at: blog

(Sunday, January 01, 2006-)
+2:09 AM]*

# precountdown stayover-

30-31 december 2005. how very cool.

maybe this time around, making the words bigger on my wordpad will enable me to write more concisely, since it's like eating bigger portions of food at one go, hence the feeling of satiety comes about sooner. but as always, i won't bet on it, and you can ask doctor robert wilks for more information. he's the one who gave me some really serious surgical treatment.

really, at about waking time of 30 dec to about 3pm, there was nothing special about my day, save for the fact i was already in my hwachong pe attire trying to get out of the house to run on the school track. but i was too lazy, i had some stupid runny nose and i felt like i was going to catch a cold. furthermore, my father didn't let me bring his priceless, worth its weight in gold ps2 which i always get addicted to nowadays, to amy's, much to my chagrin and utmost despair, so in other words i was feeling quite bu shuang. you can say it's pms without the cramps. then after lunch, when the weather is good and the sun is shiny, it seemed that i can wait 2 hours and then get out to run, before getting amy her wanted cutlery before going to her house proper. but aloy teo called me and i slipped out of my pe attire and into clothes that i would be wearing for the next 25 hours. which may explain why elaine smelt something funny the next morning, when i was really wishing it wasn't me but the carpets in amy's room.

i really wasn't prepared to stay over at all, not even bringing any towels and full sets of clothing to change into, for that added feeling of freshness we all love to have when sleeping around. it just felt like some other sianned out day, when i would be playing my ps2 and getting some running and pull ups done. yet when i'm at dover meeting aloy teo, richmond and finally zp whom we didn't manage to diss for being late since he summoned us at the bus stop, clever boy, one strategic step ahead of us so to speak, it seemed that aloy teo and only a minority others won't be staying over. it does seem from the entire pacing of the afternoon at amy's, that we won't be having much of the fun and evil entertainment of staying over and stretching and testing our body systems and healths by not sleeping over, and by sleeping for that matter.

5pm, amy's. so the first few words that came from the guys was of course the sheer magnitude, decoration and wealth of it all. you name it, amy has it. i didn't seem to care very much, not even at the prospect of all those very nice thematically-designed private housings on our way in, or the 3-level spanning waterfall with koi pool, simply because ... well, i really didn't care. i was quite content with the state of my own home and living, even though it is not the richest abode in the whole world. really, there is no end to admiration and jealousy of those atop us, because we won't ever be at the top of the economic ladder. so, what's the point of hating your own hdb flat? there's really no end to it.

of course, while everyone is slowly coming in batches, introducing themselves inevitably with their own trademark entrances some more well-received and funnier than others (eg. whining for nothing at really high siren pitches, just smiling to everyone, shyly ambling in trying not to get noticed, start talking about their travels and beauty accessories including themselves etc.), the xbox was being played of its games just before it's being sold at a cheap bargain price to a prospective buyer in the house. burnout 3 takedown, need for speed 2 underground featuring a full-busted woman in orange low-cut and suitable for ages 3 and above (i'm sorry but there are a few things at amy's i experienced i can't get over easily), and behind us hilarious, roaring games of snap and domination games of bridge and taiti. then i played this 3 player soccer game with shiwei and aloy tan, and of course, held negative number of candles with respect to skills even though it's an entirely new game to all of us, having score zero goals of my own out of 20 in shots altogether. i'm already quite immune to negative feelings of being sucky, simply because of the sheer number of games i lose in or am bad at. and by bad, it really means the kind whereby i contribute nothing or negatively towards the score i'm playing towards, or being last in some business trading card game where apparently there's no such thing as blaming luck, you can only blame yourself. hell, i can play 10 rounds of mahjong only to HU in zero games. in fact, i can safely say i will lose in many games i play, unless there's really something very wrong with the other players. i am therefore thankful that the night consists of not many competitive gaming sessions.

of course, throughout the while, especially when playing nfs 2 underground, i really wished my father had let me bring my ps2 along, and then even the girls will want to pick up the controller to play virtual guitar, as i think not many people have seen games outside of controlling mechanical robots, shooting, banging cars into side railings and other vehicles, and that involve only a psychedelic slide show in the middle and a very simple interface of coloured notes falling into place. of course, i had my own version of the same car-banging into other cars action, which was really easier to control and achieve 10 takedowns before your car gets totalled.

