Day and day and day

And there goes the last week of May, and hence my vacation attachment at my sponsoring company - for now.
Today is my very last day at the company before I get the whole of the month June off so that I can concentrate on training with my dragonboat teammates for the dragonboat festival come the 30th. Looking back, these 3 weeks has its fair share of exciting, and yet sometimes hilariously unfortunate events which I'm starting to accept as a part of my perhaps semi-charmed life.

Let's see. I met a lot of nice friendly people at the company, and not to mention machines which were 2-3 times my age. You'd be surprised to know that despite being old, they've almost never broke down before in their many years of service. No wonder the company which produced these machines went bust - there were no orders for new machines since the old ones seem to last forever xD

I got the chance to indulge myself in the super hot, and dust-filled, sauna-like atmosphere near the plant furnaces. As mentioned to a fellow staff on the orientation tour, it was more of a pore-opener than an eye-opener to us; and the guys were just grinning away at the girls from HR dept, with expressions which say, "NOW, you know what work is like for us xD ".

I met two charming young ladies from the HR department. One of which probably was either disgusted or extremely amused by my attempt to ask her to help me to fill in my feedback form for last week's staff orientation according the answer key ("54553554454434544545" "wonderful" "magnific" "Tan Jo" "QA/QC" "28/5/07") that I sent her through email. The other one was either irresistibly cute or was totally in love with "Milo" when she knocked her own head against a Milo tin she was playing with when she was little, making a tiny crescent-shaped scar in between her eyes.

Tan Jo probably made his own name known to the CEO of the company when he accidentally emailed a print request to his big big boss instead of to his colleague in the same room. *shudders in horror at the thought of being called to the CEO's office to pick up the printed documents that I requested* Good thing he was out of town when I sent out the email, so that I had time to recall the contents of the email through the mail system (WELL, I honestly hope that it worked) =P .

Frustration was the word to describe how my colleague and I felt during our attempts to mark out a 6m x 2.4m perfect triangle on the plant floor using nothing but chalk, a 60cm ruler and a measuring triangle. Oh my poor legs and back >< . I can't believe that I totally overlooked the fact that it could've been faster had I used a piece of string and chalk as a protractor to sweep out the sides and diagonals of the rectangle I was supposed to draw -- feeling stupid (this is reinforced by the fact that I did badly in my results of semester 2 which just came out last Saturday). You should've seen my black-as-coal fingers when I was done.. heck, even the chalk I was using turned black.

"If you have but one wish, what would you wish for?" was the question that I posed to people around me, ever since I overheard this pair of aunties chatting on the company bus about how a Miss Universe contestant wished to be able to take 2nd helpings without putting on weight. The responses are varied. A young friend of mine wished for a girlfriend. Another friend in NZ wished that his 2 assignment papers are done. An undergraduate in medical school wished that she would get her wings and halo soon and become a full-fledged 'angel', while another drama queen kind of girl wished that she'd know how to be herself better. My best friend wishes to be reincarnated as a girl, while my cousin and this other girl wished to have "endless wishes". It's interesting how one's response tell so much about their character and personality.. my conclusion? I have a lot of weird friends -- and I love them all xD

She agrees with my postulate that horoscopes are a kind of personality brainwashing, and she paints her own room while chatting online in the middle of the night. Yay, another addition to my pool of crazy aquaintances! ^^ AND she's coming. Look out Singapore! xxxDDD

What are blogs for anyway?

I wonder.. what are blogs for? An avenue to update your friends and family about your life or is it just an lot in cyberspace for you to rant about your life and other's lives in a bid to elicit attention and sympathy from your readers?

ET showed me her ex-boyfriend's rather disturbing blog-- aside from being filled with obscenities which tend to distract the reader due to his limited vocabulary of obscenities(not that I like reading posts filled with them anyway), the author was also quick to slap bad labels onto his ex, and the groups that he was affiliated to, like his school's prefectorial board. In short, throughout his meagre 6 posts on his blog, I found it disgusting that his tone was one where it was as if the world owes him a good life and that all the undesirable things that happened to him was that of other people's doing - he would first blame his enemies, and if that were not possible, he would proceed on to blame his friends, and eventually fate and the supernatural - Not once did he put the blame on himself. Everybody is wrong except o' noble he.

Have I ever told you about how much I hate people who claim that life sucks, especially those who are not ripe enough to have strands of white in their hair? No? In that case, look me up on msn if you really have the time to burn xD

Anyway, sometimes I wonder if the purpose of my blogs resemble more of the latter than former as mentioned at the start of this post. Somehow, I find that I seem to feel less inclined to post here whenever I am feeling very happy and contented with my life. Take the last two weeks for instance, the sudden surge of optimism which I obtained through studying various religious doctrines and philosophy has left my poor blog deprived of updates..

OK larh! I admit that leaving for work at 6.30am and reaching home at 7.00pm and the intensified dragonboat trainings that I have to attend has often left me too tired and lazy to post updates, since I know myself to not be able to resist making long posts once I started typing. =P

Hah! Enough of that. Some updates:

ET is coming to NUS! Crop-circles and abductions aside, I'm really excited that she's coming over! I hope we have lots of fun together^^

I have my own workstation despite being just an intern^^

My colleagues at the department that I'm attached too maybe mostly ah peks, but they are demn cute, funny and friendly^^ you gotta love 'em.

