In order to fulfil Jie Yee the little baby cow's 20 (or if you like, 1 repeated 20 times) aims, I shall recount our crazy tuan yuan fan and sleepover, held on 5th Feb 2008. Hopefully those who didn't go with us or didn't manage to stay over can share the fun with us. Sorry, no photos from me, and I don't think anyone took pics anyway.
Apparently Lerong was forced to go home because he was so forgetful loh, forgetting all sorts of funny stuff. He wanted to slip out of home without meeting his mum, but him, wanting to complete his forgotten jobs to perfection did it slowly. so slowly he had to meet his mum loh. so sad right? got niaoed and made to run some funny errand for his mum. which he refused to tell us about. hmm...i wonder what it was. anyways, he was offered a ride from his mum in exchange for the errand. a ride...to the nearest MRT station. from his house that is. wow, he made us wait a grand total of 1 hour. but we were smart enough to start eating first loh. :)
oh, and Jie Yee was quite pissed he didn't tell her he was heading for home. i dont know why also. because none of them told me anything. how come they dont tell me anything de! yeah...leave it to my imagination huh?
The Long Wait. We had to wait a super super long time just to get everyone together, because of various reasons. chao tong had to lao yu sheng with his huang cheng peeps. which he claimed would take a few minutes. but his FEW minutes meant about half an hour lah! made us wait for so freaking long. argh...all for a yu sheng which does not contain fish. yeah, but he managed to catch us at the bus stop loh. not because we wanted to wait for him. but because the 170 bus driver wanted us to wait. he just refused to come loh. why do we need to pay so much for such lousy service ar? maybe jam at johor checkpoint there lah... or maybe it was chao tong. using his ultra sloot powers to cause the bus to come only after he arrives. too bad he is too sloot le. the bus didnt even appear even when he came to the bus stop. hahax.
Bus Ride + MRT Ride. Finally, we gave up waiting for the slowpoke 170, which chao tong cursed. we decided to head for Newton MRT instead. we dont know if we were faster, or if some 170 actually came when we boarded the bus to newton. 67 came first followed immediately by 171. Only Cao Lei, Peng Rong and me took 67, because someone said 171 was faster or something. In the end, the 3 of us still arrived before them. i wonder who jinxed the 171 lah. direct bus being slower than one which needed some distance of walking. and in a bid to get a position report from those on 171, Cao Lei accidentally called Suat Lay causing a little confusion. the transport system of singapore just cant accomodate our already puny population. and we had to squeeze terribly just to get into the train. squeezing in through 3 different doors. and argh...bugis just had to open on the opposite side. then we had to snuggle our way through this throng of people to get out into the station. we were like lucky to get out of the train unscathed. okok, maybe that is exaggerated... but still, getting out the train was such an adventure. hahax.
Tuan Yuan Fan. We took a walk from Bugis MRT through Bugis Junction, passing the National Library to the Steamboat Restaurant. Halfway through Bugis Junction, we lost several people who got washed away in the crowd. some people really need to walk faster lah. or else need to waste precious eating time looking for lost cows. Moral of the story, just keep up. Finally we arrived at the restaurant, come to think of it now, I realised we could have walked easily from City Hall MRT and it may be even shorter than the Bugis route, plus it is safer as we don't have to jaywalk. The traffic light is right where we needed it, and the 2 small streets we will have to cross on that route doesn't have much traffic, unlike at Bugis. but blah, we got there, and we got to our table. I wonder what Jie Yee and Mel will say... OK, at the restaurant, Cao Lei gave us a crash course on the restaurant.. she was quite knowledgeable of the place, must have frequented the place lah. but she claimed she only went there a few times. We took up 12 seats, with 3 steamboats, the Yuan Yang type with 2 different soup bases. We had a bit of trouble with the spicy soup base. it was not that spicy lah. it just burned your lip so much that even one jug of iced water cant help your lips from being totally fried. For the table with special dietary restriction (Mel, Jie Yee, Lerong and me) I ended up eating anything that dropped into the spicy side of the steamboat provided I can eat it, since Lerong wasn't around yet. Then Jie Yee discovered that she wasn't really good at placing stuff into the steamboat. I got hit with hot soup for a total of 3 times and resorted to ducking under the table whenever they wanted to top up the thing with food. Besides, she dropped some of the food stuff into the spicy side of the steamboat. One of them was a quail egg and the two "brothers" requested I eat it up. So Jie Yee transferred the egg not into my bowl but into the non-spicy side of the steamboat. As I watched the ring of red oil float up, I announced that my assumption is that the soup is a buffer solution. but the broth did turn out slightly spicy after that. i really wonder what they put into the ma la soup lah. imba flavour loh. Next, Jie Yee and Mel found the fish paste which was squeezed out like icing quite fun, and I had to get them to clean the stuff up from the surface of the soup by eating them so that I can get at the vegetables at the bottom. Lerong was sort of bullied once he arrived at the restaurant, as Mel and Jie Yee did rather silly stuff and kept calling him boy, which was actually how I addressed him when he called me on the phone.
