Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Eventful days, class outing, results and eric's farewell
lots of things happened the past 'long weekend'... so much that my mind's almost overwhelmed by it...
so let's start from class outing on sunday, 27th february first. was pushing my expectations a li'l low before that cos it seems like we were unable to contact quite a few pple and some decided not to go. ok, on the day itself, went play ball with jun liang early in the morning for a while, preparing to rush to meet up for the class outing after that. but suffered a bout of diarhea (however u spell it) and ended up an hour late... surprisingly i was not the last lol, and 12 pple turned up, which could have been better but very satisfactory already imo
so just like the last time we went to sentosa. this time with no false title of a 'picnic' i went with the right attire haha. at first played frisbee, then some volleyball before going into the sea. my, the gradient of the beach was really steep. just a li'l into the sea have to thread water already, but i digress. hate it when mouth touches the salty water but nonetheless had a good time just hanging out with friends. oh yeah, finally took some pictures of the class this time. i like the group photo on the rocks... (guess will upload them soon)
after that there was some confusion. there were some plans to go lik khian's house but sandy wanted us to go orchard help out buy the farewell gifts for eric. in the end some felt against going and went to lik khian's house but jun wei and junio headed to help her. had pizza, nice. then relived some childhood memories eating those biscuits with the sugary thing on top... don't really know how to describe but it's common how we eat it, biscuit first then the sugary stuff...
next played mahjong. um, so while we were leaving sentosa sth happened and left me reflecting on myself. so it was a good diversion to stop myself from thinking too much in a sense lah. at first i could concentrate, won a few rounds here and there but nothing much but after that my mind started to wander. some rounds i found myself just giving up before even finishing... but overall i enjoyed it lah. but in the end stopped and gave up my position. maybe there's no money involved haha...
so after some time i left. made a plan with lik khian, lymon and aaron to go to lik's house the next day (ponning sch in the process) to try make sth for eric. think i needed that cos i know with my tendency to think too much i cannot afford to let myself be alone during that time... so fast forward to next day. turns out we didn't do anything in the end and couldn't find what we wanted... but it's the thoughts that counts? haha
wrote my note to eric in lik's house. it's so tough putting down my feelings in words but got it done in the end. am very thankful for the company though and the banters that went around, especially with aaron's plans for his note. i really cannot envision going to sch then.
but sadly, the coming of the results soon got to me. we were like jokingly counting down the when our results would get released but somehow i started feeling nervy. very weird considering i've not really paid much attention to it before this. i started to think what i wanted to get, but was at a loss... on one hand i wanted to score well for the obvious reasons but on the other hand i'm actually hoping to get less than satisfactory results... can't really pinpoint the reason... maybe deep down i was hoping to go to poly and lead a less taxing life. maybe...
so was feeling quite nervous when going to zhss. thankfully vinnie with his usual jokes, etc managed to cheer me up considerably and i wasn't so anxious anymore, until we saw that we didn't do that well this year as a whole... thankfully our class did very well i think.
am happy (ok, maybe i should use a more 'intense' word) with my results, but somehow i feel i don't deserve some of them. feel a li'l ashamed sometimes... then felt a li'l weird talking to others bout it cos they'd give the 'so u very good lah' (something along those lines lah, just can't remember the exact phrasing) and i'm afraid i might be a li'l insensitive sometimes... different people have different expectations so didn't really know how to talk bout this sort of stuff.
ok, after that went took pictures with ms chan, huang lao shi, ms ten and ms tan with eric and co. i've always pitied the fact that we haven't taken many pictures as a class or smaller as a group so happy for that.
eric's farewell later in the canteen. we bought a cake, bear and watch for him. he sang the 4e1 song, still touching as always. took a video with the video camera... too bad it's 100mb... gonna take some time to upload that. am very pleased the whole class actually turned up, and to go along my crave for pictures these days took two class pictures with ms chan, mr yeo, mr choo and mr won. nice ^^.
