Newspaper

I usually walk down a few shophouses past Yut Sun (a place where I always have my lunch) to buy the Star newspaper at the newspaper distributor there. After about 2 weeks of travelling there consistently to buy the papers during lunchtime, the tau keh there already more or less know my face. So, it happened today that the Star newspaper was sold out and I had to wait for about 5-10 minutes for one of the vendors to return with the paper. While waiting, I had a conversation with the tau keh since we are familiar with each other. He's Hokkien but is quite fluent in English (I had to tell him I'm Cantonese or he will start conversing with me in Hokkien..lol)

Well, the conversation generally drifted from where I stay to about the issue on my departure from Singapore. He was surprised to hear my point-of-view and that I would rather choose to come back and remain Malaysian citizen as to stay in Singapore. There's a whole lot of reasons at my significant post here which I talked to him about some of the reasons there. Part of the surprise came from his experience that many Malaysian Chinese are dying to come to Singapore to take up PR (old cliched stuff). I joked with him that I was the weirdo going the opposite direction..lol. The usual reasons that he heard for people coming to Sg are same old stuff like better prospects and etc. I pointed out to him that I was perhaps, one of the the odd ones out since I'm planning to take Law plus I'm a non-Science or Maths fella and given the stringent quota and post-studying life there, I don't really see much prospects in continuing life in Sg. Anyways, I let him into some bits of the Chinese community in Singapore. Haha, I guess my unique point-of-view would be sort of an eye-opener for him as is to many whom I have chatted about this issue.

I had an enjoyable time chatting with the tau keh and at the same time, I can say I acquired a new friend..haha. It was nice of him to make an arrangement to inform the vendor to deliver an additional copy of Star with my grandfather's chinese newspaper at the doorstep.

New Church, new friends

I went to Taiping Full Gospel Assembly yesterday for church service. Taiping FGA was the church my mama use to attend when she was staying there. Mama told me to look up Pastor Bernard for an introduction but I also dunnoe hu he is in the hall. It was until I saw a man going around greeting good morning to everyone that I manage to talk to him. One thing I noticed when I was in Taiping FGA is that there are really all sorts of pple from all walks of life. Today's worship session was headed by a travelling band called Sands from Penang. This band is very unique since it is made up of people from different Christian denominations and they travel around Malaysia to play in churches. The founder of the group, sister Lucy heeded God's calling and went by faith to lead the group. So, I wasn't really able to see the Taiping FGA music team.

Pastor Bernard is really humorous in his sermon! It seems that Taiping FGA has several active ministries around Perak in terms of orphanages and homes. After the service, a few of the youths introduced themselves to me. I got to know three fellas, Jireh, Daniel and Kendrick. Jireh and Daniel are fellow slackers with me since they are waiting for their STPM results too. I would have gotten to know more of them but my grandfather was already there to hurry me since he wanted to go off to visit my aunt Siew. Ahh, I guess in future I won't be following him for his visiting trips. Anyways, I still got opportunity to know more of them this Saturday since they have youth meetings at 1.30 pm. It seems that they are preparing for a concert at the Town Hall in June and they are in need of guitarist. Oh well, I hope I would have the opportunity to use my drumming skills to serve the Lord and improve more in the process. But I don't really mind switching to learn electric guitars temporary instead if someone won't mind teaching me..lol.

Rampant United hits 6

There's nothing really surprising to another boo-boo show from Newcastle United. Only a team like Newcastle could achieve the feat of conceding 6 goals within one 45-min half. Even without the famous defensive duo of Bramble-Boumsong, the Newcastle defence was still as horrendous no matter who is in it. Well, a little credit to them for holding out in the first 45 min. But after Ronaldo scored from the free kick in the second half, it goes from bad to worse there. Shay Given decided to have some fun and play pinball with his defender and before long, Tevez juz rammed in the 2nd goal and it was as good as over for the Toon Army (if it was even one in the first place). Golden boy Ronaldo scored a nice hat-trick to heap more misery on them. Perhaps Taylor should be complimented a little for some of the last-ditch tackles that would have seen the scoreline beyond 6-0. Carr and the other 2 frends of him are just off, totally off. Shay Given was a world class keeper whenever Rooney shoots but he becomes worst than Taibi whenever it is NOT Rooney that is shooting. Good news for United too with Arse-nal now falling back after a draw with Birmingham. United's massive win was also superb for my EPL fantasy football with my team garnering a monster 105 points thanks to Ferdinand, Ronaldo and Tevez. Haha, the excellent point gains from the last few weeks saw my team rocketed to the top 50 of the Singapore rankings.

On the Jan transfer, bad boy Anelka moves to Chelsea and he's a truly priveledged fella to have played for 3 out of the Big 4 in England plus Real Madrid. Seriously, how many players can match up to that? He was at one point linked with Man Utd but I doubt Fergie wants a bad boy that disrupts club harmony. Another bad boy Robbie Savage moved to the other side of the table to Derby where he may find his bad boy tackling skills more useful. Apparently Star newspaper reported that Man Utd may be putting up a bid for Hunterlaar. How much that's true I'm not sure lar, but it sounds like a good deal since Fergie can't forever depend only on Rooney and Tevez to be at the front for every single game in the season.