7.30pm. amy and her henchmen have started dishing out her dishes onto the dining table, and at first glance, they seriously look homemade and not worth a lot of its salt. the spaghetti can only be handled by hardcore wannabes, but when mixed properly with the tomato sauce it was sour and tangy all the same. the brinjals taste fried as if on a wok, absorbing most of the garlicky taste, the potatoes are what you can get if you do your bbq right, the giant mushroom tastes hotel-grade with the cheese on, and the tomato containers with curry fish bits simply taste exotic, if their flavours don't complement each other. the watermelon was a nice alternative to the sparkling grape juice, which tastes fakely alcoholic. lastly, after laughing at sheryl's incessant humour and antics, getting trashed by the too-pro (not in my own words) shiwei at halo 2, and getting a stupid score of 2, we went to get our dessert - tiramisu cake and chocolate nutella cake! beautiful for the tastebuds.

9pm. time to watch soapy, melodramatic mediacorp rappers rap out their lyrics to express their heartfelt emotions regarding true love and betrayal! not the channel 5 and 8 watching me, i simply sat in on the carpet for fun, enjoying the company more than jacelyn tay. although only carine asked me to shut the hell up, i'm sure many more feel the exact same way, only to be unable to find the right words to describe how irritating i am. after a while, the scriptwriters failed to grip all our hearts, and we begun to talk to each other, share prom photos, korea photos, switzerland photos, france photos, exploits and travels. i was really trying to strike up conversation with the always-quiet yaqi, who incidentally went to nz after i returned the day before, so there was no chance of meeting her at all, even though we went to the same 3 towns on the route and no, my coach did not stall for one hour and i did not wear my nicest-looking scarf. i think only carine and elaine will know what i'm talking about, having met each other in switzerland captured and proven on the always reliable photo. there were really quite a lot of things to share about nz, because it isn't the mango, lv, prada and giorgio armani of singapore town life but handgliding, skydiving and jet boating and loads and loads and loads of mountains and clear waters everywhere you turn. when richmond and aloy tan asked if i wanted to visit 7-11, i couldn't pluck myself from the nz experience just yet and nosy emmeline chuckled to herself but i could see and hear it from afar, as just because i can't stop talking to yaqi means i like her or something.

10pm, walking down mount sinai and henry park to jelita and 7-11. richmond and aloy tan are really special company, having an unprecendented level of spontaneity, well of course in their own degrees. from school to scholarships, universities to courses of desire, bmt to sispec, ocs to loads of money and prestige and a good, good resume, there was loads to talk about, loads to share, and loads to think about together, as we're about to lose our freedom and our youth and become - of all the horrors of the world - adults. en route, i finally got wind of what they truly wanted to buy - alcohol. me? i only yearn for simple snack bars to munch on if i get hungry at night. i feel juvenile. when we were going back, they would isolate themselves outside, at the romantic balconey with the koi swimming around the moat, and drink themselves silly. while i would be joining the girls as a wuss playing games. one comment that aloy surprised me with was what girl was there to be with inside? (which was ironical on hindsight) actually i only wanted to play the games.

so once back, we were already in 3 groups playing this charades game involving many movie titles, most of which are handwritten by notable figures of the trade, namely the very participants of the game. so most of the cheap descriptions included 'the one i wrote', 'the one they said', direct chinese translations against all rules, multiple skips without notice, just a strange name with no bearing of anything whatsoever (and people can still get it), and the best of all is yi1 qie4 jing4 zai4 bu4 yan2 zhong1.

