Happy Birthday to me!

Birthdays. Somehow birthdays are bittersweet. Well, there's the good things about birthdays - you get reassured that you do exist, people do care and there's the gifts, the food and of course, the cake.

But somehow, there's bit of wistfulness of being older by a year. Gaining some wisdom, along with cynicism. Appearing more mature, at the expense of some wrinkles.

I've had good birthdays and bad birthdays. But let's not talk about the bad ones today!

OK so my birthday eve started out a slow lazy morning, catching up on sleep and just lazing around. Hung around online, then dragged my ass outta the house to:

Subway chase! Subway was offering their subs for 10 cents each during 3-4pm on that day. So met up with Ryan Ferret and Ellsie at Raffles City for the first leg of the subway chase. Plan: to do whatever we did 2 weeks ago, going to 3 different Subways and getting totally stuffed.

Was early so circled around the place like vultures for a while, we passed by Subway at 2.45pm but by the time we passed by again in 10 minutes, there was a long queue!



Parked ourselves somewhere in the middle of the queue and in about another 20 minutes we got our Subway fix! A full 6-inch cold cut trio!

Destination 2: Marina square Subway.

I was famished so I polished off the subway on the go, crumbs scatterring in a trail behind me. Met Crocy but his lunchtime was over so he couldn't join the chase.

Marina Square's branch had a much longer queue and it didn't really move, because they actually went to toast all the sandwiches (as for the usual paying customers.)

Halfway into the wait, they gave out queue numbers, and we didn't get one. Augh! Mission failed! Only got 1 sandwich each! Still worth it though, for just that 10 cents.



Bussed to Plaza Singapura, just hung around that area for a while. Then to Macs - met up with Mr Black and he's so much better now! Able to move aorund in crutches, and cheerful and funny like last time.

Whiled some time away, then we went to Cafe Cartel there. Many, many people joined in - Jason, Meowking, Dan, Joanne, Unseen, Jade, Alicia and Kate (in random order), in addition to Ferret Ryan Ellsie and me. Yay!

Food was great. Over dinner Ryan was showing us all a photo of his side profile that's freaky in the way that it looks more like him than me. Everyone except one person at the table thought that it was me, that's really freaky!



Some seafood platter thingie with everything fried. Evil but tasty - and the wasabi mayonnaise was delicious!



Yay! Cake! We're celebrating Unseen's birthday too! I say it and I'd say it again - Secret Recipe's cheesecake rocks! The cheese is really creamy, and the chocolate cookie base doesn't have the throat-grating feel that many cheesecakes do. Feeling realy stuffed after second helping! (not from choice, gee, it was smashed into my face, sorta)



Females are way better at cutting cakes, somehow.

Birthday pressies! Really touched and surprised - didn't expect there to be so many and to be so thoughtful! Tough part about unwrapping presents is that I really hate to tear up the beautiful wrapping paper - so I have to slowly tease the sticky tape apart.



The cards first. Jade's card:





The card from all the STOPMers! With springy dog in the middle!





Cute keychain that reminds me of Weedle (from Pokemon):



But but I've not yet graduated! Sweet though.



Candle holder! Now, an excuse to make use of those unused tea candles at home heh.



Beanie bear! Lovely to squeeze!



And as for the highlight: Bad Taste Bear! This bear's Horny, complete with horns on its head, and well, a horn in its crotch. Ryan and Mr Black got a Bad Taste Bear for their birthday, so that's cute! Ryan's this one with a hotdog at its crotch, name's Frank, and Mr Black got Nursie.



Scooted off to a new pub Ferret recommended. Drank a little, felt the buzz, but luckily stopped myself before I got drunk! Sorta fun hanging around in a semi-drunk way in a pub. The rest is, uh, sorta not meant for blogging. And there was this uncomfortable discussion with Dan's friend (who joined us later in the night at Cafe Cartel). Too much information!




