People should not show off. Unfortunately, people who like to show off/act seh (like me) tend to be the kind of people you simply cannot drum this fact into. It stays in for a while, but when the confidence returns it just flies right back out again.

See, last year, cycling back and forth from home to the sports complex every week (about 30min cycle) up and down the curbs, dodging pedestrians, fellow cyclists and lamp posts, and smoothly checking my watch once in a while had given me the confidence that I am a reasonably.. fluent cyclist. No I still hate cycling, and I do look pathetic and wimpy on a bike, but it just never has been a terrible problem mounting curbs and pedalling furiously along the road. On my 1st cycling attempt after a considerable period, I was 1. late and 2. on a bicycle that was too high for me. Or rather, I was too short for the bike. Anyway, with the ease that I assumed had been ingrained into my cerebellum, I confidently swerved past a pedestrian onto the road cycling track. That was successful, but when, with equal confidence, I turned to mount myself back onto the pavement again my bicycle bucked and flung me flat onto my intended destination without it :(

I was just a few metres ahead of the person I had overtaken too :(

I try not to think how, if I were that person, I would feel 1. really sorry for the poor person and pity her embarrassing plight 2. smug about how that idiot tried to overtake me and ended up falling flat on her face and try to think 3. ignore her. she is just a child.

Lesson #2. Believe in Feng Shui. Oh I might as well do some promotion for my feng shui book. It is really quite a good book. It is by Lilian and Jennifer Too and is called 'Feng Shui for the Dragon 2009-2010' or something like that. The book has been so far so good.. I mean, not to follow it to the letter, but generally it has been pretty accurate and given me advice that actually seemed to work so far. Anyway, this month it told me as a side note that if I am involved in any sports or games to avoid them completely because if I were to engage myself in sports I would be sure to meet with nasty injuries. Ok, to qualify, I am still fit enough to blog and go on facebook, and I was only thrown off 1m from where I started. Not too bad la. Only ended up with scraped palms and bruises at all sorts of funny places I did not know I could land on. I always hear about my friends or their friends flying off bicycles before and think, 'What an interesting experience to share'. I now realise that is very shallow and stupid thinking.

People who are proud and scared of embarrassment really do end up with more of such loser incidents. Falling down in front of the whole LT? Check. Falling down for no reason in front of cheering crowds? Check. Having an entire match stopped because my shoe sole came off? Check. I cannot help wondering why these things always happen to me. I was talking to Evon about how people always complain about why everything happens to them.. Well I suppose not everything happens to me, but a considerable proportion of them do seem to. Like my eventful journey home. Laptop crashed > Airport caught fire > Flight delayed > Need to pay for trolley > Took wrong train > Arrived at train station late > Raining > Reached home to find dog shit on my doorstep. The poo was a classic comedic ending to my trip.. They are still in the midst of disintegrating, but shit is still rather prevalent on my street these days.

Which leads me on to think about what Yiling said about my affinity with flies. I got 緣 and I got 糞 and so I got flies. This year, because of the stupendous amount of shit along my street, I no longer walk on the pavement but stick to the side of the road. Firstly to avoid the shit and secondly to avoid the flies that come with it. New experiences have taught me that. 3 times already this year a fly has flown into my left eye despite my spectacular (I wear SPECTACLES. hahahahaha..) protection. That means the fly(ies) deliberately dodged under my lens just to poke me in the eye. I felt a bit consoled tho when my friend told me about how a fly had flown into her mouth while she was yawning. She then choked on it and coughed it out but I think it had already died.

Many thought accumulated from the month I have been here...

PJ Pubcrawl

Yes this is the kind of costume that gets you photographed at PJ pubcrawl. Another is a spongebob outfit. That got alot of people queueing up for a personal picture. Unfortunately mine got lost somewhere in the melee of photographs that were taken that night.

This costume IS actually really cool. It is supposed to be a mother giving birth and all the babies that have already been born are kinda loitering around in the background in diapers and having drinks. The 1 featured in the photo is on his way out and not in a very sociable position. Ah. Typical medic-wear. No one can resist showing off at a get-together like this. I overheard the people talking about their costume the next day on the way to school saying "... depends on how much money and effort you want to spend on your costume, really". How much could they have spent tho, seriously? It was a really smart and cost-efficient idea. The stretcher was made of a Morissons trolley with its back pushed inwards. The baby went inside the trolley head-1st and kinda poked his head out at the appropriate location. Den there was a support on the trolley for the mother to lie on with alot of white cloth and red dye on the diapers and bedsheets. And each time they went into a pub everyone got out of their way coz there was the whole stretcher paving a way through for them. So there was no problem with crowds.

I have to admire their spirit and the effort they go into dressing up and planning their costumes. There were silver statues, members of Kiss, power rangers, toy soldiers from toy story (those were really convincing but really embarrassing when they stopped and stood still in the middle of the road or like when they tried to direct traffic), ribena people, pacman, THE MARIO FAMILY (that was so cool..) and silly me in my bathrobe. Man I really want to put in more effort into dressing up next time the occasion rises. So fun! Really expensive tho... But still. So fun!

I've got the sniffles



Someone in my class was suspected of having swine flu but dedicated as he is, he still turned up for hospital teaching. And lessons in school afterwards. The next time we had classes, 1/2 that group was missing and there were flu-bitten students dotted about in several other groups. My group had 3 including me.

Turns out he did not have swine flu tho. But this flu has been going on for ages.. Yet it is not serious enough to warrant a journey to Freemen's medical centre.

Ever had the experience of blowing and blowing and blowing your nose and successful or not, still always have something dribbling down 1 nostril soon after? I always wonder if, by blowing, I am encouraging my goblet cells to heighten their productivity to make up for the mucus deficit.

I do not have the habit of using tissues. I think it is the bother of walking over to the other side of the room to pull 1 piece out, thinking that that will be the only piece I will need, only having to walk over again 5 minutes later. 'Bring over the whole damn box to where you are, you potato' many voices tell me. However, somehow after wiping my nose dry on that 1 piece of tissue, the comfort of having a clean dry nose always convinces me that my nose has, this time, truly decided to stay still and stop running. And so after my 4th-ish piece of tissue I decide that enough is enough.

'Enough!' I tell my nose and my tissue box,

and on reflex just reach for the nearest, most convenient piece of wiping equipment I can find, which is, of course, my jumper sleeve. Do not cringe your noses in disdain and say 'ee...'. I know many of you secretly do it too, when you casually sweep your hand across your face to swat away a fly or brush back your hair and casually slide it into your trouser pocket when you are done. Now 2 surfaces (the back of the hand and the trouser pocket) are contaminated with body fluid. Fortunately, I just use my sleeve and I do wash my jumper alot so the rest of my belongings are clean.

I have now found an obvious coping strategy, which is to utilise the 34 packets of tissue I have in the drawer beside me. That way I can stay at the same spot and have unlimited excess to my tissues. The drawback about using tissues in general tho (and many of my tissue packets contain 3-ply tissue. why??) is when your airways are obviously blocked/nose is obviously dribbling but the bulk of the mucus does not wish to leave its nest and you end up using a whole piece of perfectly good 3-ply tissue to absorb just a few drops of fluid despite various styles of angling the tissue to maximise its potential. I am not a huge environmentalist person. Hm but I am a bit of a cheapskate. Anyway, I believe that each ply deserves to be maximally utilised and so when it is just a minor leakage, I still instinctively depend on my handy old jumper for its absorptive properties. Reusable and Recyclable. And I reduce the amount (yes amount. not number) of tissues I have to throw away on a flu-ey day.