It's that time of the year again. The tickets for F1 go on sale and the race once again, begins in September. For me, that means Grid Girls! Did an event for F1 yesterday in town. I had a lot of fun with the other girls, it was sort of like a mini-reunion. Well, except for this ONE girl I had no desire to see AT ALL, the rest of us were fine. Like I said, you don't get this lucky for the lottery, man. I was paired up with this particular slut, out of ALL the girls. URGH. She flatters herself too much. Especially when she went to request for a partner switch. Hahahahaha wutttt. Like I wanna be paired with her???!!!
It was raining and we couldn't do the roadshow for awhile, so we were stuck in the office building behind Forum Shopping Mall. I got bored and drew a dinosaur on the white board, and Shumin decided she would colour it green:
Baha, that crazy woman!
With Sheralynn and Constance:
Thank God I got Constance for the roadshow instead. She's so much fun, I love Constance!:
Our job was to stop people in the streets and ask if they'd like to participate in a show-and-tell to tell us why they love F1 and stand to win prizes. Everyone shunned us because they didn't wanna go on video. -.- I spent 3 hours getting rejected. The other girls had tasks that were so much more fun! Like for example, stopping traffic. =/ One of the Grid Girl F1 hardcore fans - we always see him everywhere:
After work, I went for dinner with Conz and we also went shopping at Forever21. It was awesome. ^_^ I love my Grid Girl friendssss. Well, not all but I can safely say Conz, Hamizah, Weiling, Rachel and Shumin are among them. Hahahaha. Will be seeing some of them at Stereophonics' concert on the 30th! We're all going together. Have a birthday surprise planned for one of the doods, I was told. Can't wait! Till then. xoxo
I worked for the FHA 2010 last week, from the 20th to 23rd:
It was my first time working for a food exhibition, if I recall correctly. I thought it was gonna be an events job like what I am used to doing, but it turned out to be more than that. I was working for The Dessert Empire, and basically I was scooping gelato all day and washing up at the end of the day. My uniform was a t-shirt and my own jeans. Although I got paid more than the part-timers I met there, I was still underpaid compared to like, a carshow or an IT fair job. But it was great fun nonetheless. I think F&B is a fun job, really. But it's such tough work. Check out the different tubs of gelato and sorbetti we had!:
YUMMAYYEE!!! They had alcoholic flavours like baileys, lychee martini and chocolate whiskey too! You can even customise your own flavours. So imagine like.... Cheese gelato? Or tomyam gelato? LOL. Creativity is endless! I had a taste of peanut butter gelato and bak gua gelato, I kid you not. But they weren't out for sample, it was behind-the-scenes. =P Isabelle was in charge of cakes and pastries...:
I've never been a big fan of cakes and stuff, but on the last day I hopped over to the cake counter and tried their lemon meringue tarts:
I am drooling just thinking of how it tastes like in my mouth. =D~~~ And it looks so cute and perfect-looking, with that whipped cream on top. I had 4, I think... Before they were all given out. =( I couldn't even bring them home! No leftovers! I brought home sorbet and gelato though. Guess how much? 20 litres worth. LOL. My freezer is packed to the brim with lychee sorbet, chocolate-banana gelato, coconut gelato and white coffee gelato! Had to take a cab home with all those huge melting tubs. I got a limo cab at the taxi stand. I hopped in, and to my horror, the meter started at $5. :O What the hell. Plus the $2 surcharge out of Expo and the peak hour surcharge, by the time I arrived home my fare was $18.75. :'( Worth it for all that gelato, you think?! When I took the train home, it would be evening and the weather these days would mean that it's time for almost-rain:
I love weather like that - no sun, cooling, no rain, kinda dark. =P On the first day of the exhibition, we only had to let people sample the gelato with ice-cream sticks, and give them a cup if they wanted one. But on the second day, we were told to just give out cups of gelato. Before we knew it, we were buzzing around like busy bees because people want free stuff!!! I wasn't prepared for the horror of scooping rock-hard frozen gelato, and by the end of the day, my right arm was hurting like a bitch. When I looked in the mirror, I realised it was visibly swollen. That same night when I got home, the pain was so unbearable that I cried. Even after I took a 24-hour painkiller and stuck 4 Chinese medicated plasters all over my arm, I still woke up with a sore arm the following day. I've never worked so hard in a long time! I'm so proud of myself. LOL.
And speaking of food, Elle had a day of leave to clear from work sometime the week before, so we decided to go for a high tea buffet at Orchard Point's Mushroom Pot:
OMG IT SUCKED LIKE HELL. I don't recommend anyone goes! The soup wasn't flavourful, the tofu was hard and the fried minced beef tasted like fried flour. YUCK. All that for $25 per person. Not worth it!!!!!! Got conned by the Facebook ad. I'd never ever go back there again.
Looks like this post is all about food. Ha. F1 roadshow tomorrow! See ya!
I popped by Pasir Ris farmway yesterday with Celine to do some volunteering at the shelters. Sylvester's friend organised a grooming drive at Gentle Paws, with the purpose of making the dogs look clean and nice to raise their chances for adoption. Bandanas were sponsored too, and I shared money with Sylvester to buy dog treats. Sylvester didn't go in the end 'cos he said he was sick. So I went with Celine... But majority of the volunteers there already knew one another, and because Sylvester was absent, Celine and I felt super extra standing around. I think they already had more than enough people, which makes me wonder why they even put up an open event on Facebook in the first place. While standing around, I snapped this...:
That's Mario, the resident social butterfly. He was the only dog running up and down the kennels and being a nosey and curious dog. It's endearing. And obviously he's done with his grooming 'cos of that blue bandana he's sporting. How handsome! LOL.
In the end, Sylvester's friend managed to offer me a task: play rodeo clown for the dogs. Okay well, so I was supposed to distract them while they have their individual photo taken with their bandana. But somewhere in the midst of all that, someone else decided to take over my task while I was still on it, so I decided they didn't really need help and I left to another shelter. I'm sure some of you have heard about the 75 dogs at the puppy mill. It was published in The New Paper as well. Anyway, you can check out http://dogmilllrehomers.blogspot.com/ to find out more, if you haven't already.
I bought some eggs and vegetables to bring to the farm so that the people could cook proper food for those dogs instead of just plain rice they had before they were "found". Plain rice, seriously? How much vitamin and minerals could plain rice possibly give?????? This is what I hate about puppy mills. You see those cute puppies rolling about in their showcases at the pet stores or just about anywhere, and you think they're so damn cute. They are. But their parents probably suffered at a puppy mill to produce them to meet the demands of us, human beings. A lot of people want a pure-bred, brand new puppy. Not everyone would consider adoption. When I tried to put Cookie up for adoption because I couldn't handle everything all at once, nobody even wanted to consider a mongrel. Seriously do you see people putting up forum ads with the subject line: "Looking to adopt a mongrel puppy"? Like real. They don't even wanna adopt at shelters. Puppy mill owners are running a business. A cruel one where they let the dogs mate and produce puppies for sale. And in the meantime, the welfare of these dogs are not taken care of. Seriously, who cares right? As long as there are new pups to sell = $$$$$? I care, because imagine being kept just to make babies. How miserable would your life be? When I was at the farm, I saw so many dogs running around and amidst all that barking and stench and dirt and matted fur and skin sores, a few female ones had saggy breasts from all the repeated pregnancies. And do they know what's going on? NO. What the fuck, seriously don't they deserve better than this??? I remembered visiting Joyce at her grooming store once and she was bringing a female German Shepherd for a walk. At first glance, the dog obviously didn't look right. Her fur was balding and she was really skinny. When I approached, she turned her head slowly to look at me and I met the saddest eyes I'd ever seen on a dog. It was like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. I asked Joyce what happened, and she told me that dog was kept solely for breeding purposes, and had lost all her fur due to many, many pregnancies. She'd probably been made use of her whole life. It's not right, is it? DON'T EVER, EVER BUY FROM PUPPY MILLS. Because if you do, you're not helping to stop the inhumane cycle.
Celine and I were each given a poodle to nurse because they were one of the many dogs with tick fever. Hers was male, mine was female. We put ice in plastic bags and wrapped them up with a cloth, and then held the poor dogs and placed the ice on their necks, armpits and inner thighs to reduce their temperature. Dogs have a higher body temperature than humans to begin with, and with tick fever, can you imagine how burning hot they felt to the touch? Celine got her poodle first before I got mine, and seriously the sight of that male poodle in Celine's lap just broke my heart. I'm sobbing as I'm writing this, because the dog was so feverish that he was in a daze. He looked really pathetic, weak and disorientated. I almost wanted to cry right then and there, but I told myself I had to suck it up 'cos I was there to help them, not to wallow. My female poodle refused to lie down, so in the end they put her on a drip. When the dogs left our laps, they left behind a mess of skin flakes. After Celine was done with her poodle, she set him down and proceeded to go out and walk a Cairns terrier. This white Jack Russell terrier got into a fight with the male poodle and bit his ear and there was quite a lot of blood for awhile. I sat around with all these shih-tzus and Golden Retrievers and Schnauzers... It was just lovely to be surrounded by so many dogs. I just wish they were in a better state. I know sometimes people tend to judge others.... I was in black jeans and a tank-top, Celine was in nice shorts and she had a girly scrunchie in her hair and we both had makeup on our faces. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't get down and dirty for the dogs, you know? Sometimes I wish people would give us a chance and not judge a book by its cover.
