Now, apparently this conspiracy to keep me out of the house is now a plot; it's been going on too often for comfort.

I was suddenly informed that there was a Rosyth gathering, and unlike normal things that people do, be it Guitar Hero or such, we were going to go and have a picnic in the middle of the Botanic Gardens.

Yes. A picnic. In the Botanic Gardens. My mind initially could not wrap around the concept; people actually do that?

The gathering came at such a short notice because TG, being TG, removed me from the mailing list. So I was unassigned in the gift exchange, unnotified, and by all rights shouldn't have been there at all. SURPRISE!

Thankfully, a few Mousehunt Corkboard posts by Alvan and a MSN chat (starting to get useful) with Jazlyn proved that it was happening, and then a phone call with Kash.

Parents dropped my off, on-time as always, at Serene Center the next day, where true to Mom's predictions, I waited for a long time (being 45 minutes) for people to actually turn up. Got Wenda and Nic Eu, the two inseperable scouts, to get to Serene Center, Jane turned up, followed by everyone else.

I found it funny that while the girls were off having their Island Creamery, the guys (then consisting of Me, Nic Eu, and Wenda) went and at Mac ice-cream. Hilarious.

When everyone had turned up, and TG uttering a swearword on the girl's behalf for no reason whatsoever, we headed on to Botanic.

(Have I mentioned that TG's new hairstyle looks really great on him? Alright, moving on)

We moved on to Botanic, where we spotted Alvan and Andrew hanging out, having what was called a ' ghey date' or a ' jolly gay time.' After some cracks about 'waterfront dining', we settled down in front on the small lake, the one with the black swans.

Attempts to explain to Jazlyn who the 'JY' really was were futile. She asked for cute people in Buckely. COUGHCOUGHCOUGH.

TG disappeared to fetch Sugi, and thus began what was called by Dodo the 'anti-social' part of the day. Guys played cards, girls chatted and did whatever they normally did, plus throw my rushed Mitch essay draft into the lake. An appeal for cooked food resulted in the guys protesting that chips were cooked, after all.

Then there was the detour to frisbee, where we, err, played frisbee, threw my frisbee in the water a lot, irritated the uncle who was cleaning the pond, and played more frisbee. Then came Quah's shot; scoring was this:

Mat: 10 points
Girls: 20 points per person
Swan: 1000000 points if he can retrieve the frisbee
TG: 50 bonus points
Cleaner: Lose one life i.e. cleaner will kill him
Water: Game over

True to form, he scored the water, and luckily the frisbee was retrieved by the extremely tolerant uncle. Next to be thrown across the lake were apples; Alvan and Nic Eu tossed it around a few times, until Alvan failed, and it sploshed in the water. Some people swore they saw the uncle take a bite out of it.

With it starting to drizzle, we moved to the recently vacated pavilion nearby, and engaged in a mass game of Pig. I spent the most of it looking out for the crazy antics the rest of us were doing, and copying, and thus remaining only at Lvl 1. The eventual losers, Mahr and Munirah, did the airplane around the park. Marking the route they were to travel with Aaron resulted in the two of us having muddy shoes. Stupid detour across the grass.

Then we played 'I have Never', where you drop a finger for everything mentioned that you have done. Goal is to have as many of your ten fingers up at the end of the game as possible. I realise that I am, by modern day standards, pretty unfulfilled. But I do a lot of random stuff people don't know about, and if this game were 'I have', I would own everyone pretty badly. So, the stuff I have never been:

-I have never owned a pair of ankle-socks (good one that killed a few people)
-I have never played Maple (HAH)
-I have never been in a relationship (To quote Adil, 'Let's see all those fingers dropping people')
-I have never gotten a GPA higher than 3.33 (Oh the shame; Alvan was complaining 'I don't have a GPA!')
-I have never been on national TV (A joke specially targeted at Quah and Dodo)
-I have never failed to fill out RE Congress booklets (A whole bunch of RI guys failed, hah)

As for the things I have:

-I have played Mafia Wars (apparently sending energy packs to mom counts; noes!)
-I have played Mousehunt (Grah)
-I have played TF2 (Is it me, or are there a lot of mentions of games)
-I have cursed Priscilla Lim (very astute, Alvan)
-I have read manga illegaly (once, over my brother's shoulder! That's no fair!)
-I have failed a Math test (repeatedly)

Then later people who died (I died once; was going pretty solid all the way to die at the end) had to do a forfeit. So the bunch of us made a Fail Train, and ran the track, to only break up and become a Fail Mob, running back to the pavilion, heh.

Rain vanished, along with Wenda and Nic Eu, and some of us suddenly decided to take a walk. Through Botanical Gardens. Something normal! So we walked. The first round was a bunch of us, as can been seen in the groupshot that a passerby was kind enough to take a shot for us.



