Tired. Wet. Irritated

Which pretty much describes my mood these days.

Tired comes from helping Tenderheart distribute surveys all over prime office space in Shenton Way and Orchard. Went building to building, door to door, knocking on doors, pressing doorbells, intercoms, all with the same story. "Hi! I'm a student from NUS and I'm conducting a survey in this building!..." Responses range from outright rejection, [Woman at UOB Kayhian cut me off with a curt "We have no time to entertain these!" the moment I said the first 5 words] hesitation, ["er, I'll try, but I don't know if she'll do it] and the rare acceptance. ["Sure! WHere's the survey?]

Then after that come the telephone rejections, and Tenderheart got the blast of it, cos her number was on the forms distributed. Most pple are rather polite about it, but some woman just blasted her off on the phone, about how her envelope wasn't attentioned to anyone, and that pple would usually throw it away, [Gee, how'd we know who to attention it to? Shldn't the fault lie with ur receptionist for not putting anyone's name down on the envelope?] how the thing got thrown to her, [that's not our fault isn't it? How can we be responsible for what your company does to you?] and that the most atrocious thing was that her boss asked her to reject us politely. [ironic, considering she was anything but polite to Tender, and that she considers it beneath her to show simple courtesy to others]

Bleah. Can honestly say that this is the most tiring of survey distribution methods ever. Not to mention that most people are turned off by the sheer bulk of her survey, which is about 40 odd pages. [Most common response:"Wah! So thick ah?"] Takes a buncha wheedling and begging after that. ["Please............ I need it to graduate"]

One interesting thing about this affair, however, has been the part about how to get into the buildings in the first place. Since we don't exactly look like executives with a mission, dressed in jeans and carrying stacks of surveys, we get stopped by the security guards most of the time. When we have to explain that we're NUS students and we want to distribute surveys, we know we're gonna get turned away. The guards don't wanna get into trouble if any tenants complain about us. So we either walk right in, like we own the place, or we come up with some story. Case in point, 78 Anson Road:

Guard: [sees us looking around, gets suspicious] Where are you going?
Me: Er, [looks at numbers on lift lobby] 13 floor.
Guard: Oh, Alexandria, is it?
Me: [relieved] Yea, yea, that's right

After this phase of survey distribution, we're all rather familiar with the level of security in most of Shenton Way, which you cannot get in, which you can get in with a little *tweaking* and which have empty floor spaces for you to attach incendiary devices [IBM towers is the most empty building in Tanjong Pagar]. We actually have enough information to start off a terrorist bombing in Singapore. Just kidding. Hope no one from the ISD reads this.

So after all that physical activity of the past 3 days, coupled with tuition after that, I'm bushed. Drained. Whacked. Insert adjective for lack of energy here. Not to mention the rain has definitely dampened my mood. Haha. [n my humour as well. Damn.] I woke up today, not having to wake up early to distribute surveys, hoping for a nice hot, crispy prata with teh peng at AMK, and instead what i get is more showers of blessings. It's been raining since like, 8 in the morning in Bishan I think, and 5 hours later, no sign of stopping. And I have tuition later in the day so I can't stay at home and cower. Blast. Need to get wet again in the name of financial sustenance. I hate life.

I thus decided to log on to the Net, do some blogging, send off some email, and stuff. THat's when I realise that the modem was missing. My dad's been messing around with the coms trying to get a router working, but so far no luck. My laptop was out of the table, on the beanbag, as usual. It's funny how parents nag at you for leaving books and magazines lying around on the living room table or floor, then conveniently leave a $2000odd laptop lying on a beanbag susceptible to a big fat butt being sat on it. I rescued it from impending death by butt, then started a search for the modem. Even when modem was found, telephone wires was missing. Shifted com table, found one wire hanging behind it, and now I'm on, telling the world about the rubbish I went through today, regardless of whether they want to hear it or not. I think I'll leave everything in a state of mess to make a statement to my father.

Bleah. mood is definitely sucky today.