A Better Title

Apologies for the lack of updates for the past few days. I just didn’t really have the mood to blog.

Anyway, I missed my bus by half a minute this morning, so I had to take a cab to work and bid goodbye to 1.5 hours of pay. It isn’t the first time I almost miss or actually miss my bus.

Sometimes it is my fault (“oh, I still have 3 minutes left the last time I checked, let’s just take a leisurely wa… oh foot, that’s the bus!” *runs to catch the bus*), but sometimes it’s iris’s (“oh I still have 15 minutes to get to the bus stop, now let me just refresh the pa… oh foot, I only have 2 minutes!” *runs out of house*).

In the former case, sometimes I see the bus pulling away without me at the bus stop, in which case I know I’ll have to wait for about half an hour for the next bus. In the latter case, usually I don’t even get to see the bus at all. The only indication that I’ve missed the bus is iris saying that the next bus is coming in half an hour’s time.

Rather than waiting for the next bus and be extremely late, I usually choose to take a cab instead. When I have flagged a cab, boarded it, and told the driver my destination, a few things can happen.

The first is the driver beating me up to death.

The first is the cab overtaking the bus along the way to the expressway. This means that I’ve just missed the bus by a few seconds. I know I could have just told the driver to drop me at the next bus stop, but I’ll feel bad giving the driver a false hope of earning my 1.5 hours of pay. So usually I just pretend I don’t see the bus at all and carry on to my workplace.

The second is the cab overtaking the bus on the expressway. This means that the bus has left the bus stop quite some time before I reached. Since it is an express bus, the next stop would have been somewhere near my workplace, so usually I’ll just carry on to my workplace.

The third is the cab doesn’t overtake the bus at all until I’ve reached my workplace. In which case I’ll call 999 for investigation of possible alien abduction.

So I thought that this cannot go on all the time. I have to come up with a strategy in order to waste only as little money as possible. Here’s how it roughly goes:

1. Check iris at home and leave the house at least 10 minutes before the predicted or scheduled arrival, whichever is earlier. Really, this is the easiest way not to miss the bus, but knowing myself, I doubt this can happen all the time.
2. Check mobile iris when I’m walking to the bus stop.
3. If by the time I reach the bus stop, the predicted arrival of the next bus is still within the next 10 minutes or Arriving, then I haven’t missed the bus.
4. If along the way, the predicted arrival of the next bus changes from Arriving to half an hour, it means I’ve missed the bus.
5. If I can get a cab within 3 minutes after missing the bus, I’ll ask the driver to go to the last bus stop just before the expressway.
   • If I overtake the bus before reaching the bus stop, I’ll alight at the bus stop and flag the bus there.
   • If I don’t overtake the bus before reaching the bus stop, it means the bus has entered the expressway, and so I’ll ask the driver to take me to my workplace instead.
6. If I can’t get a cab within 3 minutes of missing the bus, I’ll ask the driver to take me directly to the work place.

Let’s hope that this strategy will solve my problem, and at the same time save me as much money as possible.

I think that things come full circle.

I used to listen to this song at one period of time a long time ago, in a similar situation. It’s a very uplifting piece of song. In fact, I described it much better in that post of mine:

Let me share with you this beautiful hymn, which I fell in love with after listening to it in the ‘Divine’ album. The song in the album was performed by the ‘Choir of Uppingham School’, which has definitely transformed the song into one beautiful and heavenly piece. Those who like choir songs should also sample this song as the arrangement is simply too amazing to resist.

How I wish I could blog like I did at that time. The version I found on YouTube is performed by ‘Saint Paul Cathedral Choir’, but it’s just as good.

Read more for the lyrics.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, it’s over.

***

Thank you for the memories.

Thank you for giving me such a wonderful experience as my first love.

Thank you for bearing with me when we were still together.

Thank you for making me learn what love is all about.

Thank you for putting colours in my life.

Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for everything.

I’m sorry I can’t be your last love ever.

I’m sorry I haven’t done my best in the relationship.

I’m sorry I’ve taken you for granted.

I’m sorry for all the wrong things I’ve done.

I wish you all the best in your final year, and I hope you will find the right one soon.

I hope that we can remain as friends, no matter what has happened.

I hope that we can keep in touch, one way or another.

***

Don’t worry, I’ll be alright. Though sad at how things actually turn out, I also feel relieved and freer, after months of waiting and hurting and being hurt.

Now that I have nothing else to lose, it’s time to really do my best in everything that I do.

Meet up, anyone?

I’ve been hearing this song being repeated over and over again in various blogs, for various reasons. I do have my own reasons too. Maybe that’s the best course of action after all.

Sorry, feeling quite tired, so this is one of those short, cryptic blog entries.

Anyway, enjoy the song.

Read more for the lyrics.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was at Jurong Point on Tuesday, and braved myself and went into Cards n Such where I got the first present. I didn’t know what pushed me to go there. Part of me wanted to see that silly little bear again, part me of me didn’t.

The bear wasn’t there, as it’s probably out of production. Not surprisingly, the memories came flooding back, and if there weren’t my friends or anyone there I might have just cried.

