I should change the title of this blog to Too Little Time.on her Hands. It feels like I've hardly had a free day to myself these days.

And this is the part where all the working people and schooling pple go: "WTH??"

My hat off to u guys, if I actually wore one. I go to NUS to meet with Dr Foo for 3 hours, eat lunch in sch, hop off to town or somewhere, and I'm drained by the time I head for tuition at 5. I swear I eat too much carb. It makes you sleepy after that.

What I Did On My BirthDay

So.... here heralds the days of being 23. 2-3. Not a nice age to be. I liked 18. I was ok with 19. 20 was fine, and 21 was cool. 22 had a nice symmetry. 23? Prime number. Yuck. If there was a mathematical popularity poll, 23 would rank at the bottom. Can't wait to be 24. Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

As birthdays go anyway, can't complain. The only thing I didn't like was having to go to NUS in the morn for a meeting with Dr foo. [bleah. they shld give out mandatory leave on birthdays. can someone appeal to MOM?] Had lunch with Candle in school, then went to check out the LaSalle Open House. Looking through the studios, the works on display, the musicians performing......... damn. Suddenly my time at NUS seemed like such a waste. Anyway, in terms of real info, the open house wasn't too forthcoming. The overall impression was a load of pomp and popery, designed to impress the impressionable secondary school kids who were tromping in by the busload. And whaddaya know, they didn't even gimme a goodie bag, cos they didn't think they had enuff for all the kids. Wat da heck.

So I wandered aimlessly around the campus, even bumping into old secondary school classmates, and eventually joined what seemed to be a walking tour comprised of adults. [huh? whatdaya doin here?] So walked around the building a bit. One impression I gained was that the people doing product design had an atrocious grasp of the English language. Sorry lor, but their standard of English was just plain bad..... and this is what you want to present to prospective clients? Sorry guys, but bad, bad English just turns me off. [tuition teacher instincts] Although acceptable in Primary School essays, certainly not in presentation materials for corporate clients. [biz sch instincts]

After that, I adjourned to Changi Airport to see off SylverAcyd. Friends since sec school, spent birthdays, new years, and even one christmas together, and she chose to fly off on the very day of my birthday. Bleah. Anyways, it was fun, even if our group's particular brand of humour did seem to alarm some of her other saner friends. ["And this is just when we're sober!"] Hope she's fine down under, [reading this blog] and that she has loads of great times there! We ended the night off with sundaes at Swensens' and a mad dash to the MRT station for the last train home. Kudos to me, I'm 23.

The next day..... woke up and went down to NTUC shopping for ingredients for a potato salad and garlic bread with mozza cheese for the ducky NUS gang heading down that night. Opted for a night with takeaway pizza cos' least we can stay the whole night chatting, no worries about the place closing, and if anyone gets drunk, they can just spend the night on my floor. Potato salad turned out great, though I think mine was the first waldorf salad with red apples and prawns.

And gods the prawns! I had this mad idea at NTUC to put prawns in the salad for the less vegetariannally-inclined [is there such a term? Did I just invent it?] among us, and first it was to the seafood section. Piles of prawns, lumped together on ice, and when you pick them up with the pliers, they look at you with these emotionless eyes. Fine. You wanna eat me. Whatever. Then becos of the airconditioning or some errant breeze, their feelers would move or wave and you have the freezing thought that they're alive! They're alive and you're about to eat and kill a living creature! Suddenly you realise why animal activists feel the way they do. So you gingerly pick each prawn up with the tongs, praying to God that one of them doesn't suddenly squirm in your grip and cause you to let out a blood-curdling scream across the supermarket. Finally you're done, and you signal to the lady behind the counter, while a man behind her calmly takes a cleaver and decapitates another dead fish.

This is why I always prefer my meat very dead by the time it comes to me.

When you get home, you have this brief idea of shelling [shelling? peeling?] the prawns and throwing them into boiling water. Mother comes home and dispels that simple notion. First, you tear the heads off the prawns, and squeeze out the orangy-brown brain juice from the body. Then you shell as usual. When that's done, you slice the prawn down the middle, and pull out a long, thin black thread, which is supposed to be the defecation tunnel of the prawn. When that is done, you throw said prawn into a dish, and try to throw out thoughts of how the prawn would have looked, swimming happily in the sea, with all its crustacean brethren, and you realise you will never again look at prawn the same way again, let alone cook them for your friends. *shudder*

My consolation is that they liked the salad! They said it was good, [though maybe they just didn't have the heart to break mine on my birthday] they ate the prawns, [thank god. crustacean bastards] and sat around the merry round table eating pizza and drinking.

Did I mention the drinking? Gods... as far as our group's standards, it was a celebration of bacchalian proportions. [once again, did i spell that right?] What other drinking hole offers a smoke free environment, toilet literally a stone's [or prawn's] throw away, and all the booze you can handle the whole night? Well, not that we handled it all that well anyway. With the excess alcohol going around, people became rather "szair" [i have NO idea how to spell that word in the English language] and spilled out their employment woes. Think of how the people in the drama serials usually do it. Haha, ok, kidding guys.... [ducks the various missiles thrown to her] My father even came in and threw a bottle of cognac as well. [what a dad, huh?] The night's drunk count in the end was: Gamybird, Me, Yenn, and Quet, the latter being the most highly inebriated. [blogger needs a spell check. help!] Half the party drunk after the night was over. I count that as a successful party. Mwahahaha....

Meanwhile I have 2 tubs of ice cream in the freezer, one courtesy of kairos, 2 bottles of hoegaarden beer, courtesy of Yenn, and a half bottle of advocaat, courtesy of Candle. I love advocaat! Mix it with 7up and you get this yellowy drink that tastes a little like a vanilla milkshake with a twist. Yum! That night I mixed together gin, coke, advocaat, and 7up. yum yum yum. Tonight I mixed it with the 7up and stirred in vanilla ice cream. Fainted and woke up in a heavenly place with clouds around me and angelic music in the background. Fainted due to shock and woke up on earth. Darn. But i seriously recommend advocaat. Yum Yum Yum.

So there passed my 23rd birthday. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me. Here's to another year, and the next bachannial [is that right now?] celebration.