Life
Sunday, September 02, 2007
and the third and final instalment for the day. after all I spent time blogging before and after my tuition and going to grandma's house.
after updating about my memories of commonwealth, then the long-overdue prelims update, now we shall have a "normal" life post.
as you would have known from my previous post, my prelims technically lasted for three days last week. so what did I do with thursday and friday? nothing productive. as sad as I am to report that, humans shouldnt run away from reality. but this will change, as my less proficient subjects will make their appearence in prelims real soon and I really have to buck up.
but before all that, lets see what I did with my time on thursday and friday.
==
thursday was a full free day for me. I wanted to just sit at the bus stop near my house and laugh at any person I see wearing uniforms there. but, that makes me a bad neighbour and I did not forget I will be wearing a uniform, waiting for a bus at the exact same bus stop the next day, so I abandoned that idea.
I woke up at about 7am and went to Jurong Polyclinic to see a doctor about my chronic sinus that worsened last week during prelims.
I arrived at 7.35am and guess my queue number? 2039. 38 persons actually were that hardworking and perseverant to wake up earlier than 7am just to see a doctor! I concede defeat. seriously.
I bought some hot soya bean from the snack stall inside the polyclinic ($1.20! what a rip off!), since I havent had breakfast and the newly-renovated Jurong Polyclinic was pretty darned cold in the morning.
I slowly drank it as I queued for my registration, consultation, prescription and payment. fine. I finished it before consultation but never mind that okay? here we see the government indeed functions in an organised way, but we also see plenty of red tape from all that different queues. but hey, I am not complaining. at least people are queueing up and things go orderly.
here comes the problem, my mother warned me against taking their nasal spray, and so I didnt. then I paid up and left. they only issued 10 cheap $0.30 (for the entire packet, I am serious!) pills to be taken once a day.
I refuse to believe such a low dose will help my situation at all, and after confirming with my mother, there is INDEED no problem with the spray the doctor was recommending, in fact she was using it herself through a GP. and thus after breakfast with them, I went back to the polyclinic to get the spray.
I went to the registration and enquiries counter, and she advised me to just pop in and see the same doctor once a patient comes out. I was really nervous while waiting. I hoped none of the patients outside would threaten to beat me up because I "cut" their queue in a sense. good thing it didnt happen.
the doctor gave me a strange look, but issued the prescription anyway, telling me to take a queue number (oh god) at the pharmacy and to clarify the situation with them. I did that, and that meant a 20 minutes wait and 5 minutes of desperate explanation to get them to look at the prescriptions again.
I finally got that stage done and the next problem comes. the nasal spray (Flixonase, in case you are interested) is unsubsidised and will cost me $25.90.
I didnt bring enough money, since I expected the entire thing to cost less than $20, pretty typical if you are going to polyclinic for a common ailment. but I forgot mine was chronic. after a whole morning of fun with the NHG, I still cannot go home!
I called my father, who was already on his rounds for his school bus trip. I called my small uncle, who was dealing with his newspaper delivery business, I called my first uncle, who was at bedok and will take some time to come down. finally my first aunt said she could come by along the way since she had to drop by the bank. you can imagine my embarrassment at all that begging.
while waiting for her to come (it took 45 minutes or so I believe), I explored the entire Jurong Polyclinic since I cannot go out anyway. I also bought a cup of diluted milo for 50 cents at the vending machine. got ripped off by them yet again.
my aunt eventually came and I left at about 11.30am
I was rather exhausted after this farce. I watched the Campus Superstar 2007 Final finally (pun not intended) with mobtv and then fell asleep at about 4.30pm, only to wake up at 10pm. what the heck.
this taught me two things.
one, NHG dont really care if you pay up or not. they didnt even pester me to pay even though I did not join the cashier queue and was walking around with my medicine for nearly an hour after collecting them.
two, NHG earns your money not from your medicine, but from the (often mediocre) food they sell.
==
friday was a stupid short day back at school, with the "class interaction time" which was not really that interactive, considering the tables are all in exam format and even the partitions are left open.
