Clean toilet day???!!!

What’s up with the cleaning of the toilet today? Everytime I need to go to the toilet there’s someone cleaning it. Arrggghhh…

Unexpected Saturday…

My stomach’s growling. It’s calling out to me, “Lunch! Lunch! Feed me!”.

I hammered off a couple of goodbyes, press the enter key, slammed my laptop shut, throw on a fresh new t-shirt and bermudas when I heard it. I looked up at the window.

Shit.

Rain.

Muttering little curses under my breath I thought to myself. The coffeeshop’s just across the street, I’ll just run across, pack it and run back again, nothing to it. It’s only lunch, can’t be complicated , at the most I’ll just get doused by a couple of raindrops. That’s nothing.

I stepped out of the house, looked up again and the rain’s stopped. Someone’s looking out for me. Smiling to myself, I locked up the door and walked briskly down the stairs. As I stepped out of the void deck and out into the open the sky opened up and I was hit by a dose of sunlight.

Shit again.

Sun after rain, this is going to be sweaty.

More grumblings later, I packed a pack of economy rice, grabbed a bottle of ice cold ribena, paid for it and started back for my place. A cool strong breeze started to blow out from nowhere. Once again, I was smiling.

I quickly returned to my place, opened the door and left it open to enjoy some of mother nature’s cool fresh air while I dig into my lunch. Not bad, I’ve always liked the way they cook their food at this coffeshop and the price’s reasonable.

Washing it all down with the ice cold ribena, I lay back onto the chair and was wondering if I should start going about completing my list when my phone goes off. Hmmm… Not a familiar number. I answered and heard a recorded message.

“You have an urgent message from MINDE…”

Shit. ???. Grrr.

I quickly keyed in the necessary numbers and another message.

“You have not been recalled or your…”

I couldn’t believe my ears and pressed the repeat code again just to make sure. Hee. No recall leh. Again, someone’s looking out for me. This is nice.

Once again, I laid back, picked up the control and started flipping through the channels. 10 minutes later I’m thinking maybe I should get started on my list instead of wasting time when my phone goes off again. Again I answered and again a recorded message.

“You have an urgent message from MIND…”

This time, there’s a difference, “You will need to acknowledge…”.

Damn. Acknowledge? You don’t need to acknowledge unless something’s going on. Quickly I punched in the numbers again.

“You have been recalled. Will the following please report back…”

Shit. ???. Grrr. Bruuudy heeeow.

I thought they just said no recall? Pressing the acknowledgement key, I hung up and dialled the ops room. Busy. They must be flooded with calls by now. Finally I got through.

“Hey, I just received 2 conflicting messages, is there really a re…”

“Yes! Yes! There is! Please report back immediately!”

“Uh… Ok.”

I hung up. Grumbling silently, I quickly put on my uniform. Kiwied my boots just to make sure it’s black enough not to be stopped at the guardhouse. Grabbed my full pack, ID, cash, mobile phone and left the house. I minute I stepped out of the void deck a cab stopped right in front of me. Lucky? I couldn’t care less at that point in time.

“Uncle, ******** camp.”

“Ok. Eh. ??, you kena recall ah?”

“Ya lor…”, I answered.

I went on to grumble about the conflicting messages I received as the uncle sped across the PIE towards my camp. Soon I reached my camp. I paid the uncle and reported to the guard room for registration.

I had to surrender my camera phone. Nothing special about this except that they sealed my phone in a letter envelop taped across by 2 strips of masking tape and chopped with a seal across both ends. Funny way to do it but it does send the message across well, no photo taking in the camp. And they did this without causing any inconvenience to us camera phone totting soldiers, we’ll just have to open the envelop only after exiting the camp.

The whole process was fast, they had this station ready back at the camp’s void deck, a scanner and stuff, pretty high tech these days. Had our IDs scanned and receipt printed. We proceeded then to full pack inspection and were allowed to leave immediately. All done in a matter of 15 minutes. Efficient.

Met a couple of familiar faces. We chatted for a while. Some already married, some getting married, some already got kids. Seems like time has really just pass by me without my realising it. Anyway, we’re all going to meet up again in a couple of months for another one of their wedding.

One of them gave me a lift back home. I cleared up and repacked everything before keeping them aside for the next recall and in-camp. I then settled back for some relaxation before going out for dinner with some friends.

Now I’m back home again hammering away at my keyboard. That’s about sums it up for my Saturday. My list is still uncompleted, maybe I’ll see what I can do about that tomorrow.

My weekend to-do list…

Things I feel like doing this weekend.

• Hang out at the beach.
• Go take some photos.
• Change my SCV box to digital.
• Have a nice cheesecake at the Cheesecake cafe.
• Write something.
• Get myself a cash box.
• Clean up room and table for brother’s return next week.
• Send my camera for repair, again.

Things done so far.

Nothing.

