Work Exposure Programme which I'm tempted not to go for and possible get killed by Mrs Janki. I'm attached to Oriental Hotel, and I missed the compulsory briefing in school cos of church camp, so I'm half clueless, half dead. Yay. Im just going to tag along with Lincoln tmr and hope everything turns out fine. :)
Right after my possibly torturous hotel week is CONFIRMATION and omg I'm going first. Crap. My 3 siblings ALL have names starting with M, but great, I'm Andrew and I'm always like near the front which sucks sometimes. Like when I have to go absolute first for some stuff, and when people insist on being retards and start counting from the back. But otherwise, as Andrew K. says, "Andrew is the sexiest name alive" :D so yeah. But confirmation is like.. kind of bittersweet. I've only started getting to know some of the people and half the people in my huge cat class are still... just random people. Yeah.. kind of sad..
I haven't properly choreographed the dance.I haven't done the tq proposal that was due long agoI think I'm going to die for Work Exposure ProgrammeI am going to China to teach English next weekI think I'm going to die clueless in ChinaI'm going to spout random butchered malay that doesn't make sense.
Saya mahu bermain bola sepak!
Saya tak mahu tulis tq proposal!
Saya mahu pergi ke tidur.
Saya tak ialah orang Malayu.
I am not malay. I am not malay. I am not malay.
Malay is a scarily funny language that I've got 10 DMP lessons worth of knowledge of.
I've left all the hate and fury at St Teresa's. I hope.
"I forgive you;
I love you;
You are mine;
take my hand.
Go in peace;
sin no more,
beloved one."
A surge of randomness at 9:39 PM, Singapore time.
post-exam stress
Who says holidays are for resting and relaxing???? Mrs Jacq
Sim Chua apparently thinks we are all going to take a nice long rest these 2 months, but guess what? We have so so so much crap to do that we're all going to drown in our homework, yay.
A surge of randomness at 5:08 PM, Singapore time.
late night letter
Saturday, November 10, 2007
GOALS and DESPERATELY IN-MY-FACE TASKS FOR THE UNSPECIFIED TIME PERIOD.
1. THINKQUEST PROPOSAL (OVERDUE)
2. CHOREO DANCE BY TUESDAY 9AM ARGH (HOME IS A DUMB SONG)
3. WORK EXPOSURE PROGRAMME. I'M SCREWED, YAY
4. BUY STUFF FOR WUHAN OIP TRIP (BEFORE I FLY OFF ON THE 19TH ON A LOUSY Silkair A320)
5. SAVE UP FOR AN IPOD TO SAVE MY DYING NEEON
6. GET HER NAME IS NICOLE, GRADUATION, DRASTIC FANTASTIC AND SOME OTHER POP ALBUMS
7. BEAT KC FOR SIT&REACH NEXT YEAR! I
ONLY GOT 58cm, which is
ONLY 4cm FURTHER THAN HIM! I WANT AT LEAST 65cm AND GET A COLLAR PIN ARGHHHHH!
8. WHATEVER ELSE MAY COME TO MY MIND LATER.
sorry for the caps.
all these are urgent except for number 7, and i need somewhere to make a proper list that won't get lost in my jungle-resembling desk.
A surge of randomness at 10:24 PM, Singapore time.
touched by an angel
Warning: This post is really long.Warning 2: Even though I don't really like talking about religious stuff publicly in the spirit of respecting other religions, I guess you'll have to bear with me today :DI'm back from camp! 3 days of tiring, fun, happiness, randomness (insert your own noun here), in this really, really, REALLY weird-feeling place. Majodi Centre is some isolated, ulu sanctum of spirituality (I magically retain my class-topping lit skills exemplified by alliteration! :O <-- rubbish), but the retreat centre at St Teresa's church is on the TOP floor of the parish house at this ancient but pretty church next to IJ Kellock. (I stole some random picture off google images below hehe)
Anyway, the weird thing is that the retreat centre is right opposite PSA, and the roofs of the PSA buildings freakily look like people- it reminded me of the classic Jesus walking on water scene. I REALLLLLY wanted to take lots of photos :( It was a really nice place but GUESS WHAT? I'm a good boy and handed over my phone unlike *ahem* someone who was fiddling with his ipod touch at night >< Argh. No photos of the place- only random group shots that aren't with me. Haha.
