Friday, July 25, 2008

Oh, bugger.
Well, I didn't make it in. Half of me expected it, the other half is like 'Oh, like damn, why didn't I get it?'
Ah well, I know why I didn't. I know I didn't prepare and everything, so when I went for whatever it was, I knew I screwed it up really badly. Oh well.
Ahhhh my world is rather hard to crack. But once it gets broken, it stays like that for quite a while.
I am such a loser. This is the problem with being a Qualified Procrastinator.
Now let me go drown my sorrows in The Dark Knight OST, which is a very awesome movie, by the way.
Heath Ledger, saaaaluuute!
And because I know I probably never will finish it, this is the unfinished, unedited version of last month's night cycling event.
Incidentally, I just went for another last week but I'm not in the mood to say anything about it. Sorry Samnalvin. And Liew(s).

And so it begins.

Calculation: If 6 hours got 3.5 pages and the first night cycling event I went for took about 9 pages if I remember correctly, then this should take about the same length, in the same size 10 font. You have been warned, fair and gentle readers.
Feed my doll-doll if you feel bored.
Ah. Okay, I came online to do the Night Cycling post because I was forced to completely bored but then I got distracted. So there.
Anyway, now XL was saying this morning (it being Sunday morning) that she hates me because I didn’t invite her to the Night Cycling event. Well I’m sorry; mummy didn’t think you’d be interested. And if you really were interested, you’d bang my head until I signed you up. I gave the distinct and very clear invitation that you were allowed to do so. But you didn’t. So there, again.
Uhmm incidentally that day was also my last day of work and everyone was really nice about it and treated me to a nice Macdonalds lunch because KFC was being bitchy and refusing to let us home deliver unless it’s above S$80 so we got Macs instead. Later during the day when the work became even more hectic, they were jokingly asking me to stay for another week. But nah~ I don’t want to. Time is more precious than money, man. And I need the time. To sleep, write, think, swim, doodle, bite people… so many things to do~
I really didn’t want people to ask me stuff like, ‘Oh so what did you do during that long break you had?’ and my only answer would be, ‘… Work?’ which is pretty ghey in my opinion but there you go.
Ah yes, there never was such a thing as a ‘humble opinion’.
But then again, as someone, I really can’t remember who, said, ‘Isn’t that what everyone is doing, really?’
Well that’s everyone else’s problem then.
Yes, moving on, I went home and onto the Night Cycling thing.
I was late. Yes I know that.
I said I’d be late, so don’t bitch at me about it. I was meeting Hen at NTUC Fairprice and we strolled there together to Burger King before calling Marcus the great OIC, and finding out that it had been shifted to Macdonalds. Like really. I swear the email said Burger King. Hen said it did too.
In the end we went to Macdonalds instead and found everyone there. Liew and her sister had already reached Macdonalds and were happily spamming me with calls asking when it would start and etc but in the end they got pretty quiet because the trio, with Melissa, sneaked off to the beach somewhere in ECP and I had to call them to ask them where they were.
People started coming around then, and we were shooed off to the Kit Runners by Burger King (See, we had to go there eventually) to prepare the bikes for everyone. Ah let’s see. Organising committee had MarcusTonyDanielSabrinaJiaYingPeiShanJoycelynMeiying… uh I’m not counting the facilitators and this is where my memory fails me. So we were wheeling out the bikes slowly for everyone to use and the Kit Runners people were putting the twinkly (why doesn’t MS Word register this as a word? It’s a WORD!) lights – whatchamacallem – blinkers…? No, they’re put on horses… Lights… thingies. Whatever.
We spent quite a while milling about as the people slowly trickled in from Macs. Here I think I was quite high – oh yeah Tony baked these random chocolate cornflake crumble things that are fantastic, I tell you, fantastic – and I made many new friends. Like Jia Ying and Pei Shan for example. Part of the organising committee and I had never seen them before until that day. Oh my.
Liew, Terry and Melissa were there. Melissa was her slow self again; she totally didn’t take my new hairstyle. I was like ‘Eh? It’s been long since like… JC1?’ and she was utterly and completely in shock by the entire thing. I mean, I just grew out my hair. What’s wrong with that? She looked exactly the same anyway, just more cleaned up than usual, unless it was the darkness which didn’t let me see more clearly.
Here I talked to more people like Pearl and Li Jia, who are a lawyer and a broker respectively and learnt a new term, known as ‘re-insurance’, which is insurance for an insurance company. Wow, then who insures the re-insurance company? They were pretty worried about the distance and staying up for the whole night but they were pretty cool about it. They were also worried about being the oldest but we found people much older than them later!
