It is the time of the year yet again when the whole town is painted red… and gold…

The time of the year I dread.

I loathe those blaring dong dong qiang Chinese New Year songs, especially those sung by CT girls. They give me a headache.

I loathe the gaudy and loud mish mash of Chinese-New-Year-red and gold at every turn of the street.

I loathe the ubiquitous Chinese New Year decorations. They are unsightly and I can't seem to avoid them.

I loathe those big head “gong xi gong xi” boy-girl duo slapped on both sides of the doors of many shops. They are plain ugly.

I loathe those red lanterns. They look eerie.

I loathe jostling with the crowd from the neighbourhood to the town area.

I loathe all the spring-cleaning. But at the end of it, it is truly worthwhile.

I loathe going out to bai4 nian2. The most fundamental reason would be laziness. I’m one lazy person.

I loathe being late and being overwhelmed by so many people that I have to greet and wish every uncles and aunties one by one.

I loathe kaypo and gossipy relatives.

I loathe answering their questions. I’m too lazy to keep a conversation going.

I loathe all the superstitions and list of things not to do during CNY. They are just so dumb.

I loathe getting so little ang pows. Actually I receive a lot of ang pows every year, just that the value inside is little. My friends used to compare “earnings” and while theirs totaled to few hundreds or even a thousand. Mine barely reach $200. With 30 cousins on one side, I can’t really complain much about the abundance of $2 ang pows. Ya ya… it’s the thought that counts right? Pooi! Me think that age-old adage is just some excuse cooked up by some miserly people long time ago.

My loathing for this time of the year is augmented a thousandfold because I’m still having a runny nose plus I’m coughing badly. How am I to eat all the goodies??? Also, I wish I could make use of this break to take my drowsy medicine thrice a day as instructed and sleep my whole holiday away so that I can recover once and for all.

It’s funny how after I’ve typed all these, I do not loathe CNY that much anymore.

For the whole of today, I led a pig’s life.

Isn't the above title a deja vu? History is repeating itself. I was even more sick than I was last Wednesday. Sore throat revisited, coupled with a terrible cold, cough, and a slight fever. Like History, I slept the whole day, only waking up to eat. My shopping for Chinese New Year’s clothes plan is ruined. I haven’t springcleaned my room yet. All I did today was eat and sleep. When will I be able to find the time to shop for my cny stuff?

And I took 1 hour to type the above paragraph coz I was on the phone with kh. What started off as a concerned call to a sick gf ended with gf feeling very irritated. Probably I’m more irritable when I’m sick and I find everybody irritating. I suspect I’m likewise very annoying to others too, with my bad moods and incessant demands. I get away with leaving my plates on the table and not washing them. I get away with the flooded bathroom after I bathed. I get away without making my bed. I get away with anything and I get everything my way just because I’m sick.

The prata supper on Wednesday was good. Laughed loads. My bunch of friends are damn funny. We should do this more often. But wait, I’m always the one who can’t make it. *sheepish look*

While waiting for “Desperate Housewives” to come on, I went through friends’ blogs again. I was touched by one of my friend’s latest entry. This friend used to be my very close friend in primary 5 and 6. If I’m not wrong, in autograph books, we used to regard each other as best friends. However, we drifted apart after we went to secondary school and drifted even further as time passes, only meeting up to cheong every now and then or as a group. I have no idea if we are still considered good friends so I was quite moved when she referred me as one. Perhaps that term was just mentioned casually in that entry, but I indeed felt something stirring in my heart. I know you will be reading this. I had initially wanted to leave a comment but I can’t do so as I’m not a multiply member. Eh, but you are still a bitch as before lor… haha… fancy you stealing my pictures without my consent.

I know the last sentence was an anti-climax la. But I dun wanna sound all so soppy you see.

TV time.

I’m coming down with sick so I took half the day off and ended up in front of the comp...

Throat is hurting very badly now. Drinking herbal tea doesn’t help. Neither does honey, nor water. They only make me visit the loo more often. After my breakfast of zai mi fen with those fried crispy stuff, my throat got slightly better. That’s why I believe in yi3 du2 gong1 du2 and indulge in them at times.

My nose is runny too. I’m coughing every now and then. My muscles ache. I suppose I really sound perpetually sick on my blog. SIGH…

And I had the time to peruse some important documents (read: read some blogs) and was very well informed of the outside world (read: world outside my world).