11pm. first it was taxi 1, then it was cut off less than halfway for taxi 3, which again was cut off less than halfway for hot chick. i learnt that anything with a chick in it involved transgenderal roles. it was hilarious and a good comedy, but here and there some pretty provoking analysis of the ideas of family, friendship and sexuality is evident. i was particularly uncomfortable with the idea of jessica's best friend falling in love with her personality but in the form of a not so good looking male physical shell, especially when the name 'spence' is used to refer to the new prototype of a person, which was all the more hair-raising. i mean, personally i won't mind lesbianism, but 'spence' was born less than a week ago and she had to fall in love with him/her already. however, the poor billy is worth everyone's sympathy. i was also pretty impressed when weilin correctly predicted the love confession of jessica's best friend to her. i thought the setting was important as a clue on the whole. movies. oh yes. 1) jessica's brother is sick and 2) rob schneider is a damn good actor.

1 am. after some rounds of bridge, which was pretty lame actually given how awfully low the bids were for the power of the cards, like a 2 bidder had how many thousand trumps and aces and picture cards, we talked of mahjong but it never was. there was constant auto-hushing as we have neighbours who can get quite bitchy and don't hold class parties more often than we do. in the midst of passing marshmallows and japanese sweets and chocolates around, most of us visited the outdoor bar. richmond was high and on the verge of being drunk, and shiwei was happily drunk, red, and tested positive for vodka sensitivity. aloy tan could hold his liquor well though, he was talking and behaving normally as he would. on more than one occasion, jieyu would remind shiwei not to try falling off the ledge. in the end, we played the number passing game to eliminate the rest of the vodka with some coke for dilution. that didn't stop the true blue alcoholics from downing their favourite mouthfuls from time to time, though. after that, aloy tan bode us farewell as we would be seeing him for the last time. no it won't be, he just took some photos with us before we would all go for january ns.

2 am. while some who were occupying amy's room went ahead to bathe and disperse themselves around, we crowded round to talk rubbish, and eventually the laptop opened up to prom pictures from numerous favourite photo artists' prized and limited edition collections. i was quite critical and verbose, criticising almost everything that came my way, including carine's hair which was really blocking my view, so i snapped at her, as usual when i talk to this kind of people. huishan, for the umpteenth time, mistook my intentions and snapped back at me, telling me to behave the hell well and be nice. after that, i just decided to ignore her, for she was really spoiling the mood. after a few more photos, we started talking again.

there would be all sorts of the seen before and never-before-seen footages of hwachong people, dolled and drawn up in their self-deemed nicest ways, concealed, powdered, puffed and coloured to picturesque perfection, until their original look was gone and a few seconds would pass before i recognised some of them. my classmates were different, though. somehow i could recognise them quickly enough not to feel self-humiliated inside. it was also worth noting that their level of makeup and artistry is high. emmeline's photos were sorted wrongly into amy's laptop, on its way to seventeen magazine for publication on the cover page. Emmeline Teaches You How To Ditch That Asshole in One Minute.

so prom memory is still running vibrant and fun.

3 am. most people were getting their bedsheets ready, or they simply stole them from the ground not asking for permission and getting ready to sleep, basically. the amy's room population slowly dwindled, as more people emigrated. after viewing the prom photos, amy begun to explore her computer for rubbish to look at. and lo and behold, she found not a couple of, but a whole series of an american long-running serial, into its fifth season on her laptop. queer as folk, anyone? i wonder how queer 'folk' can get, whatever folk can be. the laptop couldn't blast any dialogue, which was purportedly well-written as amy explains, and there is a storyline to follow apart from some arbitrarily gross parts, some head over heels grosser than others. amy was explaining to us what was going on, giving admirably concise and remarkably objective descriptions, such as 'hate crime', where i would be mincing my words and saying stuff, as doctor robert wilks would predict, to be something like 'oh they hate these bastards in this clubhouse, so they bombed them all to hell.' as compared to 'hate crime'.