Yet I know that if I want to truly move on, I need to confront my fears and see it right in the eyes. Going to the shop is one of the ways, by looking and realizing that it’s really over and that it’s not going to happen again, at least in the near future.

By doing it a few times over and over again, I’ll get used to it, and by then, I would have conquered my fear. It forces me to accept the facts.

I have no idea whether this technique will work, but I’m glad that I did it.

So, what do you do with your fears? Do you avoid them like plague, or do you face and confront them?

Too tired. Couldn’t sleep properly last night, as I was just washing my earplugs and so they weren’t fit for use, and my roommate snored. Got woken up at 3 am and couldn’t get back to sleep immediately. I tried my best to do work in the office, and got handsomely rewarded by falling asleep while standing in the train along the way back from work.

Got new pairs of earplugs, hope they’re better than the last one.

OK got to sleep soon…

One thing I’ve often wondered though, is how the name Bukit Batok came about. In Indonesian, the word “bukit” means hill, while “batok” can mean many things, from coconut shell to the (top of the) skull. Basically almost anything hard and half-roundish can be called “batok”.

So I asked my good old pal Wikipedia, and he said the following:

There are many different versions for the origins of the Malay place name Bukit Batok. Bukit means “hill” in Malay, thus the name of the town gives the impression of it being hilly. Batok, however, has several interpretations.

One version has it that according to a Javanese village chief in the tiny village of Gassing, coconut trees grew on the hills in the area and hence the name batok, the Javanese term for coconuts.

The Chinese interpretation is that the hills were of solid granite and hence called batu, the Malay name for “stone”, which was corrupted to bato and finally batok. Another version argues that the hill resembles a skull top and batok could also be construed to mean “skull top”.

Others felt that the cold air in the area, which led to coughs and colds, conferred on the place the name batok, the Malay term for cough. This could also be a reminder of the days when the area had a large granite quarry at Little Guilin; coughing refers to the sounds of the explosives used.

A more ribald explanation has it that the two hills in the area looked like green buttocks to the British, a word which suffered verbal mutilation among the Chinese to finally emerge as batok.

Quite interesting, eh?

Some of you might have known that I’ve left my old residence in Jurong West to Bukit Buttock Batok. I moved together with the friends who shared that old house. This is the fourth time that I’ve moved ever since I came to Singapore close to nine years ago.

The first was from Winstedt Hostel when I was still attending the 2-month intensive English Language course, to the ACS (I) Boarding School. Internal moves within the hall for the next 4 years are not counted. Then I moved from the boarding school to the NTU Hall 5 to stay for a year. Then I moved out to Jurong West, where I stayed for 3 years. And now I’ve finally moved to Bukit Batok.

The thing about moving is that it’s so troublesome to pack up all my belongings, and then unpack everything at the new place. The small things are a killer, especially those which are a hassle to pack, but too meaningful to throw away.

Anyway, I digress.

The new house is not too bad, it’s near many makan (eating) places, from the hawker centre at the community centre just opposite my block, to the market 10 minutes away, to the restaurants in West Mall. The place is also quite near the MRT, which is only about 5-minute walk away.

Not that I take the MRT that often, since I have a direct express bus to my work place.

The house is quite spacious, though it’s smaller than the Jurong West one. And there are only 3 bedrooms, to be shared with 5 guys. Otherwise it’s quite nice, although the HDB block itself is quite old.

I particularly love the bath heater in the house, especially in the master bedroom, which I share with a friend. It’s so much of an improvement compared to the Jurong West house’s heater, which is not hot at all, except in hot days. The jet stream from the shower head is also very refreshing, something that the old house is, again, lacking.

I can see that our monthly water bill will shoot up from this month onwards. Oops.

So, I’m a Bukit Batok-er now, still a Westie. If anybody in the west wants to meet up somewhere nearby, feel free to give me a buzz.

Photo by Ethan

This was what I was out for (almost) the whole day today… after getting my residential address updated with the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority and buying a new pair of shoes, that is. Too bad I wasn’t wearing the mortar and pestle mortarboard (cap) in the photo. The rest of the set should be uploaded later on, I think. I will be providing the link to the album once it’s ready.

Thanks to Ethan and Terence for taking photos for the four of us (Hendri, Grace, Berdine, Lynn).

BTW, the bloody old pair of shoes just sort of disintegrated itself when I was wearing it, leaving me with just 70 bucks left in my bank account to last me for 2.5 weeks. Well, actually the sole already separated itself yesterday, but I glued it back to the shoe, thinking it would hold.

It obviously didn’t.

Seen on my colleague’s C textbook (scribbled on the margin; syntax corrected for display on this blog):

char *lineptr[3];
lineptr[1] = “I love you”;
lineptr[2] = “You love me”;
lineptr[3] = “Fuck you”;

Oh dear, I wonder what was on his mind…

PS: I left the office to meet up with someone, and I actually went all the way back to the office to take the book that I accidentally left behind, just so that I can take the photo and put it up here. Oh, the things that I do in the name of blogging…

Oh, and I ended up being late for my dinner date with two friends.