I wrote the memories stuff that will be put in the "Heritage Room" of General Office for years to come. I finally knew what that darned dark room was for. I also voted chloe png as most caring teacher thing.
then it was off for a short recess before the teachers' day concert. settling down took 20 over minutes. no wonder they wanted everyone to assemble there at 9.20am. the programme was pretty normal, I personally thought the first few performances were poor, but it got better in the end. the programming is pretty much de facto yearly, so I shall not comment much.
then comes the fun part. the "circle" had all along decided on a study session at The Arena Country Club. trust me, even the organiser didnt know its actual name. I saw it myself when I went. but again, something just had to happen. Murphy's law I guess.
wei yao and hwee shi jio me to go back rulang. I thought since this might be the last year this could happen, I okayed it, agreeing to look for the rest later.
it was a great disappointment though. only the three of us, huiwen and shi fei turned up. the latter two eventually seperated from us and evapotranspired. we went to eat, came back, got shocked at the amount of people crowding around entrance to staff room, walked a few rounds, laughed at the paintings along the staircase we did back then in primary 4, when the school was still new, and went home.
edwin was terribly late. in fact, I only saw him when I was on my way to lakeside MRT to take bus to meet the circle. guess he repeated our procedure alone. haha.
and so I rushed to boon lay interchange to catch 193 to Upper Jurong Road. not really a long ride, though I was more busy looking for signs of where to alight than anything else.
turns out they had booked the board room for studying. talk about 大材小用. things started out slow, blasting of jay chou's's OST's music, some crap talking and mind maps before things started going crazy as everyone started doing crazy things to pass time. I think it is the aircon there which can reach 10 degrees.
it started when one particular person began tickling me for no other reason than because the rest are not scared of it. I thus exacted my revenge by tickling that person for one full minute. at the end of it, that person was literally spasming and laughing uncontrollably that everyone present felt disturbed. the scene was totally impossible to describe I am telling you.
I would like to make it clear that I did not touch anywhere I am not supposed to touch, in case any dirty minded readers start developing intolerable ideas.
that person continued laughing for 20 minutes. serious. we used the time to prove the hypothesis that the person would start laughing when lights were dimmed. it was a fair test because it was repeated five times.
it took that person nearly 20 minutes to calm down and stop laughing.
after that everyone went to the karaoke lounge instead (still within the club) since it was on the tab. for me at least.
it is my first time going for karaoke, so the concept was rather new to me. I refuse to pick up the microphone, and many others in the circle dont like it all too much. so it ended up very much like a sing along session, but hey, it was still fun.
the music was a bizarre mix, because everyone took turns to choose the songs they want, except me of course, I wont be singing anyway. haha. there are new songs like Secret, memorable ones like At The Beginning, to the plain old like 朋友 by 周华建. I swear at one point someone nearly picked Auld Lang Syne.
and so a study session turned into a major slacking session. that was friday.
==
my saturday and sunday were comparatively normal and would be bland to talk about, considering even thursday and friday is not really that exciting to some people to begin with. so I shall end this post here.
after updating about my memories of commonwealth, then the long-overdue prelims update, now we shall have a "normal" life post.
as you would have known from my previous post, my prelims technically lasted for three days last week. so what did I do with thursday and friday? nothing productive. as sad as I am to report that, humans shouldnt run away from reality. but this will change, as my less proficient subjects will make their appearence in prelims real soon and I really have to buck up.
but before all that, lets see what I did with my time on thursday and friday.
==
thursday was a full free day for me. I wanted to just sit at the bus stop near my house and laugh at any person I see wearing uniforms there. but, that makes me a bad neighbour and I did not forget I will be wearing a uniform, waiting for a bus at the exact same bus stop the next day, so I abandoned that idea.
I woke up at about 7am and went to Jurong Polyclinic to see a doctor about my chronic sinus that worsened last week during prelims.
I arrived at 7.35am and guess my queue number? 2039. 38 persons actually were that hardworking and perseverant to wake up earlier than 7am just to see a doctor! I concede defeat. seriously.
I bought some hot soya bean from the snack stall inside the polyclinic ($1.20! what a rip off!), since I havent had breakfast and the newly-renovated Jurong Polyclinic was pretty darned cold in the morning.
I slowly drank it as I queued for my registration, consultation, prescription and payment. fine. I finished it before consultation but never mind that okay? here we see the government indeed functions in an organised way, but we also see plenty of red tape from all that different queues. but hey, I am not complaining. at least people are queueing up and things go orderly.
here comes the problem, my mother warned me against taking their nasal spray, and so I didnt. then I paid up and left. they only issued 10 cheap $0.30 (for the entire packet, I am serious!) pills to be taken once a day.
I refuse to believe such a low dose will help my situation at all, and after confirming with my mother, there is INDEED no problem with the spray the doctor was recommending, in fact she was using it herself through a GP. and thus after breakfast with them, I went back to the polyclinic to get the spray.
I went to the registration and enquiries counter, and she advised me to just pop in and see the same doctor once a patient comes out. I was really nervous while waiting. I hoped none of the patients outside would threaten to beat me up because I "cut" their queue in a sense. good thing it didnt happen.
the doctor gave me a strange look, but issued the prescription anyway, telling me to take a queue number (oh god) at the pharmacy and to clarify the situation with them. I did that, and that meant a 20 minutes wait and 5 minutes of desperate explanation to get them to look at the prescriptions again.