Made my way home earlier at 11pm with Ryan, sorta lost, then walked until we saw the MRT station. Took the train back home, and gladly the effects of the beer was wearing off so I'm not gonna fall facedown onto the sidwalk. Yay lovely day!

Volvo B9TL - oh the horrors

A few months ago, SBS Transit unveiled its first wheelchair-accessible buses. They're the Volvo B9TL double-deckers. They had 2 previous types of stepless-entry/exit buses, but those were not equipped with ramps.

They are also the first buses (apart from the 1 lone experimental B10TL which is now considered the ugly, deformed bastard child of ComfortDelgro Engineering) to be bodied in Singapore itself, by ComfortDelgro Engineering, which is essentially a different part of the same company as SBS Transit.

It was the first time I boarded this model of bus, as they finally rolled out these buses on the 74 route. Initial impressions: they climbed uphills really well, the interior is furnished very similarly to the previous-generation B10TLs. Which was fine and dandy. The acceleration at higher speeds was poor though.



But 30 minutes into the ride, I was feeling sorta sick. The engine, although rather quiet, was sending vibrations throughout the floorboard. And. Horrid suspension.

I have this thing against bad suspension. Alot of poorly-designed suspension makes you feel like being at sea in choppy waters, allowing the vehicle to bob around like mad, rather than dutifully absorbing the bumps like they should.

While the older Volvo suspensions are too stiff to provide for a silky smooth journey, they do not bob around like crazy. And it's the bobbing around that makes me feel nauseous and sick. Add the B9TL to the list of buses that make me bus-sick.

Mercedes O405G - all bendy buses on SMRT. Sitting in the rear carriage makes me very, totally sick. The trick is to stare out of the window at all times, or to stare at the back of the seat ahead.
Volvo B10BLE - those compressed natural gas powered buses
Volvo B9TL
All Mitsubishi coaches - creaky, bouncy, out-of-control suspension that's more nauseating than a bumboat ride I swear.

Monday - in a few words

Morning tutorial. Learnt a little, but the highlight was catching up with a friend in the break in the middle of the tutorial. Answered tutorial questions in class like an idiot would, eliciting an 'obviously!' kinda response from the professor.


Working hard in library after the tutorial. Slowly ramping up revision schedule!

Bus to Orchard. Note to self, Elite Beat Agents is impossible to play on a bumpy bus.

Met Ryan, Ferret, lunch. Ferret's busy, only could pop out for a while for lunch. Hung around Ngee Ann City with Ryan. Library. Borrowed 2 comics - Ultimate X-men, and another one which escapes my half-asleep mind now.

Hung around.

Hung around. My memory fails me when I'm this tired right now.


Signboard with finger says 'We can't control the weather'. Took some trouble trying to get it to point at the guy's crotch, but well, it didn't really work.


On the way home. Crowded.

I'm, like, really lazy to blog anymore tonight, and I'm really tired and sleepy after a run. So there. That's all the stuff I'm gonna blog about today.

Project-Lose-Flab-Before-Chinese-New-Year

In line with having eaten a shitload and a half worth's of food yesterday, I'm going to start on Project-Lose-Flab-Before-Chinese-New-Year. Armed with an intimate knowledge of physiology and nutrition and gastroenterology and biochemistry, I'm convincing myself that this should be no biggie at all. Goal: in 12 days, lose a kg of fat.

1. Played around with some online calorie counters. They are grossly inaccurate and not localised to a Singaporean's typical diet and there's no telling how many of the calories you eat actually gets expended daily. You can count your food to the nearest calorie, but you can't count the number of steps you take a day, the exact amount your arm muscles use when you brush your teeth and so.

However, they have a role, though a very small and specific one. They help one to achieve a proper macronutrient ratio, that is the ratio of proteins to carbohydrates to fat. From my knowledge in the field, I theorise that the often-recommended 30% cals protein : 40% cals carbohydrate : 30% cals fat would be best.

I'm going to monitor and track what I eat for a couple of days until I can achieve the ratio just by feel and estimation.

