post-exam celebration
Saturday, May 10
NOTE TO RYAN: Some of the paragraphs near the start may have portrayed you rather badly XD Don't take it personally, cos I wrote it when I was super pissed with you XD So it was just my emotions talking there :P I'm too lazy to edit it. Too long. Sorry :S
so yesterday was the last day of exams :D okay, so it felt more like the exams had already ended, since higher chinese is a non-studyable subject, completely out of the textbook.
so, on thursday night it looked as if the day was not going to go very well. after trying to get things planned out for the whole day, our discussions were going nowhere. all the people i had planned to go out with were either not free, or already had plans. so it was a mad scramble for me to get people to go out with. i mean, i'm definitely not gonna spend the last day of exams sitting at home by myself! not a chance.
so, ryan, arjun and i spent the whole day deciding who to invite, and it was so irritating trying to come to a consensus between the 3 of us, for lots of reasons. first of all, as i'm sure you all know, ryan is rather against certain people, so of course that's a major problem. an even bigger problem was that arjun utterly refused to go out with a certain person, whom i shall not mention just to be nice... but i mean like, that person's nice what! please, even ryan finds him nice! that's an amazing feat in itself! haiz... so picky ah these people... and the most irritating thing that got me angry was that arjun kunnasagaran always took soooooooo long to reply to our messages on msn! and by long, i mean like 5 to 15 minutes... irritating much!
ugh, i shall not describe the whole fiasco, since that's not the important thing about this post. but in brief, we ended up adding ALL the people we were considering to the convo, and never could reach an agreement, then our dear arjun who was holding everyone up had the cheek to say "hey guys, i have to go and sleep now, so please hurry up." and within 5 minutes, he vanished. talk about the kettle black! wow... i just realised how apt that idiom is for this case :P so with him gone, obviously nothing could be done. thus we all just left the convo, leaving the plans for the next day completely unsettled.
and of course, ryan desperately called me after that, and started saying, "aiyo clement, so how! i dont want uninvited guests coming again like last year!" hello lah please, as if i'm God, i cant force people to come and force people not to come either right! then he still continue bitching away, asking the same question over and over again! i just felt like saying "can you PLEASE snap out of it madam!", quote the arena contestant. i mean, i cant do anything right? with nobody but dear ryan to discuss with, you expect me to come out with a 50-page plan for an outing in a few hours like darren tay? please lah, i also want to sleep you know! and then i could hear ryan's mom shouting in the background, "RYAN YOU BETTER GO TO SLEEP! YOU STILL GOT EXAM TOMORROW YOU KNOW!" and ryan was so rude, say, "aiya you, go and watch your idol lah. let me finish talking." not like there was much talking... all that was being said was ryan's constant whining to me and saying "so how ah???" while i kept telling him over and over that i couldnt do anything! never listen! fail in debating skills ah! maurice awlsome dont deserve to be a judge on the arena!
so when i finally got ryan off the phone, i continued reading foxtrot comics before i finally turned in, wondering what a fiasco the next day would turn out to be like...
and the day of our last exam finally arrived! lets skip the details of the terrible chinese exam and fast forward to the moving of tables. so everyone moved the table they were sitting at back to class. i got a disgusting table, so once in class i took another table from the whole mess of tables. and i was one of the few whom the teacher forced to leave their bags behind in the audi while moving the tables, so i had to run all the way back to get my bag! ugh! stupid teacher!
and on the way back, i saw sam ong carrying 2 tables, cos he was one of the unlucky few on the right most row who had to carry for the entire empty row on their right :P he gave us all a pained smile, which almost look like a silent plea for help. but he never opened his mouth to ask for help at all! i was really just waiting for him to ask, but that moment never came, so i walked on by. i mean i know i could have offered him help myself, but i was really hoping he'd ask :S he's always so quiet, and if he's really struggling he could just ask anytime. i had to rush off and get my bag cos the other people were already bugging me anyway...
