Yume no Kawa

I managed to sell my second item on eBay: the KFC Marvel Avengers' set. I am a bad businessman and I don't buy things only to sell it later on. I actually intended on collecting this but as I am running out of space for my Final Fantasy collections, I have to let them go as I am a bigger fan of Final Fantasy. I sold them for $20 or $5 each. I "made a profit" if I consider that it cost me $3.80 to top up my meals to get the toys. However, I actually "made a loss" if I consider that I would not even get the meal if not for the toys. Whatever.. at least I get more space now.

This is totally unrelated but I thought I would share Yume no Kawa by AKB48. This is the last song with Atsuko Maeda as a member. No official video clip uploaded in youtube yet but this fan-made video is the quite excellent to share the song as well as Acchan's high moments with AKB48. It is quite touching actually.. The song itself is also pretty nice. Firstly, it is seldom to see AKB48 members get solo parts on their hit songs. Although I think their voices are so-so to sing solo, their voices sound very emotional here and that nicely delivers the "goodbye" feeling. Anyway, only 9 other members, other than Accahn, are involved for this song: Kojima Haruna, Takahashi Minami, Itano Tomomi, Minegishi Minami, Shinoda Mariko, Oshima Yuko, Kashiwagi Yuki, Watanabe Mayu and Matsui Jurina.

No AFA this year :(

I gave Anime Festival Asia (AFA) a miss this year :( Although I had been waiting for it eagerly, the location was a let down. Expo is very far and out of the place.. On top of that, I am not feeling well today. I did not know why I suddenly fall sick. I felt alright on Friday night but I woke up with runny nose and sore throat yesterday morning. I had difficulty sleeping last night even though I never switched on my aircon. Usually that is a sign of incoming fever. And the last reason is I just spent money on Rinoa-Siren and Squall-Bahamut statues. Yeah!! That means my Final Fantasy VIII Transcendent Artists' Collection is completed!! Yeaaaah!!!

Anyway, I am on MC tomorrow. A bit angry about it because the clinic opposite where I stay was not open today. I decided to go another clinic down the road and I forked out $54!! Seriously a rip off! Usually I felt much better after getting the MC but this time I think I am really sick!! Even with the MC, I am still feeling unwell. Grrah.. anyway, I ban this lousy clinic and should just stick with the one opposite my place. I know I could have waited and go to the usual clinic tomorrow morning. But I hate to see doctor in the morning as I would be too nervous whether I would be granted MC or not. If I am really sick, I also need a long good night rest, so waking up sickly in the morning is not too appealing. And the last reason is that I do not want to wake up tomorrow and realise that I am already fine and hence I need to work -_- This MC system sucks!! Seriously I know when I am sick enough and when I am not sick enough for me to decide whether or not I should report for work!!

First public talk

Today is another milestone for me: I did my first public talk :) The audience was about 15 people from the Care Managers Support Group. Well 15 is not a big number so it is not really "public" per se. I am glad that it turned out better than what I expected. I am happy to find that these people voluntarily signed up and thus were genuinely interested in learning more. Some of them even took down notes and I find that to be amazing o_0 They also asked relevant questions. The best part is of course they all understand English. If only majority of people behave this way.. or I wonder whether these people are usually in their best behaviour when they were down in the pharmacy too.

Actually this morning I woke up with sore throat and runny nose. I thought it was the usual "morning runny nose" so I did not take runny nose medication. My nose was still runny even at work so I decided to buy and take medicine. I guess it was worth it. The nurses told me that generally the feedback was good and the audience learnt new useful things. In addition, the nurses requested for my slides and said that they alse learnt something new. Hearing these positive feedback is very very encouraging :)

It was not perfect as someone actually fell asleep and snored pretty loudly. It could be quite discouraging actually.. but perhaps the topics were too "cheem". During the Q&A, the snoring guy actually asked questions so I think he came for a purpose. Perhaps he was too tired or I was too boring that he fell asleep.

It seems that I slowly get an idea on what I like to do.. I like to teach and share knowledge with other people, I like to collaborate and work with other departments, and I have a bit of liking for projects. The big question is: what's next?

