You are guilty...

Today started the first Water training since the CNY celebrations. After a month and three weeks of Start-of-Year raining, the water level of MacRitchie's finally back to where it should be! The Concrete is underwater again, and the legs of the Pontoon aren't exposed anymore! Capsized half-way in my programme, that I can tell you. And the adventure of trying to get back on board isn't a pleasure cruise, I assure you. For me and Jedd's case, we capsized out at the 250m Mark, within Lane 3. My deduction for the cause: the boat was totally unbalanced. I was literaly paddling the whole length with my right bottom cheek not touching the seat at all. Jedd has a lot to work on right now...

So we had to watch out for canoe traffic before crossing the lanes (Remember to look to your left and right...), and once out, we had to make our way to the nearest shore, still making sure we wouldn't colide with another boat on the way. Once at shore, we had to empty water quickly, then find an area shallower than our knees to climb in (This was really tricky, esspecially to the fact that spiders and snakes abound both in the branches above and on branches that protrude just on top of the water surface, and that it'sa very steep slope from the waterbed to dry shore.) and make sure that we don't colide into anything else when we reverse backwards to get out.

Then after Water training, we did a little Land training: Sprints x6 (Juniors; 4). Then we did the 10 push-ups that we all owed Mr. Goh for our bad performance last Thursday. When I say "10", I mean 100 normal push-ups. It was tough, and some of the new people wern't that good in their sustaining, so time after time we had to stop at the last ten-digit number we stopped at. Somewhere in the duration, I was bitten on my right pinky by a sand bug, and boy did the pain hurt. But I had push-ups to do, so I tried my best to ignore the pain. Once finished, we still had 15 to owe to Nick Low. Ouch.

After being dismissed, I found out from Kirby that the preview of 'Ghost Rider' that the ACPS Boys were supposed to have done last Friday was going to be done today. Trying to take my chances, I decided to ask if I was allowed to join in. So Kirby called Tim and asked him for me while he was also settling his arrival time at ACPS to meet some ex-teachers, and so I was welcomed. But looking at the attire I brought to change into - Cooperate T-Shirt and school bermudas - I felt maybe I'd be better if I went home to wash up first. By now, my right pinky was swollen from the bite, and I could barely bend my finger without feeling as if my finger was about to burst. Wondered how long this would stay.

Anyway, I went back home, finished off my homework, ate lunch, bathed, changed into one of my favourite clothing combinations [Teal T-shirt + French jagged long pants + Boots] and made my way to the bus stopin a duration of less than 2 hours. While waiting at the bus stop, Tim called to check my arrival status, and apparently I only felt the vibrations till half-wait. So the first thing I heard when I answered the call was an emergency-related shout to change my waiting tone. Not my fault SingTel shoved a French jazz singer into my phone! But you've got to admit, the song's quite nice. Unless of course, it's not the song I think it's playing.

Took a fairly filled 700 (The best bus to take to the city in my area, since it's the only one that uses the expressway), dropped off at Far East Plaza and made my way to Lido. Honestly speaking, this is the first time in my school social life that I went to watch a movie at this theatre which I highly reguard. True, it's kinda old and the furniture is quite close to Old CPA quality, but the audience who come here are the best! Least likely to be disturbed by an annoying quarrel between youngsters, almost not possible for me to be disturbed by a handphone and everyone laughs the loudest here! I take the laughing point as the most important as it makes any movie, weather be comedy or horror-with-slapstick-sarcascim, very sucessful and comfortable for the audiences to watch.