so i grabbed my bag, and lo and behold! a few people wanna tag along with my planned group! there was gabriel, reno, gideon, and mark. gabriel for one asked me whether he could come along, to which i gladly said yes, since i find gabriel a totally fun person (: little did i know that reno and gideon were also like 'attached' to him, so they started to follow us around :S and then our dear mark ong didnt even ask to follow, and just said, "i dont have anything to do so i guess i'll just follow, haha" HAHA YOUR HEAD! this is what you call a self-invited party! please lah, its like forcing your way into a group without even asking if people are fine with you coming along! talk about rude!
so joshua, leon, arjun, gab, gid, reno, mark and i went to the space frame, where we met with ryan on the way. and obviously upon seeing the 4 extra people opened his mouth in shock and then asked me to walk a distance away from the others... it was obvious what was coming... "WHAT ARE THOSE PEOPLE DOING FOLLOWING US HUH? GET RID OF THEM! I DONT WANT A REPEAT OF LAST YEAR!" wow... i couldnt have said it meaner myself. not to mention i'm in no position to forbid people to come along somewhere right??? i mean, it's a free country, so i cant force them to do something! and of course, ryan wouldnt take no for an answer, "I DONT KNOW! JUST DO SOMETHING!" i was too pissed to reply
so we saw isaac, and finally made for the bus stop, with still nothing planned, and ryan still complaining to me. so as we walked down the slope, arjun walked to the old field with a couple of his soccer friends to play soccer, so we asked him when he would be meeting us, just for his sake. and he totally dao us! so min! well good riddance anyway. one less soul to care about. and with that, arjun was removed from our outing.
so we continued down the slope, and gab, gid and reno started lagging behind cos they were walking slowly. and of course, as expected, ryan said, "quick! lets run off and leave them behind!" how silly right, since we'd just be running to the bus stop where we had to wait for the bus stop. so i dint bother, while he ran a bit before he realised that i wasnt following, and started complaining. haiz... as if i hadnt had enough. even while waiting for the bus at the bus stop, i couldnt have noticing this person constantly walking past me and saying in hushed hisses, "how do we get rid of them! those stupid people!" i wonder who was the source of this strange buzzing.
so the bus finally came, and we all boarded, still arguing over where to go. leon wanted to go to vivo, while isaac wanted to go to orchard, and the rest of us were split in the decision. i was especially against going to vivo cos the gv website said the earliest iron man show only started at 4:30pm. things were getting more frantic as we reached the mrt. well we got on the mrt, since both orchard and vivo require us to take mrt there. so after a little more discussion on the mrt, we finally decided to go to vivo, and catch another movie if there really wasnt any iron man timings available. gab and co wanted to go to orchard, so they decided to split from us, which of course please ryan A LOT, and finally put an end to his whispered complaints... for now. so the whole group of us continued talking away, and then out of the blue this stupid woman who was sitting down bang the plastic of the side of a row of seats and told reno, "CAN YOU PLEASE LOWER YOUR VOICE? YOU'RE SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY." speak for yourself woman... then after that she closed her eyes and went back to trying to sleep. then we were all giggling quietly at her XD i mean, who cant laugh at that :P totally hilarious. a stupid woman pounding the plastic thingy and telling us not to talk loudly by talking uber loudly herself....
at outram park we got off the change train, and i had the luck of being at the back with ryan, who continued his stream of complaints, this time solely about mark. "aiya, this is so much like last year, i hope we dont have to end up running all over vivo this time! get rid of him!" haiz... overkill... just cant stop harping on it... and i, as harper lee, had to harp on the fact that i was in no position to do anything. at least he got sedated by the fact that it was only mark left, rather than him and gab, gid and reno. so aunty!
wah the whole preparation process can take so long to type out some more... so moving on to the goods.
