you have received one voice mail.

"hello, denise, this is julia from the cancer awareness association. you've signed up for a study with us. please call me back at this number as soon as possible."

in typical denise fashion, i forgot to call julia back. and never had i signed up for such a study.

a week later,

"hello, denise. this is julia from the cancer awareness association. i'm calling about you signing up to be a volunteer in our research on cervical cancer. you rated your enthusiasm for our study to be 1 which means VERY enthusiastic. you signed up at NUH under list C. please call me back."

oh ho.

the minute nice sweet julia mentioned NUH, my brain went ka-ching and pinpointed a stupid bastard with waay too much time on his hands. i called him up and the idiot had the audacity to gleefully admit to the screaming accusations i was hurling at him.

so i called julia back and i wanted to tell her that i "signed up" under false circumstances and that it was a certain jy teo who happily signed up on my behalf. she still interviewed me all the same to see whether i was a suitable candidate for research. we barely got past the first question when she decided that i didn't suit her needs.

bah, fine with me. FINE FINE.

today was filled with unexpected turn of events. i almost went but i didn't. the key word here is almost. and it's very difficult to try to get two groups of friends to mix. they usually congeal into this awkward, uncomfortable substance with the mediator having a hard time jumping between the two groups. mei ling and i tried to split from them but to no avail. in the end, i ended up with them and mei ling went home. then they jumped into a mandarin-dominated conversation and i, myself, made a quick exit.

penang, here i come.. WHOOOoOOo

they are so mean. they know i can't speak mandarin and hc sneakingly asked me to go pour the plum sauce over the yu-sheng that the BIG BOSS ordered.

the house rule is that when one serves the yu-sheng and pours the plum sauce, one must also sputter a few chinese new year greetings in mandarin, a language of which i have been trying (very futilely) to learn for the past year.

so i struggled pathetically to spit out "gong xi fa cai" and "nyen nyen something something" whilst concentrating very hard on pouring my plum sauce. in the middle, the boss' mistress' lesbian friend stops me and says

"haiyaah why you never say properly? it's gong XI fa cai, not gong seeee fai cai"

yeah whatever, boss' mistress' lesbian friend.

and in the midst of this, ALL of them stood behind the glass door, snickering at me, which made me choke halfway on my gibberish new year greetings. i will kill bennyshimindesmondandpaul. but not now, because i need my energy to complete three energy-sapping assignments.

andrea's in singapore now and smsed me to meet up. i'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and not think bad thoughts. but like yao said, it's pretty hard when the only time she contacts you is when she needs you and she chastises you for not keeping in touch when she, herself, didn't make the effort. we're meeting tomorrow after work and i'm bringing my camera, heeding requests from the horny donkey and spiderwoman.

went to orchard with debs and met paul and his gf amy. she's really sweet and friendly and they're so lovey-dovey, couldn't stop giggling at each other and feeding each other yoshinawa food. unfortunately, it was a pretty short meeting due to respective time restrictions.

and thank you to feli for sending me alex to's lyrics. heh. that was very nice of you.

a big welcome back to sze ning and grace. you guys have just extended my online time.

please queue up for a taxi. please queue up for some personality and humility, u dud.

has anyone heard of this woman called joey yung? she's a chinese singer who's got a lea salonga-ish voice. i've heard this particular song of hers a couple of times but never could find out the title. since my ability to speak any sort of chinese is very much limited, i've resorted to downloading every song of hers i can get in kazaa. but i still can't find the ONE song that i want. her other songs are pretty nice so i shall retain them in my "not able to sing along to" folder.

call me cheesy but i just downloaded alex to's "baby i'm so sorry". i love that i can sing along to the chorus. only the chorus, mind you. even though it's a cringingly cheesy chorus.

hobby of the moment: picking at the pimples growing on my right cheek.

pei li's such a riot. she asked me to wake her up at 0030 so she could study. i nudged her awake at 0045

"wei wake up leh."

"huh? ok. what's that on your head?" (i was wearing a bandanna)

"fashion accessory. faster wei. keep me company."

