move over, children in Africa

Thanks for the sudden flurry of comments, I like being newsworthy. I’m back from my second day of work, and just before I left I tried to tell myself, “Don’t worry, it can’t get any worse :D”.

Ah well, an occasional shot of dramatic irony helps too.

But I’m back and that’s all that matters. I will quit the job after I’ve done enough to be able to get my pay – I really would have stayed on to prove myself had there been a decent pay, because after a while the grime and rude customers stop getting to you and your ego makes a little “pop” sound as it gets burst, which can be pretty entertaining, but I think there must be an available job out there that’s better than this, and I can’t take the shit anymore. And you know it’s a bad thing when my “shit” reference was a pun.

On the bright side, I persuaded myself not to drink someone’s half-drunk fruit drink while clearing the table, TWICE, so yeah, Power to the Starving Temp!

But I’ll still hold a job, I think it’s really enriching, and I’ve been feeling like I’ve earned my periods of slumping in my chair, using the computer. Also, having a job pretty much makes up for / hides your lack of social life.

Bob: Hey Mooty, I didn’t see you at the cool party last night! You weren’t invited?
Mooty: What party – oh uh, I was working. So, um, yo dude, how wuz the drugs and sex, yo?
Bob: What drugs and sex? We spent the night playing someone’s Gamecube.

Or it could help cover up your clandestine rendezvouses with future life partners.

Bob: Hey Mooty, what were you doing last night?
Mooty: Uh, hmm, I was working!
Bob: Really? I went to Filipino Express last night with my friends and we didn’t see you there!
Mooty: Oh, uh, I had toilet duty last night.

OR – it could help you PICK UP your future life partner!

Bob: Hi Mooty, what’ve you been occupied with?
Mooty: I’ve been working. Just got my paycheck last Thursday.
Bob: Wow! You’re working! OMG, so cool! WILL YOU BE MY BOYFRIEND?
Mooty: Okay.

I’d say more, but I’m busy cross-stitching back my ego in time for my next shift.

the apron isn’t helping

I like Stacy’s neighborhood, because there’re so many playgrounds with sand pits and swings which are breeding grounds for happy children and Hand Foot Mouth Disease. And happy children. And couples who make out and further their kind on the benches, whoo!

Her Mom also thinks I’m “half my size” (from last year) but it’s not true because my flab’s just been offset by my height so yeah. She’s also kinda scary and aptly teacher-like and I wouldn’t want to be taught by her because I’d go all scared and have premonitions of doom whenever I forget to do my work, but she’s kinda cool because there’s a song about her!

-

If the industries of Singapore was a collective human body, F&B would be like the BUTT PIMPLE. Robyn gets $6.50 for telemarketing, which while probably really tedious and demoralising, at least entails sitting down and constant access to a cup of water, I hope? My first day at Filipino* (*nationality changed to protect Thai national pride) Express today. I get $4.80 an hour for:

• staring lustily at the food and water
• having lunch at 4pm
• realising that 90% of Singaporeans don’t notice your existence when you offer them water (Caucasians are marginally politer, and so are pretty and/or young girls, oh thank God for those)
• getting scolded by bitchy colleagues for no reason other than freshness to the job, who’re probably just bitter because their future lies at the Filipino Express counter and mine doesn’t
• discovering that Filipino Express is really unhygenic and all the cutlery and utensils and cups are kinda oily still because they’re just dumped into soapy water and blasted with water

It’s quite sad when the only thing moving your life is counting elapsed minutes and trying to divide by sixty and multiply by $4.80, and assuring yourself that you’re actually building character. It was definitely humbling, I suppose, because we’re so used to being “important” in school, and it shows that one man’s meat is another’s part-time exploitee.

I can’t wait for Christmas Day where I start cashiering at Robinsons for $5-6 an hour, because that sounds pretty slack and sedentary. I feel quite stupid when people all around are using their contacts to get $10/hour jobs but I can’t because I don’t know anyone who’s self-employed. I think feeling stupid is kinda part of the character building process.