we went to buy the tickets first of course, being very smart and critically thinking acsians, lest the queue was too long and we good too bad seats. and some of them dint even know how to get to gv... living under a rock izzit? much to our delight, and my shock, there was an iron man timing for 1:20pm or something. so after convincing joshua to watch with us, we purchased the tix. why was joshua (it's a strong name! quote leech) had to be persuaded, is cos he was gonna watch iron man 3 times in 24 hours straight... totally fabulous right? watched it first time previous night on the comp (internet duh), and 2nd time with us, and finally 3rd time in the evening with his church cell group friends. haha, instant recipe to get sick of a show.
so with lots of time to kill, we started walking around the whole vivo, cos isaac was looking for some apparel, namely a shirt, jins, belt, and tie. so basically we walked around from shop to shop looking at the stuff, giving isaac our opinions on the items. we visited almost the whole vivo, other than the food shops :P heh. totally took so much time, so we didnt have time to eat anything. what a total waste of time!
we went back to the cinema and bought stuff from the concession stand to fill our stomachs slightly... so obviously we bought the item that had the most starch, which was the hot dog, since the bread provided the highest amount of starch, so we just went for that, hoping it would be filling enough. and after that we obviously went to the cinema to watch the show.... Hall 1 in vivo... never been in that hall before XD
so, the 6 of us had like mixed reviews on the movie, the worst review was from ryan tan, who even said that he almost fell asleep during the movie! tsk tsk tsk. how bad of him :P personally i thought the intro was rather draggy, but i guess that was rather important for characterisation and background information. there were lots of nice graphics and the action was awesome. i'd give it 4 out of 5 star rating, since the plot itself was also rather simple and not well developed, due to the screen time taken up by the intro. that joshua liew was even asking me questions in the movie lor! i was so shocked, like, he watched the movie before, shouldnt he know? after all, even if he didnt get it before, he'd surely understand the second time watching it... and he still spoil me some more! so evil... told me some twist. not that you couldnt see it coming anyway :P
after that, we continued walking around the whole place, cos isaac insisted on buying stuff! so he, ryan, mark and i went to top man (again), while leon and joshua went to adidas to play table soccer while they waited.
as much as top man is a good shop, the service there was downright TERRIBLE! the people serving us were all muds, and they couldnt serve us well for nuts. in places with good service, there usually are people standing at the door, smiling and greeting you whenever you leave or enter, and have people who are readily available to help you to find the perfect item you wanna buy. places with GREAT service even have people that spontaneously coming up to you, asking if you need help! of course they dont do it more than once, that would be just irritating. anyway thats besides the point. the muds there were just standing around, and even when we asked them for help, they took so long to come to us, and offered the bare minimum information.
it ended up being mostly self-service, which pissed me off completely. the most stupid thing of all was that there was this rack of 5 pairs of jeans that was on display, and there was a huge sign that said "$56", and the jeans looked rather high quality too. so it was only natural that isaac was interested in buying them. i mean, i'd also check it out if i had the money, but i didnt, so oh wellz. we had to call so many times for the stupid shop assistants to tell us where the whole rack of jeans were. and from there it was back to self service. tsk tsk tsk. what's more, after spending at least half an hour just choosing the jeans, the shop assistant finally told us that it cost $110+. i cant really remember exact. such a total waste of time! then we were like whats the $56 for then? and he said, "oh, those are for this table." which was just next to the rack. POOR LAYOUT MUCH! if that's what is $56 you should put the sign there for goodness sake! so misleading!
oh right and there were also a rack for those nice thin ties. some of the designs were totally disgusting, and there was even a plastic gold one! DEEESGOOOSTEEENG!!! like for some magician lor! bleugh. and there was one that isaac and ryan said looked nice, but i thought it looked rather indiany XD no offense to the indians :P looked like some design you'd find on a sari.
isaac finally made his purchase of a belt and tie, which he ended up paying more than he expected cos the lousy shop assistant quoted the wrong price for the belt. very very disappointing service i'd say.
