happy birthday kean!

Happy 24th Birthday Kean Bon! May all your dreams and aspirations come true and may you get another CAP score of 5.0 this semester too! But not the next two semesters, haha...

It's been great being buddies with you and here's to many more years of friendship...

Take care! =)

Hong bao update: Better than expected! ;p

raising the red lantern...

Saturday, 17th February 2007 – 10:24pm Singapore time

First and foremost, Gong Xi Gong Xi Gong Xi Ni! Hey! Hehe… Happy Lunar New Year, y’all! Hope we all get lots of hong baos! Yes, I do receive hong baos too… In case you forgot (or refuse to register), I am half-Chinese… Anyways, good fortune and prosperity to all! =)

It was another tough session of dragonboating today… Nasi (Mr. Coach) made us do a one-hour set! One hour of paddling! In the hot sun! I am burnt beyond recognition right now… But as usual, it was a good workout and I am heading back for more torture tomorrow morning… Hehe…

I wanna give a special shout-out to a very good friend of mine Mark Liew… Unlike some of us, Mark is not really having a good festive season cos his dad is currently in hospital… Mark’s dad was suffering from prostate cancer and after an operation to remove his testicles, he suffered from a bad infection which affected his anal area and areas beyond… He had to remove some of his anal parts and this didn’t help… He now has some gangrene in his chest and the family has decided not to have any more operational procedures done on him… Doctors have given him one week left to live…

Mark told me he has already thought about making the funeral arrangements… This whole story has made me wonder: Is it better that you can mentally prepare for the death of a loved one or will it hit harder if it was a sudden blow? Pro-longed pain and uncertainty or a sure shot? I don’t know… It bites anyhow…

So Mark, my prayers and thoughts are with you and your family…

Stay strong bro…

like soft white feathers from the sky...

Monday, 12th February 2007 – 4:28pm Singapore time

I was in the mood to do laundry this morning, so that’s exactly what I did… As usual, I remove any foreign objects from my pockets before I dump them into the machine… But somehow, I forgot to check the back pockets of my jeans… And as luck would have it, I had *two* serviettes in them! So you can guess what happened to all the other stuff in the wash… It was like everything was covered with feathers… Sigh… The good thing was that the serviettes were of relatively high quality, so the shreds of them didn’t really cling too much to my other clothes… Just a good shaking did them all fine…

So this weekend was torture weekend at dragonboat camp… We had to do a 45-minute paddle on Saturday! 45 minutes! It was a rude and crazy shock, but I’m sure Mr. Coach had a good reason for doing it… I’m proud to say I survived the whole set without stopping… Yay!

And Sunday was also surprising because we had to do medicine ball training before heading out to the water to do some resistance training… Tiring, but I can see improvements in my fitness level and also the training these past few weeks have been helpful in improving my technique… So I will shall keep going even though I am all sunburnt now… Yes, I did put on a cap, sunnies and sunblock, but Singapore’s sun is just too potent…

Good news: My eyes are ok! Yay!

here's a toast...

Thursday, 8th February 2007 – 9:30pm Singapore time

After three days of administering the prescribed eye drops, I saw no improvement with my eyes… In fact, things got worse as my left eye also somehow got affected with the redness… The swelling was gone but the redness was still very apparent and persistent… No pain though… I was sick of wearing my glasses and having to contend with people questioning me on the ‘horrorful’ redness in my eyes, so I decided to pay the doctor another visit…

This time, a younger doctor saw me and he got me to do a vision test to make sure it wasn’t something more serious… He then decided to prescribe me two different drops which were more potent than the one which I got on Monday… The downside was that I would have to pay for them (Monday’s drops were free) but they were only $18, so why not? I told him that I just wanted to stop having red eyes and his response was,

“Is it because you have to make TV appearances?”

I don’t know why I elicited such a response… Maybe the university doctors are supposed to be weird…

Afidah was with me to get a prescription of malaria tablets for her impending trip to Sabah during the Chinese New Year week… Anyways, Afidah claims that I emit himbo vibes which was why the doctor asked me the TV question… OR she just hasn't been spending enough time with Jamal cos who would think *I* emit himbo vibes when you have Jamal around? Does this also mean that only air-headed people make it to our screens?

Moving on, the new, more potent drops are working well and I can see drastic improvements… Let’s hope it’ll all be good by the time the weekend comes…

Anyways, I have a story to share with you all…

There was this good friend of mine who was making toast one day and while waiting for the bread to get done, he went to the living room to sort out some of things… When he came back into the kitchen, he found a piece of bread stuck in the toaster’s mechanism and hence tried to dislodge it… He didn’t think of turning off the power supply while doing this and inevitably the toaster short circuited and the whole house experienced a power trip…

Of course, this friend of mine knew he had to look for the circuit breaker box to restore the power in the house… As he had never taken notice where the box was, he went on a hunt around the house in search for the ever elusive circuit breaker box… It was hard as the house was rather big and when he was about to give up, he decided to look into one place which he hadn’t looked at before --- the fridge… After looking inside, he realised that circuit breaker boxes can’t be found in refrigerators… He got more exasperated until he finally found the box, under the living room light switches… Oh well, all in a day’s work...

Moral of the story: Make sure your bread doesn’t get stuck in the toaster when you use it…

TGIF tomorrow y’all!

asraf can't get all wide-eyed...

Monday, 5th February 2007 - 5:19pm Singapore time

I just got out of the doctor’s office… I had a bad attack of conjunctivitis (aka the sore eye) on my right eye yesterday and it got worse today as I woke up with my eye half of its usual size and as red as a ripe tomato… So I decided to skip my tutorial today and went to the University’s Health and Wellness Centre to seek treatment… The first thing the doctor said when I took off my sunglasses was, “Horrors!”

I know, it sounds like he was some character from the Addams’ Family but that was exactly what he said… He told me it was quite a bad infection and gave me tips on how to avoid passing on the virus to others… He also said no one gets it by looking into my eyes… Of course I knew la! Did he think I was that naïve?

Anyways, he gave me some eye drops and told me to apply them every three hours except when I am sleeping (Is it me or does he think I am dumb?) and gave me a three-day MC… Woo hoo! I get a break… Haha… Well, not really cos I do have some work to catch up on…

Earlier today I received a call from a Cik Salleh who asked if I was still interested to be part of the National Inter-JC/Institute Malay Debate Tournament… As a committee member of course… I am not so sure if I want it still… It’s a little late to be approaching me now, isn’t it? I thought they forgot all about me… I don’t even know the position which they’re offering me… I’ll have to call Mariah and check with her before I make any decision…

Nothing much going on… Just gotta write some emails to my teachers to tell them I won’t be in class…

Oh, Danny and Nazira joined me for dragonboat practice on Saturday and they enjoyed it! Well, at least I think they did cos they’re both coming back next week! So any of y’all who has some interest, just make your way ya?

Time for me to head off now… Till the next amazing adventure… =)

asraf has nothing better to do...

So he decides to post up a picture of himself holding an axe on his blog... I am not thinking of pursuing a career in carpentry, don't worry...

Have a good weekend y'all! =)