WTF - Wednesday/Thursday/Friday

3 days to blog about, all in 1 entry, and it has to be snappy enough for your attention span!

Wednesday was errand day. Woke up all groggy and dazed after tiring Tuesday, and just lazed the morning away in blissful slowness. Popped out to Ang Mo Kio to run some errands and all.

Went to Sportslink along the way to scout out running shoes. Weird sign in the lift.



Had my mind set on one of the lower-end 'serious' running shoes, which happened to be $156 before discount. Yowch. Nike's higher-end stuff comes in 3 broad categories - cushioning for higher-arched feet, motion control for flatfeet and lightweight for the race days (they look so poorly-cushioned I'd bet one would ruin their feet running long-term in them.)

Went on to Junction 8 next to rent some DVDs. Ice Age 2, Munich, X-Men 3.



Home, and decided to start on that Neon Genesis Evangelion manga I borrowed from the library. It's volume 7 but I've only read 1-3, but I didn't mind cause I already knew the whole plot from the anime. This is the American version rather than the local Chaungyi press, which means 3 things: 1. higher-quality paper, 2. lack of the 4 full-colour pages 3. double the price if you buy it.

1 and 2 are mine, 7 is from the library.





The manga's not half as interesting as the anime - the fight scenes simply don't translate well to paper. But being a diehard Evangelion freak, I just can't resist reading it, to lap up every morsel of the story I had not picked up while watching the anime. Still tempted to try my luck out at the Evangelion Swimsuit toy vending machine at $3 a pop!



Rest of the day's a blur. Heh.

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Thursday is gonococcus's big day out!



It started with a bicycle ride, which sorta didn't go too well because the derailleur cables were probably gunked up since I've been lazy to keep them clean the past few months. Shifting gears was still reliable, but it no longer had the crisp feel to it. Gotta clean them up soon!



Was all raring to go to IKEA with Ferret and Ryan when Ferret called to say she's not feeling well. Oops, decided to go to Vivocity with Ryan instead.

I'm not going to overload this entry with details, neither am I going to further clutter up cyberspace with duplicated bytes, so you can read Ryan's take on it.

A summary:
1. Samsung Gallery. Samsung i320N is amazingly cheap at $700 for a QWERTY Smartphone. It runs on Windows Mobile 5 and the 1.3 megapixel camera didn't look too shabby when I tested it at the gallery with good fluoroscent lighting. So much for the pros, how about the cons? No fatal flaws yet, but well, it's a Samsung and you know its terrible reputation.

That Samsung K5 MP3 player with built-in speakers that you see being advertised all the time lately? The price's really quite hefty and the user interface sorta sucks. But the cool factor's still there.

2. Pageone's this cool bookstore with sorta reasonable prices and a good variety of books. Gotta check it out again next time.

3. Weird product placement in Toys 'R Us makes for sadako-esque horror scenes.



4. Walked into this gift shop - Action City - and one of the sales assistants asked 'Are the 2 of you from STOMP?'. Freaky. She said she isn't from STOMP. Does it mean that the 2 of us are, like, famous already? This is absolutely freaky. It's one thing to be famous, but it feels totally weird to be recognised for one's online persona rather than for myself! The line between my online persona and the real-me is slowly being chipped at, erased, obliterated and in time, even real-life family and friends would know everything I say online. Creepy huh.

Got this really cool caged piggy along with a piggy mug for Twinkie.



5. Read the sign before entering the toilet, lest you get a shock



Went to Toa Payoh MRT to meet up with the rest of the STOMP people to go to Casuarina Curry, was early so just popped by Popular for a while. Saw True Singapore Ghost Stories book 15 being displayed, and was musing about how all the local ghost stories (not just TSGS but anything and everything you hear or read from a Singaporean) always revolves the same few predictable themes - guy prays at temple for wish, guy gets wish, guy didn't go back to the temple to show his gratitude, bad things happen to guy. Or play audio tape of dubious origin backwards, hear satanic messages. Or one of the many zillion stories from the army, such as the mysterious extra person when doing a head-count in the middle of the jungle.