Anyway, one of the volunteers felt a huge tick in the Jack Russell, and she was too scared to pull it out. So I did, and burst it with my sandals. I reckoned there was more on him, so I took him for a shower and pulled out more ticks, big and small, mostly on his neck area. After that I dried him and walked him. He's a quiet dog, didn't fuss when I gave him a bath. I wished I caught his name, though. Don't know if he had one but yeah, this is him:
^_^ Celine and I left the place in the evening, and we went for sushi at Century Square. I reached home with aching joints and sore muscles, and for a minute I wondered if I caught tick fever too. LOL. But nuh, the work just took a toll on my old bones I suppose. Celine's actually a great dog-lover, and I'm really indebted to her for helping Gucci tremendously when he was hospitalised. If you wanna check out her blog, it's HERE! Haha. But yeah, we don't judge dogs for the sores on their skin or the smell emitting from them because right in the very center of them is a heart just wanting to love and be loved. I have lots and lots of love to give... I just don't have the necessary resources but I will try. Sometimes when I daydream, I imagine myself having lots and lots of unlimited money, and I imagine buying a huge plot of land to build an animal shelter to house all these abandoned and unwanted dogs, and I will feed them and care for them and there won't be adoption because I will wanna keep them all.
I hope the dogs at the mill find good homes soon, because I'd hate to wonder if they ever ponder about why their living conditions are this bad and why they're plagued with this sickness and that, and yet they can't do anything about it unless we help them. I felt good about myself after I helped out.... At the end of the day, I might only have nursed one dog and bathed and walked another, but slowly and surely, hopefully it'd make a difference because all I want is for them to have a good life and know that there is someone out there who would love them unconditionally like they do to us.
:'( Imma cry again. Check out http://dogmilllrehomers.blogspot.com/ and help out whichever way you can. It'd make a difference to these dogs because they really deserve a lot better.
Was just looking through my albums and found some baby pictures so I thought I'd share them. My mum said I was a fuss-free baby. Eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleeeeeeeep and sleep some more. And I got passed around a lot, like a ball. Everyone wanted to hold me, even counter salesgirls. I don't remember much about my childhood, except in little bits and pieces. Of course, I have no recollection of anything that happened until I was about 3 or 4. Me, as a baby:
This is my twin sister, she is soooo plastic!:
Me and my mother:
G'day, mate!:
Look! I was fat once!:
I think that's how it is for most people - you have baby fat when you're little, and then you shed them when you grow older, and then you gain the weight back as you progress through life and become slave to all the good food. Haha...
Anyway, that above picture made me realise how much I was probably afraid of being the centre of attention, fiddling with my bracelets in an empty field. =.= But look what I'm doing for a living now! Hahahaha.
I also loved art, and my mum sent me for art class. Out of all the trophies I have, only one is for sports. The rest are for art competitions, like this one:
I totally remember the above scenario. HAHAHA. I was colouring a picture of a fireman, and I remembered hesitating on what colour I wanted to use for the fireman's coat or something. And then my mum prompted, "What colour do you want to use for that?" And in my meek tiny little voice, I said, "..... Chocolate." And then my mum said, "Ah. Okay. Chocolate lor." LOL!!!! Some things just stay in your head.
A trip to town with my family and my favourite aunt who would buy us lots of presents all the time:
I remember this bike of mine... =):
The very first time I had a birthday celebration:
Look at my face. Claustrophobia x 1000. I didn't even know what was going on! I only remembered being really annoyed at my mum for suddenly showing up in class with a cake and everything, taking photos and making me the centre of attention. I was kinda scared. Yeah, I really was that shy.
And last but not least, at my next-door neighbour's:
Majority of the people who's seen that picture would go, "Why did you look mixed when you were young?" I didn't even think anything of it until people started asking the same question over and over. I don't know why I looked mixed, and all the more now, I don't know what happened! LOL!
When I think about my childhood, I think about 10-cent jelly and animal biscuits, about Barbie dolls (my favourite, Teresa!! I still have a Teresa now), about the plastic rulers that you slap on your wrist and they curl around it, about getting my lower lip stuck in the cap of my mineral water bottle because I decided to nip my own lip on purpose, and ended up bleeding and crying. I also remembered taking the doll out of the doll pram and kneeling on the pram with one knee, using the other to push myself around like a skateboard. How the doll pram ended up tipping over and I hit my chin on the floor and needed 5 stitches. That was also the first time in my life I saw my mum cry. And also the first time I knew how dizziness felt like when the anesthesia wore off. I was 4.
I had mumps in pre-school, chicken pox in Primary 5 (2 weeks off from Miss Joycelyn Tan, how amazing is that?!), the worst ankle sprain ever in Secondary 2. Started earning my own keep when I was 18.... Gone through this heartbreak and that, stupid mistakes etc. Getting slammed on gossip forums, having gossip flying all around me. I wonder why. Jealous much? If you sit and look back on your childhood, you'd realise that it really wasn't all that long ago. But add another 10 more years now and I'd be mid-way through my life. So scary, how time waits for no man. When I was a kid, I only had to worry about what time my favourite cartoon would be on so I wouldn't miss it. Now, I have to worry about Gucci and Cookie, along with the bills and the finance (they sort of come hand in hand), about work... etc. I have to work on my relationship to make sure it doesn't fall apart, I keep thinking how to make money and more money. $_$
When I got upset, I would buy a lot of storybooks and lose myself in them. It's just like how people go shopping for clothes.... But I buy books. I'm a weird bookworm person.
The other night while I was chillin' at the coffee shop with my cousin and her friends having drinks, we touched on the topic of school bullying. It was really random, but yeah, I was a victim of school bullying. Like, seriously I got it quite bad. Is that hard to tell? I don't think so, right? Judging by how my devil horns are made of sarcasm and how I now stand up for myself when I think I'm being unfairly treated, I am so making up for lost time. HAHAHAHA. =.= When I related my stories, Claudia and her friends all said I should blog about it. And so I think I shall do just that. I've never really talked about it here before because it simply just didn't cross my mind. No special reasons. Maybe also because it's been 6 years since I was last in school, and I just didn't think of wanting to blog about something so long ago. But now I shall!!
I was a quiet kid back in school. The very, very first time I realised school existed, I HATED it. It wasn't so much of the curriculum or the studying, I just felt safer and more secure hiding behind my mother. So imagine the problems the teacher had to deal with when I was separated from my mum. I was a cry-baby. But I outgrew it. In primary school, I got along well with the girls but I remember the boys who used to tease me. I even remember their names. Ming Yong, Guo Long, Kenji, Shaun Peh, Shaun Wu, Fabius. I always brought my skipping rope to school to play "Teddy Bear" or "Zero Point" with the girls during recess. One time in Primary 2, Ming Yong snatched my skipping rope and swung the wooden handle in my face. The next day, I had a black and purple bruise on my right cheekbone. In Primary 3 and 4, Guo Long called me names, Kenji hit me with his badminton racket and big, fat Fabius fell over me while he was playing catch in class when the teacher wasn't around.
The worst consequence I've ever had from primary school bullying came in Primary 5. I had forgotten to do this particular worksheet that we were supposed to hand in before the bell rang for assembly. I was in the afternoon session then, and after I found out it needed to be done, I rushed it quickly but I handed it in on time. My mother was with me in the canteen, and being her (she is still like that NOW), she started chiding me for watching cartoons all day and kept pushing my head with her finger. Of course, a lot of my classmates saw but I didn't even think of feeling embarrassed because I was so concentrated on my worksheet and thinking in my head that I really didn't hear the teacher tell us we needed to do that worksheet.
My form teacher in Primary 5 was Miss Jocelyn Tan. She was well-known to be really awesome at Maths and she could sing really well. She was also super fierce. She planted this fear in us when we watched her blindly slap students with their spelling books for having made the same old mistake while doing corrections. And then after that the spelling books would fly out the window. Miss Tan arranged our seating plan so that her beloved badminton boys (she was the CCA's teacher-in-charge) sat in the front with her by the teacher's table. I guess she also needed to keep an eye on them, since they were the same troublemakers. Shaun Peh and Kenji were among these boys. That same evening, the whole class was quietly doing work when suddenly I heard Miss Tan call my name. Confused as to why she summoned me, I walked to the front of the class. Miss Tan left me standing there and asked Shaun and Kenji, "This afternoon?" And right in front of my very eyes, Shaun said, "Yah. Her mother said she keep watching cartoon." So they ratted on me. It dawned on me that they were talking about the worksheet I rushed to finish in the canteen, obviously. Miss Tan said to my other classmate, "Jacqueline, ruler please." I remembered Jacqueline's face as she looked at me. It was full of fear. I don't know if it was the fear of Miss Tan's wrath or fear that she might have gotten me into trouble but yet couldn't defy the teacher's orders to hand over the ruler. The ruler was a 30-cm plastic one, but it was the kind of hard plastic whereby if you try and bend it, it snaps immediately instead of actually bending. Miss Tan said to me, "Hand." I was pale and speechless as I slowly extended my right hand. She hit me once with the ruler, and then again. And again. I don't know how many times she hit me, but I remembered with every hit, she said "Fann Wong". Why? Because it was the beginning of the school year and we'd just handed in a composition writing entitled "Myself". I wrote that my favourite actress was Fann Wong, and she's an actress, so Miss Tan sort of made the link when she heard I loved watching TV so much. She hit me on both hands, and she didn't stop even when I was already crying so hard, even asking for my hand back when I snatched it back from the unbearable pain. As an 11-year-old kid, there's only so much physical pain I can take right?!
