i can't believe this.
written: 10:47 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007

Okay, I exaggerate. And I do know where to start: The bloody beginning.

So I had Personal Prop seminar today at 1.30 and my mom was all, "If you're gonna be in school for a while, you can take the car." But I had a Law Society thank-you dinner to attend at night and I thought I would be going down from school - this was before finding out that neither Jolie nor Jervis were going from school. I thought I would follow, if not both, but one of them to Clarke Quay...but I went to school, without the car, and a few minutes after the seminar began Rui told me, "Jervis is not going from school."

Great.

In the midst of me trying to decide how I wanted to go to Clarke Quay, I had to have the misfortune once more of being called by the tutor to answer a question for a topic that I hadn't got round to preparing for. Why? Because I was trying to finish choses in action. And because it was 1 bloody a.m. and I was tired. AND because I did the bloody choses in action tutorial until 2 a.m. and I was REALLY TIRED. He asked me to answer some question about equitable assignments and I had a vague idea that I should say something about the parties' intention, like, "I agree insofar as equitable assignments are about giving effect to the intention of the contracting parties." BUT before I could open my freaking mouth to say something apart from "I don't know", he beat me to it. And then he was like, "What's the issue here?"

How the fuck would I know? I hadn't even read William Brandt or whatever. It's a miracle already that I had a vague impression of that case.

ARGH PERSONAL PROP IS SO TRAUMATISING. And DISTRESSING. And incredibly upsetting. Jolie was right: I should just forget about redeeming myself. He never calls me when I actually know the answer. Bleah. Anyway, tomorrow's the last seminar and it's a revision seminar and I glanced at the question and I'm pleased to say that I have no idea what the fuck it's talking about. Thank you very much.

BLEAH.

Anyway, that was yet another traumatising Personal Prop seminar that is fast becoming a norm. Moving on now to what I really want to write about: Driving.

So like I said I had to attend a dinner at Clarke Quay, right? The problem with going to Clarke Quay is that it's bloody inconvenient. I could take the MRT, but I would need to change trains at, firstly, Jurong East, then secondly, Outram where I would take the North East Line. And the problem with the NEL? It fucking sucks. And when I say it sucks, I mean that you have to walk ten million miles from the East-West line side to the North-East line side. And that really, really pisses me off. After the last time I took the NEL and marvelled over how seemingly never-ending the bloody distance was, I vowed to never take it again. And indeed I haven't since then (can't quite remember when that was though).

It's a good thing that I have a direct bus to Vivo City. I used to hate it, but I go there now when I want to do express, one-stop shopping. Which is quite often nowadays 'cause I'm just way too lazy to go home from Orchard as it's also rather inconvenient because there's only one bus that goes to my place and it's always packed at the Orchard stop.

Anyway, so MRT is inconvenient, and let's not even get started on buses. I think there's a direct bus to Clarke Quay from my place, BUT I have no idea what number it is. And I could take 174 from Chloe's but that would mean taking a bus to her bus stop just to take another bus - and the bus that I need to take to her bus stop takes ten million years to arrive. And I really wasn't in the waiting-for-bus-mood.

So I came home after Personal Prop and told my mom, "I'm taking the car later okay?"

She said, "No! You can't even park!"

I made some angry face and went into my room where I played Scrabulous for an hour. We didn't talk about it anymore. When it was 5.30 and therefore time to go, I got changed and everything, went out, said to my mom, "I take the car okay? I've looked up the driving directions and everything."

I honestly don't know what she said, for whatever it was, I was under the impression that she didn't want to argue with me and that she was resigned to letting me do whatever. So when I left the house without her following, I assumed, automatically, that she was okay with me driving by myself to Clarke Quay.

And so I did exactly that.

And I almost ended up at Tuas.

But I did end up at like, Jurong. West Coast. Wherever. You see, I meant to take the City exit from the AYE but I wasn't sure if it was the right one, so I ended up missing it. I didn't even know that I'd missed my exit until I ended up at like, West Coast. Or somewhere ulu along those lines. And when I saw "AYE {Tuas)", I freaked out. In my head I was like, "SHIT. WHERE THE HELL AM I? OH NO THIS IS BAD." So I kept driving on until I saw the go-straight arrow with "AYE (Tuas)" written beneath it, and that was when I knew I had to get off the damn expressway.

So I got off the damn expressway and found myself in the middle of a jam. Great. Basically I had no idea where the hell I was; I was frantically trying to look for road names that ring something in my mind and trying to keep my eyes on the road at the same time. Fortunately I saw a right-turn sign for...I dunno, Boon Lay way or something along those lines, which was familiar. So I turned right, or attempted to turn right. The junction was packed with cars.

And then I saw: "AYE (City)". And a weird arrow that looked like it told me to turn right ahead, because it pointed right, but in an upward fashion. I didn't really know where to go: I could either go straight with the rest of the cars, or turn right immediately. But I wasn't sure if that was AYE. So I decided to go straight with the rest of the cars.

It turned out I decided wrongly. It turned out that I should have turned right. Because "AYE (City)" was not on the subsequent signboard. All I saw were: Jurong Town Council. Jurong Whatever.

Oh, my, god. I spotted a sign board at the other side where cars were going in the opposite direction and very precariously, after passing it, I turned my head to look - and I SAW "AYE (CITY)".

Time to make a u-turn.

But there was no u-turn sign. I didn't think it was wise to keep going straight, so I took the first right turn I saw. Went straight some more...and saw a u-turn sign! I was so terribly relieved.

