the dearth of taxis at crucial hours.
written: 10:12 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008

Fuck, I need to stop having dreams. I thought it was over, but...apparently not. It was just a dream. But why did I even have that dream?

Right. On a less complicated note, I bought Kenneth the drink that I'd been meaning to buy him on Friday night at Sueprfamous. Before that we had dinner at LAU PA SAT OMG OMG OMG! because I told him that I wanted to eat budget. Because, you know, I totally have no money and everything. And why three OMGs? Kenneth told it best when he remarked, "This is cheap compared to what we usually have." (Barring, I'm sure, the...stuff we eat in the canteen. Because canteen food does not count.)

Somehow, as much as I was horrified at the amount of money I spent on my two-dish dinner at bloody Lau Pa Sat (Lau Pat Sa? Wah lau whatever lah), a part of me isn't surprised that my attempt to save money rather failed. There was this Taiwanese stall and I ordered two dishes and it totaled up to $8.80. Like, seriously. Unbelievable. The braised seaweed cost $3.80 and the smelly tofu cost $5. FIVE FREAKING DOLLARS OMG WTFFFFF. I can get the same thing, but much nicer, in Taipei for $1.50! And the seaweed was utter shit. I honestly had no conception of the very idea that it was possible to screw up braised seaweed, but that stall totally screwed it up. It just tasted shit. Not literally, obviously, but it was just awful.

On the bright side, the tofu wasn't too bad. But paying $5 for it was just utterly ridiculous. My principles were so affronted that I called my dad to bitch about it and scolded him for not letting me go to Taipei with him in March, and that it was all his fault that I paid $5 for smelly tofu and had to suffer through really shitty seaweed. Boo!

I'm still shocked that it cost $5. How can tofu cost five freaking dollars?!

Superfamous was nice, despite the trashy music and the almost non-existent service. It was empty for a Friday night, probably because it's located in the middle of office buildings and office workers probably don't want to hang around their workplaces on a Friday night...though Kenneth did see a group of corporate-y people carrying briefcases and going back to an office building, presumably for work, after their drinks. Which I found utterly depressing. As is the thought of hanging out at Superfamous in the near future, having drinks over memos and affidavits, OMG how absolutely tiring.

Though I wonder what it'd be like writing a memo under the influence of alcohol. Could one get fired for such things? Assuming, that is, that alcohol does the opposite of inspiring you and makes you emo and thereby makes you churn out "advices" along the lines of, "Our client should totally win because he's damn poor thing! I have no authority to support my contention that someone should win on the basis that he's 'damn poor thing' but I AM THE LAW! SCREW AUTHORITIES! BWAHAHAHAHAHHA." And a post-script at the end of the memo: "This was written after five glasses of vodka on the rocks. My alcohol tolerance isn't very high."

But then again, if I can still spell that perfectly after five glasses of vodka, I'm not sure if I could defend myself with the Intoxication excuse. Isn't intoxication supposed to screw up your mental faculties, thereby rendering you unable to spell? But what if I'm just an exceptionally good speller, someone whose spelling abilities will not be affected by any amount of alcohol? Because I still spelled perfectly well when I got drunk at Zouk last August. Just ask whoever received my SMSes...oh wait, I remember typing a word wrongly when I replied to Kenneth's SMS about lunch or something, but even while wasted I noticed that the word wasn't quite right; I just wasn't lucid enough to correct it. But I noticed! And I proceeded to ramble about not knowing if I'd answered Kenneth's SMS for the rest of the night, which was definitely strange.

Alcohol, therefore, is bad for you.

Anyway, the highlight of Friday night was being stranded in City Hall after giving 171 ten minutes to arrive, then when it was 11.50 and there was no 171, walking to the Raffles City taxi stand to get a cab and standing in line for twenty minutes without a single taxi pulling into the stand. We walked from Superfamous to the traffic junction opposite SMU, near the Substation (we heard the Timbre band and Kenneth wanted to go check it out but my dad was already pissed that I wasn't home yet so we had to take a rain check), and stopping by the Fullerton to use the toilet. And it was fine - except there was no cab. I can only imagine what we would've done if an unoccupied taxi hadn't happen to careen down the near-empty road towards us, because I honestly think that walking home wasn't out of the question. Desperate times called for desperate measures. And it really wasn't the first time we were stranded without a cab, though I must say that I've never been stranded without a cab in the middle of nowhere with anyone else but Kenneth.