I’m doing evening shift tomorrow, and if it could make Thomas have to take a day off tomorrow it sounds pretty bad. Oh well. Sticks and stones and soiled dishes and oily cups! Please visit me at Raffles City Filipino Express because it’ll distract me from the evils of the corporate world!

/rant which forgot to have a punchline. Uh, knock knock!

my soul smells of freshly-minted $2 notes

I think it’s never a good sign when you’re better-known on the Internet than in real life. Having online friends is like keeping an Aibo dog. (I can’t think of a complementing witty comment right now.)

I mean, look at Xiaxue.

What I really, really dislike are smokers who presume that people around them should accept their nasty habit just because they are “addicted”, or that “please, it’s just a bit of smoke”.

Which part of LUNG CANCER and JUMPIN’ JIMINY* SMELLY do they not understand???

*Offensive words were removed and replaced with worksafe terminology. At it’s mooty, WE CARE, and we know that at any point in time, your parents could be peering around your shoulder staring – uh, hi Uncle.

This is Xiaxue.

Soft, meaty and just divine on the inside, with a crispy skin on top of it.

The carrot cream sauce is innovative yet well made. The initial taste is cream and the aftertaste is a subtle taste of carrots.

This is Xiaxue with a wad of banknotes stuffed up her _________.

I guess I’m just aghast how much money a blogger can earn for posting mean, insensitive and controversial stuff. I’ve been doing just that for the past two years FOR FREE. Bye, off to find me some obstrusive banner ads.

legal

Not every birthday you see ~20 people sitting in your room making a mess (eeps I hope they didn’t riffle through my stuffs, IF YOU DID DON’T POST COMMENT, I’LL BE WILLING TO SETTLE OUT OF COURT/THE INTERWEBS) and popping balloons by the minute. I’ll let it slide.

Thank God for a brilliant/cunning/conspiratorial sister who hacked into my MSN and liaised with Sean and planned The Ultima Human RickRoll/Betrayal. Thank God for the OTHER sister who couldn’t make it but would doubtlessly have wanted to (I think) join in, and who sent me a Grow-A-Geek. Thank God for the parents for cleaning up and not having much of a fit as 20 hot and sweaty people drop cake and curry and chips on the floor. Thank God for the parties (geddit) who turned up or would have liked to. See, I haven’t had a party in seven years, because I couldn’t think of who to invite and was scared no one would turn up, probably due to the fact that I have about the social aptitude of a hermit slug, but all’s well.

Pictures will be on?

Masses: FACEBOOK!

To those who weren’t invited, it’s okay, we love you even if you aren’t from 4K. It’s not your fault, you were born that way.

Okay, I think this makes up for my days of lolling around the house growing fat. Whoo social life GET! At least now I can grow fat on birthday gifts! Maltesers and candy, very wise.

(I was trying hard to remember what I did for my sis’ 21st birthday bash way back in January, other than eating the eclairs and drinking fruit punch. The eclairs were good.)

Also many Facebook wishes from people who barely know me. Some guy called Ben Tan wished me happy birthday, even though we don’t know each other and he has 1697 friends and he’s Sec 2. If you’re reading this, Ben Tan, thank you Ben Tan! Catch up with you some other time Ben Tan.

23/11

I took my love, and I took it down
I climbed a mountain, and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Till the landslide brought it down

Oh mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don’t know

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, even children get older
And I’m getting older too

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, even children get older
And I’m getting older too

Take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down

twilight at the end of the tunnel – BAM!

I rarely post my stories in this blog, but I felt this ought to be an exception, as proof that you can write a Twilight fanfic in one hour and get away with it.

Please comment if you like it, and comment twice if you don’t. If you have nothing better to say, here’s the place to say it!

Presenting:

After The Exertions Of The Last Book (Which I Never Read): A One-Shot And Not-So-Alternate Universe; Expect Gore At Any Moment And Have Nightmares After Reading Kthx

by Matthew Chan

A full bucket of puke by the time you’re done – OR YOUR MONEY BACK!

