The domestic mode continues today, as I manage to clear out [most of] the mess in my room, which had reached a critical Level 3. [Level 3 meaning that there was 3 layers of mess over all the surfaces in my room] Finally today I manage to see my floor again, without having the view obstructed by books, bags, papers and hair. [i shed a lot]

I still can't access Yahoo Mail or Geocities on my laptop, so I won't be able to upload photos for a while.

Horoscope today tells me to face it, that I have the tendency to go into hiding whenever problems loom too large for my liking. As unflattering as it is, I have to hang my head and admit truth in that. Better learn to tackle that bull by the horn.

Other than that, the other interesting thing today happened as follows:

Nurses can't heal themselves?

Everytime I write something in this blog, it's about me. This time I switch the topic to my brother.

Early Sunday morning, as I'm reading the news, Bro comes down and I notice that he's limping rather noticeably as he does so. I frown.

"Hey, did you sprain your ankle again?"

"Yup."

"Didn't you just sprain that ankle last week?"

"Yup"

As you can see, he's at that stage of adolescence where it is deemed unnecessary to volunteer any excess information to senior family members unless directly asked. Mother comes down and kicks up the typical motherly fuss.

"You sprained your ankle again!!" Statement, not question.

"Yup"

"Did you put anything on it? Ice? Medicated oil?"

"Nope" Hey, a different answer finally.

"How did you sprain your ankle?" Mother asks the question on my mind.

"Walking"

???? What the heck?? The last time he had sprained the ankle was playing basketball and at least that had a modicum of coolness to it. Walking???

Father joins in the act with his own brand of fatherly love.

"Oh, my poor, poor son! Sprained your ankle again? Can you walk?"

"......"

So of all the family, Mother is the only one with enough sympathy in her to make him lie down while she spreads generous amounts of medicated oil on the ankle, and then wrapping it in a blanket to keep in the heat. Funny since I thought the typical prescription for a sprained ankle was a bucket of ice, but hey, it's bro's ankle...

The even funnier thing is that Bro is a nurse in training. The first time he sprained his ankle, he didn't even put ice on it, just went to bed and of course the next morning, he's limping. You'd think a guy who understood all the cheemo-body-parts-terms in CSI would know enough to be able to treat a sprained ankle, but apparently that was missing, either from his education or from his common sense.

Our family has a peculiar way of showing sympathy in the event of injury, especially when we feel you could have avoided it if not for stupidity and carelessness:

Me. As we walk out of the flat: "Let's walk to Ang Mo Kio for dinner!" Ang Mo Kio is a 1km walk away from my house.

Instead we take the car, to a coffeeshop that's five or less minutes walk from my house. :p

Father in the car, outside coffeshop: "I better let you off here at the coffeeshop for the sake of my poor, poor son who cannot walk!"

After dinner, we decide to drive to a friend of father's who runs a foot reflexology shop in IMM.

Father to Me: "You wanna go along?"

Me: "What do I go there for? Just to hear him scream?"

Father: "Something like that."

Me: "Ok!"

Father. On the journey there: "Drive all the way to the shop because of my poor, poor son. Nurse also don't know how to help himself!" hereby condemning the level of nursing education at NYP because of the [idiocy] of his son.

Father at IMM: "I better park on the 2nd level [same level as the shop] for the sake of my poor, poor son who cannot walk!"

Notice how Father likes to put the emphasis on poor. Kudos to Brother, who manages to maintain a stoic silence throughout the evening. Something we probably picked up along the way while living with our father.

But Brother does get his own back in the end though. While he gets a foot massage, father decides to get a body massage. Halfway throughout the massage, a heartrending yowl is heard throughout the shop. Apparently, in an effort to dissipate negative energy in the body, the masseur put her knuckle to the middle of Father's chest and then pressed her entire body weight onto that one spot. Yeow. So the one whose screams bring down the shop in the end turns out to be that of my dad's. :)

And what do I get out of the whole thing? A trip to this incredible $2 shop at IMM called Daiso, which got me 2 Jap books [normal phrases, no curses and insults] and a new waist pouch [i know, another bag, but I couldn't resist, for $2. :p] for $2 each. Mwahahahahaha... You could say I got the best out of the entire evening, especially towards the end:

Me, lifting one foot in the direction of my bro's sprained one: "Hey, let's test to see if your ankle is fully healed"

Bro, dodging awkwardly: "I don't think so."