I waved back at her, recognizing it was my colleague. As the bus was packed, she couldn’t get a seat and stood beside me. It was an awkward moment between me, sitting, and her, standing.

Do you want to sit? *prepares to stand up*
No, it’s ok.
Are you sure?
Yeah it’s ok.

And thinking that I wanted to take a nap along the way anyway, I remained there sitting. It was a short while later that she asked me to hold on to her laptop, which I did since I was sitting.

Of course, I didn’t take a nap, knowing there was someone I knew standing right beside me. The journey took about 45 minutes, as we were travelling from Bukit Batok to Eunos. We ended up exchanging some short conversations along the way, which I can describe as nothing less than awkward.

When I was about to stand up and alight, I passed the laptop back to her, since I needed to carry my laptop and take out my wallet.

After we alighted, we were walking towards the office, about 5 minutes walk away, when the sky threatened to pour. I asked if she had an umbrella with her, and offered to carry her laptop while she searches for it.

Let me carry your laptop first? *points to laptop*
No, it’s ok.
Are you sure?
Yeah it’s ok.

I wonder, am I being ungentlemanly by not insisting to let her sit down or carry her laptop, or did I scare her, or is there nothing wrong at all?

Oh, and if this post doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry about trying to make any sense out of it. This is the side effect of 35.5 hours of no sleep.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

That there isn’t a CH Products flight yoke in front of me.

That there isn’t David Allen’s Getting Things Done on my table.

That I’m not writing this blog entry.

That I don’t have a bottle of Redoxon in front of me.

That I’m just seeing things.

Tell me it’s just a dream.

And that you’ll come to wake me up.

What is Plurk?

Wikipedia says:

Plurk is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as plurks) through short messages or links, which can be up to 140 text characters in length.

Updates are then shown on the user’s home page using a timeline which lists all the updates received in chronological order, and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Users can respond to other users’ updates from their timeline through the Plurk.com website, by instant messaging, or by text messaging.

Plurk is a very convenient way to give short updates on your life or your thoughts. I mainly use Plurk after Twitter started to die off some time back. Just to give a snapshot of how Plurk looks like, have a look at the following:

Yep, you can reply to each Plurk by plurking on the plurk itself (notice plurk is both a verb and a noun). It might be a bit hard to use at first, but once you get used to it, you can get really addicted.

If you use Plurk, feel free to add me. My Plurk profile is private, so you’ll have to be my friend in order to see anything I posted.

See you there!

I’m currently having a patch of dry skin on the “inside” of my elbow (elbowpit?), so this morning I applied some skin moisturizing cream.

The brand is Rosken.

And then I remembered that close to 3 years ago, someone else noticed that my elbow (the “outside” this time) had a patch of dry skin. One fine day when we were studying on the school benches, from her bag she took out a small bottle of skin moisturizing cream.

The brand was Rosken.

I can’t remember where she got the moisturizing cream from. All I knew was that it was a really small bottle, probably a sampler from… the Big Walk maybe? It wasn’t exactly the same type as the one I’m having now. The one she had was a blue “Dry Skin Cream”, whereas the one I use now is an orange “Rosken Dry, Itchy & Scaly Cream with Vitamin E” (that’s a mouthful, I know!).

I remembered that she helped me to apply the cream, making sure that the entire patch was covered thoroughly. When the dry skin persisted, she gave me the bottle of skin moisturizer and reminded me to apply it regularly.

What she did wasn’t much by any standard, but it was a catalyst for the 2-year relationship that ensued 3 months later. Right now the empty, blue Rosken bottle sits inside a white box in my Bukit Batok apartment. The bottle is just a small fragment of a chapter of my life that I’d still like to keep for the time being.

As I finished applying the cream and dressed up for work, I smiled.

It is easy to remember the bad times and get hurt all over again.

But it also isn’t hard to dig the sweet memories and remember that at one point in time, someone had loved me and I had loved her too.

But by the time that another time comes, I will have another topic in mind, and I will start thinking of how to write that other topic.

Repeat the process a few times, and you’ll realize why I haven’t been blogging a lot lately.

Seriously, I have many things that I want to blog about.

From the graduation gift given by the school, to the graduation gift that my brother sent me, to convocation, to graduation evening, to someone who has been special. But so far, none has been written, and at the end of the day, I have even more things to write than I can handle.

Funny, really, that after realizing all these, I can still blog about the thought process (i.e. this very post you’re reading) instead of actually putting the things I’ve always wanted to write into… well, actual writing.

Anyway, it’s time to sleep.

The reason why I’m still awake at this hour is that we were changing our air conditioners to brand-new units, and there was some dispute between the landlord and the air con guys.

Basically the air con guys didn’t carry the proper certificate to certify that they are certified (very odd sentence!) to install the compressor bracket just outside the flat. Without the certificate, if anything happens to the compressor (let’s say it decides to free fall nine storeys down and kiss someone down there), the blame will fall on the landlord and she may end up behind bars.

The company wasn’t happy when the certificate was demanded, and pulled the guys out of the project, leaving holes in the walls of the house where the air con units were to be installed.

Of course, the landlord wasn’t happy at all, and there were some arguments.

Eventually the air con units were installed, but they only finished at 10-ish. With dust all over our house and damage in some locations in the house. We had to spend the next hour or so cleaning up the house. That doesn’t even include resting, showering and waiting for my hair to dry, like what I’m doing right now.

Anyway. Time to sleep.

Anyway, I’m exhausted, and tomorrow is Monday. Time to recharge and start working again.

Till next time.

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 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.

For The Beauty Of The Earth
Anthony Way

For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies;
For the love which from our birth,
Over and around us lies,
Over and around us lies;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our joyful hymn of praise.

For the beauty of each hour,
Of the day and of the night;
Hill and vale and tree and flow’r,
Sun and moon, and stars of light,
Sun and moon, and stars of light;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our joyful hymn of praise.

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parents, child;
Friends on Earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild,
For all gentle thoughts and mild;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This, our joyful hymn of praise.

For each perfect gift of Thine,
To our race so freely given,
Graces human and divine;
Flowers of earth and buds of heaven,
Flowers of earth and buds of heaven;

Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our joyful hymn of praise.

***

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?