"yah yah."

yah yah my fat bloody arse. she fell back asleep the second i turned my back. then tomorrow she's going to wail about how she's so far behind in her finance module and scold me for not being an effective alarm clock.

but i'm used to it.

there was this new girl at work today. her name is nelly and she's from... ta-daa... rjc. she reminds me of a giraffe because she's really tall and long limbed but she has very pretty eyes. she got in a bit of a panic because she accidentally stuffed someone's payment into the tips box but things were sorted out in the end.

i got myself in a little jinx today because i didn't say byebye to the boss and his mistress when they left. screw it man, there i was smiling like a crackpot and they just sailed past me without acknowledging my friendly smile. turns out that i was supposed to make them look at me by hollering "MR CHUA AND MISTRESS!! LEAVING SO SOON?? AIYAAAH... BYEBYE AND SEE YOU AGAIN!". hc can be such a jerkoholic asshole sometimes. must get him a hr management book for christmas. the way he handles his employees definitely decreases employee productivity and happiness.

mr. t worked today. i don't know. maybe it's the environment.

school's alrite. oscar extended our assignment deadline till monday. he had to because his assignment required that we surf to this science website which can only accommodate max 5 simultaneous users. so you can imagine the busy signals we were getting when we tried to access the site. whatever it is, i still don't understand his vaguely-phrased questions. i asked around and apparently, most people are facing the same dilemma. mei ling and i compared rough drafts of our answers and our analysis of the questions is scarily different.

is 2003 the year of break-ups? in the past 23 days, i've had 3 of my friends break up with their steady steadies. and one was after a 5-year relationship.

go figure.

i wanna bite his head off
yeah that'd be fun
coz I sure got an appetite
i click my heels together three times
they sparked a little, but nothing happened
and the big bad wolf's still in my bed
- alisha's attic

oh yeah i'm totally over the skum now. that's the new nickname i've decided to give him. he is skum, after all. SKUM SKUM SKUM did anyone notice this when they watched "the eye"? i did.

freaky deeky.

it's late but i'm still up, trying to digest the first two chapters of my mpw textbook.

today was my uni's patron's day. president nathan came over for his annual obligatory visit, the school made a big hoo ha about it and declared a holiday for all students and staff. there were lots of stalls and performances and nathan made his cursory tour and goodwill comments before zooming off with his envoys.

the theme of today was "let's get loud". as predicted, there were some individuals who dressed extraordinarily out of the ordinary. a girl wore a jester's hat and a fur coat, this guy with orange hair walked around decked in an orange overcoat with his mouth covered ala michael jackson style, i saw a few afro wigs and this girl came dressed as a cow girl with a chowchow hanging from her arms. but the one that clinched it was this guy who dressed like a girl. it wasn't a very novel idea, i admit, but when i saw his skinny hairy legs sticking out from his red batik skirt, i almost choked on my garlic bread.

i was hoping i'd get lucky in this year's lucky draw (no. 733) but alas, lady luck did not bestow any of her blessings upon me. the first prize was a TV, i think, which i would've sold had i won it.

because most of the stalls were run by fellow students, i was obliged to make a few purchases. i bought a snuff box. a very pretty one for $3 but i suspect the cost price was probably about $1. ah well. such is business.

i wish i had taken pictures. then i could've posted them here for no one to see.

so i resumed work yesterday. i reluctantly donned my uniform and trudged forlornly to my former/present workplace. everything's still the same and because it was a wednesday night, business wasn't very brisk so for most of the time, i stood in a corner and diligently refilled half-empty glasses of water.

my boss reprimanded me for being distant with the customers i.e. whenever a customer approaches me, i back away until i stand at a respectable (in my view) distance.

so yeah, i was thinking what was so wrong with that? i need to respect everyone's personal space and vice versa. but noooo the hamsap chikopek (hereafter referred to as HC) claims that to make customers feel more at home, i have to lean forward and hurl spittle in their faces. ergo, when they reply, my face will be the immediate direct target for stray droplets of saliva.

gruesome, isn't it? but singapore's got a very competitive jobless community now, all vying for any job that pays respectable wages. so in order to secure a steadfast grip on my quasi-vulnerable job, i have to do what the HC says.

work aside, today i was walking down a flight of stairs in school, holding a gossip session with mei ling. due to the intensity and juiciness of this gossip session, i failed to focus more attention on where i was placing my feet and slipped on the edge of a stair. partial blame is to be placed on the cheap rm10 slippery-soled sandals i was wearing.

i let out a big screech and in my moment of panic, grabbed mei ling's arm. fortunately, she possesses powerful arm strength or else the both of us would've gone tumbling down the stairs together. she assisted me in regaining my balance and could not help but cackle in wicked mirth. i was already a deep dark shade of mortified red and didn't dare turn around to see whether my very rare moment of clumsiness was witnessed so i scurried off with my head bowed low and left mei ling hooting with laughter by herself.

damn paiseh, ok?

but i'm really happy that jimmy loves and appreciates my birthday card. i picked it specially for you, jimmy!