I finally got that stage done and the next problem comes. the nasal spray (Flixonase, in case you are interested) is unsubsidised and will cost me $25.90.
I didnt bring enough money, since I expected the entire thing to cost less than $20, pretty typical if you are going to polyclinic for a common ailment. but I forgot mine was chronic. after a whole morning of fun with the NHG, I still cannot go home!
I called my father, who was already on his rounds for his school bus trip. I called my small uncle, who was dealing with his newspaper delivery business, I called my first uncle, who was at bedok and will take some time to come down. finally my first aunt said she could come by along the way since she had to drop by the bank. you can imagine my embarrassment at all that begging.
while waiting for her to come (it took 45 minutes or so I believe), I explored the entire Jurong Polyclinic since I cannot go out anyway. I also bought a cup of diluted milo for 50 cents at the vending machine. got ripped off by them yet again.
my aunt eventually came and I left at about 11.30am
I was rather exhausted after this farce. I watched the Campus Superstar 2007 Final finally (pun not intended) with mobtv and then fell asleep at about 4.30pm, only to wake up at 10pm. what the heck.
this taught me two things.
one, NHG dont really care if you pay up or not. they didnt even pester me to pay even though I did not join the cashier queue and was walking around with my medicine for nearly an hour after collecting them.
two, NHG earns your money not from your medicine, but from the (often mediocre) food they sell.
==
friday was a stupid short day back at school, with the "class interaction time" which was not really that interactive, considering the tables are all in exam format and even the partitions are left open.
I wrote the memories stuff that will be put in the "Heritage Room" of General Office for years to come. I finally knew what that darned dark room was for. I also voted chloe png as most caring teacher thing.
then it was off for a short recess before the teachers' day concert. settling down took 20 over minutes. no wonder they wanted everyone to assemble there at 9.20am. the programme was pretty normal, I personally thought the first few performances were poor, but it got better in the end. the programming is pretty much de facto yearly, so I shall not comment much.
then comes the fun part. the "circle" had all along decided on a study session at The Arena Country Club. trust me, even the organiser didnt know its actual name. I saw it myself when I went. but again, something just had to happen. Murphy's law I guess.
wei yao and hwee shi jio me to go back rulang. I thought since this might be the last year this could happen, I okayed it, agreeing to look for the rest later.
it was a great disappointment though. only the three of us, huiwen and shi fei turned up. the latter two eventually seperated from us and evapotranspired. we went to eat, came back, got shocked at the amount of people crowding around entrance to staff room, walked a few rounds, laughed at the paintings along the staircase we did back then in primary 4, when the school was still new, and went home.
edwin was terribly late. in fact, I only saw him when I was on my way to lakeside MRT to take bus to meet the circle. guess he repeated our procedure alone. haha.
and so I rushed to boon lay interchange to catch 193 to Upper Jurong Road. not really a long ride, though I was more busy looking for signs of where to alight than anything else.
turns out they had booked the board room for studying. talk about 大材小用. things started out slow, blasting of jay chou's
it started when one particular person began tickling me for no other reason than because the rest are not scared of it. I thus exacted my revenge by tickling that person for one full minute. at the end of it, that person was literally spasming and laughing uncontrollably that everyone present felt disturbed. the scene was totally impossible to describe I am telling you.
I would like to make it clear that I did not touch anywhere I am not supposed to touch, in case any dirty minded readers start developing intolerable ideas.
that person continued laughing for 20 minutes. serious. we used the time to prove the hypothesis that the person would start laughing when lights were dimmed. it was a fair test because it was repeated five times.
it took that person nearly 20 minutes to calm down and stop laughing.
after that everyone went to the karaoke lounge instead (still within the club) since it was on the tab. for me at least.
it is my first time going for karaoke, so the concept was rather new to me. I refuse to pick up the microphone, and many others in the circle dont like it all too much. so it ended up very much like a sing along session, but hey, it was still fun.
the music was a bizarre mix, because everyone took turns to choose the songs they want, except me of course, I wont be singing anyway. haha. there are new songs like Secret, memorable ones like At The Beginning, to the plain old like 朋友 by 周华建. I swear at one point someone nearly picked Auld Lang Syne.
and so a study session turned into a major slacking session. that was friday.
==
my saturday and sunday were comparatively normal and would be bland to talk about, considering even thursday and friday is not really that exciting to some people to begin with. so I shall end this post here.