Hitting the road again. We left the restaurant rather late, and were the only group of people left. The staff were also having a celebration on their own and they only managed to start when we were about ready to leave. After that, we had a bit of trouble finding the right bus stop to head to Dairy Farm Estate where Mel and Yuan Chang lives. In case I didn't phrase that properly enough, Mel lives in Blk21 while Yuan Chang lives in Blk 23. We got a little disorientated but still found the bus stop and squeeze aboard the bendy bus which just happened to be waiting. The whole bus trip was spent talking crap about a certain musical instrument and other crap. Once again I had to act as a buffer to block people from losing their balance. Yuan Chang got a bit too excited (i dont know about what lah, but yeah) and told us to alight one stop too early, so we walked to a better bus stop and waited. Fortunately, this one was much emptier so we managed to sit and Yuan Chang managed to nail the right bus stop. Who would expect Dairy Farm Estate to have more than one gate, so we walked all the way down this quiet road...this long stretch of road actually. all these to reach the North Gate (so many freaking gates lah! why cant they just make it a little smaller, and build those apartments a little taller and save us all the walking!?) and arrived at Mel's Block. Respecting Mel's tradition of using the lift to get from B1 (the carpark) to Level 1 (her unit's level) we all squeezed into the tiny lift except Yuan Chang who decided stairs = better. and what the heck, the lift was like... so small! it seemed to be only for one person at a time lah. but we squeezed in 6 people nevertheless. Don't worry, the lift never overloaded.
Mel's Place. Having found Mel's unit, Yuan Chang left for his own block so that he can drop his stuff and return later to confirm wakeup time. Maybe because we all ate alot, so the atmosphere was rather dead. Mel almost fell asleep immediately on her hot pink bed. By the way, her room is filled with different shades of pink, pink walls, pink ceiling etc. Jie Yee discovered to her amazement that Mel owned the same phone and clock. After settling cleanliness issues, we started playing cards and Lerong declared he was going to mug. totally mug lah. go home dunno do what (maybe mug?) then go for sleepover also mug! He got "scolded" so he decided to use Mel's computer to go online. Some interesting conversations took place in the room as a result. Finally, Lerong gave up fiddling with the computer so as to allow Mel to play a game like Dance Dance Revolution with Jie Yee and Yuan Chang. (Now you can see how good my memory is... I have forgotten so much...) In an attempt to feed all of us, Mel brought up a whole basket of snacks from downstairs and then returned the basket back down with a large bag of chips missing. A few rounds of Dai Di and bridge later, Mel fell asleep first followed by Jie Yee soon after. Lerong managed to coax the remaining 3 (Yuan Chang went back) to play poker, using another 2 incomplete decks of cards as chips. Chao Tong won in the end when we all decided to just be funny and use up all the chips in the last game. I would have folded if it wasn't the last game. So we turned off the lights at 2am in the morning. Tian Yi got a mattress beside the door and Mel's Cupboard. Lerong and Chao Tong shared the other mattress near the computer. Tian Yi was supposed to share Mel's Queen size bed (it can fit two people, but isn't King size I think.. correct me if I am wrong) but Jie Yee fell asleep on her spot. I was the only one to be on the floor in one of Lerong's silk sleeping bags mainly because I volunteered to do so. It wasn't bad at all since I could use the corner of Lerong and Chao Tong's mattress as a pillow. Wakeup time was set at 5.30am...
7th Feb 5.30am. Lerong's Handphone alarm was the first to go off. It did make a rather loud noise as "advertised". but zong ting bu zong yong (中听不中用）Unfortunately, it only managed to wake up one person. Next, my watch alarm went off, and still, only one person awake out of 6. So I washed up and reset my handphone alarm to 5.45am. Once done, I kicked Lerong awake, since normal methods of waking someone didn't work. I believe I did the same to Chao Tong too, since it was too dark to see clearly which leg belonged to who. Having them hidden in the sleeping bag just made the problem worse. Finally, the handphone screen light managed to wake Lerong and Tian Yi when the alarm went off. After some shuffling about and whispering, we managed to wake Jie Yee as well. As no one was quite ready to be up and about, yet time was running short, I had to resort to an extreme method, switching half the room lights on. Mel declared this was the earliest she had woken up (camp time is not considered)
Morning. We wasted a rather large amount of time getting up and running at normal power. Lerong fell asleep again while waiting for his turn in the toilet, so you can sort of guess how long that was. So Mel didn't manage to fulfil her wish of taking a bus to school. Yuan Chang couldn't be ready in time too, so we all had to squeeze into Mel's Dad's car. That was one person too many but well, we still managed to do it. On the way down, Lerong and Chao Tong took the stairs, but this time, the lift beat them. Mel's car's dashboard reminds me of the A380. Once you go into reverse gear, the GPS screen immdiately switches to the feed from the rear mounted camera, much like the ground steering camera mounted on the giant airbus' tail. Breakfast was bought at KAP through the drive through. We didn't really arrive early enough to eat it in the canteen so they decided to leave it with ME at the terraces. That's the result when you are absent from the decision making meeting just because you have to report to the Music Practice Hall. The rest of the day everyone is dispersed, so I shall end here.
If there are any mistakes, please edit thanks. As my language skills are not that powerful, if it sounds boring, I apologise. Do tian you jia cu if needed and fill in any missing bits. Finally, Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!
oh...chao tong did edit within the paragraphs. he wonders if you people actually notice...
SQ888
Edit: I realised I missed out a point. Chao Tong was playing this strange game when he woke up and was waiting for his turn at the toilet. In the game, you have to shoot zombies and when you score a hit, a significant amount of blood is spilled. His reason: it is a good way to de-stress and wake himself up. Well, I am sure no one wants to see Chao Tong with a gun in the morning, who knows what he will do.