smoulering ruin...

i have developed an uncanny ability to chat with any taxi driver i am riding with.

This is highly depressing as i tot only the saddest, most pathetic people would actually chat up the taxi driver. But i have found it to be HIGHLY challenging. Talking with taxi uncles will IMPROVE your command of english, or chinese, or whatever babble you practice.

The trick is to keep the conversation going until you reach ur destination.

I had a lengthy discussion with a taxi driver when he drove me from WOODLANDS checkpoint all the way back to my ex-apartment in Paya Lebar. About 20min.

And we were talking about GOD. And it wasnt that we were cussing and dissing God almighty, but the taxi driver was actually a devoted christian.

This scared the HELL OUTTA ME, since there was a buddhist pendant hanging from his rear view mirror. Nothing is scarier than a split personality person who is HIGHLY religious, in BOTH of his personalities. One minute, he's all HALLELEUJAH, and the next he's mumbling Buddhist scripture.

Also on the bus today, i witnessed vehicular assault. It was one vehicle assaulting another. My bus cut a lane and made the car behind come to a screeching halt. The car accelerated forward past my bus and the uncle cussed and swore.

It was the funniest thing i had seen all week. The sight of an ageing Sikh, waving his hairy fist at the bus driver with his turban shuddering with anger was enough to make me bite my lip and drink my blood in laughter.

Of course, the bus driver couldnt give a rat's ass about it and just drove on. The Sikh was having none of this. No one fucks with a sikh and gets away with it. He rammed his car into the bus. Ok, not really rammed. It was more like a nudge. At least that's wat it felt like on the bus. The bus suffered no injuries, but the car had its wing mirror smashed. The bus driver wound down his window, looked at the side of the bus and drove off, leaving the Sikh in the middle of the road.

Well, at least, he made his point.

song of the day is "The Last Ressort" by Eagle...

a change of scenary...

Ok so mom couldnt stand it anymore. We moved.

Moved to Balestier, where my HAWT cousin resides. Thankfully she had a spare room for jasper and i to bunk in - for free. She was actually planning to let one of her other friends stay in that room, but she let it up to us and slept with her friend. That in itself... is pretty hawt...

I need my new laptop. I need it so bad that it makes me cry.

Looking for a place to rent, and im still working too... ugh...

like a shark that smells blood...

Ok ok so blood is on the walls and lots of thing's been happening.

Basically, allow me to sum it all up in a few points. Then i'll elaborate. Maybe. If i feel like it.

1) The new K Pro Staff rocks. I might buy another and this will be the "last" racquet i ever buy.

2) I need to move. Something's come up and the place has been labelled UN-LIVEABLE. Not my fault. But it's still not fit for human residence.

3) The job has gotten heavier by the ton. Not only am i expected to learn all there is to know about CEM technologies. I am also expected to have a hand in South AND North Podium coordination. And not to mention DCS (District Cooling Systems) and the asshole of Marina Bay Sands - the LINK CHAMBER.

4) Lastly, I need to move. OFFICE THIS TIME. Move from Paya Lebar down to the Marina Bay Sands project itself. This will be refreshing. But the smell of the fresh paint tells a different story.

So long story short, I have LOTS of things to do. Especially this month. Expect posts to be intermittent, but laced with hatred. Yeap.

song of the day is "Wonderwall" by Oasis...

there is nothing conceptually better than rock and roll...

I awaken at 630am. Clean myself up and get into the skin of a manager and head to the office. I get to the office early for the morning brief at 830am. But it was cancelled last minute, leaving me deprived of 30min of sleep.

REVENGE.

And so the course starts, headed by a bearded Irish dude called Mike Tuke, a cool dude with an ADDICTIVE attitude. 2 hours into the course and suddenly everyone was asking question in cockney slang or mock-irish.

I almost snorted coffee out my nose when i heard Cedric say "I'll reckon that..."

RECKON???

The curse of european influence didnt stop there.

I happened to stumble across a list compiled by Q magazine - listing the top 100 greatest songs of all time. At 11th place was my all-time fav, Dont Look Back In Anger by Oasis. But bless mi dearest soul (see, irish IS addictive), the NUMBER ONE song was a song i had never heard of before.

Turning to the worldest truest library of info, youtube, i searched for it. "LIVE FOREVER" by OASIS.

And i found it.

I played it.

It was awesome. I cant believe how good it was.

The day was dead shitty. Course ended with a mess of cat6 cables all over the place and alarms from all the test kits going off, and Mike Tuke congratulating us on a great second day to the course.

9 more days of this crap to go.

Then it was a rush of email answering followed by rushing off for my night course, interrupted by Mr Khoo calling me up and laying down a few "need to get done by tomorrow" tasks, followed by more emails bringing up delayed tasks faster than the a dead-rising necromancer in burnt out australia (oops).

Anyway, when the course ended, and i was hitching a ride back to my place with my engineers, a word flashed in my head.

REVENGE.

I detoured, got back to the office, opened my emails, looked at everything.

Then i called Mr Khoo, and lambasted him with HEAPS of questions that had to be answered before i could give him anything tomorrow. Unable to answer anything, he had to put it off to tomorrow, where he promised a good discussion.