We walked a loop around the lake, cross the bridge, detouring to avoid dogs, then straying pretty far off to the evolution garden, talking about everything under the sun, and quite a bit about the internet. I have learned a whole list of webcomics that I will peruse, from Jazlyn (so far SurvivingTheWorld has been great, Dreamless looks promising). I have learned from Munirah that Muslims have to wash themselves with soil if a dog touches them (how is soil supposed to clean you?). I have learnt that scags Dodo and Quah enjoy playing ball with the smuggled Guffy. I have learnt that Alvan has lost two specs to MacRitchie. We seriously talked about all sorts of things.

Going through the Evolution walk, and passing by 20 million years in a matter of minutes, we headed back to get our stuffs and rejoin with the antisocial card players. We split up then, all heading to the bus-stop. I just followed Munirah, who definitely knows her buses. Followed Aaron and Sugi on 855, and bumped into Kailing who just got on. She looked reeeeelly sleepy. Chatted, about Julian on TV, his repetitive FB status updates, asking my friends who was more scary, and such. Followed Munirah and hopped onto 980 right behind us, and home! I learned that 980 does go to opposite Sembawang Shopping Centre (which has so many movie adverts and no theatre, WTF). I have such a fear of riding buses. Lacks the familiarity of MRT trains where you know exactly where you are going, while buses are... more prone to mishap. Whatever.

---

Segmenting returns!

---

I finished Blink a while back, and Tipping Point too, and both books were really really great, cementing Malcolm Gladwell into one of my favorite writers ever.

I would spend time talking about the books, except I won't be doing the arguments justice. READ DEM BOOKS. I particularly find thin-slicing really insightful, along with the dangers of first impressions. Tipping Point lacked the punch that Outliers had, but I'm missing part of the picture; my book is a misprint; page 300andsomething suddenly cuts to page 86 to 120something, then to 370something again. So I'm missing a chunk of my book, NOOOOO.

Blink helped smash the writer's block I had for DPE (Doctor of Political Expediency). I know how to settle Lecture 4 (Art of Making Decisions) now. Yay.

For those interested in my lesson plan for the lectures, this breakdown comes from my notes:

The Importance of Political Expediency (written)
The World Around Us (written)
The Management of People - Tipping Point peeps?
The Art of Making Decisions - Blink mixed in?
The Method of Planning
The 5 Kinds of Power (Written)
The 3 Kinds of Authority (written)
The Different Forms of Leadership (written)
The Role of Assassination

I'm really putting off the last one, as it's a summary and requires rhetoric, something I'm a little stretched for right now. I'm going to boot Lecture 5 for something else soon, as I have no idea what to do with it.

I secretly wonder how many 16 year-olds actually have to manage a full professorship, a virtual doctorate course. Which shows how inherently awesome Discworld is.
MUST FINISH IT SOON OR LLYLIA WILL CONTRACT ME OUT OF ANGER. (Actually she wouldn't. So yeah.)

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ibhsohogoh ceoa tthsoh msoeogocohn oaoeenoe oend tthsoh ibogoetths mgf tthsoh msoeogocohn JY!!!

JY-speak is hard.

---

Recent fascination with 'Blade in the Crowd'ing people in Assassin's Creed, which means secretly assassinate targets without them knowing, the way it should be done. So far I've done two, one involving kicking in someone's knees and stabbing the base of the neck, the other springing off the wall and smashing him blade-first into his desk. Violence is fun, but involves a lot of hard work.

I have a new favorite climbing spot in AC now, the big cross at the top of the roof in Acre. It is practically the tallest structure in the game, all the way up the church, then the tower, then the incredibly steep steeple, then the huge cross, and while Acre totally sucks for roof-climbing, there is a certain attraction in climbing to the top of a big cross and looking down. I went along the lines of screaming 'hey I can see the Assassin's Bureau from here' before realising that indeed I could. And it's freaking scary manipulating yourself on top of a giant cross. Imagine screaming down 'show me what your God can do, freaking templars!', before getting picked off by a frigging archer, falling all the way down. Was tempted to, but couldn't find a button for it. I'd bet it would be in 'High Profile'. Cough. Oh, I also think that I found Excalibur hidden in the game, but I can't be sure. Sure as hell can't get it out of the rock though.

---

I have a copy of Waiting for Godot! Hurrah!

I wanted to do Lucky's speech for the monologue audition of Theatre Studies. Slight problem, it's three pages long. Of gibberish. If I really go through with it, it will require some SICK SuperMemory (tm) techniques application. Adam should totally use Lucky's speech instead othe 30 or 20 word lists.

I picked out a good one by Vladamir that might serve as a fair replacement though.