so we had the cake and stuff... slowly people started streaming out but i didn't really want to leave. most of the class actually stayed for quite a long time. and even though i didn't really talk much to anyone just the presence is enough. finally went to mac with ash, terence, aaron and lymon and hongyi. trying to make some plans with eric for the next day but not really settled. but he had to have dinner with another group of friends...
nice talk. oh yeah, great to see the 'new' hongyi. much more sociable now. happy for him. eventually had to part.
so went home. side track back to the results for a while. discussing on which jc to go to with some friends and quite some going ny then. so gave it a consideration. parents were quite happy bout my results, but then i told them bout me considering ny and tt i wanna pon the next 2 days (they don't even know ponned monday) and they didn't look too happy. oh well
turns out eric not going out with his jc friends on tuesday so we get to spend the whole day with him ^^. and can stay overnight at his place too (double ^^). but only settled details at like, 12 or so. almost fell asleep. plan in the end was playing lan in the morning then go on from there.
ponned sch 'as usual' on tuesday then and for the first time, i actually played lan with them. most of the time if i tagged along i'd be outside bowling while the others were playing but i decided to play it just for the sake of doing it. there was eric (of course), aaron, lik khian, lymon, terence and patrick there...
started playing, and of course i was at a loss when everyone else understands what is going on. a lot of times i ended up staring at my screen and shouting what is happening, throwing my mouse down. spent more than 3h in there... scary looking back at it lol. kinda fun in a sense but so utterly confusing...
after that was lunch at the place affectionately called yellow-chair coffee shop. had western food there as usual. bowling next. think i'm kinda bad, championing for that when eric, the 'main character' of the day is not playing. played one game, and am satisfied i managed to break 100 even after so much time not bowling.
me and aaron then went to eric's house after that. he was packing his stuff, we ain't much help, so just sat around. but so many memories of just sitting down at my favourite corner at 'ponyboy's house', looking at either eric or ash playing the guitar on the bed or at the computer with warcraft, utopia or gangland. i'm surprised how i managed to have so fond memories of them even though i was just idling time away haha. how nice.
later on ash and lymon joined up at eric's house. the last time we went for the farewell dinner during the holidays it was the five of us too. thought it'd change this time round with terence and lik khian 'invited' and lymon and ash maybe unable to make it but fate is just such a sweet thing. we were talking bout what a coincidence then, but more's in store...
plan this time round for dinner was seoul garden at bugis again, continuing from where we left off that last time. eric took a li'l longer than expected to do the last of his packing so we only arrived there at 8. on the way we were joking bout requesting for the table we sat as the last time to really continue from there. but when we got there and i took a glance inside it seemed like it was taken.
but when the person led us to our table it turned out that i had seen wrongly and the table was empty. while walking towards it there was this excitement inside as we're hoping to get it... and we did. coincidence number 2, or as i like to call it, fate. so without even asking we took the places we had the last time and started the dinner rolling.
because we had lunch so late i was really full and ate kinda little. how wasteful of $22. drank a lot of sprite + lemonade cos was really thirsty but made me even more bloated. only ate a li'l meat, two eggs and some ice cream in the end. halfway through the dinner aaron spotted a worm in the plate where we had just taken our vegetables from. thankfully haven't eaten them. really disgusting with it crawling around and the slimy green color. thankfully quite small. called the staff there and tried to ask jokingly for refund but failed. only got a change of the soup... but that's just the side story.
this time because we were kinda late and took bout 1h to get the eating done, etc had not much time on our hands for the 'bonding session'. earlier part of the banter was still immensely fun nevertheless but no doubt that was what we'd (or at least me lah lol) been waiting for. ended only bout 30min of that and we're the last group inside seoul garden. staff didn't chase us out so we talked for a while more til 10 and realised that eric had told his guardian that he'd be back by 10.30 tt we left. good thing lymon managed to convince his parents to stay or sth along those lines so everyone will still be together for the rest of the night.
