Hi guysss I'm banking on the chance that I have readers who are not my Facebook friends, or that I have readers who are my Facebook friends who have not liked Deenie's photo and will do so if prodded thrice.

So... PLEASE LIKE DEENIE'S PHOTO IF YOU LIKE READING MY BLOG! If it has ever made you laugh or something. Yes yes I know it's very emo recently, but whatever if my misery has ever entertained you, please click on this link and like her photo!

Because I love Deenie so much (and because she has been a steadfast bimbo friend and taught me all about make up and hair and also, on occasion, gaming) I have posted it twice on FB, called in all the favours I've accumulated over the years from teaching people and helping them with/doing their homework, and even sat through an episode of Running Man with Jie because he said he'd only like the photo if I finished watching the episode.

Longest hour ever.

Lol I'm just kidding I spent it very fruitfully staring at the wallpaper and trying to figure out the pattern behind it. Seriously if the episode had gone on any longer I would have turned into that woman from The Yellow Wallpaper fantasizing about the creeping wallpaper and vines coming out to strangle her. Strangulation might actually have been welcome because Running Man literally plays the Korean convention of replayed moments to the hilt- just like how it gets a little annoying when they replay a shot of a passionate kiss in the rain from like a thousand different angles in those Korean dramas, Running Man does the same for like "gag" moments. Which is okay, and sometimes passably hilarious, but it's like being the awkward kid at a party where you watch people have fun but you don't actually have fun.

So yeah. I lolled around, watched the wallpaper creep, played with Jie's Griffles, tickled him with it until he just ignored me, whined about wanting to read Klein (at which point he gave me a most disgusted look- hmph who was the one poring over H3 during A level mugging last year booooo) and watched his brother walk in and out of the room in FBTs, which I still think are strange on guys!

Let's take a poll: FBTs on guys - hot or not? Jie says they are normal, like any other shorts, but I think curve cut is a little weird even on girls.

Ah disclaimer his brother is really nice though so I don't judge him even though he wears FBTs.

Anyway I have digressed a lot, so... help me like Deenie's photo kthxbai!!!

I think sometimes, when you are in a position of power, it gets far too easy to forget to love other people- by virtue of your power, you can set impossible tasks and watch people scramble to finish them.

Today, I panicked like hell over a visa application for my boss's son because it was due tomorrow, and they'd decided to make an appointment to discuss it with their banker only tomorrow.

They made me call their banker, and they tried to make her rearrange her schedule just because their son didn't start earlier on his visa application, and didn't really know where what things went, and the whole day I just calling around and begging for documentation for a visa that wasn't even mine to use.

I had to queue up and give the form to the teller, and then nag her to expedite the processing of the form, and to try to give it to me by tomorrow morning. I think I gave her a bad day. I apologized, though.

It's not fair to have to make others annoyed and upset just because you're in a position to. If I ever become rich and/or powerful, I will remind myself and my children constantly to be charitable- and to remember this day as an intern where I was made to run an errand for someone else's visa application.

In case anyone was wondering about my visa application, I sent it off today via registered mail; I started collating documents 2 weeks ago because with my intern allowance, I could only afford to pay for registered mail, not express courier. I helped Jie deposit a cheque today, and he earnt like 1/6 of my entire month's pay in 1 day doing part time work.

I really felt like shit today.

I shall only comfort myself with the fact that my school and my banker love me more than his love him- he had to hire an agent for his visa application while my school is doing it, and my banker was willing to do my letter with 2 hours' notice rather than the 2-3 business days his needed. (I gave 3 business days' notice anyway because it was only polite)

Please be nice to people even if you don't HAVE to. They are also the loved ones of others. You are not the only loved person in the whole world.

A WhatsApp message from Mum while I'm at work:

Mum: U Chicago sent you a Fedex parcel.
Me: Oh. What's inside?\
Mum: Want to open?
Me: Open lor.
Mum: Opening

Mum: Got a very nice woolly scarf with "Chicago" embossed.
Me: Haha. That's nice of them. Sigh I wish I didn't have to reject all these great schools.
Mum: And many other pamphlets, insiders' guides.
Me: Have fun reading.
Mum: No. Having fun trying on the scarf.
Me: Lol ok
Mum: Can I borrow it when I go travelling during the winter?
Me: Sure

Mum: It's very pretty. I'm keeping it in my cupboard
Me: Omg keep it in mine it's my scarf
Mum: Finders keepers

Walau mum is toooo freeeeee at home.

Sigh.

Some days, it's just an endless stream of firefighting.

I have eye bags. I have never had eye bags in my life before. For some reason this makes me even sadder.

This was Jie's exercise list today in Guards:

"Like after an annoying 400m morning swim, we did like 120 push-ups (among other exercises) in Strength training before going on a 2km introductory fast march."

