Doraemon's Time-Travelling Adventures in Singapore

God works in a mysterious and miraculous way. Today is the last day of the Doraemon exhibition and as what I wrote yesterday, I sort of give up of any possibility of taking photos. After thinking about it last night, I decided to just let it go. However, somehow after gym today, I was considering if I should just go. It was not raining and it would be just nice that I would arrive at Singapore National Museum at exactly the opening hours. I set up my mind to just take photos of at least the outdoor Doraemon. A part me was hesitating as there was no point for me taking photos which I could find online anyways. I decided to go since I would be washing the clothes I was wearing so might as well sweat a bit. I was also hoping that somehow I would be lucky to meet a random friend there to help me take photos.

I reached there just few minutes before 10am. I hesitated again when I saw the queue to enter. I tried to take photos from outside the barricade but I had to zoom quite a lot and I would be risking blurry photos. By the time it hit 10am, the queue moved quite quickly so I decided to go since I was already there.

The queue just prior to 10am

I did not meet any friend but I met a stranger whom I would think of as an angel sent by God so that I could take photos with Doraemon. His phone was broken and he said he needed to take photos of the Doraemon for his project. He asked if he could use my phone and then I sent him the pictures. Since my main aim was also the Doraemon, I did not mind. As a return of the favour, I was just being thick skinned and asked him to help take photos with Doraemon and that was how I fulfilled my wish.

I did not retake the Doraemon-only photos that he took. I would be able to take better photos but I was already too happy with the chance of getting my photos with the Doraemon. I had some irritation since I wore ugly clothes and I did not bring my camera. Not to mention the glare from the sun and I did not QC my photos since my face was not thick enough for that. Haha.. Yeah I know I should not be complaining since I already got more than what I was hoping for today. Anyway since there is no way to take photos without the mask, I would not be happy. I hope this will return again someday.

Moving on to the exhibition itself, there are 13 Doraemon statues (inclusive of the Dokodemo door) outdoor. The one with Dokodemo door is considered 'outside' the exhibition as anyone can take photos of it without officially considered as visitor to the museum. To access the other 12 outdoor Doraemon area, we need to be considered as a visitor to the museum first. There is a notice to limit to 15 minutes in the outdoor area which is more than sufficient. Today I had 2 rounds (once just the Doraemon and once with me) and it only took me about 10 minutes. If I were to be picky and QC to retake some photos, it would still be within 15 minutes. Anyway I do not think it is not really enforced if the area is not too congested. They do watch and warn people who are touching the statues which is forbidden for infection control reasons.

Inside the museum, there is another queue near the cafe to enter the area to take photos with the yellow Doraemon and the time machine. I did not go there today since I already took photos here during my first trip. The queue was long at that time since the photo area is quite small. They only allowed around 8 people to enter each time. I did not keep track of the time but after certain period, they would ask the group to finish and allow the next group.

The merchandises in the shop are not impressive and I do not think there is anything really special or unique for this particular exhibition. To me it is like putting random Doraemon merchandises.

There is one final bit of Doraemon in the end of the Singapore History Gallery. This gallery depicts Singapore through the years since it was known as Singapura in 1299 up to present days. There is Doraemon bit at the end which is meant to be the section of the future.

I am not a fan of Doraemon so I only consider the exhibition so so. I do not mind going since it is free. I do not think it is worth going if there is a fee. The outdoor area is not exactly a good idea. It rains more often than not in these last 2 months so I think there is more time that the section is closed. That is ironic since this section is the main attraction after all. It is also exposed to elements. When I went there in early November, the grass patch was still grassy. Today the grass was mostly gone and the soil was rather soggy. I think it would quite muddy if it just rained. Overall, it is still okay as a cheap thrill and entertainment in the midst of getting stuck here because of COVID.

Blue Christmas

The perfect Christmas for me is to just enjoy a quiet and relaxing time at home. 2020 obviously is an extraordinary year and against my will, I cannot travel and have to be stuck here for Christmas. This is my most emo Christmas so far simply because there is nothing that I can do. During FYP, I could accept that my grade and future were at stake. In addition, I experienced my first midnight Christmas Mass and walking home from Holy Cross back to PGP because there was no bus running after that. Sadly I did not manage to secure any slot for Christmas Mass this year and I could only followed it online. Two years ago I did not go home because I just switched job. This year I could not even concentrate for work at Christmas' Eve half day. Sigh.. How to survive next week.