Oh, managed to take a look at the Comics Mart in Serene Centre, and their stuff. Daren't look at the games section, so stuck to comics. And I saw a whole bunch of Sandman. Drool. Only Gaimen I really want to read except for the collaboration with Prachett, which I already have. If anyone asks me (again) about the goddess Bilquis I only remember her as roadkill. Moving on.

Question: Terry, how did you and Neil Gaiman work together on Good Omens? Who wrote what?
Terry Prachett: I did the words, he did the spaces. Mind you, he tells it differently.

---

I have some bits to ploink in here. Gimme a moment.
Don't want to spend a new post on it, since the next one is the big one hundred, and I wanna save it for something. New Year or liddat.

You know what? Forget it. I'll get to it when I get to it.

You will notice that there has been a lull of inactiveness on my blog. You will also notice that the music is gone, but let's not digress. Well, it seems that for the past few days there has been a conspiracy to keep me in the house. Even if Sam Swee thinks I'm bored much. Cough.

You will find the last bits of the holiday post all hashed up. It'll be very brief, as Mom has finally gotten around to loading the pictures.

So yes, what have I been up to? Lemme see...

Firstly, badminton on Monday. After a huge rush on Sunday, finally got it arranged at one of the Yishun CCs, and we had a good time (time= 2 hours) playing badminton. Ryan came along! Yes! My rather anti-social, hard to understand brother actually came along! Also there were Jasmine and her friend, plus Joee who popped up a moment later. Brendan busted his ankle, and after his x-ray, came by later too. Got pung-sehed by the Shauns.

Played badminton, talked, played somemore, sat backstage of the hall taking in some fan, talked somemore. We didn't do THAT much playing; partially because of the absent Shauns. Lack of people. But it was a good time; though I did something to my leg; it was hurting pretty bad on the way back. Stopped off at Northpoint foodcourt for lunch, and then headed back to the GV building for some arcade playing. Me and Ryan cleared a mission or two of Virtua Cop, Joee and Brendan attempted to beat the basketball highscore, I beat Brendan in a 1 on 1 race, where he owed me one arcade coin. And so on.

We split up after that, where me and Ryan took advantage of our free movie ticket vouchers to catch Avatar. The graphics were really nice, the story was a tad predictable, Ryan was fangirling over the machines... and indignant that they loss, annnnnd yeah, it turned out pretty well. Considering that the last time James Cameron made a lot of money was when the ship sank.

Because of Ryan, here is a list of my favorite characters, in order:
1. The cool Eywa flower seed
2. The spunky pilot
3. The big birdy
4. The Colonel (who was freaking badass)
5. That 'Grace' character

As I am typing this, Ryan is lying on my bed incessantly chattering about DOTA, and I am tempted to delete it to damnation off our main comp. It's all he talks about, and it's freaking irritating. Plus, he's indignant about the fangirling comment, and I'm sticking it there anyway. BLAH TO YOU.

Brendan invited us to a barbeque at his place the next day, a pleasant surprise, and what turned out to be a fun time :)

Now, moving on to Tuesday, the day started off with Nic Eu informing me rather earlier than usual, that there was lanning. Now, instead of 15 minutes before it happens, he gave me a full 2 hours! OMG! Typical Scout last-minuteness, but an improvement nonetheless.

So I headed down to Dhoby, and after getting lost, finally found the new place that the guys go to. Got there, and with a scream of 'YO BITCHES', entered the fray, capping all three flags and killing heavies as an engineer. For non-TF players, yes that is an achievement. Except that, you know, the rest of my juniors can't play to save their little virtual, respawnable lives. Me and Kwang Ik massacred them.

More people turned up, and I went to new heights, such as highest backstabs (4), highest headshots (tied at 8), and me and KI tag-teaming and taking out opposition. It was easy.

Headed out to Dhoby to meet up with Brendan (for the barbeque) at 4, and after convincing him that going 4 MRT stations took ten minutes, and not half an hour, and on the train convincing him that his ancestors were probably animal herders because he was defiant to an NCC instructor (Culture of Honor, Outiers, Malcolm Gladwell), we moved to Harbourfront, where after a brief detour upstairs where Brendan looked for new headphones, we then headed back down, meeting with Jasmine. Brendan bought them small Christmas hats, and I doth had one, which I will go and pay for some other day when I have cash on my person. Guffy's now wearing it, wishing people 'Mewwy Chwistmas!' like the little duck in Tom and Jerry that goes 'Happy Easter!'. Anyhow, moving on...

After an incredibly long bus-ride, where I found I could have just come from Woodlands instead, we made it to the bus-stop, where we were picked up by Brendan's mom, who wasn't driving a red Ferrarri (as promised), but a black Lexus. After one tragic suan and a discussion on how many bans on the condo were put in place because of Brendan, we pulled into his place.