sleepover it is but we hardly slept at all. talked and joked lots. been 2 months + since i last saw eric in person but we still could hit it off really well. i can say that the friendships built between the few of us are really strong i hope. the serious stuff and all the sharing, the light stuff with all the talk bout charlie and 2.06 (watching movie in a group is so fun when u piece up the missing bits after tt lol. we've been talking bout hide and seek for so long lor...) and me and lymon's impulses to snuffle ash lol. ash doing silly stuff with the pooh bear, eric 'fighting' with ash. (lol, nothing involving 'no hormones' aaron seemed to have happened)... 'vampire' ash and the debate bout turning on/off the lights... testing eric's 'aim', scaring lymon with stuff, our very own 'dr hitch'... it was just a awesome night in a truly incredible day... a memory to savour.
slept very li'l, and not helped by the super cold aircon coupled with the thin blankets and small part of the mattress i got (get things straight... i'm not complaining here eh), woke up, went yellow chair coffee shop have breakfast.
oh yeah, on a side story it seemed like i'm the unofficial spokesman for eric's flight lol. received so many sms-es asking me bout the details of eric's flight. nvm, back to the day...
after that, went back, did last of packing and took taxi to airport. was surprised to see the number of people seeing him off in the end. some who originally sent regards through the unofficial spokesman turned up after all, which was really nice.. let's see, we had the four of us, terence, hongyi, shiu hei, lik khian, junio, vinnie, sandy, candy, weiteng, qiujin from our class (hope i didn't miss anyone out)... that makes it 14. then there was cheryl and mei fang, two of his badminton friends and another big group of jc friends... kinda cool having such a large 'entourage'... think he was really busy, trying to attend to so many different groups.
ok, side track again to the results. turns out aaron's parents didn't really like the idea of going ny too so we decided to try psycho other people go aj. wonder how things will turn out in the end with who going where... but think i'd be going aj almost definitely now unless sth major happens... hope to see gd friends there...
so, soon, it was time for eric to check into the departure area. time to say bye bye. he promised that he'd be back (and according to aaron with his honed skill of peeking into other pple's stuff) he'd be transitting in singapore soon. hope can meet him then. but i'd leave this to fate i guess. i'm sure the bonds we'd built between us will ensure we keep in contact.
really thankful i was able to stay strong for the two fantastic days spent with him. definitely will miss him, but was able to suppress any notion to feel sad by first wanting to spend some really enjoyable time with him and later thinking bout more positive stuff. after he went through immigration we're kinda joking bout sending somebody else off at another terminal cos we stacked all our bags into a trolley and seemed like whoever's pushing the trolley's leaving too. ok, the lame stuff we do but loads of fun. eric leaving is seeping in bit by bit now but i've promised myself i shall not feel sad for this. we've had a great time knowing each other and i will just yearn for more of good times instead of mourning bout sth we cannot change.
it was kinda like a mini class outing then, what with 10+ pple around. after much hanging around and trying to decide what to do most of us went to tampines mall to have lunch. after lunch some of the guys decide to continue hanging out and do sth. accompanied ash to get his singpass done (the others watched mr bean but i got so tired i fell asleep in the meantime) then a few of them went to get ramly burgers. haven't eaten them before, but would have if only i wasn't broke and in debt yet again just 2 days after paying my previous debts off. and financial assistant aaron himself was broke as well lol. guess some other day.
and after much hanging around tampines trying to decide where to go and what to do, 8 of us decided to go to parkway to play pool. felt so weird going past tj halfway on the bus trip. my first time really playing pool (my only experiences with it was playing around for less than 5min at the lobby of a few hotels in some overseas trip). was incredibly crappy but was really funny. i goofed up on so many occations... at the start there was a free ball and i had the chance to pocket my first ever ball with one nicely near the pocket. i proceeded to do that, only hitting the white ball inside too -_-. then there were times i'd totally miss hitting the ball, miss clear sitters and one time hit a ball which was just in front of the pocket out when it seemed easier to hit it in.
nonetheless still a very fun experience. had fun laughing at myself and the times where beginner's luck set in and i made some angled shots a few times in a row were really satisfying. wanna say thank you to shiu hei for treating us. after that, went home and here we're back...
my, so many things happened this past few days. ponned 3 consecutive days, hope won't run into too much trouble. a 'long weekend' with quite some lasting impacts on me...