I had my appraisal and I was happy that I did not have to resort to any toxicity. Honestly though, if there is a chance of jumping ship, I would consider because I am sian after knowing how toxic these current bitches are. Of course ideally the best will be for them to jump for whatever reason since I am actually enjoying the flexibility here.

Somehow I have been having dreams that made me thinking of and being sad about my dad's passing. The dreams were not about my dad per se but they were the things that reminded me of memories with him or my unfulfilled wishes such as to go to Japan with him. Not everything is in the good side though. With my current state of loneliness and being stuck here also awakened my unhappiness about living alone and being homeless here. Haiz.. all the prayers saying that I accept my cross etc feels like me bullshitting myself. I know this is an inner devil that I will always have to fight for the rest of my life. Not to mention that one of the prayers during Prayer of the Faithful on the last weekend was specifically about those celebrating Christmas this year who have lost someone this year :(

I have been spending too much time with Genshin Impact lately. If not because of the limitation of iPad battery, I think I would be playing non-stop. Once a gamer is always a gamer. Huhuhu... My sleep is also disrupted as I have been taking a nap in the late evening and waking up past midnight. Then I will play until 4am before going back to sleep. I even cancelled my gym and pretended to not feeling well so that I can siam my aunt's invitation to go to her house for dinner tonight.

Aaargh I don't give a damn about people anymore as noone also gives a damn for me. Noone is helping to take photos with Doraemon which is going to be over tomorrow and I am getting very sick with the people in my house who keep cooking and making my room smell. Fuck la.

Toxic week

I did not work this past week as it was a year end appraisal week. It was my turn to be in the office and at the start of the week, I was tempted to request to work from home instead since it would mostly be online communication. In the end I did not request that as I really needed the double screen. It was quite stressful this time as the timeline was very tight. Everything had to be completed within this week while I only had time to prepare from last Thursday. Due to some IT issue, I could only start on Friday afternoon so it was a mad rush. Thank God everything was completed.

I am not looking forward to prepare for my own appraisal. Sigh.. I realised that I spent so much time dealing with people but that is not a big chunk of my own KPIs. So overall, I think I would not do that well on paper, especially with the recent toxicities from the bitches. Haiz.. My boss told the big boss about the recent saga as my big boss was hinting about it and seemed to try to get me to talk about it again. It is difficult to remain on the moral high ground. I hate hypocrites and people who do dirty politics so I have to prove that I am not one of them. I just have to remain objective and mention about the situations, instead of the people since really I actually have no issue with the bitches. How to even have issues when I work so little with them this year. Now my "issue" will be the broken trust. These bitches simply destroyed whatever working relationship there is.

Coincidentally, my friend who is a lecturer in a polytechnic told me a few days ago of a vacancy in case I would be interested to apply. I am actually quite settled in with my current work but because of this recent bitchiness, I would be considering another job if there is. I was ready to update my CV this weekend but my friend just informed me the latest update that the vacancy is not confirmed yet. Oh well, after all the vacancy was not officially advertised yet. When my friend told me about it, it was more of registering of interest or something.

The toxicity somehow also spilled over to other aspect of my life for this week. My gym is closed until new year for renovation so I temporarily have to go to Orchard branch. It is a new branch and I am interested to try. It is good that when it opened, I did not transfer my membership there. Going there is quite stressful because of the traffic to Orchard area. I was always worrying whether I would be late. The gym itself is much bigger and brighter but I prefer the more compact, cosy, and dimmer Holland Village. Haha.. It is nice to see some familiar faces as some coaches have been permanently assigned to the new branch after its opening.

I donated blood on Tuesday and had my haircut. I was very suay with my haircut because the other customer who was in the shop with me was a crazy guy. He quarreled, argued, shouted, and screamed at the auntie cutting her hair. The conversation was in Mandarin so I did not really understand. What a reminder my crazy front line days dealing with such crazy customers. Anyway the auntie was equally stupid. I think she had no customer service training as well since she retaliated and the best part was she took photo without permission. Of course that triggered the crazy guy even more. Wew...