This was my exercise list today:






... uh I walked to buy curry chicken rice for lunch.
... and I pretended I was Hyuna and strutted while walking, which I SWEAR BURNS EXTRA CALORIES OKAY

-creys-

Sian lah while he is busy getting super buff in camp, my butt is expanding at the same rate as the universe and then he is going to dump me for a girl who actually looks like Hyuna because everyone loves a military guy, according to College Magazine's top 10 universities to get a husband (West Point is ranked first). Which Crystal and I came across while clicking around on the internet today.

To those who texted/said something to me re below:

Thank you. Sorry I didn't reply in person- you know how I am. But I appreciate it, really. Thank you.

And when I am in a more stable emotional state, we will catch up again.

I have this recurrent nightmare where I turn up at school all excited to start life for real, and the admissions officer greets me with a huge smile, which slowly fades away as she flips through the list and asks me to spell my name again? And then the Dean takes me aside: "well, um, I'm afraid there's been some miscommunication-" and it turns out that I'm not actually admitted.

I worry all the time that someday, someone will realise that I'm not really all that people think I am; in some kind of reverse appeal, they will take back my grades and return me lower ones. I used to worry before exams because I was scared that this time, I would finally slip, and people would realise that I'm not actually very smart or hardworking- that I've just been lucking my way all along this whole time, and I was always on tenterhooks that this would be the day my luck ran out.

I'm afraid that I can't be good enough to protect those I care for. I'm racking my brains to think on your behalf, but I just can't understand. I don't know what to do anymore. I feel like all the lovely things in my life came to me by luck, but I don't deserve them because I don't know how to keep them with me. If they found out, they would leave.

I'm scared that they will leave.

Sometimes I wish I could just stop running this race, but I know if I stop they will catch me and cut me open and they will find all the little growths festering away inside. In Primary 4 we read an extract by William Carlos Williams, and the little girl who fought so hard to keep her secret (but was ultimately foiled, by the author and his spoon) has stayed with me this whole time.

I wonder how much longer I can keep on fighting for.

Please. 2 more weeks. It cannot be turtles all the way down; the infinite regress has to stop somewhere and I have no business bringing more people into this. Just give me the strength to carry on for 2 more weeks, and then I'll give in.

Let me just look after the ones I love first. 2 weeks. Please let me be strong enough for this.

Postings are out!!!

Weijie got Guards and he's depressed as hell, but I secretly think Guards is a freaking cool posting and super bragworthy- like "oh I was in Guards, nothing much, just some heli rappelling and stuff like that, yknow."

According to many people Guards is like Commando (though with infantry pay) and everyone knows Commandos are like cool as hell. So yeah major respect to Guards!!!

--

On a separate note, Yuhui and I went out for lunch, and relieved the good old days of IS writing by eating at Everything with Fries.

Yuhui is as strange as ever and happily gnawed on the bones from my pork chop ew. But we accept him for who he is, bone chewing and all!!! -huge encouraging grin-

We were talking about postings, and Yuhui got SCS for infantry, so it's possible that he might get posted to Tekong to train the ickle recruits in future. Because a good soldier is always prepared, we started coming up with Fun Pumping Ideas- inspired by his PS getting annoyed and ordering 1200 push ups (yes, one thousand and two hundred; I did not accidentally add a zero) one day.

Being kind of geeky, we decided that it would be quite cute to make his men pump prime numbers- like instead of going "1 SERGEANT, 2 SERGEANT, 3 SERGEANT-" they would have to count in primes, so "2 SERGEANT, 3 SERGEANT, 5 SERGEANT...etc". So pump up to the largest prime before 100, and if you miss one... STAR FROM JIRO.

(I've also been trying to get Yuhui to master encikglish.)

And then you have those lame games like "how many stars are there in the sky?" and "how many meh-meh jumped over the wall?" So today, you guys will be pumping the answer to "how many recruits cleared the low wall"! Wrong nehmind, STAR FROM JIRO.

Other fun pumping ideas included Yuhui's "happy number" thing- Yuhui said that a happy number was a number of which the sum of its prime factors equals the number itself, and 86 is the largest happy number below 100. (ok the definition is wrong, but whatever lets just pretend this is correct) So like, "RECRUITS, PUMP THE LARGEST HAPPY NUMBER BELOW 100! You have 10 minutes to figure it out. Every extra minute you take, we'll go on to the NEXT happy number!!!" (This was more funny at the time because Yuhui said the next happy number is in the ten thousands)

And this opens up a fun spin on the "RECRUITS, IS YOUR SERGEANT SEXY?" pumping question. "RECRUITS, DOES PUMPING HAPPY NUMBERS MAKE YOU HAPPY? DOWN!!"

HAH Jie is ranked 5th most bitchy in his section of 15 people! 

POP LORH!!!!

