Wednesday, December 10, 2008



Okay, better blog about today before today's events slip away!

Haha okay so basically today I woke up and switched on my computer to hear it make the wonderful high-pitched deafening shriek o' doom. This was discouraging to hear, but I was not in the least surprised because I was just waiting for it to break down. Gave me (an overwhelming) excuse to finally send the silly machine in for reparations.

Called up the HP service staff. Got some indian man who, despite being extremely nice ( as all indian service staff are wont to be ), had a horrendously thick accent. For what it's worth, I might as well have been trying to talk to someone who had 10 sticks of dynamite shoved into his mouth, only he didn't sound like he was going to have ten tons of crap blown out of his head.

I also tried to inform him that we did, in fact, have a warranty until March 2009, a statement he refused to accept by repeatedly telling me that The System that they have is completely up-to-date and as such, if it's not reflected there, it's not happening. Clearly The System is unable to detect hard copies, something which Indian tech guy also seem to be unable to grasp. Perhaps in their warped HP society where everything breaks down every 2 months, The System is what holds their fragile little alien minds together, and anything not dictated by their mothership cannot possibly be happening.

The System is also incapable of detecting human emotion. This is obvious because my boiling rage at this point would have vaporized the machine instantly. However, since Mr Service Staff wasn't intentionally being an irritating, pompous douchebag, I decided that it'd be best for him, me and my blood pressure if I simply ended the call asap.

To his credit, he did try to help me run more diagnostics test, most of which involved starting up the computer. Since this was very much impossible, I more or less just thanked him profusely for all his help but that I really had to go already. I also assured him that I would run those diagnostics tests as soon as possible. This is a variation of a white lie, known as lying through your clenched teeth. I didn't have the heart to inform the tech guy that he could draw me a picture of the diagnostics tests and it wouldn't help me one banana-bit because I couldn't turn on the computer.

Seeing as the warranty problem was still a bugger, I decided to give a call to the Grand Matriarch, the High Priestess of arguing - Mum. After asking her to give HP a 'quick call to confirm the warranty', I put down the phone and laughed, knowing that somewhere in some small cubicle in HP, one very unlucky tech support/customer service person was going to experience the equivalent of hell. Initially, I did feel some pity. But after remembering that this piece of crap HP sold as a laptop for 2.6k breaks down every 2 months, the pity turned into vengeful bloodlust.

Made my way to Parkway after that to cut my hair at the wonderful Two-Step. The haircut today was really nice ( relative to the general pleasantness of most haircuts ) and thoroughly enjoyable. Almost fell asleep during the haircut, but was woken up by some hair ever so gently crash-landing on my nose and giving me an inane urge to sneeze. I didn't, because of my immense willpower. For 3 seconds anyway.

Met up with Timo at the Parkway bus stop where we were suppose to meet BokChong. Mr Bok however, smsed us later that he was delayed and was on a bus 31 to Parkway and asked if we'd so kindly buy him a Strawberry Milk Tea. After agreeing that whatever butter-related business had delayed BokChong was surely important to the survival of the universe, we strolled over to Each-A-Cup to buy a Chocolate Oreo and Strawberry Red Milk Tea. We assumed red, because green strawberry milk tea just looks, sounds and tastes wrong.

BokChong arrived after we'd bought the bubble tea. Waited around a while and crapped about Cr8 ( Encore? ) until 36 came. Got slightly lost. Basically we walked past Millenia Walk, entered Suntec City Mall, went underground, strolled around a bit and came back at Millenia Walk. It was rather vexing, particularly since we had to cross a road with a long little pavement-esque thing in the middle. I'm going to assume that a small rain cloud suddenly appeared over the pavement and decided to rain on it, because the soil wasn't soil. It was like clay. Vicious clay. Like quicksand. Vicious quicksand.

Finally found the guys at the MRT station. Much fuss was created about my hair, mostly arising from how it didn't look toot anymore and now looked vaguely like a pineapple. I faintly remember someone mentioning that my hair looked like the bastard spawn of a "sea anemone" and a "volcano". I am willing to accept however, that this may just be a figment of my imagination, and it was simply the voices in my head mocking me again. Walked and talked as we made our way to our undecided-as-of-yet eating place. We learned many valuable life lessons during this walk.

We learned how BokChong inappropriately hugged Darius in a supposedly-sneaky fashion.
We learned how Sebastian thought I had ulterior motives, which I disproved by hugging Darius in a 光明正大 fashion.
We learned that Darius likes to be hugged. He's huggylicious.

Ended up lunching at Subway. Lunching is used loosely here, since all I did was nibble my Chicken Teriyaki and half a Double Choc Chip cookie. Surprisingly, Subway didn't make me feel hungry even though I had skipped breakfast. Darius' concoction of Iced Lemon Tea and Barley was very interesting. It had a sharp acidic taste to it, with a sour barley aftertaste and was in truth, rather unpleasant. But because Darius looked so excited ( although it could just have been because ShiXian was having a tryst with Saba ) that I gulped down a few more mouthfuls. After the third swallow ( yes, I swallow ), it tasted quite okay.