On Thursday, I also received an emo update that the clinic where I am currently volunteering will no longer operate on Saturday from next month. Sigh.. If I am interested to continue, I will have to go to Mandai which will open on Saturday. Bleah.. I have never been there and it seems to be more troublesome to go there as compared to Geylang :( Nevertheless, I have decided that I will give it a try instead of following my lazyness. After all, I have always wanted to participate in some volunteering activity. Finding one which can be done on Saturdays and make use of my license is already a rare opportunity.

My spiritual life also took a deep dive this week. Work is really a huge destroyer. I felt so bad despite completing the last 3 days of the Novena this Monday-Wednesday. I felt that I was just watching the Mass out of obligation as I wanted to participate. Sigh.. I ended up feeling very irritated with the priest for the very boring Mass and so on. I also skipped my evening prayer for the whole week as I was too tired although that partly because of gaming.

The shittiest part of the week was when I was filled with so much anger and prejudice towards the maid in my current rental place. On Thursday, I realised that I ran out of my working pants and I thought she stole it :( Oh my gosh! I was filled with all the dark thoughts that she stole it and perhaps gave it to someone and so on. In the end, I found them. I could not find them initially because after ironing, the pants were put in the same hanger with the working shirt. That was really a wake up call for me to not to lose my cool at work with others especially with all the bitchiness going around.

The only good vibe for me this week was that I sold Spiderman golf balls that I bought from USJ in 2015. Initially I also got agitated with the buyer for asking so many questions despite me sending the photos. I did not accept any nego and the buyer agreed with the $35. Yay. The best part is she arranged for a courier to pick it up from my office. I think she needs it urgently for gift purpose. I never set up any Paynow but I set it up this week to facilitate this transaction. Haha..

Next week is Christmas and I hope that next week will be better. I have to be thankful that I get Christmas and New Year weeks as my working from home week. There is a high chance I will be emo again because of my appraisal this coming Wednesday but I have been preparing myself not to lose my call. All of us have our own strengths and weaknesses, let's say 80:20. I will accept the '20' but I will not my '80' be affected by the toxic bitches. I have prepared my punchline: Appraisal is about me and I am not going to compare myself with others. Highlighting others' weaknesses change nothing about my own strengths and weaknesses so I am not going to be like others who think by highlighting my '20' can help with their own 80/20. Oh perhaps, they are 70/30 or 60/40 and hence jealous of me :p The last sentence, of course, is just in my mind. Haha.. I am not going to let myself be as bitchy as these bitches too.

No Zhongli

I am still spending too much time on Genshin Impact that even the excitement of revenge was not enough to make me write a post about it last week. Lol. After my rant in last post, I did my statistics for enquiries and thank goodness: data proved the bitch wrong. I am not going to talk too much and let the evidence speak for itself.

Ironically, I still had a bad week overall because I did not get Zhongli in Genshin Impact huhuhu... As expected, my good luck would not continue after pulling Childe quite quickly previously. On the bright side, I got all the 4 star characters from this current banner. I really needed fire and ice power so I finally can progress with the game. Although the reviews for Zhongli have been terrible, I don't care because I focus on enjoyment by playing with cool characters haha... Yeah I can say that now although during playing, I will be cursing when playing with my underleveled characters.

My diet was more successful last week as I kept a clean sheet from any potato chips despite few temptations of really grabbing a bag on a few days. I made an exception on Saturday as I wanted to spend my Garrett voucher. I was happy that I could try the seasonal flavour: Dark Choc Cocoa. No way I would buy it without a voucher at $10.50 for the small one. Haha.. I am a savoury person and $10 worth of potato chips would give me more joy. I enjoyed it much better than expected as it is not as sweet as the normal caramel version. As my voucher was $10, I was paiseh if I just bought one Dark Choc Cocoa and only paid 50 cents. I added a small bag of the Cheese Corn (which is only $5.50) and that was a mistake as I could get a bigger bag of potato chips with that price.

I went to Church again for Mass yesterday and I had 4-day streak of gym. I could go again today but I decided to give my body a break. Year-end appraisal is coming so it is going to be a relatively toxic week ahead. Not that it is making a big difference as currently I am also still sore with the bitch. I know I am supposed to be forgiving bla bla bla but that is easier said than done.

Justice always prevails

God works in miraculous way. I felt very irritated with myself for withholding myself and over the weekend, I was scheming on how to craft my feedback on the bitch during the year-end appraisal. I say 'scheming' because revenge will easily cloud my mind and if I follow my emotion, I may end up spewing things which may backfire.