At the end of the whole thing, as I walked back to my seat sobbing, my hands were swollen and red and purple. I kid you not. The last period was PE, and I wasn't even excused. By then, my sobs had already subsided. When my mum picked me up from school, the first thing she asked when she saw me was, "You cried, right?" I lied and told her I didn't. She demanded, "Don't lie to me. What happened?" I insisted I didn't, but her constant pestering finally made me break down and I burst into tears and told her Miss Tan hit me. My mum was like, "Where?!??!!" And I showed her my hands. She was boiling mad. Without even taking my dinner first, she dragged me to the doctor's. The doctor took one look at my hands and exclaimed in shock. He immediately wrote a doctor's letter and ordered my mum to hand it to the principal. YES, my hands were really that bad. I couldn't even hold my pencil or dinner spoon properly.
The principal said she would speak to Miss Tan privately, and until this day I have no idea what she said to her. But after that, Miss Tan never really dared to do anything to me anymore. Nothing physically painful, anyway. The point of this whole blabbering story is not so much about Miss Tan (although I agree she was monstrous and cruel), but more about how mean the boys were to have told on me anyways even though I handed in my worksheet on time, albeit a little bit of rushed work. And no, I'm not done!!!
Secondary school was when the girls started getting bitchier. Countless of them. Well, they were either bitchy or just mean in the sense that they never bothered about how I would feel. Angelina, Julia, Priscilla Foo, Cheryl Poon, Lydia, Norfadzlina, Sabeena, Ambika, Sasha - don't you all agree with me?? In Secondary 2, we were all assigned group work. The school named it "The IPW Project". We didn't get to choose our group partners, and I was grouped with Angelina, Julia, Kavikumar and a few other people. I thought Angelina and Julia were harmless, until one day during class, I got a note passed down to me. I opened it and it said:
"Dear Crystal, We quit the IPW project. You do yourself ok!!!! WE QUIT!!!!!!!!!"
And then every other group member signed off. I know some of them like Kavikumar weren't actually that mean, but I guess they just followed the leader or something. Brainwashed? *shrugs* All over the piece of paper were the words "WE QUIT!!!" in big and small handwriting, like decorations to fill up space. I didn't even make a sound, just silently crumpled up the piece of paper and left it on my desk. Didn't ask them about it too. I can't remember if I finished my project alone but yeah, that was how mean they could be.
In Secondary 3, I was put in the most notorious class along with ManQin and Angel. We were the noisiest and I think the only class who didn't bother studying. Everyone was like, "Let's all fail together!" And all of us didn't study. But some of them did, at the last minute. Of course ManQin and Angel did too, because I was the only one in our group who dropped from Secondary 3 Express to Secondary 4 Normal Academic. It added an extra year to my education, and I was put in a separate class from Angel and ManQin come Secondary 4. Our time-table differed too, and there was only one particular day of the week that we had the same recess. I would have recess with them, of course. But one day those 2 friends of mine decided together that they didn't wanna go to school. So that day, I was alone for recess. I asked Angelina and Julia and a few other girls, if I could join them instead, and they said yes. When the bell rang for recess, we all went to the washroom first. The Express classes had PE before that, so they were all changing out of their PE shirts. I was in a cubicle like the rest of them, but then just as I reached out to open my door, I heard giggling. I stepped out just in time to see Angelina grab her PE shirt from the bench and run out of the washroom together with the rest. She was too late. I sucked it up and went for recess alone, but before the first lesson after recess, I cried. It hurt, obviously. Because if they didn't want me to join them for recess, they could have said so. I didn't understand why they would say yes and then do this. I remembered Angelina came to me and asked, "Eh Crystal, are you okay?" I told her to get lost. After we all graduated, Friendster was all the rage. I got a friend request from Angelina, and a message in my inbox from her, saying sorry for having bullied me and asking me to let bygones be bygones. Thing is... I forgive, but I never forget.
Priscilla and Cheryl Poon were netballers. You know how popular they are, just like cheerleaders (except we didn't have cheerleading in school). Priscilla sat behind me in class, and Cheryl sat one seat away from Priscilla. Every time they made fun of me, I would hear them giggle or laugh out loud at their own insults, like they were the funniest and coolest girls in the world. I don't know why they decided to go against me, but one of them received prank calls one day and they came back to school the next, Priscilla banging her textbooks on her table and saying, "WAH! Somebody make prank calls, man!! Call SPCA and ask them to take her dog away!!!" Obviously they were implying and talking about me, and Gucci. I was within earshot, since I was right in front of Priscilla. I kept quiet but I told my mum about the false accusations, and my mum asked a favour from the class monitor to make them stop. He tried, but they accused him of having a crush on me and he got so embarrassed, he stopped trying. So the bullying continued. They stuck chewing gum on my chair so I would sit on it, and I would come back to school after an MC to find the word "BITCH" written across my table. One time, we had this table-decorating competition where we had to wrap our tables with mahjong paper and decorate it however we wanted. I flooded mine with pictures of Fann Wong. You know how classroom tables have this little drain at the top for your pencils? The mahjong paper wrapped over it too, and one day I came back from sick leave to find that someone had poked a ton of holes where that drain should have been. It ruined my entire effort. Priscilla and Cheryl would tease me about telling my mum, taunting me to go ahead and complain. I don't know why I let them manipulate me to that extent, but it kept my mouth shut. I didn't tell my mum a thing, and I suffered silently for weeks. I would come home from school everyday feeling miserable, and on the days when I couldn't take it, I would ask my mum if I could transfer schools but each time she would say 'no'. And each time, she would ask me for my reason but I always never told her. But I broke down one day during dinner and told her everything, and she went to see the discipline mistress about it. Can't remember when the bullying stopped, the memory is a little fuzzy but why did it matter? They weren't the only ones anyway. Last I heard, Cheryl Poon is still as arrogant as ever.
Norfadz was in the same Secondary 3 class as me, and she too, dropped to Normal Academic and was in the same Secondary 4 class as I was. She hung out with Lydia, and they were the smelly girls because they were fat and had body odour. I remembered Lydia even had yellow sweat stains on the armpits of her uniform. YUCK. She and Norfadz would obtain porn from the Internet, burn it into a CD and then bring it to school to exchange so they can bring it home to watch. I know, right? Girls watching porn. Around the brief time while I was still on speaking terms with Lydia, I remembered going to her house once after school to learn the piano. She taught me how to play a Christian song:
Lord, You are more precious than silver Lord, You are more costly than gold Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds And nothing I desire compares with You
I remembered it was my first time hearing that song, but it couldn't compare to the memory of walking into Lydia's room, only to have the sour smell of sweat hit me in my face. It was so strong! And uber gross. We fell out one day because of some F4 concert issue where she didn't return me my money after I handed it to her and she decided to go with her brother instead. Our mums got involved, and Lydia and her mum turned up at my doorstep over the weekend and threw my money at my feet. When I went back to school on Monday, Norfadz and the 3 Indian girls - Sasha, Ambika and Sabeena, they all heard about what happened because Lydia called them over the weekend and told them HER side of the story. Well, as if those 3 Indian girls didn't give me enough shit as it is. Sasha and Ambika called me "dog", and whenever they saw me approach, they would say, "Oh look! Here comes the DAWGGG!!!" Valdric and Vishal joined in and started taunting me. Then again, they usually did. One time after PE, I felt so faint and couldn't get up from my seat to go to the computer lab for lessons. Some of the other "neutral" girls asked if I was okay, and said I must need sugar in my blood. So they asked around for sweets, and they happened to ask Sasha, who was walking past to go to the lab at that time. She said, "No? And so what if I have?? I don't wanna give it to her lah. Just let her DIE." I swear if I weren't feeling so lousy then, I would have gotten up from my seat and punched her face right in.
I stopped going for recess altogether one day. We weren't allowed to stay in class during recess, but I would just sit in class with the lights and fans off so that the prefects doing their rounds wouldn't catch me. I would keep the doors half-closed and write in my journal, and I guess it helped that my seat was against the wall. Sometimes a prefect would open the door and find me there, but they let me stay all the same. I had to leave the classroom and go for recess when Sasha, Ambika and Sabeena started staying in class too, because I didn't want to be in the same room as them when I could help it. I didn't rat on them, but Ambika would always pull up MY chair to sit at Sasha's table, and then not push it back. They bought food from the canteen and ate it in class, and then after they were done, they threw it in my bag. Plastic bags from the burgers, biscuit wrappers, etc.
One fine day, I came back from the science lab to find my entire school bag MISSING. That was after the whole thingy with Lydia. I kept calm though, and waited for Mrs Lum to come in for POA lessons. I'd dropped that subject by then, so it was free periods for me, for 2 hours. I went up to her and told her what happened, and I said I know who did it but I needed a teacher's pass to look for my form teacher, Mdm Eio. As I walked back to my seat, I passed Norfadzlina. I knew she had something to do with it, 'cos I kept staring at her as I slowed down my pace, but she refused to look at me in the eye. She couldn't even pretend properly. I walked the entire school looking for Mdm Eio to report to her what had just happened. She was nice to me, she's always been. I spent the rest of my free periods looking for my bag but I still couldn't find it. So for the rest of the day, I had no books for class other than the heavy textbooks under my table that I carried by hand and book-strap. Mdm Eio detained the whole class after school and told them nobody can go until whoever took my bag owned up to it. The culprits refused to own up, obviously. They had the guts to do it but didn't have the guts to own up. In the end, Mdm Eio dismissed the whole grumbling class but made me and Lydia stay back. She tried to make us shake hands but of course we refused to. She grabbed both our hands and shoved them together, and it got me so mad that I left the classroom and banged the door so hard against the wall.
