There are certain times when I pause and think “if others don’t care, then why should i even bother?”

Let’s see.. Friday W is flying to aus, D is flying to europe, K is flying to US, Sat A & V are flying to aus, Sun J is flying to aus, Mon J is flying to aus, J is flying to US. You can imagine the number of ‘bon voyage’ i say over the next few days.

Panda flew off this morning and we camped through the night at the airport to send her off.

To prepare for the camp, each of us brought a considerable amount of items like our laptop, books, jackets, mp3s, dvds etc which most proved to be useless because in the end 1) we didn’t get to have free wireless internet and 2) found other forms of entertainment like writing poems and basically just laming around.

I hope Panda get used to the bamboo shoots there in her new phase of life!

Today i accidentally forgot to bring my e-z link card with me when i went out to a friend’s birthday party. This was despite a reminder from my mum to get it from her earlier in the afternoon, in case i forget to later. Anyway i discovered it only after i board the bus and i had only a $10 and a $5 note with me then, and so i went up to the bus driver to tell him that and offered to get down the bus at the next bus stop. This driver, instead of showing me a black face, asked where i wanted to go. So i told him the mrt station, which was just another stop away and he said “then nevermind lah. I take you there.”

What a nice uncle!

And from the mrt station, it was nightmare all the way considering this said friend lives in boon lay and thus the amount of public transport i needed to take to reach there.

I had to queue to purchase single trip card from a machine that only dispense $4 change at most (means you cannot use a $10 note to buy a $2.90 ticket) and later queue again to get back my $1 deposit. Then i had to go around changing coins so that i can take the buses. The best part is that i no longer remember how much it takes to take the bus, so i anyhow throw in 80 cents (for just 4 stops) and hoped the driver let me off.

Anyway the party was pretty fun (ny), all thanks to the guys for turning up in tuxedo and what’s not, and being asked to be camermen because well, they are so well dressed.

And yeah, i have once again proven that my pool skills are superbly good ….at hitting in the black ball.

Now on top of not knowing how to calculate money (people who go for dinner or supper with me should have realised), i am becoming dumber each day.

See the situation was this: the pratagang stayed over at my place and slept on my bed. When i finally wanted to sleep, i took my pillow and slept on the cold floor, beside the door, furthest from the air-con and the whole time wondering why it was so cold.

After 1 hour or so, I remembered this is MY room and proceeded to take my jacket. How dumb?

1) I have been to PS 4 times in the past 1 week, each time with different groups of people but dined at the same 2 restaurants 2 times each. Burp. Oh and cartel has finally succumb to charging its diners 10% service charge and scraping its ’self-service’ style. The waiters just didn’t seem too happy with their additional workload- they gave us 3 cups of ice water when they were clearly 5 of us, and when they had to refill my ice water, they did so very unwillingly. I’d rather do it myself if given the choice and save myself the 10%.

2) I have watched x-men 3, well before most people did. And because of that, i didn’t know i have to stay till the credits roll because no one warned me to. Now i tell everyone who’s going to watch to stay so that they could watch the part of the movie which i didn’t get to see. Professor X never die lah. Really. That’s how nice i am.

3) I bought 16 books on saturday, of which 4 are panda’s and 1 for L. Given that i am still reading my 3 books (1 fiction, 1 travel book, 1 non-fiction), i wonder how long i will take to finish them.

4) There must be certain reasons why Kinder Surprise is strictly for kids. I had one the other day after a long absence and i didn’t enjoy the chocolate, neither did i like the toy, nor get any surprise. Instead i got a small doraemon toy which i didn’t know what to do with it and a shock that I actually get nothing that i have expected.

5) I have the amazing power to pause and continue my dreams. I got woken up a few times this morning, and each time when i went back to sleep, the dream continued. A minor glitch was that i was initially with my uni friends in the dream but later I was my jc friends instead.

6) 1 July is proving itself to be a very popular date for activities. I have already 3 events scheduled on that day. 1 boot camp, 1 youth day opening and 1 21st birthday party (or 2 since it’s twins!).

7) I have been getting more Bananas than Apples these days. There must be something not right. Where did the Apples go?

8) It’s never too good an idea to drink teh-peng at supper. It does make you insomniac and end up writing crap.

There are several things that i do once a year, like cleaning up my room (during CNY) and meeting D. D came back from states for holidays and so the girls met up today for lunch. You know sometimes you don’t have to constantly keep in touch with someone but once you meet, you are able to immediately pick up from where the conversation last ended. Or i am just talkative lah.

Interestingly i realised that should the practice continues, I will be 30 after seeing her for another 10 more times. I’m aging!