I was reading Tammy’s blog when my mum walked in, stood beside me and looked at the screen. I absolutely hate it when people look at my screen. But that’s not the point.

She asked, “Poem huh?”

“No.” came the monosyllabic reply.

“Very beautiful picture.”

“Yah.”

I don’t know how Tammy does it, but her pictures are always so dreamy, so whimsical. Soft lighting… faded edges… angled shots... Even pictures of people look like they were drawn out from long time ago, or from some dreamland.

I think I’m not very good at expressing myself.

I’ve not read the great copywriter’s blog for some time too and was greeted with a scatologic entry. Shit returns to the scene of grime everytime. Why do we always end up talking about shit? And I didn’t know you finally got yourself a “high-tech phallus” (read: iPod). I would expect to hear you bragging about it.

iWant… iDream… iYearn… and finally iHave…iPod…

He claims that all the women will love him now and asked if he suddenly seem more attractive... with his 20GB phallus. *rolls eyes*

One of my friend snipped her hair off. I don’t know if I can mention her name here. And oh.. please don’t do your Dove girl imitation. I think right now all I can say is “My hair is like sand, like coarse sugar.” (imitates irritating dove gal’s tone) Behold! Before Chinese New Year, I would go and do my hair and can proudly say “I just have to go like this and like that and it falls in place easily.” (imitates irritating pioneer dove gal’s tone).

Feeling very drowsy now but I’ve gotta head for work soon. Prata supper with some primary school friends later and I don’t know if I should practise my yi du gong du trick later.

After 3 whole weekends of uploading and arranging, my NZ trip albums are up and running at imagestation.

Now if any of you are looking for great online photo hosts, look no more. Imagestation is the best!

-->It offers UNLIMITED storage.
That means you can take 700 crazy photos and post them up. It also means uploading your mega-sized photos straight without having to resize them. Isn’t that like a timesaver?

-->It offers 15 minutes worth of video uploads too.
Just that I haven’t found the option to do that. Damn!

-->The layout and presentation is great!
Simple classy black is good. I like the effect of the slideshow too.

-->The photos do not take shit time to load and to view.
So friends would be very happy viewing your albums. And you would be happy if friends are happy.

But of course it has glitches too.

-->It stupidly arranges your photos in no particular order after each upload.
Try as I might, I could never get the photos to be arranged according to the dates and time although there is an option like that. So most of the times, I would have to arrange them all over again, drag and drop etc. It’s really tiring and a waste of time but I simply cannot stand jumbled photos. It also reminds me that amidst my neatness I'm actually a very disorganized peson. I cringe whenever I think of the huge photo drawer in my room with photos from JC times still not packed into albums. I wonder how I can be so overly neat when it comes to soft copies.

>You can’t manage the photos into folders.
As a result, the albums have to act as the folders and so I have to allocate different albums to different days of my trip. Leading to… yes… 12 invites to those friends whom I invited to view the albums. I know, I know… don’t kill me!!!

>A lot of time wasted to amend the above.
Now you all know why I take such a long time to get all the photos up.

But hey, I can’t really complain. The unlimited storage outweighs all the other drawbacks.

Now I am going to reply to the emails of some favourite people.

Two funny incidents happened to me on Saturday night.

One of my 1 plus year old students “called” me a tortoise, you know, like an “wu1 gui1”. We were doing some matching of animals IQ game where you match the same animals together. I was playing with one of the students so I bent down with my face quite near theirs. Then one of them put the picture of a tortoise next to my face and go “Wo wo wo wo wo…..”

I turned and saw the tortoise next to me and screamed, “[Child’s name]! Are you calling Teacher a tortoise?!”

All the mummies looked up and upon realizing what the said child had done, bursted into laughter.

Said child looked at me with big, innocent, dewy eyes. I felt like hugging him coz he looked soooo cute.

So right now, I am Jolene the Tortoise.




Another funny incident happened that night too, only that I didn’t think it was funny. The showerhead came crashing into my forehead while I was showering, leaving me with a huge purple bruise. I had to use my hair to cover the ugly mark.




When I showed my family members the bruise, they all looked pretty amused at that funny thing on my forehead. And after recounting the showerhead incident, they all chortled like I wasn’t in pain.

Only my Mum went “Aiyoh!! So poor thing!” while the rest of the unfeeling bunch were still cackling away.