so let's start from class outing on sunday, 27th february first. was pushing my expectations a li'l low before that cos it seems like we were unable to contact quite a few pple and some decided not to go. ok, on the day itself, went play ball with jun liang early in the morning for a while, preparing to rush to meet up for the class outing after that. but suffered a bout of diarhea (however u spell it) and ended up an hour late... surprisingly i was not the last lol, and 12 pple turned up, which could have been better but very satisfactory already imo
so just like the last time we went to sentosa. this time with no false title of a 'picnic' i went with the right attire haha. at first played frisbee, then some volleyball before going into the sea. my, the gradient of the beach was really steep. just a li'l into the sea have to thread water already, but i digress. hate it when mouth touches the salty water but nonetheless had a good time just hanging out with friends. oh yeah, finally took some pictures of the class this time. i like the group photo on the rocks... (guess will upload them soon)
after that there was some confusion. there were some plans to go lik khian's house but sandy wanted us to go orchard help out buy the farewell gifts for eric. in the end some felt against going and went to lik khian's house but jun wei and junio headed to help her. had pizza, nice. then relived some childhood memories eating those biscuits with the sugary thing on top... don't really know how to describe but it's common how we eat it, biscuit first then the sugary stuff...
next played mahjong. um, so while we were leaving sentosa sth happened and left me reflecting on myself. so it was a good diversion to stop myself from thinking too much in a sense lah. at first i could concentrate, won a few rounds here and there but nothing much but after that my mind started to wander. some rounds i found myself just giving up before even finishing... but overall i enjoyed it lah. but in the end stopped and gave up my position. maybe there's no money involved haha...
so after some time i left. made a plan with lik khian, lymon and aaron to go to lik's house the next day (ponning sch in the process) to try make sth for eric. think i needed that cos i know with my tendency to think too much i cannot afford to let myself be alone during that time... so fast forward to next day. turns out we didn't do anything in the end and couldn't find what we wanted... but it's the thoughts that counts? haha
wrote my note to eric in lik's house. it's so tough putting down my feelings in words but got it done in the end. am very thankful for the company though and the banters that went around, especially with aaron's plans for his note. i really cannot envision going to sch then.
but sadly, the coming of the results soon got to me. we were like jokingly counting down the when our results would get released but somehow i started feeling nervy. very weird considering i've not really paid much attention to it before this. i started to think what i wanted to get, but was at a loss... on one hand i wanted to score well for the obvious reasons but on the other hand i'm actually hoping to get less than satisfactory results... can't really pinpoint the reason... maybe deep down i was hoping to go to poly and lead a less taxing life. maybe...
so was feeling quite nervous when going to zhss. thankfully vinnie with his usual jokes, etc managed to cheer me up considerably and i wasn't so anxious anymore, until we saw that we didn't do that well this year as a whole... thankfully our class did very well i think.
am happy (ok, maybe i should use a more 'intense' word) with my results, but somehow i feel i don't deserve some of them. feel a li'l ashamed sometimes... then felt a li'l weird talking to others bout it cos they'd give the 'so u very good lah' (something along those lines lah, just can't remember the exact phrasing) and i'm afraid i might be a li'l insensitive sometimes... different people have different expectations so didn't really know how to talk bout this sort of stuff.
ok, after that went took pictures with ms chan, huang lao shi, ms ten and ms tan with eric and co. i've always pitied the fact that we haven't taken many pictures as a class or smaller as a group so happy for that.
eric's farewell later in the canteen. we bought a cake, bear and watch for him. he sang the 4e1 song, still touching as always. took a video with the video camera... too bad it's 100mb... gonna take some time to upload that. am very pleased the whole class actually turned up, and to go along my crave for pictures these days took two class pictures with ms chan, mr yeo, mr choo and mr won. nice ^^.
so we had the cake and stuff... slowly people started streaming out but i didn't really want to leave. most of the class actually stayed for quite a long time. and even though i didn't really talk much to anyone just the presence is enough. finally went to mac with ash, terence, aaron and lymon and hongyi. trying to make some plans with eric for the next day but not really settled. but he had to have dinner with another group of friends...