Black cat meow meow

The black cat is back! Nope, I am not talking about Train Heartnet but about the black cat outside my workplace. I saw it for the first time two weeks ago and I found it cute. Today it followed me from the gate to the bus stop :) with its bells ding dong-ing as it walked. Hehe.. As I was waiting for the bus, it rubbed its fur against my pants (you know.. it's a cat thing). It circled around me and when I spaced my legs apart, it even moved in between my legs. It also kept meowing at me :)

I don't think someone dumps the cat as I only see it after working hours. My feeling is that the owner does not want the rest of his/her household know about the cat so the owner dumps it there in the late afternoon and picks it up again in the morning.. The reason for me to feel this way is that I noticed that the cat was wearing pink necklace today. I am very sure it was not pink 2 weeks ago.

To be honest, I don't normally like cats. I hate it when they rub against me as I hate to have some of their hair stuck onto my pants. But for this cat, I make an exception. In fact, people normally associate black cats to bad omen. But I don't care.. This black cat is cute and it's very friendly. I am very touched with the fact that it was not scared of me and rubbed itself against my legs. It did not do so to the other people who passed by or stood around the bus stop. Usually cats would just meow to strangers but they won't straight away dare to approach and rub its fur against strangers.

I felt sad to say bye bye and boarded the bus. Will I ever see it again? Haha.. This sounds retarded but I felt like crying when I said bye bye. Yeah.. I am lonely.. and I find it ironic that I have more care and concern to a cat than to fellow human beings whom I see day in day out. If I have my own house here, perhaps I would pick the cat. If my parents are here, I am sure they will be glad to keep it.

I wanted to take a good photo of it but looks like it was too shy on camera. Haha.. I was also to embarassed to squat down and take a good photo of it. I also felt like squatting down to pat its head but I am a bit of cleanliness-freak so I was a bit reluctant to "dirty" my hand..

The next time I see it, I will try to squat down and take a better picture of it. I will try to see whether it is willing to let me pat its head. Hehe.. I just hope it does not get scared and scratch me instead :( Anyway, the cat is a male so perhaps I should say "he" rather than "it".

Rainy days

Rainy season is here and the weather becomes unpredictable. Last Sunday was an example. The sun was up high in the sky in the morning and it was stormy in the late afternoon. I had to u-turn and skip lunch because I was already drenched halfway through my journey to the hawker centre which is only about 200m away. My self-consciousness made me feel uncomfortable if people were to see my wet beige-colour bermuda. That made me decide to stock up some instant noodles in case the weather does not allow me to go out to get my meals in the coming weeks. Today was another example. It was raining pretty heavily at lunch time and 2 hours later, the sun was already scorching hot.

The unpredictable weather ruins my exercise plan as I do not like to jog when the environment is wet. I am thinking of gym of something but I feel paiseh if there is someone who can see me exercising. Oh well =x I actually prefer sport games like badminton as a form of exercise. Too bad that I don't even have a friend whom I can ask to spar with. It is difficult to do any kind of exercise alone. A friend will be a great encouragement but again, I have no friend.

Anyway, I have given up the idea of friendship since many years ago. And welcome to working world in which friendship is even faker than friendship among school/classmates. Perhaps it is just my personality.. I am very objective and I think something personal like close friendship with my colleagues will compromise  working relationship and workplace dynamics. 

I am a bit pissed with my project.. What's the point of having someone in the group when I am almost doing everything on my own! Jeez.. it is not a matter of "your name is there so why don't you contribute too" or something.. If I can do everything alone, I will gladly do everything myself. But I have weaknesses in terms of visual as I am more of a "wordy" person. I really need help in this department. Oh well.. what to do.. the moment I heard "I also have my own things to do", that shattered everything about teamwork etc. I also have my own things to do. Everyone also have his/her own things to do. Do you think I will even bother to ask for your help if your name is not in the team in the first place?

I am also a bit of perfectionist when it comes to data collection and I am very irritated when people cannot even contribute to 100% accuracy in data collection. Sigh.. I know that sometimes I don't need to be 100% perfect as nobody would be checking the data anyways.. But still, it is just the part of me which sometimes feel like screaming "Just a simple thing like this also so difficult to do meh!!".

Aiya, just the thoughts of these made me agitated until I don't know what else to write sia.. Anyway, even though I mentioned that I am more of a "wordy" person, my command of English language is pretty atrocious actually. I went to read my old posts and I could not get past the first page of my blog. My writing was.. atrocious. I was trying to edit some yesterday, at least to make them grammatically correct, but it was challenging. The writing was so atrocious that I could not even recall or guess what I was writing about at that time. This was my second attempt to try "fixing" my old posts. Seems like the outcome will be the same as my first attempt: just let them be. Lol.. I don't know about now but I think my writing is not much better as compared to many years ago HAHAHA..