Half the machines in the lab are at least twice my age >< style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold" size="4">I just sat thru staff orientation today. Met alot of other young colleages there.

I've been told that it might be arranged for me such that I'm to get interviewed by some scholarship publication. Sounds fun huh^^

MSN is demn sucky. It's been like that for days ady. I can't even have a proper chat with ET. =/

And some pics..

That´s me in my goggles

And that´s Stitch feeling blue

1st day at work, 1st in dragonboat race and the death of a friend

And thus, it came to be that these 3 events all took place on the same weekend - quite an eventful one it was.

Friday was my first day of attachment at my sponsoring company. Didn't do much on the 1st day, except for chit chatting with collegues and supervisors to aquaint myself with the company. After my safety briefing, I even got a pair of goggles, ear plugs, boots and a matching helmet to go with them^^ WELL, the serious stuff starts tomorrow I am told.. no more slacking around =/

News of the Taiwanese fighter jet crash which killed two SAF soldiers got to my attention that day, but I contented myself with the fact that none of my ex-classmates were serving in Taiwan in this period in time. ( even Babykun came back about a month ago)

Sunday morning was when I got a rude shock when Babykun told me that Isz was one of the unfortunate soldiers who lost their lives. I couldn't bring myself to believe it until Ah Rong showed me his copy of Newpaper which had an article decidated to his demise. Oh boy.

Went for a dragonboat race in the evening under the banner of Teck Ghee CSC. Came in first for our category.

Way tired now, and I have to work till 5.33pm tmr. Time to turn in. Rest in peace Isz. You were marvelous and I'm glad to have known you when you were alive.

Some recent additions to the family of gadgets living on my desk :

Member 1:

Nope, it's not an mp3 player; It's actually an FM transmitter! and it's mine xD


Although it's supposed to be used in a car, this lil' baby saved me from having to buy a subwoofer system just to aid my laptop's failing speakers. Finally! A means of communication between lappie and mini hifi(you can almost say that they think on the same wavelength now xD)



Member 2:

HEHEH. What can I say? I love computer mice which gradually change colours from time to time =P

By the way, I'm so sunburnt now from the 3 hour row under the scorching sun. It hurts to even stand in the sun's rays today as I went down to the Kuan Yin temple to say a prayer of thanks for everything. Surprisingly, I met two of my teammates at bugis today, and a girl from hostel whom I thought rather well of.. and I got a very special phonecall right after, on my way back, bringing news my teammates will be glad to hear at training tomorrow ;)

so stay tuned.. ^^

Now that's a post-exam day for ya

Ahhh.. A perfectly enjoyable post-exam day out today was.

It all started off with me and Chin Seong going back to school - AJ in good ol' Ang Mo Kio to see some of our tutors. We stated off our tour of AJ with a very excited Malay-stall aunty who was keen to show off the new look and decor of her stall. She even remembered that we were loyal fans of her 'nasi-lemak' back then ;)

After that, we bumped into Mr. Chan CM along one of the corridor who was on his way to "scare the h1 arts students into dropping physics". And he remembered my name! It was done by refering to Ms. Joy Tan's name though.. I wonder if that's a good thing, lol.

We met Mdm Khoo, our Chemistry tutor who've jst finished one of her consultation sessions with some students. She was quite surpised that a lot of our class girls opted to take courses in the Arts and Social Sciences Dept when our class was one of the better performers in Science in our cohort.

To our delight, Mdm Khoo invited us into the staffroom, which was off limits to students. Embarassingly, i've never been into the staffroom before( I was a good boy, ok? xD), so this trip was turning out to be quite an exciting one for me.

We met Mr. Tan and exchanged hurried greetings to him because he was rushing off to class, and spent what seemed like hours chatting with Ms. Joy Tan, reminisicing about her campus life. She was, afterall, our NUS senior ;) Mrs. Ip, our econs tutor joined us at the staff lounge as well and we chatted happily away. Too bad Ms. Usha and Mrs Law weren't around that day.

Mdm Normah the librarian kindly alllowed us to use the library coms for a while too when went and see her. She's such a dear. Even the bookshop owners remembers us^^.

After that, Chin Seong and I went down to Marina Square, because he wanted dinner at Thai Express, and I have $60 worth of 2-year-old Times Bookshop vouchers to cash in.

Forgive my suaku-ness, but I have no idea buying books with a generous budget could be sooooo gratifying*blisses out* I bought 3 books for myself and one for Chin Seong.. hehe.. they're gonna make Tan Jo a very happy guy for a long time^^.

Which reminds me, me and Chin Seong bought Fantasia Sanguo 3, a chinese RPG, from Funan IT mall yesterday. And we spent an hour trying to figure out how to "activate" the stupid game from the inaccurate instructions given in chinese. And people wonder why pirated games are prefered over the originals.. geez.

The 2nd game of this series totally broke my heart last time.. and 2 hours into the game, I'm pretty sure that this one's gonna be more a heartbreaker than the rest. ><

And oh.. i've finally time to draw again.. so happy. and Ms. Tan added me to MSN! woots! xD

ciao~ ;)

some recent photos on my phone :

*Drools*

Like... WOW?! I want one of those! *.*