Blast from the Past

If you thought yesterday's entry was a tad short of the usual 2000 word essay that I normally post then I tell you now, you are absolutely right. Though that may be case, I'm sure most of you would have enjoyed yesterday's short but humorous post. If yesterday's events( which I have not posted yet) were anything to go by, I'm sure my long break would be more fruitful than I had thought. Let me elaborate.

After Blogging on my mom's interesting phone call yesterday,( which unfortunately took longer than the time taken for most to read it due to the fact that I accidentally refreshed the page while half-way into the story and conveniently erased my entry) I waited for my father to bring back the "Zinger Burger Meal, upsize" I ordered. This, of course was a big mistake as he went ahead with his own lunch first and then proceeded to settle my lunch. He came back at about 1.45p.m. This left me with about half an hour to get to orchard to meet up with of my long-lost VIP mates. So he came back and saw me already changed.

" Going out ah?", my father said, all the time looking at the new shirt I was wearing.

"Yeah. For a while. Don't think I'm having dinner tonight."

" OK. Wah, so fast already wear new shirt liao ah?"

"Yeah"

"......."

The silence was almost deafening. I quickly took my meal and sat down in front of the TV trying to gobble down my food as well as to look as inconspicuous as humanly possible.

By the time I got out my house, walk to the MRT station and arrive in orchard, it was already about three. I hurried past the gantries and called grace for their 20( status).

" Hey, where are you all?"

" waiting for you ah."

" ah? I thought I told you all to going ahead without me first."

In an uncanny foresight, I saw that she was going to ask on the group's behalf for a treat in repentence for my lateness. And so I beat her to it.

" Anyway, where are you all?"

" We are on the right of the Passenger Service Centre."

I honestly did not see them when I came out of the gantries. Maybe my memory is failing. Maybe they have changed too much. Maybe there were simply too many people there( despite it being a monday). Whatever the case, I missed them.

All this while i was talking, I was walking towards Wisma Atria. I briefly changed course and made my way back to where they were.

I finally found them with a guy which I found rather familiar but couldn't really pin him down. In an attempt to cover up the fact that I was rather late ,I wished everyone Merry Christmas while profusely shaking their hands. Evidently, this did not do the trick as they started to discuss who came first and how early they were. Fallen in disgrace I could only rely on my inate ability to change subjects.

"So where are we going?"

This question was met with some discussion. Nowadays, whenever I go to gatherings, a place to go is not normally planned. Maybe the spontaneousness of the entire thing gave the participants some kind of novelty. Maybe the participants know not what they want and plan it such that it will suit how they are feeling then, which they wouldn't know until the hour of the gathering comes. And so I suggested watching "Kung Fu Hustle" which I had been wanting to watch for some time. There was some more discussion and they finally decided to go to Cineleisure for some tea at Lips Cafe.

Lips cafe was the kind of place the more well-to-do will go to. [(and maybe some who don't know any better are peer-pressured to go) like me]Drinks are sold at a whooping $5.(They actually are ice teas with exaggerated names much like Thai Mango blended with ice from the French Alps when a simple Mango ice blended will be more than suffice.) That aside, we caught up with one another pretty well, with some reading magazines and others adamently refusing perfectly normal requests to eat some potato wedges .I dare say that that was one of the best experinces I ever had catching up with friends.(actually I think that was my first time)

Anyway, Grace had the good sense of bringing her scrapbook of her trip to Kunming. The Scrapbook was a combination of photographs, quotes of experiences of the people who went there and some Chinese ( which I had difficulty reading). Apart from trying to decipher the chinese characters, Shaun and I certainly enjoyed looking through it, at what we missed . I knew that it would another experience all together if we were to go with them. Joyce had the nerve to ask why I didn't go( I had to enlist) . That was too much. But in view of the fact that she will be sending me photos of our gathering that day, I shan't probe any further. Shaun took one hour of persuading and a lot of other hard core techniques( which i would not go into explicit detail) to finish off grace's one photo wedge.

To Shuan: you really got to tell me what's inside the wedge!

In short, we really enjoyed ourselves in the few short hours there together, getting to know how each other have been doing the past few months. Shuan and I were comparing how Garung ( Shiong we were in our individual units. I'll leave the conclusions to the audience present that day.

With dark clouds gathering outside the glass windows of the Lips Cafe,we decided on a safe bet and made our way to the Orchard Library. But not before we took some pictures. Take a look!


Ok. I admit to spoiling the picture. I think Grace's hair distracted me.


Notice how small we are compared to the tree. Hobbits anyone?

Needless to say, the library was packed when we finally reached there and many of the books I had wanted to borrow were already borrowed by earlier users. Noticing my recent perculiar interest in blogging, Grace commented on how few guys were actually interested in blogging. I was unpreturbed none the less. Maybe I am born weird. Anyhow, I borrowed two books from Shuan's library card( who learnt it to me rather unwillingly) only when I managed that I return my books on time. I , of course conviniently forgot to mention that I was once fined $75 for returning my books late but that's another matter altogether.

After finishing a quick meal at MOS burger, ( Joyce's waterbottle had a perculiar tendency of drifting towards the dustbins, aided by the somewhat uncontrolled forces of MOS burger workers who were clearing up tables.) I had wanted to rush to Simei to meet my sister . While coordinating the syncronisation with my sister, I met Simin and Adlina, both members of Tampines Junior Concert Band and found out that they were both taking computer engineering at NTU.

Now, as you all would have already known, recently I have been very interested in HTML, all Macromedia products, Java, C++, visual basic and all thing programming related. Finally meeting people that I could talk at the same wavelength to, we broke into a heated debate of how computer programmers could change the world. ( No, of courses that is not true) In any case, it was still an interesting experience meeting up with future computer programmers. I think computer speak would in a matter of time be part of their vocabulary, effectively encrypting themselves with those who do not know. I could almost imagine them them.

" Hows the JAVA doing?"

" getting better, though I think it needs more interfaces from object C"

"really? how about the Cedar Mensa"

"fine, just fine. The interface of the left interpolated BIOS is holding it up nicely"

I am pretty sure some of the terms are used wrongly but you get the general idea.