Oh ya, USA presidential election is over and congratulations to Barack Obama! It always amazes me how people around the world are so excited with USA presidential election even though the outcome may matter little to them. China will be having its once-in-a-decade leadership transition tomorrow but I don't think the world even cares about that. No wonder that USA is considered a superpower..

Another Zumba post..

Zumba class today made me realise that aging is indeed an evil process. I can't imagine myself living until 40.. 50.. 60.. 70.. 80.. what would be left with my body by then? I am not a dancer.. and I am not an exercise freak. But hearing and "feeling" the crackling sound for vigorous movements which involved my knees were pretty scary. I had no such problem 5 years ago.. Similarly with all the stretchings.. I had no problem doing that in my primary and secondary school times. In fact, last time it felt rather "shiok" to force myself to do the stretching.. but now, the moment I felt the pull, I would immediately bend my knees a bit to prevent the stretching. Still, I don't know whether it is due to aging.. or simply because I do not use these muscles that much anymore.

It was the 6th session today and I found that some of the routines are getting more complicated and difficult to follow. My eye-hand-foot coordination could not make it =x I think it will be cool to watch someone doing all these things but doing these is another thing. Haha.. While doing one of the shaking movements, I felt an akward sensation: I felt that my whole body was hollow and my spine and pelvic bones shook inside.. Am I being to skinny that I have nothing to insulate my bones from such shaking? Or was I wrong and it was actually the sensation of my blubber of fats shaking?? Lol.. So am I too skinny or too fat?? Come to think of it now, it was quite freaky.

If after the first Zumba class I was impressed with those male celebrities who could dance well, today's experience made me feel that those celebs above 20 years old are really something. Dancing is one thing but it is nothing compared to overcoming the aging bones and joints which are no longer that flexible.

Final Fantasy VIII Scale 1/6 Kotobukiya

Here is another Final Fantasy VIII collection which was released in 1999, not too long after the release of the game in the same year. I consider them as rather ancient and they are proofs that action figure technology has improved greatly. They also show that Kotobukiya is indeed one of the finest action figure manufacturers since back then. Even nowadays, most action figures are in the scale 1/8 or 1/7. Having scale 1/6 figures in 1999 was certainly something extraordinary and hence explains the extraordinary price tags too (6800 Yen each).

It is unfair to comment how "bad" these figures are by today standards. Firstly they are made of hollow vinyl materials, instead of the commonly used PVC nowadays. Vinyl is harder but more brittle. It is difficult to squeeze the weapons into the grips and too much force will result in breaking the figure at the point where force is exerted. To illustrate how brittle vinyl is: even forcing the figures out of its plastic packaging may result in breakages. Yup, it is THAT brittle. They also do not withstand impact as good as PVC and some parts may break or snap when the figures fall. Secondly, bleeding paint and glue jobs are common. Not sure whether aging also plays a part on this. The paint may also scratch off very easily. Thirdly, manufacturing "defects" are pretty common as many of the figures are unable to stand on their own.

However, I have to admit that Kotobukiya did a terrific job with the facial expression. I have to admit that the faces are even better than Final Fantasy VIII Play Arts from Square Enix (although I don't know whether mine are original or bootleg). Except for Quistis, I think the rest are very similar to the in-game illustration. Oh ya, these figures come with a card and serial number too even though nobody knew how many were ever produced.

Squall Leonhart - Sleeping Lion Heart

The first one in the series, he looks much kinder and friendlier than he is in the game. My serial number for Squall is #14509. I like the details like the yellow inner side of his leather jacket, the Griever engraving on his Gunblade, as well as the metal chain at the end of the Gunblade. It is quite difficult to squeeze in the gunblade to his grip but it is possible. However, I dislike his stance. The hand position is in a masturbating position o_0 if he is displayed without his gunblade. With his gunblade, the metal chain often gets stuck between his crotch. And  it is difficult to take a nice picture of him because the gunblade is outstretched so far. Sigh.. Interestingly, he is unable to stand properly without holding his gunblade. Don't know it's manufacturing defects.. or simply aging.