As Wei-Sheng was being picked up, we poked around his room, hanged around (in essence, not doing much), I was accused of locking Brendan's bro (also called Ryan) in the AK toilet, a crime I have no memory doing. Damn it, blamed and yet no job satisfaction. I also helped out arranging the charcoal, and gave tips on barbequeing. Turns out CCA does have a use after all!

After a while, Wei Sheng popped up, and it was great to see him again. Turns out the Shauns pung-sehed us again. Short game of frisbee, where once I landed it in the pool, and paddled it to safety; second I just reached out and retrieved it. Only the first was my fault, honest! I need to learn how to throw a frisbee properly. Gah. Then there was the incident where Brendan threw some chicken skin on Jasmine's hair. And then the raw teriyaki chicken offering of peace. Then getting drunk on non-alcoholic beverages inside the clubhouse, popping the cork into the distance. Good times.

Had a short tussle with Ryan in the clubhouse; which proved that all the self-taught training did work; had him forced to the ground in a moment, and after letting him up, forced to the wall. Of course, no anger whatsoever, just amusement. Manage to make some good peace, so ah well.

Then came the poker game, (I learned how to play poker!) where after long and rather good game for me, majorly loss to Wei Sheng, leaving me last and liable for a forfeit. It is then I realise how hard it is for people to come up with something decent for a forfeit. Err. Now, I am a guy who is fine doing the craziest stuff imaginable, but at least keep it decent guys. Urgh. Cause Jasmine to be late for her curfew. Feel pretty bad about that.

Bus ride back, chatting with Wei Sheng all the way to Sembawang (cos he lived there). Then home.

I'm still liable for that forfeit next gathering. Oh dear.

~Russell
Has all sorts of cool things to write about and do, but as you can see, is busy. Next few days promises to be writing time though.

For anyone still hanging on, Part the Third is up, and it's probably longer than the earlier two combined. It's been worked on for the past few days.

Also, went down on Friday to Aaaaaaaron's house for Halo, Halo, and More Halo. And some Assassins Creed and TF.

ODST was interesting; takes some getting used to that you aren't Chief anymore, but we had a ball playing it. Versus on Halo 3 was utter madness, with all of us spraying our 'chicken pudding' at each other. We also dabbled in some Infection and KOTH, which were pretty neat.

I have no comment on the Soldier V Demoman war, except that Valve's idea for the prize is GENIUS, as both classes would need it. My war contributions to both sides are single-digits, and NOT ZERO. Didn't have time for it.

I notice that posts include a lot of things that have been happening to me. Need to be 1. random and 2. write more.

~Russell

You will notice the top of my blog has been Up-ed. It's a nice picture; though am a little unhappy that I couldn't get a good one of Paradise Falls. Next thing to go is that picture of me; it's from a year ago, sheesh.

You will also notice the words have changed. If you didn't, you'll notice it now. The song is Pretend, from Scott Porter and the Glory Dogs.



It is like my new favorite song.

Last of all, part 2 of the holiday is up. The rest of it may have to wait for after the Math test on Tuesday.

~Russell
A whole bunch of mentions.

NOTE: PART THREE HAS BEEN ADDED.

Err, whut? Blogpost? About my holidays? Oh right! I'm supposed to do one of it. Oh dear.

As you can see, I've been putting it off. Why? Cos it's a BLOODY LONG THING TO WRITE. But I can't ignore it; with it in the way, I can't blog about the other stuff I want to blog about in my everyday life. Like how I can create a line of bubbles underwater, took a shower wholly standing in a bucket, clear riddles on Warcraft, and other such weird things that I find myself doing throughout the course of my life.

Another problem is this: I has no pictures. Which shtucks. Therefore, should I happen to be talking about a particular cloud formation, or a nice place, you will have to visualize it in your mind until my mom bothers to dig out the camera and I come up with captions and stealth-add it into the post.

Well. Let us begin. Err.

We flew in to Tokyo first, as my family figured we couldn't handle a direct route straight to America. And since attempts to learn Japanese from TG completely broke down, I had to pick up some stuff here and there. We stayed in Shinjuku-gyoenmae (I only remember it because that was the railway station there), and I'm mentioning this because I can show off the fact that I remember the spelling. Anyhow, moving on.

We had our first meal, yakitori, in a cosy, small restaurant, and it was just awesome. We would return a few times on the first leg and the last leg, when we were in Japan. I am never eating that dabao yakitori crap again.

Incidentally, there my Dad offered me some (Asahi) beer. I passed on the opportunity, unlike some people. Let's pull the laws from a random country, say, Taiwan, and take a look...