The stress over the weekend was worth it because today I had the chance to say those things. My boss was concerned if I had a conflict with the bitch. So basically the bitch just self-destructed since I had nothing on my side. Initially I had reservations of keeping them until year-end appraisal as I do not want to be seen as trying to engage in politics. Well today was not appraisal so I was able to say everything without heaviness in my heart since it was feedback session hehe. I thank God for protecting me from going bonkers and only said the objective things and avoid the subjective stuff. I know I always do the right things so by staying with the objective stuff, people will not be able to tear me down.

Another complaint that I received was that I seemed to avoid enquiries. I have been tasked to get statistics for enquiries so this will be a good time to update this statistics and see if objectively I really did few enquiries. I will do that tomorrow and I hope the data will show otherwise. That would be a perfect weapon for me retaliate at the bitch so that she learns to think before spewing rubbish and stop making a fool out of herself as usual.

My diet plan for this Advent already failed from yesterday. I did not manage to secure a gym slot yesterday. With no banana at home, I had to order delivery for dinner. Another reason was that I got $8 voucher from Deliveroo so I wanted to use it ASAP. Today I wanted to be good but all the bananas were green so they were inedible tonight if I bought them. I ended up having snack as my dinner. Huhuhu T_T Why are temptations keep coming when I try to be good boy for this Advent?

Advent is coming

I have been wasting my time and my life for Genshin Impact. Previously I complained because the game kept crashing on my iPad. After the game update a few weeks ago, it becomes more stable and I am able to play. I know it is a waste of time if I am spending too much on a game but it is difficult not to get hooked initially when the game still feels fresh and exciting.

I finally went to attend Mass at church last weekend. Since I am already going out for work and for gym, there is no reason of being worried of COVID anymore. Anyway my main reason for finally going is that the church is gradually allowing more people to attend which means we are back in the main church and not at the chapel anymore. It is still 1 weekend mass per month so I chose last Sunday to coincide with the Feast of Christ the King which marks the closure of a liturgical year.

I woke up at 530am and reached the church at around 650am. It was still kinda rushed with the social distancing at the entry. I felt kinda irritated with people who did not know how to queue properly. Seriously what was the rush with seats guaranteed and assigned anyway. I think all the available slots were taken which was a good thing. I have signed up for December and the good thing about me liking 7am slot is that it is the least popular slot. 9am and 11am are mostly full while the 5pm only has few seats left. 7am still has 50 over slots hehe... Unfortunately, all the slots for penitential service are already fully booked when I checked last night.

The Devil does not like me to good works and I have been feeling very shitty this past week. I was asked to write a 400-word article for Landings and last weekend was ruined because of that. I woke up at 630am on Saturday with the intention of completing the writing. I had writer's block and after 12 hours, I was only halfway through. Sigh.. Ironically, it is always easy to just type long rubbish blog post like this. Haha.. I continued on Sunday and 'die die' I wanted to finish it as I did not want to prolong my misery.

I am supposed to attach a picture that depicts my faith and the problem is I don't take photos at places of worship. Even all my travelling photos are usually taken outside a church building and not inside. To capture the majesty of the building, usually I am small in the photo which is not suitable for this current purpose. I decided with a photo with a statue of Jesus outside Rue du Bac. That is the most acceptable although I still think it is quite lousy. The one with both me and Jesus' face facing the camera is shadowy as we were there at late afternoon. So no choice but to choose the one to 'avoid' the shadow and Jesus' face is not facing the camera :( All this shit always happened just like previously when preparing for faith story.

At work, I am feeling more and more irritated with few bitches. I have decided that I will say something for the upcoming year end appraisal. Hehe.. Previously I did not say anything in mid year but things do not improve. The evil part of me is actually saying: Hey bitch, you want to play gutter politics, I am going to show you how to really play dirty. No point saying during mid year since it will not change anything but when I fire my salvo for year end, there is higher chance that this will affect your bonus.

Yesterday this crazy bitch went bonkers after I asked one innocent question in the group chat. She kept on and on and then my boss sort of  'defended' me even though I did not say anything further and I also did not message my boss privately. Hehe... Seriously I don't know what happen with this bitch as last year she was not like this. I suspect she may be jealous of me because of my promotion this year as that is the only thing that changed as compared to last year. Anyway it is going to be easy to 'tear her down' as when usually she goes bonkers, she makes herself looks stupid and unprofessional on her own. When something is already 'bad', it is quite easy to make it 'terrible'.