Ah so we chatted for a while longer until almost everyone was there and I met some really nice people like Jeremy’s friend who I think is called Desmond. Or something. And then one of the twins in our school, called Zhen Long while I think his brother is called Zhen Xiong. A dragon and a bear. Nice names, really. They had a friend called Charles, which I immediately replied with ‘& Keith!’ which completely embarrassed Siti who had been draping off me and introducing me as Lenin, the great dictator. I think I scared the people off. Siti agreed with me and said she didn’t love me anymore. ;___;
But really, that’s the way to remember names, like associate them with something you know. Like Sharon, I knew a girl called Sharon too who was also quite pretty like this Sharon, so her name stuck, and her brother was the tallest person around, so he was easy to remember – 187cm! Beat that, Jonathan~
Eventually Sabrina and Tony got the group together and told them about the safety rules (which fell on some deaf ears apparently, I’m going to KILL YOU Melissa, if you had been seriously injured, I will KILL YOU). I can’t remember if Tony or Daniel spoke after Sabrina but I think it was Daniel because I remember telling… Oh.
Ummm first they made us split into groups, 4 groups – A, B, C and D. Tony would be the lead, with groups A and B behind him while Marcus would be in the second large group, with groups C and D trailing behind. Got Hen and Jia Ying in my group, with Hen was the leader. She pushed me to be the main facilitator later – I suspect it was because of the high I was on but I didn’t really care. They let the participants pick the groups and so I immediately dragged Liew, Terry and Melissa into my group and found that it was still pretty small so I randomly looked around and found two more guys and roped them in. They were called Sam and Alvin but I christened them Samnalvin after this pair of twins I remember from somewhere – Samneric – I know where they’re from already: Gerard’s RLOTF play, where I think Martin, was it? played a pair of twins. Or was it Matthew. Whatever.
He did a very good impression of the twins anyway. Like Smaegel. Turning his head left and right to symbolise the different twin… Where had I seen that before…?
I found the name ‘Samnalvin’ insanely funny.
Apparently, I was the only person who did.
Daniel… oh wait I think Marcus had arrived by this time and was briefing everyone about the hand signals we were going to use and telling them that Daniel was The Ultimate Sweeper, the last person right at the back and deservedly so.
Not that he’s a bad cyclist, Daniel is good – but the thing is that no one actually believes it, after cycling behind him for a long while. He twitches his bike, pseudo-crashes, stops and starts, pseudo-falls etc and completely freaks the person out who’s cycling behind him. Meiying and I who have had that dubious honour can safely testify so. You worry so much for him even though he’s perfectly fine that it becomes tiring. Like you’d say ‘Careful~’ after he pseudo-crashes into a drain and your heart is like ‘Zomg what happened to him, is he alright?’ and he’d sing back an ‘I’m fine~’, which makes you completely not believe him so you worry some more. It’s a vicious cycle really.
Anyway, so my group consisted of eight people in all: Hen, Jia Ying, me, Liew, Terry, Melissa and Samnalvin. Samnalvin were from the 2001 batch, which made them older than the pair of ladies, Pearl and Li Jia, who were from the 2002 batch… and I just revealed their ages here. Right.
Hen was leading our team and I was the sweeper behind so I told Samnalvin to be the lookouts for our team, for cars and everything when we were crossing the road filters (oh so THAT’S what they’re called!) for the entire team and they were like cheerfully saying okay~
Uh, eventually we got onto our bikes and set off, Tony with groups A and B and then Marcus with groups C and D. Hen led the group first, behind Marcus. I was behind sweeping my group and Huizhen was supposed to be behind… but she wasn’t.
After a long while. I got kinda worried and apparently so did Marcus because he turned around and went back to find her. Apparently the sweet dear didn’t know she was supposed to follow us but she kept a close eye on us later. Terry’s bike seat screwed up somewhere here but we fixed it eventually, which made all Well and Good.
We continued on out of ECP and onto the roads, where we mercifully did not meet much buses or cars. Somewhere around here, this bunch of random guys came over and sorta helped us by being the overall sweepers for the entire group, looking out for cars and everything. Found out later that they were the bunch of ACS boys who had crashed our event because they found out about it on Facebook and contacted Daniel who contacted Marcus who contacted everyone else in the committee before giving them the green light to join us.
See, never underestimate the power of Facebook… Even though I rarely go on it now.