Retold one of the stories I heard from army, supposedly happened in Pulau Tekong. Middle of the night. One guy in the bunk needed to pee. Woke up guy in the next bed cause he was afraid to go alone. (I swear this doesn't normally happen.) Second guy waited vigilantly outside toilet while first guy went to pee. Waited really long. Still no sign of first guy. Got bored and went back to the bunk, only to see the first guy asleep in his bed, as though he never went to the toilet at all.

Met up with the rest of the people. 7 people, most are familiar faces, so it was a really informal (therefore nice and friendly) thing. Went to Casuarina Curry in Upper Thomson, the food was great like always, and servings are large and yummy-looking. Some pictures.





After dinner no one wanted to part that early, so Junction 8 Cafe Cartel it was. Got drinks. I got an Oreo frappe to try to perk myself up after the cumulative fatigue and sleep deprivation - sugar + caffeine works wonders.



Reluctantly had to part eventually, after an extended camwhoring session that made the waitress stare at us with a frown of impatience. (The place was about to close, and well, like any normal human being, she does want to knock off on time)

It was a lovely day.

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Friday is end-of-posting-test, MCQ and OSCE paper, OSCEs are like, you look at an X-ray or a photo and answer 3 short questions on the paper in 3 minutes. I didn't die or anything, but the test was rather nasty.

Went solo to Queensway to get a pair of shorts and do a quick look-see. Since M was going to Alexandra Hospital (to get some school project done, stop making me feel so guilty!) we took the same bus and reminisced on how we actually used to get proper school holidays, sigh.

Most of the shops were still closed so decided to explore the area. Made a quick recce of IKEA to decide if my room needs anything new (not really) and a recce of Anchorpoint to see what was there. Walked around aimlessly in Cold Storage for a long while, looking at all the weird Japanese products, then left with just a 90-cent packet of chocolate milk.

Went back to Queensway, bought a pair of cheapish shorts, and saw the pair of shoes I fell in love with. $140 after discount. Well. If I decide to pull the trigger on new shoes I know exactly what to get.



Went home, shoes felt weird, looked at the sole and saw that a rubber part was missing. Is that a sign that I ought to get new shoes? Was pretty mad as that pair of shoes in question are rather new and barely worn-in yet. Luckily, an old disused pair of shoes I have have a sole that looks exactly the same so I pried it off from there and glued and clamped it to the shoe with the missing sole ruber. (The alignment was sorta bad but at least I guess it works.)

Watched Munich on DVD after fiddling with a wonky remote control and wires that had gotten loose from the hifi speakers. While it's a polished Spielberg movie, I just couldn't appreciate it due to too much talk and too little action. The typical themes of 'is revenge ethical?' and 'what's right and what's wrong?'.

Spent the evening reading stuff online about running shoes. Since I have a highish arch and had had a mild case of plantar fasciitis (a specific kind of heel pain from tendon strain) before, the medical experts tend to advise cushioned shoes, and that pair of shoes I've been eyeing sorta fits the bill. Was searching some running discussion forums for shoe advise, particularly the technicalities and specifics, but didn't learn much.

It seems that cycling communities have people who are more technically and academically inclined, somehow. Cyclists can gush for pages about bicycle tyres and different characteristics of different tyres and even how the design and materials contribute to the characteristics, while you simply don't get that kind of obsession elsewhere. And if you're looking for sports physiology and nutrition, bicycling forums are definitely the best place to go to. Discussions can lead into biochemical pathways and organic chemistry, stuff that's beyond me even though I'm a medical student. Yeah, bicycling communities tend to have a disproportionate ratio of medical professionals and I don't know why.

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Whew. Finally, 3 days of events all compressed into 1 entry. Had to look at past messages on my phone, read Ryan's blog, search STOMP archives, look at photos from my camera phone, to rebuild the hazy recollection of events since 3 days ago. I really ought to blog at a more regular pace!