new year's eve and the first four hours of 2008.
written: 9:50 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 01, 2008

Writing that scene for the musical totally killed me. I've never done script writing before and I honestly did not know that it's not as easy as it looks. I spent two hours at the just-opened Coffee Bean near my place, thereby subjecting myself to disgustingly bad coffee, and after those two hours I felt like I'd just sat for two Evidence exams. Sadly I don't think it was very good at all, and I didn't get round to writing the next scene like I was supposed to. I was just quite burnt out. And now I'm too sleepy to do anything.

That is, apart from write about my bestest best New Year's Eve ever because it so totally rocked!

Mag and I lost our sanity momentarily and decided, at around 5 p.m., to go to the countdown thingy at Marina Bay. We definitely assumed the risk voluntarily, because any idiot would know that it was going to be packed. And packed, it was. We first went to One Fullerton on the tentative hope that it might be less crowded than the Esplanade area...but it wasn't. We wanted to grab some coffee from Starbucks, but when we got there, we saw that the queue extended to outside Starbucks, and quite lengthily, too. Imagine people queuing up outside Starbucks to get their drinks when ordinarily, waiting an extra five minutes to get my iced latte would be enough to drive me absolutely insane. Did we bother with Starbucks? Of freaking course not.

I was in rather dire need to pee so our first priority was to find me a toilet. Needless to say, the only available toilet at One Fullerton was packed with people and being me, I couldn't be bothered to queue. Mag suggested we walked over to the Esplanade to see if the situation there was any better, and I was all, Okay great!

So we walked. The bridge - whatever you call it - connecting the two areas was closed off to traffic. There were people sitting along its two sides and more people walking in the middle in two directions - in droves. Mag was so right when she dubbed it a refugee camp, because it was disgustingly crowded and squeezy. I swear - I almost died. It reminded me of last Wednesday's impossible-to-move-without-rubbing-against-someone's-sweaty-body Mambo, but it was worse, because there was no air-conditioning. After a while I began to perspire. After a while some security person shouted in his loud hailer for people not to walk towards the Esplanade because it was packed, but Mag and I surged forward anyway.

And after a while, we were stuck somewhere towards the end of the bridge. It would have been okay...except a group of totally retarded guys who were obviously lacking in civic mindedness decided to form a train and push through the crowd. And they pushed the way Singaporeans do when trying to squeeze their fat asses onto the MRT during rush hour. When one of the smelly gross guys pushed into me, I was seriously about to yell, "What the fuck are you doing?" And you know what? I really would've done that if Mag didn't pull me back and told me to chill.

In retrospect, that was quite dangerous, considering it was just Mag and I and a whole bunch of guys. If they wanted to beat me up, they so could have beat me up, and I would have dragged Mag into the potentially explosive situation with me too. But oh, patience really ain't one of my virtues. A person would have to be massively joking if one day he/she describes me as a patient person. I have very low tolerance for people who walk oh-so-slowly in Orchard Road and I have this urge to overtake, so it follows quite logically that being stuck in the human traffic was already pushing my thin patience to its very stretched limit. Getting pushed by smelly-ass retarded guys? It was a miracle I did not snap. And that miracle was Mag!

But we did eventually make it to the other end. And I can't begin to describe how amazing it was, to be able to breathe FRESH AIR! It did help, though, the fact that I was tall(er than most people) in the crowd, but nothing beats being free of having smelly people brush various parts of their bodies against yours every other second. Have I emphasised enough how utterly disgusting it was? Because it really was.

Still in search for a toilet, we went down to CityLink Mall because the bloody Esplanade was too high class to open its doors to the general public on New Year's Eve. Assholes. The queue for the toilet wasn't as long as I'd imagined, and after finally relieving myself, Mag and I headed to TCC where we ordered drinks and an Ole Ole whatever cake.

While waiting for our orders, Mag spotted this nice pink-hued picture that was framed in this star-shaped border of blue Christmas lights, which we both thought was super pretty. Thus ensued a short camwhoring session that involved the ten-second timer, me posing for Mag to find the right angle, and Mag rushing to join me to take pictures. It was DAMN FUN and I was DAMN HIGH. I kept laughing at the most random things, including Mag scrolling through 800 pictures to find the one that we just took (her memory card is weird). In fact, we were both damn high the whole night. Like Mag said, we have this amazing ability to self-entertain, and that ability was on full display last night.

After that, we walked up to Raffles One or One Raffles or whatever it was, the place where Pacific Coffee Company is. We found what we thought was a good spot for the fireworks: not crowded, can see the sky, did I mention not crowded? Because it was not crowded. It was about 11.40, so for twenty minutes we camwhored some more, laughed at random things, and even managed to talk serious. I think we're amazing, don't you think so Mag?

What was rather funny in an anti-climatic way, though, was that no one counted down to midnight at our area. When it was 12.01 a.m. on my handphone clock, I was all, "Eh, it's already midnight leh. Why nothing happened one?" And when the fireworks started, the reason why the area was not crowded became painfully obvious: Because the fireworks - half of them - were blocked by the stupid-ass trees.