Rinoa Heartilly - Wing Heart
So far, no Rinoa action figure in existence whose face is similar to the in-game illustration. However, as compared to other figures, Rinoa from this set is perhaps the most similar. She looks pretty (other Rinoa action figures looks atrociously ugly) but her standing position is also quite akward. She can stand well on her own although I don't think anybody will stand with this pose in real life. Oh ya, my serial number is #6013.

Seifer Almassy - Cross Sword

Seifer is the heaviest among all, perhaps due to his overcoat. I love his stance. The air of arrogance is there without making him look evil. In fact, he is quite handsome here. However, I can't have him hold his Hyperion. That sucks.. I tried forcing it to his grip and I "tore" his grip. Bleah.. Vinyl sucks.. Hard and brittle. Lucky I never forced harder or else the grip would totally come off from the rest of the body :( A very small part of his Hyperion broke and I did not take notice of that :( By the time I realised it, it was too late to ask for some compensation from the seller. Bleah.. He is also unable to stand.. I don't know if he is supposed to be like Squall: unable to balance on his own without the gunblade. His serial number is #5631.

Selphie Tilmitt - Illusory

Selphie is my least favourite character but I have to admit that she looks pretty here. Her face gives a more mature look rather than the playful and mischievous in-game Selphie. She looks better without the nunchunks as it is quite weird to hold the nunchunks that way and I expect a more animated pose while holding the nunchunks. I have 2 Selphies: 1 without serial card and with one part of her hair snapped and 1 undamaged one with serial number #6676. Both are unable to stand, with or without her nunchunks. Sucks!

Laguna Loire

Terrible.. looks like Kotobukiya runs out of idea to give a nickname for Laguna. Could have called him "Man with Machine Gun" or something mah.. Laguna is the first one which I own. I found it during Anime Festival Asia last year for $50. I brought him home.. and just brought him back to Singapore last week to meet the other 5. Hehe.. Laguna can stand with or without his weapon and there is little problem with making him holding the gun. However, the face is rather ugly as it is too "long". He looks chubbier in the game. His hair has more volume than his face making his head rather disproportionate. Bleah.. Perhaps that's why Laguna is the most commonly on sale and the cheapest too. Poor guy.. He is not really the main character in the game so it is quite rare to have an action figure of him. What a waste to make him this ugly :(

Quistis Trepe

Again, Kotobukiya runs out of idea to give her a nickname. My favourite character in the game so her face here is a disappointment. She does not look pretty.. Sigh.. She looks stern and angry here.. Aaargh.. Her grip is too small for the whip to go in so I am unable to display her with her weapon. I bought 2 of her (serial number #3496 and #3731) simply because she is my favourite character. She tends to be quite expensive so when I found 2 which were rather cheaper, I bought them. Unfortunately, 1 shared the same fate as Selphie, a tip of her hair broke.. And I realised it too late to get some compensation. GRRRR!! Anyway, good thing that she is able to stand and her stance is quite sexy as a whip holder :) if only the bloody whip could go inside her grip.

If only Kotobukiya made Zell and Irvine, this collection would be complete and perhaps would simply be the best of all FF VIII action figures out there.. Hoho.. Cost-wise, I got them for not more than their original retail price, and some are lower.

Okay just some more pictures bah...

This is my only free Saturday in November as I have to work on the rest of the Saturdays in this month. Sian.. Plus there is some dumb event after work next Saturday which coincides with Anime Festival Asia. I want to go.. but I am not sure that I will be going :( Firstly is because I am too tired that I can only go on Sunday. And secondly is because it will be held in Expo this year. That is very far.. Why can't just they have it in Suntec like the previous years :(

As the year is coming to an end, it is time for year end blockbusters as well. With the end of Harry Potter last year and with the absence of superheroes movies, I thought it would be a boring year end for the cinemas. I was wrong.. As I was flipping through local movie magazine yesterday, I was like "Shit.. this one looks interesting..".. flip to next page "Damn this is also interesting..", and so on. Haha..

I am never interested in James Bond movies as I am not into action movies. But hmm.. with 4.5 stars, it looks pretty interesting lol.. Cartoon-wise, there are Rise of the Guardians (which features children's fairy tales mash-up: Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Jack Frost), Wreck-it Ralph (which features video games characters: Sonic the Hedgehog, Bowser from Super Mario, and Street Fighter gank such as Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy, Zangief, M Bison), and Frankenweenie (by Tim Burton). The synopsis for Life of Pi does not interest me but considering that it is based from a best-selling book, it should be quite interesting.. And of course there is the expected best box-office of the year: Twilight Breaking Dawn part II. Upon checking the net, I find that Rurouni Kenshin Live Action will be out here in late November.. And there is Pitch Perfect which has a pretty interesting trailer (based on the trailer when I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower).