Pestilence

I wasn't exaggerating when I said that my room is a jungle when it rains. Not only do I need to deal with the water problem, there are insects too. Apparently, some bugs are attracted to the light in my room and they came in swarms! And a handful of them also decided to make my bed as their landing pads. So, what I did was that I switched on the air-con to send them into a prolonged winter frenzy and within and hour, those pest started falling dead one by one and littering my bed even more. In the end, I ended up sleeping on the floor yesterday coz I was too sleepy to clear all those darn pests off my bed. This morning, I spent a good deal of time to use the vacuum cleaner to suck out all their little corpses and also wipe clean the puddle of yellow water that is residing comfortably on the floor.

Roof leaks

When it rains, it's trouble for my room as I discovered yesterday. There was some heavy thrashing of rainstorm and before long, the air-con is sputtering some water and the side of the wall started flowing out liquid. After the ordeal, a nice brown puddle of water stays in my room. It is particularly irritating especially since I spent the whole day before to mop up the room. Not only that, half of my bed ended up being splashed too. My room becomes a jungle when it rains..lol. Nothing much can be done since it is the structure of the shophouse. Well, I guess I had to live with it =p

Anyways, I went to Maybank today to create a new savings account and I'm pleased to have my own ATM card! Haha, depositing money into the bank is also super simple, juz go to the machine, put ATM card in and cash in to the machine. I wasn't issued a passbook since I'm told that all banking statements are now available online or can be checked through the machine. Hopefully the interest in there also good bah.

FA Cup 3rd Round

I was able to officially catch my first 'live' football match in my new lease of life on last Sunday at 1 am. Haha..From now on, I need not resort to any sort of unorthodox overseas method juz to catch one. At first, I thought that my first match would be at the 13 Jan weekend since last weekend would not be featuring Premier League matches and that the players needed a break. Oh well, but I seem to forget that there's such thing as cup matches. That's because usually, my unorthodox channel dun really feature cup matches unless its the final.

Anyways, back to the discussion on Man Utd vs Aston Villa. It was a really cagey match especially in the first half. Anderson nearly did a Ryan Giggs when he crazily ran from his own half. Oh, Carrick got some shots towards the last minutes of the game but as usual, his shots do not pose any sort of threat. It's difficult really to pinpoint what kind of role Carrick has even after being in the club for more than a year. He is really really a 'central' midfielfer that is neither good in attacking or defending. Sometimes, more like a fill-up space player in the middle to link up passes..lol. The introduction of Rooney into the field at the 2nd half definitely opened things up and not long after that, Ronaldo scored with the help of Anderson and Giggs and Rooney added the death blow. Overall, boring match in the first half and until the last 10 minutes of the game, there is always an impression that it would end up as a replay.

Over to the other teams, Liverpool's miserable run of misfortune continued with a draw with lowly Luton Town that is on the brink of bankruptcy. They're miserly, they rather save 200k for their own needs than donate it to help a club that is gonna die liao. Considering that it's being played at Luton's stadium, Liverpool should give a bit chance lar. Maybe the 1-1 draw was a slight retribution for that Scroogy attitude..lol. The New Year EPL weekend for Liverpool was hilarious and a big joke. Of all the people, it had to be Titus Bramble to spoil the party. Well, we all know Bramble's 'legendary' defensive skills and his 'glorious' partnership with Boumsong during his time with the 'wonderful' club of Newcastle. Seriously, maybe Shebbby Singh could suggest that Bramble should be playing as the striker forward instead of languishing at the back. Bramble has afterall, some hidden undiscovered talents of putting the ball in the back of the net and his ultimte skill was shown by how he killed Chelsea with his goal a few years ago! The title race for Liverpool is really as good as over already and they should juz focus on winning Cups instead.

Settled down

I reached Taiping this morning and the whole day has really been tiring for me. The load of stuff that I carry back is totally crazy! I carry until my hands go numb sia. Despite that, I still got a big bunch that is still left back at Sg. The bus trip was alright, the single seat was comfortable enough to sleep on and so I had no trouble dozing off unlike the other time when I can't lower down my seat.

For starters, one of the most pressing tasks to do was to clean and vacuum parts of my room since my grandparents seldom do cleaning because of their age. I gotta clear the dirt before the insects come biting my arse again. I also upgraded my lappie with a pair of speakers! It seems that doing that would make the laptop keyboard less hot and not burn my fingers while I go for long-hour gaming. Previously, I did a test by playing Guild Wars in December and found out that I had to tip-toe my fingers after 1 hr of playing the game. So, the external speakers would put less stress on the laptop. Not only that, one more lesson to be learnt was that the router should not be placed on the modem. Putting them together is like adding extra fuel to the heat that is generated. The interesting result was that my wireless connection ended screwed up and as a result, my WoW downloader is still patching the game as of now.

I check the TV for Astro and it worked! Lol..In addition to the package that I subscribe, I also got lots of free channels. For like about S$ 30 or RM59, I can have my daily dose of EPL football plus history channel and funny cartoons! I think that's more economical compared to the prices that is offered by Starhub Cable TV.

Oh well, looks like I've got a long road ahead of me with stuff like getting the proper utensils for cooking, more cleaning up to do and getting used to my grandparents' peculiar habits. Haha, at least I need not do any shitty studying at the moment and can daydream as much as I want...