Bowled after that. The lady who served us at the counter was intentionally being an irritating pompous bitch. She practically shoved the shoes in our face and was generally very snappy. I felt like doing something about it, but because flaming genocide is generally frowned upon by many, I refrained myself and instead settled for squeezing ShiXian's face to relieve my anger.

Had a pretty decent bowling day together.

First Round: 139. Won ^^
Second Round: 97. Lost to Saba's 101 ( horrors of horrors )
Third Round: 113. Lost to Nat's 114 ( the shame ! )

Was top scorer for the day and pretty much consistently at the top so I'm quite satisfied haha! Everyone bowled really well today. BokChong and I proved that we were lategame heroes. Well, I did anyway haha. BokChong took until his 3rd game to break eighty/80/at. Sorry, inside joke ^^

Visited the Arcade after that. House of the Dead 4 was embarassing, died really really fast. BokChong then played DrumMania for a while until him, ShiXian and Saba got addicted to the Hooker Machine where you basically use a misshapened claw to try and capture one of many worthless prizes. Watching them throwing money at the machine was somewhat like flushing money down the toilet bowl, only the former actually has some innate entertainment value. Apparently, their strategy soon turned to a plan of flooding the machine with so much money that it'd explode and rain down upon us all the prizes. Since I was particularly interested in anatomically-incorrect Winnie The Poohs, Mickey/Minnie Mice and what looked like the horror child of a butterfly and Mickey, I quickly pulled Darius, Nat and Timo away. The other three addicts soon followed.

Alas the joy was short-lived as yet another row of Gachapon machines lined the corridors out. Perhaps this is just my accursed logic speaking, but I'm thinking that all the owner of that horrible place wanted was to wrangle each and every banana cent out of the poor souls that happened to patronize it. As luck would have it, there were three morons who were immediately drawn to the Gachapon machines like Oprah is drawn to butter. After trying to yank them away in vain, us four sane ones decided to go ahead and find the food court to eat dinner first. At this point I will reiterate that I skipped breakfast and more-or-less skipped lunch so I was pretty damn ravenous at this point.

Bought some japanese food set. The Ebi Tempura was decent, although I'm suspicious of what was claimed to be chicken. It was covered in a nice amount of batter, and was rather tasty. However because I was looking forward to eating something tasting remotely like chicken, this was worthless. The four of us talked about a lot of things, most of which were random and somewhat NC-16, despite only Darius and I actually being 16. Another interesting and somewhat depressing point to note is that despite being the oldest in the bowling group that day, I was only taller than ShiXian.

The three dopes joined us later for dinner, amazingly managing to pull themselves away from the stupid money-blackhole of a Gachapon Machine. BokChong had won another banana skin and ShiXian had been rewarded with what looked like a small brown dead whale. However, since they were so pleased with their prizes, I couldn't bear to crush the charred husks of what was once their dignity and instead settled for a 'good job'.

While waiting for ShiXian to finish his plate of food and for BokChong to finish his plate and food, we talked about a lot more stuff, spending 1 hour there. The four of us started eating at around 5, and the 7 of us left at around 7, so two hours spent. It was a good fruitful two hours though, fellowship and all that, and all the scandalous little secrets that came to glorious light during the light-hearted banter. BokChong tried to wrestle Darius away from me on several occasions, but after threatening to sit Darius next to the wall and lie on him, BokChong finally relented. Darius looked disappointed, probably because having me lie on him would be the most exciting thing of the entire day. But the best is yet to come, so it can wait for another day.

Left the place at 7 and MRT'd home with Nat, Timo and Darius. Timo and Nat decided to go down to Bishan with Darius and leave me at Dhoby Ghaut all by myself. I didn't quite mind, since this gave me a good amount of time alone with my iProd. It is interesting to note here that if a bomb had exploded, due to the volume of my iProd, I may or may not have heard a sound. Therefore if a bomb explodes, and I am not around to hear it, relative to me, did the bomb make a sound? Another of life's many mysteries.

Came home and had to deal with my mum telling me that a phone number I had purportedly written down and given to her was written wrongly. This was obviously false, as I pointed out to her that not only do I write in a handwriting style completely different from anyone else that I know, my handwriting is also legible. Since the handwriting on the paper looked like a new recently-discovered form of ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, it could not possibly have been mine. After much debate, she left the room asking me to be more responsible when writing down numbers. Clearly she ignored everything I said about not writing down the damn number and only served to reaffirm my belief that my family will hate me regardless of anything I do in life. So why not have some fun while at it.