I walked into the school gates with my entire school bag but walked out of it with only 2 textbooks and my pencil-case in hand. It was kinda pathetic. I saw my sister and her boyfriend waiting for me opposite the school, and as I related what happened, my sister and her gangster boyfriend and their friend, all stormed straight to the principal's office. It was quite embarrassing, because they were in home clothes and my sister had golden hair at that time, her boyfriend's hair was fiery red and their friend had ash purple hair. OMG. They stood out from the school students, obviously. The school servant finally found my bag. At the rooftop. Everything was intact, nothing was lost. It was just an evil prank, but it wasn't funny at all. Valdric taunted me about my sister the next day. He pulled a chair up and sat next to me at my table, and he said, "EH. You ask your sister to come to school ah. So gangster, so scary." I looked at him and said, "If you don't shut up, I'd slap you." He offered me his cheek and patted it, a go-ahead. But I didn't. I turned my head the other way, out the window. He continued, "What's so nice outside? The scenery very nice meh?" I waited and waited until he laughed and finally moved away. Then my sister came to me and said she approached Valdric on mIRC, and he said he wanted to "settle things outside". OMFG, it was so stupid. My sister dragged me to the meeting location along with her boyfriend and a couple of other people, only to be met not by Valdric but by 2 policemen. -______- Apparently Valdric was gonna ask for the help of a senior, but it was the senior's final year and he wanted to concentrate on his studies, not stir trouble. So Valdric, left on his own, chickened out and he called the police instead. LOSERRRR!!! We were escorted back into school with the policemen and our discipline mistress. You can imagine the stares that followed all the way from the school gates to the principal's office. I didn't know why I even landed myself in that kinda trouble when it wasn't even me who started it! At one point in time, Valdric and I were left alone in the office, and he said to me, "Eh, I'm very sorry." I ignored him, and told him not to talk to me.
I remembered wayyy after we graduated, he actually told me he liked me. I wanted to barf. SORRY, NO CHANCE!!!! Here and there, there were the little incidents of bullying, name-calling. Sometimes it got serious, like I've mentioned above. It never really stopped, to be honest. I remembered I had a nightmare about it once. I'd already graduated by then, but in my dream, it was meet-the-parents session. I was walking down the stairs when I met Sasha, Ambika and Sabeena along the corridor. When they saw me, they went, "Here comes the DAWG!!" I went to the staff room to look for Mdm Eio, and I asked if she was gonna tell their parents. She said yes. I started crying, and I told Mdm Eio I'd already graduated, and I didn't know why they still wanted to pick on me. I woke up then, and my pillow was wet with tears. It was completely weird. I'd sort of fused life during school and after graduation together. But yeah, it surprised me to realise just how traumatised I actually was, if not why would I have even dreamt about it??
Last year, I got a message from Vishal in my inbox. It said (click to enlarge):
Like I said, I forgive but never forget... If I'd already forgotten, I wouldn't even remember so much of these in such detail. I remember Denise once said to me that name-calling is worse than fist-throwing because it damages the soul. I agree. With all that said, you must be wondering (like I did), why I was constantly picked on. I still have no idea. Maybe I was too quiet, a good student. Maybe I was just a nerd. I looked like that back in school:
That's Mdm Eio (and on my right, half of Sabeena). Mdm Eio was also Fiona Xie's form teacher once, and she has always told me how sweet Fiona was. I can't agree, though. Oh, and pukebox, I was from Saint Hilda's, not CHIJ. LOL, get your facts right. Okayyyy. I digress.
I was also sort of the English teacher's pet 'cos I excelled in languages. English was my favourite lesson, hands-down. I don't know why I was a bitch by keeping to myself, but I guess when people just wanna hate you, they will no matter how you are or what you do or say. Even now, at work or at the events I do, it's just the same. Aimee Thompson decided to hate on me during Deal or no Deal even though I'd never met her before in my entire life. She was just being childish and being a stupid white bitch. I've learnt to just let those insults roll off my back, and also to bite back twice as hard if I get bitten first.
I wrote all these not to expect pity, but I just wanna tell whoever is being bullied in school that you can stand up for yourself and whatever threats those bullies make on you are just silly, empty threats. What could they possibly do to you, man? Nothing. I only knew that when I graduated but you can realise it for yourself now. This is Singapore. They'd get into shit with the law if they really tried anything funny. If the school can't handle them, the law will. So you can fight back! I wish I could turn back time and do the same, but I guess it's never too late to learn. I got several apologies and messages regarding the bullying I got in school, and it just drives home the point that it wasn't my fault. It never was. If you wanna talk about faults, they all lie with the bullies for being freakin' insecure that they have to put other people down to make themselves feel better. It's true.
I don't need many friends, just that small handful. I might look like I have a lot of friends, but I know 80% of them have, at some point in time or constantly, bitched about me behind my back. If they can be fake, I can be fake too. Learn to protect yourself already. It's just how it is. ♥
The CHH issue is all over! NOT. I have moved on to blogging about other stuff (as you can see), but apparently the activity in the dog forums have failed to cease. The reason I only saw them now is because I haven't logged in for weeks, precisely because I have moved on from that entire shit thing. Fine, if other people want to question TK's issue of the $200 adoption fee, then go ahead. It's none of my business. It's his deal, his reasons, his "integrity", right? To that "DuNn0LaH" person in the forums, comparing me to Ris Low makes you as much a joker as she is. For starters, anyone can tell I speak and write way better than she can. And yes, your nick "DuNn0LaH" just shows you don't know anything. If you say I'm trying to "get the limelight", I can tell you that I don't need it. My blog is my platform to make myself heard, like I've said countless times before. It's been around for so long; if I wanted the limelight then why now and not in the beginning? DUMB. If you're so jealous, you can start your own damn blog too you know? Oh, right. You don't know!!!!
AND TK, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP MENTIONING MY NAME ALREADY. Saying, "Even Crystal agreed to it (the adoption fee) when I explained it to her... after that she decided to go the other direction when I didn't agree to simply hand the dog back to her." <--- HAHAHA, are you fuckin' serious?!?!?! I agreed???? Agreed on what? I questioned you about the fee, you gave me your reason. My "OKAY" meant, "Okay, I got what you mean." It does NOT mean "Okay, I am on your side and I agree with you." So stop letting your big fat ego jump to conclusions and fucking put words in my mouth, you bloody liar. There is also no point trying to explain things to Genevieve (of all people, why specifically leave comments on her blog?). Stop dragging her into this. She has already said everyone has moved on. More than a week ago. Except maybe you. So just get the hell over it and shut the fuck up, alright??? GAWD, you're such a loser...!!!
Went to Play with my cousin and her friends last night. It was the first time ever that I felt so EFFIN' BORED!!! Argh!!!! Now that I'm recalling it all over again, I'm so irked by the time I wasted there. Claudia, Mel, Daphne and I arrived before 10, and there were like less than 20 people inside. We sat in a corner and waited. BORED MAX!!:
MEL is totally looking at me like I'm scum!!! ='( LOL:
Ordered a jug of Asahi to share:
Daphne, you're a lousy photographer!!!:
The club did fill up gradually, but only after we went for a prata supper at Maxwell and came back then did it look like a club where people actually go to have fun. -.- Fatty food (the oyster omelette store was closed! SAD!):
It was nice seeing Candice after so long, though! And Juliet. And Ed. But Daziree, where were you?! LOL.
My cousin!:
Poor Mel, she looks so.... overwhelmed by me, somehow! HAHAHA:
You only attempt to camwhore in a club when it's that boring:
This is just plain retarded:
I don't know why when I look at the pictures, I think I look way older standing next to my cousin and her friends. :( I look like I'm out partying with kids! =.= It's been months and months since I last went to Play.... And then when I go back, it's so boring. Is it the DJ? I can't remember if it's a dude or a girl. But I just know that all the songs were ruined with the remixes. SAD! Gawd, it'd take some strong convincing to make me go again! Maybe it was an April's Fool joke. HA.
We all left early and went back to my place to walk my dogs. Gucci was mellow, as usual, while Cookie terrorised Claudia with his over-enthusiasm....... as usual. So much so that she decided to video it down!:
That's him offering me his paw in the beginning when I said "shake hand". And yes, that's how I walk him. Or rather, how he walks me. He doesn't understand the choke chain chokes him if he keeps tugging. And he tugs like hell. =.= Sometimes it's embarrassing when I have no strength to tug him back and I get dragged along while people look on. It's not even funny. Looking at the pics, he does look preeetty scary:
To a stranger, at least. But he's really just a little out of control, like when he decides to dive for Daphne's sneakers:
He's totally harmless. Of course, pervs and bad people lurking in the streets at night don't need to know that!!!