Since I had problem going away for a long holiday, we went on a 1-day island getaway. Or rather the idea came about because Cauchy-Riemann bored me to tears last week that i picked up my phone and smsed everyone “want go ubin?”

We managed to quickly get over to ubin without much waiting because there were already 2 old couples waiting to cross over. So plus the 8 of us, we made up the number for one boat.

Leaving Singapore

Suaku or what, this was my first visit to ubin. On top of not knowing how to cycle, I wasn’t from any CCA that had camps at ubin and so i had no reason to be there. I am not called a citykid for no reason.

First ubin view

It must be obvious that I was new to ubin because immediately after i went up to the info kiosk to get a map, the guard ( or what do you call that uncle who sits behind that info counter) asked me how sydney is. The question drew a blank until i realised i was wearing a “sydney Olympic 2000″ t-shirt. Did he think i was from sydney?

We first went up this hill which overlooked the quarry. Chin once told me an interesting story about this quarry which made it even more “must visit”. The clear blue green water from the top view has an effect of making you feel that you are far away from bustling Singapore, until you see the blocks of punggol HDB flats in the background. Someone again asked why the water is blue. Because blue is my favourite colour… I am going to repeat this everytime someone asks me this question.

Top view of the quarry

We walked to the prawn ponds next, only to find that we were on the wrong way and that old prawn ponds had closed. The new ones were located quite a distance away and so we had a good reason to have lunch first.

Coconut tree that stood tall

We met the 2 old couples again at the drinks stall. They had actually gone to ubin to cycle and pluck cocoa. Someone actually commented how this was such a cheap and romantic date for them. haha.

Drink stall with the best marketing tagline

After lunch we headed to chek jawa, aiming to reach there at low tide. But after trekking through a considerable amount of distance, we somehow thought we were lost in the jungles. There were tapes tied around the trees and we had no idea if they were used to mark out the area or just tapes left behind by inconsiderate campers so we detoured and later found ourselves in some unknown area. It being a Tuesday afternoon didn’t help because there wasn’t a single soul that we met along the way. For half an hour or so, we were just trekking aimlessly in the woods with lots of mosquitoes chasing us and meeting a group of wild boars. We even came up with ST headlines in the event that we were really lost and the news reported in ST. It’s times that like that the line “Sometimes we just have to keep walking” made most sense.

The crabs hid faster than i can capture them

We finally reached chek jawa but we missed the low tide timing. All we saw were mangrove trees, lots of crabs and the holes they made, rocks and alot of mud on our shoes. Not a single starfish was seen! We took a few photos and retreated from the place seeing that the tides were rising and we needed time to trek back to the jetty before the sky darkens.

Where’s the starfish hiding?

The boat ride back was especially refreshing with the strong cooling winds blown into your face after a long day’s trek under the hot scorching sun. Better than daikin, i say. I tried the famous nasi lemak at changi village and that marked the end of the ubin trip. That is with blistered feet and tired legs with lots of mosquito bites.

Bye for now

I calculated we had trekked about 13-14 km in a single day. A pity there was not enough time for chek jawa. We shall be back the next time… with phua chu kang boots and super powerful insect repellents. Cloudy is right, mosquito patches are only good for sticker books.

Yesterday night, or rather this morning, panda smsed to say she’s insomniac.

So i executed my Insomnia tackling steps.

1) Sing lullaby.

Doesn’t work? Go to step 2.

2) Wake up to read some sleep inducing notes. I have lots of them.

Doesn’t work? Go to step 3.

3) Think about life.

Doesn’t work? Go to step 4.

4) Think about how we (panda and I) met each other.

Afterwhich panda replied to say that she might have nightmare if she did step 4. Ok.. and i didn’t receive any sms from her after that. I presumed she slept well. Hahaaha.

Me having insomnia? No way .. my problem is waking up. This morning i had a very long dream.. about me holidaying somewhere and taking this roller-coaster like LRT which went in the wrong opposite direction.. and when i woke up, it was already 1pm. Hur hur..

Had wanted to blog about this a long time ago.. but didn’t have the chance to.

I had regularly read the blog of this girl, let’s call her A, since about 2 years ago. One day, one not very close friend, let’s call him B, talked about his ex-girlfriend. And it struck me as to why the things he said sounded so familiar.. until i discover that those things that he said resembled the things that A wrote. Aha.. suspicious. One day i came across B’s friendster (friendster is the best tool for this kind of FBI work) and saw a testimonial left by A for B. OK.. so the relationship link between A and B is confirmed.

Then one day, i read A’s entries again, and found her to become very familar…. and it hit me that i have met her at some event about 2 years ago (that’s before i started reading her blog) when she told me that i looked familiar to her because she has seen me before at another occasion 2 years ago (means 4 years ago).

Confusing? yeah.. that’s how human relations are all linked up.