By the way, this is a different bitch from the one I wrote previously. I also received good update for this bitch yesterday. Higher management has decided that the issue is indeed for the bitch's team to handle, not mine. See la, want to taichi, taichi to wrong person, now still end up as yours. Aaah.. revenge is sweeter when it is done by karma and I am not even involved in anything that befalls on these two bitches.

I failed my diet plan for November completely. Tomorrow is the start of Advent and this time for real, I am going to stick through with no junk food, no potato chips, no fast food, no bubble tea, and less food delivery. To ensure this plan does not fall through, I forced myself to finish whatever I have at home this week until I am having sore throat. Phew... Anyway the only thing I am not able to stop is the bottled sweet drinks after lunch. Everytime I skip, I always feel very weak and hungry at around 5pm and it will make me skip gym or ordering delivery for dinner. So it is more reasonable to spend the calories for a bottle of drink than ending up overeating and not exercising.

Now I am also starting to pray the Chaplet of St Michael (which is also called as the Rosary of the Angels). I try to do it daily but I have failed in the past 2 days because I was too tired of gaming. Jeez. Personally, my priority is still my daily rosary so it is going to be sometime before I can pray both diligently everyday. I feel the prayer in Chaplet of St Michael is petitionary which complements my daily Rosary which is more like a contemplation. Honestly I am more and more distracted with my own personal prayer.  Gone is my Consciousness Examen that I promised early last year.

Just to keep in memory the awkwardness from the very first experience of praying the Chaplet: I thought the Chaplet beads are the same as the Rosary beads meaning there is no 'correct' side to start the circle. I was wrong haha.. The Rosary is symmetrical with 10 small beads and 1 large bead from whichever side. There is no 'first' large bead as the first Our Father is using the center bead. The Chaplet of St Michael that I have, however, starts with 1 large bead (after the center bead) + 3 small beads. Thus the other side ends with 3 small beads. Thus the chaplet is no symmetrical. I started from the wrong side during my first try and I was finding the order kinda awkward. Lol.

Continue binging

I continue to mess up with my diet plan. I had this 6 mini burger set on Sunday. The size is smaller than expected but the whole thing is still definitely bigger than what I normally have for lunch. I did not how it happened but I ended up seeing 1-for-1 KFC popcorn chicken in the app. I had that for dinner and I bought it again for lunch today. It was my first time going to Thomson Plaza for lunch since the start of working from home and it was all just for KFC. I was punished for that with the super heavy rain and numerous water puddles thanks to the ongoing construction work around Thomson Plaza. I pre-ordered through the app so I had no choice but to go and collect despite the rain. Sigh.. I also bought and finished two bags of Kettle's potato chips. I think this will be the end for all this rubbish eating for now because now I feel quite sick of them thanks to my indiscriminate eating for the past 3 days.

The weather has been wonky recently. I usually enjoy the rain but since the Doraemon disaster, I feel quite irritated with the unpredictable rain pattern. I worry if the next time I go, it will be raining and I miss the chance again. It aggravates my moodiness and now I feel like quitting work. Previously during the continuous working from home, I sort of enjoy working from home. Now with the alternating schedule, I end up hating both working from office and from home. Haiz.. God please call me home soon so that all this shitty life is over for me.

Ruined plans

This week turned to be a complete opposite of what I set to do. I ended up eating one pack of potato chips every single day and I wrapped up the week with McD for lunch yesterday. I also added the Hershey's Sundae which is currently in the menu and I also bought instant noodles for dinner. There is no more excuse to repeat the same failings for this coming week onwards. I received an encouragement that my working clothes looked oversized which means my weight loss has been successful. Sadly instead of making me more eager to continue with the weight loss, I lowered my guard this week.