After the dog-walking, we all sat at the coffee shop, ordered drinks and chatted for ages. Yum yum, teh peng. Now at least that was time "wisely" spent! Instead of turning to mush in some boring club with lousy music........... (T_T)
It's that time of the year again. The tickets for F1 go on sale and the race once again, begins in September. For me, that means Grid Girls! Did an event for F1 yesterday in town. I had a lot of fun with the other girls, it was sort of like a mini-reunion. Well, except for this ONE girl I had no desire to see AT ALL, the rest of us were fine. Like I said, you don't get this lucky for the lottery, man. I was paired up with this particular slut, out of ALL the girls. URGH. She flatters herself too much. Especially when she went to request for a partner switch. Hahahahaha wutttt. Like I wanna be paired with her???!!!
It was raining and we couldn't do the roadshow for awhile, so we were stuck in the office building behind Forum Shopping Mall. I got bored and drew a dinosaur on the white board, and Shumin decided she would colour it green:
Baha, that crazy woman!
With Sheralynn and Constance:
Thank God I got Constance for the roadshow instead. She's so much fun, I love Constance!:
Our job was to stop people in the streets and ask if they'd like to participate in a show-and-tell to tell us why they love F1 and stand to win prizes. Everyone shunned us because they didn't wanna go on video. -.- I spent 3 hours getting rejected. The other girls had tasks that were so much more fun! Like for example, stopping traffic. =/ One of the Grid Girl F1 hardcore fans - we always see him everywhere:
After work, I went for dinner with Conz and we also went shopping at Forever21. It was awesome. ^_^ I love my Grid Girl friendssss. Well, not all but I can safely say Conz, Hamizah, Weiling, Rachel and Shumin are among them. Hahahaha. Will be seeing some of them at Stereophonics' concert on the 30th! We're all going together. Have a birthday surprise planned for one of the doods, I was told. Can't wait! Till then. xoxo
I worked for the FHA 2010 last week, from the 20th to 23rd:
It was my first time working for a food exhibition, if I recall correctly. I thought it was gonna be an events job like what I am used to doing, but it turned out to be more than that. I was working for The Dessert Empire, and basically I was scooping gelato all day and washing up at the end of the day. My uniform was a t-shirt and my own jeans. Although I got paid more than the part-timers I met there, I was still underpaid compared to like, a carshow or an IT fair job. But it was great fun nonetheless. I think F&B is a fun job, really. But it's such tough work. Check out the different tubs of gelato and sorbetti we had!:
YUMMAYYEE!!! They had alcoholic flavours like baileys, lychee martini and chocolate whiskey too! You can even customise your own flavours. So imagine like.... Cheese gelato? Or tomyam gelato? LOL. Creativity is endless! I had a taste of peanut butter gelato and bak gua gelato, I kid you not. But they weren't out for sample, it was behind-the-scenes. =P Isabelle was in charge of cakes and pastries...:
I've never been a big fan of cakes and stuff, but on the last day I hopped over to the cake counter and tried their lemon meringue tarts:
I am drooling just thinking of how it tastes like in my mouth. =D~~~ And it looks so cute and perfect-looking, with that whipped cream on top. I had 4, I think... Before they were all given out. =( I couldn't even bring them home! No leftovers! I brought home sorbet and gelato though. Guess how much? 20 litres worth. LOL. My freezer is packed to the brim with lychee sorbet, chocolate-banana gelato, coconut gelato and white coffee gelato! Had to take a cab home with all those huge melting tubs. I got a limo cab at the taxi stand. I hopped in, and to my horror, the meter started at $5. :O What the hell. Plus the $2 surcharge out of Expo and the peak hour surcharge, by the time I arrived home my fare was $18.75. :'( Worth it for all that gelato, you think?! When I took the train home, it would be evening and the weather these days would mean that it's time for almost-rain:
I love weather like that - no sun, cooling, no rain, kinda dark. =P On the first day of the exhibition, we only had to let people sample the gelato with ice-cream sticks, and give them a cup if they wanted one. But on the second day, we were told to just give out cups of gelato. Before we knew it, we were buzzing around like busy bees because people want free stuff!!! I wasn't prepared for the horror of scooping rock-hard frozen gelato, and by the end of the day, my right arm was hurting like a bitch. When I looked in the mirror, I realised it was visibly swollen. That same night when I got home, the pain was so unbearable that I cried. Even after I took a 24-hour painkiller and stuck 4 Chinese medicated plasters all over my arm, I still woke up with a sore arm the following day. I've never worked so hard in a long time! I'm so proud of myself. LOL.
And speaking of food, Elle had a day of leave to clear from work sometime the week before, so we decided to go for a high tea buffet at Orchard Point's Mushroom Pot:
OMG IT SUCKED LIKE HELL. I don't recommend anyone goes! The soup wasn't flavourful, the tofu was hard and the fried minced beef tasted like fried flour. YUCK. All that for $25 per person. Not worth it!!!!!! Got conned by the Facebook ad. I'd never ever go back there again.
Looks like this post is all about food. Ha. F1 roadshow tomorrow! See ya!
I popped by Pasir Ris farmway yesterday with Celine to do some volunteering at the shelters. Sylvester's friend organised a grooming drive at Gentle Paws, with the purpose of making the dogs look clean and nice to raise their chances for adoption. Bandanas were sponsored too, and I shared money with Sylvester to buy dog treats. Sylvester didn't go in the end 'cos he said he was sick. So I went with Celine... But majority of the volunteers there already knew one another, and because Sylvester was absent, Celine and I felt super extra standing around. I think they already had more than enough people, which makes me wonder why they even put up an open event on Facebook in the first place. While standing around, I snapped this...:
That's Mario, the resident social butterfly. He was the only dog running up and down the kennels and being a nosey and curious dog. It's endearing. And obviously he's done with his grooming 'cos of that blue bandana he's sporting. How handsome! LOL.
In the end, Sylvester's friend managed to offer me a task: play rodeo clown for the dogs. Okay well, so I was supposed to distract them while they have their individual photo taken with their bandana. But somewhere in the midst of all that, someone else decided to take over my task while I was still on it, so I decided they didn't really need help and I left to another shelter. I'm sure some of you have heard about the 75 dogs at the puppy mill. It was published in The New Paper as well. Anyway, you can check out http://dogmilllrehomers.blogspot.com/ to find out more, if you haven't already.
I bought some eggs and vegetables to bring to the farm so that the people could cook proper food for those dogs instead of just plain rice they had before they were "found". Plain rice, seriously? How much vitamin and minerals could plain rice possibly give?????? This is what I hate about puppy mills. You see those cute puppies rolling about in their showcases at the pet stores or just about anywhere, and you think they're so damn cute. They are. But their parents probably suffered at a puppy mill to produce them to meet the demands of us, human beings. A lot of people want a pure-bred, brand new puppy. Not everyone would consider adoption. When I tried to put Cookie up for adoption because I couldn't handle everything all at once, nobody even wanted to consider a mongrel. Seriously do you see people putting up forum ads with the subject line: "Looking to adopt a mongrel puppy"? Like real. They don't even wanna adopt at shelters. Puppy mill owners are running a business. A cruel one where they let the dogs mate and produce puppies for sale. And in the meantime, the welfare of these dogs are not taken care of. Seriously, who cares right? As long as there are new pups to sell = $$$$$? I care, because imagine being kept just to make babies. How miserable would your life be? When I was at the farm, I saw so many dogs running around and amidst all that barking and stench and dirt and matted fur and skin sores, a few female ones had saggy breasts from all the repeated pregnancies. And do they know what's going on? NO. What the fuck, seriously don't they deserve better than this??? I remembered visiting Joyce at her grooming store once and she was bringing a female German Shepherd for a walk. At first glance, the dog obviously didn't look right. Her fur was balding and she was really skinny. When I approached, she turned her head slowly to look at me and I met the saddest eyes I'd ever seen on a dog. It was like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. I asked Joyce what happened, and she told me that dog was kept solely for breeding purposes, and had lost all her fur due to many, many pregnancies. She'd probably been made use of her whole life. It's not right, is it? DON'T EVER, EVER BUY FROM PUPPY MILLS. Because if you do, you're not helping to stop the inhumane cycle.
Celine and I were each given a poodle to nurse because they were one of the many dogs with tick fever. Hers was male, mine was female. We put ice in plastic bags and wrapped them up with a cloth, and then held the poor dogs and placed the ice on their necks, armpits and inner thighs to reduce their temperature. Dogs have a higher body temperature than humans to begin with, and with tick fever, can you imagine how burning hot they felt to the touch? Celine got her poodle first before I got mine, and seriously the sight of that male poodle in Celine's lap just broke my heart. I'm sobbing as I'm writing this, because the dog was so feverish that he was in a daze. He looked really pathetic, weak and disorientated. I almost wanted to cry right then and there, but I told myself I had to suck it up 'cos I was there to help them, not to wallow. My female poodle refused to lie down, so in the end they put her on a drip. When the dogs left our laps, they left behind a mess of skin flakes. After Celine was done with her poodle, she set him down and proceeded to go out and walk a Cairns terrier. This white Jack Russell terrier got into a fight with the male poodle and bit his ear and there was quite a lot of blood for awhile. I sat around with all these shih-tzus and Golden Retrievers and Schnauzers... It was just lovely to be surrounded by so many dogs. I just wish they were in a better state. I know sometimes people tend to judge others.... I was in black jeans and a tank-top, Celine was in nice shorts and she had a girly scrunchie in her hair and we both had makeup on our faces. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't get down and dirty for the dogs, you know? Sometimes I wish people would give us a chance and not judge a book by its cover.
