Eventful Day..

Monday - comm service! =P

I thought I had it all planned out - wake up at 6.30am, breakfast, followed by a quick MRT ride to Redhill for comm service in the morning, then movie "Nanny McPhee" in the afternoon, topped off with dinner! =) However, the fates thought otherwise..

I was rudely awakened at 6am this morning, wondering what the ruckus was all about.. only to find that my whole house had a blackout!! Argh!! We tried tweaking with the master switch box, to no avail.

Conclusion? Call an electrician.

Who's going to be at home when the electrician comes? Me.

But my whole day is booked! Scrap the movie.

There you have it. Well, on hindsight, it was the only logical thing to do - the rest were out at work, and I was the only one with flexible time on my hands. -_-"

So after comm service with the kids, I dashed home in the nick of time at 2pm, to open the door for the electrician. I had just opened all the windows, and was about to open a pack of cup noodles when he knocked on the door. Talk about excellent timing.

Anyway, the guy was really nice lah.. He was very professional, got straight down to work on the switch box. After testing that the switch box was normal, which got me confuddled (then wat's the problem?) he went for the jugular by asking whether there was any faulty electrical appliance in the house. Aha! The kitchen light. Man. This guy is good. =)

Apparently the kitchen light was non-functional for a few days liao.. Then how come of all days, must choose today to blackout the whole house.. Aiyoh.. Yah, so the electrician demolishes the light in double quick time, and saw that the wires had been pulled out, resulting in the short circuit. He changed the wire arrangement, and rearranged it so that the started for outside the lamp container - yay! So much easier to change the starter from now on. =P And we were all done within half an hour! Haha.. Was so impressed. =) Plus that guy was uber friendly and patient - chatting, about how he was on call 24 hours a day and stuff.., explaining the electrical details to me (quite electric-idiot, but hey, I know how to change the bulb and starter ok.. not that lousy.) as he went along.

Yay, so I was out of the house in less than an hour. But to no avail. ARGH. I still missed the movie. -_-""" Spent the next few hours in PS with Jan, Susan, Chris & Dave, buying Yong Chin's present, and that heading for a sumptous dinner at Thai Express. Can't believe we spent so long in Action City arguing over which cute character to get - Eh. I still insist that the Mowbray character was adorable. =P And then we walked up to the 3rd floor to settle on a totally different present. -_-"Ok lah, but THAT ONE's lovely too. =D

Then we had to contend with the less than perfect gift wrapping from the shop. -__-""" The guy wrapping the present was seriously, quite untrained. I'm sure I could have done a better job, making it look more decent, albeit it will lack the special multi-layer effect which he was trying to do on the gift. So there we were, the 5 of us huddling outside the shop, trying to decide the best way to go in and tell the guy to re-wrap. The next thing we knew, he strode out past us, (probably to the washroom) and we happily walked in, and asked the sales manager to rewrap for us. =P (Hey, even SHE agreed that it looked bad.) So we disappeared off and came back 10mins later to collect the present.. (Fortunately the guy still wasn't there. =P)

Anyway, the final product wasn't stellar either - the girls complained that the lines were crooked. The less artistic me, was inclined to think that it was done on purpose, which drew me a reproachful look from Susan. -_-" Bleah. But it was ok lah. Shldn't ask for the heavens you know.

Dinner at Thai Express - their tom yum soup was quite decent.. =) Tangy, but not too hot. =) Oh oh! There was this cute girl which Chris couldn't keep his eyes off too - he insisted that she probably just got her A's and was working parttime. Yah, so he kept gazing in her direction, murmuring wistfully abt how happy she seemed, laughing all the time.. Until all 5 of us turned to stare at her. You shld have seen the look on his face when she came over with the bill! *Should have conned him into paying for the whole meal.. =P*

After we left the restaurant, he turned to us, and told us that he was trying to read her name tag. And so we eagerly asked him what her name was.. Her name tag read...

" TRAINEE "

O_O!!! No comments absolutely.

Oh well.. A chance lost for him.. Haha.. =P (Maybe he went back there for her number after we all left! *Just kidding*)

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Oh yah, totally skipped the part about the comm service above. Yep, as I said in my previous post, I was doing the Caterpillar station.. The kids were doing in 3 rotations, so my 1st of 3 groups arrived, with me eagerly anticipating them. And there were only 2 pple!!!! -_-" How easy is that. -_-" Please loh. I can fit 2 pple even into the smallest hula hoop on my Caterpillar course. -_-" needless to say, the task was finished in 54 seconds, and I found myself "jobless" for the next 29 minutes and 6 seconds. -_-"

The other schools went through the course quite ok.. The game focused quite a bit on leadership - someone had to step forward to give direction to the whole team; and communication skills - well, with your L leg tied to the other guy's R leg, you better open your mouth to talk, unless you're psychic.

Throughout the whole game, I realised that the Malay students tended to talk in Malay, and they didn't really talk much with the other Chinese girls and guys, and vice versa. Of course, there were also those who mixed well lah. So I asked the 2 malay guys why they don't talk with the girls, and came the blatant reply, "Cos they always talk in Chinese."

I looked at the group of girls, but there was an equal number of Chinese and Malays in the group, and they were talking and laughing away together.. Of course, I do understand that different people with different family backgrounds tend to be stronger in their Mother Tongue, and hence, they converse most fluently in the Mother Tongue and tend to speak their Mother Tongue.. But I do think that we should all constantly remind ourselves not to talk in, say, Chinese, when we have other people around us who are from different races.. Its about basic courtesy and racial harmony.. I mean, I won't like it either if my Malay friends spouted off in Malay, while I go "Huh?" at one side. Yah, so I do think that we should consciously make an effort to be aware of the people all around us.. =)

Yay. My learning point from today. =) Overall an enjoyable day, save the part about the blackout. =P