I must make mention here of the fact that I suck at u-turning. Ever since passing I'd only u-turned twice and both times I was scared to death. Today was no different, and I was alone, and I had no choice, so I quickly turned and tried my best not to hit the curb - and I didn't! So totally awesome.

Eventually I found my way back to the AYE, going in the right direction.

But because the directions I took down from streetdirectory.com said that I had to exit to City or whatever before Alexandra Road, when I'd passed the Alexandra Road exit and was still on the expressway, I freaked out. I reached Gillman Flyover and I thought I was headed for Vivo City and I freaked out some more. By then it was already 6.23 or thereabout and I was supposed to meet Jolie at 6.30. Because the dinner was at 6.30.

Convinced that I was fucking lost, I drove on some more because I had no choice, all the while keeping to the left lane just in case I needed to make some emergency exit.

But it turned out that I needn't after all. In fact, it turned out that I should've stayed on the middle lane, because out of nowhere I saw: AYE - CTE.

OMG! I WASN'T LOST! The CTE was exactly where I wanted to go!

And from there everything went smoothly. Got out at Clemeanceau, turned into River Valley, found Riverwalk or whatever it was called.

Well, there was a small little kink. Parking. At first I wanted to go into the open-air carpark because I was afraid of going up a multi-storey one. But I had to turn right and there were quite a number of cars, and the carpark looked full anyway, so I thought, Aiya fuck lah, and turned into the multi-storey.

It was damn backwards because there was no automatic censor; I had to insert the cash card manually. And I was too far away from the thingy so I had to get out of my car, which entailed me putting the gear in park and unfastening my seatbelt and pulling up the handbrake. When the cash card was done I got back in and in my haste to go up before the barrier clamped down on me, I accidentally gunned the accelerator.

The car surged forward and at the back of my mind I half-expected myself to hit the wall. DAMN SCARY LAH. I was like, Shit what's going on?! I braked, then let go of the brake, and felt the car slide backwards. OMG. I didn't even know if there were any cars behind me; all I wanted to do was to go up the damn slope. So I accelerated again and the car surged forward again.

In the end I managed to calm down enough to drive up to the carpark without crashing into anything and anyone.

But the truly miraculous bit? I took the first empty lot I saw and I parked my car within two minutes, maybe less. And it was reasonably straight and everything!

Yayness. Pleased with myself, I went for dinner at River Tandoor and dinner was good, interesting, talked to a couple of people. I didn't eat much though. The potato was nice but bloody spicy. And I wasn't really sure if the thing that I thought was bean curd was really bean curd so I didn't finish it in the end. And now I'm rather hungry. Oh well.

Anyway, I wanted to go home via Orchard but I saw AYE and I thought, Just go there lah. So I went AYE and everything, exited at Clementi. I intended to take the route that my parents always take so I was expecting to see Clementi Avenue Six...but then I ended up seeing Ulu Pandan and Bukit Timah. So I turned into Ulu Pandan, drove on happily for a bit...and then I saw: Orchard Road.

WHAT THE HELL?!?!?!? I was convinced, once more, that I was going to be lost, that I was travelling in the wrong direction.

However, out of nowhere (okay, it was nowhere to me) appeared a sign that said 'Sixth Avenue'. And for some reason I actually hesitated before taking the turn; I thought I would end up in one of those maze-like landed property estates and I'd just end up getting lost.

But nope, I turned left and once more I was back in familiar territory. So I managed to also make it home in one piece, although I'm still rather hesitant when attempting to turn into a major road from the minor road. I never know when it's appropriate for me to turn and when it's not.

All should be well when I reached my condo...except, not really. After parking almost perfectly at the Riverwalk carpark, I thought that parking at home would be cake.

It was not.

I took fifteen bloody minutes to park the bloody car.

There were three lots. The right one was taken. I wanted to take the left one but ended up turning into the middle one instead. And even so it was more like I was in the middle of the two lots.

I ALMOST DIED. I turned and went forward and reversed, got out of my car a few times, almost wanted to go upstairs at one point in time but couldn't leave the car all crooked and too close to the car on the right, so I got back in and reversed and turned the steering wheel like I knew what I was doing when in fact I hadn't the faintest idea...until fifteen minutes later it finally resembled "parking". The car was still crooked but I couldn't be arsed anymore. I went upstairs.

And that was when I discovered that, contrary to the perception I was labouring under, my mom hadn't actually given me permission to drive.

So effectively I took the car without parental consent.

Like oh my god. What the hell? It turned out that my mom thought I was going to take a cab, but I thought, when she didn't follow me out of the door with her car keys, that she was okay with me driving by myself.

When the enormity of what I did sank in, I was rather shocked.

But I'm not anymore. It doesn't matter anyway; I didn't crash, I'm still alive, and the car is still in one piece. No additional scratches or anything. Hopefully this means that I'd get to use the car when mom doesn't need it, which is very bloody good news!

I also find that I feel a lot more relaxed driving when there isn't someone else in the car. The stress level is extremely high when my dad's next to me; he's somehow convinced that I should go really slow, that I'm gonna crash into something any minute. On Monday when he came to pick me up I drove home, and while driving out of school he kept telling me to go slow, and I was like, What? There are ten million cars behind me and I'm already damn slow! How can I possibly go any slower?

My mom, on the other hand, thinks I drive too slowly. Apparently she keeps wanting to tell me to overtake; she told me this when I was complaining to her about my dad on Monday when we got home.

So there you have it. My first virgin drive-by-myself experience. And it wasn't even authorised.

I truly amaze myself.

I think I should read the seminar question. But I'm damn tired. I hope he doesn't call me. But I think he will. Bloody hell.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010