• It is illegal for anyone under the age of 18 to consume alcohol.
• Parents, guardians, and others taking care of people under 18 shall prohibit underage drinking, or risk administrative fines of 10000 to 50000 new Taiwan dollars when the situations are serious.
• One shall not supply alcohol to anyone under the age of 6. A violator shall be administratively fined 3000 to 15000 new Taiwan dollars.

We also made a pilgrimmage to Tsukiji market, that I'll cover when I mention the second leg too. We didn't make just one pilgrimmage of sorts. More of, like, four?

The first leg had two main events: Meeting Edgar, my mom's ex-student from A Long Time Ago, where we met for dinner in Roppongi, and he turned out pretty cool. "I wish I had worked less when I was a student" sort of won us over already. Heh. He was a GEPer (under Grosse too) and an Old Boy, so we had a few common grounds on which to talk about.

(Roppongi is one of my new favorite words, apart from Ghiradelli and Conquistador, which will pop up later; they are extremely fun to just randomly spout out of nowhere in a funny voice. Roppongi with a very springy tone, doink doink doink, Ghiradelli with a very Brooklynish, nasal tone, and Conquistador in a very Zorro-ish, Mexican tone, even if the term is Spanish. Very FNU.)

The second main thing was meeting really old friends. When we stayed in Vietnam, a good, err, 11 years ago, we had a Japanese family as neighbours, and we became best of friends. That family is Aunty Maki, Mizuki, and Keyi. We met them for the first time in nine years two years ago, and we met them again. It was really, really great to briefly catch up with them before we headed Stateside. We met them again later on the last leg, and I'll explain more then.

Moving over to the States, we crammed in four movies on that flight. I have forgotten to mention that we use flights to cram all the movies we have been missing, and I have since watched an extensive list:

-500 Days of Summer (Again. Twice)
-GI Joe (we all need to indulge in an action flick once in a while)
-Bandslam (surprisingly catchy)
-Public Enemies (not that great)
-Time Traveler's Wife (great show; mom liked it loads)
-The Hangover (plain madness)
-Julie&Julia (not so great; little irrelevant to me)
-Captain Abu Raed (Yes, I watched a show in Arabic. It was a little sad, to be honest.)
-Mary Poppins (YES. I DID)
-The Lake House (So-so.)
-UP (HELL YEAH)

Few mentions: Conquistador popped up when I re-watched Indiane Jones. Mary Poppins was insanely random, and I have new respect for Dick van Dyk or however his name is spelled. Yah. TIme Traveler's Wife was a lot better than expected, if a little disjointed (understandable). Abu Raed was a markedly great show, but with a very foggy and sad ending. I was dying to watch Up for ages. And the biggest shocker of all: Bandslam was INSANE. It was waaay better than expected, and I initially didn't want to watch it at all. I totally enjoyed it.

Oh, I spent the flight sitting next to an American, Dan, who was really great. As we were soaring above Los Angeles, he helped point out all the landmarks, which were way cool in the sky.

Moving on, we landind in LAX (What an acronym for an airport. "Could I have a LAX service please?") It was in reconstruction there, with pretty funny billboards:

"Everyone's trying to be an actor here; pretend you don't see the construction going on."
"Like a fine wine, we get better with age. Bear with the construction."
"The construction is like the paparazzi; just ignore it."

We picked up the car from Alamo, and headed to the Howard Johnson rooms we rented. They call themselves HOJO, heh. Found some killer Vietnamese food across the road which was as good as when-we-were-growing-up-Vietnam standard.

Then we come to the three theme parks.

The first was Disney. Which was pretty fun. I however had to limit myself on 1. Churros 2. running around singing 'A Whole New World' because it isn't exactly my first time in Disney. It was there I took the awesome Space Mountain coaster photo of me deep in thought; I spent the entire ride with my chin in my palm, heh. I am also insanely proud of the fact that I can no longer recognize some of the charaters walking the streets. Who the hell is Handy Mandy anyway?

Second (actually third, before Six Flags) was Universal, which was alright too. I bought a Master Chief figurine there, don't tell Russ Lim. There was a whole freaking collection of Spartans, badass. And I found an insanely cool Joker ski mask which I was denied buying. Funny photos there included a shot with Marilyn Monroe, riding the Terminator bike with sunglasses, and me getting my legs chomped by the big shark (arm power FTW). Also, the Studio Tour was insanely fun and interesting.

Third (actually second, etc) was Six Flags Magic Mountain. This was the insane one. Ryan wanted to go for all the coasters, and guess who had to go along to make sure he didn't get himself killed? Gah. We, in the end, rode:

-Colossus
-The Scream
-The Bat Man
-The Riddler
-Ninja (Awesome! Just because of the name)
-Tatsu
-Terminator: Salvation
-X2

If you do your Googling right, you'll see that all these rides, apart from Ninja, are classified under Six Flags in the rough equivalent of 'INSANE SHIT'. And I was totally battered.

