time to play blackjack. i'm sure this is a sign. (refer to title)

hung out with 2 long time best buds Tim and Ernie. and all it took was a random phone call from one of them calling for coffee. met Tim first as Ernie took a while to realize that his Tim called him to hang out. Tim was recollecting about how he tried to call loads of peeps and i was e first one who was free. then Ernie eventually made it! alright! we roamed the streets of bukit batok paved with well... pavement. we almost made decided to walk all e way to gombak and then to choa chu kang. but... that was a crazy idea. i'd die on e trip back.

nice salmon colored paper. and wow... it finally didn't rain for a day.

nonchalance and blatant ignorance is probably the best policy for me nowadays when encountering petty people. i need more than patience or i'll seriously start to kill someone. thankfully i was able to muster enough resistance to that temptation when it knocked this monday. hmmm... i wonder how those petty people who think the world should be at their feet will feel if u just show them that u don't care that they have to do something so simple for something necessary.

now i know how my sister feels when she always sleeps past 3am. only to wake up past 12pm. came back from her 21st at clarke quay yesterday. we were professionally chaffered home by Keefe. thanks man! now u know how tiring it is to be brother. haha.

Today went by a lot quicker as a volunteer keeper. It was a whole lot more enjoyable being able to do more stuff. Maybe it was just because i made it out to be so blur and lost and blur and lost that it slowed time by 1.5 times.

The highlight of the day was the white tiger training. We had to train Omar (the only male) by making hand gestures and asking him to sit, lie down, roll over and jump and open his mouth. ok. not roll over. this is just making him sound like a puppy. but yes for the rest. making him open his mouth was like asking him to yawn. we'd just spread out our fingers and he'd open his mouth so we could check his teeth and smell the breath of someone who'd just finished a raw and bloody large pile of meat. And then he'd also roar at us and we'd just deprive him of treats to tell him it was wrong to do it. sounds like kindergarten treatment. Oh... and he's actually only 160 KGs not 230! unlike what the commentators say. haha.

Cool. There's finally another person from CJC's 08 batch working in the zoo! Her name's Merisa.

yesterday's party at Caspar's was swell. although i only managed to make it to his place at 9 cos i had committed myself to go for institute every week, it was a light hearted affair that really struck a chord and helped loose some unwanted tension that lay. the stay only lasted 2 hours. by the time i got there, they had already finished dinner but had saved me food and was already mid way through a game of taboo. but the highlight of the night was the playful continuation of the matchmaking of the birthday boy and someone else. haha. i shan't disclose the details here to respect the privacy of the parties involved. haha. Caspar is gonna kill me.

anyway... to sidetrack completely... i hope i do more than enough to be forgiven so that any hint of awkwardness left can just break.

amidst all the normal regular bothering and somewhat irritating expectations and mundane stuff which requires meeting pre-determined marks set by the former runner and conceived expectations as a result in the wake of the release of results is the irritating interjections made by others in schedules already fixed way prior to an event just thought up on the fly. they make such a big fuss out of the small little issues like a meal when the day itself doesn't really represent the event that truly endorses the importance of the event. stupid. stupid self oriented views. i've already made so many allowances to spread time about evenly. oh the antique clock nincompoops. oh well... c'est la vive.

happy total defence day. lol. there go e sirens again.

priesthood advancement class was hilarious today. given that it was done by Brother Dennis Lam as it has been for the past few weeks already, it lived up to its normal billing. we had to opportunity to learn about blessings and how we should call upon the correct authority. and for the lesson... there was the expected scenario of someone having to be e sample-cum-test-subject-cum-lab-rat. so chester and i were the ITS. haha. so we re-enacted some scenes like baptism and blessings so many times, i think some of us got "demoted" from teacher to deacon, "promoted" to elder to and back to priest to what have you. and i got e Holy Ghost at least 6 times consecutively.

argh. the stress of having to coordinate sacrament.

met up with Kenneth today for a long and nice bike ride around ubin.

motocross biking, tree climbing and animal noises, and lunch munch black carrot cake. the day started out really well. while taking the bus 29 to the changi jetty, we found out why Trent was named Trent by Bro. Dave Lai. So bus 29 actually passes by this SIA building for i-don't-know-what-sad-isolated-purpose-near-changi-village. and this SIA building for i-don't-know-what-sad-isolated-purpose-near-changi-village is situated right next to TRENT WAY. mighty coincidence huh?

today marked the first day of being a volunteer zookeeper. i couldn't catch on quick enough to the new tasks and alien surroundings cos u hardly even get e chance to go into the animal enclosures unless ure a zookeeper. First i got to know Nasir and Prakash. Nasir was the section head keeper and i didn't really see him much but Prakash was really nice in teaching me and helping me along with e tasks altho i fumbled here and there. Subsequently i made more new acquaintances in Cheryl (from the rhino keepers section), got to know more about Eevin who's one of the commentators and Wei Wen who's also one of the keepers in the section i was attached to which covered the White Tigers, Kangaroos, Pygmy Hippos and the Wart Hogs.

the morning greeted me with a lot of... well... animal dung while cleaning the kangaroos and wart hogs enclosures by sweeping the whole areas. the wart hog cleaning was a muted one but the kangaroo enclosure was met with constant bugging by one or two emus. one of which was just there to disturb you while the other was kinda aggressive and would start kicking and pecking you or sth. later on there was the kangaroo token feeding session where the visitors were allowed to come and feed them and pat them at the same time at a cost tho. u get to do it free as a keeper. haha. the wallabies are super cute. especially the smaller ones. they hop around the enclosure in a flash. and they'd just crowd around u one u have food and just start sniffing at every part of ur clothing for hidden food. in this case... they might have swallowed my wallet, handphone or mp3. that would suck.

next was the white tiger and pygmy hippos token feeding session. there were 3 white tigers. the biggest one being the only male called Omar and the other 2 females - one is Winnie while i forgot the last one's name. Omar was bullying Winnie over food and roared at Winnie who quickly jumped away much to the horrific gasps of the onlooking visitors. The keepers just smiled and Eevin the commentator and i just laughed. the pygmy hippo feeding was subdued as there wouldn't really be much drama with hippos that walk underwater anyway.

being a keeper means u have at least 3 hours of break. well... OFFICIALLY. but unofficially u have at least 4 or 5. went cycling around the zoo to go look for my fellow colleagues like Caspar and Kun ao. Kun Yao was like super bored at the boat dock near kidsworld cos he was alone listening to his almost perfect 10 radio called the walkie talkie. and Caspar was playing with a walkie calling the Cleaners' supervisor. for what? to clean up an ice cream on the floor.

when we finished e day, we brought e animals back into confinement. this reminds me. I should be thankful i'm not confined every night or closing time. at least i will be for the first 2 weeks plus of army. but oh well... what the heck. keeping the white tigers was really an experience. Got to see them upfront. Winnie was lying down and looking at me while i sat down in front of her and looked back. it was all so cool.