To prepare for Twilight, I watched New Moon which had been sitting in my desktop for a year. Bleah.. frankly, I have no idea why people are so crazy about this series. I find New Moon to be as boring as the first Twilight.. I fell asleep half-way.. I am in the midst of Eclipse (which my sister gave me) and after 30 minutes, I still do not find it interesting -_-

I ended up taking photos of my Final Fantasy VIII Kotobukiya Scale 1/6 collection. Bought it a few months back but I have yet to blog it because I just brought Laguna from Indonesia last week. Hoho.. Tomorrow I shall update the photos..

Post-holiday blues

I felt so exhausted throughout the whole week. I don't know whether it was because my delayed flight on Sunday which screwed up my sleeping plan on that day. I worked opening shift this week in which I always have less sleep. After work, my body could not adjust to 2 hours nap. I always overslept up to past 12am and by then it was too late to take a shower or brush teeth. Eeek.. ya non-hygienic I know!! -_- By the time I slept again, it was always close to 2am and waking up at 6am was rather hellish.

I started to feel overwhelmed by work too. My manager is on leave since last week. Since I hate patient contact, I self-sabotaged myself to attend monthly meeting to represent my manager. As a result, I needed to type notes for her and type roll call notes to brief the rest of the staff. On top of that, I had outstanding minutes from my workgroup meeting from the previous week too. I hate minutes-taking lah!! Grr.. In addition, I still had my sub-workgroup work, had to follow up on my project, and had to discuss for the new paperless nursing voucher workflow. Bleah.. tiring but I actually don't hate them so much so that kinda helped. I like medication safety and I like to colaborate with other departments. Yup.. better than customer service -__-.. Oh ya.. I almost forget something important: my slides for presentation next Saturday are still not done yet!! Oh God!!

Before I went home, I was tidying up my wallet and threw away some receipts. I usually kept the receipts for card payments and threw them once I got the statements and verified the information. I also threw my dental receipt. Sigh.. I forgot that I could claim $130 yearly for dental purposes from the company. Now what I have is only the copy of the receipt (I requested from the dental clinic) and I don't know whether that would be accepted. Haiz.. I would just lie and say that the original voucher was drenched in the rain or something :( Sad.. $130 means at least 1 toy leh :(

I went to Orchard Road yesterday to collect the copy of the dental receipt. The Christmas decoration is up! I initially mistook the red heart-shaped ornaments Valentine's day or Chinese New Year ornaments.. Haha.. The theme for this year is red and white/silver. I have not seen them after the sunset so I can't comment. One thing for sure, as the Heeren is being renovated, there is nothing on the Heeren - Somerset junction this year. My Christmas mood was only invoked by Takashimaya Christmas tree!! Woo.. I am sure it is the same tree from previous years but this time the colour of the lights is white, unlike yellow from previous years. I~~~m dreaming of a whi~~~~te Christmas~~...

What the heck happened!

I was away from home for exactly 6 months and my very first reaction after reaching home was "What the heck happened to this house!!". Gosh.. the amount of junks that my parents are collecting simply blow me away. My dad bought a new plasma TV which is meant for internet and cable use only. I have no idea why he still keeps the old dying TV -_- Yes so now I have 2 TVs in the living room: 1 which is non-functional for normal TV and the dying one which cannot display clear images. My mum's dressing table is literally covered with papers etc and around the cloth hanging pole, my father is collecting more and more plastic bags. I wonder what they contain. My sisters are also guilty of turning the sofa on level 2 into their wardrobes.

The last thing I wanted was my own room to be messed up too. I was particularly upset that my elder sister now slept in my room every weekend.. After screening my room, there was hardly anything which did not belong to me. However, I discovered food waste and that really made me very angry. Firstly, you have no manner to use other's properties without telling and secondly, you use it the way you deem fit. I am angry not only to her but also to my parents. They did not even tell me anything about it.

You know, every family has its own problems and every person has their own problems. I have no idea what is happening to my father. He was not like this when he was younger. Nowadays, he would give thoughtless comments in public which was not very nice. In addition, he hardly bought or collect anything so I was pretty surprised that his area of storage was getting bigger and bigger. Lastly, I don't understand why he likes to keep money in the bank. He always nags nags nags that inflation eats the money stored in the bank but despite that, he does not want to invest the money. And this brings me to my mum.