I've also learned that when it comes to coasters, I am a speed junkie. I like fast rides, not them harnesses and twists and turns. Which means I liked Terminator and Colossus and Ninja, and hated everything else (Though Tatsu was pretty good, I'll admit). But someone has to follow Ryan, so ah well.

Some shopping at Carmarillo, where I got some great keeper gloves at a low price, a set of Silver Tab jeans, and and some other stuffs that I forget. Oh, I managed to get an awesome 'Currently Unsupervised' shirt at Six Flags.

And so we began the trip up to San Francisco, me looking for Carmen. You never know, she could have moved. She couldn't have evaded the police in Diego forever.

The ride up was reasonably simpler than what we've normally done. Highlights included interesting cloud formations, various attemots to take a shot of 'Congress created Dust Bowl' signs (for the Team Fortress people), and Guffy and Hammie poking around the car cabin.

We managed to pull into San Francisco, crossing the San Francisco Bridge. Ironically, traveling all the way there, the only way we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge was under it. That comes later.

We checked in at the Hilton, in Chinatown, and the most pleasant surprise was this: They doth had internet. Which was awesome. We checked in, and headed up to our room, which had a killer view of Coit Tower and the accompanying hill.

We were in Chinatown. Which means that, amoung other things, the vicinity had a lot stores manned by Chinese people. Which made it a hotspot to sell weapons. Which was awesome, except for the plain fact that I couldn't find my balisong trainer anywhere. In all the shopfuls of exotic weapons, with me even seeing the REAL SHIT (which would probably cause me to lose a finger attempting to manipulate), all we walked out of the stores was 'Making Paper Planes with Dollar Bills: Another Way to Throw Your Money Away.'

For anyone wondering what a balisong trainer is, it is a person who specialises in singing Bali songs, and trains people to do so. They do not like being manipulated, so the real shitty ones will chop off your finger in retaliation. How was I going to bring one back to Singapore? I dunno, I couldn't afford the airfare. And if you believed all of that, you are as likely to believe that such a person named Sarah Haras exists. And after finding out otherwise, think the pun in the name was 'Sahara.'

We turned in the car back to Alamo, which meant that our main form of transport was the local tram. Which was total fun. Hanging on for dear life on the side bars is extremely exhilarating and dangerous. Especially going downhill, though the operator does brake on the way down. I fulfilled my wish; which was to high-five someone hanging on the bars on another passing tram. That was extremely cool. My bro finds me weird. He has NO FREAKING IDEA.

The remainder of day one in was spent in Macys, where I finally got to see the Ronco's Rotisserie Oven (which was mentioned in What The Dog Saw), and scammed free chocolate of the promoter. Hah. Then we headed straight upstairs to the heaven that was Cheesecake Factory.

I am forever grateful to whichever ex-student of my mom's recommended the place. It was great. The food did not disappoint at all. We had pretty great eating. The only exception was the miso-grilled salmon, which was remarkably similar to one sold in Singapore, in the Changi airport staff canteen (which I am quoted saying elsewhere as 'the place behind the Burger King down the narrow staircase). Then there was the cheesecake. We had one, shared, and had to stop there. Too much of a good thing.

The next day was Fisherman's Wharf. Which, compared to other fish markets we've been to around the world, was a little bit of a let down. We had some crab, a little fishy, calamari, and clam chowder. The soup vendor was Chinese, and uttering a single 'daw jie' made him crack a smile, and utter 'xie xie lah, daw jie.' 'daw jie ye xing ma!'. It felt good to be able to bring a smile to somebody's face. Chinese is actually useful! Even if 'daw jie' is one of them dialects. Catonese?

Poking around look for 'the wharf with the sea lions', we ended up finding de Museaum de Mechanique, a vast warehouse of coin-operated machines that we actually saw on 'How It Works' in the hotel room the day before (episode on coins.) Which was totally cool, and resulted in us actually going inside and wasting a few quarters and various coinage. We wasted money on a weird boxing game (I owned my brother hands down), the very first edition of Space Invaders, a pretty cool Star Wars game that I played a few rounds of (and repeatedly failed to blow up the Death Star; they didn't give me proton torpedoes!), and a tank game, where I found a guy's wallet, whom I could luckily find on a racing game nearby (I recognized the face in the driver's licence, oh the irony).

Moving on, we took a cruise, and this was where we crossed -under- the Golden Gate Bridge. Dad enjoyed taking a look at Alcatraz, I enjoyed the scenary, Mum enjoyed the scenary and phototaking, and Ryan enjoyed something. Staring out at the ocean? I have no idea.