Anyway, one of the volunteers felt a huge tick in the Jack Russell, and she was too scared to pull it out. So I did, and burst it with my sandals. I reckoned there was more on him, so I took him for a shower and pulled out more ticks, big and small, mostly on his neck area. After that I dried him and walked him. He's a quiet dog, didn't fuss when I gave him a bath. I wished I caught his name, though. Don't know if he had one but yeah, this is him:
^_^ Celine and I left the place in the evening, and we went for sushi at Century Square. I reached home with aching joints and sore muscles, and for a minute I wondered if I caught tick fever too. LOL. But nuh, the work just took a toll on my old bones I suppose. Celine's actually a great dog-lover, and I'm really indebted to her for helping Gucci tremendously when he was hospitalised. If you wanna check out her blog, it's HERE! Haha. But yeah, we don't judge dogs for the sores on their skin or the smell emitting from them because right in the very center of them is a heart just wanting to love and be loved. I have lots and lots of love to give... I just don't have the necessary resources but I will try. Sometimes when I daydream, I imagine myself having lots and lots of unlimited money, and I imagine buying a huge plot of land to build an animal shelter to house all these abandoned and unwanted dogs, and I will feed them and care for them and there won't be adoption because I will wanna keep them all.
I hope the dogs at the mill find good homes soon, because I'd hate to wonder if they ever ponder about why their living conditions are this bad and why they're plagued with this sickness and that, and yet they can't do anything about it unless we help them. I felt good about myself after I helped out.... At the end of the day, I might only have nursed one dog and bathed and walked another, but slowly and surely, hopefully it'd make a difference because all I want is for them to have a good life and know that there is someone out there who would love them unconditionally like they do to us.
:'( Imma cry again. Check out http://dogmilllrehomers.blogspot.com/ and help out whichever way you can. It'd make a difference to these dogs because they really deserve a lot better.
Was just looking through my albums and found some baby pictures so I thought I'd share them. My mum said I was a fuss-free baby. Eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleeeeeeeep and sleep some more. And I got passed around a lot, like a ball. Everyone wanted to hold me, even counter salesgirls. I don't remember much about my childhood, except in little bits and pieces. Of course, I have no recollection of anything that happened until I was about 3 or 4. Me, as a baby:
This is my twin sister, she is soooo plastic!:
Me and my mother:
G'day, mate!:
Look! I was fat once!:
I think that's how it is for most people - you have baby fat when you're little, and then you shed them when you grow older, and then you gain the weight back as you progress through life and become slave to all the good food. Haha...
Anyway, that above picture made me realise how much I was probably afraid of being the centre of attention, fiddling with my bracelets in an empty field. =.= But look what I'm doing for a living now! Hahahaha.
I also loved art, and my mum sent me for art class. Out of all the trophies I have, only one is for sports. The rest are for art competitions, like this one:
I totally remember the above scenario. HAHAHA. I was colouring a picture of a fireman, and I remembered hesitating on what colour I wanted to use for the fireman's coat or something. And then my mum prompted, "What colour do you want to use for that?" And in my meek tiny little voice, I said, "..... Chocolate." And then my mum said, "Ah. Okay. Chocolate lor." LOL!!!! Some things just stay in your head.
A trip to town with my family and my favourite aunt who would buy us lots of presents all the time:
I remember this bike of mine... =):
The very first time I had a birthday celebration:
Look at my face. Claustrophobia x 1000. I didn't even know what was going on! I only remembered being really annoyed at my mum for suddenly showing up in class with a cake and everything, taking photos and making me the centre of attention. I was kinda scared. Yeah, I really was that shy.
And last but not least, at my next-door neighbour's:
Majority of the people who's seen that picture would go, "Why did you look mixed when you were young?" I didn't even think anything of it until people started asking the same question over and over. I don't know why I looked mixed, and all the more now, I don't know what happened! LOL!
When I think about my childhood, I think about 10-cent jelly and animal biscuits, about Barbie dolls (my favourite, Teresa!! I still have a Teresa now), about the plastic rulers that you slap on your wrist and they curl around it, about getting my lower lip stuck in the cap of my mineral water bottle because I decided to nip my own lip on purpose, and ended up bleeding and crying. I also remembered taking the doll out of the doll pram and kneeling on the pram with one knee, using the other to push myself around like a skateboard. How the doll pram ended up tipping over and I hit my chin on the floor and needed 5 stitches. That was also the first time in my life I saw my mum cry. And also the first time I knew how dizziness felt like when the anesthesia wore off. I was 4.
I had mumps in pre-school, chicken pox in Primary 5 (2 weeks off from Miss Joycelyn Tan, how amazing is that?!), the worst ankle sprain ever in Secondary 2. Started earning my own keep when I was 18.... Gone through this heartbreak and that, stupid mistakes etc. Getting slammed on gossip forums, having gossip flying all around me. I wonder why. Jealous much? If you sit and look back on your childhood, you'd realise that it really wasn't all that long ago. But add another 10 more years now and I'd be mid-way through my life. So scary, how time waits for no man. When I was a kid, I only had to worry about what time my favourite cartoon would be on so I wouldn't miss it. Now, I have to worry about Gucci and Cookie, along with the bills and the finance (they sort of come hand in hand), about work... etc. I have to work on my relationship to make sure it doesn't fall apart, I keep thinking how to make money and more money. $_$
When I got upset, I would buy a lot of storybooks and lose myself in them. It's just like how people go shopping for clothes.... But I buy books. I'm a weird bookworm person.
Life. What do you know about it?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
School bullying
The other night while I was chillin' at the coffee shop with my cousin and her friends having drinks, we touched on the topic of school bullying. It was really random, but yeah, I was a victim of school bullying. Like, seriously I got it quite bad. Is that hard to tell? I don't think so, right? Judging by how my devil horns are made of sarcasm and how I now stand up for myself when I think I'm being unfairly treated, I am so making up for lost time. HAHAHAHA. =.= When I related my stories, Claudia and her friends all said I should blog about it. And so I think I shall do just that. I've never really talked about it here before because it simply just didn't cross my mind. No special reasons. Maybe also because it's been 6 years since I was last in school, and I just didn't think of wanting to blog about something so long ago. But now I shall!!
I was a quiet kid back in school. The very, very first time I realised school existed, I HATED it. It wasn't so much of the curriculum or the studying, I just felt safer and more secure hiding behind my mother. So imagine the problems the teacher had to deal with when I was separated from my mum. I was a cry-baby. But I outgrew it. In primary school, I got along well with the girls but I remember the boys who used to tease me. I even remember their names. Ming Yong, Guo Long, Kenji, Shaun Peh, Shaun Wu, Fabius. I always brought my skipping rope to school to play "Teddy Bear" or "Zero Point" with the girls during recess. One time in Primary 2, Ming Yong snatched my skipping rope and swung the wooden handle in my face. The next day, I had a black and purple bruise on my right cheekbone. In Primary 3 and 4, Guo Long called me names, Kenji hit me with his badminton racket and big, fat Fabius fell over me while he was playing catch in class when the teacher wasn't around.
The worst consequence I've ever had from primary school bullying came in Primary 5. I had forgotten to do this particular worksheet that we were supposed to hand in before the bell rang for assembly. I was in the afternoon session then, and after I found out it needed to be done, I rushed it quickly but I handed it in on time. My mother was with me in the canteen, and being her (she is still like that NOW), she started chiding me for watching cartoons all day and kept pushing my head with her finger. Of course, a lot of my classmates saw but I didn't even think of feeling embarrassed because I was so concentrated on my worksheet and thinking in my head that I really didn't hear the teacher tell us we needed to do that worksheet.
My form teacher in Primary 5 was Miss Jocelyn Tan. She was well-known to be really awesome at Maths and she could sing really well. She was also super fierce. She planted this fear in us when we watched her blindly slap students with their spelling books for having made the same old mistake while doing corrections. And then after that the spelling books would fly out the window. Miss Tan arranged our seating plan so that her beloved badminton boys (she was the CCA's teacher-in-charge) sat in the front with her by the teacher's table. I guess she also needed to keep an eye on them, since they were the same troublemakers. Shaun Peh and Kenji were among these boys. That same evening, the whole class was quietly doing work when suddenly I heard Miss Tan call my name. Confused as to why she summoned me, I walked to the front of the class. Miss Tan left me standing there and asked Shaun and Kenji, "This afternoon?" And right in front of my very eyes, Shaun said, "Yah. Her mother said she keep watching cartoon." So they ratted on me. It dawned on me that they were talking about the worksheet I rushed to finish in the canteen, obviously. Miss Tan said to my other classmate, "Jacqueline, ruler please." I remembered Jacqueline's face as she looked at me. It was full of fear. I don't know if it was the fear of Miss Tan's wrath or fear that she might have gotten me into trouble but yet couldn't defy the teacher's orders to hand over the ruler. The ruler was a 30-cm plastic one, but it was the kind of hard plastic whereby if you try and bend it, it snaps immediately instead of actually bending. Miss Tan said to me, "Hand." I was pale and speechless as I slowly extended my right hand. She hit me once with the ruler, and then again. And again. I don't know how many times she hit me, but I remembered with every hit, she said "Fann Wong". Why? Because it was the beginning of the school year and we'd just handed in a composition writing entitled "Myself". I wrote that my favourite actress was Fann Wong, and she's an actress, so Miss Tan sort of made the link when she heard I loved watching TV so much. She hit me on both hands, and she didn't stop even when I was already crying so hard, even asking for my hand back when I snatched it back from the unbearable pain. As an 11-year-old kid, there's only so much physical pain I can take right?!