we went to adidas to look for both the leons where they were still playing table soccer. heng's conscience felt pricked that they'd been playing it for so long without needing to pay, so he bought a soccerball to appease his conscience. at least he had such gentlemanly conduct, not being a freeloader XD heh.
after that we went to the splash pool or whatever its called on the top of vivo, which was so dirty! i cant believe people even dont mind splashing it onto other people... make your clothes so dirty. we walked on till we were out of vivo, and into some other obscure shopping mall, harbourfront centre, which was like population zero. isaac wanted to look at the single clothes shop there, which had such low quality products i've no idea why he even wanted to go there. and as luck would have it, some person roped us in for some tv show thingy. we were all like what the pong...
it was some makeover thingy by silkpro, i think the show is called something like follow me to whatever. on channel 8. totally lame lor! cos they needed public to vote on who they thought was the prettiest after the makeover... lmao. and ryan immediately pang seh us, running away to who knows where. so min! then the rest of the 5 of us were like debating whether to go away or stay, cos they were so filming us... euuu! and leon said it was those kind of lao ah ma show so he didnt wanna appear :P
the problem was that everytime we started to make a move, the people were like, "aiya bu yao zou diao ah!" irritating! prevent us from leaving. then ryan tan started walking back, and sniggered at us, and walked off the other way towards vivo. so leon and joshua took the chance to run off. more ditchers! so was just mark, isaac and i trapped there... we couldnt even leave cos they smartened up and planted a person there to stop anyone from running away. grrrrr!
anyway we found out how such game shows are so cheapskate. no, the audience are not so despo to find out the results to stay all the way till the end... the shots on tv are totally shammed! you know the end scenes where the members of the public seem to be clapping for the winner? in actual fact, the winner hasnt been announced, then they just ask the people to look at the stage and smile and clap, starting at the same time... they even ask people to start giving wolf whistles and shout/scream! so cheapo!
so when we finally were supposed to do the stupid voting, one of the contestants friends begged us to vote for her friend, so we were like ok lor, since we hadnt even decided... and we were given a gift hamper for our time, and we immediately ran off to look for the other 3 people.
after we met up with them, we went out to the open again, and just sat down talking. then in front of us was this ring where there were children riding on animals. was so funny lor, the mechanism was such that you needed to push with your legs against two bars which cause the seat to move up. then you used your ass to push the seat down and the bar for the legs would rise. and with every motion like that, the animal moved forward :P just watching them was so hilarious, and isaac even took a picture of a girl when he walked pass. i bet she was like traumatised. can just imagine her going to her mom, "mummy, some man took my picture!" and the mom would be getting paranoid thinking her daughter is gonna be a rape victim... naughty naughty isaac!
and on the spur of the moment, ryan asked us to go to his house! so fun! finally somebody offering up their house for us to crash. so calls were made and we all agreed to go to his house for dinner, only poor joshiwawa couldnt cos he had to go out with his cell. on the mrt on the way to ryan's house, ryan got a phone call from his mom, and from the tone of his voice, i could sense that something was wrong :S it sounded like his mom suddenly changed her mind and didnt want us to go to their house. and of course we know the usual dynamics between ryan and his mom, and as usual ryan kept on insisting that we go to his house XP personally if his parents didnt want us there, i'd not go cos we'd be like imposing on them. but oh well, ryan managed to get his way.
the trip to his house took so long, i didnt know if we were going to have dinner or supper. but we got to his house eventually. we had to sneak in by the back door, because ryan's sister was having chinese tuition before her exam on monday, so we weren't supposed to distract her. according to ryan, she'd be distracted by the littlest of noises. we went straight to ryan's room and boy was it in a mess! he has 2 beds, so he used 1 to sleep on, and the other was as good as a dumping ground.
we ended up looking at yearbooks from acsp, looking at our pics from primary school. of course leon and isaac were very interested, considering they'd never seen it before. ryan and i looked the same, but mark was just like... woah! even i couldnt spot him without referring to the names! can use his photo for some before and after slimming course already XD haha.