We passed by the city, the skyline plastered into the backdrop of the sky. We crossed under the bridge. We passed the outlying communities. We passed Alcatraz. We had one heckuva view. We saw the dock with the sea lions. We saw all sorts of things. I can either waste a hundred words per scene, or stick the pictures here when I get them. If I get them. I pick the latter. The ship had it's own portable radio small commentary, and that proved to be pretty interesting itself, though I can't help but feel that one could glean as much reading the relevant Wikipedia articles.

Further poking around the wharf, and heeding the advice of the tram inspector, we headed for Ghiradelli (the last of the awesome words), and what could possibly be the world's best hot chocolate. We had ice-cream too. It was fantastically good. Ironically, there was no 'Coit Tower' ice-cream to be found in San Francisco. Oh the irony.

We found Ghiradelli hot chocolate sold in a can in Cold Storage. Muahahahaa.

Moving on on the next day to the really really crooked street, Lombard (another awesome-but-not-so-awesome word; pronounce it in a vaguely Fwench accent). It's very nicely decorated with all sorts of plants, and really, really bendy. Attempts to actually drive through it were foiled due to the simple fact that we didn't have a car. From up there on the hill you can get really really great views of San Fran. Attempts to actually roll down the steep street were foiled by my mother threatening to not let me on the tram back to the hotel.

Next day, we picked up the car and got ready to take the 17 Mile Drive (which is actually a whole lot shorter), and to leave San Francisco. But before that, we had one more stop to make; Mom wanted to check out Alamo, the landmark, and not Alamo, our car rental. Reunited with the noisy GPS, we didn't regret it one bit. Great views. Again, I'll let the pictures do the talking. If they ever get here.

Moving on, we drove down to Monteray Bay, managing to reach there just as the sun was setting. Motel Six accomodations waay better than we expected, we spent the night, before heading to the world number one aquarium, Monteray Bay Aquarium.

That place was huge, and extremely great. I realise I'm running out of ways to say 'awesome' here, but everything just blew us away. The artfully placed models hanging from the ceiling, the huge Outer Bay display showing all the humoungous tuna and sharks (Ryan couldn't find the whale shark he was looking for), the sandbank place where I stroked a bat ray, the coral decorations and the penguins taking a leak in front of everyone. The otters playing around in their tank, and the special Secret Lives Of Sea Horses exhibition. Everything completely surprised and delighted, and I have no problem seeing how it is the world's number one. IT IS AWESOME.

After poking around Cannery Row (and me attempting to get into the John Steinback museum), we decided to go to Bubba Gump's and have seafood. Natural side-effect for food-loving Singaporeans after staring at that much fish. Apart from the great seafood bucket, I finally got to take a taste of Key Lime Pie, though it was the cheesecake-ish version, not the meringe version.

Running late, we attempted to go for the 17 Mile, but were out of time; we ended up stopping off further up, in Carmel instead, canceling our earlier reservation further towards LA. Hungry, and having found a great hotel, we crossed the road, and stumbled into the world famous Allegro, an Italian pizza place. It was some of the best pizza I've had in my life (and the owner's son, 'JP', shocked that our family could totally demolish three full pizzas.) We were so damn lucky, since stopping off in Carmel meant great pizza, a chance to take in the scenic 17 Mile in the day, and less rush, at virtually no cost to ourselves!

Moving on, we took on the 17 Mile drive, which was super scenic. It was scenic enough to make someone scared of scenery. We were practically stopping every 10 minutes to admire the scenary. Pictures will come. Eventually. It was there where I had a cup of hot chocolate and mistook 'cinnamon' for 'chocolate powder'. It has left me with a small phobia of cinnamon. It was that bad.

From here on I'm hashing this, so that I can write other things, and there are pictures anyway.

After we left the park, trailing behind an extremely slow-driving Indian family, to the Big Sur. Then we headed back down to LA. Let me now mention that attempts to visit Los Angeles Plaza failed, since it was even further from HOJOs than Disneyland, and that was a 2 hour drive.

Then we flew to Japan. There we did some stuff. One of the first is meeting Edgar, where, much to the chagrin of my mom, I was actually allowed into Roppongi again. Ryan stayed in the hotel room. Heh. There we met Mika (whom Facebook actually suggested the next day; I swear they are stalking me aaarrrgh), and actually had some great teppanyaki. There I also fell down for the second time of the day, down some stairs. That hurt.

Met up with Auntie Maki and Mizuki again, and went for, whattaya know, yakitori! Got to talk a lot more without a rushed schedule and having to make up with two years worth of information. Didn't get to meet with Keyi though. He had a bball game on. So yeah. Then we went to Starbucks, where I enjoyed a cinnamon-less cuppa of hot choc, and talked somemore. Ya.