The rain completely ruined my plan to take photos with Doraemon today. It was raining since I woke up at 630am. The rain got lighter and the sun was out that I took a gamble to still go in the hope of the rain stopping by the time I reached National Museum of Singapore. Instead of reaching at 10am as planned, I reached 15 minutes later and there were already quite a lot of people there. Haiz I thought Doraemon would not be that popular. Not too long after that, it started to drizzle again and they closed the area with Doraemon at the grass patch. I decided to wait it out by looking at other things inside the museum but the rain did not stop. Doraemon and I always do not go together with rain. It was also raining when I went to find Doraemon at Takaoka last year. At least the rain stopped by the time I reached the park and I managed to take photos without umbrella and all that.

No choice but to return on another day. I ask my friend to accompany again sometime on a weekday. I am not a fan of Doraemon. I suppose because of covid and the feeling of being cooped up at home for so long make this Doraemon exhibition more exciting than usual. I especially cut my hair earlier than usual this week so that I do not look too ugly in photos today. I have to cut again next month since it is going to be ugly again. Sian.. I also wasted one pitta mask today. I wore it so that I did not look too ugly in case I could not take off the mask if there were a lot of people.

Talking about Pitta mask, this mask is indeed not meant for health purpose. After getting used to wearing 3-ply medical masks almost daily for the past few months, pitta mask does not actually press on the nose that much. It is much easier to breathe although my glasses will still fog. I remember when I wore it at Disneyland last year to protect my face from the winter air, I felt it was quite difficult to breathe. Pitta mask also does not 'suffocate' the mouth so it is quite okay to put it on after food. Yesterday I was so irritated after the McD lunch as I had to put on my mask before walking to the sink to wash my mouth and I felt that it was contaminating the mask.

On the way back, I dropped by at Robinsons in Raffles City. The closing down sale is a fake news. 5%-20% off is like normal sale. I thought I would 'support' by buying some underwears, which I need, but with only 5%-10%, I think it is better for me to wait for 11.11 or Christmas sale elsewhere.

False anticipation

I am not a big fan and I could not be bothered about A380 restaurant by Singapore Airlines as much as those who waited past midnight to compete for the reservation. All were sold out within less than half an hour and SIA added a second weekend. I still did not bother. Last week was the first weekend and after reading the reviews, one of the blogs I follow wrote that there were still limited spaces available, mostly single seats. That got me excited but alas, it was just a 'waiting list' and in the end, I was not contacted. Huhuhu T_T If it is just food for $53.50, I could easily pass but after reading the blogs, I got excited with the pre-boarding activity as there is a caricature draw. I even planned for my 'heritage' attire so that I could get a free umbrella. Haiz.. Oh well it did not happen. What made me less emo is to know that this weekend ended up fully booked as well. I feel a bit lazy if there are so many people.

The monthly spending on food and grocery serves as a proxy of my weight. My food expenses for October is the highest since May. That is worrying because in May, I was still still ordering lunch delivery. I stopped my Deliveroo Plus in June and since then I rarely ordered food delivery anymore. My grocery expenses for October is as high as July when I was still buying Yakult to help with my bowel movement. I already stop that and I no longer buy red dragonfruits after the price increase which means that the spending is mostly caused by potato chips and those bottled drinks.

I am very happy that I managed to resist the gluttony temptation in these past few days with the excuse to 'celebrate' my anniversary of coming here. With October just ended and Christmas is just around the corner, it is time to renew my diet commitment: to avoid bubble tea, potato chips, bottle drinks and fast food and to cut down on food delivery. Yesterday I managed to resist bubble tea for lunch but I was so hungry and wanted to Grab for dinner. Luckily because of the bad weather, the options from Grab were limited and I ended up not ordering. Today, however, was not that successful. I went out today so I had a burger from Monster Curry. I usually avoid Monster Curry since their serving size is too big for me but this burger is a new menu. I finished my lunch at around 12pm and yet I was hungry again at around 4pm. I ate the last cup of instant noodles in my room and I am now hungry again for dinner. I have a $4 off voucher in Grab which has been tempting me since yesterday so I just decided for once and for all to just use it tonight for dinner. I hope this is going to get rid of the temptation to order any delivery just to make use of vouchers subsequently.

I went out to Suntec to collect my Singapore Mint orders. I realised that I have not been past Takashimaya leisurely for almost a year after realising that Decathlon now exists in Centrepoint. Last year when I was looking for my ski warm attire at Decathlon, there was no Centrepoint branch yet. I also just knew that Marina Mandarin Hotel has been re-branded to Parkroyal now. Wow..