i wanted to wash my clothes today. but someone beat me to it. so my clothes are now festering in a knee-high pile of dirt, mould and stale sweat. ah well, if clothes aren't meant to be washed, then who am i to stand in the way of a three hundred year old tradition?

there's an odd atmosphere permeating the flat now. wait, i know why. there's no one to barge in and out of my room, no maniacal cackles disrupting the general peace, no out-of-tune warbling of mariah songs and no one to hog my phone. my poltergeist has been exorcised! hallelujah danke sayonara goodriddancetonoisysisters. much gratitude is extended to buses that travel the penang-singapore route.

kidding only lah. you know that deep down your jie jie misses you very much, u uberdyke. and u left two rubber bands wound tightly around my spoon.

today we decided to go to sentosa. i, myself, haven't been there in 8 years. we went by bus and for 5 hours we were stranded on the minute island, sweltering beneath the unforgiving sun. it was worth it because i managed to see

a signboard reminding me i was in sentosa

and


a great white shark

is fred durst really going out with britney?

the us version of the ring just opened in singapore and contrary to what most babies claim, it's not THAT scary. i wasn't a big fan of the jap version so i won't bother to make stupid senile comparisons between the two.

is it just me or does naomi watts look like nicole kidman? and the kid pulled off a watery version of haley joel osmont. watery. but believable.

i hate it when people spoil my movie-watching experience with their yakkity yak jabber jabber ooh the girl is so scary *fake scream* bullshit nonsense. the key word here is considerate. unfortunately for me and my fellow movie goers, we were subjected to a scene by scene description of the movie by a loudmouth geekozoid. the thick skinned antagonizing loser didn't even get the hint after numerous SSSHs. and the fella had the utmost misconception that he was a macho stud and thought he could carry off wearing shorts so short his frilly panties stuck out. too bad he had the face of a baboon with a perpetual sneer.

and i hate KIAMSIAP people. you hear me? when i buy a textbook, it's for ME and ONLY ME. what in hell gave you the idea that you could order me to lend you my book so you could photostat it? gila babi hutan. i didn't spend 42 bucks buying the book so you could flatten it on a photostat machine and save yourself 30 bucks. go buy your own book, you moronic cheapskate egotistical pundekface.

and get a haircut. long hair is sooo passe.

i've retracted my last post. i don't know what on earth possessed me to write so much about my active bowel movement. especially when i was eating my floss bun. and playing literati.

must've been the heady combination of both.

well, happy campers, today i went to seiyu and stocked up on my statione(a)ry. my my there were so many pens to choose from today!! i was so excited, scribbling all over the rough paper attached to the shelves. i wrote "minimum" (my favourite word to write) and signed my name all over with different corour and different thickness. then i heard one saleswoman scolding another saleswoman for seeing her bf too much and i got a bit more kaypo and wandered away from my task at hand.

i'm sad to report that unlike you lucky australian bastards, uni classes have started for me. i'm stuck in with two yawn-inducing professors from china. hah! they're exact human replicas of textbooks; what they do is just stand there and churn out information verbatim from the textbook. are all people from china like that? because if they are, i predict on an indexed scale of one to ten (taking into consideration other factors including economic health, geographical position and population), china is the world's 2nd most boring country, with new zealand sailing far ahead to win top honours.

dinner's back!!

i did the most stupid thing i could ever do. it wasn't pre-meditated. nor was much thought given prior to the act. i did it on a whim, when i was high on girl-power and milo peng and dog food.

now, children break into howling sobs and burrow their faces in their mothers' armpits when they see me. no one can contain their gasps of repulsion and everyone hurriedly makes way for me, turning their heads so their eyes avoid direct contact with the nightmarish hermaphrodite-like freak sashaying in front of them. people on the streets tug frantically on each other's sleeves and point at me and whisper excitedly amongst themselves.

me? i just ignore them. i ignore the silent laughter, the mockery they make out of me, the wretched howls of terror of those unfortunate enough to look my way. i endure the stones and rocks pelted at me by meddlesome kids who don't understand why i did what i did.

sometimes i notice ah bengs nudging each other, daring each other to come up to me and ask

"are you boy or ger?"

stupid ah bengs. stupid mat rocks. stupid people.

ahem. the thing i did?

i cropped my hair.

so now my hair is very short. i was also quite scared lah when the hairdresser was done and i ran my fingers through my hair (or what was left of it). but what to do.

and yes, i graciously accept the complimentary membership to the "penang butch society", thank you very much.