And I can't remember for the life of me anything else. Some stuff ocurred, yeah, but it's all fuzzy, or hard to explain. So yah, here's the last bit hashed out. And that was my holiday.

Now, for the pictures!


~Russell
Working on it...

fluffy! i'm here again!

boss finally strayed into internet range, which was in the form of the internet kiosk in the hilton (san francisco) hotel lobby. 'please limit use to 15 minutes' my very fluffy paw. so he's back on the nets, but i'm doing the blog post, just because he thinks it would be cute, and he's busy complaining about balisongs.

yes, i came along the trip. smuggled in the luggage. don't ask.

the trip is very long... boss did a lot of stuff. in japan he met his really old childhood friends from vietnam... which he was there in p1 ish, i think. and he met his mom's student in roppongi someplace. then he went to america, and hanged around l.a. doing some shopping, where he got keeper's gloves, and three theme parks. disney, for the novelty or something, universal studios, and the worse, six flags magic mountain, where his bro dragged him through all sorts of crazy rides. boss was very beat up after that. then the family drove down to san fran, where they were in chinatown. chinese was actually useful! they've been bumping around the city, heading to fisherman's wharf, ghiradelli (choc-lat), seeing the big bridge, shopping, and taking in the view. and today they went to the really really bumpy street. see, i'm so nice, i got links. there are a lotta pictures... boss has to upload them all when he gets back.

so tomorrow they're driving to monteray on the way back to l.a. for the flight. we're following the noisey gps again. boss will tell you more when he gets around to blogging. it would be a long post. bleh.

~guffy
does not like being in checked-in baggage for the entire flight across the pacific or whichever ocean it was.

Once again, my blog will have yet another period of dead-ness. This time, I'm jetting off for a holiday, to Japan, and then America (collecting myself into a United State).

To make it up to my blog readers, I've included the starting bit of my attempted story here (that is most definitely not koped off Sarah Haras, eh crys?); please be gentle.
To make it up to my Facebook friends, I've edited my Info with a bit more details. I have wisely decided not to squeeze in two weeks of very random status updates into one day, for fear of being removed by a lot friends.

So see ya'll; I'll be thinking of you guys when I sing 'Leaving on a Jet Plane' tomorrow on the plane.
(I have recently had a vast improvement in singing ability, can do lots of songs now, with recent attempts I'm Yours, I'm Just a Kid, Everytime, and The Last Night. So this will be slightly more pleasant a prospect for my cabin-mates.)

~Russell

The results were back, and as with any story commanding any plot whatsoever, they weren't good.

Bob sat there, patiently hearing but not listening to what the doctor had to say. 99.8% chance it was malignant; there could be treatment, but there was a very low chance of success; and most importantly, he had 6 months, maybe more if he took good care of himself.

And as the doctor was expounding upon the various things he could or should do, he spoke, in plain, simple words.

"I don't want treatment."

And so the medical specialist painstaking explained that it could help him; that it was highy recommended; that he was throwing away his one chance to live.

"I don't want treatment."

Try as he might, with the knowledge of four degrees hanging on the walls behind him, the doctor could not budge his unwilling patient. Very well then; you will have to go through one last checkup, and a visit to the counselor, before you can go.

At the counselor the same scene repeated itself, but still all that could be coaxed from him was four words.

"I don't want treatment."

Back outside, he was waiting for the receptionist to come with some forms, where he was to be signing away all the responsibility of his health from the hospital, signing an affirmative that he did indeed know what he was doing, signing a statement for them to stop caring. While he was waiting, the only other person in the waiting area, a middle-aged woman, asked him;

"So, what are you down with?"
"Cancer."
"Ouch. Refusing treatment as well?"
"Yes. You?"
"ALS. Not pleasant at all. Nothing much they can do for me, anyway, and I dead refuse to be shackled to a bed."
The receptionist returned with the forms, calling. Charlene, you can go in now.
"Certainly. It's been good meeting you?"
"Bob."
"Hope to see you around."

With that, she entered the office in a bustle, no doubt to prove to them that she wasn't crazy too. Bob signed his forms, and he left.

***

What does one do when one has 6 months to live? Bob didn't know, so he stuck to what he did everyday. Inside he felt numb, uncertain, lacking direction.

So he headed home, buying the paper as he did. It was only until he got down, tossing the paper on the coffee table of his small apartment, did he break down and cry. He didn't know what to do, where to go, how he was going to spend the time he had left.

He had never done anything major in the 30-odd years in his life, never contributed much to his community, never did anything anyone could remember him for. How would he be remembered?

Then as he looked up from his tear-stained palms, a column headline of the paper came into focus. It read "Facebook of Death - New service allows one to send messages to loved ones after death."

And so he picked up the paper. He could work with that.

~To be continued~