As usual, we were split into groups again (that's kind of common sense), and it was supposed to be really random, but my group was half made of people that I knew and half made of nice people that I didn't. The thing I hate about random groups is that I feel very scared that I get some crap group with no friends :S But in the end I got grouped with really nice people. [small note: I'm really glad I wasn't grouped with any of the *barbarians* that I really try to stay far away from]. Anyway my group comprised Bryan, Renee, Sandra, Mary-Anne (no idea how it's spelt, but that's my JC sister's name, so I shall spell it the only way I know), Rachel, Pauline and Damien, and our facils were Xavier and Deborah. Yay how's that for a totally boring yet seemingly necessary factual regurgitation. :P
Haha I shan't be stupid and start narrating an elaborated itinarary cos that's just stupid. But I need to say this desperately. The Mission Team of Indians as I call them are SO, SO, SO SADISTIC!!!! ARGH! There was this
torture session "game" where we had to sit in the blazing hot sun (sorry bayley, but some things cannot be tahan-ed :D)and then proceed to play this totally cruel game where we had to take turns to use our mouths to find M&Ms in a plate with a whole pile of flour. !!!!!!!! I ate so so so much flour and breathed in a whole lot and I still have this lingering feeling that I have flour in my throat/lungs somewhere and I keep coughing and it hurts :( AND we had to use chopsticks to fish out random items from milk water that looks like the fishhead bee hoon soup T_T argh.
I've come to realise that some people are really, really, really, really crazy and spoilt, crazily spoilt and so spoilt that it's crazy. Take exhibit A: Alex, who is contemplating choosing either Sally, Apple or Sapple as his confirmation name. He refused to eat any of the food and survived on his own smuggled food, 2 apples and random stuff ><
BUSINESS CLASS EVERYWHERE HE GOES, from Paris to Milan, London to KL, and he was telling me how he flew on Garuda and got a tail seat and hated it. I mean HI? That's the safest part of the plane unlike business class which is right in front -.- why do you think black boxes are at the tail of the plane and not lounging in business class? Argh AND he has this super weird fengshui ritualistic thing that is SO scary. Apparently, his blatantly flawed fengshui master made him a firm believer in the fact that "feet can't point at doors because they resemble dead bodies", and that "heads should always point to the CBD". WHATTTTTTTTTTT?????????
Anyway, the most important part of the camp was really the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and NOT some rubbish fengshui crap, and that was really, really cool/touching. It's really something that's indescribable and the annoying thing is that people who don't believe can't be persuaded into believing because you really can't say much about it. It's something you feel inside and not something you can really express well no matter how vast your vocabulary is. Oh well. I feel pretty happy and seemingly carefree now. Um. I wonder how long it will last, but oh well.
I think the last activity where we went around writing stuff on paper stuck on each other's backs was really nice. On one hand you have to trust that no one writes some crap on your paper, and on another hand there's like... haix wait never mind. I'm feeling pretty touched after reading my paper. There's really this thing that comes with writing that unleashes the unknown. I'm really surprised by the things that the people that I least expect to write write, but I think I'll keep that personal :) I'm not sure what to do with the paper but it's a very special piece of A4 paper. "Hey Andrew, Andrew is the sexiest name on Earth! Stay sexy, Andrew". Heh. Andrew Krygsman is lame but nice and super random.
I'm going to try finding all the songs we sang :D
PS: I don't think I'm shy- I'm just quiet sometimes :)
A surge of randomness at 8:45 PM, Singapore time.
unbreakable
Before I start rambling on and on about camp, I'm officially transferring off all my old posts, so I shall be restarting this blog :D I shall write a ultra hyper long post LATER. I have about a million unread emails (haha nice joke :P) and I have about a million things to do (wish it were a nice joke ><).
I shall temporarily leave you with the chorus of this "really nice" song-
This is home, truly
Where I know I must be
Where my dreams wait for me
Where that river always flowsThis is home, surely
As my senses tell me
This is where I won't be alone
For this is where I know it's home-and I have to choreograph a dance with the chinese version of this totally death inducing song.
A surge of randomness at 8:10 PM, Singapore time.