Sweetcheeks’ revenge…

It’s been a while since I’ve played diligently so I decided to pull out Sweetcheeks from her comfy little wooden case and give her a bit of a workout.

We chewed through “Romance”, “D minor”, “????” and we were halfway through “English Rose” when I felt this sharp pain up my first finger and pulled away quickly. Shit! I know that feeling! I’ve felt it before and I knew immediately what had happened.

Fingertip nerve damage.

Seems like I didn’t warm up enough and with my recent recess from playing, my finger’s not up to working so hard. Looks like I’m going to have to take it easy or keep off playing for a few days while my finger recovers. Maybe it’s Sweetcheeks’ way of telling me she’s not happy to be left in the cold for so long.

Sigh…

Moo Moo Dental Hygiene…

Toothbrush holder…

Originally uploaded by I@n.

Yep.

I’ve got this toothbrush holder with my toothbrush stuck on the side of my office’s overhead drawer. I take my dental hygiene seriously. Moo…

Stand there do what???

Something caught my attention on my way to the office today.

A group of people were standing around this floor cleaning machine, not sure what is it called. Basically there is this big washing thingy that runs on the front of the machine and at the back, 2 little wheels that will help guide the machine as the user pushes it along.

Somehow one of the back wheels broke off for this particular machine. This one perspiring guy was trying to fix it while the rest of the other five blokes stood around watching, pointing, waving their arms around and commenting pretty loudly.

Amazing how man power is being utilised these days. You send 6 people down to fix a wheel. Reminds me of a situation I faced years ago when we put up a request to a major consulting company for a ram upgrade to one of the servers in a data centre.

They sent down one person to shut down the server, another person to bring the box containing the ram down, another person to unscrew the panel on the server, another person to take out the ram and slot it in, the previous person to screw back the panel and another person to restart the server. And you wonder why these big consulting firms charge you an arm and leg for their services.

Rare find…

Rare find…

Originally uploaded by I@n.

This is a real rare find…

Sunny rain again…

First there was the rumble of thunder. Then came the downpour. Next came the cool breeze and then to my utter disgust, sun. Blazing hot sun after the heavy rain. That’s an absolutely dreadful combination. It’s now hot and humid, much worse than before it rained. Wish there could be something we could do about the weather.

I hate waking up late…

The thing I hate about waking up late is that a better part of the day is gone. This is true even on weekends or during holidays. I like to be able to wake up to the new day early and enjoy the rest of it as an entire day. Blame it on my net surfing last night.

Cramp… Pain…

My left hand is now sore and painful from all the stretching. I’ve been trying to find the chords and tabs to a very nice song I heard from an album. After finding the notes to the first bar and trying them out, I’m already wondering if the guitar player for that song’s a cyborg or at least have his hands stretched beyond recognition. Anyway, I’m going to rest my hand for a while and continue tomorrow. Maybe it’s just me not warming up my hands enough…

Sketches…

Just some sketches I did. Someone suggest that I put it up so here they are, most of them are just copies of what others have done or at least inpired by what they’ve done. Just another stupid way to take my mind off problems.

Broke and yet I bought…

I’m not wise when it comes to managing money. I’m broke, yet I bought a FM receiver for my IPOD nano. Now I’m feeling so guilty.

This was actually quite some time back, yet I’m still feeling guilty today. I really need to find other forms of therapy for myself other than retail. The end result is causing more distress than relief.

Lethargic afternoon…

I feel so drained… Not in my best form today… I’m thinking about sleep…. Getting away… Burning burning out…

Look…

Tried a couple of themes today and this one seem to work, at least for me…

Who’s out to get me?

Sometimes I wonder, if there’s someone who’s out to get me.

Everytime when I’m into something that potentially would help me get out of my seemingly endless bout of bad luck, that something either goes public and creates heaps of competition or becomes common enough to be useless to me.

It has happened often enough for me to start thinking if there is some group of people or some powerful force out there that’s got an issue against me. If there is, I guess you’ll be reading this blog too.

So I implore you, could you please leave me alone? Please let me be, I’m just trying to live a normal life. Struggles are part of life but I can do without the incessant trampling. It’s so tiring to be trying to pick myself up and before I could really stand up right, you either trip me again, kick me in the gut or drop a piece of rock on my head.

Enough to this bullshit! Maybe you could tell me what you want from me and we’ll settle this once and for all?

Handicapped without me compact…

I could never have imagined the day that I would feel so handicapped without my compact camera. Seriously, I’m feeling very handicapped. Ever since my Sony F-88 compact died and I had to send it for repairs, I’ve felt so handicapped when it comes to taking pictures.

Not that a DSLR won’t do the work, just that somehow a compact takes out the technical aspects a lot and let me focus more on the composition and colours. Tomorrow, I’m going to give them a call again to check on what’s the status of my repair.

Solid!!!

This is abolutely perfect!