i have this odd quirk, in that even though its already 3.27am - or however late - i will still be loath to go to sleep without...i don't know...working off excess energy? this trait is the reason i'm suddenly writing this after many moons without blogging, and the reason my upper body is aching today - i suddenly decided to do some pt last night.


the past couple of weeks have been rather busy. mostly school related stuff - briefings, meetings, ferrying primary 5 kids to watch the ndp rehearsals.

which reminds me.
you know how they say that in space, no one can hear you scream?
well, in a bus full of primary 5 kids, no one can hear you scream either.

and you know edvard munch's famous painting, 'the scream'?
well, i'd put money on his inspiration having been a few hours in a norwegian primary school.

kids are evil.
well. perhaps not evil. but they are terribly noisy.
my pet peeve, though, still has to be the way they love putting their grubby little paws all over you. thankfully for me, though, primary 5 kids have grown out of that stage already.

when i signed up for this ushering gig, they most certainly didn't mention anything about herding a huge gagglefuck of children around. and for good reason, too. thankfully the teachers still do most of the work. and i have yet to bring a bunch of kids to toilet break, as a few of my unfortunate colleagues have had to do.

god, i can't wait for this saturday's final ne show to be over. after that, it'll be ushering adults. but then again, those are singaporean adults we're talking about here, which means they'll be pushing and shoving and insisting they just have to have a different coloured funpack, or their seat positions are too high/too low and how about we sit there in the vip section nobody will notice can one lah you don't let me sit there i write to straits times and complain.

another perk of the job is the way-too-short and really-really-ugly shirt they've issued us with. it's baby blue and it has an orchid motif on the front and the ndp logo on the back. we look like waiters at a pap restaurant.


i ate dinner at the raffles city subway outlet just now. there i witnessed a new low in service standards, even for singapore. now, how subway works is that they have a production-line system to assembling your sandwich, with one fellow in charge of prepping the bread and some toppings, another doing the rest of the filling, then finally the cashier. so here's the Best Of Subway's Sub-Standard Service (do i get extra marks for alliteration?):

bread uncle: hello! hello! hello!
now, bread uncle can prep the bread faster than filling dude can keep up, so there is a backlog of sandwiches (and hence the people who ordered them) in front of me. as i am therefore quite far back in the queue, and coupled with the fact that bread uncle speaks with a strong mandarin accent, i take a while to realise he's addressing me.
bread uncle: hello! hello! hello!


bread uncle: you like cheese?
this one was addressed to my friend. what he means is, "do you want cheese on your sandwich?" but, given the way he's phrased it, plus his unclear pronunciation, it sounds like he's asking something quite different.
bread uncle (getting frustrated): you like cheese? yes or no!


me: hey, could you put some of those jalapenos on as well please?
filling dude: [straight faced] out of stock.
and what are you going to do about that? is it my problem? my sandwich is supposed to have jala-fucking-penos on it!


me: oh and can i change the chips for a pair of cookies yeah?
cashier auntie: [again, straight faced] no.
me (incredulous): no?
cashier auntie: no.
me: you're kidding me.
cashier auntie (totally unapologetic): unless you want to wait 20 minutes.


now, i've lived in singapore for my entire 20 years, and while i realise that lynndie england and the abu ghraib players offer better service standards than the majority of singaporeans in the service industry, this incident really took the cake. it was like a conveyor-belt of bad service.

anyway. i was still reeling from incredulity so i just paid up without making a fuss and headed to my seat. my friends and i were jointly goggling over the new low in service standards the subway circus had set, and it was then that i realised bread uncle had left the cheese out of my steak and cheese sandwich.

me: ho ho ho! here, take a look. no cheese in there, right? i'm really gonna give them a good bollocking now!

so i marched back to the counter and approached cashier auntie.

me: yo. there's no cheese in my cheese steak sandwich.
cashier auntie examines the sandwich closely, [what, you think i'm trying to cheat some extra cheese out of you?] then looks up at me and quickly apologises.

now, one bad trait i have is that when i get pissed off, i usually don't hold back in letting the other party know that i am pissed off, and in no uncertain terms, either. both in words and in expression. this has led to my calling someone a "mess tin nazi" at orientation camp last week, among other things. this is a very bad habit which i ought to do my best to control.

chiefly because in this case, it made cashier auntie realise i was looking to make a scene and therefore apologise before i could do so.

such a disappointment. anticlimactic, i know, but i just couldn't bring myself to blast an auntie. another bad habit i'm going to have to work on...


my face has decided to break out just when i'm having to go out and meet new people a lot - piers anthony calls it the perversity of the inanimate. thankfully my tan makes it less obvious, but still. bah.


mmmm. there. i think i'm ready to go to sleep now. this entry will probably have to entertain anyone who has yet to give up on waiting for updates from me for the next month or so. hur. perhaps if you read it really slowly? oh wait. if you're reading this then you're probably done reading the whole entry already, which makes my suggestion moot. well, just too bad.