Because we now live about 1+ km away from each other, Weijie's mother very kindly gave me a lift to Marina Square. I was supposed to meet her at 6:40, but when I woke up I realised in horror that it was already 6:20. I think I broke a record for quick dressing- also, if anyone saw a ghostly looking figure flit through the side gate and down the road, it might have been me running in a long chiffon skirt.

Anyway we got to Marina Square and found a pretty damn good parking lot (yay me! I suggested it). I met Esther in the carpark, and we kind of waved excitedly at each other but I didn't get to talk to her. And then we had to find Jie's elder brother, who had stayed out the whole night on a fishing trip. But he'd been really enthusiastic for some reason and turned up at Marina Square at 6:50 LOL.

Got pretty good seats at the Floating Platform, but it was unbelievably hot because of all the people packed together there. I choped a seat for Deenie behind with tissue paper, and this very aunty-like behaviour made Jie's brother pretend not to know me, and this stupid Deenie never actually turned up to claim the seat!!! ): She would only walk when the guys on the field were marching- hence when there were boring speeches and suchlike and the guys were in rehatkan diri she refused to move. Only when they cepat jalan-ed would she start her trek from whereever she was sitting to the seat I saved for her. Hence she never reached.

The marching was really good, guys! Except there was quite a substantial amount of shifting during ke kanan lurus, but that's what ke kanan lurus is for. I think. I had to rely on Jie's brothers to give me translations of the commands- the elder one had been through NS and thus knew everything, and the younger one was in NCC and snarked at the standard of all their drills LOL.

Except we all burst out in giggling when they ran back in, because they ran like I would run. Or, more accurately, mince along in heels.

The SAF ceremonial band was awesome; they had these cute little scores that were clipped to the front of their various instruments. And they played a medley of ABBA songs, and did fancy drills (um, to me, fancy is anything more than walking and turning and taking dressing, and they kind of split into rows and crossed over and U-turned and it reminded me a bit of that video of a sphere turning inside out).

Ah and when the recruits marched past us, we realised the detriment of sitting so near the front- as Jie's brother put it succinctly: "So this is what 24km smells like." It's not just sweat, but like... aged sweat with a bouquet of feet, maybe. But okay stink with pride, NSmen! It's not easy to get through it, and yeah I must admit that I was really glad that I didn't have to do it because I don't think I would have survived. Jie said he was pushing/steering his sectionmate for the last 2 hours, and he said it was like driving a car that would go off the road every now and then.

Our seats were pretty awesome, when the parade re-entered we were playing "Spot Wei Jie" and we managed to! He was in the second or third row from the front of the parade, and right in front of us, and his mum and I immediately started screaming and waving like excited fangirls at a K-pop concert. The usher had to come over and tell us to shut up, and even Jie averted his eyes and pretended he didn't recognise us. But we were actually quite happy about finding him, because it meant that we didn't have to throng through the masses of the not-very-fragrant guys. (This came from Jie's elder brother, who was an NSman once!)

But still we lost him. We ended up standing at the spot where he had once stood, going "Eh? Where is he? He was just here a few minutes ago!" because he ran off to go hug some of his friends or something. Took the few obligatory pictures, and then started the long trek back to the Marina Square carpark through the hoardes of NSmen and fieldpacks.

Halfway through I spotted Yuhui and excitedly ran over to say hi, and we had this little bimbo sisterly reunion (think "OHEMGEE!!!! HIIII!!!!!" with excited little handwaves). Until Jie came over all grumpy and said we'd lost his mum, and made me call his mum to find her because according to him I'd been the one who lost them. And he was grumpy because as he said really loudly, "I HAVE BUTT ABRASIONS. MY BUTT. I'M NOT GOING OUT. MY BUTT HURTS." Like wtf how do you even get abrasions on/in your butt??? I am once again so thankful that I am female.

And then I had to sit next to Jie in the car on the way home because his brothers didn't want to. Lol. We used up about half a tiny bottle of Body Shop strawberry perfume, heh.

TOMORROW IS POP DAY AND WE ARE SO HAPPY AH

I don't actually know how this goes but YA

K i'm going to the Subordinate Courts and waiting for a taxi, and there are a bunch of people in front of me who are also dressed for court- black suit and white blouse/shirt.

Except that I am dressed like someone from OMG Secretaries- the name of a company a legal executive and I came across while doing research, whose line of business sounds quite suspect.

Is it BAD to like dressing like this though?? Am I going to become a -prudish voice- "titful harlot" when I go to university?? Maybe this is one of those early warning signs. I should probably look into purchasing some nuns' robes or something.

BUT I DON'T WANT TO GIVE THIS UP!!!! People are so nice to me, especially when I do my Confused Girl imitation where I speak really gently and blink in a pretty confusion and they never get mad at me when I ask questions because they assume that I'm pretty stupid HEH. And everyone smiles and hopes that I have a nice day :)

People keep messing up my beautiful desk and leaving papers around so desperate times call for desperate measures and I have sworn a solemn oath to shred any unattended paper on my desk.