4 am. apparently the opening title screen wasn't enough to cue me in on the nature of this series aired in the US. naked, muscularly well-toned young men (in trunks of course) dancing, twirling themselves to sexy perfection. actually some of the moves do look like our dear sebastian, but not as jerky and disco. two or three guys at a time embracing, kissing and making love. a well-built, radiant woman, seemingly in support of the whole affair. and the first scene of the episode, season five? two guys in the middle of the street, apparently some parking place, starting to french, german or whatever nationality or style, passionately. it is a gay show. as amy explains, everybody we would see in the show is a homosexual, mostly male, but two lesbians forming a civil partnership, and (!) later having IVF children, all going to bed all cuddly, warm and happy, as samuel puts it. i remind him what a disturbing proposition it would be for the children, who would grow up with two parents, who are a mother, and ... another mother. he asked, won't the children ask? i guess they did after that. and by the way, the radiant woman is a mom of one of the gay men, loving and supporting her gay son in all his exploits and in support of the homosexual movement. what samuel called a funky mother.

oh but there are exceptions to the gay parade. apparently, as amy explicates, this series is about 5-6 gay men and their interrelationships, their exploits and how they progress some form of storyline, which in this case is about the gay pride movement and some convention they want to hold, and of course in the process getting rejected by many hotels they looked up. any straight characters not in the gay circle are meant to be peripheral. that's a rather interesting world to live in, i guess. and of course, in the middle, homosexual affection expressed like they were a man and a woman. the best part was this sudden cut to a scene to two naked men one behind the other, of course one plugged into the other, one humping the other (you sort of get the picture by now) in great vigour, sexual excitement and forceful groans, all of which i didn't really remember after watching by myself. but what really bugged me the most, and what i did remember after watching, was that the two men were TALKING during their obligatory intercourse, as normally as they would any two normal good friends lifting dumbbells together in the gym. now THAT'S really freaky. and of course, in a good manner of american liberalism, the door goes a-knocking, and they unplug from each other, shove a towel into their crotches and open the door. their friend (sexuality i didn't remember or find out from amy) walks in, looked like he was talking about the stock market. in the midst of two gay men, sweating from the ensuing sex, and i think one of them was telling the guy who just came in about some dynamite thing.

after a while, though, the storyline became quite regular, when you get used to the fact that this world is not quite the same as the usual world we live in, in terms of love-making between the genders. i begun to lie on the armrest because i was getting quite tired and bored, while carine, amy and jieyu viewed his ipod for his korea pics, talked for no end, and there was one particularly interesting article that they talked about ...

6 am. amy talked about this mysterious junior, whom i may hunt down if she tells me who she is, whose parents are really ownage. this big house at tanglin, which has humongous toilets tiled with marble and gold, rooms of mirrors, rooms of glass, stairs of glass, don't know how many models of cars, pool tables, a swimming pool, tv screens like no other, many many bedrooms, many many long hallways, and many many, many marble statues lying about everywhere. amy went on and on on her expository, which apparently wasn't laden with unnecessary verbosity, making me wonder more than at one point whether she was talking about some resort or self-sustaining town in singapore. on confirmation, no, it's one person's home.

7 am. sleepyheads who didn't sleep, let's go eat breakfast!! some of us went down to the basement level and caught zp up and running with his usual overnight favourite - nba on the xbox. while the breakfast goers sat down and eyed the action, i went up to check emmeline out, as she was taking her time bathing for work. by the time she opened the bathroom door, and i walked down to the basement, everybody was knocked out by the nba action that only the player himself can understand in full. amused, emmeline went to wake everyone up, and off we went, on a trip to clementi town centre, a trip that made no travelling and time-saving sense, since i didn't take my bag along with me and had to travel along the same footpath for don't know how many times.

8 am. we were welcomed into this town centre, from a slumber of a peaceful escape of amy's house and estate, by smoke, incessant hustle and bustling noise, people walking in all directions rapidly, and hawkers at the hawker centre shouting across unknown spaces. and of course, this super enthu uncle who quickly and forcefully ushered us to two specially-laden tables which sat all 8-9 of us. of course, he then quickly took drinks orders, and went off presumably quite happy at his catch this early morning. what a change of landscape, from a posh, serene resort, to a lively, heartlander area. complete with a pawnshop which did not sell sex toys.

most of us ate porridge of some form or another, with or without an egg hatched into it. i must say richmond's chai tow kuay was really spicy and fried and nice, although carine was too stuck up to try it. in the end, jieyu had to leave, being really late for his cip (at this time?) at bishan. so, naturally more photos, can't bear to leave but must leave scene.