2. Proteins are important. After playing around with that calorie counter, I found out that I was taking in way too little protein. While there is no solid evidence, it is believed that a 1.2-1.4g/kg bodyweight/day intake is best, and I'm usually far off from that.

3. Calories in, calories out. Now this is something with good clinical evidence. A 1500cal/day intake is best for fat loss.

And so, armed with these big ideas (I've got alot of ideas and plans and stuff but I'm not going to bore you here - suffice to say they're all based on science so they're sorta safe), it's action.



Using Fitday I compiled a log of what I had eaten today, and it turned out to be roughly close to the goals above.

Sunday

Slow lazy morning, slow lazy afternoon, and off I went to a friend's barbecue.

Long train journey there all the way to Bukit Gombak. Was feeling rather down for no reason at all, feeling empty and weary about thing (i.e. 'Why even bother?') but at least hanging around with my classmates would be a good distraction.

It's a surprise birthday celebration for M. What my classmate did was to contact his girlfriend, then ask her to bring him to the barbecue venue with having a date as a pretext, then everyone surprising him at once, there and then.



Beautiful view from JK's balcony.



Sneak preview of the food!



Starting a fire ain't easy. It took about an hour and 4 people to do it. Got my hands all dirty and all, but at least we got a fire going in the end!



Food. A friend prepared really tasty chicken wings, and there were lotsa these fishballs and sausages to polish off. Somehow the fire turned out blue on the photo, but actually it's just the orangey-red smoulder of the burning charcoal.



This cat kept on moaning and making mating calls right next to the pit, so we tried to silence her with food. But no matter how we tried to feed her she kept moaning. Was musing at how she moaned only when guys approached her, she must be in heat or something!

Heard the cheering of nearby residents. Apparently Singapore was drawing with Thailand for the football finals, which when added to the score from the first leg of the match, would result in a victory for Singapore. I'm not into football, but I can sorta imagine how it'd be so cool if the Singapore team actually won despite the odds.

And like always, the guys hafta finish up the food that the girls couldn't manage to polish off! Argh I'm getting fat!

There was corn and chocolate banana but I didn't eat them - don't really like corn and was pretty full. H was the one preparing the chocolate bananas, and while they were being cooked another friend exclaimed 'I can't wait for H's banana!'. Pointed out how dirty that sounded, and almost got skewered alive for that.

Went back to JK's home after a final round of marshmallows. Watched the final minutes of the match, and yay, Singapore won. M cut the cake (S baked it) and we shared it. Me getting fatter argh. And Chinese New Year is coming - and I don't want to be fat in front of my relatives - not to mention all the Chinese New Year goodies would make me even fatter.

Got late, went home, alone on train, bah. Flurry of messages on my phone. Decided not to wait forever for the feeder bus home, so walked back, which wasn't too wise an idea cause I almost got squished by a bus while running across the road madly for a green man. Must be karma catching up with me for doing all sorts of crazy things on the road with buses when I'm on a bicycle. Oops.

Got plans brewing for lose-some-flab-before-Chinese-New-Year, after all that crazy amount of food I'm eating, and the lard I'm accumulating the past couple of weeks!

School barrels on

and I don't know if it's good or bad, but life has yet settled again into a numbing, boring routine. Numb and boring it may be, but at least it is a routine. Waking up, checking the timetable, getting dressed, hopping onto the bus, turning up for the scheduled tutorials, making idle chat with schoolmates, then going home. Wash, rinse, repeat.



Friday's the conclusion of that Community Health Project thingie. There's this peer evaluation thingie where every group member gives marks for every other group member for their contribution, and I'm pretty sure I messed that up. Me however, being the nice guy I am, gave everyone the same mark. Communism rocks.



And when Saturday comes, I'm sorta too jaded to do anything but to plop myself in front of the computer, hop onto STOMP forums and post like mad, check out the posts on the other forusm, et cetra, et cetra. There's comfort in familiarity - but this comfort is really a guilty pleasure. It doesn't benefit me much, and it definitely doesn't benefit anyone else at all.