leon flipped through the year book and found more people whom he'd never realised were from acsp. but the funniest thing of all was seeing samong's pic! totally hilarious that all 5 of us just had to laugh for so long XD he looked so different last time, like puffy cheeks and all! dont get me wrong, i'm not laughing at samong as a person, but just how diff and funny people looked last time :P just like if you saw an old photo of qin xiang looking very much like a pig, i'm sure you'd laugh too!
after playing some soccer and monkey in ryan's garden (where i also used the extremely rusty and short swing in their baby playground), we were finally brought out for dinner at singapore swimming club, along with ryan's family. while waiting for seats in the eating house, we went to the coil pond to sit around. and amazingly, ryan managed to spot 2 n*gger coils. of course he already knew of their existence, but its amazing that he even manged to spot them :P they were exactly the colour of the tiling of the coil pond. the only time you'd be able to see them is when parts of other coils disappeared from view. swathi and arjun swimming around... lol.
so we finally got a table, and ryan's sister, megan, sat with us while his parents wanted to sit outside by themselves. i've no idea why megan was made to sit with us, cos its rather obvious that a sibling in a group of friends would feel very awkward, having nobody to talk to... not like we can talk to her without it sounding totally forced. just imagine lah... asking her all those stupid cliche questions... can totally imagine how forced it would sound.
"oh so what school do you go to? wah mgs ah? very good school! so you're p6 this year ah? oh, i see, psle this year right? very stressful! study hard ok! must get to a good school!"
please lah that sounds more like an adult talking than a teen... i pity her. heh.
so we were seated, and for a long time we didn't have any water. this was just a foreshadowing of the utterly disgusting and poor service we were about to receive from that place. ryan, being the host, tried to get the attention of a waitress by raising up his hand. in other words, the civilised method. and the waitress just walked on by. ryan kept raising his hand everytime a waitress passed by, and still there was no response at all! well it was kinda mostly the same waitress the whole time, so that may explain it. but its not like anyone would be blind enough not to notice a raised hand, especially after passing right by it a number of times! i could only conclude that the waitress was either really really myopic and forgot to wear her glasses, or was just choosing to dao us completely. i'm more inclined to think that its the latter reasoning...
so seeing that ryan's cultured and civilised ways werent working, i decided to take matters into my own hands. i raised my voice and said, "EXCUSE ME!" of course, no surprise, some of the nearby tables turned to stare, but i couldnt care less. of course my fellow table members all hushed me immediately, which i did comply to. but i certainly wasnt done. the waitress walked pass again, and ryan raised up his hand, but like before, the waitress ignored us. once again, i cried out, "EXCUSE ME!" directing it to the counter where all the waiters and waitresses seemed to be streaming out. i've no idea whether people turned, cos i was seeing if anybody at the counter gave a tuppence for me. obviously not. apparently they're deaf too.
just then, the waitress walked pass us again, and while ryan raised up his hand, a woman at another table raised up her hand. the response was immediate. the waitress came to an abrupt halt, and gave her undivided attention to the woman. i was totally indignant at that time, as it was very obvious that she didn't bother to serve us because we were just a table of teens. please lah, customers are customers, all have equal importance! so giving the waitress the benefit of the doubt that her eyesight had miraculously healed and she could now see, we waited till she was done with the other table, then raised our hand again. but it seemed that her eyesight had suddenly worsened again, and she couldnt see us! oh my, poor thing. sporadic good vision. must be irritating.
it was already 8.30+, and we still hadn't even ordered, so i was on my very last nerve, and that really pushed me off the edge. i was rather determined to get our order taken, and if i were to be asked to leave, i'd be sure to bring those blasted waitresses down with me. in other words, i was in my shameless mode. and boy, you dont want a shameless person in your shop... i mean, if the waitresses are gonna give me a bad dinner experience, i'm very happy in making it a bad experience for everyone in the restaurant, till the waitresses finally decide to do something about it.