9 am. we're back at amy's, and most people have woken up. many gathered around her room and her mattress, viewing her photos, her showroom-quality photos of her own home shots, her travels to sentosa with her rgs friends, and talked more about travelling. plans were transiently made about going on a 45 day camping tour, going to taiwan, or would you prefer korea, maybe hong kong is better, or let's just go to thailand and watch some transvestites.

10 am. now carine was behaving strangely. didn't we just have breakfast at clementi? she was starting to feel hungry and cooking instant noodles already. amy whipped up some omelette, complete with tomato bits and cheese. cheese is just THE cheat code to make things taste fuller and more high-class. and of course a few dashes of salt. amy's cooking is admirable anyway. while i went away from the table after getting bitten by mosquitoes to watch some rubbish boring nba live game, i turned around to observe the table and the people eating there, peacefully, happily and just like in one family. but stacy don't what to go for countdown party!! argh. she didn't want to watch fireworks and eat swensens after as she said earlier. on hindsight, i think that's a pretty good idea anyway.

11 am. incessant, unadulterated, nonstop talkshow action. in amy's room once again, we got ourselves driving licenses, theory tests, better gold or silver deals that had higher or lower entry fees depending on how easy you could pass the courses, and compared whether their mothers or fathers passed the test with greater ease and parked better. we raided every secondary school, each person present being of a different origin, labelled rgs angry, militant bitches, labelled sc girls demure and well-groomed, labelled chinese high guys to have hairy legs, labelled mgs girls to be bitchy and full of complaint, labelled acs guys to like to attack sc and mgs girls, labelled st nicks as having loads of butches, labelled rv and the cheenabiang school and ny not that much more westernised. all these of course could be found on some sketchbook weblog started by two jjc guys, who seem to criticise everyone in rather equal proportion. finally, we explicated the ills of overly-demure women and the good in women having their own say. that chiling lin has class and is beautiful, that angelina jolie is gorgeous but not jolin tsai and shuqi. that jacelyn tay is pretty but not ann kok. and the best was the whipping out of this magazine that categorised many female hollywood stars into their cup sizes, from A to DD+.

1.20 pm. finally, we really had to go home. if our parents won't shout their tops off, we would just die of exhaustion first. but i really won't mind staying another night, and taxi 3 a watch and maybe the gay shows another chance. on our way out, though, we stumbled upon three small, cute black kittens.

animal lovers of the world, unite! stacy and zp played with the kittens, which emerged from the long kow and probably their mother ditched them, but stacy was quite enthusiastic, going so far as to play with them using sticks, stroke them, make funny happy sounds to entice the cats and borrow my drinking water. we tried to ask the nearby house if the cats belonged to them. although their car was parked in the garage, there was nobody coming out to greet us. rich bastards.

i really won't give a damn about those cats if i were walking out of amy's house alone, partly because i was in a hurry to catch my father's car at clementi to pizza hut near my house for strings juniors' treat. of course, i was never an ardent fan of animals found off the roads, streets or in this case the long kow, but because i was walking with great big fans of these furry idols, and that i was quite taken in by all the love given to them, i stopped and stared. stacy even wanted to bring her cats to spca, where according to her they would have a high chance of getting adopted. at that point, i realised that humans do look out for looks in animals as well, when they decide its fate. have a cute, longing innocent pair of eyes, and it would get reared. have an ugly colour scheme that is totally unattractive, and you can almost guarantee spca would have to put it to sleep. is love for animals really an affair of looking at their exteriors first? apparently, first impressions do count.

carine and i wanted very much to go home, and samuel tagged along and left the rest behind, feeling a sense of guilt leaving our more compassionate classmates behind, not even waiting for amy to get some boxes from jelita to house the cats temporarily. on the way, carine was giving her high-pitched rendition of How My Mother Bitches At Me, much to our amusement of how parents can get unfair at times. i can't agree more, but it's too bad we have to listen to them anyhow. it's always true they care about our welfare, but it's also true that most of the time, their treatment of their intentions is wrong and misplaced. it could also be due to stress at work or at home, or given to themselves by themselves. the result? just heck loh.

i love everyone's company. i just don't feel that i'm that close yet to anyone, or to many people, and how i wish i have 3 years of jc to do that.

the story ends like this;
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