He's bloody amazing, I tell you. I was this close to swearing (well, I did, mildly) and whining (uh, did that too) and pouting (I think I did that as well) and he just laughed and said, "This is like a mini tradition!" Then he proceeded to tell me why I should see the humour in the situation. It would have been a lot more amusing if my dad hadn't hung up on me half an hour before. But okay, it was still amusing anyway.

Friday was also good because Chloe gave me cupcakes! That she baked, obviously. And they were damn yummy! I felt very happy eating them and didn't think about getting fat at all. How amazing right? Like, totally.

I watched Stan Lai's Like Shadows with Jolie last night, a Taiwanese play. It was surprisingly not post-modern! It had an actual plot, actual acts, actual storylines, no way! I preferred What is Man? but Like Shadows was not bad. Unfortunately the two Panadol I took in the afternoon wore off and my bloody migraine came back and I almost died. I slept at 12 midnight that night which was the earliest I'd slept in a VERY long time. I woke up at 1 the next day, ha ha ha.

I've been too lazy to reply to SMSes on time. I would tell myself that I'd reply before I sleep, then "before I sleep" comes and I'm too lazy to reply, so it becomes "after I wake up". After I wake up I find myself with a million things to do, none of which pertain to my 5000-word, 100% Infocoms paper due at the end of the freaking month, and in the rush to do these million things I cannot find in me the energy to expend the great effort of trying to remember where my bloody phone is, then getting off my chair and going towards its location, then extending my arm to search for it, and moving my thumb across my shitty keypad (my 'space' button is broken) to type some nonsensical shit that I don't want to type, in order to answer a trivial SMS that I don't feel like answering.

In short? I am not an SMS conversation person. It floods my inbox unnecessarily and for some reason the newer Sony Ericsson phones don't have the trusty and handy 'reply and delete' option that my old T630 has, so these trivial text messages accumulate and my stupid inbox is always over 90% or 95% or whatever it is full. And I'm too lazy to delete my messages because it involves the absolutely tiring and laborious process of searching for my phone which I described earlier.

Am I a bad person if I'd much rather do other things than to reply to text messages that don't beg an answer, and the ones that do, don't beg an urgent response? Not to mention: It's not free, you know. After 500 text messages sent, every single one costs money, so forgive me if I don't feel like wasting money on mundane things like what I'm doing at the moment, how my day was, blah blah blah. Since I don't keep track of how many text messages I send in a month, I'd prefer to err on the side of caution and just cut down on unnecessary texting.

But if I don't reply, the person may think I'm ignoring him. Which I'm not, really; I just don't like to SMS. Have I mentioned that my space button is broken? Imagine how damn difficult it is to SMS, which only adds to my dislike for texting.

Also, I can't fathom how anyone can say that legal theory is useless because POSITIVISM SUCKS and a superficial championing of positivism defies all evidence that points to the contrary, and I want to do something for the SLR Writing symposium thingy, partly because it would be damn awesome to win US$3000, and partly because Kenneth organised the whole thing and naturally he talked me out of not taking part, and he said that he got rid of the writing competition which is replaced with the symposium, which is a bi-annual thing? Which means it's now or never! And it would look damn good on my CV if I place. But discrimination in the law? I don't even know where to start. And like I keep reminding Kenneth - as if he needed any reminders - I'm damn lazy.

Bleahhhh. If anyone's kind enough to do research for me though, let it be known that if I win something, I'd totally buy you a drink. Or a meal (budget S$20) if alcohol isn't your thing. Or coffee if eating isn't your thing.

Thursday night, dinner with Rui, Chloe and Jolie! I can't wait.

Shit, I need to get started on the Infocoms thing. It's a hundred freaking percent and I have no idea what's going on. I'M SCREWED.

As for the horrible dream, I'm just going to ignore it. Bad things should stop happening to me, I think.

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