Domum

A few months ago, when I had just been in Japan for about a month or so, my baby sister told me a dream she said she had had.

In the dream, I had returned home, and suddenly appeared in front of her, and she felt so happy that I was back, but then, she woke up, and realized it was a dream, and felt sad.

So naturally of course, I filed that story in my mind, and when I was preparing to go back for a short while, I decided to try to do it. But I didn't want to just stop at my sister. I wanted to prank my parents too. I would've thought of pranking my brother too, but it's more fun to rope him in and prank others.

I touched down on 20th November and managed to sneak my way into the house relatively undetected. My parents were suspecting I would be returning soon, but I had very cleverly avoided talking to them on Skype and not answering their questions about my flight details, so they did not know when I would really be back. Brother let me in, and I managed to get to my room without anyone realizing.

Unfortunately, while waiting for my dad to go and sleep so that I could go shower and sleep, some twit started calling my home phone. The twit would call, and when someone answered, he (or she) wouldn't say anything. Which of course, woke my dad up. And despite my brother's best efforts to keep him out of the room and in the dark, my dad found me hiding behind the door.

Oh and my grandma detected my presence the next morning because she spotted some abnormalities in the shower room. I bet she was like a counter-intelligence operative or detective when she was younger.

When I was trying to survive in Tokyo with the at-times-8-degrees-weather, I would think that I was more used to hot, humid, tropical weather. Once I got back to Singapore, I realized that being used to it didn't make me any more immune to disliking feeling sticky all the time. And now, what my brother calls 'cooling weather' is still too hot by my standards. But still better than shivering.

So anyway, I went back mainly for Josh & Aggie's wedding, which was on 28th Nov. The Tuesday before the wedding, Josh suddenly asked me to be one of the 'brothers' to help him gate-crash Aggie's place in the morning. Fortunately, most of Aggie's sisters were nice people, so the things we had to do weren't too terrible. At least, from my perspective. Probably not the same view for Jiehuai, Chai and Josh.

I guess the wedding felt somewhat different, maybe cos it was on Sentosa instead of in church, but also because it just seemed strange to see two people you have grown up with exchanging their wedding vows at the front of the hall.

I guess this means that next time I want to ask Aggie out for lunch, I'm really gonna have to ask Josh for permission first haha.

Also got the chance to meet up with several other important friends (there were lots of other important friends I didn't get to meet up with, so sorry), and settle some other important matters (saving the world vicariously through CoH, submitting PR documents).

Was rushing around quite a bit, doing stuff, meeting people, playing games, and it felt so packed. I wasn't even able to have like proper QT most days, and at the back of my mind, I kept on thinking how I wasn't getting rest.

But when I read Sul's message "...hope you had a good rest...", I realized that actually, I was feeling quite refreshed and all. Even though I was trying to reconcile having to re-adjust to being back in Japan after sort of adjusting to being in Singapore.

And well, hopefully this will help last till I finish off my term in April-ish.

Cheerio!

P.S. New official couple in church. And looks like they may not be the only ones.... haha...

P.P.S. Some people still think 31st Nov is real.

Dear America,

I'm an American citizen, but I've grown up in Singapore. And I would like to mention something with regard to your foreign policy.

Please stop telling the rest of the world to do what you think is best.

Please stop telling us that we are undemocratic.

Please stop telling us to stop censorship.

I think censorship is necessary, as I think it is a lesser evil than rampant liberality.

I feel that having a strong, one-party government makes our country more stable and flexible than having a president who is handicapped by politicians whose interests lie almost as much in altruism as in selfish gain.

I do not want your style of society, where people criticize others in a chaotic, tabloid-style manner, and where you can sue a fast food company because you got fat eating their food.

We may not be perfect, and sometimes, we may have a lack of 'human rights' (both real and imagined) but let's face it, no one is, not even you. And we don't tell you what we think you should do to your country.

We appreciate the concern you are trying to show the rest of the world, by showing us how America got to how it is. But in case you have not noticed, we are not America.

We are different from you. We have our own cultures.

You are not us, so how would you know it'll be good for us?

So thank you very much, but please, stop telling us to become more like you.

Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/obama

雨

Today was a cold and rainy day. Cold as in 15 degrees cold. Rainy as in there was a bit of a drizzle, you know, the kind that makes you feel depressed. The skies were overcast, and it was kinda gray.

So of course, when Steve and I went to E-moms, and only Miyako turned up (with Au-chan of course), Steve felt kinda bummed out. It didn't help that he had been psyching himself up for today's English conversation, since he was planning on using the idea of Thanksgiving (the holiday) to talk with the ladies, and to try and give a Christian-based view on the meaning of that day.

After the E-moms, we were supposed to go with Miyako to her place to plan for kids' club stuff, but since there were so few people, Miyako suggested we just go over to her place. It would also be a lot easier to distract Au-chan in her home than at the community center.

It was true that Au-chan was a lot less noisy at home than at the community center, especially after Miyako put on a video for her to watch. Then Steve got down to discussing Kids' Club stuff with Miyako while I ended up taking care of Au-chan.

And after the discussion was over, Steve asked Miyako if she was interested in doing the study he had prepared for E-moms that day, since Au-chan wasn't disturbing them, so Steve managed to talk to her about Thanksgiving and about how we can be thankful to God and stuff (I didn't really hear what went on during the lesson), but at the end of it, Steve realized that even though E-moms had more or less been canned, he had the opportunity to really share with Miyako.

So in the end, he was happy.

And I was happy cos I got to meet Mel in the evening.

Cheerio!

Wao!

Looking through the news this morning, I read this sports article about a Saudi striker who scored just about off the first touch, 2 seconds into the game.

Talk about shades of Shaolin Soccer...



Cheerio