At the end of the whole thing, as I walked back to my seat sobbing, my hands were swollen and red and purple. I kid you not. The last period was PE, and I wasn't even excused. By then, my sobs had already subsided. When my mum picked me up from school, the first thing she asked when she saw me was, "You cried, right?" I lied and told her I didn't. She demanded, "Don't lie to me. What happened?" I insisted I didn't, but her constant pestering finally made me break down and I burst into tears and told her Miss Tan hit me. My mum was like, "Where?!??!!" And I showed her my hands. She was boiling mad. Without even taking my dinner first, she dragged me to the doctor's. The doctor took one look at my hands and exclaimed in shock. He immediately wrote a doctor's letter and ordered my mum to hand it to the principal. YES, my hands were really that bad. I couldn't even hold my pencil or dinner spoon properly.
The principal said she would speak to Miss Tan privately, and until this day I have no idea what she said to her. But after that, Miss Tan never really dared to do anything to me anymore. Nothing physically painful, anyway. The point of this whole blabbering story is not so much about Miss Tan (although I agree she was monstrous and cruel), but more about how mean the boys were to have told on me anyways even though I handed in my worksheet on time, albeit a little bit of rushed work. And no, I'm not done!!!
Secondary school was when the girls started getting bitchier. Countless of them. Well, they were either bitchy or just mean in the sense that they never bothered about how I would feel. Angelina, Julia, Priscilla Foo, Cheryl Poon, Lydia, Norfadzlina, Sabeena, Ambika, Sasha - don't you all agree with me?? In Secondary 2, we were all assigned group work. The school named it "The IPW Project". We didn't get to choose our group partners, and I was grouped with Angelina, Julia, Kavikumar and a few other people. I thought Angelina and Julia were harmless, until one day during class, I got a note passed down to me. I opened it and it said:
"Dear Crystal, We quit the IPW project. You do yourself ok!!!! WE QUIT!!!!!!!!!"
And then every other group member signed off. I know some of them like Kavikumar weren't actually that mean, but I guess they just followed the leader or something. Brainwashed? *shrugs* All over the piece of paper were the words "WE QUIT!!!" in big and small handwriting, like decorations to fill up space. I didn't even make a sound, just silently crumpled up the piece of paper and left it on my desk. Didn't ask them about it too. I can't remember if I finished my project alone but yeah, that was how mean they could be.
In Secondary 3, I was put in the most notorious class along with ManQin and Angel. We were the noisiest and I think the only class who didn't bother studying. Everyone was like, "Let's all fail together!" And all of us didn't study. But some of them did, at the last minute. Of course ManQin and Angel did too, because I was the only one in our group who dropped from Secondary 3 Express to Secondary 4 Normal Academic. It added an extra year to my education, and I was put in a separate class from Angel and ManQin come Secondary 4. Our time-table differed too, and there was only one particular day of the week that we had the same recess. I would have recess with them, of course. But one day those 2 friends of mine decided together that they didn't wanna go to school. So that day, I was alone for recess. I asked Angelina and Julia and a few other girls, if I could join them instead, and they said yes. When the bell rang for recess, we all went to the washroom first. The Express classes had PE before that, so they were all changing out of their PE shirts. I was in a cubicle like the rest of them, but then just as I reached out to open my door, I heard giggling. I stepped out just in time to see Angelina grab her PE shirt from the bench and run out of the washroom together with the rest. She was too late. I sucked it up and went for recess alone, but before the first lesson after recess, I cried. It hurt, obviously. Because if they didn't want me to join them for recess, they could have said so. I didn't understand why they would say yes and then do this. I remembered Angelina came to me and asked, "Eh Crystal, are you okay?" I told her to get lost. After we all graduated, Friendster was all the rage. I got a friend request from Angelina, and a message in my inbox from her, saying sorry for having bullied me and asking me to let bygones be bygones. Thing is... I forgive, but I never forget.
Priscilla and Cheryl Poon were netballers. You know how popular they are, just like cheerleaders (except we didn't have cheerleading in school). Priscilla sat behind me in class, and Cheryl sat one seat away from Priscilla. Every time they made fun of me, I would hear them giggle or laugh out loud at their own insults, like they were the funniest and coolest girls in the world. I don't know why they decided to go against me, but one of them received prank calls one day and they came back to school the next, Priscilla banging her textbooks on her table and saying, "WAH! Somebody make prank calls, man!! Call SPCA and ask them to take her dog away!!!" Obviously they were implying and talking about me, and Gucci. I was within earshot, since I was right in front of Priscilla. I kept quiet but I told my mum about the false accusations, and my mum asked a favour from the class monitor to make them stop. He tried, but they accused him of having a crush on me and he got so embarrassed, he stopped trying. So the bullying continued. They stuck chewing gum on my chair so I would sit on it, and I would come back to school after an MC to find the word "BITCH" written across my table. One time, we had this table-decorating competition where we had to wrap our tables with mahjong paper and decorate it however we wanted. I flooded mine with pictures of Fann Wong. You know how classroom tables have this little drain at the top for your pencils? The mahjong paper wrapped over it too, and one day I came back from sick leave to find that someone had poked a ton of holes where that drain should have been. It ruined my entire effort. Priscilla and Cheryl would tease me about telling my mum, taunting me to go ahead and complain. I don't know why I let them manipulate me to that extent, but it kept my mouth shut. I didn't tell my mum a thing, and I suffered silently for weeks. I would come home from school everyday feeling miserable, and on the days when I couldn't take it, I would ask my mum if I could transfer schools but each time she would say 'no'. And each time, she would ask me for my reason but I always never told her. But I broke down one day during dinner and told her everything, and she went to see the discipline mistress about it. Can't remember when the bullying stopped, the memory is a little fuzzy but why did it matter? They weren't the only ones anyway. Last I heard, Cheryl Poon is still as arrogant as ever.
Norfadz was in the same Secondary 3 class as me, and she too, dropped to Normal Academic and was in the same Secondary 4 class as I was. She hung out with Lydia, and they were the smelly girls because they were fat and had body odour. I remembered Lydia even had yellow sweat stains on the armpits of her uniform. YUCK. She and Norfadz would obtain porn from the Internet, burn it into a CD and then bring it to school to exchange so they can bring it home to watch. I know, right? Girls watching porn. Around the brief time while I was still on speaking terms with Lydia, I remembered going to her house once after school to learn the piano. She taught me how to play a Christian song:
Lord, You are more precious than silver Lord, You are more costly than gold Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds And nothing I desire compares with You
I remembered it was my first time hearing that song, but it couldn't compare to the memory of walking into Lydia's room, only to have the sour smell of sweat hit me in my face. It was so strong! And uber gross. We fell out one day because of some F4 concert issue where she didn't return me my money after I handed it to her and she decided to go with her brother instead. Our mums got involved, and Lydia and her mum turned up at my doorstep over the weekend and threw my money at my feet. When I went back to school on Monday, Norfadz and the 3 Indian girls - Sasha, Ambika and Sabeena, they all heard about what happened because Lydia called them over the weekend and told them HER side of the story. Well, as if those 3 Indian girls didn't give me enough shit as it is. Sasha and Ambika called me "dog", and whenever they saw me approach, they would say, "Oh look! Here comes the DAWGGG!!!" Valdric and Vishal joined in and started taunting me. Then again, they usually did. One time after PE, I felt so faint and couldn't get up from my seat to go to the computer lab for lessons. Some of the other "neutral" girls asked if I was okay, and said I must need sugar in my blood. So they asked around for sweets, and they happened to ask Sasha, who was walking past to go to the lab at that time. She said, "No? And so what if I have?? I don't wanna give it to her lah. Just let her DIE." I swear if I weren't feeling so lousy then, I would have gotten up from my seat and punched her face right in.
I stopped going for recess altogether one day. We weren't allowed to stay in class during recess, but I would just sit in class with the lights and fans off so that the prefects doing their rounds wouldn't catch me. I would keep the doors half-closed and write in my journal, and I guess it helped that my seat was against the wall. Sometimes a prefect would open the door and find me there, but they let me stay all the same. I had to leave the classroom and go for recess when Sasha, Ambika and Sabeena started staying in class too, because I didn't want to be in the same room as them when I could help it. I didn't rat on them, but Ambika would always pull up MY chair to sit at Sasha's table, and then not push it back. They bought food from the canteen and ate it in class, and then after they were done, they threw it in my bag. Plastic bags from the burgers, biscuit wrappers, etc.
One fine day, I came back from the science lab to find my entire school bag MISSING. That was after the whole thingy with Lydia. I kept calm though, and waited for Mrs Lum to come in for POA lessons. I'd dropped that subject by then, so it was free periods for me, for 2 hours. I went up to her and told her what happened, and I said I know who did it but I needed a teacher's pass to look for my form teacher, Mdm Eio. As I walked back to my seat, I passed Norfadzlina. I knew she had something to do with it, 'cos I kept staring at her as I slowed down my pace, but she refused to look at me in the eye. She couldn't even pretend properly. I walked the entire school looking for Mdm Eio to report to her what had just happened. She was nice to me, she's always been. I spent the rest of my free periods looking for my bag but I still couldn't find it. So for the rest of the day, I had no books for class other than the heavy textbooks under my table that I carried by hand and book-strap. Mdm Eio detained the whole class after school and told them nobody can go until whoever took my bag owned up to it. The culprits refused to own up, obviously. They had the guts to do it but didn't have the guts to own up. In the end, Mdm Eio dismissed the whole grumbling class but made me and Lydia stay back. She tried to make us shake hands but of course we refused to. She grabbed both our hands and shoved them together, and it got me so mad that I left the classroom and banged the door so hard against the wall.