“The best fanfic since Harry Potter!” – The New York Times

intelligent design

On fringe CCAs and girls.

matthew says: (7:49:37 PM)
astronomy club?
matthew says: (7:49:44 PM)
that has fringe written all over it
jun sean | 永祥 says: (7:49:52 PM)
well
jun sean | 永祥 says: (7:49:59 PM)
it’ll be the most romantic one
matthew says: (7:50:11 PM)
ugh, provided there’re chio girls
jun sean | 永祥 says: (7:50:18 PM)
there’s no need
jun sean | 永祥 says: (7:50:22 PM)
it’s dark

waltzing ma~a

I have been reading Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel!

Brings me back to the P5 days where Bowie showed some of us and we were all “Wow dere’s an f-wurd lol n ron iz a dog wtf ftl rofl” about it, but it really isn’t such a bad parody, and since I’m more than a little stuck-up I’ll give my opinion about it.

I think parody was the first kind of thing I ever wrote – to Harry Potter, what else? Okay, it wasn’t really a parody in the parodying sense, but an alternate universe with uncannily similar occurences and similar Harry/Ron-like characters with different names masquerading as an original novel – HEY, I WAS EIGHT. The thing about parodies is that all the scaffolding has already been done for you, which makes it easy to fill in the blanks and derive humour. You could change a letter or two in the names of people and locales and it’d be funny already – not mightily funny, but then better than what options you have in an original humourous work.

(And who could forget the P5 A Wrinkle in Time parody scandal/debacle? Great times. Didn’t the teachers notice that it had been the greatest literary boom any school had had in ages? I think I lost mine somewhere in a Nanyang file.)

I think I have a rather Trotterian sense of humour. I fall back on metanarratives quite a bit – way more than effective, anyway, and after awhile the wry self-observing humour starts falling flat – and when all fails I resort to sheer physical humour. Not that I’ve actually written anything funny in very long, or attempted to. I think periods of self-doubt are really effectively useless for humour of any sort. I mean, there were times where I could shout out a lame joke in class and not care about the repercussions. (I think.)

But I want to write humour again. I think if I could write a full-length comic novel it’d be a pretty fulfilling life.

And I think no one has noticed that I haven’t really talked about Barry Trotter.

it does die eventually

Origami is pretty therapeutic. It’s quite cool when you fold cubes and boxes.

I’ve been wondering what defines masculinity, and why folding scraps of paper won’t win you chicks when running around with a ball under your armpit will. Maybe if our forefathers had been differently engineered, the world would be pretty different right now.

Mating Ritual

Ogg: Me fold CRANE.
Tugg: Me fold ROSE. Win.
Pretty Mariagg: WOW Tugg u so kul lets gt maried
[Exit Tugg and Pretty Mariagg]
Ugly Bettygg: wow i liek crane
Ogg: Screw off.

But seriously, origami is pretty fun. It’s like flower arrangement, minus the undying shame.

auspicium capsicum

APR day!

My GPA’s now a whopping mediocre-but-that’s-okay 3.69!

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Get an end-year GPA above 3.6!

And my group got A+ for RE! At this point I would be trying to figure out what we did correctly, but then I’m busy trying to figure out what we did.

(Rich, I hope you’re reading this. It would, in all sincerity, make my day.)

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Lead a group of incorrigible slackers (self included) to an A+ for RE!

And I did a barrel roll!

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED – oh, shut up.

So many achievements I will never unlock, but then no one will ever unlock them all, though the goal is to try. I think this year I’ve been trying harder than ever, which isn’t very hard, but still, the year has truly been eventful and blessed.

I have acted in the Arts House – on two separate occasions.

I have had a flat top and a shaved head within days of each other.

I have directed a full mark Lit performance.

I have grown X cm (X being almost infinity, except slightly less).

I have acted in Dramafeste.

I have caused some random RGS girl to lock her blog.

I have assembled a presentable Grad Night outfit for slightly less than $100.

I have gotten drunk on Orange F&N.

… and a variety of slightly more personal feats (like finally having pimples). Basically this year has been like no other, and even I’m no prefect or captain or batch-topper in any way, I still feel a slight tinge of nostalgia coupled with anticipation, the cocktail that inevitably accompanies transition and change.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED – Lose the game.