OMG have you heard of something so lame? Mag thought that the stuff would be shot higher, but it wasn't. How Singaporean it was, really. But still, what we did manage to see of the fireworks were really quite pretty. There was this particular sperm-like one which amused me to no ends, and the fairy glitter dust one was very pretty. The whole she-bang took about ten minutes, and what was remarkable was that I was getting all excited and girly and clappy hands-ish over it. Remember this fireworks festival thing we had at the Esplanade sometime back? I went with my mom and I was all, "Er. Okay. Nice. Whatever. Can we go home?"

It's rather tragic that I've lost a considerable amount of my jaded edge. Ah, well. I suppose that's called growing up.

Anyway, what was REALLY REALLY SUPER BLOODY HILARIOUS about the whole night was what happened after the fireworks. Mag had already decided that she wanted to eat black sesame tangyuan (what's tangyuan in English ah?) at Xin Wang Cafe, and immediately after the fireworks ended and people started moving off, she was all, "Ok hurry let's go grab a table!" And because I was high, I was all, "Ok hurry let's RUN!"

And run, we did.

Or rather, run, she did. I was wearing heels and my shoes were quite loose, so I didn't manage to run more than ten steps before I had to stop and walk. But Mag? She ran all the way there (which wasn't very far actually) and got us a table, way before anyone else! It was so hilarious and I couldn't stop laughing when I was half-walking half-running there. We proceeded to have a good time gloating at the long queue of people waiting outside to have a table and congratulated ourselves on a good job well done. HAHA.

Mag treated me to Chinese tea! So sweet. And we ate our TCC cake with...chopsticks. Which was entirely Mag's idea. But it was quite efficient, save for me needing to shove the chopsticks quite far down my throat to get the cream off them. So the first thing I ate in 2008 was a chocolate cake. A sign of things to come? Gosh, I hope not.

The night out with Mag ended on a lovely note with a lovely conversation over post-fireworks food at Xin Wang. It was my first time ever going out on New Year's Eve; ordinarily I couldn't be bothered. I almost couldn't be bothered last night until Mag said that she was up to going. And I'm so glad that I spent it with her, because she's a friend like no other. We do the most retarded things together, like posing like tourists in the middle of the closed road in front of the Fullerton Hotel and running to the cafe for a table. We also have the best conversations and even though our religious beliefs cannot be more fundamentally opposed to each other, I feel like she really gets where I'm coming from and vice versa. Beyond that, she never judges me for the things I say and the things I'm liable to do, even when I know she doesn't quite agree. No matter what I do, she's always there, always listening, never judging, always offering advice.

Ugh, I so don't want to think about the fact that she's going to be in Manchester next semester. But I do hope that she has a fulfilling and enriching experience anyway, even though I'd rather have her home haha. I'm really so glad that I spent New Year's Eve with Mag. There was no one else I wanted to spend it with, really. Best New Year's Eve ever, and I only have her to thank.

The MRT ran until 2 a.m. which was utterly amazing; I was expecting it to extend only until 12.30 a.m. So glad I didn't have to cab, because I am this close to becoming shit broke. When I got on the train I felt all my energy being sapped out of me, probably was because I was so damn high with Mag earlier on (and no, we didn't drink a single drop of alcohol; it was more like we were high on each other, I was high on caffeine, Mag was high on her lychee soda). I was so tired that I could've fallen asleep on the MRT, and yet my mind was wide awake. In any case, I couldn't sleep yet, because Marcus texted me earlier on and said that he'd be at his friend's house, which was a street away from mine, and that we could meet up after I got back from Marina Bay. And I was like, Okay I'll drop by.

And drop by I did. I thought the condo was at the bottom of the road/hill, but it turned out to be at the top, which means it was a bit further from my house than I'd thought. By then it was 2.30 a.m. and my mom was already getting on my case. Two seconds after Marcus found me lost at the guard house, my mom called, and a moment of complete shamelessness seized me which led me to tell her, "My friend's going to walk me back so you don't have to drive me home."

After I hung up, I turned to Marcus, grinned widely at him, and said, "I just told my mom that you're going to walk me back. Is that okay?"

Hahaha. How could he refuse, right? In fact, how could anyone possibly say no to me?

Anyway, it was nice talking to him. We talked for about an hour, including the walk to my house. Even without my anal parents though I couldn't have stayed longer because I was really very super amazingly tired. Halfway through walking back I told him, "I'm so tired that I don't want to walk anymore." When we reached my house I was saying something which I can't remember and I was slurring!

And it was quite interesting and nice, and I laughed a lot. He's this very strange person. I've been in law school way too long because non-law people, meaning people who weren't already my friends before law school started, are just strange to me. Perhaps that's why I still think that we should attempt to see each other in daylight because amazingly, that hasn't happened before. Ever.

But then again, I've only met him two weeks ago, so maybe it's not that amazing.

Anyway, I'm super sleepy and I haven't showered and I'm watching a movie with Chloe and Jolie at 11 a.m. tomorrow which is quite insane so I think I should go sleep now. Yes. Or rather, go shower and then sleep. Yes. Totally.

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