For the ongoing Doraemon Time Travelling Adventure Exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore, I was thinking of getting a Doraemon-themed t-shirt from Uniqlo. I did not buy in the end as the price is $19.90 for Doraemon line.  Wew -_-" That is 1/3x more expensive than the Disney line or the manga line while I am not really a fan of Doraemon.

I thought I could see the Doraemon on the bus on my way to Suntec. I mistook Singapore Arts Museum (the one opposite Cathedral) as National Museum of Singapore which turns out to be the one near YMCA. I ended up calling the museum to ask if I have to wait until the official opening hours to take photos with the Doraemon statues at the field outside the museum. The person answering was a rude uncle. It looks like I have to pray that I will be lucky with both the weather and the crowd as I cannot go early :( The rude bastard said there would be security guard stopping people from entering before the opening hours. Oh well at least I got my answer.

Today happens to be the All Saints Day. It was a good thing that I was busy in the morning as the usual Sunday Mass livecast was having some technical problems. The video was still not up when I was going to watch at around 3pm. Thus I ended up watching the Mass by Church of St Mary of the Angels. That was my first time since I have been only following the Mass from the Cathedral. The duration is shorter (~40 minutes) but I find the pace quite fast. I prefer the slower pace of the Cathedral but I guess when I am pressed for time, I have an alternative.

Lastly, I finally decided to register for physical Mass attendance. I think it is no longer acceptable to use an excuse of trying to avoid crowd as I am already going to gym, going to Orchard and going to office as close as usual already. Seeing that the 7am Sunday Mass will be at the main church makes me even happier. Hehe.. Each person is still limited to one weekend Mass per month so just nice to choose a 'special' Sunday which is the feast of the Christ the King which marks the end of Church calendar. Christmas is in December so let's see how the arrangement will be for next month. Meanwhile, I am feeling damn sian as tomorrow is my turn to report to office again. Bleah..

18 years of homelessness

I celebrated this miserable day simply this year with only a bag of cassava chips and a cup of bubble tea. Normally I would go for something more extravagant like expensive restaurant or ice cream but I decided to just settle with bubble tea this year since I really do not want to go beyond 60kg.

Honestly, I feel quite different this year. I do not think I am as emo as in other years. Perhaps I am slowly accepting to this life. It does not matter whether it is in a positive sense (i.e. God's way) or in a negative sense (i.e. I am tired of fighting anymore). Another reason could be the aftermath of the eRetreat over the weekend and the end of Landings run yesterday. In fact, my group had an online rosary just now. My past self would just come up with an excuse so that we would have it on another day as I just would like to drown myself in sorrows on 28 October. Anyway, I did not really feel good with a group rosary and I prefer to have a private time when I am praying.

Yesterday was the conclusion of the Landings run and the concluding sharing reminded me that I am not a junk. I should not be too harsh with myself and learn to look at things from God's perspective. I am meant to have this current life, with all the goods and the bads. I just come to realise that the message in my perpetual calendar for 27 October reads: May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. What an apt message since I always associate 28 October as a day when my life turned to shit 18 years ago. I only realised about this coincidence now since in previous years, I am not diligent in reading the perpetual calendar daily.

One interesting thing was after my visual rosary, some of my group members thought I was very good with prayers or leading prayers. Ooops... Leading prayer is my big weakness since I am never really taught on how to pray. Sometimes I also think in my native language when I pray so saying a proper prayer in English is very awkward for me. Well it was good to clear the misunderstanding as it meant to give credits to the deserving Ones. The credits obviously go to God and Mother Mary. With tonnes of rosary videos in Youtube, it is divine providence that I could find the one that I used in the end and others found the images and music in that video powerful.

Currently what makes me emo is my right back pain. Huhuhu... I did swings for the very first time on Monday and I was worried if I did something wrong as my back and the back of my thighs felt more sore than usual. Today what I feel with my back is pain. Bleah.. It reminds me of the back pain that required physiotherapy previously. Maybe something is indeed injured there since a few years ago and now it happens again at the same spot. I hope it gets better tonight and I am already prepared to skip gym tomorrow if the pain still persists.

Anyway looking back at my old posts, I am quite surprised to realise that I actually did not post emo stuff on 28 October every year. I thought it would be like end of year review or birthday post that I will remember not to skip. Haha.. Maybe it is true that I am getting numb and already sort of accept this life as it is.