Did inane stuff. Went for a morning run, saw the Wiseguy again after a long time. Ironically, since I was eating alot more the past few days with lotsa food at home, I could really run much faster than usual, despite the growing rolls of fat on me. Got some groceries from the provision shop (the heavy stuff, since my mum can't carry it all by herself) before heading back.

Plopped myself in front of the computer. Chatting with Ryan, just being there for him cause he's having a rough time lately. When I was at my lowest the only people I could really thank for getting me up are my friends for just being there. Not that they gave me some really golden advice or pepped me up or anything, but they were simply there, because to me, just knowing that someone bothers to listen is golden enough. Since then, I swore that I have to pass this favour on.

Had a short nap. Played a little Elite Beat Agents and got past another stage. That kinda little pointless guilty pleasures.

Tried to glue back a new rubber sole to the shoe. It's particularly hairy cause the so-called 'transplant' failed, and I'm at my wit's end trying to get a new piece of rubber to stick! After lotsa difficulty and fingers stained with glue:



And gee, I have so much revision to do, but I can't muster up the effort to do so! At the back of my mind I figured that since the exams are 4 weeks later, what I study now would be sorta forgotten within that 4 weeks anyway. Excuses! Bah.

Hair

I'm going to be clean and innocent here and not follow the footsteps of pkchukiss's hair post! Haha.

Morning. Got ready for school. Woke up and went down for breakfast. There's breakfast on the table. Then I looked closely through my sleep-blurred eyes and saw that it was my brother's. No breakfast for me, had to make my own. Dad's been making breakfast for my brother ever since he started working (and bringing in the dough), as though to mock me for not being of use to the family (at least, not right now).

Well, gee, who cares, I can make breakfast myself. But it's still a little pissy waking up to see breakfast on the table that's not yours.

Now for the hair woes. With the ever-growing mop of hair, it has become almost impossible to towel-dry my hair. Usually gotta use the hair-dryer, but mom is sleeping and I didn't want to wake her up grabbing the hairdryer from her room.

Had to make do with going to school with soggy hair. Non air-conditioned bus. Hair flying all over.

Windy day. Hair in an absolute mess.



School. In summary it was the various groups presenting their projects for the community health posting, and my group was first, so I paid quite good attention to what my team's presenters were doing.

But 10 minutes into the second group, and I totally drifted, choosing to have a nice long chat with my friend next to me. Bah. Pointless. If I'm not going to listen to the lecture at all, why am in the lecture hall? I So decided there and then that it was the right time to leave the stupid lecture hall. Was going to meet Ryan later anyway, so I went to the co-op (sorta like a university bookshop) and chilled for a while.

Looked at a book on haematology (about the blood), one of the fields I'm considering. Read about a condition a friend had, and well, I wish the outlook could've been brighter than what the book states. Sigh.

Bought this NUS lanyard which I had a fetish for ever since the lecturers started using a similar one (labelled with the centennial logo though).



Windy and hot day. The wind's particularly irritating cause it gets my hair in my eyes, my face, my ears and just messes up everything.



Went to the around that gameshop in Pasir Panjang to wait for Ryan, and the funny thing was, one of the game-shop guys was loitering around the place, unable to get in because the other guy with the key wasn't around yet. Went to 7-11 to get a drink, then went back to the shop and they just got it to open. The games were cheap there, but then, they didn't have much of a variety.

Next in the agenda. Haircut! Jean Yip Vivocity.


Before, at home.


After the haircut, before the styling. I look like an idiot.


Yay finally! But no thanks, I'd style it differently myself next time.


After a shower.

OK. I'm sleepy, and if I continue blogging from here, it's gonna be one really bloaty post. So why don't you read Ryan's take on it?


The evil tauhu telur that defeated me. 'YOU LOSE!' it screams. It's just so huge and oily and dense and stuff, I couldn't finish it all.