I knew tonight i would have no emails on my blackberry. Live Forever baby.

song of the day is "Live Forever" by Oasis.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maybe I dont really want to know
How your garden grows
I just want to fly...

Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain
As it soaks it to the bone...

Maybe I just want to fly
I want to live I dont want to die
Maybe I just want to breath
Maybe I just dont believe
Maybe youre the same as me
We see things theyll never see
You and I are gonna live forever...

Maybe I dont really want to know
How your garden grows
I just want to fly...

Lately did you ever feel the pain
In the morning rain
As it soaks it to the bone...

Maybe I will never be
All the things that I want to be
But now is not the time to cry
Nows the time to find out why
I think youre the same as me
We see things theyll never see
You and I are gonna live forever...

Were gonna live forever
Gonna live forever
Live forever
Forever

yeap...

Ok im back from the 10 long absence.

Mainly, i've been up to my EARS in work. Courses left and right and STILL got tonnes of paperwork, shop drawings and coordination to attend to.

Plus, i got a new laptop.

OH YEAH. The DELL XPS STUDIO 16. A fucking beauty. And yet, still... very VERY affordable.

And in a sudden twist of unexpected bliss, i just got a RAISE. My income now... is well... QUITE good. Better than i'd expected it to be. However, I only found out AFTER i had ordered my bloody laptop, which means that i couldve bought an even BETTER one, bcos the raise would've altered my budget, no?

And mom dropped the bomb.

This wednesday... my MOM... will go out with her friends... and go... DRINKING.

Oh yeah. Jasper dropped his spoon, Oliver choked, Dad's jaw dropped that his beard almost ended in the soup. I dunno what I was doing, but im pretty sure i looked con-fucking-fused. Never had lunch been so TENSE.

But it was only during dinner that mom finally cleared things up. They were going out TEA-DRINKING.

CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY... ... ... ... ... ...

Oliver has become a pretty good guitar player. Some time after dinner, mom forced him to play. And of course, he had to play the one song that EVERYONE in the house can sing.

Oh yeah... HOTEL CALIFORNIA.

And everyone was singing it. Jasper was singing it as he watched Man-U thrash some unknown club. Dad was singing it as he surfed the net. Mom was singing it as she washed the dishes. The whole house broke into a fucking medley, which i wish i had recorded, of course.

He's learning Dont Look Back in Anger by Oasis - the most OWNAGE rock song ever. Shit like that never gets old.

In the meantime... im still counting my days til the laptop arrives. Damnit...

song of the day is "Dont Look Back in Anger" by Oasis... as expected...

the lead-up and a new thing to buy...

Ok so CNY was pretty okay. Not as noisy as the previous years', but still fun nevertheless.

Now on to the current. As you all know, i have a new laptop. A company laptop. Well, it's made me realize something. It's better than the one i currently have at home.

Now on to the CONSUMERISM part.

I want a new laptop. I want one. A new one. Something that i can at least play some DECENT games on, like F.E.A.R or something that has 3D graphics in it. Im sick of plain ol' NOTHING to play on my laptop bcos my HDD is already full. All 80GB of it. And in case you dont know, 80GB is NOTHING in today's world.

I'm targetting a 17" LCD screen laptop, with 4GB RAM, a Core2Duo processor greater than 2.0GHz, with a fucking dedicated graphics card and 320GB HDD space. And all this... for LESS than SGD2000.

Possible?

I'll give you a moment to think about that and come back to it later.

Today's tennis was the most exciting shit i have played in a long time. To be honest, i was off-form and LK was ON-FORM, this equals EPIC upset in the making.

But no, he didnt beat me. But he made me look really STUPID at times, which is the highest compliment i will ever give to someone.

I still won. but it was CLOSE. 6-4. I need to play more.

BUT... that won't happen AGAIN. Bcos the Sixeff gathering's been pushed FORWARD to this sunday... which means... haiz... no tennis... AGAIN... gawddamnit... why does shit always happen?

Also, last week was awesome, almost ALL the bosses were on leave... and this spells MAJOR and BlATANT slackerage from the entire department, which is always cool and shit. I actually saw one of my engineer bring a pillow to the office and lay it on the table and slept right there after lunch. Oh well, nothing to do i guess. That's great.

Now, back to the laptop.

YES, it is possible. In fact, I just randomly surfed Dell's website again just to put it together... and YES... it will cost SGD1938. Whoopee-fucking-doo. Let's do it!

song of the day is "A Little Too Not Over You" by David Archuleta...

new toys again...

Blogging from a brand new company laptop.

The model is a Lenovo R400. Everything is golden, ESPECIALLY bcos the IT department had a problem installing Roadwarrior on this laptop.

Basically, Roadwarrior is a hardware that allows this laptop to be enabled by insertion of a smartcard. This system also allows the IT department to track what programs im installing or whatever... so WITHOUT it, im practically FREE. Thank gawd the are idiots.

The only downside is that the laptop has PATHETIC memory. It has only a pathetic 1GB of RAM. I need more to run AutoCad, which is the MAIN reason why i asked for a company lappie.

I'll plug in a spare one that my dad has, maybe, or maybe just invest in a module myself, since it's pretty cheap nowadays. See how bah!

Oh yeah, and the screen is bigger than my old one - i think...