nice talk. oh yeah, great to see the 'new' hongyi. much more sociable now. happy for him. eventually had to part.
so went home. side track back to the results for a while. discussing on which jc to go to with some friends and quite some going ny then. so gave it a consideration. parents were quite happy bout my results, but then i told them bout me considering ny and tt i wanna pon the next 2 days (they don't even know ponned monday) and they didn't look too happy. oh well
turns out eric not going out with his jc friends on tuesday so we get to spend the whole day with him ^^. and can stay overnight at his place too (double ^^). but only settled details at like, 12 or so. almost fell asleep. plan in the end was playing lan in the morning then go on from there.
ponned sch 'as usual' on tuesday then and for the first time, i actually played lan with them. most of the time if i tagged along i'd be outside bowling while the others were playing but i decided to play it just for the sake of doing it. there was eric (of course), aaron, lik khian, lymon, terence and patrick there...
started playing, and of course i was at a loss when everyone else understands what is going on. a lot of times i ended up staring at my screen and shouting what is happening, throwing my mouse down. spent more than 3h in there... scary looking back at it lol. kinda fun in a sense but so utterly confusing...
after that was lunch at the place affectionately called yellow-chair coffee shop. had western food there as usual. bowling next. think i'm kinda bad, championing for that when eric, the 'main character' of the day is not playing. played one game, and am satisfied i managed to break 100 even after so much time not bowling.
me and aaron then went to eric's house after that. he was packing his stuff, we ain't much help, so just sat around. but so many memories of just sitting down at my favourite corner at 'ponyboy's house', looking at either eric or ash playing the guitar on the bed or at the computer with warcraft, utopia or gangland. i'm surprised how i managed to have so fond memories of them even though i was just idling time away haha. how nice.
later on ash and lymon joined up at eric's house. the last time we went for the farewell dinner during the holidays it was the five of us too. thought it'd change this time round with terence and lik khian 'invited' and lymon and ash maybe unable to make it but fate is just such a sweet thing. we were talking bout what a coincidence then, but more's in store...
plan this time round for dinner was seoul garden at bugis again, continuing from where we left off that last time. eric took a li'l longer than expected to do the last of his packing so we only arrived there at 8. on the way we were joking bout requesting for the table we sat as the last time to really continue from there. but when we got there and i took a glance inside it seemed like it was taken.
but when the person led us to our table it turned out that i had seen wrongly and the table was empty. while walking towards it there was this excitement inside as we're hoping to get it... and we did. coincidence number 2, or as i like to call it, fate. so without even asking we took the places we had the last time and started the dinner rolling.
because we had lunch so late i was really full and ate kinda little. how wasteful of $22. drank a lot of sprite + lemonade cos was really thirsty but made me even more bloated. only ate a li'l meat, two eggs and some ice cream in the end. halfway through the dinner aaron spotted a worm in the plate where we had just taken our vegetables from. thankfully haven't eaten them. really disgusting with it crawling around and the slimy green color. thankfully quite small. called the staff there and tried to ask jokingly for refund but failed. only got a change of the soup... but that's just the side story.
this time because we were kinda late and took bout 1h to get the eating done, etc had not much time on our hands for the 'bonding session'. earlier part of the banter was still immensely fun nevertheless but no doubt that was what we'd (or at least me lah lol) been waiting for. ended only bout 30min of that and we're the last group inside seoul garden. staff didn't chase us out so we talked for a while more til 10 and realised that eric had told his guardian that he'd be back by 10.30 tt we left. good thing lymon managed to convince his parents to stay or sth along those lines so everyone will still be together for the rest of the night.