A few years back, my mum asked my dad to use her retirement money to get a house for investment. My father did not want as he did not want to spend time to "take care" another house. Sigh.. It sounds a fine argument unless you know that he can afford the time to "take care" 4 cars -_-" I mean it is fine if the cars are your collections of Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, BMW, or what.. 2 off them are office cars and 1 is my younger sister's Honda Jazz.

My elder sister is another huge mess. Not sure whether I wrote previously that she actually lied that she would "graduate" to practise few months back. Her lie was damn good, she even bought the clothes and my parents even took leave from work etc. Then a few days before the fictional "ceremony" she said that "ceremony" was cancelled because the presiding official was sick. I suspected something amiss but I did not say anything. It seemed that my parents still believed to that.. not until when a letter from a university came to inform my parents that the university wanted to expel her because she had not turn up for the past 3 semesters.

It was an embarassment, a shock, a scandal! We could not believe what on earth she had been doing for the past 1.5 years. We could not imagine what she used all the time for.. Of course it was a question with what happened to the course fees but that was of less priority because I think it would be easy to spend money. But free time? I did not know whether my parents exploded upon knowing this. Upon hearing this story, I burned with anger. Add in the story that she had been using my room without my permission and I can shamefully testify that at that moment in time I HATE her!

She is an anomaly. I thought girls can't keep their mouth shut and would always like to share their problems with others. From many many years we have been asking her what problems and difficulties she is facing so that perhaps we can help. Each time we asked, the reply was always rude and was not an answer. I am irritated even more with the way she responded to my mum. I think she is "scared" of my dad so she still shows respect.. but the way she behaves to my mum, sometimes I feel like slapping her. She is almost bloody freaking 30 years old and still acts immaturely. I am amazed that at such an age she has not started thinking about her own future and how she has to take care of parents etc. It seems irony that the one who is closest (in living proximity) to my parents in the university days turns out to be the biggest problem.

Immaturity is also a problem with my younger sister, to a smaller extent. Thank goodness that she is already working. But it seems that she has yet to think about saving for the future and splurge all the money for gadgets and travelling. Well, you can buy gadgets and travel but not spend all your money for these. I, myself, had the thrill of splurging on Final Fantasy VIII toys for the past few months. However, I always made sure that I had saving at the end of the month.

When my younger sister and dad talked about condo in Singapore, I just snapped. They want it as a "home" in Singapore so when they come here, they can stay there and save of accomodation. They do not sound happy that I would rent it away even if my dad decides to buy one. Bloody shit, how many times do you all want to travel here? Have you all imagined staying away without a place called home for the past 10 years alone? Do you think it is an easy decision for me to say that I would rent it away? I also would like to stay inside so that I can buy more figurines and display them all over the house. But hell no! Renting it away can give me at least $200 more per month as compared to if I were to stay in. To me that is a large amount. For the sake of "brighter" future, I don't mind sacrificing my present by living nomadically (is there a word?).

And of course, the 4 of them have the problem of having big mouth (but not doing anything). I wanted to try my credit card overseas so I suggested for a meal in a hotel. What the fuck was so difficult about calling the hotel on your own? If you had so many things you wanted to ask, why didn't you make your own call? Sigh.. Similarly, what was so difficult with calling the internet provider to complain that the internet was problematic? Haiz..

Anyway, I give up. I am not gonna bothered about asking them for food anymore. My dad said my recommendations were not nice. I don't know. I only googled and I only recommended those commonly appeared in google, which implies that a lot of people like. Well, what my dad said nice turned out to be garbage to me.. I know my mum that she would choose whatever cheaper. If you already chose the place right from the start, just say so and do not waste my time for recommendations! My sisters were equally bad. What's the point of agreeing with me at the hotel already that the buffet was shitty. They ate there twice previously so they could have refused to go there right from the start. Damn la!!

Oh well, no matter what, they are still my family. I, too, have my own problems and idiosyncracies for sure. I still can't help to imagine what my life would be if I never left 10 years ago.. Sigh.. Would everything be better? Would I be in a better state? Would I be happier? Haiz.. One thing that remains.. I cried like a baby when I had to leave home for the first time on 28 October 2002. It is 28 October 2012 now and I still can't help but cry that I have to leave home again.. I am working tomorrow!!