But still, don’t underestimate it. It is teh scary.
Especially the spam.
I’d still have to say that Raymond is a pretty boy. I swear.
Umm okay, there was James, who’s this fantastically experienced and pro cyclist with his racing bike and everything, then Joel the thin guy who sprouts English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, and many different dialects like water and Nicholas who has this 17000plusplus custom-made bike from Germany because he loves motorcycling but couldn’t get a license and cycling was the closest thing he could find and Raymond, who was the youngest and the pretty boy.
Our first stop was at the bridge before the Indoor Stadium and it was with much joy that we reached it and took random pictures. Jia Ying was a dear and brought her cameras and that was when everyone realised what scary and terrifying camera whores ODACians, well, namely me, can be.
Okay now I gotta go type out games for Nigel from church. I am so not going to play them next week.
And I was supposed to type something here before all this but I can’t remember what it is.
… Whatever.
After the Indoor Stadium was the Esplanade, if I remember correctly and I remember somewhere here that Melissa decided to be a prat and risk her own life to follow the group, happily cycling infrontofabloodybigtruck – I distinctively remember her smiling – while the truck bore down on her like death, doom and destruction all together before she got to the side safely.
I swear… Melissa, you…
Oh yeah, after Esplanade, Hen and I switched places and she became the sweeper instead.
We passed the Singapore Flyer too! It sparkles brightly in the night.
Hey that looks like MSN nick-worthy material… okay, I’m sorry if I sound like I’m rambling. It’s past midnight and I have no work tomorrow but I have discovered that I have massive and purpley black eyebags under my eyes! The horror~
I have kinda lost interest in this post.
No! Must continue!
Uhh after that was more cycling. And cycling. And then we went to Lau Pa Sat and had supper there.
Ooh yes, interesting part here~
No, ‘cause you see, Samnalvin were really close to each other during the night cycling – they did the hand signals, they really did! I love them! – and they shared a plate of cha kuayteow (is it tiao? Or teow?) together with much love~
AND SITI BROUGHT CADBURY CHOCOLATE. I LOVE HER NOW.
I didn’t feel like eating then because I had a cube of chocolate from Siti even though Marcus was like ‘NO SITI DON’T GIVE HER CHOCOLATE’ and Siti herself avoided me like the plague ;___; but I did the sad face until she relented and gave me some. Yay!
So anyway, back to Samnalvin. I wanted a completely random picture of both of them feeding each other but they refused to do it! So I had taken Jia Ying’s camera and was randomly taking pictures of Melissa and Elizabeth – andtheydiditthenwhenIwastakingotherpictures! – and I was all like whining and such and begging them to do it again but Samnalvin refused!
I was pretty much annoyed and Marcus didn’t make things any better by fa-lalaing over with his camera and taking sneak shots of everyone.
Then Liew brought out Salvation.
She had brought Oreo cookies along!
I chomped them down happily, getting a complete sugar high. While I was in this state of overdosage, Samnalvin struck again by feeding each other Oreos! And we didn’t have any camera with us at the moment so it went wasted! Gone!
But no! I have faithfully recorded it here for all to see and read! (If you get this far, that is) So Samnalvin, there’s no escape from the detailed, perfectionist, trigger-happy, completely random Facilitator-of-yours-who-has-a-good-memory-for-this-sorta-thing!
Oh yeah. I had sugar cane water here too. No wonder I was really, extremely, superduper high.
Oh and Alvin found me on Facebook. Scary. And he looks really like my uncle. Scarier. I have fallen into calling him uncle when I see him. If I see him. Uhh. Whatever.
And I found Sam too! It was the only Sam that Alvin had as a friend so he was easy to find.
Okay today is the 18th June. I have delayed this post for almost 2 weeks already. Hey~ maybe I should continue delaying it…
Right. After Old Market it was off to Vivo City for us. This part was pretty mundane, just cycled behind Marcus methinks, because I switched with Hen again.
I remember when we were doing the recce for this event, when we were cycling past Vivo City; we interrupted this bunch of teenagers who were standing around the bushes. They recovered magnificently from our disturbance but it was pretty obvious what they had been doing before we came over.
Oh today is the 28th June, I have delayed this post for almost over 3 weeks already. Oh hohohohohoho~
I don’t quite remember the rest of the trip, we went to Sentosa and back again before stopping at Vivo City again. Here we rested for a really long time, methinks maybe almost 2 hours before setting off back to East Coast.

Posted by norbert at 7/25/2008 12:27:00 AM