so like before, instead much louder this time, i said my usual catch phrase, "EXCUSE ME!" the response was immediate. not from the waitresses, but from the customers that is. many faces turned to our table giving us odd looks, and i just gave them a half-smile, while mark, ryan, leon and isaac were trying to hide their faces. all 4 of them were like half giggling and half desperately trying to get me to be quiet. so sorry to you people it had to be at your expense :P heh. ryan, being mr prim and proper told me, "oi dont do that lah, so embarrassing you know!" lol XD he should seriously get his dad to complain lor :P then leon said something along the lines of, "as much as i agree with your attitude to this, i think you shouldnt shout like that lah. i mean my dad would also be like you if he got this kind of service, maybe even worse, but i wouldnt do it" then "i dunno why you're so quiet in class lor, you're usually so outspoken."
i was like thinking to myself ooh! compliment! nobody ever called me outspoken before XD i was so elated that i just decided not to make a scene anymore XD for their sake :P anyway, i was just reacting how my mom may have reacted :P
so finally a waitress wearing a different outfit from the rest came near our table and was clearing another table. she was wearing a vest too, so we guessed it meant she was higher rank than the other laywaitresses. ryan raised his hand once again, and this time we finally got a waitress' attention, and we finally made our order. i probably irritated her slightly by asking for water 3 times... like 1 time at the start, 1 time after we all ordered, and 1 time after she repeated her order. i mean, she didnt even make any sign to show that she'd heard, so you cant blame me for asking so many times :P but ryan chided me the 3rd time XD hehe.
while we were waiting for our water to come, we resumed our complaining about the poor service in the place. leon declared, "seriously lah, this place has one of the worst service i've ever got." and just then, the nice waitress set down his glass of water. lol! perfect timing :D so poor thing she XD the only one who gave us good service, and she had to hear the bad news.
the dinner was rather uneventful, except that ryan spilt water all over the table twice, once when he was trying to pour water for isaac, and another time when he knocked over a glass of water :P how clumsy! clumsy cos hes falling in love? (quote fergie XD)
so we went back to ryan's house, where we basically messed up ryan's bed. the quilt ended up on the floor, after isaac constantly squashed leon by lying his heavy body on leon.
everyone was clearly putting off going back home, even though all our homes were far away from ryan's house :P so we made good use of our time by deciding to make a prank call, as suggested by leon. we pulled out ryan's 2 contact lists from 2.12 and 3.9, and started looking for our potential victim. after wasting lots of time deciding who to call (including a moment where we thought of prank calling zhi en and making train noises), we finally settled on qin xiang. having been in his class for 2 years, he'd obviously recognise the voices of ryan, mark, isaac and me, so we had leon to do the honours, using his handphone, incase qin xiang had called id, so he would have "no id" (ankewax language) who was calling him.
the prank call went totally smoothly. whether qin xiang was playing along or really was deceived by leon, i'm not too sure. but the fact remains that leon was just awesome :P while the other 4 of us had to stifle our laughter by laughing into ryan's pillows, leon managed to keep his composure! i'd never be able to do that XD just hearing qin xiang would have made me laugh and give the game away :P so kudos to leon.
of course we quickly called qin xiang back after that to make sure he didn't think it was genuine :P and the first 2 times he hung up on us, for reasons unknown. finally the 3rd time, when we feared that he was pissed and was trying to dao us, he actually said he found it amusing and very well done :P hehehe XD obviously that didn't mean he allowed word of its contents to be known to the rest of the world, so sorry chillun! we're all kinda sworn to secrecy, so i cant tell what was said during the prank call :S maybe a few years down the road when qin xiang forgets XD hehe.
so finally, feeling high after the success of the prank call, we left ryan's house, and began our long journey home. ah. what a wonderful day XD
AMEN;
2:04 pm