I walked into the school gates with my entire school bag but walked out of it with only 2 textbooks and my pencil-case in hand. It was kinda pathetic. I saw my sister and her boyfriend waiting for me opposite the school, and as I related what happened, my sister and her gangster boyfriend and their friend, all stormed straight to the principal's office. It was quite embarrassing, because they were in home clothes and my sister had golden hair at that time, her boyfriend's hair was fiery red and their friend had ash purple hair. OMG. They stood out from the school students, obviously. The school servant finally found my bag. At the rooftop. Everything was intact, nothing was lost. It was just an evil prank, but it wasn't funny at all. Valdric taunted me about my sister the next day. He pulled a chair up and sat next to me at my table, and he said, "EH. You ask your sister to come to school ah. So gangster, so scary." I looked at him and said, "If you don't shut up, I'd slap you." He offered me his cheek and patted it, a go-ahead. But I didn't. I turned my head the other way, out the window. He continued, "What's so nice outside? The scenery very nice meh?" I waited and waited until he laughed and finally moved away. Then my sister came to me and said she approached Valdric on mIRC, and he said he wanted to "settle things outside". OMFG, it was so stupid. My sister dragged me to the meeting location along with her boyfriend and a couple of other people, only to be met not by Valdric but by 2 policemen. -______- Apparently Valdric was gonna ask for the help of a senior, but it was the senior's final year and he wanted to concentrate on his studies, not stir trouble. So Valdric, left on his own, chickened out and he called the police instead. LOSERRRR!!! We were escorted back into school with the policemen and our discipline mistress. You can imagine the stares that followed all the way from the school gates to the principal's office. I didn't know why I even landed myself in that kinda trouble when it wasn't even me who started it! At one point in time, Valdric and I were left alone in the office, and he said to me, "Eh, I'm very sorry." I ignored him, and told him not to talk to me.
I remembered wayyy after we graduated, he actually told me he liked me. I wanted to barf. SORRY, NO CHANCE!!!! Here and there, there were the little incidents of bullying, name-calling. Sometimes it got serious, like I've mentioned above. It never really stopped, to be honest. I remembered I had a nightmare about it once. I'd already graduated by then, but in my dream, it was meet-the-parents session. I was walking down the stairs when I met Sasha, Ambika and Sabeena along the corridor. When they saw me, they went, "Here comes the DAWG!!" I went to the staff room to look for Mdm Eio, and I asked if she was gonna tell their parents. She said yes. I started crying, and I told Mdm Eio I'd already graduated, and I didn't know why they still wanted to pick on me. I woke up then, and my pillow was wet with tears. It was completely weird. I'd sort of fused life during school and after graduation together. But yeah, it surprised me to realise just how traumatised I actually was, if not why would I have even dreamt about it??
Last year, I got a message from Vishal in my inbox. It said (click to enlarge):
Like I said, I forgive but never forget... If I'd already forgotten, I wouldn't even remember so much of these in such detail. I remember Denise once said to me that name-calling is worse than fist-throwing because it damages the soul. I agree. With all that said, you must be wondering (like I did), why I was constantly picked on. I still have no idea. Maybe I was too quiet, a good student. Maybe I was just a nerd. I looked like that back in school:
That's Mdm Eio (and on my right, half of Sabeena). Mdm Eio was also Fiona Xie's form teacher once, and she has always told me how sweet Fiona was. I can't agree, though. Oh, and pukebox, I was from Saint Hilda's, not CHIJ. LOL, get your facts right. Okayyyy. I digress.
I was also sort of the English teacher's pet 'cos I excelled in languages. English was my favourite lesson, hands-down. I don't know why I was a bitch by keeping to myself, but I guess when people just wanna hate you, they will no matter how you are or what you do or say. Even now, at work or at the events I do, it's just the same. Aimee Thompson decided to hate on me during Deal or no Deal even though I'd never met her before in my entire life. She was just being childish and being a stupid white bitch. I've learnt to just let those insults roll off my back, and also to bite back twice as hard if I get bitten first.
I wrote all these not to expect pity, but I just wanna tell whoever is being bullied in school that you can stand up for yourself and whatever threats those bullies make on you are just silly, empty threats. What could they possibly do to you, man? Nothing. I only knew that when I graduated but you can realise it for yourself now. This is Singapore. They'd get into shit with the law if they really tried anything funny. If the school can't handle them, the law will. So you can fight back! I wish I could turn back time and do the same, but I guess it's never too late to learn. I got several apologies and messages regarding the bullying I got in school, and it just drives home the point that it wasn't my fault. It never was. If you wanna talk about faults, they all lie with the bullies for being freakin' insecure that they have to put other people down to make themselves feel better. It's true.
I don't need many friends, just that small handful. I might look like I have a lot of friends, but I know 80% of them have, at some point in time or constantly, bitched about me behind my back. If they can be fake, I can be fake too. Learn to protect yourself already. It's just how it is. ♥
The CHH issue is all over! NOT. I have moved on to blogging about other stuff (as you can see), but apparently the activity in the dog forums have failed to cease. The reason I only saw them now is because I haven't logged in for weeks, precisely because I have moved on from that entire shit thing. Fine, if other people want to question TK's issue of the $200 adoption fee, then go ahead. It's none of my business. It's his deal, his reasons, his "integrity", right? To that "DuNn0LaH" person in the forums, comparing me to Ris Low makes you as much a joker as she is. For starters, anyone can tell I speak and write way better than she can. And yes, your nick "DuNn0LaH" just shows you don't know anything. If you say I'm trying to "get the limelight", I can tell you that I don't need it. My blog is my platform to make myself heard, like I've said countless times before. It's been around for so long; if I wanted the limelight then why now and not in the beginning? DUMB. If you're so jealous, you can start your own damn blog too you know? Oh, right. You don't know!!!!
AND TK, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP MENTIONING MY NAME ALREADY. Saying, "Even Crystal agreed to it (the adoption fee) when I explained it to her... after that she decided to go the other direction when I didn't agree to simply hand the dog back to her." <--- HAHAHA, are you fuckin' serious?!?!?! I agreed???? Agreed on what? I questioned you about the fee, you gave me your reason. My "OKAY" meant, "Okay, I got what you mean." It does NOT mean "Okay, I am on your side and I agree with you." So stop letting your big fat ego jump to conclusions and fucking put words in my mouth, you bloody liar. There is also no point trying to explain things to Genevieve (of all people, why specifically leave comments on her blog?). Stop dragging her into this. She has already said everyone has moved on. More than a week ago. Except maybe you. So just get the hell over it and shut the fuck up, alright??? GAWD, you're such a loser...!!!
Went to Play with my cousin and her friends last night. It was the first time ever that I felt so EFFIN' BORED!!! Argh!!!! Now that I'm recalling it all over again, I'm so irked by the time I wasted there. Claudia, Mel, Daphne and I arrived before 10, and there were like less than 20 people inside. We sat in a corner and waited. BORED MAX!!:
MEL is totally looking at me like I'm scum!!! ='( LOL:
Ordered a jug of Asahi to share:
Daphne, you're a lousy photographer!!!:
The club did fill up gradually, but only after we went for a prata supper at Maxwell and came back then did it look like a club where people actually go to have fun. -.- Fatty food (the oyster omelette store was closed! SAD!):
It was nice seeing Candice after so long, though! And Juliet. And Ed. But Daziree, where were you?! LOL.
My cousin!:
Poor Mel, she looks so.... overwhelmed by me, somehow! HAHAHA:
You only attempt to camwhore in a club when it's that boring:
This is just plain retarded:
I don't know why when I look at the pictures, I think I look way older standing next to my cousin and her friends. :( I look like I'm out partying with kids! =.= It's been months and months since I last went to Play.... And then when I go back, it's so boring. Is it the DJ? I can't remember if it's a dude or a girl. But I just know that all the songs were ruined with the remixes. SAD! Gawd, it'd take some strong convincing to make me go again! Maybe it was an April's Fool joke. HA.
We all left early and went back to my place to walk my dogs. Gucci was mellow, as usual, while Cookie terrorised Claudia with his over-enthusiasm....... as usual. So much so that she decided to video it down!:
That's him offering me his paw in the beginning when I said "shake hand". And yes, that's how I walk him. Or rather, how he walks me. He doesn't understand the choke chain chokes him if he keeps tugging. And he tugs like hell. =.= Sometimes it's embarrassing when I have no strength to tug him back and I get dragged along while people look on. It's not even funny. Looking at the pics, he does look preeetty scary:
To a stranger, at least. But he's really just a little out of control, like when he decides to dive for Daphne's sneakers:
He's totally harmless. Of course, pervs and bad people lurking in the streets at night don't need to know that!!!
After the dog-walking, we all sat at the coffee shop, ordered drinks and chatted for ages. Yum yum, teh peng. Now at least that was time "wisely" spent! Instead of turning to mush in some boring club with lousy music........... (T_T)