sleepover it is but we hardly slept at all. talked and joked lots. been 2 months + since i last saw eric in person but we still could hit it off really well. i can say that the friendships built between the few of us are really strong i hope. the serious stuff and all the sharing, the light stuff with all the talk bout charlie and 2.06 (watching movie in a group is so fun when u piece up the missing bits after tt lol. we've been talking bout hide and seek for so long lor...) and me and lymon's impulses to snuffle ash lol. ash doing silly stuff with the pooh bear, eric 'fighting' with ash. (lol, nothing involving 'no hormones' aaron seemed to have happened)... 'vampire' ash and the debate bout turning on/off the lights... testing eric's 'aim', scaring lymon with stuff, our very own 'dr hitch'... it was just a awesome night in a truly incredible day... a memory to savour.
slept very li'l, and not helped by the super cold aircon coupled with the thin blankets and small part of the mattress i got (get things straight... i'm not complaining here eh), woke up, went yellow chair coffee shop have breakfast.
oh yeah, on a side story it seemed like i'm the unofficial spokesman for eric's flight lol. received so many sms-es asking me bout the details of eric's flight. nvm, back to the day...
after that, went back, did last of packing and took taxi to airport. was surprised to see the number of people seeing him off in the end. some who originally sent regards through the unofficial spokesman turned up after all, which was really nice.. let's see, we had the four of us, terence, hongyi, shiu hei, lik khian, junio, vinnie, sandy, candy, weiteng, qiujin from our class (hope i didn't miss anyone out)... that makes it 14. then there was cheryl and mei fang, two of his badminton friends and another big group of jc friends... kinda cool having such a large 'entourage'... think he was really busy, trying to attend to so many different groups.
ok, side track again to the results. turns out aaron's parents didn't really like the idea of going ny too so we decided to try psycho other people go aj. wonder how things will turn out in the end with who going where... but think i'd be going aj almost definitely now unless sth major happens... hope to see gd friends there...
so, soon, it was time for eric to check into the departure area. time to say bye bye. he promised that he'd be back (and according to aaron with his honed skill of peeking into other pple's stuff) he'd be transitting in singapore soon. hope can meet him then. but i'd leave this to fate i guess. i'm sure the bonds we'd built between us will ensure we keep in contact.
really thankful i was able to stay strong for the two fantastic days spent with him. definitely will miss him, but was able to suppress any notion to feel sad by first wanting to spend some really enjoyable time with him and later thinking bout more positive stuff. after he went through immigration we're kinda joking bout sending somebody else off at another terminal cos we stacked all our bags into a trolley and seemed like whoever's pushing the trolley's leaving too. ok, the lame stuff we do but loads of fun. eric leaving is seeping in bit by bit now but i've promised myself i shall not feel sad for this. we've had a great time knowing each other and i will just yearn for more of good times instead of mourning bout sth we cannot change.
it was kinda like a mini class outing then, what with 10+ pple around. after much hanging around and trying to decide what to do most of us went to tampines mall to have lunch. after lunch some of the guys decide to continue hanging out and do sth. accompanied ash to get his singpass done (the others watched mr bean but i got so tired i fell asleep in the meantime) then a few of them went to get ramly burgers. haven't eaten them before, but would have if only i wasn't broke and in debt yet again just 2 days after paying my previous debts off. and financial assistant aaron himself was broke as well lol. guess some other day.
and after much hanging around tampines trying to decide where to go and what to do, 8 of us decided to go to parkway to play pool. felt so weird going past tj halfway on the bus trip. my first time really playing pool (my only experiences with it was playing around for less than 5min at the lobby of a few hotels in some overseas trip). was incredibly crappy but was really funny. i goofed up on so many occations... at the start there was a free ball and i had the chance to pocket my first ever ball with one nicely near the pocket. i proceeded to do that, only hitting the white ball inside too -_-. then there were times i'd totally miss hitting the ball, miss clear sitters and one time hit a ball which was just in front of the pocket out when it seemed easier to hit it in.
nonetheless still a very fun experience. had fun laughing at myself and the times where beginner's luck set in and i made some angled shots a few times in a row were really satisfying. wanna say thank you to shiu hei for treating us. after that, went home and here we're back...
my, so many things happened this past few days. ponned 3 consecutive days, hope won't run into too much trouble. a 'long weekend' with quite some lasting impacts on me...