But moving back to meeting the people, I met then at the section of the compound where the old 'James Bond' posters hung. 'Them' refers to:
~Tim
~JKit
~Matt
~Kirby
~John Lim
~Aik Leng
~Han Jie
But the moment I stepped close to them, Tim suddenly said, "Why did you have to wear green?!" Apparently, he was also drinking a green cup of green bubble tea with green pearls using a green straw. Ironic. The we spent the next hour-or-so chatting about random stuff and so on. John kept telling me how much I should have gonet the CNY celebrations the ol' Del-Care people were celebrating yesterday. How the people were playing Twister and so Stanley ended up farting directly at Lynette's face. How Lynette made weird moves in one of the poker card games they were playing. How I missed out on the 60 cents Lynette still owes me. The thing was this: I couldn't join the party cause NOBODY TOLD MY FAMILY!!! URGH!!! HOW MANY MORE EVENTS MUST MY FAMILY MISS BEFORE SOMEBODY REALIZES THAT WE ARN'T EVEN THERE??!!! GRAWWRR!!! GUILTY!!!!
But anyway, once we only had a few more minutes left to wait, we decided to go buy some snacks and walk around to do a little Poster Observing. Yay! A favourite activity of mine! Especially in a movie theatre! We looked around at posters, from the perfectly 'normal' ones like 'Number 23', to the standardly creepy ones like 'Mr. Bean's Holiday', to the plainly disturbing ones like 'Morbit'. Ah. The sights of it all! Poster Observing to me is like Portrait Observing to an art lover. It's just entertaining, and you never know what you can notice in every picture, every corner, every detail!

While we were walking around, JKiet appeared out of nowhere, which was apparently due to Kirby's 'un-official invitation' that was meant to be a joke. There were a few problems we had to settle with an extra crew member on board, but as they always say, "The more the merrier". While we were still moving about the compound, JKiet suddenly asked if I was angry with him or something as I was stoning again. Now I know how great an extent my unintentional stoning can drive others nuts. For any other victims of my momments of sheer quietness that I've never noticed, I sincerely appologise. When the timimg was right, we began to queued up at the snack stall to buy somemore combos to share out in the movie. If you've forgotten, the movie was 'Ghost Rider'.

The cermecials at the begining were nice. Sometimes out of context, but still nice. Then in a matter of minutes, the lights went out, and the movie started to play. The show's quite good, I must say. Frankly speaking, I thought it was going to be a rather frightening horror movie at first before I watched and was not certain if I could make it through the movie without having to stain my pants with yellow. But I guess I survived this movie very well. The plot of the movie wasn't that much disturbing to me after all: As a Protestant Christian, I believe that the devil has no power, no power at all, except the power, or should I just say skill, of persuation. Either than that, the devil does't even have the authority to touch you, and only the human lack of faith causes the downs of life to look more frustrating than its suppose to be.

Getting back, I was proud that I could get out of the theatre without expecting nightmares to follow. Praise the Lord! After being 'dismissed', I pretended to walk along towards my own form of transportation. Once I knew the coast was clear, I made a little round-a-bout to the basement of Lido to do a little something I always make a point doing after every visit to Orchard Road.

More Poster Observing!!!

I endulged myself into the many posters available and stared at each one in great detail before moving along to others! Blood and Chocolate was interesting; I doubt many people would notice that the woman's hand was transforming into a paw. Epic Movie was entertaining; fun to play 'guess' on which character plays a spoof to which real character. Mr. Bean's Holiday is, erm, you'll see. Now I've learnt three of his movie's slogans: 1) One of them has the brain the size of a peanut. 2) Disaster is just a step away. 3) Disaster has a passport. After a good (And I mean goooooood) scan of all of the posters, I went off and caught the next bus to my Mom's tution center. Once there, I stayed at the waiting area and read a few magazines (About the creepy side of the insect world) while waiting for my Mom to finish off with teh remaining students of the day. The buisness seems to be improving, and now she's got 8 teachers in the center. I'm impressed; this outlet started off with 2 throughout last year. Thank you Lord!

Then once everyone except me, my Mom and my Dad (Who visits the center to help out whenever and in whatever he could) was out of the center, I helped my parents shut down the computers, lights and air-cons and made our way out of the place, calling it a night. So I guess that of the group who were present to watch the movie, I stayed in Orchard Road the longest. That's what you get when both your parents work on opposite ends of Orchard. Dad wanted to ta pao ('take away') some fried kuay teow and mutton soup for supper, but by the time we arrived at the hawker center, both shops that soldthe stuff respectively were closed. The side-effects of 15-day Chinese New Year celebration custom.

Now to prepare for school (And canoeing [And push-ups]) again...